July 1
1388: Jews of Lithuania received a Charter of Privilege.
1490: Twenty year old Yucef Franco, a Jewish cobbler from Tembleque and his 80 year old father Ça Franco was arrested by the Inquisition.
1581: Gregory XIII issued “Antiqua judaeorum improbitas,” a Papal Bull that “authorized the Inquisition directly to handle cases involving Jews, especially those concerning blasphemies against Jesus or Mary, incitement to heresy or assistance to heretics, possession of forbidden books, or the employment of Christian wet nurses.” (Jewish Virtual Library shows the date as June 1, 1581)
1569: The Union of Lublin joins The Kingdom of Poland and the Great Duchy of Lithuania into a united country called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations. This had to be an improvement in the situation for the Jews of Lithuania who were governed by statutes that read in part, "The Jews shall not wear costly clothing, nor gold chains, nor shall their wives wear gold or silver ornaments. The Jews shall not have silver mountings on their sabers and daggers; they shall be distinguished by characteristic clothes; they shall wear yellow caps, and their wives kerchiefs of yellow linen, in order that all may be enabled to distinguish Jews from Christians." During the 15th and 16thcenturies the Jews of Poland enjoyed an increasing amount of political autonomy and economic wellbeing which would come to a crashing end with the Ukrainian uprisings in the 17th centuries.
1589: In Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, a Dutch publisher who printed “a good many Hebrew texts” passed away today. Plantin printed the “Biblia Poygotta” a Bible containing five languages one of which was Hebrew. “The first four volumes contain the Old Testament. The left page has two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin translation, the right page has same text in Greek with its own Latin translation. Underneath these columns there is an Aramaic version on the left-hand page and a Latin translation of this on the right-hand side. For printing the Hebrew text Plantin used among others Daniel Bomberg's Hebrew type, which he had received from Bomberg's nephews.Volume 5 contains the New Testament in Greek and Syriac, each with a Latin translation, and a translation of the Syriac into Hebrew. Volume 6 has the complete Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, as well as an interlinear version that has the Latin translation printed between the lines.”
The last two volumes contain dictionaries (Hebrew-Latin, Greek-Latin, Syriac-Aramaic, grammar rules, list of names, etc.) that were of value to scholars
http://forward.com/articles/186552/solution-to-antwerp-mystery-leads-to-yet-another-m/
1651: Poland was victorious over the Cossacks. The Jews were allowed to return to their lands but the society that they had built was gone forever.
1736:Ahmed III, the Sultan who appointed Judah ben Samuel Rosanes to serve a “hakam bashi” (Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire passed away. Rabbi Judah was a noted scholar who was an ardent opponent of the Shabbethaians (the followers of the “False Messiah”)
1776: “Cherokees attacked settlement along the” South Carolina frontier resulting in a “Paul Revere-like Ride” by Francis Salvador to sound the alarm for those living within a 30 mile radius.
1776: First Jew lost his life in the American Revolution.
1798: In Switzerland, special taxes on the Jews were finally abolished.
1805(4th of Tammuz, 5565):Pinchas Horowitz, a rabbi and Talmudist who was born at Chortkiv in 1731 died today at Frankfort-on-the-Main
1810: The reign of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, as King of Holland, came to an end. Bonaparte sought to improve the condition of the Jews. Among other things he abolished the “Oath More Judaico” and opened military service to Jews by creating two battalions made up exclusively of Jewish soldiers and officers.
1845: David Levy Yulee began serving as the United States from Florida. This was in the days before the direct election of Senators. After Florida joined the Union, the state legislature chose Yulee to fill the position. This made him the first Jew to be elected to the United States. Yulee would desert the Union and join the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. Yulee would ‘desert’ the faith of his fathers wen he married a Christian and raised his children in her faith.
1857: According to the New York Times, there are 1,500,000 Jews living in Russia out of a population estimated at 63,000,000.
1858: The House of Lords took up the question of admitting Jews into Parliament. Lord Derby expressed a willingness to end his opposition to the measure as a way of avoiding a major collision with the House of Commons. [Editor’s note – The issue of Jewish emancipation was not strictly a “Jewish issue.” It may also be seen as part of a larger power struggle between the Establishment as represented by the Lords and the changing economic and social milieu as represented by the Commons. The issue of Jewish Emancipation was but one of many issues over which this battle was fought with the Commons ultimately emerging victorious.]
1861(23rdof Tammuz, 5621): Bernhard Beer, a member of the prominent Bondi family, who as a journalist worked for the emancipation of his co-religionists in Saxony and who, although a layman, “was the first to introduce German language sermons a the congregation in Dresden, passed away today.
1862: Russian Jews were granted permission to print Jewish books
1863: First day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Just as the war pitted brother against brother, so it pitted Jew against Jew. At Gettysburg, Prussian born Major Adolph Proskauer of Mobile led the 12th Alabama against the Army of the Potomac which included Lieutenant Abraham Cohn, a native of East Prussia, who fought with the 6th New Hampshire Volunteers. Cohn fought in 11 battles and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Proskauer did not survive his service with the Rebel Army.
1863: Lieutenant Colonel Israel Moses was among those who arrived with Sickle’s brigade as it tried to stem the Confederate tide on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg.
1863: Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman had sufficiently recovered from the wounds sustained at the Battle of Brandy Station to serve with United States Army Signal Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg.
1867: With the passage of the British North America Act, Great Britain officially recognizes the Dominion of Canada as an independent country. Jews had been living in Canada since the British took it from France in the 17th century. There were enough Jews living in Montreal to allow for the creation of a synagogue called Shearith Israel. While most members of the small Jewish community lived in various towns in the eastern part of the country enough Jews arrived in British Columbia during the Gold Rush that a synagogue was constructed in Victoria in 1862. At the time that Britain recognized the independence of Canada there were about 1,000 Jews living in “our neighbor to the North.” This number would explode shortly thereafter with the beginning of the immigration of Russian Jews.
1873: Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian Confederation. Apparently, Jews did not start settling in Prince Edward Island until the first decade of the 20thcentury with the arrival of Louis, Israel and Abie Block. The three brothers were from Riga and may have been the Jews who were described in 1908 newspaper article as having celebrated Passover in this part of Canada.
1873: The government closed the “rabbinical school of Jitomir” where Chaim Lerner, a native of Dubno had been service as the Hebrew teacher since 1851.
1873: In Detroit, Michigan, founding of Congregation B’nai Israel
1874: “Ivanhoe or, Rebecca, the Jewess,” a “dramatization” of Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel opened tonight at Niblo’s Theatre in New York City. The play, which presents a sympathetic depiction of Isaac of York and his daughter was well received by the audience. [Editor’s Note – The positive response of the audience to Jewish characters stands at odds at with the outbreak of genteel anti-Semitism that is soon about to infect polite society in New York and elsewhere.]
1877: It was reported today that people in Bucharest were quite surprised to learn that Jewish citizens in the United States had presented a petition to Secretary of State William Evarts asking him to intervene on behalf of their co-religionists in Romania and Turkey. According to the reports, the Jews of the region were even more surprised than the gentiles to hear of this request for intervention by the government of President Rutherford B. Hays.
1877: Wilhelm Bacher “was appointed by the Hungarian government to the professorship of the newly created Landesrabbinerschule of Budapest.”
1878: Karl Nobling “shot and wounded Kaiser Wilhelm I in a failed assassination attempt.” It was the second such attempt in less than a month and provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the leverage of implement the Anti-Socialist Law in October which was meant to curb the growth the Marxist Social Democratic Party,
1878: At the insistence of Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck the Congress of Berlin incorporated into the Treaty of Berlin an article intended to provide the Jews of Romania with the opportunity for full citizenship. Unfortunately, the Romanians evaded the article and only a hand full of Jews would gain citizenship.
1880: “A Survey of Assyrian Art” published today provided a detailed review of Manual of Oriental Antiques, Ernest Babelon’s tome about the architecture, sculpture and industrial arts of ancient civilizations which includes one chapter devoted to the Jews. The representations of “Jewish art and architecture…supplied from the work of de Vogue and from ‘The Recovery of Jerusalem’ by Wilson and Warren.”
1880: (12th of Tammuz): Birthdate of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok who would become the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe would overcome a terrifying imprisonment at the hands of Stalin’s henchmen in the 1920’s. Later, he would escape the clutches of the Nazis and settle in Brooklyn where he revived the cause of Chabad-Lubavitch. The Rebbe would launch, what would become under his son-in-law who was the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of history’s most successful Jewish outreach programs.
1881: “Scenes in Parisian Life” published today reported that “Fashionable Paris kept its word loyally” by keeping its promise not to leave the city until after the concert which was to raise funds for the Jews of Russian had been held. The Gaulois sponsored a concert that included performances by Faure and Mme. Alder-Devries the proceeds of which were to go to the “evicted and demolished Israelite of Southern Russia.”
1882: The Memphis (TN) Avalanche reported that during the commencement address delivered by George Cable at the University of Mississippi, the distinguished author call for embracing the future included the challenge - “Let us search provincialism out the land as the Hebrew housewife purged her house of leaven on the eve of the Passover.” (Apparently this custom of the Jews was so well known that the New Orleans author felt that it would be easily understood by those attending an event in rural Oxford, MS.
1883: It was reported today that ten new rabbis will be ordained later this month at the first graduation ceremony of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1883: “A Middle Age Trial” published today described the Christian community of Hungary as being dense an dark in light of the trial being conducted Nyreghhaza where Jews are charged with having killed a Christian girl “in order to use her blood in ceremonies of the Passover;” a charge that “reads like a chapter from the history of the Middle Ages…What is taking place in Hungary is what was a common occurrence a few hundred years along. It only within the present century that the cruel and causeless prejudice against Jews has disappeared in civilized communities…Hungary is only about four hundred years behind the age.” [Note – The same article contained the oddly prophetic statement “In Germany the cry is raised that a few Jew have, by their talents and industry, made themselves the ruling class.”
1883: Joseph Blumenthal completed his term as President of the Board of Trustees of Shearith Israel in New York City.
1883: Since the Board of Directors were in a deadlock when they voted for a new president for Shearith Israel, Joseph Blumenthal “was made Chairman Pro Tem and authored to act as President until” the board elects a president.
1884: Isaac Jacobs, a middle aged Jew, is being held in Boston, MA on charges that he murdered Mrs. Etta Carlton of Watertown in 1883. Jacobs had been extradited from New York where he had been arrested on an outstanding larceny warrant.
1884: It was reported today that anti-Semitic riots have broken out in Algiers. Order was restored by troops who put an end to the pillaging of the Jewish the city’s Jewish quarter.
1884: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, Russia The New Times has declared its opposition to granting Jews equal rights with Christians saying that this “would be a greater misfortune for Russia” than when it had been ruled by the Mongols. [Statements like this should help readers understand the depth of anti-Semitism in Russia which propelled the massive migration to the West, primarily to the United States.]
1886: The first edition of the Menorah, a monthly magazine published by the B’nai Brith is scheduled to appear for the first time today.
1886: Birthdate of Ithak Katzenelson, a native of Karleichy who became a teacher, poet and dramatist. Like so many of his generation, he was caught in the web of the Holocaust. He took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising before being murdered in May of 1944. He wrote Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishn folk( "Song of the Murdered Jewish People") which was retrieved from its hiding place after the war and taken to Israel.
1888: A summer term instituted by the trustees of the Jewish Theological Seminary will begin today. Among the instructors will be Dr. Cyrus Adler who will lecture on “Assyriology.”
1889: Manuel of Oriental Antiquities by Enest Babelon which was reviewed today devotes one chapter to the Jews. Information on Jewish art and architecture is based on The Recovery of Jerusalem by Wilson and Warren and the works of Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé
1889: The Will of Alexander Bach which left bequests of $1,000 each to Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore Home for Incurables, Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society, United Hebrew Charities, Temple Gates of Hope Hebrew Free School Association, Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Temple Israel of Harlem was executed today.
1889: Birthdate of Russian born artists and printmaker who settled in Chicago where he became a leader in the art community and an activist among Yiddish speaking artists.
http://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/todros_geller/
http://blog.chicagohistory.org/index.php/2013/02/my-jewish-chicago-todros-geller/
1891: The Hansa Line Steamship Pichuben left Antwerp today carrying a large number of Jews who have been expelled from Russia.
1891(25thof Sivan, 5651): Forty-four year old Alexander Weisse, a native of Budapest who had been in the United States for six years and was the advertising agent for a German language evening paper, took his own life after attempting to murder the young girl who had been in his companion for several months.
1891: According to today’s “Theatrical Gossip” the comedy company of Jewish producer Charles Frohman “has made a great hit in Chicago” with its performance of ‘Mr. Wilkinson’s Widows.’”
