This Day, November 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

November 30

1215: The Fourth Lateran Council which had been led by Innocent III came to a close. The Fourth Lateran Council made the first official use of the term "transubstantiation," with reference to the Eucharist (Lord's Supper). The adoption of this concept would lead to anti-Semitic outbreaks based on charges that Jews had desecrated the Host i.e. the wafer that was seen as being the body of Christ.

1286 Pope Honorius wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, reaffirming the decision of the Lateran Councils. He enlarged on the evils of relations between Christians and Jews and warned of the pernicious consequences of the study of the Jews’ Talmud going so far as to issue a bull condemning the Jewish text.

1518: Maria Lopez and her daughter Isabel were sentenced to death by the Inquisition after having been charged with “juadizing.  (As reported by Renee Levine Melammed)

1597: Sir Henry Finch, the author of The World's Great Restauration, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ introduced a new bill into the House of Commons for the relief of the poor.

1631(5^th of Kislev, 5932): Rabbi Samuel Eliezer ben Judah ha-levi Edels passed away.  Born in Cracow in 1555, Edels is known by the acronym Maharsha. He was known as an outstanding Talmudist and master of dialectics whose commentaries were of such value that they were included in most editions of the Talmud.  Edels was a man of character as well as erudition.  “He attacked the misuse of rabbinic authority and the attempt made by wealthy individuals to monopolize communal offices.”

1654: Sixty-nine year old John Selden an English jurist and student of Jewish law whose writing included a 1646 treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews entitled Uxor Ebraica, passed away today.

1654: Sixty nine year old English jurist and scholar John Selden, “the first Talmudist in England since the expulsion of the Jews…who recognized the humanness of Jewish marital law and found in Deuteronomy and the Talmud a model for the proper relationsip between the judicial and executive branches of government” and who wrote The Jewish Wife, a work “on the theory and practice of Jewish marriage and divorce law” passed away today.

1670: Birthdate of John Toland, Anglo-Irish author and philosopher. In 1714, at a time when Jews were still considered to be outsiders by many Englishmen, Toland wrote “Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews” in which he advocated “full citizenship and equal rights for the Jewish people.

1718(OS): King Charles XII who had who had “incurred substantial debts with Jewish and Muslim merchants” while supply his army that was fighting in Bessarabia which led to several Muslim and Jewish creditors arriving in Sweden which led to Swedish law being altered to allow them to hold religious services and circumcise their sons

1725: Today Felix de Castro, a Spanish physician living at Agramunt “was condemned by the Inquisition for life for Judaizing.

1726: In Dusseldorf, Lazarus Eliezer Leiser Joseph van Geldern and Sara Lea van Geldern gave brith to Dr. Gottschalk van Geldern.

1748(9^th of Kislev, 5509): Mordecai ben Jacob Ẓahalon, a doctor and rabbi who was part of a famous Sephardic family, passed away today in Ferrara, Italy. Among his many books were Megillat Naharot," describing the miraculous rescue of the Jewish community of Ferrara from the inundation that occurred in 1707.

1774: Pamphleteer Thomas Paine whose opposition to Monarchy was based in part on his reading of the Bible where the Israelite kings had a propensity for leading their subjects into the evils of idolatry, arrived in Philadelphia on the eve of the American Revolution.

1778: The “40-year-old wife of Abraham ben Simon” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1782: In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

1790: King Leopold II forwarded the petition from the Jews asking for full equality with other citizens to the “chancelleries of Hungary and Moravia” to see if this change would be supported.

1790: Georgia Governor, Edward Telfair granted to Levy Sheftall, Cushman Pollock, Joseph Abrahams, Mordecai Sheftall, Abraham de Pas, Emanuel de la Motta, and their successors a charter of incorporation wherein they were declared to be "a body incorporates by the name and style of the 'Parnass and Adjuntas of the Mickve Israel at Savannah.'" This charter is still in the hands of the congregation, and it is the document under which it operates to this day.

1790: Birthdate of Klingen, Germany native Samuel Weis, the husband of Agatha Klein and the father of Julius and Sophia Weis.

1803(15^th of Kislev, 5564): Sixty-year-old Sarah Leon, the daughter of Abraham de Leon passed away today in Philadelphia.

1803:  In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1805: In Chatham, Kent, England, Lazarus Magnus and Sarah Moses gave birth to Jacob Magus.

1813: In the Hauge, Leonardus Levy Abraham Verveer and his wife Caroline Elkan gave birth to Salomon Leonardus Verveer

1813: In Paris, Alkan Morhange and Julie Morhange, née Abraham gave birth to Charles-Valentin Morhange, the descendant of Ashkenazi from Metz who gained fame as French pianist and composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.

http://www.alkansociety.org/

1813: William VI, the future King William I who would play an active role in the reorganization of the Dutch Jewish community arrived at Scheveningen.

1817: Birthdate of German scholar and political leader Theodore Mommsen who denounced the anti-Semitic campaign being led by his colleague Heinrich von Treitschke and who descried the “position and influence of Jews in the Roman Empire” in his multi-volume History of Rome.

1822(16^th of Kislev, 5583): Parashat Vayishlach

1822(16^th of Kislev, 5583): Seventy-seven Shinah Solomon the Lancaster, PA born daughter of Bilah Myers-Cohen and Joseph Solomon who were married in London in 1738 and the wife of Elijah Etting with whom she had eight children passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1823: Birthdate of German botanist Nathanael Pringsheim who “in 1882 established the German Botanical Society, which in twelve years included over 400 German botanists, and of which he was annually elected president until his death.”

1824(9^th of Kislev, 5585): Sixty-year-old David David, the Montreal born son of Lazarus David and Phebe Samuel, the fur trader and militia officer who was the first Jew born in the Province of Quebec passed away today.

1825: In Liverpool, Sarah and Lyon Samson gave birth to Lewis Samson.

1828(24^th of Kislev, 5589): The first Chanukah Candle was kindled for the last time during the presidency of John Q. Adams who had just lost a hotly contested election with Andrew Jackson.

1831(25^th of Kislev, 5592): Chanukah observed for the first time since the end of the Polish-Russian War that had begun exactly a year ago with an uprising of the Polish officers.

1832: Georgetown, SC native Divnah Cohen and Isaac Minis who had married in 1803 gave birth to Cecilia Minis.

1833: In London, Rebecca Jacobs and Michael Meir Myers gave birth to Maia Golda Myers.

1836: Today, “Mr. Danofsky, of King Street, St. James, Westminster married Mrs. Hughes, the widow of the late Mr. Moses Hughes at Margate.”

1841: Alsey Harris and Abraham Ellis gave birth to Nancy Ellis.

1845: Birthdate of Wisconsin Congressman Richard W. Guenther who worked with Congressman Ford during the 1880’s to conduct a series of hearing designed to exclude Jews from immigrating to the United States

1840: Birthdate of Ludovic Trarieux, the supporter of Dreyfus who founded the League of Human and Civil Rights

1850(25^th if Kislev, 5611): Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Vayeshev observed for the first-time during Presidency of Millard Fillmore

1852: Birthdate of Hermann Gollancz the Professor of Hebrew at University College.

1854: Between 300 and 400 people danced to the music of Dodsworth’s Band at the Hebrew Young Men’s Ball held in the New York City’s Chinese Assembly Rooms.  Proceeds from tonight’s event will be be given to the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1856(3rd of Kislev, 5617): Marcus Cone, a Jew who had been living in New York, passed away today in Abbersweiler, Germany, his hometown.

1856: The Manchester Guardian reported a "Great Fire" had taken place in Constantinople where 600 homes were destroyed, and another devastated Adrianople.

1856: Two days after he had passed away, 49-year-old Joseph Abrahams was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1858: Today’s City Intelligence column reported that the recent stories about the arrest of three Jews for their role in selling lottery tickets were in error.  At least one of those arrested was identified as being a rabbi when in fact he made no claim to being a clergyman.  Apparently, he is the leader of a “Bet Hamidrash” or House of Instruction which is attended by recently arrived poor immigrant Russian Jews who speak little or no English.  In Europe, the sale of lottery tickets is legal and apparently the immigrants had no reason to think that this was not the case in the United States.  Those preparing the original report were unaware of the fact that the term “Reb” merely implies that one is a “master” or an “instructor” and not a clergyman.

1861: Emmanuel Marks, who was killed while serving in the Union Army, began serving with Company K of the 28^th Regiment.

1863: In Paris France, Sophie Neymarck and Elie Camille Spire gave birth to Ferdinand Espir.

1863(NS): In Warsaw, Jewish shopkeeper Moishe-Leib Abramovych Vynar and his wife gave birth to University of Warsaw trained attorney and political leader Maxim Vinaver, the father of the radiologist Valentina Maximovna Vinaver Kremer,  the literary historian and founder of the International Arthurian Society Eugène Vinaver) and the lawyer Sofia Maximovna Vinaver Grinberg who developed a practice revolving around the rising anti-Semitism that included organizing the successful defense in the Vilna trial of David Blondes [ru], who was charged with ritual murder.

1864(1^st of Kislev, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1864: In Tennessee, Colonel Frederick Knefler commanded a brigade protecting the Union flank at the Battle of Franklin, one of the worst defeats suffered by the Rebels during the Civil War.

1864: Private Abraham Greenawalt, Company G, 104^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, served with such valor at the Battle of Franklin that he would be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for capturing the “corps headquarters flag” of the Confederates.

1867: In Philadelphia, PA, Henrietta and Max B. Loeb gave birth to Horace Harris Loeb the brother of Balance, Leonore, Jacob Bertha and Harry M. Loeb.

1867: In Hungary, Eliyahu Menachem Goitein, the son of Zvi (Armin) Hirsch Goitein and Szali (Sara) Sarolta Goitein and his wife Amalia Mahala Goitein gave birth to Jacob Loeb Goitein.

1867(3^rd of Kislev, 5628): Fifty-two-year-old Wolf Alois Meisel, the Chief Rabbi in Budapest passed away while preaching a sermon that was “later published by Simon and Wilhelm Bacher under the title Die Brunnen Isaak's”

1869: Two days after he had passed away, David Nathan, the husband of Mary Lazarus with whom he had four children, was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1870: E.B. Hart delivered the opening remarks at the Hebrew Charity Fair.  The lavish event was held to raise funds for the Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.  In his speech Governor Hoffman of New York said praised both institutions saying that the latter was indeed populated primarily by Jewish children but that the former served all members of the community, regardless of their religion.

1871(17^th of Kislev, 5632): Thirty-five-year-old Gaston Cremieux who along with fellow Jew Adolphe Carcassone headed the Revolutionary Commission of the Département Bouches-du-Rhône was condemned to death and executed today for his role in the revolt that had followed the Franco-Prussian War in November 1871, the only one among the leaders of the Commune.

1873: The Jewish Maternity Association, originally known as Ezrath Nashim (Helping Women) was founded in Philadelphia, PA.

1874:  Birthdate of Sir Winston Churchill, the British statesman, orator and author who served as prime minister during World War II.  Churchill’s official biographer was the famous Jewish historian, Martin Gilbert. Churchill often spoke of his support for a Jewish homeland.  During the war, his government studiously supported the White Paper which effectively banned Jewish immigration to Palestine.  Churchill’s supporters explained this as being a wartime necessity meant to ensure Arab support for the Allied cause.  Even if one accepts this argument, it does not explain Churchill’s support for the ban on Jewish immigration after the Nazis had surrendered in May of 1945. For more about Churchill and his relationship with the Jewish people, see Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert.  Like all off Gilbert’s work it is well researched and highly readable.

