December 12
456 BCE (1st of Tevet, 3305): Ezra opened convocation on the problem of intermarriage.
627:
A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian
forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh at the Battle of Nineveh. This meant that
The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire regained control of the Middle East,
including Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor did not
keep his promise to his Jewish allies to give them control of David’s City and
its environs.
1098:
During the First Crusade, Christian forces breach the walls of Ma'arrat
al-Numan in Syria and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. Some view this is as a
“dress rehearsal” of the massacres that took place when the Crusaders arrived
in Jerusalem and slaughtered the Jewish and Moslem inhabitants
1204(20th of Tevet, 4965): Maimonides passed away. His name says it
all. Nothing that can be said here would
do him justice. Maimonides followed the
Rabbinic injunction that a man should have a job and study Torah unlike some
who today insist that their “studying’ exempts from having to earn a living.
“From Moses to Moses, there as none like Moses”
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/75991/jewish/Maimonides-His-Life-and-Works.htm
1254: Alexander IV, the prelate
“responsible for launching the Inquisition in France” began his papacy today.
1347: Today, Charles IV sold “his royal
rights concerning the Jews: to the /count of Ottingen.
1474:Isabella crowns herself
queen of Castile and Aragon in what will become a milestone on the road to end
of the Jewish Community in Spain in 1492. Ironically two of the people who
would help her come to power and/or consolidate her crown were Don Isaac Abravanel
and Don Abraham Senior.
1479: The Jews were expelled from Schlettstadt, Alsace by Emperor
Frederick III
1484: At Soncino, Italy, Joseph Solomon Soncino printed the first
copy of “Beḥinat ha-'Olam” (The Examination of the World) by Jedaiah ben
Abraham Bedersi a Jewish poet, physician and philosopher. Born in 1270 at
Béziers, he was the son of Abraham Profiat, another French-Jewish poet. He
passed away in 1340. Beḥinat ha-'Olam (The Examination of the World), called
also by its first words, "Shamayim la-Rom" (Heaven's Height), a
didactic poem written after the banishment of the Jews from France (1306), to
which event reference is made in the eleventh chapter. The 37 “chapter” poem
concludes with an expression of Bedersi’s admiration of Maimonides.
1501: Alexander Jagellon began his reign as King of Poland during which he
permitted the Jews to return to Lithuania and issued a decree”in which the Jews are especially mentioned, again orders that everything
formerly belonging to Jews which had been sequestrated for gifts must be
returned to them, and that all the debts owing to them must be paid.”
1505: In Ceske Budejovice, Czechoslovakia,
ten Jews were tortured and killed after being accused by a local shepherd of
killing a local girl. Years later on his deathbed, the shepherd confessed that
he made up the whole story.
1524: Pope
Clement VII approved the organization of a Jewish Community in Rome
1561:
According to a document of this date, Nahum Pesakohovich, a Jew living in Pinsk
filed a complaint against Grigori Grichia, the estate owner in the district of
Pinsk for failure to honor the terms of their mortgage agreement.
1574: Selim
II, Ottoman Sultan, passed away. During his reign, Selim appointed Joseph Nassi
as the Duke of Naxos. He appointed his
physician Solomon Nathan Eskenazi to serve as ambassador in Venice where he
participated in negotiations for a treaty between the Turks and the Spanish.
When Turkish forces took Cyprus, Selim had five hundred Jewish families settle
on the island. This was a way of
improving the economic environment on the island while ensuring the presence of
a loyal local population.
1586:
Stephen Bathory the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, “who was the
friend of the Jews” living in Grodno “passed away today.
1626:
Inquisitional authorities arrested Francisco Maldonado de Silva, after his
sister (a devout Catholic) turned him because he told her he believed in
Judaism, as their father had. His passion for Judaism came after studying a
book written in 1391 by the Bishop of Burgos. The Bishop, a convert Jews who
was born as Solomon Halevi, wrote the book to defend the Catholic faith.
Halevi's words put doubt into Francisco's mind about Catholicism and brought
him closer to Judaism-the religion Francisco's father had already been
following. In the end Francisco went to his death January 23, 1639 for his
faith in Judaism.
1653: The Short Parliament was dissolved today leaving
Oliver Cromwell, who held the title of Protector of the Realm, as the king-like
ruler of England. This may have actually helped Manasseh ben Israel in
his effort to gain readmission of the Jews since Cromwell, unlike some of his
allies, actively supported the Jews attempts to return to the British Isles.
1655:
A special Conference which had been established by Cromwell and the Council of
State to consider all of the issues pertaining to the Jews and their
readmission to England which had already decided “that there was no law which
forbade the Jews’ return into England” today continued to consider during a second session held today the question, if
it be lawful to allow the Jews to live in England, “upon what terms it meet to
receive them?”
1670: Today the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam
acquired the site to build a synagogue.
1687: Today, “the East India Company in Fort St. Geroge
announced to its Factors in Bengal, “We have given permission to all our servants
and all our freemen, English Jewes and
other foreigners and Native to send home upon our own ships consigned to your
Company, any sort of Bengal Good/”
1701(22nd of Kislev, 5642): Mary Nunes
Rodrigues, the wife Anthony Fernandez Carvajal and the mother of Jacob and
Isaac Carvajal passed away today after which she was buried at the Velho
Sephardic Cemetery.
1739: In Savannah, GA, Dutch born Hannah Solomon and
Prussian born Benjamin Sheftall gave birth to Levi Sheftall who marred Sarah De
La Motta in 1768 at St.Croix after which they had fourteen children.
1762(26th of Kislev, 5523): Second Day of
Chanukah
1762: In Philadelphia, Mordecai Moses Mordecai and
Zipporah "de Lyon" Mordecai gave birth to their first daughter Esther
who became Esther Mordecai Russell when she married Dr. Philip Moses Russell in
1780.