1892: “Jewish Pawnshops Must Go” published today described the government’s order that all Moscow pawnshops owned by Jews will be closed. The Jews will be given six months to close down their businesses.
1892: Today’s investigation of an explosion at a New York Tenement that was home to Russian and Polish Jews including butcher shop owner Myer Kohn and the family Moses Lefkowitz revealed the fact that the tenants have been complaining about the smell of gas ever since the Consolidated Gas Company began putting a new pipe into the building. Their complaints were ignored.
1894: It was reported today that the Hebrew Institute will be hosting free talks by leading physicians on the “Care and Feeding of Infants and Children During the Warm Weather.”
1894: It was reported today that the 265 students who have stayed at Cypress Hill, a facility for truants, in the past year, 18 of them have been Jewish.
1894: In a comment that would have a rabbi proud, Dr. Jesse W. Brooks told his Christian audience that “of all the ancient nations…the Hebrew was the only survivor because it obeyed God’s injunction to keep holy the Sabbath Day.”
1895: It was reported today that “the notorious Jew-baiter Hermann Ahlwardt” is among those who are about to be prosecuted by the Imperial Treasury “for their flagrant misuse of free passes to canal fetes.”
1895: A group of underprivileged children left today for a two day excursion at the Rockaway Beach Hebrew Sanitarium.
1895: Colonel Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr left his job at the Statistical Section (the counter-espionage service of the French Army) to take command of the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban. In 1894, when the Statistical Section had intercepted a handwritten note that established that French military secrets had been handed over to the Germans, Sandherr convened the secret commission that “hastily” decided Alfred Dreyfus was the spy. Sandherr was replaced by Colonel Georges Picquart who was a key figure in proving Dreyfus’ innocence.
1898: In the Spanish-American War Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba. The Rough Riders was a cavalry unit recruited by Roosevelt that drew on every strata of American life from Western cowboys to Yankee Bluebloods. Several Jews served with the unit including Jacob Wilbusky, the first Roughrider killed in action. The Roughriders were forced to leave their horses back the United States so the famous charge was made on foot.
1899: The Conference of the English Zionist Federation comes to an end.
1900: Herzl turns to Prime Minister Koerber and asks him to use his influence with the Sultan to permit the Rumanian Jews to immigrate into Turkey and to receive him, in order to discuss the question of colonization and settlement.
1901: The month in Morgan City, LA the building housing Shaarey Zedek burned down.
1902: Birthdate of Oscar winning director Billy Wyler. Wyler directed many classics including the World War II tear-jerker Mrs. Miniver. Ironically, his greatest hit was The Best Years of Our Lives, a film that described the return of four veterans to civilian life after World War II. Once again, the Jews played a major role in crafting the cultural myths of Middle American Culture.
1906: In Queens, NY, Rose Schotz Rosenthal, and Max Mentzer gave birth to Josephine Esther Mentzer who became famous as Estée Laude, a woman who took her place in the world of business in a manner that marked her as a trailblazer. She was the co-founder, along with her husband, Joseph Lauder, of Estée Lauder Companies and the mother of Jewish leader Ronald Lauder.
1907: Birthdate of famed sportscaster Bill Stern.
1907: Corresponding Secretary Tobias Schanfarber reported that during the fiscal year that ended today the Central Conference of American Rabbis have issued 89 vouchers amounting to $6,959.73.
1907: The SS Cassel entered the port of Galveston, Texas with 87 Russian Jews aboard, heralding the start of the Galveston Movement - an organized attempt to bring Jews to less populated parts of the US.
1908: Birthdate of Estee Lauder. Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She married Joseph Lauter who changed the family named to Lauder in the late 1930’s. Mrs. Lauder was CEO of Estee Lauder’s Cosmetics. . She was one of several Jewish women who found fame and fortune in the cosmetics business. She was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. She passed away in 2004 at the age of 97.
1909: Birthdate of Antonina Pirozhkova, the common-law widow of Russian literary giant Isaac Babel who wrote a well-received memoir that provided a rare glimpse of the persecuted writer's final years in the 1930s.
1920: Sir Herbert Samuel, a British statesman was appointed High Commissioner of Eretz-Israel. His first official act was to grant amnesty to political prisoners including Jabotinsky. He governed the British Mandate for five years. Sir Herbert governed as a British official, not as a Jew and there were clashes between him and some Zionist leaders.
1920: In an attempt to strengthen the American labor movement, Benjamin “Schlesinger addressed a letter to the Neckwear Workers' Union of New York, the International Journeymen Tailors' Union of America, the International Fur Workers' Union, the United Garment Workers of America, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and the United Cloth Hat, Cap Makers and Millinery Workers' Union of America, proposing an alliance of all garment workers unions.”
1921: Dr. Thomas G. Allen, Secretary of the Oriental Institute announced today that the thanks to a $60,000 grant by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the University of Chicago will excavate the site of Armageddon or Megiddo.
1922: In Syracuse, NY, prominent lawyer Warren Winkelstein and his wife gave birth to Warren Winkelstein, Jr. “a physician and researcher whose groundbreaking studies connected unprotected sex between men to AIDS, smoking to cervical cancer and air pollution to chronic lung disease” (As reported by Denise Grady)
1923: Fast of the 17th of Tammuz
1926: The New York Joint Board called a general strike by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGUWU)
1926: Birthdate of Robert William Fogel, “Nobel-winning economist whose number-crunching empiricism upended established thinking, most provocatively about the economics of slavery” (As reported by Robert D. Hershey)
1927: (12thof Tammuz): Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok is liberated from his death sentence and imprisonment in the Soviet Union. With the outbreak of World War II, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe would make his way to New York where he would establish the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch in Crown Heights. From there, he would launch what would become a highly successful world-wide outreach program designed to educate Jews and heighten their awareness of their heritage.
1929: Opening of Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook with the “book” by Eddie Cantor.
1929: Julian Mack “was reassigned as an additional judge to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.:
1929: In Queens, NY, Dr. Edward Edelman and Anna (née Freedman) Edelman gave birth to Gerald Maurice Edelman, “an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.”
1930: At the morning session of the International Wailing Wall Commission, Rabbi Ben Zion Meyer Uziel, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, described Jewish prayer rituals conducted at the Wall declaring that the High Commissioner’s recent ban on the use of the Torah Scroll, Lulav, tefillin and tallit was unacceptable.While questioning Rabbi Uziel, Arab leader Abdul Auni implied that the Zionists were using bogus claims of the right to worship at the Wall as a form of propaganda to recruit Jews to settle in Palestine. At this afternoon's meeting of the International Wailing Wall Commission, the three commissioners watched a movie filmed in 1911 showing Jewish men and women praying at the wall, Jewish worshippers sitting on benches and Jewish women kissing the stones of the Wall. The commissioners pronounced the film as authentic and thus it became further evidence of the long standing connection of the Jewish people to the Wall. The International Wailing Wall Commission was established by the League of Nations after Arab rioters violently denied Jews access to the Western Wall
1930: Birthdate of Carol Doris Schatz, the Philadelphia native who would marry Noam Chomsky in 1949 and gain fame in her own right as a linguist and educator. Mrs. Chomsky passed away at the age of 78 in December of 2008.
1930: Julian Mack was reassigned to serve solely on the Second Circuit.
1932: Over the next 11 months (June 1, 1933), the ZOA will clear the cases of 1,622 people wishing to settle in Palestine.
1932: Release date for the German film Mensch ohne Namen (Man Without a Name) featuring performances by Julius Falekenstein a Jewish actor who died the same year the Nazis came to power and Fritz Grünbaum who would die at Dachau where he performed for the last time for his fellow prisoners on New Year’s Eve, two weeks before his death in January, 1941.
1932: Birthdate of Ze’ev Schiff, the French born Jew who gained fame asan Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Haaretz.
1933:With a message of "cordial greetings and best wishes" from President Roosevelt and a declaration that "the calamity that has overtaken the 600.000 Jews in Germany has cast a shadow over everything else in Jewish life," the Zionist Organization of America opened its convention today in Chicago. Five thousand delegates and observers attended this meeting which was described as being the largest in the history of the ZOA. At this evening’s opening session at the Palmer House, Moriss Rothenberg, President of the ZOA reported that 20,000 Jews had entered the National Home in the last 18 months and that during 1932 12 million dollars in new investments had been made in Palestine. While Rothenberg had words of praise for the British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Grenfeel Wauchope, he was highly critical of the Mandatory Government (the British) for not increasing the allotment of immigration certificates in light of the events in Germany.
1933 The German government states that "Reich Chancellor Hitler still belongs to the Catholic Church and has no intention of leaving it."
1934: Birthdate of director Sydney Pollack. His hits have included Tootsie and Presumed Innocent.
1934: Erich Gans was murdered in Dachau. It was the last such murder for ten months. The Jewish population at Dachau was almost non-existent at the time since most had been killed or released by end of 1933.
1934: The New York Times reviews From Nebuchadnezzar to Hitler by Danish author Peter Hemmer Gudme. In this sympathetic study of the Zionist movement which the reviewer is sure will be translated in English, the non-Jewish Gudme traces the ancient connection of the Jewish people with their homeland before describing modern efforts beginning with Pinsker, Hess and Herzl to create a modern Jewish home in Palestine. Gudme will die at the hands of the Nazis in Copenhagen in 1945.
1934(18th of Tammuz, 5694):Tzom Tammuz
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): In London, Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore passed away. Montefiore was the head of the London Portuguese community and was a great philanthropist
1935: In the Nahalat Ahim quarter of Jerusalem, Rosa and Musa Kraus gave birth to Israeli entertainer Shmuel “Shmulik” Kraus.
1936: The Palestine Post reported from London that the House of Commons discussed the question of the composition of the proposed Royal Commission for Palestine. The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, explained that the appointment of women members to the commission was undesirable, due to the sensitivities of the Moslems and Orthodox Jews.
1936: As Arab violence continued to intensify, The Palestine Post reported that the Christian communities of Beit Jala and Kafr Kana were warned by Arab terrorists that they must deliver 60 young men as volunteers for their ranks, or face the consequences. There were sporadic shootings, bombs thrown and trees uprooted throughout the country. Two British soldiers were hurt by flying debris during the demolition of houses in the old quarter of Jaffa.
1937: The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of "unacceptable" artwork by Jews and others opens in Munich. A concurrent event of "approved" art held nearby attracts far fewer people than the Entartete Kunst
1937: Pastor Martin Niemöller's anti-Semitism does not prevent the Nazis from arresting him because of his opposition to Hitler
1938: Birthdate of Diane Silvers Ravitch, a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and former United States Assistant Secretary of Education who became a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
1938: Under a proposal called the Sosua Project, the Dominican Republic offers to accept 100,000 European Jewish refugees, to be settled in an area near Santo Domingo, in return for payment of millions of dollars from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). (Under the plan the Dominican Republic actually admitted on only about 500 Jews by 1940 when immigration was halted)
1939: Fourteen year old Rudolf Wessely arrives in London from Prague. Wessely was the son of Charles Wessely, a successful Czech businessman and civil servant. The British could find room for the son but not his 43 year old father or 38 year old mother
1939: In Park Ridge, Norman Ziegler and the former Elsie Reif gave birth to Karen Blanche Ziegler who gained fame as actress Karen Black who starred in two 1970’s cult films – “Easy Rider” and “Five Easy Pieces.”
1940:A war emergency program to aid in the defense of the 500,000 Jews in Palestine was adopted unanimously by the convention of the Zionist Organization of America meeting today in Pittsburgh, PA.
1940: The America First Committee is formed. It is the most significant American isolationist group, and it is also infiltrated by Nazis, who are working to prevent American intervention in Europe. Several prominent Americans speak in support of the committee. Many in Congress attack the Jews of Hollywood as attempting to involve America in opposition to Hitler.
1940: Bloody anti-Jewish riots erupt in cities throughout Romania
1940: In a letter to German Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Bishop Theophil Wurm, head of the provincial Lutheran Church at Württemberg, Germany, objects to "euthanasia" killings at the nearby Grafaneck crippled-children's institution; See September 5, 1940.
1940: In Holland, a collaborationist propaganda group, Nederlandse Unie(Netherlands Union), is established.
1940: A Jewish ghetto is established at Bedzin, Poland.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): The first day of a three day killing spree in Drohobych, during which Ukrainians, assisted by Whermacht soldiers killed three hundred Jews.
1941: A Pogrom in Jassy, the cradle of Rumanian anti-Semitism claimed 5000 Jewish lives.
1941: Birthdate of Dr. Alfred G. Gilman recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1941: British code breakers monitoring radio traffic coming from German troops in the Soviet Union become aware of Nazi massacres of Soviet Jews.