1876: Rabbi Einhorn is scheduled to deliver the sermon at Temple Bethel’s Thanksgiving Services the first of which will be held at 10 AM followed by a second service at 11 AM.

1876: Rabbi Gottheil will deliver the sermon at this afternoon’s Centennial Thanksgiving Service at Temple Emanu-El. The service will include a musical program by the congregation’s choir and a reading of the President’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.

1876: In Philadelphia, a ceremony was held today unveiling and dedicating a monument symbolic of Religious Liberty that was built with contribution from member of B’nai Brith from throughout the United States.

1876: Two years after coming to America, in Rochester, NY Jacob Lipsky and his wife gave birth to “Louis Lipsky, noted Zionist leader, journalist and author” who “had three sons: David Lipsky, a theatrical press agent, Eleazar Lipsky, a novelist, and Joel Carmichael, a historian.

1876: It was reported today that the Ladies of the Forty-fourth Street Synagogue’s Hebrew Benevolent Society are seeking donations of goods and money for the fair they are holding during the last two weeks of December.

1877: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and 1900 Harvard University graduate Max Hirsch, the President of the Sachs Shoe Manufacturing Company, Democratic Party activist and “patron of Hebrew University” who married Marga Henie Hirsch after the death of his first wife Effie Wyler Hirsch.

1878: Solomon A. Levy and Dilah Horner Levy gave birth to Henry Horner, the first Jewish governor of Illinois.

1878: In the “Czech Republic,” Bertha and Hermann Ullmann gave birth to Irma Ullmann who became Irma Hirsch when she married Albert Hirsch.

1879: C.J. Fishel of Mellis & Fishel read the opening prayer at the funeral of S.L. Lewis which was the first Jewish funeral to be held in the Sandwich Islands which we know as Hawaii.

1881: It was reported today that new regulations issued in Russia divided the Jews of Kiev into 8 different classes based on education and occupation.  Membership in a particular class determines your rights including where you can live in the area and for how long.

1881: It is reported today that at least one Jew in St. Petersburg has found a way to get around the government law forbidding Jews from changing occupations.  A Jew who began as a maker of ladies’ riding habits is now operating a counting house.  He just never changed the signage, something that everybody including the authorities is aware of

1881: In Brooklyn, the fair sponsored by Temple Israel will open today and last until December 10.

1882(19^th of Kislev, 5643): Sixty-year-old merchant David Hays Solis, the Mt Pleasant, NY born son of Jacob da Silva Solis and Charity Solis and husband of Elvira S. Solis, a supporter of the B'nai Jeshurun Educational Institute the Hebrew Charitable Fund, the Jewish Publication Society and the Hebrew Educational who was the first president of the Congregation Beth-El Emeth, in Philadelphia, passed away today in Philadelphia.

1882: It was reported today that the United Hebrew Charities has contributed one hundred dollars to the Charity Organization Society, an umbrella organization that investigates applicants for charities in New York Society to make sure that they are really in need.

1883(1^st of Kislev, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1883(1^st of Kislev, 5644: In Rushville, Indiana, a violent quarrel, including fisticuffs and gunfire, between Jewish merchants Eli Frank and Jacob Block turned fatal when Frank was shot to death by Block’s son.

1883 In Zalal Lovo, Hungary, a peasant woman informed a Jewish merchant named Kohn
that “some bands had collected in the neighboring villages and that they “planed “an attack upon him tonight.  Kohn warned the mayor who “strengthened the night watch” and the Jews prepared themselves for the worst.

1885: It was reported today that an unnamed Jew from Pittsburg stole $475 from a co-religionist in Newark, NJ.

1885: “Le Cid” a four-act opera with a libretto co-authored by Adolphe d’Ennery was performed for the first time at the Paris Opera.

1885: It was reported today that New York Police Commissioner Stephen B. French, a Republican had several explanations for his party’s defeat in the recent election, including the fact that in Fourth Assembly there are “a great many Irish and a great many Hebrews.”  According to French, the Jews “are always nearly against” the Republicans and the Irish have reverted to voting Democratic after their apparent switch in the 1884 election. (Electoral postmortems are nothing new and misguided ones are certainly not.  Actually, in the post-Civil War United States, Jews in the North and Mid-West tended to vote for Republicans)

1886: The wife and daughter of a Polish Jew named Milkowski who has lived in Louisiana for the last 30 years took refuge in Lake Providence after a mob attacked their home in Caledonia.

1887: Based on information that first appeared in the London Truth, it is reported that there are no more than 100,000 Jews in France, but of the 86 prefectures (administrative chiefs) 60 are Jews.  Furthermore “Jews have the best places in the Treasury” and “merit was the last consideration when they were appointed.”  (Editor’s note: This sub-text of French anti-Semitism would play out in the Drefyus Scandal and continue into the darkest days of Vichy)

1887: It was reported today that the recently concluded conference of Reform Rabbis adopted a resolution introduced by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise to appoint a committee to “consider establishing a reformatory for Jewish children.”  According to Wise, there are more than 150 Jewish children in various reformatories, and they are never visited by a Rabbi.

1887: It was reported that the next national meeting of The Jewish Ministers’ Association, an organization of Reform Rabbis will be held this Spring in Washington, D.C.

1888: It was reported today that there had been a record number of Jews attending Thanksgiving services and that the Thanksgiving Dinner served to 200 east side children by the United Hebrew Charities was further proof of Israelites enjoyment of this American holiday.

1888: In New York City, Millie Abrahams and Abraham Levy gave birth to NYU trained attorney, author and graduate of the U.S. Army School of Military Aeronautics Newman Levy, the husband of Eva Garson and contributor to such magazines as Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post who also wrote “Twelve Hundred a Year” with Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber.

1888: Birthdate of Frank T. Fleisher who did not live to see his second birthday.

1890: In Massachusetts, Eli and Bessie Aronson Levin gave birth to Aaron Isaac Levin

1891: Benjamin Berensen, a leading member of the Boston Jewish community disappeared.

1891: Birthdate of Chicago native and Kent College of Law graduate Benjamin Kahane who entered the motion picture industry as general counsel for what became RKO studios, after which he served as vice president of Columbia Pictures and president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences while being married to Mildred Kahane with whom he had two children – Shirley and Benjamin, Jr.

1891(29^th of Cheshvan, 5652): Seventy-three-year-old Edwin de Leon, the native of Columbia, South Carolina who while serving as U.S. consul-general to Egypt during the Franklin Pierce administration “rendered conspicuous services in protecting American Missionaries in Jaffa,” passed away today.

1892: The Hebrew Orphans Asylum band – 45 boys under the direction of Martin Cohen – will perform at this evening’s session of the American Institute Fair.

1892(11^th of Kislev, 5653): Julius D. Bemb, the Pittsburgh merchant and philanthropist who was a supporter of Pittsburgh’s Gusky Home and Orphanage and “benefactor of Hebrew Union College” passed away today.

1893: Birthdate of author I.J. Singer, the older brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Born in Poland, Singer gained fame as Yiddish writer.  He was the Polish correspondent for The Jewish Daily Forward.  He came to the United States in 1934.” Singer’s epic masterpiece Di Bruder Ashkenazi (The Brothers Ashkenazi) details Jewish industrial development before World War I.”

1893: “Three hundred children will be given a Thanksgiving dinner of Turkey, cranberry sauce and trimmings at the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities today at noon.”

1893(21^st of Kislev, 5654): Sixty-six-year-old Phoebe Elizabeth Solis, the Mt. Pleasant, NY born daughter of Charity Hays and Jacob Da Silva Solis who were married in 1811, the wife of David De Moses Sarfaty and the mother of Moses and Charity Sarfaty passed away today in New Jersey.

1893: In the Reichstag, “toward the end of the budget debate” Dr. Foerster declared that “anti-Semitism was not a passing phenomenon” and that “it would endure as long as the Hebrew race.”

1894: Birthdate of Columbus, Ohio, native Donald Ogden the Academy Award winning screenwriter who during the 1930’s was Chairman of the Hollywood Ant-Nazi League “the first American anti-Nazi organization that was not overtly linked to American Jews” and that “served as the focal point of the film industry’s anti-Nazism from 1936 through 1939.”

1894: “Dedicated to Humanity” published today provided a description of the Montefiore Home’s new additions which is a five-story edifice that includes a new synagogue on the ground floor that will accommodate 500 worshippers as well “a vast kitchen and laundry in the basement” and quarters for servant

1894: As of today, there are “3,383 children between the ages of eight and fourteen years enrolled in the afternoon classes sponsored Hebrew Free School Association; children who must attend public schools in the morning to able to take these classes in Hebrew and “religious subjects.”

1895(13^th of Kislev, 5656): Parashat Vayishlach

1895: Birthdate of Samuel Norton "Sam" Gerson, the Ukrainian born Jewish-American wrestler who won a Silver Medal at the 1920 Olympics and helped to organize Philadelphia's Maccabi Sports Club.

1895: In New York, Daniel Ryan and Daniel Healy were each fined $10 for “striking at every Hebrew they passed on Broadway” which the court described as “Jew baiting.”

1895: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon entitled “One Touch of Nature, our Appeal in Behalf of Armenia” at Temple Emanu-El during Friday night services.

1896(25^th of Kislev, 5657): For the last time during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, first day of Chanukah

1896: In Newark, NJ, Aaron and Theresa (Goldstein) Oschrin gave birth to Barnard College graduate Elsie Oschrin who after marrying Adolph Bregman, earned a Ph.D. from Columbia and gained fame as psychologist Elsie Oscrhin Bregman.

1896: Prior to tomorrow’s start of the 15^th Biennial Council of the American Hebrew Congregation in Louisville, KY, the Executive Committee met and chose temporary officers.

1897: “Ethnic Politics” published today described the difficulties that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which is polyglot multi-national domain is having in creating a national identity as can be seen even in Vienna where political lines “are drawn between Jews and Jew-baiters.”  The rise of Jews in Viennese culture has been matched by a rise in Anti-Semitism which is opposed by the Emperor.

1897(5^th of Kislev, 5658): Just 12 days before his 65^th birthday Abraham Carl (A.C.) Wertheim, a partner in the Dutch banking house of Wertheim & Gompertz, the husband of Rosalie Marie Wertheim who was a member of States-Provincial for twenty and a leader of the Jewish community passed away today.

1897: Rabbi “Backowitz” (Berkowitz) of Philadelphia is scheduled to deliver a speech this evening at Temple Emanu-El in New York entitled “Jews’ Gifts to Humanity.”

1898: Leo M. Franklin an 1892 graduate of Hebrew Union College who was the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Omaha, Nebraska, “became the 11^th rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Detroit, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.”

1898: In San Francisco, Estella and Henry George Washington Dinkelspiel gave birth to University of California alum and Harvard trained attorney Martin Jerrold Dinkelspiel, the husband of Estella Dinkelspiel.

1898: As the measles epidemic at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum comes to an end 15 children ranging in age from 6 to 11, remain in isolation at the hospital

1898: Private Will Hu Freudenstein of St. Louis finished his military service when Light Battery A, Missouri Volunteers was mustered out at Jefferson Barracks, MO.