1770(25th of Kislev, 5531): Chanukah
1773(27th of Kislev, 5534): Third Day of
Chanukah
1785: Today, King Frederick II suspended the legal action
that had been undertaken to punish Joseph Abraham Stelicki for converting from
Catholicism to Judaism which was a capital crime.
1787: Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S.
Constitution. Religious qualifications for holding state and local office were
abolished in 1790. Jews had been part of
Pennsylvania even before the coming of William Penn. The community had its start with Jewish
traders who operated in what would be the southeastern corner of the soon to be
founded colony. Mikveh Israel (Hope of
Israel) the Philadelphia’s first synagogue was established in the 1740’s. When an enlarged Mikveh Israel, under the
leadership of Gershom Mendes Seixas was dedicated in 1782, a wide variety of
public officials attended. Jews were
earlier settlers of Lancaster where a Jewish burial plot was established in
1747. The size of the Jewish population
was exaggerated due to that fact that the English confused Yiddish speaking
Jews with the German speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.
1788(13th of Kislev, 5549): The nine-day old infant
born to Marks Lazarus passed away today.
1789(24th of Kislev, 5550): Parshat Vayeshev; the first
Chanukah candle is kindled for the first time during the Presidency of George
Washington.
1794(20th of Kislev, 5555): Isaac De La Motta, the
husband of Sarah De La Motta, with whom he had six children, passed away today
in Charleston, SC.
1795(30th of Kislev, 5556): Shabbat Shel Chanukah;
Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet
1795(30th of Kislev, 5556): “Colonial Goldsmith” Myer
Myers, who married Joyce Mears in 1767 after the death of his first wife Elkaleh
Cohen in 1765 and who was the father of six children – Solomon, Samuel, Joseph,
Rachel, Judy and Rebecca – passed away today after which he was buried at Beth
Olom Cemetery in Ridgewood, NY.
1800(25th of Kislev, 5561): First Day of Chanukah
observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.
1802: “Eight-year-old Abraham Bar Naphtali” as buried today at the
“Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”
1803(27th of Kislev, 5564): Third Day of Chanukah
1805: Birthdate of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, a
collection of whose papers are found at Brandeis University.
http://brandeisspecialcollections.blogspot.com/2011/10/william-lloyd-garrison-collection.html
1806:
Birthdate of Rabbi Isaac Lesser, one of the most important leaders of the 19th
century American-Jewish community whose accomplishments included completing the
first translation of the Bible from Hebrew in English published in the United
States.
1809: Lewis
Gompertz married Ann Hollaman in London today.
1821:
Birthdate of Gustave Flaubert, the French author whose works included
“Herodias” set in the court of Antipater in which the author writes “The Jews
were tired of Herod’s idolatrous ways.”
http://peopleofshambhala.com/herodias-of-flaubert/
1822(28th
of Kislev, 5583): Fourth day of Chanukah
1825(2nd
of Tevet, 5586): Eighth Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the
Presidency of John Q. Adams.
1827:
Eliezer ben Moshe HaCohen married Yacht bat Moses Israel at the Western
Synagogue today.
1827:
Abraham Moise of Charleston, SC, married Caroline Agnes Moses, “the third
daughter of Isaac C. Moses.
1831: In
Jamaica, a tankard was presented to Moses Delgado in recognition of his work on
behalf of Jewish rights.
1832: Birthdate
of Sophie Schriesheimer Waldstein, the German born wife of Henry Waldstein with
whom she had four children.
1832:
Birthdate of Abraham Carel Wertheim, the native of Amsterdam whose role as
banker, politician and leader of the Jewish community can be seen in his
partnership in Wertheim & Compertz, membership in the Dutch Senate and
“presidency of the Jewish community.”
1837:
Birthdate of Rabbi Moritz Framer, the native of Rybnik, Prussian Silesia who
wrote numerous articles and served as the editor of a Jewish literary magazine
while leading congregations in Thorn and Magdeburg.
1838(25th
of Kislev, 5599): Chanukah
1838: Three
days after he had passed away, 73-year-old “Plymouth wine merchant” Samuel Hart
was buried today in the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.
1841: Jacob
Frankfort arrived in Los Angeles as part of the Rowland-Workman party. Frankfort, one of the earliest Jewish
settlers in New Mexico had been living in Taos when he hurriedly left town
because authorities believed he was part of a group of Texans seeking to take
control of the territory. He and some of
his confederates joined a scientific expedition and traveled with them to
California.
1851: An article entitled “Interesting Hebrew Relic”
published today reported that in Washington, DC, Colonel Lea, the Commissioner
of Indian affairs has in his possession “four small rolls or strips of
parchment, closely packed in the small compartments of a little box or locket
of about an inch cubical content. On
these parchments are written, in a style of unsurpassed excellence, and far
more beautiful than print, portions of the Pentateuch, to be worn as frontlets
and intended as stimulants to the memory and moral sense.” The item was brought to Washington from the
Pottawatomie Reservation on the Kansas River by a man named Dr. Lykins. Lykins
got them from a member of the tribe name Pategwe who had gotten them from his
aged grandmother. Originally there had
been two boxes, but one of them had been lost long ago when the Indians were
crossing some river rapids. The Indians
believed that the lost box contained a description of the creation of the
world. Nobody seems to know how the
boxes first came into the possession of the Indians. They cannot remember a time when they did not
have them in their possession. The
article concludes, “The question occurs here, does not this circumstance give
some color to the idea, long and extensively entertained, that the Indians of
our continent are or less Jewish in their origin?”
1852: In Richmond, VA, Ellen and Samuel Fox Mordecai
gave birth to University of Virginia alum Samuel Fox II, the great-great-grandson
of German born Jewish merchant Moses Mordecai and the great-grandson of Jacob
Mordecai who as an assistant professor of law at Wake Forest College before
being name senior profess at Trinity College Law School which became Duke
University.
1852: Birthdate of Plattsburg, NY native Hulda Levi
Lasker, the wife of Samuel Lasker whom she married in 1877 and the mother of
Meyer, Helen, Isaac, Rose, Tillie and Selma Lasker.