1941: Two thousand members of Minsk, Belorussia's intelligentsia are executed by German troops in a nearby forest.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): More than 2500 Jews are slaughtered at Zhitomir, Ukraine.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): During an EinsatzkommandoAktion (murder operation) at Mielnica, Ukraine, a Jew named Abraham Weintraub hurls himself on a German officer and shatters the officer's teeth. Weintraub is immediately shot.
1941: In the Bialystok region of Poland, Nazis murder 300 members of the Jewish intelligentsia.
1941: German killing squads begin to murder Jews remaining in Kishinev, Romania.
1941: The Hungarian government undertakes a mass roundup of almost 18,000 Jewish refugees for deportation to Kamenets-Podolski, Ukraine.
1941: Twenty-two-year-old Jew Haya Dzienciolski finds a pistol, leaves Novogrudok, Ukraine, and helps to organize a group of young partisans in nearby forests.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): One hundred Jews are murdered at Lyakhovichi, Belorussia.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): Hundreds of Jews are killed at Plunge, Lithuania.
1941 In the Ukrainian town of Koritz, Nazi troops begin what would become a three day murder spree. The Jews are forced to prepare three burial pits, one each for men, women, and children. For sport, a man's corpse is propped atop one of the pits, in which some Jews have been buried alive.
1941: Members of the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, and Esalon Special,a Romanian unit, begin murdering the Jews of Bessarabia in eastern Romania. By August 31st, they will have killed more than 150,000 Jews.
1942: Hundreds of German Jews are deported to the ghetto/camp at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In Paderborn, Germany, all Jewish orphans are deported to Theresienstadt.
1942: In the Netherlands, the Westerbork “deportation” Camp became operational. The camp had originally been established by the Dutch government as a place to house German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The term deportation camp is a bit mis-leading since it was the last stop before arriving Auschwitz,, Bergen-Belsen or the other death camps.
1942: Seven trains of Jewish deportees leave Westerbork, Holland, for the Auschwitz death camp
1942: At Kleck, Belorussia, a few dozen Jews break out and join partisans.
1942 (16th of Tammuz, 5702): The Jewish community at Gorodenka, Ukraine, is wiped out.
1942: Extermination activities at the Sobibór death camp are temporarily halted for railway construction and enlargement of the camp's gas chambers.
1943: In an American radio broadcast, U.S. Congressman Emanuel Celler excoriates the U.S. government for its continuing silence on Nazi treatment of European Jews. This is the same Congressman Celler whom Senator Bilbo of Mississippi will refer to as a “kike” while giving a speech in the Upper Chamber; a reference that brings no response from those who hear it and who will guide the 1964 Civil Rights Act to a successful in the House of Representatives.
1943: The American Women's International League for Peace and Freedom estimates that millions of Jews have already been murdered by the Germans in Poland, and that the American government and people share in the guilt for these atrocities because they are complacent cowards covered "with a thick layer of prejudice."
1944: The SS completes the evacuation of the death camp at Majdanek
1944: The SS evacuates the concentration camp at Kovno, Lithuania
1944: Neutral Switzerland ends long-standing, restrictive Jewish-immigration standards and admits all Jewish refugees who wish and are able to enter.
1944: As the war put additional strains on the German labor force, 1,000 Jews were taken from Birkenau and put to work within Germany.
1944:"There were still 185 Jews living in Magdeburg, mainly partners of mixed marriages, who managed to survive the war.” The Magdeburg Jewish community was one of the oldest in Germany dating back to 965.
1945: Establishment of “The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews”, whose primary offices were located in Munich, close to Leipheim. “The Central Committee represented 175,000 Jews living in the DP camps in the American and British zones in Germany and Austria.” The committee was dissolved in December of 1950. (As reported by Yad Vashem Archives)
1945: In New York, Yiddish-language actors, Pesach Burstein and Lillian Lux gave birth to Michael Burstein, who gained fame as actor Mike Burstyn.
1946: The Haganah officially withdrew from its alliance with Irgun and Lehi. The Haganah did not renounce its role in defending the Yishuv against the British and Arab attacks.
1946: As American businessmen, labor leaders, and consumers adjusted to the first day without the existence of the OPA, "Israel Sachs, president of Sachs Quality Stores, announced that" his stores "would raise prices." "At the same time he "appealed to Congress to enact immediately 'intelligent, workable price legislation.'" At the same time, "Victor A. Fishcell, vice president and general sales manager of Seagram-Distillers Corporaton announced that Seagram was continuing its shipments at regular OPA ceiling prices."
1946: During an interview given today at the New York office of the United Jewish Appeal, Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus that "Jews returning from concentration camps owned nothing but cast-off army clothing and were living under 'infinitely worse considitons' than the Germans. Rabbi Neuhuas, the "former Chief Rabbi of Hessen and liaison officer with the American Military Government in Germany" said that "the situation of the Jews in Europe is growing more critical, with displaced persons embittered by their 'no-man's land' status and the renewal of anti-Semitic outbursts in many countries."
1946: "Dr. Nahum Goldman, a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, said at a press conference today that Great Britain's latest program was a provocation to war, not only to the Palestinian Jews but to those all over the world. Dr. Goldman described as a 'breach of faith'...the arrest of 2,000 Jews in Palestine. 'If Britain persists in her present aggressive policy against the Jewish population in Palestine and its officially recognized leaders and bodies, she will create a state of permanent hostility against Britain on the part of Jews everywhere.' Dr. Goldman denied statements that the" British "government had informed" the United States government of its plans to crack down on the Jews of Palestine, including a massive round-up of Jewish leaders.
1946: "Three hundred persons attended a funeral service today at the Free Synagogue, 40 West Sixtyeighth Street, for Dr. Emanuel Libman, noted diagnostician, who died on Friday at the age of 73." During the service, Dr. Stephen S. Wise praised his friend of sixty years, Dr. Libman, for his efforts to train medical professionals and for his work on behalf of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the medical facilities at "the Jewish University of Jerusalem."
1946: In what would prove to be the first act in series of event that would lead to a pogrom in Kielce, Poland , eight-year-old Henryk Blaszcyk of Kielce, Poland, hitched a ride to his old hometown, visiting friends and picking cherries. Since his parents did not know about this they filed a missing person report with the local police.
1946: The Fair Employment Practices Commission issued a final report as it was forced to close down due to Congress' failure to enact legislation that it would have extended its existence. The report warned that "Wartime gains of Negro, Mexican-American and Jewish workers are being los through an 'unchecked revival' of discriminatory practices." The report also said that "a survey of job seeking by Jews since V-J Day conducted in fifteen cities, showed a marked rise of discrimination against all Jewish applicants and that 'Jews who had fought for their country fared no better than those who had not.'"
1946: In a displaced persons camp at Stuttgart, German Jacob and Fanny Silberman gave birth to Rosie Silberman who as Rosalie Abella became Canada’s first Jewish woman justice.
1946: The Mayor’s Committee on Unity headed by Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. recommended to that the Board of Regents conduct an investigation “into racial and religious discrimination in the admission of students to intuitions of higher learning…” The committee contended that “there could not long be any reasonable doubt that racial and religious discrimination was practiced by” colleges and universities “in New York and elsewhere” usually through the employment of some kind of quota system. According to the committee’s findings, this discrimination is directed at “Jewish, Negro, Catholic and Italian students.” While Medical Schools seem to be the prime practitioners of this discriminatory behavior, “it exists in other graduate and undergraduate schools as well.”
1948: In Jerusalem Yehudith and Yaacov gave birth to Michael (Mickey) Gal (Hepner) who would be among the crewman lost when the Dakar sank in 1968
1951: Six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer, Israel. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel presented to the US State Department a detailed aide-memoire urging the settlement of Israel's $1.5 billion restitution claim against Germany. The police had so far examined 150 war-crimes cases since the Knesset passed the War Crimes Law, directed at persons who cooperated with the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The experience of the first few cases had raised some doubts as to the possibility of obtaining convincing evidence against the accused.
1953: Paramount Pictures releases “Stalag 17” directed and produced by Billy Wilder, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum, with a score by Franz Waxman and featuring Otto Preminger as the Nazi prison camp commandant. (Editor’s note – this is a great, must-see film)
1958: Birthdate of Brooklynite Nancy Lieberman.
1958: Yosef Burg completed his term as Minister of Communications
1961: Coronet Magazine published “Rudolf Kasztner” Eichman’s Last Victim”
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/Rudolf_Kastner_Article_pdf
1967: An Israeli armored infantry company attacked an Egyptian force entrenched at Ras el 'Ish, located 10 miles south of Port Said. The Israeli company drove off the Egyptians but loses 1 dead and 13 wounded.
1971: In one of those ironies of “progress,” while bagel production and consumption soared to new heights, Local 338, the fabled bagel bakers local, ceased to exist and Local 3 acquired a Bagel Division.
1972: After 12 previews and 522 performances “Follies,” a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman completed its original run on Broadway.
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733):A few minutes before 1 A.M. Colonel Yosef (Joe ) Alon and his wife Dvora returned to their home in a quiet Washington, D.C., suburb. Alon, the air attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, had been at a farewell party for an Israeli diplomat. They parked the car. Dvora went into the house and then heard five gunshots. She rushed outside, saw her husband lying in a pool of blood, and glimpsed a white car driving away. She and her daughter Dalia, then 17, tried to help him. The other two girls, 14-year-old Yael and 6-year-old Rachel woke up. Joe tried to mumble something. An ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. (The murder remains unsolved. As reported by Yossi Melman)
1976: Terrorists in Entebbe, Uganda, still held 200 hostages from the Air France jet, hijacked four days earlier on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. They threatened to kill all remaining hostages and blow up the plane if their ransom demands were not met by two o'clock. A special Air France plane carrying 47 hostages, released earlier, arrived in Paris.
1976: Brigadier General Dan Shomron presented his plan for rescuing the hostage to the Chief of Staff Motta Gura and Defense Minister Shimon Peres.
1984(1st of Tammuz, 5744): Moshe Feldenkrais passed away. Born in the Ukraine in 1901, Feldenkrais moved to Palestine in 1918 where he continued his education. After living in France before World War II and serving with the British Navy in World War II he returned to Israel. He was a renowned physicist and judo expert, who developed a method of education and self-awareness training called The Feldenkrais method.
1987:''Portraits of an Era: Photographs by Irv Kline'' opens Bishopsgate Institute Foyer as part of this summer's Jewish East End Celebration.
1991(19th of Tammuz, 5751): Michael Landon, born Eugene Horowitz, passed away at the age of 54. Landon gained fame for his portrayal of Little Joe on the television western, Bonanza. He gained additional fame for his work in front and behind the camera in another television hit, Little Houseon the Prairie. (As reported by Peter Flint)
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/02/obituaries/michael-landon-54-little-joe-on-bonanza-for-14-years-dies.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
1993:Anne Lapidus Lerner became Vice Chancellor of the Seminary, the first woman to hold that post. As Vice Chancellor, Lerner was one of the highest-ranking women in all of American Jewish institutional life. In that role, she devoted her energy to adult education, working to bring Jewish education to the lay community. After earning bachelor’s, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Anne Lapidus Lerner joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1969, becoming the first American-born woman to hold a full-time position there. JTS trains rabbis and cantors for the Conservative movement and offers a range of masters and doctoral degree programs. Today, Lerner is an assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Literature at JTS, where she teaches courses in Hebrew and American Jewish poetry, modern Jewish literature, and the portrayal of women in Jewish literature. In addition, she is the director of the JTS Jewish Women's Studies Program, which she also founded, and Director of the Jewish Feminist Research Group. In 2001-02, she was a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School. Lerner has published two books and is at work on a third. In Passing the Love of Women: A Study of Gide's "Saül" and Its Biblical RootsLerner examines how the Biblical book of Samuel inspired a novel by French author André Gide. In Who Has Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Judaism Lerner discusses the interaction between Judaism and the modern American feminist movement. A new book on the image of Eve in Jewish literature is due to be completed soon. In addition, Lerner has published a range of articles, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Women's League Outlook, Hadassah, Judaism, Nashim, and Lilith.
1993 (12th of Tammuz, 5753): Olga Khaikov a Jewish immigrant from Russia and the mother of an 11 year old daughter was killed when terrorists tried to seize a bus near French Hill in Jerusalem.
1993: Gil Stein’s term as President of the NHL came to an end.the duties of the president were given to the commissioner. Stein then served as advisor to the commissioner for over three months, retiring from the league in October.
1994: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat drove from Egypt into Gaza, returning to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.
1995: Sir James David Wolfensohn began serving as the 9th President of the World Bank.