1899: One thousand pounds of turkey was consumed by the children under the care of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.  The daylong celebration included band music, a speech by Dr. Kaufman on the meaning of Thanksgiving and an afternoon of play preceded by the receipt of “a masquerade costume” for youngsters.

1899: Four hundred children attended the 19^th annual Thanksgiving Day Dinner at the Industrial School of the Hebrew Charities Society.

1899: In New York City, “Isidor Heldenstein and Rose Miller” gave birth to Columbia Law School trained attorney Herbert W. Haldenstein, the President of the Central Bureau for the Jewish Aged who married “the former Mrs. Jennie L. Whitehill” after his first wife Mrs. Marion Kaufman Haldenstein had passed away.

1899: One hundred children who attend the kindergarten sponsored by the Shearith Israel Sisterhood were provided with a free Thanksgiving Dinner.

1899: In Branchville, SC, Julius and Etta Karesh Levin gave birth to Sidney Levin, the future husband of Tina Levovitz Levin.

1899: Seventy-five-year-old philosopher and psychologist Mortiz Lazarus, “son of Aaron Levin Lazarus” celebrated “the fiftieth anniversary of receiving his doctorate.”

1900: Today an overflow crowd of enthusiastic listeners—Jews and non-Jews alike—filled an auditorium in Moscow to hear a lecture on Yiddish folk music given by the lawyer, amateur historian, and folklorist Peysekh Marek followed by a concert that included new arrangements of Yiddish folk songs and Hasidic nigunim that were created and introduced by the composer, music critic, and musicologist Joel Engel.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/yiddish-folksong-classical-music

1900: It was reported today that industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnage had been the main speaker at the Thanksgiving Day reception at the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids.

1900: Oscar Wilde passed away.  The Picture of Dorian Gray, possibly his most famous novel, includes a Jewish character named Isaacs, a theatre manager. The author stresses both his Jewishness and his ugliness describing him as “a hideous Jew,” a “horrid old Jew” who had “greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond … in the centre of a soiled shirt.”

1901: In Watertown, WI, Sarah Johnson Woodward and Frank Elwin Woodward gave birth to Mary Woodward who gained fame as Mary Woodward Lasker, the art historian and designer who was the second wife of advertising executive Albert Lasker and the stepmother of Edward, Francis and Mary Lasker.

1902: Most of the national officers of the National Council of Jewish Women, “including Mrs. Henry G. Solomon of Chicago, the President; Mrs. Emanuel Mandel of Chicago, Second Vice President; Mrs. J.H. Seiz of Chicago, Treasurer; Miss Minnie Loeb of Chicago, Auditor; and Miss Sadie American of New York, Corresponding Secretary” arrived in Baltimore today a week before the start of their National Convention.

1903: In a case of literary matrimony, Else Lasker-Schuler married George Lewin, the author who used the penname Herwarth Walden.

1904: It was reported today that “the annual Charity Ball of the United Austrian Hebrew Charities Association will be held at Arlington Hall on December 18.”

1905(2^nd of Kislev, 5666): Forty-two-year-old chess champion Samuel Lipschutz passed away today.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=39131

1905: It was reported today that the massacre of Jews in Minsk that was originally supposed to take place on November 26^th will now take place on December 3.

1905: Jacob Schiff presided over “the great celebration in honor of the 250^th anniversary of the settlement of the Jews in the United States… held in Carnegie Hall” this afternoon which “included the reading of a letter from President Roosevelt and “the singing in Hebrew of ‘Adon Olam’ by fifty members of the Downtown Cantors’ Association of New York accompanied by 250 members of the Choral Union and the New York Symphony Orchestra.”

1905: “John Hoar, an American jockey who has been riding for Prince Louborinski in Russia arrived “in New York today and described “the sights he witnessed” which “were so awful that he fainted” that included the gutters in that “ran red with blood.

1905: It was reported from Paris today that prices on the Bourse “have firmed” now that it has been confirmed that laws aimed at restricting the Jews have “been abrogated.”

1905: The Orphan Hebrew Asylum observed Thanksgiving and the 250^th anniversary of the settlement of the Jews” in North America with a reading of a sketch by Harry Schneidermann on the history of the Jews in the United States followed by a dress parade and concert by the 400 member Cadet Corps and ending with a dinner for 1,030 children “provided by Emanuel Lehman.”

1905: Jacob Schiff presided at the Thanksgiving Day Services held at the Montefiore Home.

1905: Today, on Thanksgiving, “Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim gave dinners to the 272 residents of the Montefiore Home in honor of her son Robert’s wedding.”

1905: “The 1,245 immigrants detained on Ellis Island,” many of whom were Jewish enjoyed a turkey dinner with all of the trimmings followed by an evening of song that ended with the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

1905: “A copy of a manifesto issued by the Odessa Zionist Central Committee” describing the murderous events in that city and the plans for a response was received in New York City today.

1905: It was reported today that to date the National Committee collecting funds to helping Jews being massacred in Russia has raised, $942,548.17 including $100 from the Societe Israelite Francais, $100 from Elihu Root, $543 from the Hebrew Benevolent Association of Binghamton, NY, $250 from Herbert Lehman, $100 from the Jews of Millville, NJ and $100 of Congregation Beth-El in Jersey City, NJ.

1906: On the lower east side, following yesterday’s strike by “patrons of little butcher shops, that included demonstrations in front of the shops owned by William Ehrenhadrt, Abe Brochnor , Sam Goldberg and members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butcher’s Association, “many of the butchers “close their places today rather than take the headache” which is good news for the fish peddlers.

1907(24^th of Kislev, 5668): Parashat Vayeshev; in the evening Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1907: As of the of the fiscal year which ended today, there had been “9,978 applicants for admission to Mount Sinai Hospital” of whom 6,173 were admitted.

1907: Saul Harris Kaufmann, the son of Jeanetter and Aron Kaufmann and his wife Cora Kaufmann gave birth to Estelle C. Kaufmann the wife of Malcomb Albert Reiser, the ex-wife of Marvin Gingold and the mother of Carter and Malcom Kaufman.

1908: Birthdate of Bernard Bernstein, the economist who rose to the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army during WW II where he “served as a financial adviser to General Eisenhower” until the Morgenthau Plan was rejected as post war policy for the treatment of Germany.

1909(17^th of Kislev, 5670): Seventy-one Bavarian born, New Orleans businessman Isidore Newman who founded the Newman Training School which became a leading private school and supported numerous secular and Jewish charities including Turo Infirmary and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association passed away today

1909: It was reported today that “A. De Sola Mendes, a son of” Rabbi “F. De Sola Mendes of the West End Synagogue who is the Vice President and General Manager of the Georgia Coast and Piedmont Railroad with headquarter at Savannah and Darien, GA, has been elected First Vice President of the Tampa and Jacksonville Railway Company which at the age of 26 makes him “one of the youngest railroad officials” in the United States.

1910: Today, while serving as a member of the Board of Alderman of Goldsboro, NC, University of North Carolina educated chemist and geologist Lionel Weil, the Goldsboro, NC born son of Sarah Einstein and Solomon Weil married Ruth Hayes after which he served as the state chairman of the Jewish Relief Campaign and “invented a device for transplanting leaf pines and other evergreens.”

1910: Lucille Selig the member of an “old” Atlanta Jewish family that had founded the city’s first synagogue, married Leo Frank who would come to a horrible end when he was lynched for a crime that he did not commit.

1910: Thirty-three-year-old University of North Carolina trained chemist and geologist Lionel Weil, the Goldsboro, NC born son of Solomon and Sarah Einstein Weil who was active in the civic affairs of his town as well as the treasurer of Oheb Shalom Congregation married Ruth Heyn today.

1911: “The right of the Jew to citizenship, not as a concession or gift grudgingly bestowed but freely granted because of the part he has taken in the forming of our Republic and his patriotic services to the State, was the subject of a sermon this morning by the Rev. Dr. Rudolph Grossman in Temple Rodeph Sholom, Sixty-third Street and Lexington Avenue.”

1911: Congressman Sulzer was a principal speaker” tonight” at the dinner of the Hebrew Veterans of the with Spain at the Palm Gardens.

1912(20^th of Kislev, 5673): Parashat Vayeshev

1912: Rabbi Weil is scheduled to lead services at Temple B’Nai Jehoshua this morning in Chicago.

1912: Dr. A.B. Yudelson is scheduled to lead services this morning at the South Side Hebrew Congregation.

1912: Rabbi Abram Hirschberg is scheduled to lead services this morning at Temple Sholom in Chicago.

1912: In Chicago, Rabbi Israel Klein is scheduled to speak at this afternoon’s Shabbat Children Service at the Institute.

1912(20^th of Kislev, 5673): Seventy-five-year-old Joseph Felsenthal, a Confederate veteran and communal leader passed away today in Brownsville, TN.

1912: Yiddish actors Leon Blank, Francis Adler and Jacob Adler are scheduled to perform at the Haymarket Theatre this eveing.

1913: Jacob H. Schiff, President of the Montefiore Home, presided at the dedication ceremonies of the new buildings at the institution located at Gun Hill Road and 210th Street, near Jerome Avenue.  The ceremonies included services at the synagogue located at the Montefiore Home.

1914: “To Meet Jewish Mark Twain” published today described the arrival of Solomon Rabinowitz, the author known as Sholom Aleichem, his wife and six children in New York who were making the second trip to the United States; the first coming in 1906 when they were escaping the Kiev massacres.

1914: It was reported today that Sholom Aleichim will be lecturing in New York “on the part the Jews are taking in the Great War.”

1914: “Contributions to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war reached a total of $28, 098.52” today.

1914: “Counsel for Leo Frank, who is under sentence for the murder of Mary Phagan, a factory worker at Atlanta, GA, last year will ask the United States Supreme Court at noon today for leave to file a petition for a writ of error which, if it should be granted would lead to a retrial of the case” and if it is denied it will be up to the Governor Slaton of Georgia to save this victim of a wave of anti-Semitism and lynch mob mentality that has swept the Peachtree State.

1914: At today’ session of the sixth annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers being held in the Educational Alliance, “it was suggested’ that Jewish famers with holdings close to New York City should cooperate that they could ship their produce to the city at a lower rate and would then enable them to charge less when making sales on the Lower East Side.

1914: In response to an appeal for aid from Ambassador Morgenthau, at Constantinople the American Red Cross cabled $3,000 from its reserved contingent fund for relief work Mr. Morgenthau” the prominent Jewish American businessman and diplomat.

1915: Twenty-two-year-old journalist, author and playwright Ben Hecht, the New York born sone of Joseph and Sarah (Swernofsky) Hecht married Marie Armstrong today.

1915: It was reported today that several million rubles, much of which was donated by Jewish organizations, have been given to support the 250,000 to 350,000 destitute people living in war-torn Warsaw.

1915: A large gathering of Rumanian Jews held a special memorial service at the Manhattan Lyceum in honor of Dr. Solomon Schechter who had passed away on November 20.  While recognizing his leadership and scholarly skills, the Rumanians were also honoring one of their own and voted to name soon to be opened Jewish Home for Convalescents the “Professor Solomon Schechter Memorial.

1915: It was reported today that Meyer London’s matzah bakery which had originally been located on Bayard Street starting in 1871 is now located at 494 Grand Street in New York.