1853: Rabbi Raphall delivered the last in a series
of lectures on “The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews” in New York City.
1855(3rd of Tevet, 5616): 8th and final
day of Chanukah
1856: HMS
Resolute, a British vessel that had been lost while trying to find the elusive “northwest
passage” and which was refurbished by the United States and that was now
commanded by Parisian born American Jew Captain Henry J. Hartstene “anchored at
Spithead off Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight” today and was then formally offered
to “the Queen and people of Great Britian” which made him “a National Hero.”
1857(25th of Kislev, 5618): First Day of
Chanukah is observed for the first time during the Presidency of James
Buchannan, the chief executive who was willing to cave in to secession and the
destruction of the United States of America.
1857: In London, Adelaide ad Sir Joseph
Sebag-Montefiore gave birth to Emily Spielman the wife of Sir Isidore Spielman
1858: In Cleveland, OH, Samuel and August Lasker
gave birth to Henry Lasker who settled in Little Rock, AR where he was buried.
1860(28th of Kislev, 5621): Fourth Day of
Chanukah observed as South Carolinians are going forward with their plans to
destroy the United States of America.
1860: In Russia, Isaac Sacks and his wife gave birth
to Rabbi Harris W. Sacks, the spiritual leader of Congregation Ohavei Zedek in Burlington,
VT.
1861: In
Houston, TX, Bennet and Bertha Cowen gave birth to Northwestern University
trained lawyer Israel Cowen, the Cook County Judge and Democratic Party member
who served as President of District No. 6 of B’nai B’rith and “a member of the
executive committee of the Hebrew Sabbath-School Union.”
1861:At today’s regular meeting of the Board of Councilmen the
report in favor of donating $30,000 to the Hebrew Benevolent Association was
finally adopted.
1862: Twenty-eight-year-old Louis Manly Emanuel who
had graduated as M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1860 went from
Assistant Surgeon to Surgeon while serving with 82nd Regiment during
the Civil War.
1862:
During the Civil War, 19-year-old Richmond born Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, the
resident of Philadelphia who had been serving with Company G of the 119th
Regiment was among those who crossed the Rappahannock at the start of what
would become the ill-fated Battle of Fredericksburg.
1865(24th
of Kislev, 5626): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle
1865: In
Vienna, Julius and Charlotte Schendel Rindskopf gave birth to Max Rik, the husband
of Alice Rink and the father of Herbert, George and Margaret Rink.
1865:
Birthdate of the Pinsk native and “Jewish Menshevik” who came to be known as
Aleksandr Martynov, one of those became more radicalized after the October
Revolution and became a member of the Communist Party in 1923.
1866:
Birthdate of Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, who had been fired by Stanford
University for his racist views when it came to Chinese and Japanese
immigration, stirred up similar controversy at the University of Wisconsin when
wrote magazine articles attacking the Jews including “Jews of Eastern Europe in
America” which contains the charge that Jews in America “are the greatest
criminals.”
1869: In
Germany, Lazarus Gossel Funk and Diertjen Jette Fischer gave birth to Louis
(Lazarus) Funk, the husband of Rosa Funk and the father of Ivan Funk; Conrad
Funk and Leo Funk
1869: In
Breslau, Silesia, Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and conductor
Leopold Damrosch gave birth to Clara Damrosch, whose grandfather was Jewish
which would make her a Jew under Nazi race laws and who gained fame American
music educator Clara Mannes.
1871(29th
of Kislev, 5632): Fifth Day of Chanukah
1872: In
Paris, Ludovic Halevy, who had turned his back on his family proud Jewish
tradition when he became a Protestant and his wife gave birth French historian
Daniel Halevy.
1872: Today
“French law introduced the system of universal suffrage in the election of the
consistories, “the bodies governing the Jewish congregations of a province or
of a country”
1874: It
was reported today that it appears Russian government has ordered to the
managers of the nation’s railway companies to fire all of the Jews in their
employ and not to hire any Jews in the future.
1875:
During the past week, the Hebrew Charity Fair raised $66, 421.19 for Mt. Sinai
Hospital.
1875(14th of Kislev, 5636): Pesach N. Rubenstein, the husband of Elke
Rubenstein of Jerusalem, “murdered Sara Alexander in a cornfield” in what “is
now a portion of the 26th ward.”
1876(26th of Kislev, 5637): Second Day of Chanukah
1876: In Slonim, Abraham Mordechai and Fruma Wernekowsky gave birth
Polish trained rabbi Isaac Werne, who earned a Ph. D at Koenigsberg Germany and
married Mary Leman before coming to the United States where he eventually
became “the chief rabbi of the United Orthodox Rabbinate of Los Angeles.
1867: Eliyahu Menachim Goitein, the Hungarian born “son of Zvi (Armin) Hirsch Goitein and Szali
(Sara) Sarolta Goitein” and his wife Amalia Mahala Goitein gave birth to future
Israeli citizen Leah Duschinsky, the
wife of Rabbi Mihály Isaac Duschinsky.
1876: In Slonim, Russia, Fruma Nacdimon and Abraham Mordechai Wernekowsky
gave birth Rabbi Isaac Werne, the husband of Mary Leman who began his American
rabbinic career at Congregation Emunah Israel in New York and after several
moves became the leader of Congregation Agudath Achim in Columbus, OH while
contributing to several publications including the Ohio Jewish Chronicle and
the B’nai B’rith Messenger of Los Angeles.
1877: Birthdate of Centerville, MD native and University of Maryland
trained physician Dr. Howard Kahn who served on the faculty of the University
of Maryland.
1878: Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing "St Louis
Dispatch." Pulitzer’s father was
Jewish. His mother was Roman Catholic.
1880(10th
of Tevet, 5641): Asara B’Tevet
1880:
Today, Abraham Marcus who had been born in Prussia in 1851 and came to the
United Sates in 1870 married Sophia Marcus who had come to the United States
from Germany in 1875 which created a union that produced three children –
Henry, Bertha and Retta Marcus – the most of whom was “Pulp publisher Henry
Markus.