1996: Robert Wilentz resigned as Chief Justice of the New Jersey State Supreme Court because of his cancer.
1997(26th of Sivan, 5757): Sir Joshua Abraham Hassan, GBE, KCMG, LVO, QC passed away. Born in 1915, he “was a Gibraltarian politician, and first Mayor and Chief Minister of Gibraltar, serving two terms as Chief Minister for a total of 17 years. He is seen as the key figure in the civil rights movement in Gibraltar, and played a key role in the creation of the territory's institutions of self-government.”
1998: First Lady Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea and Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai, China, accompanied by Rabbi Schneier. In a speech on this date the First Lady commented, "So, for [the Ohel Rachel Synagogue] to be restored, I think, is a very good example of respect for religious differences and an appreciation for the importance of faith in one's life."
1999(17thof Tammuz, 5759): Tzom Tammuz
1999(17thof Tammuz, 5759: Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg, known as Yaakov Weinberg an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Talmudist, and rosh yeshiva (dean) of Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, Maryland passed away today.
2000(28th of Sivan, 5760): Actor Walter Mattheau passed away. Born Walter Matthow in 1920, Mattheau began work at the age of 11 selling candy and playing bit parts in a Yiddish theatre on the Lower East Side. Years later he claimed that his birth name was Matasschanskayasky. According to his son, his father did this as a prank. However, the myth has become accepted as fact by many sources. Mattheau had a long, successful career playing in films some of the best of which paired him with Jack Lemmon. These included, "The Fortune Cookie," a re-make of "Front Page," and that greatest of hits, "The Odd Couple."
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/02/nyregion/walter-matthau-79-rumpled-star-and-comic-icon-dies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
2000:Publication of Haviva Ner-David's book, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination,. The book, which is part memoir and part halakhic commentary, tells the story of Ner-David's integration of feminism and Orthodox Judaism over a lifetime and argues for the ordination of women as Orthodox rabbis.
2000:The judge in the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz announced the verdicts on the 13 Jews on trial for spying for Israel. The harsh verdicts against 10 of the defendants range from 4 to 13 years. The three defendants, who had been out on bail since February, were acquitted. The international community, Jewish groups around the world and human rights groups vocally condemned this verdict and expressed outrage at the lack of due process throughout the trial.
2001: Bruce Fleischer won the U.S. Senior Open.
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Seventy three year old Jazz legend Herbie Mann, born Herbert Jay Solomon passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/arts/herbie-mann-73-musician-who-gave-flute-a-jazz-sound.html
2004: Actor Marlon Brando passed away. No, Brando was not Jewish. But he did have this to say about Jews. “Marlon Brando…once told an interviewer that, per capita ‘Jews have contributed more to American…culture than any other single group.’ Without them, the actor claimed, ‘we wouldn’t have music,’ ‘we wouldn’t have much theater,’ and we wouldn’t have “all the songs that you love to sing.’”
2005: The New York Times reported that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had moved decisively to deal with killing of a African-American man by two white males in Howard Beach. The Times favorably compared Bloomberg’s swift action with the city’s reaction to a racially inspired killing in the same neighborhood in 1986.
2005: The New York Times reported that Time’seditor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine made the decision to follow a court order and turn over a reporter’s documents to a grand jury investigating a leak of a CIA operative’s identity. Pearlstine wrestled with the compelling issues – freedom of the press versus the need to submit to the rule of law – and he came down on the side of the latter. The decision was not an easy one for a man who was a lawyer as well as the head of one of America’s flagship communication corporations.
2005: The New York Times reported that Bank of America had agreed to buy MBNA. MBNA was founded by Alfred Lerner who passed away in 2002. Learner supported numerous philanthropies including the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. The JFR seeks out to fulfill the age old injunction to seek out and recognize righteousness. In particular, the JFR works to help aged and indigent righteous gentiles who helped save Jews during the Shoah.
2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Din In the Head: Essaysby Cynthia Ozick
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766): Eighty-three year old Philip Rieff the author of a number of books about Sigmund Freud passed away today.(As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/us/04rieff.html
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766):Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs, who founded the British branch of the Conservative Movement and was voted the greatest Jew in the history of Britain's Jewish community last year, passed away today. (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/world/europe/09jacobs.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print
http://louisjacobs.org/
2006: David J. Skorton begins serving as President of Cornell University.
2007: Arnie Eisen assumed the office of Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary
2007:The Opening Day game of the Israel Baseball League is broadcast on a delayed basis on PBS in major US markets.
2007: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocquevilleby Bernard-Henri Lévy and The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter.
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of a collection of here-to-for unpublished stories by Primo Levi entitled A Tranquil Star. According to the review, those who think of Levi only in terms of being a “Holocaust writer” will be pleasantly surprised by the wide ranging topics and unique style displayed in this posthumously published tome.
2007: Avraham Hirschson resigned as Israel’s Minister of Finance following an investigation of an alleged embezzlement in which he was allegedly involved.
2007: Moseh Katzav resigned as President of Israel.
2007: Dalia Itzik, who had been serving as Speaker of the Knesset became action President of the state of Israel.
2007: Marvin Krislov became the 14th President of Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio
2008: Lauren Weisberger, author of the bestselling novel The Devil Wears Prada, reads from and signs her new book, Chasing Harry Winston, at a Borders Books in suburban Virginia.
2008: Arnie Eisen, who took office as Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary on July 1, 2007 assumed the position full time
2009: In Cedar Rapids, IA, meeting of the Hadassah book club discusses Courtesan, a novel by Dora Levy Mossanen.
2009:After 29 years of serving as supporting character alongside Marvel greats like the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, Sabra, the alias of Ruth-Bat Seprah, mutant superhero and former agent, makes her first headlining print appearance in the Marvel anthology Astonishing Tales #6. Sabra's first solo appearance is the work of Matt Yocum, who by day serves as the US Air Force's representative to the Israeli government and by night writes comic books. Yocum, who is not Jewish, has long been involved with the State of Israel. His first visit to the country was in 1992 with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and he spent four weeks living on Kibbutz Beit Ha'emek, close to the coastal city of Nahariya. In 2002 he found himself in Israel again, this time as an exchange officer doing engineering for the Israeli government. Based on his previous experience in the country, Yocum was selected to come for a third time in 2006 to work in the attaché office for the US Air Force. Using three elements unique to his life in Israel, Yocum created a story about a member of the Air Force at a diplomatic reception in Israel, which sums up his existence here. "I wanted to take the experience I had in Israel and bring it to the people who don't live here," he explains. "The vast majority of the people who read the story will not have been to the country, and they will not realize that there are things we take for granted here - one being that everyone has to serve in the army. In the US, less than one percent of the population serves, and here it's part of a natural dialogue with a high-schooler.""At the end of the day, I don't think it's going to change any ideas about Israel," he says. "It shows a piece of what it's like to live in the country and what it's like to serve here."
2009: Today President Shimon Peres invited Saudi King Abdullah to come to Jerusalem, or meet him in Riyadh, to initiate discussions that would enable the implementation of a comprehensive peace between Israel and all the Arab states.
2009:A Chabad-sponsored Women's Empowerment Rally is held at Tel Aviv's Nokia Stadium.
2009: Leonard “Cohen started his marathon European tour, his third in two years.
2009:Romanian Jewish leaders met in Bucharest today to address allegations that medical students have been using the remains of Holocaust victims for research.
2010:Yeshiva University Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art are scheduled to present “As it is Written: Lectures on the Art of Hebrew Manuscripts and Books” in New York City.
2010:The Wall Street Journalreported today that Tehran has equipped Damascus with a sophisticated radar system to help thwart a surprise Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
2011:Cantor Joel Caplan, son of Richard and Ellen Caplan, and father Ilan Caplan is scheduled to lead a Shabbat evening program called “Shabbat Spirit” that includes guitar, keyboard and PowerPoint projections of all the songs that will be sung.
2011: As the case sexual assault case fell apart due to questions of credibility regard of the alleged victim, Dominque Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today.
2011:At Shabbat Eve Services at Temple Judah a baby naming is to take place for Natanel, the son of Chavah and Stephen Rosenbaum of Jerusalem and the grandson of Kathe and Gary Goldstein of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2011: Abbie Silber, daughter of Laurie and Dr. Bob Silver (pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community) and Rabbi Feivel Strauss are scheduled to receive a blessing at Shabbat Eve services as they prepare for their upcoming nuptials.
2011: This Day In…In Jewish History makes its first appearance on http://shtetl.ca/ a must read website for anybody interested in the comings and goings of the Canadian Jewish community.
2011:Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.
2011:The Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection issued a statement today saying that the Minister, C. Papoutsis, decided to prohibit the departure of ships flying either Greek or foreign flags "to the maritime area" of Gaza.
2012: A revival of “On Second Avenue,” “a musical journey through Yiddish Theatre” is scheduled to have its final performance at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts. (As reported by Mike Cohen)
2012: The Labor Party is scheduled to hold its convention today in Tel Aviv.
2012(11thof Tammuz, 5772): Eighty-six year old “Evelyn Lear, an American soprano who became a star in Europe in the 1950s and later won acclaim in the United States for singing some of the most difficult roles in contemporary opera” passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/arts/music/evelyn-lear-versatile-soprano-dies-at-86.html?hpw
2012(11thof Tammuz, 5772): Ninety-two year old “Estelle Ellis Rubinstein, who as promotion director of the brand-new Seventeen magazine helped American businesses discover what she called “a whole new country” — the untapped market of millions of teenage girls —” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/media/estelle-ellis-rubinstein-a-pioneer-at-seventeen-dies-at-92.html
2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including the recently released paperback edition of Bloom of Darkness, Aharon Applefeld’s novel about “a Jewish child is hidden in a brothel in a Ukrainian village during the Holocaust.
2012: Mario Balotelli, a black Italian soccer start who was raised by a Jewish Italian foster mother from the age of three is scheduled to lead his team into the final of the Euro 2012 soccer championships. (As reported by the Times of Israel)
2012:Today the cabinet approved doubling the 2013 budget deficit target to 3 percent of gross domestic product, despite strong opposition from central bank and Treasury officials. It also agreed to set a new long-term target of gradually reducing the deficit back to 1.5% by 2019.
2013:Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber who was raised Catholic but now describes himself as nontheist Jew became the 20th President of Princeton University today. “While helping his son, then in the fourth grade, with a school project, he discovered that his Berlin-born mother, who had arrived in New York as an eight-year-old refugee, was Jewish. In 2009, a Holocaust claims tribunal awarded Eisgruber and his three sisters 162,500 Swiss francs, representing the value of the bank account of their maternal great-grandfather, Salomon Kalisch”
2013: Peter Salovey, a descendant of the Soloveichik rabbinic family, became the 23 President of Yale University.
2013: With Stanley Fischer's eight-year term as Bank of Israel Governor completed as of last night, his deputy Karnit Flug stepped into the role of acting governor today. (As reported by Niv Elis)
2013: As part of the fallout from a reported cover-up of sexual abuse by Yishiva University rabbis, Rabbi Norman Lamm steeped as the chancellor and Rosh yeshiva. (As reported by Uriel Heilman)
69: Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as emperor. This consolidation of Vespasian’s imperial power helped to seal the fate of Jerusalem since the destruction of the Jewish capital was his way of proving that law and order would prevail in the empire.
70: Titus set up battering rams to assault the walls of Jerusalem.
397: Emperors Arcadius and Honorius decree that Jewish clergy are allowed to keep their own laws and rituals and are exempt from service in municipal senates. This creates the superficial impression that Jewish clergy are on an equal footing with their Christian counter-parts.
985:In Barcelona, several Jewish residents were killed by the Moslem leader Al-Mansur. Many of them were land owners who left no heirs. According to the law, all their lands were given over to the Count of Barcelona. In Spain at this time it was not uncommon for Jews to own vineyards and other lands.
1187: As the showdown between Crusaders and Saracens gets closer, the forces of Saladin bypass Belvoir, whose defenders fail to come to do battle, and heads for Tiberias. The Jews are bystanders as these two interlopers fight to protect their “claim” to the Promised Land.
1244:Duke Frederick II granted a charter to all Jews under his control which“became the model by which the status of the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Silesia, and Poland was regulated.”
1388: Jews of Lithuania received a Charter of Privilege.
1490: Twenty year old Yucef Franco, a Jewish cobbler from Tembleque and his 80 year old father Ça Franco was arrested by the Inquisition.