1916: “While the majority of the London and provincial newspaper” have kept silent “on peace topics, “the Northcliffe press today made its chief feature a denunciation of Jacob H. Schiff’s American Neutral Conference Committee.” A lengthy article by D. Thomas Curtin represents Schiff as “a deadly enemy of the Allies” and “an arch-intriguer on behalf of Germany” while “detailing his financial connections” with Kuhn, Loeb and Co which gives him access to Paul Warburg whose “membership in the Federal Reserve Board confers on Kuhn, Loeb at Washington an influence on government policy and national finance enjoyed by no other banking institution.”

1916: It was reported today that following the defeat of the Rumanians at Pitechti, a town sixty-five miles northwest of Bucharest, that while the majority of the wealthy residents fled, the town’s Jews “who are professedly friendly to the Germans” remained but did close their stores.

1916: It was reported today that Harry H. Schlacht of the East Side Protective Association has asked that any upcoming peace conference should have an “adequate representation of Jews” to ensure their religious, civic and political liberty “even if the Christian nations could not be induced to allow them re-establish an independent nation in Palestine.”

1917: According to an AP dispatch from Alexandria, Egypt, a German court-martialed hanged leaders in Jaffa after having used confessions obtained through torture to convict them of espionage

1917: The Australian Light Horse, part of Allenby’s forces, took the offensive against the Turkish forces blocking the way to Jerusalem resulting in the capture of 200 Turks while the remainder fell back toward the City of David.

1917: In Bieltsi, “two thousand Bolsheviki troops, deserters and Black Hundreds” began three days of looting Jewish owned shops.

1917: In Ostrog, gangs carried out attacks on Jews and their shops

1917: In reply to a deputation of Jews who asked him to use his influence to put an end to the pogroms, Leon Trotsky said “that as in Internationalist he sees no reason to defend the Jews.”

1917: Walter J. Finlay, an American engineer who has spent the last four years in Palestine and Syria arrived in New York today where he said that when he had “left Jerusalem in the early part of September”  there was no coal to be had I the city, the cost of food and clothing had increased by five hundred percent and “that the small loaf of common bread that cost one cent in normal times is now selling for twelve cents” while “a can of kerosene costs $30.”

1917: As victorious British Imperial forces approached Jerusalem, the Turkish governor began to make good on the promise that there were would be no Jews in the city to welcome the British.  Forty American Jews living in Jerusalem and several Zionists of Ottoman nationality were expelled from the city.  A staff member of the German Consulate in Jerusalem said that the Jews were driven out on foot and beaten like criminals as they made their way towards Jericho.

1917:  The Germans captured a British brigade headquarters and ammunition dump at Masnieres and Les Rues Vertes, France. Among those taken prisoners was the Captain Robert Gee, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Gee managed to escape and organized a party of the brigade staff with which he attacked the enemy, closely followed by two companies of infantry. He cleared the locality and established a defensive flank, then finding an enemy machine-gun still in action, with a revolver in each hand he went forward and captured the gun, killing eight of the crew. He was wounded but would not have his wound dressed until the defense was organized. Gee was awarded the Victoria Cross for this action.

1918: All Night” a “silent comedy-drama film” co-starring Carmel Myers the San Francisco born daughter of an Australian rabbi and Austrian Jewish mother was released today in the United States.

1918: In New York, violinist Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. and soprano Alma Gluck gave birth to actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. who was baptized as a child in the Episcopal Church. 

1918(26^th of Kislev, 5679): Seventy-two year old Jesse Lewisohn, the son of Leonard Lewisohn and the nephew of Adolph Lewisohn, all of whom made fortunes in the copper mining business fell victim to the infamous Spanish Flu Epidemic  and passed away today.

1919(8^th of Kislev, 5680): Forty-nine-year-old Sir Lionel Barnett Abrahams the son of Mordecai Abrahams and the nephew of Barnett Abrahams, the civil servant, economist who worked with John Maynard Keynes and historian whose work included Jews from England in 1290 passed away today.

1920(19^th of Kislev, 5681): Seventy-two-year-old Arthur Strauss, the British MP whose son George was a served as an MP for 46 and whose other son Victor was killed in 1916 while serving as a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps.

1921: Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Rosengarten announced the engagement of their daughter Rose, the sister of the editor of The Jewish Forum, to Aaron Metchlik whose uncle had married his fiancée’s sister earlier in the year.”

1921: It was reported today that “State Senator Nathan Straus told members of the Women’s League for the Protection of Riverside Park…that one of his first ats upon the reopening of the legislature would be to introduce an amended bill to improve and extend Riverside Park and remove garbage dumps” from this picturesque property.

1922: “Students at Innsruck held a demonstration today demanding control of the matriculation of Jews.”

1922: Despite orders for the resumption of lectures in the State University in Vienna, “when Jewish student arrived …they found pickets either barring the entrance to the universities or demanding baptismal certificates.”

1923: New outbreaks of anti-Semitic demonstrations by Nationalist students took place today, so the Rector gave up on his effort to re-open the school today.

1923: Joseph Barondess head the Jewish delegation that went to Ottawa to make the appeal for Canada to admit seventy-five Russian immigrants being held at Ellis Island because of quota restrictions.

1924:  Birthdate of songwriter and humorist Allan Sherman author of the famous camp song that began, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”

1924(3^rd of Kislev, 5685): Fourteen-year-old William Hayes Block, the son of Meir S. Block and Carly Pierson Block passed away today in St. Louis.

1924(3^rd of Kislev, 5685): Twenty-seven-year-old Hannah Schnur passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/family-stumbles-upon-jewish-gravestone-on-beach-jetty/

1924: “Forbidden Paradise,” a silent film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky was released in the United States today.

1925: Josephine Bloomingdale Sperry married Walter David Yankauer today.

1925(13^th of Kislev, 5686): Sixty year old New York native and Columbia Law School graduate “a former Judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals passed away today.

1926: Birthdate of Andrew V. Schally. Schally is a Polish-born American endocrinologist and co-recipient with Roger Guillemin and Rosalyn Yalow, of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Schally fled Poland with his family in 1939. Schally became a U.S. citizen in 1962.  He became senior medical investigator with the Veterans Administration in 1973. He was noted for isolating and synthesizing three hormones that are produced by the region of the brain known as the hypothalamus; these hormones control the activities of other hormone- producing glands. These accomplishments were the synthesis of TRH (thyrotropin-releasing hormone), the isolation and synthesis of LH-RH (luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone), and studies of the action of somatostatin.

1927: “On the Lower East Side of Manhattan,” taxi driver Henry Hollander and garment worker Ida (Burak) Hollander gave birth to “Irwin Hollander, an artist and a master printer who persuaded Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and other Abstract Expressionist painters to try their hands at lithography in his East Village workshop.”  (As reported by Roberta Smith)

1928(17^th of Kislev, 5689): Sixty-eight-year-old Moses Shindeling, the Lithuanian born son or Rachel and Isiah J. Schoneling and the usband of Dora Shindeling passed away today in Paterson, NJ.

1928: “10 Religious Groups Meet” published today described the “community Thanksgiving service” that had been held in Carnegie Hall that included participants from the Free Synagogue, the Central Synagogue, Temple Israel, Tremont Temple, Congregation Rodeph Sholom and the West End Synagogue.

1929: “It’s You I Have Loved” a German film compared by some to “The Jazz Singer” with a script by Walter Reisch was released today.

1929: In Phoenix, AZ, Pauline and Sylvan Ganz gave birth to Joan Ganz, who as Joan Ganz Cooney gained fame as the television producer who was one of the founders of the Children’s Television Workshop that created “Sesame Street.” She was the granddaughter of Emil Ganz, the German Jewish immigrant who served three terms as the mayor of Phoenix.

1930: At a meeting in London today, Dr. Chaim Weizmann “insisted…that he did not and would not accept the MacDonald Government’s White Paper.” While expressing his displeasure with the White Paper, the Zionist leader “cautioned the Zionists…against taking sides in politics, a reminder obviously directed toward the White-chapel by-election in the East End of London, where it is said the preponderant Jewish vote may make trouble for the Labor candidate.”

1931: “Secrecy surrounds the separate interviews held today by High Commissioner Wauchope with the Jewish Agency and the Arab Executive” which have led to “unconfirmed reports that the High Commissioner” is planning on making an announcement about “the creation of a legislative assembly.”

1931: Drs. Arlazaroff, Hexter and Berkson represented the Jewish Agency in secret talks held today with the British High Commissioner.

1932: Birthdate of Erich Dyner, who was living in Prague when he was transported to Ujazdow at the age of nine after which he was murdered.

1932(1^st of Kislev, 5693): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1932(1^st of Kislev, 5693): Nancy Weiler Lazarus, the two-month-old daughter of Robert and Hattie Weiler Lazarus passed away today after which she was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, OH.

1932: “The David Baazov Museum of History of Jews of Georgia, a principal museum of the Jewish history and culture in Tbilisi, Georgia was established by the decision of Administration of the "Georgian Committee for assisting the Poor" today as a departmental organization within the framework of cultural base of Jewish workers.”

http://museum.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG&sec_id=160

1932(1^st of Kislev, 5693): London born choirmaster and music teacher David Montague Davis the long-time musical director, choirmaster and organist of the New West End Synagogue who edited The Voice of Prayer and Praise together with Rabbi Francis L. Cohen and founded the Hebrew Choral Association.

1933: The David Baazov Museum of History of the Jews of Georgia “was officially founded by the order of People's Commissariat of Education of Georgia today, under the title 'Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Museum'.”

1933: Today "Josephus" by Lion Feuchtwanger opened at the Yiddish Art Theatre in Manhattan.

https://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/moyt/pih/josephus.htm

1933: Rabbi Jerome D. Folkman, of Temple Beth Israel, delivered the Thanksgiving sermon today at a joint service attended by Jews and Gentiles. The services were held in the First Baptist Church of which the Rev. Carl Winters is pastor. (JTA)

1934: Today, the “trustees of the Lena Socolow Palestine Scholarship announced the creating of a scholarship to awarded annually to a man or woman over” the age of 18 which enable the recipient to spend “several months residence in Palestine for study and direct contact with the creative forces of the country.”

1934: “The National Labor Committee for Jewish Workers and Pioneers in Palestine opened its tenth annual convention” tonight at the Hotel Pennsylvania with more than one thousand delegates from North America in attendance.

1934: “The Private Life of Don Juan” a British comedy directed and produced by Alexander Korda and with music by Ernst Toch was released in the United Kingdom today.

1935: “Palestine Honors Lehmans” published today described the receipt of a certificate from the women’s division of the Jewish National Fund by Governor and Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman “saying that 25 trees had been planted in the George Washington Forest in Palestine in honor of their 25^th wedding anniversary” which “was celebrated several months ago.”

1935: Rosa and Avrom Shlavestein gave birth to their daughter Nina. in Berdichev in the Zhitomir District, USSR (today in Ukraine). Before World War II, Nina’s family lived in Moscow. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union Nina was vacationing in Klintsy in the Bryansk District of the Soviet Union, and was unable to return home because of the invasion. Nina perished during the Holocaust. Her mother Rosa survived and immigrated to Israel. Rosa submitted a Page of Testimony in Yiddish to commemorate her daughter Nina, probably in the 1950s. (As chronicled by Yad Vashem)

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/02.asp

1936:  In Worcester, MA, John Hoffman and Florence Schanberg gave birth to Abbot Howard Hoffman known as “Abbie Hoffman”

1936: In Jerusalem, while testifying before the Royal Commission on the question of Jewish immigration especially as it pertained to laborers, Moshe Shertok, the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, “indicated that far from overcrowding the labor market, the lasts group of immigrants, accompanied as it was by new Jewish capital for investment…increased opportunities for Arab laborers” who “are far better paid in Palestine than in any neighboring country.”