1880(10th
of Tevet, 5641): Fifty-year old Hyman Vollenburg, a Jewish tailor was found
dead in his room on Baxter Street in New York.
He was said to be so observant that he refused to accept anything which
had been purchased from Jews who worked on Shabbat.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A02E4DB123FEE3ABC4B52DFB467838B699FDE
1880: It
was reported today that among Mrs. Jacob Hess, Mrs. A.H. Allen, Mrs. J.J. Bach,
Miss Alice Solomon and Miss Essie Content (who portrays the Biblical Rebecca at
the well) are among the young ladies the Mrs. Isaac Phillips has enlisted to
work during the ten day long Hebrew Charity Fair in New York.
1881: In the Polish part of the Russian Empire, Benjamin Wonsal and Pear
Leah Eichelbaum gave birth to Hirsch Moses Wonsal who came to the United States
in 1889 where he gained fame as Harry Morris Warner, one of the Warner brothers
who formed the film studio of Warner Brothers.
1881: “Solomon’s Temple” published today carried an account of the
announcement that the Sultan has decided to take a hand in the “restoration
Solomon’s Temple” which in reality means the Great Mosque which stands on the
“Temple Mount” because “there is no need to say that the ruins of Solomon’s Temple
of Solmon’s Temple are about to be restored because no such ruins exist.”
1881: According to reports published today the burial of the victims of
the theatre fire in Vienna that claimed the lives of 580 people was public
ceremony that began with speeches by a Rabbi, a Catholic Prior and an
Evangelical Provost. The Jewish victims were the first to be buried with their
ceremonies beginning at daybreak.
1881: In Krasnosielc, “a village a short distance from Warsaw”Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born
in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum gave birth to Hirsch Moses Wonsal who
gained fame as Harry Morris Warner, one of the Warner brothers who created
Warner Bros. a major studio during the early days and golden era of motion
pictures.
1883: In Kletzk, Russia, Hannah Freidkes and Alexander Goldberg gave
birth to Cornell University trained pathologist Dr. Samuel Alexander Goldberg,
the husband of Julia Stevens who was a member of Temple Beth-El in Ithaca, NY.
1882: Sarah Bernhardt had a major marital row with her husband Jacques
Damala during she which she would no longer support his dissolute
lifestyle. This marital breakup came
while she was starring in the hit play Fedora by Victorien Sardou. Sardou refused to let him have a part in the play,
so Sarah let him serve as manager of the theatrical company, a position that he
was totally unfit to hold. Following his
dismissal, he turned to drugs and humiliating her at every turn. The role of “Mr. Sarah Bernhardt” was one
that he could not play.
1882: The settlers at Rosh Pina experienced “their first significant
rainfall of the year which meant they could now sow their first crop.” Some use this date as marking the founding of
Kibbutz which is not totally accurate because an earlier attempt had been made
1878.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/natural-cornerstone-the-blossoming-of-rosh-pina/
http://israelsdocuments.blogspot.com/search/label/1882
1882:
Birthdate of famed chess player Akiba Rubenstein.
1883: In “Kletzk,
Russia,” Hanna Freidkes and Alexander Goldberg gave birth Cornell University
trained pathologist, Dr. Samuel Alexander Goldberg, the husband of Julia
Stevens and member of Temple Beth-El in Ithaca, NY who served as a professor of
comparative pathology at Cornell and director of laboratories at the Bronx Hospital
1884: In New York, Marx Cohen, who has already been charged with
receiving “$7 worth of goods” stolen from Bates, Reed & Cooley, is expected
to be charged with more serious crimes today.
According to the police, is a Fagan-like figure who organizes youngsters
into gangs of thieves and then fences the stolen merchandise. The Jewish store owner has denied all
allegations.
1884: It was reported that in Russia, the Minister of Interior, Count
Tolstoi, “has ordered the expulsion of all Jews living in Odessa, Kiev and
other cities” if they hold foreign passports and do not have special permits
from the government. This has caused a
great deal of concern for Jews doing business in this city who are afraid the
new rules will force them into liquidation.
1884: It was reported today that fighting has broken out among Jewish and
anti-Semitic university students in Vienna.
1885: Columbia Law School graduate Isaac
Leopold Rice, the Bavarian born son of Mayer and Fanny Sohn Rice who in 1856
came to the United States where he gained fame as a chess patron, inventor and
owner of the Electric Boat Company which built 85 submarines and 722 sub
chasers for the U.S. Navy married Julia Hyneman Barnett with whom he had six
children Today
1885: In Russia, Israel Fisher and his wife gave birth to University of
Pennsylvania trained physician Lewis Fisher who in 1898 came to the United
States where he began practicing medicine in Philadelphia in 1906, married
Marguerite Lazard in 1916 and served as a “Major in the Medical Corps attached
to the Air Service” during WW I.
1885: In New York, Rabbi S. Schocher, of Russ, a city near Memel, Prussia
gave a lecture at Or Chaim in the classical style of the old-fashioned
Derashot.
1886: In New York, four undercover officers arrested for Polish Jews for
selling dry goods in violation of the Sunday Closing Laws.
1887(26th of Kislev, 5648): Second Day of Chanukah
1887: Philip Stein and Matilda Beave of Manchester gave birth to Leonard
Jacques Stein OBE “a British Liberal Party politician, writer, barrister and
President of the Anglo-Jewish Association.”
1887: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association which
had been providing services to 520 students in 1876 had grown to providing
2,581 students ten years later (1886).
1887: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association had
chosen new officers for the following year including: President – M.S. Isaacs;
Vice President – Uriah Herman; and Treasurer – Newman Cowen.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50D15F8385C10738DDDAB0994DA415B8784F0D3
1888: Birthdate of Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame who served as
Commander of the Palestine Command “which was formed with objective of
controlling all British forces in Mandatory Police from 1940 to 1941.