1581: Gregory XIII issued “Antiqua judaeorum improbitas,” a Papal Bull that “authorized the Inquisition directly to handle cases involving Jews, especially those concerning blasphemies against Jesus or Mary, incitement to heresy or assistance to heretics, possession of forbidden books, or the employment of Christian wet nurses.” (Jewish Virtual Library shows the date as June 1, 1581)
1569: The Union of Lublin joins The Kingdom of Poland and the Great Duchy of Lithuania into a united country called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations. This had to be an improvement in the situation for the Jews of Lithuania who were governed by statutes that read in part, "The Jews shall not wear costly clothing, nor gold chains, nor shall their wives wear gold or silver ornaments. The Jews shall not have silver mountings on their sabers and daggers; they shall be distinguished by characteristic clothes; they shall wear yellow caps, and their wives kerchiefs of yellow linen, in order that all may be enabled to distinguish Jews from Christians." During the 15th and 16thcenturies the Jews of Poland enjoyed an increasing amount of political autonomy and economic wellbeing which would come to a crashing end with the Ukrainian uprisings in the 17th centuries.
1589: In Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, a Dutch publisher who printed “a good many Hebrew texts” passed away today. Plantin printed the “Biblia Poygotta” a Bible containing five languages one of which was Hebrew. “The first four volumes contain the Old Testament. The left page has two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin translation, the right page has same text in Greek with its own Latin translation. Underneath these columns there is an Aramaic version on the left-hand page and a Latin translation of this on the right-hand side. For printing the Hebrew text Plantin used among others Daniel Bomberg's Hebrew type, which he had received from Bomberg's nephews.Volume 5 contains the New Testament in Greek and Syriac, each with a Latin translation, and a translation of the Syriac into Hebrew. Volume 6 has the complete Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, as well as an interlinear version that has the Latin translation printed between the lines.”
The last two volumes contain dictionaries (Hebrew-Latin, Greek-Latin, Syriac-Aramaic, grammar rules, list of names, etc.) that were of value to scholars
http://forward.com/articles/186552/solution-to-antwerp-mystery-leads-to-yet-another-m/
1651: Poland was victorious over the Cossacks. The Jews were allowed to return to their lands but the society that they had built was gone forever.
1736:Ahmed III, the Sultan who appointed Judah ben Samuel Rosanes to serve a “hakam bashi” (Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire passed away. Rabbi Judah was a noted scholar who was an ardent opponent of the Shabbethaians (the followers of the “False Messiah”)
1776: “Cherokees attacked settlement along the” South Carolina frontier resulting in a “Paul Revere-like Ride” by Francis Salvador to sound the alarm for those living within a 30 mile radius.
1776: First Jew lost his life in the American Revolution.
1798: In Switzerland, special taxes on the Jews were finally abolished.
1805(4th of Tammuz, 5565):Pinchas Horowitz, a rabbi and Talmudist who was born at Chortkiv in 1731 died today at Frankfort-on-the-Main
1810: The reign of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, as King of Holland, came to an end. Bonaparte sought to improve the condition of the Jews. Among other things he abolished the “Oath More Judaico” and opened military service to Jews by creating two battalions made up exclusively of Jewish soldiers and officers.
1845: David Levy Yulee began serving as the United States from Florida. This was in the days before the direct election of Senators. After Florida joined the Union, the state legislature chose Yulee to fill the position. This made him the first Jew to be elected to the United States. Yulee would desert the Union and join the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. Yulee would ‘desert’ the faith of his fathers wen he married a Christian and raised his children in her faith.
1857: According to the New York Times, there are 1,500,000 Jews living in Russia out of a population estimated at 63,000,000.
1858: The House of Lords took up the question of admitting Jews into Parliament. Lord Derby expressed a willingness to end his opposition to the measure as a way of avoiding a major collision with the House of Commons. [Editor’s note – The issue of Jewish emancipation was not strictly a “Jewish issue.” It may also be seen as part of a larger power struggle between the Establishment as represented by the Lords and the changing economic and social milieu as represented by the Commons. The issue of Jewish Emancipation was but one of many issues over which this battle was fought with the Commons ultimately emerging victorious.]
1861(23rdof Tammuz, 5621): Bernhard Beer, a member of the prominent Bondi family, who as a journalist worked for the emancipation of his co-religionists in Saxony and who, although a layman, “was the first to introduce German language sermons a the congregation in Dresden, passed away today.
1862: Russian Jews were granted permission to print Jewish books
1863: First day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Just as the war pitted brother against brother, so it pitted Jew against Jew. At Gettysburg, Prussian born Major Adolph Proskauer of Mobile led the 12th Alabama against the Army of the Potomac which included Lieutenant Abraham Cohn, a native of East Prussia, who fought with the 6th New Hampshire Volunteers. Cohn fought in 11 battles and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Proskauer did not survive his service with the Rebel Army.
1863: Lieutenant Colonel Israel Moses was among those who arrived with Sickle’s brigade as it tried to stem the Confederate tide on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg.
1863: Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman had sufficiently recovered from the wounds sustained at the Battle of Brandy Station to serve with United States Army Signal Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg.
1867: With the passage of the British North America Act, Great Britain officially recognizes the Dominion of Canada as an independent country. Jews had been living in Canada since the British took it from France in the 17th century. There were enough Jews living in Montreal to allow for the creation of a synagogue called Shearith Israel. While most members of the small Jewish community lived in various towns in the eastern part of the country enough Jews arrived in British Columbia during the Gold Rush that a synagogue was constructed in Victoria in 1862. At the time that Britain recognized the independence of Canada there were about 1,000 Jews living in “our neighbor to the North.” This number would explode shortly thereafter with the beginning of the immigration of Russian Jews.
1873: Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian Confederation. Apparently, Jews did not start settling in Prince Edward Island until the first decade of the 20thcentury with the arrival of Louis, Israel and Abie Block. The three brothers were from Riga and may have been the Jews who were described in 1908 newspaper article as having celebrated Passover in this part of Canada.
1873: The government closed the “rabbinical school of Jitomir” where Chaim Lerner, a native of Dubno had been service as the Hebrew teacher since 1851.
1873: In Detroit, Michigan, founding of Congregation B’nai Israel
1874: “Ivanhoe or, Rebecca, the Jewess,” a “dramatization” of Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel opened tonight at Niblo’s Theatre in New York City. The play, which presents a sympathetic depiction of Isaac of York and his daughter was well received by the audience. [Editor’s Note – The positive response of the audience to Jewish characters stands at odds at with the outbreak of genteel anti-Semitism that is soon about to infect polite society in New York and elsewhere.]
1877: It was reported today that people in Bucharest were quite surprised to learn that Jewish citizens in the United States had presented a petition to Secretary of State William Evarts asking him to intervene on behalf of their co-religionists in Romania and Turkey. According to the reports, the Jews of the region were even more surprised than the gentiles to hear of this request for intervention by the government of President Rutherford B. Hays.
1877: Wilhelm Bacher “was appointed by the Hungarian government to the professorship of the newly created Landesrabbinerschule of Budapest.”
1878: Karl Nobling “shot and wounded Kaiser Wilhelm I in a failed assassination attempt.” It was the second such attempt in less than a month and provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the leverage of implement the Anti-Socialist Law in October which was meant to curb the growth the Marxist Social Democratic Party,
1878: At the insistence of Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck the Congress of Berlin incorporated into the Treaty of Berlin an article intended to provide the Jews of Romania with the opportunity for full citizenship. Unfortunately, the Romanians evaded the article and only a hand full of Jews would gain citizenship.
1880: “A Survey of Assyrian Art” published today provided a detailed review of Manual of Oriental Antiques, Ernest Babelon’s tome about the architecture, sculpture and industrial arts of ancient civilizations which includes one chapter devoted to the Jews. The representations of “Jewish art and architecture…supplied from the work of de Vogue and from ‘The Recovery of Jerusalem’ by Wilson and Warren.”
1880: (12th of Tammuz): Birthdate of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok who would become the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe would overcome a terrifying imprisonment at the hands of Stalin’s henchmen in the 1920’s. Later, he would escape the clutches of the Nazis and settle in Brooklyn where he revived the cause of Chabad-Lubavitch. The Rebbe would launch, what would become under his son-in-law who was the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of history’s most successful Jewish outreach programs.
1881: “Scenes in Parisian Life” published today reported that “Fashionable Paris kept its word loyally” by keeping its promise not to leave the city until after the concert which was to raise funds for the Jews of Russian had been held. The Gaulois sponsored a concert that included performances by Faure and Mme. Alder-Devries the proceeds of which were to go to the “evicted and demolished Israelite of Southern Russia.”
1882: The Memphis (TN) Avalanche reported that during the commencement address delivered by George Cable at the University of Mississippi, the distinguished author call for embracing the future included the challenge - “Let us search provincialism out the land as the Hebrew housewife purged her house of leaven on the eve of the Passover.” (Apparently this custom of the Jews was so well known that the New Orleans author felt that it would be easily understood by those attending an event in rural Oxford, MS.
1883: It was reported today that ten new rabbis will be ordained later this month at the first graduation ceremony of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1883: “A Middle Age Trial” published today described the Christian community of Hungary as being dense an dark in light of the trial being conducted Nyreghhaza where Jews are charged with having killed a Christian girl “in order to use her blood in ceremonies of the Passover;” a charge that “reads like a chapter from the history of the Middle Ages…What is taking place in Hungary is what was a common occurrence a few hundred years along. It only within the present century that the cruel and causeless prejudice against Jews has disappeared in civilized communities…Hungary is only about four hundred years behind the age.” [Note – The same article contained the oddly prophetic statement “In Germany the cry is raised that a few Jew have, by their talents and industry, made themselves the ruling class.”
1883: Joseph Blumenthal completed his term as President of the Board of Trustees of Shearith Israel in New York City.
1883: Since the Board of Directors were in a deadlock when they voted for a new president for Shearith Israel, Joseph Blumenthal “was made Chairman Pro Tem and authored to act as President until” the board elects a president.
1884: Isaac Jacobs, a middle aged Jew, is being held in Boston, MA on charges that he murdered Mrs. Etta Carlton of Watertown in 1883. Jacobs had been extradited from New York where he had been arrested on an outstanding larceny warrant.
1884: It was reported today that anti-Semitic riots have broken out in Algiers. Order was restored by troops who put an end to the pillaging of the Jewish the city’s Jewish quarter.
1884: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, Russia The New Times has declared its opposition to granting Jews equal rights with Christians saying that this “would be a greater misfortune for Russia” than when it had been ruled by the Mongols. [Statements like this should help readers understand the depth of anti-Semitism in Russia which propelled the massive migration to the West, primarily to the United States.]
1886: The first edition of the Menorah, a monthly magazine published by the B’nai Brith is scheduled to appear for the first time today.
1886: Birthdate of Ithak Katzenelson, a native of Karleichy who became a teacher, poet and dramatist. Like so many of his generation, he was caught in the web of the Holocaust. He took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising before being murdered in May of 1944. He wrote Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishn folk( "Song of the Murdered Jewish People") which was retrieved from its hiding place after the war and taken to Israel.
1888: A summer term instituted by the trustees of the Jewish Theological Seminary will begin today. Among the instructors will be Dr. Cyrus Adler who will lecture on “Assyriology.”
1889: Manuel of Oriental Antiquities by Enest Babelon which was reviewed today devotes one chapter to the Jews. Information on Jewish art and architecture is based on The Recovery of Jerusalem by Wilson and Warren and the works of Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé
1889: The Will of Alexander Bach which left bequests of $1,000 each to Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore Home for Incurables, Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society, United Hebrew Charities, Temple Gates of Hope Hebrew Free School Association, Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Temple Israel of Harlem was executed today.
1889: Birthdate of Russian born artists and printmaker who settled in Chicago where he became a leader in the art community and an activist among Yiddish speaking artists.
http://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/todros_geller/
http://blog.chicagohistory.org/index.php/2013/02/my-jewish-chicago-todros-geller/
1891: The Hansa Line Steamship Pichuben left Antwerp today carrying a large number of Jews who have been expelled from Russia.
1891(25thof Sivan, 5651): Forty-four year old Alexander Weisse, a native of Budapest who had been in the United States for six years and was the advertising agent for a German language evening paper, took his own life after attempting to murder the young girl who had been in his companion for several months.
1891: According to today’s “Theatrical Gossip” the comedy company of Jewish producer Charles Frohman “has made a great hit in Chicago” with its performance of ‘Mr. Wilkinson’s Widows.’”
1892: “Jewish Pawnshops Must Go” published today described the government’s order that all Moscow pawnshops owned by Jews will be closed. The Jews will be given six months to close down their businesses.
1892: Today’s investigation of an explosion at a New York Tenement that was home to Russian and Polish Jews including butcher shop owner Myer Kohn and the family Moses Lefkowitz revealed the fact that the tenants have been complaining about the smell of gas ever since the Consolidated Gas Company began putting a new pipe into the building. Their complaints were ignored.