1936: “An American flag, the gift of Mayor a Guardia of New York, was presented today to the municipality of Tel Aviv by the Maccabee soccer team” which had just returned from a tour of the United States.  “The Maccabee also presented a flag of New York Harbor to the new Tel Aviv port in ceremonies at the City Ha, where the athletes were officially welcomed after a parade.

1937: The Arab owner of a house in Nazareth where “two bombs and nineteen rounds of ammunition were found” yesterday remains under arrest today while awaiting trial “in the military court at Haifa.”

1938: According to Michael Hesemann, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – wrote a letter today urging Catholic archbishops throughout the world to apply for visas for "non-Aryan Catholics" and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to flee Germany

1938: Germany bans Jews from being lawyers

1938(7^th of Kislev, 5699): Mrs. Jessie Fox Mack, the wife of Judge Julian Mack of the United States Court of Appeals passed away today “after an illness of several months.” (JTA)

1939: Just months after having divided Poland with its Nazi ally, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in hopes of scoring another quick victory that would re-establish Russian control of what was viewed as breakaway province from the old Imperial System.  The attack would further confuse the military and political situation in Europe during the period of the Phony War.

1939: Three months after the start of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Finland marking the start of the Winter War in which 204 Finnish Jews fought for the country with 27 being killed.

1939(18^th of Kislev, 5700): Seventy-seven-year-old Reuben Brainin, the Russian born Jewish journalist who was a delegate to the first Zionist Congress passed away today.

1939: It was reported today that “there are already 45,000 Jews in the Lublin” ghetto” and that “more than 200,000 Lodz Jews will be sent there now that the center of the Polish textile industry has been incorporated into the Reich.

1939: It was reported today that “fifty thousand Jews have already been driven from their homes in Warsaw” and that while “Polish schools have been reopened” “Jewish schools are still closed.”

1939: In Paris, “Jewish circles are informed from Warsaw that the Nazis suggested the abolition of ghettos for” a payment of “1,000,000,000 zlotys” – an offer “Jewish leaders declined fearing the Nazis would not keep their promise.”

1940: “Lady with Red Hair,” a biopic directed by Curtish Bernhardt and produced by Jack Warner was released in the United States today.

1940: Anti-Jewish laws are established in Tunisia.

1940: “Bernhard Lichtenberg…the single most well-known Catholic cleric who openly disagreed not only with the persecution of baptized Jews but of Jews in general” said today “that the idea of Volksgemeinschaft (a racially bound community) was unchristian and that the Holy Spirit goes wherever it wishes irrespective of whatever Volk.”

1940: After the “Patria incident,” General Wavell, Britain’s top military officer in the Middle East complains vehemently to Sir Anthony Eden protesting the decision to let any Jewish refugees remain in Palestine. He contends that the decision to let 1,900 Jews remain in Palestine will undermine British relations with the Arabs.  The Mufti, who is Berlin with Hitler, will be strengthened.  Nazi sympathizers in Syria will be encouraged.  And fifth columnists in Egypt will find it easier to gain support for the Germans.  At least Wavell was honest.  For him as for so many less honest Englishmen (and others) it was all about keeping the Arabs happy.    

1941: Start of the Rumbula Massacre, the liquidation of the Riga Ghetto, a killing spree exceeded only by Babi Yar.

http://www.rumbula.org/remembering_rumbula.shtml

1941: The first group of Jews from Berlin were the first group of Jews to die during the Rumbala Massacre - a crime that that the Nazis would later describe as “1,000 Berlin Jews had been ‘disposed of.’”

1941: Eduard Strauch “participated, with 20 men under his command, in the murder of 10,600 Jews of Riga in the Rumbula forest near the city for which he was promoted to commander in Sipo and the SD and transferred to Belarus.”

1941: Fifty-nine-year-old Max Kohn was deported from Prague to Terezin today.

1941: Jews began to arrive at Theresienstadt from Prague.

1941: “Two-Faced Woman” a romantic comedy directed by George Cukor, produced by Gottfried Reinhardt, with a script by S.N. Behrman and Salka Vertel, filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and co-starring Melvyn Douglas was released in the United States by MGM.

1941:  Haj Amin, leader of the Palestinians was “ceremoniously received by Hitler.”

1942(21^st of Kislev, 5703): Sixty-two-year-old Vilna born “coal and fuel dealer” Edward M. Gans, the co-owner of Harris and Gans, former Norwalk, CT, City Councilman and “Zionist” passed away today.

1942: Bernhard Bästlein “gave the Gestapo a written statement explaining why he had been and would remain a Resistance fighter.”

1943(3rd of Kislev, 5704): Esther "Etty" Hillesum a young Jewish woman whose letters and diaries, kept between 1941 and 1943 describe life in Amsterdam during the German occupation died at Auschwitz. They were published posthumously in 1981, before being translated into English in 1983.

1943(3^rd of Kislev, 5704): One of two dates given for the death of 65-year-old movie actor Paul Otto who committed suicide along with his wife in Berlin when his Jewish origins were discovered.

1943: All nine Palestinian Hebrew newspapers and the German-language daily issued at Tel Aviv re-appeared today after eleven days' suspension. “The suspension resulted from” the “simultaneous uncensored publication” by these papers “of identical accounts with uniform editorial comment on the search carried” out at a kibbutz named Ramat Hakovesh by British forces looking for arms.  The search turned violent resulting in the murder of one of the Jewish settlers. The articles in the newspapers had been part of the Jewish response which, among other things, continues to claim the right for Jews to be able to defend themselves.

1943: Italy's Interior Ministry orders the concentration of all Italian Jews in camps.

1944(14th of Kislev, 5705): Anna Dresden-Polak’s husband, Barend, died today, Auschwitz. Anna, a member of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastic team that won the Gold Medal at the 1928 Olympics, had been killed the year before at Sobibor along with Eva, her six-year-old daughter.

1944: More than 100,000 persons, more than half the population of the city, greeted Dr. Chaim Weizmann when he visited Tel Aviv today for the first time since arriving in Palestine two weeks ago. The demonstration was the greatest welcome ever given to anyone in Tel Aviv.  Weizmann responded by saying, “I never imagined my own people could have received me with such spontaneous joy.” When he went to Tel Aviv to review 200 soldiers who were serving in the new Jewish bridged of the British Army, he was greeted by crowds that were so large that they filled balconies, windows, lamp posts, trees, and telephone poles.  Weizmann saw a direct connection between the fate of European Jewry, these troops and the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.  He told the crowd that the “remnants of the European Jews” would receive the Jewish brigade as “a harbinger of freedom and by the masses of Jewish soldiers serving in the Allied armies as a symbol of national unity.”

1944: Cordell Hull completed his service as U.S. Secretary of State, a post he had held since FDR’s inauguration in March, 1933. Hull’s wife, Frances Witz, was the daughter of an Austrian Jew, something he worked very hard to hide.  He may have won a Nobel Prize for helping to create the United Nations, but for Jews, his policy opposing the entry of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe, should have earned a large measure of contempt. 

1945: “Rudolf Hess dramatically told the tribunal at Nuremberg that he had faked amnesia, fooling Allied medical experts and his own attorney, but that he was now prepared to stand trial and "bear full responsibility for everything I have done.”

1945(25^th of Kislev, 5706): First Day of Chanukah

1945(25^th of Kislev, 5706): Fifty-six-year-old New York born, Bellevue Hospital trained physician Maurice Shapiro, the Bayonne, NJ dermatologist and father of Dr. Edward Shapiro, Lt. Samuel Shapiro of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Betty Maybaum, passed away today.

1945: “Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, 29, German U-boat commander was executed as a war criminal for ordering his crew to shoot the survivors of the Greek merchant ship Peleus in March 1944.”

1946: Bombs are set off in Jerusalem.

1946: “Christopher Blake,” a Moss Hart play produced by Bernard Hart opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre.

1947: A day after the two-state solution is approved by the United Nations, Arabs begin attacking Jews in Palestine.

1947: Arab rifleman fired shots at an ambulance on its way to Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Arabs armed with machine guns and grenades attacked a bus traveling from the coast to Jerusalem killing four Jews including Jerusalemites Hirsh Stark and Hanna Weiss and twenty-year-old Shoshana Mizrachi Farhi who had been on her way to Jerusalem to get married.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): In another attack on a bus bound for Jerusalem, Arab gunmen killed Hehama Hacohen a pathologist at Hadassah Hospital.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Moshe Goldman, a twenty-five-year-old from Jerusalem was shot dead at the Jaffa-Tel Aviv boundary.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Fifty-five-year-old director, actor, writer and producer Ernst Lubitsch passed away. Born in 1892, his urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch".”

http://www.lubitsch.com/

1947(17^th of Kislev, 5708): Sixty-nine-year-old Ukrainian native William Edlin who came to the United States in 1891 where attended Stanford University where he acquired many of the Socialist ideas that would influence his career as a journalist, author and activist who “helped to found the Workmen’s Circle’ and serve as “president of the I.L. Peretz Yiddish Writers Union” passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1947/12/01/archive/william-edlin-editor-of-jewish-day-dies-was-69-years-old

1947: On the day after UN decree for Israel, Arabs attacked Jewish settlements. Even though the Jewish state would not officially declare its independence until May 1948, this day marked the beginning of the Israeli War of Independence as a bus near Lydda (Lod) was attacked by Arabs killing five passengers. The Arabs proclaimed a general strike and attacked the commercial quarter near the Old City of Jerusalem. The Arabs, including those living outside of Palestine, were determined to destroy the Jewish homeland before the mandate officially ended.  Their efforts would include attacks on Jewish settlements throughout the Yishuv as well as a siege of the City of Jerusalem.  The Arabs were well armed and moved about with impunity.  The Jews were limited in their response by an international arms boycott and the presence of the British Army.

1947: Birthdate of David Mamet, an American playwright, screenwriter, director and poet born to a Jewish family in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois who first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross. In 2006 and who wrote The Wicked Son, an examination of self-hating and assimilated Jews.

1948: In Philadelphia, comedian and late-night television host Joey Bishop and Sylvia Rzga gave birth to Larry Bishop who partnered with high school chum Rob Reiner, the son of Carl Reiner before pursuing a solo career in director, writing and acting.

1948(28^th of Cheshvan): Seventy-three-year-old Brooklyn born realtor Joseph May, the recently “elected treasurer of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and husband of “Aimee D. Loeb” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/12/01/94953288.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1948: Colonel Moshe Dayan of Israel and Lieutenant Colonel Abdullah el Tell of Transjordan Arab Legion sign cease-fire agreement “which included provision for a fortnightly convoy to Mount Scopus.”

1948: The American Council for Judaism asks Attorney General Tom C. Clark for a federal investigation of Menachem Begin’s U.S. activities.

1949(9^th of Kislev, 5710): Julia Ferber, the Milwaukee born daughter of Louis and Henrietta Newumann, the wife of Jacob Charles Ferber and the mother of Fanny Fox and famed novelist Edna Ferber passed away today in New York City.