1888: “Four Couples Made Happy” which was published today reported that
two Jewish couples were among what was described as the four “fashionable
weddings” that occurred in New York City.
1889: Birthdate of Phillip Carl Katz, the San Francisco native who earned
the Medal of Honor while serving as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army
1889: Poet Robert Browning the author
“Rabbi ben Ezra” passed away today. The poem is based on the life of Abraham
ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra lived from 1092 until 1167 and was a leading figure in what
was known as the Golden Age in Spain.
Ibn Ezra was second only in fame to Rashi as Torah commentator. He was the first two attribute that the last
section of Deuteronomy describing the death of Moses was written by
Joshua. He was also the first two
attribute the last 26 chapters of the Book of Isaiah to a different writer now
known as the Second Isaiah. The poem
begins with the famous line “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…” The belief that “Jewish blood coursed in his
veins” was so common that a biography written two years after his death began
by disproving this theory which was based on Browning’s “interest in Hebrew
language and literature and his friendship for many members of the London
Jewish community.”
1889: Birthdate of Lithuanian native
“Frances Naomi Harrison” who come to the U.S in 1893 where after studying at
NYU, Columbia and New York School of Social Work went on to a career that
including serving as the “assistant director of the Graduate School for Jewish
Social Work.
1890(1st of Tevet, 5651):
Rosh Chodesh Tevet, sixth day of Chanukah and erev Shabbat.
1890: In New York, The Board of
Estimates and Apportionment appropriated $12,700 the work of converting the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum Building into a school.
1890: In Duluth, MN, Samuel and Anna
(Karon) Mark gave birth to Marquette and University of Wisconsin trained
physician Louis Mark, the tuberculosis specialist and Republican who was the
husband of Fanny Karon with whom he had three children – Charlotte, Rae Louise
and Roy Lloyd.
1890: In “Grodno, Russia,” Fannie and
Raphael Marcovitch gave birth Cornell and University of Minnesota trained
entomologist and author Simon Marcovitch, the resident of Knoxville, TN and
husband of Anne Spring whose words include “The Strawberry Crown Borer” and New
Insecticides for the Mexican Bean Beetle and other Insects and who was a member
of B’nai B’rith.
1890: As Americans seek a way to
register their displeasure with Russian treatment of the Jews, several
prominent Jews met at the home met at the home if Rabbi Jacob Joseph where “it
was suggested that instead of hold a mass meeting, a meeting of the leaders of
the synagogues and Jewish benevolent intuitions should be help to consult as to
the best means to adopt to put a stop to the persecutions.”
1890: The eldest of Moses Winterstein’s
children who were living in New York came to the Barge Office and agreed to
assume responsibility for his Russian Jewish father and his family so that they
could enter the country instead of being denied entrance because they would
become “public charges.”
1890: Harris and Rachel Moldofsky gave
birth to Samuel Moldofsky, the cabinet maker turned rifleman who was killed
during the Third Battle of Ypres during WW I.
1892: When Treasury agents searched a
ship appropriately named the Wandering
Jew in Boston today they found boxes of cigars and opium.
1892: A list of the newly elected
officers of the Hebrew Free School Association published today includes
President Albert F. Hochstadter, Vice President Henry Budge and Treasurer
Newman Cowen
1892: “Curious Novel of Jewish Life In
London” published today provided a review of Children of the Ghetto: Being
Pictures of a Peculiar People by Israel Zangwill.
1893:
In Bucharest, Sarah (née Guttman) and Morris Goldenberg gave birth to
Emanuel Goldberg known to American movie audiences as Edward G. Robinson who
came to the United States in 1902 and gained early fame playing in gangster
movies including the classic Little Caesar and Key Largo but whose worst
performance is oddly enough when he portrays the grumbling Jew in “The Ten
Commandants.”
1894: At the convention of the American Federation of Labor in Denver,
President Samuel Gompers “announced the committees on Resolutions,
Organization, Grievances and Local Federated Bodies.
1895(25th of Kislev, 5656): Chanukah
1895:In New York, the Hebrew
Fair continued to draw “immense crowds” and enjoy three days of increasing
financial success.
1895: Rector Herman Ahlwardt, “who is proud of his German title of
anti-Semitic agitator” dodged eggs as he delivered his first address at Cooper
Union where among other things he referred to the Jews as “a disease.”
1895: Birthdate of prolific
Russian born American Yiddish author Saul Saphire who was a graduate of
Columbia University’s Teachers College and the husband of the former Bessie
Rubin with whom he raised a son, William.
1895: Policemen carried Louis Silverman out of Cooper Union and locked
him up in the East Fifth Street Police Station after he threw eggs at Herman
Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semite who was
speaking at Cooper Union.
1895: The investigation into charges of voter fraud brought by Eugene
Frayer, a member of the Good Government Club that revolved around the residents
of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews resumed today.
1896: In Russia, Nehemiah and Bailey Gitelson gave birth Moses Leo
Gitelson, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, holder of a doctorate from NYU and WW I
veteran who was a partner in Nehemiah Gitelson and Sons, a member of the “board
of overseers of JTS and the husband of Miriam Silverman.
1896: In Budapest, Simon Hevesi, the Chief Rabbi of Budapest and the
former Johanna Brody gave birth to Dr. Eugene Hevesi “who came to the United
States in 1937 as an economic attaché in the Hungarian Embassy. He resigned in
protest over the passage of an anti-Semitic law in Hungary and served with the
American Jewish Committee for 23 years.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/17/obituaries/dr-eugene-hevesi-87-a-jewish-leader-dies.html
1897: Anti-Jewish violence broke out in Bucharest, Romania.
1897: The
Katzenhammer Kids comic strip which Rudolph Block, the “editor of the comic
supplements of the Hearst newspapers” who under the pen name Bruno Lessings
helped to create appeared for the first time today.