1894: It was reported today that the Hebrew Institute will be hosting free talks by leading physicians on the “Care and Feeding of Infants and Children During the Warm Weather.”
1894: It was reported today that the 265 students who have stayed at Cypress Hill, a facility for truants, in the past year, 18 of them have been Jewish.
1894: In a comment that would have a rabbi proud, Dr. Jesse W. Brooks told his Christian audience that “of all the ancient nations…the Hebrew was the only survivor because it obeyed God’s injunction to keep holy the Sabbath Day.”
1895: It was reported today that “the notorious Jew-baiter Hermann Ahlwardt” is among those who are about to be prosecuted by the Imperial Treasury “for their flagrant misuse of free passes to canal fetes.”
1895: A group of underprivileged children left today for a two day excursion at the Rockaway Beach Hebrew Sanitarium.
1895: Colonel Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr left his job at the Statistical Section (the counter-espionage service of the French Army) to take command of the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban. In 1894, when the Statistical Section had intercepted a handwritten note that established that French military secrets had been handed over to the Germans, Sandherr convened the secret commission that “hastily” decided Alfred Dreyfus was the spy. Sandherr was replaced by Colonel Georges Picquart who was a key figure in proving Dreyfus’ innocence.
1898: In the Spanish-American War Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba. The Rough Riders was a cavalry unit recruited by Roosevelt that drew on every strata of American life from Western cowboys to Yankee Bluebloods. Several Jews served with the unit including Jacob Wilbusky, the first Roughrider killed in action. The Roughriders were forced to leave their horses back the United States so the famous charge was made on foot.
1899: The Conference of the English Zionist Federation comes to an end.
1900: Herzl turns to Prime Minister Koerber and asks him to use his influence with the Sultan to permit the Rumanian Jews to immigrate into Turkey and to receive him, in order to discuss the question of colonization and settlement.
1901: The month in Morgan City, LA the building housing Shaarey Zedek burned down.
1902: Birthdate of Oscar winning director Billy Wyler. Wyler directed many classics including the World War II tear-jerker Mrs. Miniver. Ironically, his greatest hit was The Best Years of Our Lives, a film that described the return of four veterans to civilian life after World War II. Once again, the Jews played a major role in crafting the cultural myths of Middle American Culture.
1906: In Queens, NY, Rose Schotz Rosenthal, and Max Mentzer gave birth to Josephine Esther Mentzer who became famous as Estée Laude, a woman who took her place in the world of business in a manner that marked her as a trailblazer. She was the co-founder, along with her husband, Joseph Lauder, of Estée Lauder Companies and the mother of Jewish leader Ronald Lauder.
1907: Birthdate of famed sportscaster Bill Stern.
1907: Corresponding Secretary Tobias Schanfarber reported that during the fiscal year that ended today the Central Conference of American Rabbis have issued 89 vouchers amounting to $6,959.73.
1907: The SS Cassel entered the port of Galveston, Texas with 87 Russian Jews aboard, heralding the start of the Galveston Movement - an organized attempt to bring Jews to less populated parts of the US.
1908: Birthdate of Estee Lauder. Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She married Joseph Lauter who changed the family named to Lauder in the late 1930’s. Mrs. Lauder was CEO of Estee Lauder’s Cosmetics. . She was one of several Jewish women who found fame and fortune in the cosmetics business. She was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. She passed away in 2004 at the age of 97.
1909: Birthdate of Antonina Pirozhkova, the common-law widow of Russian literary giant Isaac Babel who wrote a well-received memoir that provided a rare glimpse of the persecuted writer's final years in the 1930s.
1916:Birthdate of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin who died in October of 2009
1920: Sir Herbert Samuel, a British statesman was appointed High Commissioner of Eretz-Israel. His first official act was to grant amnesty to political prisoners including Jabotinsky. He governed the British Mandate for five years. Sir Herbert governed as a British official, not as a Jew and there were clashes between him and some Zionist leaders.
1920: In an attempt to strengthen the American labor movement, Benjamin “Schlesinger addressed a letter to the Neckwear Workers' Union of New York, the International Journeymen Tailors' Union of America, the International Fur Workers' Union, the United Garment Workers of America, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and the United Cloth Hat, Cap Makers and Millinery Workers' Union of America, proposing an alliance of all garment workers unions.”
1921: Dr. Thomas G. Allen, Secretary of the Oriental Institute announced today that the thanks to a $60,000 grant by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the University of Chicago will excavate the site of Armageddon or Megiddo.
1922: In Syracuse, NY, prominent lawyer Warren Winkelstein and his wife gave birth to Warren Winkelstein, Jr. “a physician and researcher whose groundbreaking studies connected unprotected sex between men to AIDS, smoking to cervical cancer and air pollution to chronic lung disease” (As reported by Denise Grady)
1923: Fast of the 17th of Tammuz
1926: The New York Joint Board called a general strike by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGUWU)
1926: Birthdate of Robert William Fogel, “Nobel-winning economist whose number-crunching empiricism upended established thinking, most provocatively about the economics of slavery” (As reported by Robert D. Hershey)
1927: (12thof Tammuz): Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok is liberated from his death sentence and imprisonment in the Soviet Union. With the outbreak of World War II, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe would make his way to New York where he would establish the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch in Crown Heights. From there, he would launch what would become a highly successful world-wide outreach program designed to educate Jews and heighten their awareness of their heritage.
1929: Opening of Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook with the “book” by Eddie Cantor.
1929: Julian Mack “was reassigned as an additional judge to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.:
1929: In Queens, NY, Dr. Edward Edelman and Anna (née Freedman) Edelman gave birth to Gerald Maurice Edelman, “an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.”
1930: At the morning session of the International Wailing Wall Commission, Rabbi Ben Zion Meyer Uziel, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, described Jewish prayer rituals conducted at the Wall declaring that the High Commissioner’s recent ban on the use of the Torah Scroll, Lulav, tefillin and tallit was unacceptable.While questioning Rabbi Uziel, Arab leader Abdul Auni implied that the Zionists were using bogus claims of the right to worship at the Wall as a form of propaganda to recruit Jews to settle in Palestine. At this afternoon's meeting of the International Wailing Wall Commission, the three commissioners watched a movie filmed in 1911 showing Jewish men and women praying at the wall, Jewish worshippers sitting on benches and Jewish women kissing the stones of the Wall. The commissioners pronounced the film as authentic and thus it became further evidence of the long standing connection of the Jewish people to the Wall. The International Wailing Wall Commission was established by the League of Nations after Arab rioters violently denied Jews access to the Western Wall
1930: Birthdate of Carol Doris Schatz, the Philadelphia native who would marry Noam Chomsky in 1949 and gain fame in her own right as a linguist and educator. Mrs. Chomsky passed away at the age of 78 in December of 2008.
1930: Julian Mack was reassigned to serve solely on the Second Circuit.
1932: Over the next 11 months (June 1, 1933), the ZOA will clear the cases of 1,622 people wishing to settle in Palestine.
1932: Release date for the German film Mensch ohne Namen (Man Without a Name) featuring performances by Julius Falekenstein a Jewish actor who died the same year the Nazis came to power and Fritz Grünbaum who would die at Dachau where he performed for the last time for his fellow prisoners on New Year’s Eve, two weeks before his death in January, 1941.
1932: Birthdate of Ze’ev Schiff, the French born Jew who gained fame asan Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Haaretz.
1933:With a message of "cordial greetings and best wishes" from President Roosevelt and a declaration that "the calamity that has overtaken the 600.000 Jews in Germany has cast a shadow over everything else in Jewish life," the Zionist Organization of America opened its convention today in Chicago. Five thousand delegates and observers attended this meeting which was described as being the largest in the history of the ZOA. At this evening’s opening session at the Palmer House, Moriss Rothenberg, President of the ZOA reported that 20,000 Jews had entered the National Home in the last 18 months and that during 1932 12 million dollars in new investments had been made in Palestine. While Rothenberg had words of praise for the British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Grenfeel Wauchope, he was highly critical of the Mandatory Government (the British) for not increasing the allotment of immigration certificates in light of the events in Germany.
1933 The German government states that "Reich Chancellor Hitler still belongs to the Catholic Church and has no intention of leaving it."
1934: Birthdate of director Sydney Pollack. His hits have included Tootsie and Presumed Innocent.
1934: Erich Gans was murdered in Dachau. It was the last such murder for ten months. The Jewish population at Dachau was almost non-existent at the time since most had been killed or released by end of 1933.
1934: The New York Times reviews From Nebuchadnezzar to Hitler by Danish author Peter Hemmer Gudme. In this sympathetic study of the Zionist movement which the reviewer is sure will be translated in English, the non-Jewish Gudme traces the ancient connection of the Jewish people with their homeland before describing modern efforts beginning with Pinsker, Hess and Herzl to create a modern Jewish home in Palestine. Gudme will die at the hands of the Nazis in Copenhagen in 1945.
1934(18th of Tammuz, 5694):Tzom Tammuz
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): In London, Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore passed away. Montefiore was the head of the London Portuguese community and was a great philanthropist
1935: In the Nahalat Ahim quarter of Jerusalem, Rosa and Musa Kraus gave birth to Israeli entertainer Shmuel “Shmulik” Kraus.
1936: The Palestine Post reported from London that the House of Commons discussed the question of the composition of the proposed Royal Commission for Palestine. The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, explained that the appointment of women members to the commission was undesirable, due to the sensitivities of the Moslems and Orthodox Jews.
1936: As Arab violence continued to intensify, The Palestine Post reported that the Christian communities of Beit Jala and Kafr Kana were warned by Arab terrorists that they must deliver 60 young men as volunteers for their ranks, or face the consequences. There were sporadic shootings, bombs thrown and trees uprooted throughout the country. Two British soldiers were hurt by flying debris during the demolition of houses in the old quarter of Jaffa.
1937: The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of "unacceptable" artwork by Jews and others opens in Munich. A concurrent event of "approved" art held nearby attracts far fewer people than the Entartete Kunst
1937: Pastor Martin Niemöller's anti-Semitism does not prevent the Nazis from arresting him because of his opposition to Hitler
1938: Birthdate of Diane Silvers Ravitch, a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and former United States Assistant Secretary of Education who became a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
1938: Under a proposal called the Sosua Project, the Dominican Republic offers to accept 100,000 European Jewish refugees, to be settled in an area near Santo Domingo, in return for payment of millions of dollars from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). (Under the plan the Dominican Republic actually admitted on only about 500 Jews by 1940 when immigration was halted)
1939: Fourteen year old Rudolf Wessely arrives in London from Prague. Wessely was the son of Charles Wessely, a successful Czech businessman and civil servant. The British could find room for the son but not his 43 year old father or 38 year old mother
1939: In Park Ridge, Norman Ziegler and the former Elsie Reif gave birth to Karen Blanche Ziegler who gained fame as actress Karen Black who starred in two 1970’s cult films – “Easy Rider” and “Five Easy Pieces.”
1940:A war emergency program to aid in the defense of the 500,000 Jews in Palestine was adopted unanimously by the convention of the Zionist Organization of America meeting today in Pittsburgh, PA.
1940: The America First Committee is formed. It is the most significant American isolationist group, and it is also infiltrated by Nazis, who are working to prevent American intervention in Europe. Several prominent Americans speak in support of the committee. Many in Congress attack the Jews of Hollywood as attempting to involve America in opposition to Hitler.
1940: Bloody anti-Jewish riots erupt in cities throughout Romania
1940: In a letter to German Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Bishop Theophil Wurm, head of the provincial Lutheran Church at Württemberg, Germany, objects to "euthanasia" killings at the nearby Grafaneck crippled-children's institution; See September 5, 1940.
1940: In Holland, a collaborationist propaganda group, Nederlandse Unie(Netherlands Union), is established.
1940: A Jewish ghetto is established at Bedzin, Poland.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): The first day of a three day killing spree in Drohobych, during which Ukrainians, assisted by Whermacht soldiers killed three hundred Jews.
1941: A Pogrom in Jassy, the cradle of Rumanian anti-Semitism claimed 5000 Jewish lives.
1941: Birthdate of Dr. Alfred G. Gilman recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1941: British code breakers monitoring radio traffic coming from German troops in the Soviet Union become aware of Nazi massacres of Soviet Jews.
1941: Two thousand members of Minsk, Belorussia's intelligentsia are executed by German troops in a nearby forest.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): More than 2500 Jews are slaughtered at Zhitomir, Ukraine.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): During an EinsatzkommandoAktion (murder operation) at Mielnica, Ukraine, a Jew named Abraham Weintraub hurls himself on a German officer and shatters the officer's teeth. Weintraub is immediately shot.