1949: Birthdate of Matti Caspi, the member of Kibbutz Hanita who became a leading force in the Israeli pop music world.

http://www.matticaspi.co.il/home/index_eng.shtml

1950(21^st of Kislev, 5711): William Ackerman, the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi passed away opening the way for his widow, Paula Ackerman to become “the interim spiritual leader” of the congregation. (Jewish Women’s Archives)

1950: Birthdate of Danny Sanderson, the native of Kfar Blum, who began his musical in 1971 after leaving the IDF by recording “The Left-handed Octopus" with the Egyptian-born musician Zouzou Moussa and the orchestra of Israel Radio Arabic.

1951: “The Central Bureau of Statistics announced today that the population of Israel at the end of September had reading 1, 554,000 of who 1,382,000 were Jews.”

1951: Birthdate of Christian Bernard, the former “Imperator of AMORC” who is the grandson of “French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer Tristan Bernard who was interred at Drancy but escaped deportation to Auschwitz.

1952: Birthdate of Semyon Mayevich Bychkov a Russian-American conductor who is the brother of the conductor Yakov Kreizberg, of blessed memory.

1952: In Chicago, “Doris "Doralee" (née Sinton), a homemaker, and Lester Patinkin, who operated two large Chicago-area metal factories, the People's Iron & Metal Company and the Scrap Corporation of America” gave birth to Mandel Bruce Patinkin who gained fame as Mandy Patinkin who attended Kenwood High and the University of Kansas before beginning his Broadway career that playing Che Guevara in Evita and a leading role in Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

1953: Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Uganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda. “Sir Andrew was from a distinguished Anglo-Jewish family. He was a descendant of Levi Barent Cohen, the founder of the oldest Ashkenazi family in Britain.”

1953: “Confessions of a Nervous Man” by George Axelrod which depicts a “playwright waiting anxiously in a theatre district bar for the newspaper reviews of his first play to hit the streets” was broadcast on the television drama show, “Studio One.”

1953(23^rd of Kislev, 5714): Elvira Nathan Solis, “the daughter of David Hays Solis and Elvira Nathan Solis, sister of Emily Grace Soils Solis-Cohen and Isaac Nathan Solis, and a granddaughter of Jacob da Silva Solis” passed away today in New York

1954: As Churchill celebrated his 80th birthday, Moshe Sharett (formerly Shertok), sent the aging British statesman a telegram praising him for his leadership again the Nazis during World War II and for his steadfast support of Zionism in general and the Balfour Declaration in particular.

1954: The Alma Trio including pianist Adolph Baller, whose hands were crushed by the Nazis in 1938 after which his fiancée, Edith Strauss-Neustadt helped him to escape to the United States, performed the first of three Beethoven concerts tonight at Town Hall in New York City.

1955: Birthdate of Kiev native Peter Fishman who became a leading sculptor and painter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fishman#/media/File:Admiral_Makaroff.JPG

1955: “Pipe Dream” the seventh Rogers and Hammerstein musical opened on Broadway today at the Shubert Theatre.

1956(26^th of Kislev, 5717): Second Day of Chanukah

1956: Thirteen-year-old violinist Paul Zukofsky, “a deadpan bundle of talent made his debut tonight in Carnegie Hall, “where “he went through a difficult program without turning a hair or moving a facial muscle.”

1956(26^th of Kislev, 5717): Seventy-eight-year-old Budapest native Jean Schwartz, the songwriter who came to the United States at the age of 13 who wrote “Mr. Dooley” – a song “which was sung by the title character in The Wizard of Oz” passed away today.

1957: Eighty-three-year-old Winston Churchill receives early Christmas presents – a case of Israeli oranges from Vera Weizmann, widow of Israel’s first President and longtime friend of Churchill and a Virginia Ham from American Jewish financer Bernard Baruch.

1958(18^th of Kislev, 5719): Seventy-five-year-old Russian born Yiddish author and co-founder of the Sholem Aleichem Schools, Joshua Kaminsky who in November of 1937 “introduced the new Kinder Tsaytung (Children’s newspaper) with a “cover that features a buoyant impressionistic drawing by Nota Koslowsky” passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1958/12/02/archive/joshua-kaminsky-educator-and-author-dies-in-new-york

1958: Rabbi Samuel D. Goldfarb and Cantor Aaron Caplow officiated at the marriage of Freda Gail Goldberg and Samuel Bernard Garbose at the Atlantic Hotel in Long Beach, L.I.

1959: Today’s broadcast of the Play of the Week featured the David Susskind production Sartre’s “Crime of Passion” translated by Lionel Abel, the Brooklyn born son of author Anna Schwartz Abelson and Rabbi Alter Abelson whom “Sartre called the most intelligent man in New York City.”

1960: Birthday of Hiam Abbass, the Israeli Arab actress and director born in Nazareth.

1961: “Naked as Nature Intended” produced by Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger was released today in the United Kingdom.

1961(22^nd of Kislev, 5722): Ninety-one-year-old Louis Parnes, the chairman of the board of the Paul Parnes Corporation and a founder of the Brooklyn Jewish Center and the Louis Parnes Foundation passed away today.

1962: The United Nations General Assembly elected U Thant of Burma as the new UN Secretary-General. U Thant was the Secretary General who caved in to President Nasser’s demand to remove the UN peace keeping force from the Sinai.  The men in the Blue Helmets were the guarantee that Egypt would not remilitarize the Sinai.  U Thant’s spineless behavior, in violation of the understandings that had caused the Israelis to withdraw after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, set events in motion that would lead to war in June of 1967.

1962: Birthdate of actor Ben Stiller

1962(3^rd of Kislev, 5723): Seventy-three year old Samuel Lipman, “a former member of the Bricken Construction Company and with his associates a builder of “many business structures in the garment center and luxury apartment houses on Park Avenue and Central Park West as well at the Transportation Building at Barclay Street who was the husband of “the former Frances Harten” with whom he had four children – Norma, Grace, Jacob and Robert – passed away today.

1964(25^th of Kislev, 5725): first day of Chanukah

1964(25^th of Kislev, 5725): Ninety-four-year-old pediatrician Sidney Valentine Haas, the Columbia trained doctor who made great strides in the treatment of celiac disease passed away today.

1964: In Mexico City, actor and producer Muni Lubezki and his wife gave birth to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern.

1964: “The Diamond Ring” a song written by Al Kooper and Irwin Levine was recorded today.

1965: Ninety-four out the 100 prominent Washingtonians whom Charles E. Smith had invited to a dinner at the Mayflower listened to his vision of what would become a campus on Montrose Road in Rockville that would include the Wasserman Residence, the JCC and the Charles E. Smith Day School

1966: Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom. In 1667 “many Jews moved to Barbados to retain their British citizenship. Jews are believed to have been established in Barbados as early as 1628. In 1661, three Jewish businessmen requested permission to institute trade routes between Barbados and Surinam, which was still part of the British Empire. As will be seen repeatedly, even though the Jews had full legal citizenship and were allowed by the government to trade and conduct business, their success caused the other settlers to try to limit the scope of Jewish trade. British businessmen claimed the Jews traded more with the Dutch than the British, and the government did finally put limits on the Jews' ability to trade. They were not allowed to purchase slaves and were required to live in a Jewish ghetto. By 1802, the colonial government in Barbados had removed all discriminatory regulations from the Jews living there. A Jewish community remained on Barbados until 1831, when a hurricane destroyed all of the towns on the island.” By the time Barbados gained its independence, there were approximately 80 Jews living in the country. In 1987, the Nidhei Israel Synagogue would be rededicated in a new location and the Old Jewish cemetery in Bridgetown would be restored. “The former Nidhei Israel building, which served as the synagogue, is today used for a library. The Jewish cemetery in Barbados is considered to be the oldest graveyard in the Western Hemisphere. A few of the graves date back to the 1660s and include Samuel Hart, son of Moses Hart, and Moses Nehemiah (the first Jew to live in Virginia). Today, approximately 40 Jews live on Barbados. It was the Jewish community of Barbados that initiated and maintains the Caribbean Jewish Congress.”

1966: Birthdate of Leonard “Lenny” Abrahamson, the native of Dublin whose films have twice won the IFTA award for best film.

1967: After having premiered in Hollywood in June, “The Happiest Millionaire,” a music al with a score b Jack Elliot and songs by Richard and Robert Sherman was released today Radio City Music Hall.

1968: “The Shakiest Gun in the West” a comedy written by Everett Greenbaum was released today.

1969(20^th of Kislev, 5730): Fifty-four-year-old Montreal born McGill trained architect and WW II veteran Harold cooper who came to the U.S. in 1938 passed away today.

1969:  In New York City, “actress Susan Kohner and Berlin-born novelist/menswear designer John Weitz” gave birth Christopher John Weitz who “is best known for his work with his brother Paul Weitz” for their work on the films “American Pie” and “About a Boy.”

1970: Birthdate of Montclair, NJ native and Yale graduate Jodi Wilgoren who went from the New York Times to serving as editor of The Forward under the name of Jodi Rudoren, the wife of the former Gary Ruderman who is known as Gary Rudoren.

1971(12^th of Kislev, 5732): One day before his 61^st birthday, NYU grad and Brooklyn Law School trained attorney, Arthur A. Klotz, a judge of the New York Civil Court, who was the husband of the former Rose Cohen and the father of Dr. Richard, Howard and Susan Klotz passed a way today.

1971: In Montreal, Toby Gilsig who is Jewish and his wife Claire gave birth to actress Jessalyn Sara Gilsig who had a Jewish wedding when she married Bobby Solomon.

1972(24^th of Kislev, 5733): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1972(24^th of Kislev, 5733): Seventy-seven-year-old of University of Cincinnati and HUC graduate Samuel Wohl, the long-time rabbi of the Reading Road Temple, founder of the League of Labor Zionism and husband of Belle F. Meyers Wohl passed away today after which he was buried at the Montgomery United Jewish Cemetery in Montgomery, OH.

1974(16^th of Kislev, 5735): Seventy-four-year-old Bert Gordon (Barney Gorodetsky) whose career spanned the golden age of radio (Eddie Cantor Program) to the golden age of television (Dick Van Dyke Show) passed away today.

1974: In northern Israel, one Muslim was killed, and another was wounded during a home invasion at Rihaniya.

1975: WABC-AM is scheduled to broadcast Message of Israel with an address by Dr. Human Judah Schachtel.

1975: WBAI is scheduled to broadcast “A Hanukah Offering – Shtetl on the Hudson with Issac Bashevis Singer, Leonard Michaels and Jerome Charyn, writers who transformed the Jewish experience from the old country to New York

1975: WMCA is scheduled to broadcast a 2-hour program featuring an interview of playwright Dore Schary.

1975: WNBC is scheduled to broadcast the long-running Jewish radio series, Eternal Light, with an appearance by Harry Kemelman, author of “Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red.”

1975: New York Senator Jacob Javits, the state’s most prominent Jewish Republican, is scheduled to appear on a broadcast of Focus on Youth.

1976(8^th of Kislev, 5737): Eighty-five year old Philip Reis Alstat, the native of Lithuania and graduated of Columbia University and Jewish Theological Seminary who was a leading rabbi in the Conservative movement, ardent Zionist and author for 40 years of “Strange to Relate,” a weekly syndicated newspaper column passed away today.