1898: It was reported
today that “bankers of National importance, Including Mr. Jefferson Seligman of
the banking house of J & W Seligman “ are uniformly optimistic as to the
outlook for America and American business” with Mr. Seligman being quoted
as saying that “all indications are
pointing to coming widespread prosperity.”
1900: Birthdate of
Warsaw native and Yiddish author Yoysef Vinyetski.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/06/yoysef-vinyetski-jose-winiecki.html
1901(1st
of Tevet, 5662): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah.
1901:
Birthdate of Howard E. Koch, playwright, screen writer and victim of the
Hollywood Blacklist.
1901 Rabbi
B.A. Elzas officiated at the wedding of Ida Maude Mose, the “youngest daughter
of the late B.F. Moise” and “Moise De Leon of New Orleans, LA at the home of
the bride’s mother in Charleston.
1901: In
New York City, Katherine (nee Moden) and artist Frederick William Menken gave
birth to Helen Menken
1902(12th
of Kislev, 5663): Seventy-year-old Edwin Warren Moise passed away in his native
South Carolina.
http://sc150civilwar.palmettohistory.org/edu/people/Moise-EdwinW.htm
1903(23rd
of Kislev, 5664): Solomon Loeb, one of the founders of the banking firm of
Kuhn, Loeb &Co., passed away this evening in New York City at the age of
74.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9902E4DD1539E433A25757C1A9649D946297D6CF
1904:
Birthdate of Nicolas Louis Alexandre, Baron de Gunzburg the Parisian native who
served as editor at Vogue, Harper’s Bazar and Town & Country.
1904(9th
of Tevet, 5665): Sixty-nine year old Jacob Caro the German Jewish historian who
wrote extensively about the history of the Jews Poland passed away today at
Breslau where he been serving as history professor at the University of
Breslau.
1904(9th
of Tevet, 5665): Fifty-four St. Petersburg native Emanuel Schiffers who became
a leading Russian chess master passed away today in his hometown
1905: In
Ireland, Leba Rubin Cohen and Joseph Morris Cohen gave birth to Mark “Mike”
Cohen, the brother of Louis Nathan Cohen.
1905:Birthdate of Manès Sperber an Austrian born French
novelist, essayist and psychologist who also wrote under the pseudonyms Jan
Heger and N.A. Menlos. He was also the father of Italian historian Vladimir
Sperber and French anthropologist and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber.
1905:
Birthdate of Iosif Solomonovich Grossman who gained fame as Soviet author and
journalist Vasily Semyonovich Grossman.
1905: A
dispatch from the Neue Freie Presse today reported that “the town of
Elizabethgrad, Russia, has been burning and that a mob has been killing and
plundering in the Jewish quarter.”
1905: Most
of the five hundred Jews who recently arrived in New York after escaping Russia
are expected to be admitted into the United States today.
1906(25th
of Kislev, 5667): First Day of Chanukah
1906(25th
of Kislev, 5667): Sixty-five-year-old Italian musician and composer Frederico
Consolo, the author of “Libro dei Canti d’Israele” passed away today in
Florence. (There is some confusion about the date of his death. Source is The Year Book of the Central
Conference of American Rabbis.)
1906: The
Brownsville Retail Kosher Butcher’s Association was meeting at the same time
that the women of Brownsville were holding a mass meeting designed to gain
support for a boycott of the Beef Trust. The mass meeting was chaired by Israel
Reichman. There were 350 butchers at the Kosher Butcher’s meetings, 100 of whom
have closed their shops in support of the attempts to end the Beef Trust.
1906:
Leopold Greenberg, owner of a successful British advertising agency, publisher
of “The Jewish Yearbook” and an ardent Zionist writes Jacobus Kann, his friend
a Dutch Zionist, that “The Jewish Chronicle” is for sale and he has begun
negotiating for its purchase.
1907: One
day after he had passed away, Abraham Simon Freeman, the husband of Rhoda
Freeman with whom he had had five children, was buried today at the “Belfast
Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.
1908: Five
immigrants from Russia – Miriam, Blumah and Michael Wolf, Pesach Leib Ronin and
Schije Kuperstein -- bordered the SS Ashton at Antwerp on what they thought was
the next leg of their trip to the United States.
1909:
Birthdate of Hans Alex Keilson, “a Jewish German/Dutch novelist, poet,
psychoanalyst, and child psychologist who wrote about traumas relating to what
happened in Europe during WWII. In particular, he worked with traumatized
orphans. Some of his novels deal with the same time period, though his first
one was published in 1934. He was also active in the Dutch Resistance. Francine
Prose has called him one of ‘the world’s very greatest writers.’" (As
reported by William Grimes)
1909:
Birthdate of Chicago native and University of Chicago alum, Louis Cowan the
husband of the former Pauline Spiegel of Spiegel catalogue fame whose success
in radio and television led him to the presidency of the CBS television
network.
1910:
Julian “Mack was nominated by President William Howard Taft to a joint
appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and
the United States Commerce Court, both new seats having been created by 36
Stat. 539.”
1911: The
Council of Jewish Women, which was organized in September, 1893 and is led by
President Marion L. Misch, the husband of Caesar Misch of Providence, R.I. held
its sixth triennial convention doay in Philadelphia, PA.
1911:
During the days of the British Empire, Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital
of India. Shalom Aaron Cohen who came to India from Aleppo in 1790 was one of
the first Jews to settle in Calcutta.
The arrival of Jews from Baghdad during the 19th century
marked an upturn in their economic and social power that lasted until the power
World War II rise of Indian nationalism.
1911: Dr.
Gustav Steinbach who had passed away at the age of 63 on December 6 was laid to
rest today.
1912(2nd
of Tevet, 5673): Seventy-seven-year-old Baltimore, MD merchant Isaac Strouse
passed away today.
1912: James
Creelman, the national famous American journalist and Vice President of the
Citizens’ Committee to Protest Against Russia’s Discrimination said today, in
response to Russia on-going refusal to recognize the passports granted to
American Jews said today “Russia has got to come to a decision very soon in
agreeing to a new treaty which makes no discrimination against citizens of the
United States, regardless of where they were born or what their religious
views.”