1941: In the Bialystok region of Poland, Nazis murder 300 members of the Jewish intelligentsia.
1941: German killing squads begin to murder Jews remaining in Kishinev, Romania.
1941: The Hungarian government undertakes a mass roundup of almost 18,000 Jewish refugees for deportation to Kamenets-Podolski, Ukraine.
1941: Twenty-two-year-old Jew Haya Dzienciolski finds a pistol, leaves Novogrudok, Ukraine, and helps to organize a group of young partisans in nearby forests.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): One hundred Jews are murdered at Lyakhovichi, Belorussia.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): Hundreds of Jews are killed at Plunge, Lithuania.
1941 In the Ukrainian town of Koritz, Nazi troops begin what would become a three day murder spree. The Jews are forced to prepare three burial pits, one each for men, women, and children. For sport, a man's corpse is propped atop one of the pits, in which some Jews have been buried alive.
1941: Members of the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, and Esalon Special,a Romanian unit, begin murdering the Jews of Bessarabia in eastern Romania. By August 31st, they will have killed more than 150,000 Jews.
1942: Hundreds of German Jews are deported to the ghetto/camp at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In Paderborn, Germany, all Jewish orphans are deported to Theresienstadt.
1942: In the Netherlands, the Westerbork “deportation” Camp became operational. The camp had originally been established by the Dutch government as a place to house German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The term deportation camp is a bit mis-leading since it was the last stop before arriving Auschwitz,, Bergen-Belsen or the other death camps.
1942: Seven trains of Jewish deportees leave Westerbork, Holland, for the Auschwitz death camp
1942: At Kleck, Belorussia, a few dozen Jews break out and join partisans.
1942 (16th of Tammuz, 5702): The Jewish community at Gorodenka, Ukraine, is wiped out.
1942: Extermination activities at the Sobibór death camp are temporarily halted for railway construction and enlargement of the camp's gas chambers.
1943: In an American radio broadcast, U.S. Congressman Emanuel Celler excoriates the U.S. government for its continuing silence on Nazi treatment of European Jews. This is the same Congressman Celler whom Senator Bilbo of Mississippi will refer to as a “kike” while giving a speech in the Upper Chamber; a reference that brings no response from those who hear it and who will guide the 1964 Civil Rights Act to a successful in the House of Representatives.
1943: The American Women's International League for Peace and Freedom estimates that millions of Jews have already been murdered by the Germans in Poland, and that the American government and people share in the guilt for these atrocities because they are complacent cowards covered "with a thick layer of prejudice."
1944: During the month of July, Jewish-Soviet partisans from Poland and Lithuania are active behind the lines at Lublin, Poland, and Kovno, Vilna, and Siauliai, Lithuania, as Soviet troops approach from the east.
1944: The Red Army liberates Lvov, Ukraine.
1944: The SS completes the evacuation of the death camp at Majdanek
1944: The SS evacuates the concentration camp at Kovno, Lithuania
1944: Neutral Switzerland ends long-standing, restrictive Jewish-immigration standards and admits all Jewish refugees who wish and are able to enter.
1944: Jewish-American Lieutenant Colonel Murray C. Bernays is assigned by the U.S. Army Civil Affairs Division to collect evidence of war crimes committed against American servicemen. Bernays begins to formulate his concept of Nazism as a criminal conspiracy, which will be central to the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-46.
1944: As the war put additional strains on the German labor force, 1,000 Jews were taken from Birkenau and put to work within Germany.
1944:"There were still 185 Jews living in Magdeburg, mainly partners of mixed marriages, who managed to survive the war.” The Magdeburg Jewish community was one of the oldest in Germany dating back to 965.
1945: Establishment of “The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews”, whose primary offices were located in Munich, close to Leipheim. “The Central Committee represented 175,000 Jews living in the DP camps in the American and British zones in Germany and Austria.” The committee was dissolved in December of 1950. (As reported by Yad Vashem Archives)
1945: In New York, Yiddish-language actors, Pesach Burstein and Lillian Lux gave birth to Michael Burstein, who gained fame as actor Mike Burstyn.
1946: The Haganah officially withdrew from its alliance with Irgun and Lehi. The Haganah did not renounce its role in defending the Yishuv against the British and Arab attacks.
1946: It was reported today that "Palestine Jews were considering a campaign of passive resistance" aimed at the British while the Irgun was threatening to kill three British hostages.
1946: As American businessmen, labor leaders, and consumers adjusted to the first day without the existence of the OPA, "Israel Sachs, president of Sachs Quality Stores, announced that" his stores "would raise prices." "At the same time he "appealed to Congress to enact immediately 'intelligent, workable price legislation.'" At the same time, "Victor A. Fishcell, vice president and general sales manager of Seagram-Distillers Corporaton announced that Seagram was continuing its shipments at regular OPA ceiling prices."
1946: During an interview given today at the New York office of the United Jewish Appeal, Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus that "Jews returning from concentration camps owned nothing but cast-off army clothing and were living under 'infinitely worse considitons' than the Germans. Rabbi Neuhuas, the "former Chief Rabbi of Hessen and liaison officer with the American Military Government in Germany" said that "the situation of the Jews in Europe is growing more critical, with displaced persons embittered by their 'no-man's land' status and the renewal of anti-Semitic outbursts in many countries."
1946: "Dr. Nahum Goldman, a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, said at a press conference today that Great Britain's latest program was a provocation to war, not only to the Palestinian Jews but to those all over the world. Dr. Goldman described as a 'breach of faith'...the arrest of 2,000 Jews in Palestine. 'If Britain persists in her present aggressive policy against the Jewish population in Palestine and its officially recognized leaders and bodies, she will create a state of permanent hostility against Britain on the part of Jews everywhere.' Dr. Goldman denied statements that the" British "government had informed" the United States government of its plans to crack down on the Jews of Palestine, including a massive round-up of Jewish leaders.
1946: "Three hundred persons attended a funeral service today at the Free Synagogue, 40 West Sixtyeighth Street, for Dr. Emanuel Libman, noted diagnostician, who died on Friday at the age of 73." During the service, Dr. Stephen S. Wise praised his friend of sixty years, Dr. Libman, for his efforts to train medical professionals and for his work on behalf of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the medical facilities at "the Jewish University of Jerusalem."
1946: In what would prove to be the first act in series of event that would lead to a pogrom in Kielce, Poland , eight-year-old Henryk Blaszcyk of Kielce, Poland, hitched a ride to his old hometown, visiting friends and picking cherries. Since his parents did not know about this they filed a missing person report with the local police.
1946: The Fair Employment Practices Commission issued a final report as it was forced to close down due to Congress' failure to enact legislation that it would have extended its existence. The report warned that "Wartime gains of Negro, Mexican-American and Jewish workers are being los through an 'unchecked revival' of discriminatory practices." The report also said that "a survey of job seeking by Jews since V-J Day conducted in fifteen cities, showed a marked rise of discrimination against all Jewish applicants and that 'Jews who had fought for their country fared no better than those who had not.'"
1946: In a displaced persons camp at Stuttgart, German Jacob and Fanny Silberman gave birth to Rosie Silberman who as Rosalie Abella became Canada’s first Jewish woman justice.
1946: The Mayor’s Committee on Unity headed by Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. recommended to that the Board of Regents conduct an investigation “into racial and religious discrimination in the admission of students to intuitions of higher learning…” The committee contended that “there could not long be any reasonable doubt that racial and religious discrimination was practiced by” colleges and universities “in New York and elsewhere” usually through the employment of some kind of quota system. According to the committee’s findings, this discrimination is directed at “Jewish, Negro, Catholic and Italian students.” While Medical Schools seem to be the prime practitioners of this discriminatory behavior, “it exists in other graduate and undergraduate schools as well.”
1948: In Jerusalem Yehudith and Yaacov gave birth to Michael (Mickey) Gal (Hepner) who would be among the crewman lost when the Dakar sank in 1968
1949: At the Rockdale Avenue Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Nelson Glueck, the President of Hebrew Union College and Rabbi Victor Reichert officiated at the funeral services for Dr. David Philipson who served as Rabbi of Rockdale Temple for 61 years and who was the last surviving member of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College.
1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conductor of the Boston Symphony is scheduled to conduct at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshire Hills.
1951: Six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer, Israel. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel presented to the US State Department a detailed aide-memoire urging the settlement of Israel's $1.5 billion restitution claim against Germany. The police had so far examined 150 war-crimes cases since the Knesset passed the War Crimes Law, directed at persons who cooperated with the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The experience of the first few cases had raised some doubts as to the possibility of obtaining convincing evidence against the accused.
1953: Paramount Pictures releases “Stalag 17” directed and produced by Billy Wilder, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum, with a score by Franz Waxman and featuring Otto Preminger as the Nazi prison camp commandant. (Editor’s note – this is a great, must-see film)
1958: Birthdate of Brooklynite Nancy Lieberman.
1958: Yosef Burg completed his term as Minister of Communications
1961: Coronet Magazine published “Rudolf Kasztner” Eichman’s Last Victim”
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/Rudolf_Kastner_Article_pdf
1967: An Israeli armored infantry company attacked an Egyptian force entrenched at Ras el 'Ish, located 10 miles south of Port Said. The Israeli company drove off the Egyptians but loses 1 dead and 13 wounded.
1971: In one of those ironies of “progress,” while bagel production and consumption soared to new heights, Local 338, the fabled bagel bakers local, ceased to exist and Local 3 acquired a Bagel Division.
1972: After 12 previews and 522 performances “Follies,” a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman completed its original run on Broadway.
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733):A few minutes before 1 A.M. Colonel Yosef (Joe ) Alon and his wife Dvora returned to their home in a quiet Washington, D.C., suburb. Alon, the air attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, had been at a farewell party for an Israeli diplomat. They parked the car. Dvora went into the house and then heard five gunshots. She rushed outside, saw her husband lying in a pool of blood, and glimpsed a white car driving away. She and her daughter Dalia, then 17, tried to help him. The other two girls, 14-year-old Yael and 6-year-old Rachel woke up. Joe tried to mumble something. An ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. (The murder remains unsolved. As reported by Yossi Melman)
1976: Terrorists in Entebbe, Uganda, still held 200 hostages from the Air France jet, hijacked four days earlier on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. They threatened to kill all remaining hostages and blow up the plane if their ransom demands were not met by two o'clock. A special Air France plane carrying 47 hostages, released earlier, arrived in Paris.
1976: Brigadier General Dan Shomron presented his plan for rescuing the hostage to the Chief of Staff Motta Gura and Defense Minister Shimon Peres.
1984(1st of Tammuz, 5744): Moshe Feldenkrais passed away. Born in the Ukraine in 1901, Feldenkrais moved to Palestine in 1918 where he continued his education. After living in France before World War II and serving with the British Navy in World War II he returned to Israel. He was a renowned physicist and judo expert, who developed a method of education and self-awareness training called The Feldenkrais method.
1987:''Portraits of an Era: Photographs by Irv Kline'' opens Bishopsgate Institute Foyer as part of this summer's Jewish East End Celebration.
1991(19th of Tammuz, 5751): Michael Landon, born Eugene Horowitz, passed away at the age of 54. Landon gained fame for his portrayal of Little Joe on the television western, Bonanza. He gained additional fame for his work in front and behind the camera in another television hit, Little Houseon the Prairie. (As reported by Peter Flint)
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/02/obituaries/michael-landon-54-little-joe-on-bonanza-for-14-years-dies.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
1993:Anne Lapidus Lerner became Vice Chancellor of the Seminary, the first woman to hold that post. As Vice Chancellor, Lerner was one of the highest-ranking women in all of American Jewish institutional life. In that role, she devoted her energy to adult education, working to bring Jewish education to the lay community. After earning bachelor’s, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Anne Lapidus Lerner joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1969, becoming the first American-born woman to hold a full-time position there. JTS trains rabbis and cantors for the Conservative movement and offers a range of masters and doctoral degree programs. Today, Lerner is an assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Literature at JTS, where she teaches courses in Hebrew and American Jewish poetry, modern Jewish literature, and the portrayal of women in Jewish literature. In addition, she is the director of the JTS Jewish Women's Studies Program, which she also founded, and Director of the Jewish Feminist Research Group. In 2001-02, she was a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School. Lerner has published two books and is at work on a third. In Passing the Love of Women: A Study of Gide's "Saül" and Its Biblical RootsLerner examines how the Biblical book of Samuel inspired a novel by French author André Gide. In Who Has Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Judaism Lerner discusses the interaction between Judaism and the modern American feminist movement. A new book on the image of Eve in Jewish literature is due to be completed soon. In addition, Lerner has published a range of articles, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Women's League Outlook, Hadassah, Judaism, Nashim, and Lilith.