1977: In South Africa, Harry Schwarz began serving as “Shadow Minister of Finance.”

1977: U.S. premiere of Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl” directed by Herbert Ross, co-starring Richard Dreyfus in his Oscar winning performance as “Elliot Garfield.”

1978(30^th of Cheshvan, 5739): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1979(10th of Kislev, 5740):  Seventy-eight-year-old Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the famed Marx Brothers, passed away.

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/zeppo.htm

https://www.biography.com/people/zeppo-marx-21181001

1979: Ted Koppel becomes anchor of nightly news on Iranian Hostages (ABC)

1979: Stephen Roy “Reinhardt was nominated by President Jimmy Carter today, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to a new seat authorized by 92 Stat. 1629.

1980:  Leonard Bernstein’s "West Side Story" closes at Minskoff Theater New York City after 341 performances

1980: “For the second successive Sunday police prevented Moscow refuseniks from attending the unofficial scientific seminar in the apartment of Victor Brailovsky.”

1981: “Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon arrived at the Pentagon today for a meeting with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on the strategic cooperation between Israel and the United States.”

1983(24^th of Kislev, 5744): In the evening kindle the first Chanukah light

1983(24^th of Kislev, 5744): Sixty-two-year-old New York born Florida, Miami and NYU trained attorney Philip E. Heckerling, a professor of law at the University of Miami for the past twenty years and husband of Ruth Kaufman Heckerling with whom he raised two children – Stephanie and Dale – passed away today.

1985(17th of Kislev, 5746): Ninety-four year old Israeli artist Joseph Zaritsky, native of the Ukraine, qho studied art in Kiev before making Aliyah in 1923, moved to Jerusalem in 1929 and finally settled Tzova, a kibbutz near Israel’s capital city, passed away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:313_69~Yossef_Zaritsky,_Safed,_c_1924_1.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zaritsky,_Yossef,_Painting,_1950-1~B74_0036.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zaritsky,_Yossef,_Painting,_1950-1~B74_0036.jpg

1988(21^st of Kislev, 5749): Amiram Nir, who “was said to have been in Mexico on avocado business” “boarded a one-engine Cessna on a flight from Uruapan to Mexico” which ended “when the plane went down in the mountains” killing Nir.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-counterterror-chiefs-son-blames-us-for-his-1988-assassination/

1988(21^st of Kislev, 5749): Seventy-four-year-old Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild) the daughter of Charles Rothschild, a patron of Jazz and bebop passed away today.

http://www.thejazzbaroness.co.uk/

1988: As Israeli political leaders continue try and form a government following the election held on November 1, today the Labor Party decided to end coalition negotiations with Likud. At about the same time, its leader, Shimon Peres, vowed that if a measure redefining who is Jewish under the Law of Return were put to a vote in Parliament, every Labor member would ''vote clearly against it.''

1988: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. buys RJR Nabisco for $25.07 billion. All three of the takeover kings were Jewish.

1990: “Misery,” directed by Rob Reiner, with a screenplay by Rob Reiner, with cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld, with music by Marc Shaiman and co-starring James Caan and Lauren Bacall was released today in the United States.

1993: “Schindler’s List,” the movie version Schindler’s Ark premiered in Washington, D.C. today

1994: Mark B. Cohen completed his service as “Democratic Whip of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.” Today.

1994(27th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty-six-year-old “Lionel Stander, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants whose gravelly voice and beetling brow made him a memorable presence on stage and screen and whose political beliefs in the era of the Hollywood blacklist earned him a long exile from American films, died today at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

1997(1st of Kislev, 5758): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1997(1st of Kislev, 5758): Kathy Acker (née Karen Lehmann) “an American experimental novelist, prose stylist, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer” passed away.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including The Darkside of Camelot by Seymour Hersh and an essay by Alfred Kazin entitled “Missing Murray Kempton.”

1998: Michael Dobbs examines the interaction between major American companies and the Nazis in “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration” published today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm

2000(3rd of Kislev, 5761):  Seventy-five-year-old Holocaust survivor Ilona Karmel who was remembered as the author of the novel, An Estate of Memory passed away today. It is considered one of the most significant novels in English to address the experiences of Jewish women during World War II. Born in Cracow in 1925, Karmel was interned along with her mother and sister in three different labor camps after the Nazi occupation of Poland. She sustained severe leg injuries during the war and required years of recuperation before immigrating to the United States in 1948. Within four years of arriving in the United States, Karmel graduated from Radcliffe College, won a fiction-writing contest sponsored by Mademoiselle Magazine, and completed her first novel, Stephania. Stephania focused on the physical and spiritual recovery of a young woman who had survived the Nazi concentration camps. In 1969, Karmel published An Estate of Memory, which was reissued by the Feminist Press in 1986. Reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, it was one of the earliest significant literary treatments of Jewish experience in the Nazi camps and remains one of the most significant novels to address Jewish women's experiences during the Holocaust. Karmel taught creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for many years where an annual writing prize that she established has been renamed in her honor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/arts/ilona-karmel-75-who-wrote-of-holocaust.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/karmel-ilona

2000: Time of Favor (Ha-hesder) Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar's 2000 debut film, starring Aki Avni was released in Israel today.

2000(3^rd of Kislev, 5761): Seventy-five year old Ilona Karmel, “literary chronicler of the Holocaust and author of An Estate of Memory, passed away. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/30/2000/ilona-karmel

2001(15^th of Kislev, 5762): Ninety-three-year-old Syracuse native Robert P. Jacobs who served as the Rabbi at Temple Adas Emuno and Temp Beth Ha-Tephila before founding the Hillel House at Washington University in 1946 which he served as director until 1972, passed away today in St. Louis, MO.

2001: South African businessman Cyril Kern gave Gilad Sharon a loan to help cover the shortfall in the contributions being raised for his father’s campaign.

2002(25^th of Kislev, 5763): First Day of Chanukah; light second candle in the evening

2002: The Food Network broadcast the first episode of Barefoot Contessa, a cooking show created by Ina Garten.

2003: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special interest to Jewish readers including In An Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street to Washington by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg, Secrets of the City by Anne Roiphe, Primo Levi: A Life by Ian Thomson and Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait by Midge Decter

2004 An animal-rights group released grisly undercover videotapes today showing cows in a major kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessor in Postville, IA, staggering and bellowing in seeming agony long after their throats were cut.

2004: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's shaky government coalition survived three no-confidence votes in Parliament, though the opposition managed a strong showing.”

2005: It is official. Former Labor chairman Shimon Peres announced that he was ending his political activity in the Labor Party and would support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the upcoming March elections.

2006: Haaretz reported that a small room in Kibbutz Merhavia which was once home to Israel's first woman prime minister, Golda Meir, has been renovated and refurbished in the style of the 1920s when Golda lived there. It will soon be opened to visitors seeking to learn a little about that period and the severe austerity that prevailed in the Meir household.

2006(9th of Kislev, 5767): Poet, songwriter and journalist Eli Mohar who wrote the “Goings On Around Town” column in the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’ir passed away from cancer at the age of 58.

2006: Sasson Somekh, visiting professor in Jewish Studies, opened the Jews Among Arabs conference at Vanderbilt with a lecture based on his memoir Baghdad Yesterday.

2007: John Strugnell, controversial Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, passed away.

2007: The Wall Street Journal listed Ramaz as one of the top schools for graduates entering the top eight universities in the country, with 10 out of a class of 100 (class of 2007) going to these schools. The Ramaz School is a coeducational, private Modern Orthodox Jewish prep school located on the Upper East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan.

2007: At The Sydney Jewish Museum an exhibition styled “Butterflies of Hope” a very special exhibition designed to raise awareness of the plight of children trapped in war came to and end.

2007: The weeklong launch of "Operation: Last Chance” will continue with a press conference in Chile. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's "Operation: Last Chance" is targeted to find and bring to justice at least some of the thousands of Nazis still hiding in South America 62 years after the end of World War II. It will probably be the final major effort to locate and bring to justice Nazis in hiding scattered around the world.

2007: The New York Times reviewed The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem.

2007(20th of Kislev, 5768): IDF Private Ma’ayan Rotenberg of Kibbutz Beit Haemek passed away as a result of an accident while training with a tank unit.  He died a week before his 19th birthday.

2007(20^th of Kislev, 5678): Ninety-three year old Isaac Cohen who served as Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1958 to 1979 passed away today.

2008: The Orthodox Union's National Conference meeting, at the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem comes to a close.  Participants included Rabbi Metzger, Rabbi Lau, Rabbi Menachem Genack and Rabbi Herschel Schachter. The Keynote address was given by British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

2008: The International Conference on Contemporary Issues and Halacha, opens at Yeshurun Synagogue in Jerusalem

2008: Four of eight soldiers wounded in terrorist attacks on the Nahal Oz Base Gaza crossing during the Sabbath remained hospitalized..

2009: “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza” a play panned by The Sunday Times, condemned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and described as “a blood libel” by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic opened at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon

2009: "Pray for You" a song written by Joel Brentlinger & Jaron Lowenstein and recorded by American singer Jaron Lowenstein was released today.

2009: Amy Goodman, host of the radio and television program "Democracy Now!," discusses and signs her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier, at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

2009: AJWS and its President, Ruth Messinger join Congregation Emanu-El, Congregation Emanu-El’s Young Adult Community, Congregation Beth Sholom, Congregation Sherith Israel, Taube Center for Jewish Life at the JCCSF, The Hub of the JCCSF, The SF Bay Area Darfur Coalition and Congregation Sha’ar Zahav to cosponsor an advance screening of Reporter the new documentary featuring Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist.  Reporter documents Kristoff’s efforts to write about the gut-wrenching conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

2009: The opening of the John Demjanjuk trial today in Munich had to be delayed by over an hour because of the flood of visitors - including Holocaust survivors - who wished to observe what might be the last prosecution of an alleged Nazi war criminal.

2009(13^th of Kislev, 5770): Eighty-nine-year-old Columbia Law School graduate Charles Miller Metzner, the former “counsel to the General Jewish Council” and a federal judge starting in 1959 passed away today.

https://www.fjc.gov/node/1385066

2010: "My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm Home for the Holidays!," is scheduled to have its first performance in Charlotte, NC.

2010: The 92^nd Street Y in New York apologized for the way Deborah Solomon had conducted her interview of Steve Martin along with an offer to refund their money.

2010: The Shin Bet has arrested three Palestinian militants suspected of carrying out a shooting attack against two Israelis in late September, it emerged today

2010(23^rd of Kislev, 5771): Eighty-four-year-old Cleveland native Lawrence E. “Larry” Gelfand, Professor-Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Iowa and husband of Miriam Ifland passed away today in Irvine, CA.

2010: Norman Lebrecht reviews “Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World.”

2010: “Through the Gale,” the third album of Asaf Avidan & the Mojos was released in Israel today.

2011: The Chabad Jewish Center in Metairie, LA, is scheduled to host its monthly Rosh Chodesh event which this month is entitled “Impression & Expression: The Essential Woman.”

2011: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host its final session of this month’s Adult Education Series, “The Major Message of the Minor Prophet!”

2011: David Schmahmann is scheduled to discuss his new novel “The double Life of Alfred Buber” at the final event of the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore’s Jewish Book Month.