1912: Mrs.
Joseph Fish presided over this afternoon’s meeting of the Deborah Woman’s club
whose attendees included Miss Marion Stadcker.
1912(2nd
of Tevet, 5673): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1912(2nd
of Tevet, 5673): Fifty-seven year old Barry Dantzig, the husband of “Anna Kasor
Dantzig” passed away today and was buried in the Sheffield Cemetery in Kansas
City, MO.
1913:Hebrew language officially used to teach in schools located in
Eretz Israel.
1914(24th of Kislev, 5675): Parashat Vayeshev
1914(24th of Kislev, 5675): In the evening Jews kindle
the first Chanukah light during World War I.
1915: Birthdate of Frank Sinatra.Sinatra “may
have been one of America 's most famous Italian Catholics, but he kept the
Jewish people and the State of Israel close to his heart, manifesting life-long
commitments to fighting anti-Semitism and to activism on behalf of Israel .
Sinatra stepped forward in the early 1940s, when big names were needed to rouse
America into saving Europe's remaining Jews, and he sang at an "Action for
Palestine” rally (1947). He sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, and he donated over $1 million to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, which
honored him by dedicating the Frank Sinatra International Student Center. (The
Center made heartbreaking headlines when terrorists bombed it in 2002, killing
nine people.) As the result of his support for the Jewish State, his movies and
records were banned in some Arab countries. Sinatra helped Teddy Kollek, later
the long-serving mayor of Jerusalem but then a member of the Haganah, by
serving as a $1 million money-runner that helped Israel win the war. The
Copacabana Club, which was very much run and controlled by the same
Luciano-related New York Mafia crowd with whom Sinatra had become enmeshed,
happened to be next door to the hotel out of which Haganah members were operating.
In his autobiography, Kollek relates how, trying in March 1948 to circumvent an
arms boycott imposed by President Harry Truman on the Jewish fighters in Eretz
Yisroel, he needed to smuggle about $1 million in cash to an Irish ship captain
docked in the Port of New York. The young Kollek spotted Sinatra at the bar
and, afraid of being intercepted by federal agents, asked for help. In the
early hours of the morning, the singer went out the back door with the money in
a paper bag and successfully delivered it to the pier. The origins of Sinatra's
love affair with the Jewish people are not clear, but for years, the Hollywood
icon wore a small mezuzah around his neck, a gift from Mrs. Golden, an elderly
Jewish neighbor who cared for him during his boyhood in Hoboken, N.J. (Years
later, he honored her by purchasing a quarter million dollars' worth of Israel
bonds). He protected his Jewish friends, once responding to an anti-Semitic
remark at a party by simply punching the offender. Time magazine
reported that Sinatra walked out on the christening of his own son when the
priest refused to allow a Jewish friend to be the godfather. As late as 1979,
he raged over the fact that a Palm Springs cemetery official in California
declared that he could not arrange the burial of a deceased Jewish friend over
the Thanksgiving holiday; Sinatra again -- threatened to punch him in the nose.
Sinatra famously played the role of a Jewish pilot in Cast a Giant
Shadow, the 1966 film filmed in Israel and starring friend Kirk Douglas as
Mickey Marcus, the Jewish-American colonel who fought and died in Israel's War
for Independence (Sinatra dive-bombs Egyptian tanks with seltzer bottles!) He
donated his salary for the part to the Arab-Israeli Youth Center in Nazareth,
and he also made a significant contribution to the making of Genocide,
a film about the Holocaust, and helped raise funds for the film. Less known is
Sinatra in Israel (1962), a short 45-minute featurette he made in which he sang
"In the Still of the Night "and "Without a Song". He also
starred in "The House I Live In" (1945), a ten-minute short film made
to oppose anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, which received an Honorary
Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.”
1916: No vote will be taken on the bill
limiting immigration to the United States, which if passed would have a
negative impact on Jews, who after the World War, will seek to escape the
persecution being suffered in various parts of Europe by coming to the United
States.
1916: Birthdate of Teresv native and Orthodox
Jewish survivor of the Holocaust Sara Ailender who was hidden in homes in Budapest
and was liberated by the Red Army
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=4999899
1917: Four
days after the British arrival in Jerusalem, Dr. Yaakov Thon, convened a
meeting of Jewish leaders with an eye toward establishing a City council of
Jerusalem Jews.
1917: While
working in the Judean hills to build a temporary breastwork “enjoyed fresh
meat, bread, vegetables, and rum” for the first time in a long time.
1917: It
was reported today that Al Jolson told the leaders of the drive to raise five
million dollars for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy
that “he remembered enough of his early life in Shrednik near Kovno to realize
how much the money was needed” and then closed by telling William Fox that he
was raising his contribution from one thousand dollars to two thousand dollars.
1917: A
bazar “given under the auspices of Temple Emanu-El” which is designed to raised
fund to go to the “relief of Jewish war sufferers and for welfare work among
American soldiers and sailors is scheduled to open tonight at the home of
Adolph Lewisohn at 881 Fifth Avenue – a location made possible do to Mr.
Lewisohn’s generosity which means none of the funds raised will have to be
spent on renting a hall for the activity.
1917: With
only two days to go, the committee trying to raise five million dollars for
Jewish war relief suffered its worst day for collections today when it raised
only $161,900 which means they have raised $3,048, 252 leaving them almost two
million dollars short of their goal.
1917:
Birthdate of Worcester, MA native and Methodist minister John Stanley Gruel who
served as aboard the “Exodus” in 1947 and who earned the praise of Golda Meir
for his testimony before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
which was critical in the their support for the Partition Resolution of
November 1947.”
https://www.israelanswers.com/sites/israelanswers.com/files/files/images/Grauel.pdf
1918:
“Reports of the team Captains and workers at the headquarters of the Jewish War
Relief, in the Hotel Biltmore indicated that” as of tonight, “almost one of the
five million dollars sought for the suffering Jews in Europe had been raised.”