1993 (12th of Tammuz, 5753): Olga Khaikov a Jewish immigrant from Russia and the mother of an 11 year old daughter was killed when terrorists tried to seize a bus near French Hill in Jerusalem.
1993: Gil Stein’s term as President of the NHL came to an end.the duties of the president were given to the commissioner. Stein then served as advisor to the commissioner for over three months, retiring from the league in October.
1994: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat drove from Egypt into Gaza, returning to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.
1995: Sir James David Wolfensohn began serving as the 9th President of the World Bank.
1996: Robert Wilentz resigned as Chief Justice of the New Jersey State Supreme Court because of his cancer.
1997(26th of Sivan, 5757): Sir Joshua Abraham Hassan, GBE, KCMG, LVO, QC passed away. Born in 1915, he “was a Gibraltarian politician, and first Mayor and Chief Minister of Gibraltar, serving two terms as Chief Minister for a total of 17 years. He is seen as the key figure in the civil rights movement in Gibraltar, and played a key role in the creation of the territory's institutions of self-government.”
1998: First Lady Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea and Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai, China, accompanied by Rabbi Schneier. In a speech on this date the First Lady commented, "So, for [the Ohel Rachel Synagogue] to be restored, I think, is a very good example of respect for religious differences and an appreciation for the importance of faith in one's life."
1999(17thof Tammuz, 5759): Tzom Tammuz
1999(17thof Tammuz, 5759: Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg, known as Yaakov Weinberg an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Talmudist, and rosh yeshiva (dean) of Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, Maryland passed away today.
2000(28th of Sivan, 5760): Actor Walter Mattheau passed away. Born Walter Matthow in 1920, Mattheau began work at the age of 11 selling candy and playing bit parts in a Yiddish theatre on the Lower East Side. Years later he claimed that his birth name was Matasschanskayasky. According to his son, his father did this as a prank. However, the myth has become accepted as fact by many sources. Mattheau had a long, successful career playing in films some of the best of which paired him with Jack Lemmon. These included, "The Fortune Cookie," a re-make of "Front Page," and that greatest of hits, "The Odd Couple."
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/02/nyregion/walter-matthau-79-rumpled-star-and-comic-icon-dies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
2000:Publication of Haviva Ner-David's book, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination,. The book, which is part memoir and part halakhic commentary, tells the story of Ner-David's integration of feminism and Orthodox Judaism over a lifetime and argues for the ordination of women as Orthodox rabbis.
2000:The judge in the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz announced the verdicts on the 13 Jews on trial for spying for Israel. The harsh verdicts against 10 of the defendants range from 4 to 13 years. The three defendants, who had been out on bail since February, were acquitted. The international community, Jewish groups around the world and human rights groups vocally condemned this verdict and expressed outrage at the lack of due process throughout the trial.
2001: Bruce Fleischer won the U.S. Senior Open.
2001:Caesarea-Pardes Hanna Railway Station was opened today “as a suburban station on the newly inaugurated Tel Aviv – Binyamina Suburban Service. The station was constructed to provide a railway link for the area's growing population as well as encourage rail commuting to the industrial zone in the vicinity.”
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Seventy three year old Jazz legend Herbie Mann, born Herbert Jay Solomon passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/arts/herbie-mann-73-musician-who-gave-flute-a-jazz-sound.html
2004: Actor Marlon Brando passed away. No, Brando was not Jewish. But he did have this to say about Jews. “Marlon Brando…once told an interviewer that, per capita ‘Jews have contributed more to American…culture than any other single group.’ Without them, the actor claimed, ‘we wouldn’t have music,’ ‘we wouldn’t have much theater,’ and we wouldn’t have “all the songs that you love to sing.’”
2005: The New York Times reported that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had moved decisively to deal with killing of a African-American man by two white males in Howard Beach. The Times favorably compared Bloomberg’s swift action with the city’s reaction to a racially inspired killing in the same neighborhood in 1986.
2005: The New York Times reported that Time’seditor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine made the decision to follow a court order and turn over a reporter’s documents to a grand jury investigating a leak of a CIA operative’s identity. Pearlstine wrestled with the compelling issues – freedom of the press versus the need to submit to the rule of law – and he came down on the side of the latter. The decision was not an easy one for a man who was a lawyer as well as the head of one of America’s flagship communication corporations.
2005: The New York Times reported that Bank of America had agreed to buy MBNA. MBNA was founded by Alfred Lerner who passed away in 2002. Learner supported numerous philanthropies including the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. The JFR seeks out to fulfill the age old injunction to seek out and recognize righteousness. In particular, the JFR works to help aged and indigent righteous gentiles who helped save Jews during the Shoah.
2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Din In the Head: Essaysby Cynthia Ozick
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766): Eighty-three year old Philip Rieff the author of a number of books about Sigmund Freud passed away today.(As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/us/04rieff.html
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766):Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs, who founded the British branch of the Conservative Movement and was voted the greatest Jew in the history of Britain's Jewish community last year, passed away today. (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/world/europe/09jacobs.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print
http://louisjacobs.org/
2006: David J. Skorton begins serving as President of Cornell University.
2007: Arnie Eisen assumed the office of Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary
2007:The Opening Day game of the Israel Baseball League is broadcast on a delayed basis on PBS in major US markets.
2007: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocquevilleby Bernard-Henri Lévy and The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter.
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of a collection of here-to-for unpublished stories by Primo Levi entitled A Tranquil Star. According to the review, those who think of Levi only in terms of being a “Holocaust writer” will be pleasantly surprised by the wide ranging topics and unique style displayed in this posthumously published tome.
2007: Avraham Hirschson resigned as Israel’s Minister of Finance following an investigation of an alleged embezzlement in which he was allegedly involved.
2007: Moseh Katzav resigned as President of Israel.
2007: Dalia Itzik, who had been serving as Speaker of the Knesset became action President of the state of Israel.
2007: Marvin Krislov became the 14th President of Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio
2008: Lauren Weisberger, author of the bestselling novel The Devil Wears Prada, reads from and signs her new book, Chasing Harry Winston, at a Borders Books in suburban Virginia.
2008: Arnie Eisen, who took office as Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary on July 1, 2007 assumed the position full time
2009: In Cedar Rapids, IA, meeting of the Hadassah book club discusses Courtesan, a novel by Dora Levy Mossanen.
2009:After 29 years of serving as supporting character alongside Marvel greats like the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, Sabra, the alias of Ruth-Bat Seprah, mutant superhero and former agent, makes her first headlining print appearance in the Marvel anthology Astonishing Tales #6. Sabra's first solo appearance is the work of Matt Yocum, who by day serves as the US Air Force's representative to the Israeli government and by night writes comic books. Yocum, who is not Jewish, has long been involved with the State of Israel. His first visit to the country was in 1992 with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and he spent four weeks living on Kibbutz Beit Ha'emek, close to the coastal city of Nahariya. In 2002 he found himself in Israel again, this time as an exchange officer doing engineering for the Israeli government. Based on his previous experience in the country, Yocum was selected to come for a third time in 2006 to work in the attaché office for the US Air Force. Using three elements unique to his life in Israel, Yocum created a story about a member of the Air Force at a diplomatic reception in Israel, which sums up his existence here. "I wanted to take the experience I had in Israel and bring it to the people who don't live here," he explains. "The vast majority of the people who read the story will not have been to the country, and they will not realize that there are things we take for granted here - one being that everyone has to serve in the army. In the US, less than one percent of the population serves, and here it's part of a natural dialogue with a high-schooler.""At the end of the day, I don't think it's going to change any ideas about Israel," he says. "It shows a piece of what it's like to live in the country and what it's like to serve here."
2009: Today President Shimon Peres invited Saudi King Abdullah to come to Jerusalem, or meet him in Riyadh, to initiate discussions that would enable the implementation of a comprehensive peace between Israel and all the Arab states.
2009:A Chabad-sponsored Women's Empowerment Rally is held at Tel Aviv's Nokia Stadium.
2009: Leonard “Cohen started his marathon European tour, his third in two years.
2009:Romanian Jewish leaders met in Bucharest today to address allegations that medical students have been using the remains of Holocaust victims for research.
2010:Yeshiva University Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art are scheduled to present “As it is Written: Lectures on the Art of Hebrew Manuscripts and Books” in New York City.
2010:The Wall Street Journalreported today that Tehran has equipped Damascus with a sophisticated radar system to help thwart a surprise Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
2011:Cantor Joel Caplan, son of Richard and Ellen Caplan, and father Ilan Caplan is scheduled to lead a Shabbat evening program called “Shabbat Spirit” that includes guitar, keyboard and PowerPoint projections of all the songs that will be sung.
2011: As the case sexual assault case fell apart due to questions of credibility regard of the alleged victim, Dominque Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today.
2011:At Shabbat Eve Services at Temple Judah a baby naming is to take place for Natanel, the son of Chavah and Stephen Rosenbaum of Jerusalem and the grandson of Kathe and Gary Goldstein of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2011: Abbie Silber, daughter of Laurie and Dr. Bob Silver (pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community) and Rabbi Feivel Strauss are scheduled to receive a blessing at Shabbat Eve services as they prepare for their upcoming nuptials.
2011: This Day In…In Jewish History makes its first appearance on http://shtetl.ca/ a must read website for anybody interested in the comings and goings of the Canadian Jewish community.
2011:Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.
2011:The Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection issued a statement today saying that the Minister, C. Papoutsis, decided to prohibit the departure of ships flying either Greek or foreign flags "to the maritime area" of Gaza.
2012: A revival of “On Second Avenue,” “a musical journey through Yiddish Theatre” is scheduled to have its final performance at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts. (As reported by Mike Cohen)
2012: The Labor Party is scheduled to hold its convention today in Tel Aviv.
2012(11thof Tammuz, 5772): Eighty-six year old “Evelyn Lear, an American soprano who became a star in Europe in the 1950s and later won acclaim in the United States for singing some of the most difficult roles in contemporary opera” passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/arts/music/evelyn-lear-versatile-soprano-dies-at-86.html?hpw
2012(11thof Tammuz, 5772): Ninety-two year old “Estelle Ellis Rubinstein, who as promotion director of the brand-new Seventeen magazine helped American businesses discover what she called “a whole new country” — the untapped market of millions of teenage girls —” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/media/estelle-ellis-rubinstein-a-pioneer-at-seventeen-dies-at-92.html
2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including the recently released paperback edition of Bloom of Darkness, Aharon Applefeld’s novel about “a Jewish child is hidden in a brothel in a Ukrainian village during the Holocaust.
2012: Mario Balotelli, a black Italian soccer start who was raised by a Jewish Italian foster mother from the age of three is scheduled to lead his team into the final of the Euro 2012 soccer championships. (As reported by the Times of Israel)
2012:Today the cabinet approved doubling the 2013 budget deficit target to 3 percent of gross domestic product, despite strong opposition from central bank and Treasury officials. It also agreed to set a new long-term target of gradually reducing the deficit back to 1.5% by 2019.
2013: The Aleph Kallah –Connecting the Divine Within and Around Us – is scheduled to begin today.
2013: The North American Jewish Data Baml is scheduled to move from the University of Connecticut to the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in New York.
2013:Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber who was raised Catholic but now describes himself as nontheist Jew became the 20th President of Princeton University today. “While helping his son, then in the fourth grade, with a school project, he discovered that his Berlin-born mother, who had arrived in New York as an eight-year-old refugee, was Jewish. In 2009, a Holocaust claims tribunal awarded Eisgruber and his three sisters 162,500 Swiss francs, representing the value of the bank account of their maternal great-grandfather, Salomon Kalisch”
2013: Peter Salovey, a descendant of the Soloveichik rabbinic family, became the 23 President of Yale University.
2013: With Stanley Fischer's eight-year term as Bank of Israel Governor completed as of last night, his deputy Karnit Flug stepped into the role of acting governor today. (As reported by Niv Elis)
2013: As part of the fallout from a reported cover-up of sexual abuse by Yishiva University rabbis, Rabbi Norman Lamm steeped as the chancellor and Rosh yeshiva. (As reported by Uriel Heilman)
2014: Decent people everywhere continue to react with shock and horror to the news concerning the murder of the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers - Naftali Frankel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16; and Eyal Yifrach, 19 - who were abducted on their way home from school on June 12 and whose bodies were found near Hebron.
2014: Scott S. Cowen is scheduled to step down as President of Tulane University.
2014: Scott S. Cowen is scheduled to step down as President of Tulane University.
2014: In Israel “1.5 million elementary students and over 71,000 teachers are scheduled to begin their summer break.”
2014(3rd of Tammuz): 20th Yarhrzeit Menachem M. Schneerson of blessed memory simply known as “the Rebbe.”