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top cabinet ministers approved the handover of $100 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority today, despite the vocal opposition of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

2011: An errant volley of projectiles landed in the vicinity of a top Israel Defense Forces officer today, in what preliminary reports say was a severe mishap during a large-scale drill in Israel's south.

2012: Adi Neuhaus, first prize winner of the “Voice of Music Young” Artist Competition is scheduled to perform at noon today in Jerusalem.

2012: “A Late Quartet,” Israeli director Yaron Zilberman's engrossing drama about an illustrious string quartet, is scheduled to shown at several cinemas in New York City.

2012: “A Search for God Through Bluegrass and Klezmer” published today described the career of Andy Statman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/nyregion/andy-statmans-search-for-god-in-music.html?ref=music&_r=0

2012: In a clever combination of Mitzvot (Tzdekah and Shabbat) the Young Professionals Network is scheduled to host a Shabbat dinner where the attendees will make contributions toward the B'nai B'rith's Disaster Relief Fund for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

2012: Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, who delivered a supportive speech of Israel at the UN before its vote yesterday on the Palestinian statehood, said today "the bottom line is we will not let the Jewish people and the State of Israel stand alone when the going gets tough."

2012:  At a meeting of the Saban Forum, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of the peace talks in 2000, when she said, “I don’t care how many people try to revise that history, the fact is [Arafat] said no at Camp David.” 

2013(27^th of Kislev, 5774): Shabbat Chanukah

2013: Scheduled opening of the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: A Palestinian was shot to death this morning by Border Guard volunteers, who were searching after illegal aliens in the area of Yarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva. The Border Guard stated that a policeman shot the Palestinian after the latter attempted to stab him. (As reported by Hassan Shaalan)

2013: Beduin Israelis and their supporters throughout the country staged protest demonstrations today against the controversial Prawer resettlement plan.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Modeling the Flood Story – from Ancient to Modern Times.”

2014: As part of UK Jewish Comedy Festival, LOCO and JW3 are scheduled to present “Time Travel” with Woody Allen

2014: In Melbourne, “King of the Jews” and “Magic Men” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014: Thirty-one-year-old Gill Rosenberg, “an Israeli-Canadian woman who traveled to Syria to fight alongside the Kurds there earlier this month has been abducted by Islamic State fighters, Hebrew media reported today, citing Syrian jihadist-linked media

2014: According to a report published today in Haaretz, Jerusalem’s “is plumbing new depths to devise funerary solutions to Israel’s shortage of space and has broken ground on two experimental crypts near the entrance to the city.

2014: “Rafi Eitan, the head of the Bureau of Scientific Relations in November 1985 that ran Jonathan Pollard confirmed Sunday for the first time that the prime minister Shimon Peres and defense minister Yitzhak knew full well that Israel had a spy within the US armed forces” who was in fact Jonathan Pollard.

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including George Marshall by Debi and Irwin Unger with Stanley Hirschon and an essay “To Russia, With Tough Love” by Marsha Gessen

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/books/review/to-russia-with-tough-love.html?ref=books

2015: Friends and family of Dr. Fred Goldblatt, whose incomparable contributions to the Cedar Rapids Jewish community include a willingness to share his considerable musical skills, prepare to celebrate his natal day.

2015(18^th of Kislev, 5776): “Janet Wolfe — gleeful gadabout, archetypal Gothamite and the longtime executive director of the New York City Housing Authority Symphony” passed away today at the age of 101. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

2015: Seventy-one-year-old Sheldon Silver “the son of a hardware store owner on the Lower East Side” who rose become “one of the most feared politicians in New York State was found guilty…of federal corruption charges” today.

2015: “Righteous Among Us: Two Who Defied the Nazis,” a film about how Waitsill and Martha Sharp worked to save Jews from the Shoah in 1939 is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois.

http://www.ushmm.org/online/calendar/eventDetails.php?event=MWEPHEMERALPP1115

2016: It was announced today that “Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd has pledged 13.4 million euros to provide guards for Jewish schools, nurseries, synagogues, and colleges all around the United Kingdom.”

2016: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a memorial tribute for Elie Wiesel this evening.

2016: “For the first time in three months, Israeli jets reportedly struck targets in Syria early this morning, hitting a Bashar Assad regime military base and a Hezbollah convoy en route to Lebanon, according to foreign media.”

2016: “Army reported” today that “several leading rabbis have decided to campaign against moves by the IDF to further integrate women into combat units and plan to advise religious male soldiers to avoid orders relating to mixed-gender activities.”

2016: During an interviews on CNBC today, future Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said that the Trump administration’s job is to “make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs” and “his priority was getting a sustained growth of GDP of 3% or 4%.”

2016: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “We Were Neighbors: Remembering Middle Eastern Jewish Communities” which will include “scholarly, first-person reflections by award-winning writers Lucette Lagnado (The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World) and André Aciman (Out of Egypt)

2017(12^th of Kislev, 5778): Seventy-four-year-old Leslie Wolfe, the Washington born daughter of Theodore and Isabelle Rosenberg and holder of a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Florida who was a leader in the fight for equality of women through her work with the Center for Women Policy Studies passed today in Rockville, MD. (As reported by Amisha Padnani)

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a noontime “chill and chat” with Rabbi Michael Rosenfeld-Schueler who also will be leading an “in-depth text-based Gemara learning” session before the weekday evening meal.

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Peter G. Weintraub’s first session of “Introduction to Judaism.”

2017: The Jewish Music Forum is scheduled to host a lecture by historian Daniel Jütte on “Gustav Mahler:  Jewish Identity and Nineteenth-Century Musical Culture” followed by a concert featuring Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn’s chamber orchestra arrangement of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)

2017: “The Jstyle Winter Premiere Party” is scheduled to take place at the StoneWater Golf Club in Highland Heights, Ohio.

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education is scheduled to host “An Evening of Unity.”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as David Fromkin whose works included the must-read A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East continues today.

2018: “The 10 Best Books of 2018” from the NYT included How To Change Your Mind: What the Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence by Michael Pollan, “the son of author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan.”

2018: As of today, the Kfir Infantry Brigade has “completed an extensive two-month exercise simulating a war in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas terror group” prior to the unit being “stationed outside the coastal enclave” in 2019.

2018: “Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who has twice pleaded guilty to crimes that have implicated Mr. Trump in illegal or questionable conduct, asked a federal judge late tonight that he be allowed to avoid prison when he is sentenced in less than two weeks.”(As reported by Benjamin Weiser and Maggie Haberman.

2018: The Israel Museum is scheduled to host a lecture on “Vayeshev” with “Noga Elias-Zalmanovitch” at 11:00 A.M.

2018: As American Jews prepare for Shabbat, they dealt with reports of arsonists being responsible for a fire at an Orthodox synagogue in Houston, the attack by vandals on the offices of Professor Elizabeth Midlarksy at Columbia who painted the walls with Swastikas and the ramifications of Michael Cohen’s plea deal that included claims that were diametrically opposite to President Trump’s description of the same events.

2019: “The Israel Defense Forces said it had launched airstrikes against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza in the predawn hours this morning after weapons were fired at Israel from the Strip yesterday.” (As reported by Times of Israel Staff)

2019: In a testament to the vitality of Jewish life in the rural heartland, in Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host the “Baby Blessing Ceremony” of Juniper Josephine Kline, daughter of Jake Kline and Alice Baker and Ariella Rose Greenfield, the daughter of Andrea and Brandon Greenfield.

2019(2^nd of Kislev, 5780): Parashat Toldot;

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the fourth and final lecture by Martin Kaufman on “The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. “

2020: The jHUB Young Professionals are scheduled to host a monthly book club where they discuss books about Jewish themes, identity and experiences which this month is reading Naamah: A Novel by Sarah Blake.

2020: The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Virtual Israel Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: As more lockdown restrictions are scheduled to be lifted, Israelis face the reality that the national coronavirus infection rate has spiked to over 3%.

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center of Jewish Culture is scheduled to host Kenneth D. Wald, author of The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism which seeks to answer the conundrum – “why Jews, one of America’s most afflu­ent and upward­ly eth­nic groups, have con­tin­ued to vote against what would appear to be their class interest. “

2021(26^th of Kislev, 5782): Second Day of Chanukah

2021: A double Simcha – while the friends and family of Fred Goldblatt kindle the second Chanukah light, they will also light the candles on the cake marking the celebration of birthday of a first class mensch.

2021: In partnership with Menemsha Films, the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to present a screening of “The Tattooed Torah”as part of the Hanukah Film Festival 

2021: Chanukah Lighting Across Iowa is scheduled to take place this evening via Zoom.

2021: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “Reclaiming Identity: Jews of Arab Lands and Iran share stories of identity, struggle and redemption” “a first-of-its-kind global virtual event marking November 30, Israel's national day of commemorating the effectual end of Jewish life in many Arab lands and Iran.”

2021: The Stanford Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Jewish History and YIVO are are scheduled to present, online, The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust” during which U. of Michigan professor Jeffrey Veidlinger will discuss his book, “In the Midst of Civilized Europe,” while exploring conditions that led to the Holocaust.

2021: Lockdown University is scheduled to present a lecture via Zoom by Trudy Gold on “Menasseh Ben Israel and the Return to England.”

2022: In Metairie, LA, the Chabad Center is scheduled to host a “Women’s Event.”

2022: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “On the Page and Our Stage during which Idina Menzel, Cara Mentzel, Lisa Barr, Anna Quindlen, Jenny Mollen and Zibby Owens “discuss their latest books, their newest characters and what it means to be a powerful woman in the 21^st century.”

2022: YIVO is scheduled to present online, “Nick Underwood as he explores how left-wing Yiddish-speaking emigrants from Eastern Europe created a Yiddish diaspora nation in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s in his new publication, Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France.

2022: The NY Jewish Week, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation, Natan Fund, Jewish Book Council, and ASF Institute of Jewish Experience are scheduled to present: An Evening with “One Hundred Saturdays.” 

2022: Thanksgiving is past and Channukah seems far away, but the friends and family of Dr. Fred Goldblatt have something to celebrate – his natal day!

2023: The Jewish National Fund’s Global Conference for Israel which is now dedicated to standing with Israel is scheduled to begin today.

2023: In Washington, DC, the Kościuszko Foundation Art Show in Connection with the New Film "A Pocketful of Miracles" is scheduled to come to an end.

2023: JWA is scheduled to host the final class in Jewish Women in the Medieval World series with a lecture by Renee Levine Melammed on “Women’s Voices as Reflected in the Cairo Genizah.”

2023: Friends and family celebrate the natal day of Fred Goldsmith, a world class physician and a Beetles fan par excellence whose craft skills include changing toilet seats but who is most important of all a mensch of the first order!

2023: JCC north shore is scheduled to host Jennifer Rosener, author of Once We Were Home in the last even of the 29^th annual JCCNS Jewish Book Month Series.

2023: The Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University is scheduled to present a special Spotlight Session in honor of the university’s 75th anniversary, at which Brandeis scholars of Jewish education share some of the most important developments in the field of Jewish education and why they matter for the flourishing of individual students and the vibrancy of the Jewish community.

2023: As November 30 begins in Israel, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies are scheduled to host an “Interfaith Security Summitt the includes the FBI and the Massachusetts State Police in response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the United States, “the on-going truce is scheduled to end after a six-day pause” while the rest of the Hamas held hostages begin day 55 in captivity.

(Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time)