1918: It
was reported today that the Y.M.H.A. of Washington Heights had raised $1,143 to
aid the suffering Jews of war torn Europe while a soldiers’ committee at Camp
Hancock had raise an additional $108.35 for the same cause.
1919:
Victor Cross winner Leonard Maurice Keysor who had enlisted in 1914 and served
in Egypt and Gallipoli before fighting on the Western Front was discharged
today.
1919:
Birthdate of Abraham Hirschelf, the native of Tarnow, Poland, who became a
successful real estate investor, producer and New York City political
candidate.
1920: Over
a year after premiering in Germany, “Madame DuBarry” a bio-pic directed by
Ernst Lubitsch opened in the United States.
1920(1st
of Tevet, 5681): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah
1920: As
part of the celebration of Chanukah, “a program of Jewish plays, tableaux,
recitations and motion pictures” is scheduled to be shown today for children in
Harlem at the Regent Theatre.
1920: “The
Seventh Annual Flag Day of the Jewish National Fund” is scheduled to be held
today.
1920: Dr.
Wise is scheduled to deliver an address on “Breathes There a Jewish With Soul
So Dead” at “the Union Maccabean Service of the Free Synagogue.”
1920: The
Union of American Hebrew Congregations are scheduled to sponsor “two big mass
meetings” this evening, one in Brooklyn and one in New York, for the purpose of
bringing “the message of Judaism in its modern aspects to the Jews…”
1920:
Terese L. Nathan, the daughter of New Yorker Mr. and Mrs. J.P. Nathan is
scheduled to marry Joseph M. Sydeman after which the couple will honeymoon “on
the Continent and the Far East.”
1920: The Histadrut Ha-ovdim
(General Labor Federation) was founded in pre-state Israel. Its founder, Berel
Katznelson, a disciple of Ber Borochov, combined various labor groups to form a
federation.
1921:
Birthdate of Anita Nathan Bayer the mother of Carole Bayer Sager Daly and
Grandmother of Christopher Elton Bacharach.
1921:
Funeral services are scheduled to held today for 54-year-old Samson D.
Oppenheim, a graduate of CCNY, Harvard and NYU Law School who was the “editor
of The American Jewish Year Book in 1918 and 1919.
1922: Ralph
E. Heilman, the Dean of the Northwestern School of Journalism is scheduled to
“give his first of a series of lectures on ‘The Newer Ideas in Business and
Industry’” today “at the first monthly tea sponsored by the Educational
Department of the Chicago Woman’s Aid.”
1922:
Sisterhood President Mrs. Gerson B. Levi is scheduled to oversee an exhibit and
sale of work made the blind at B’nai Sholom Temple Community House in Chicago.
1922: Thirty-one-year-old
Maurice Bloch the
NYU trained attorney and New York State Assembly, the son of Netta Donner and
David Bloch, married Madeline Neuberger today.
1923: “Four convicted
pickpockets and the widow and the mother of two youths who were slain on the
lower east side were witnesses today in Judge alley's part of General Sessions
at the trial of Louis Kushner alias Louis Cohen, for shooting and killing
"Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan in front of the Essex Market Court.
1923: It was reported
today that several Jewish students were badly in a demonstrations by Christian
students at the university in Budapest.
1924: In the Bronx, Yetta (or Joyce, née Silpe) and Louis (Leib) Koch,
immigrants from Uscieczko in Eastern Galicia gave birth to Edward Irving “Ed”
Koch who served as Mayor of New York City from 1977 to 1989.
1924:
Birthdate of Baghdad native Nissim Rejwan, “an author journalist and political
commentator” who “began writing of the Iraq Times” before emigrating to Israel
in 1951 “where he joined the staff of the Jerusalem Post.”
https://fonsvitae.com/sil_author/nissim-rejwan/
1924(15th of Kislev,
5685): In Berlin, fifty-seven-year-old
Alexander Israel Helphand, the man who negotiated with the German’s during
World War I to gain Lenin’s return to Russia from Switzerland which brought
about the Communist Revolution and took Russia out of World War I passed away.
1925(25th of Kislev,
5686): Parashat Vayeshev; First Day of Chanukah
1925: Birthdate of Russian
composer Vladimir Shainsky.
1925:
The Majlis of Iran votes to crown Reza Khan as the new Shah of Persia. The new
Shah removed “removed restrictions on Jews and other religious
minorities.’ He prohibited the mass
conversion of Jews and “Jews were allowed to hold government jobs.” But the Shah’s sympathetic view of Nazi
Germany, along with an under-current of anti-Jewish sentiment, left the
community with a sense of discomfort.
1926:
“Palestine Comes Into the Modern Word” published today provides a detailed
review of Palestine Awake: The Rebirth of a Nation by Sophie Irene Loeb.
1927:
“Jerusalem Ten Years Ago” published today marks the decennial of Allenby’s
entrance into Jerusalem.
1928:
In Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Alfred Frankenthaler and his wife Martha
gave birth to abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Helen_Frankenthaler-1956.jpg
http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/12/1928/this-week-in-history-soak-stain-artist-helen-frankenthaler-is-born
1928:
The jury found in favor of Dr. Louis Lahn today in civile case in which had
been charged with negligence while performing an operation on a popular
vaudeville actress.
1929:
“The agreement of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America,
the Jewish Colonization Association of Paris and the United Jewish emigration
Committee of Europe on united work in the fields of Jewish emigration and
immigration was renewed for another three years at a meeting of the American
organization’s board of directors” where it was also agreed upon that the
budget for the work should be two hundred thousand dollars.
1930:
“A delegation from six Zionist organizations visited Professor Albert Einstein
this morning on board the Red Star liner Belegenland which is docked in New
York and presented him with a special volume of the Golden Book of the Jewish
National Fund” which contains a list of all those who have contributed to the
Palestine fund in his name.
1930: William Kohn, the owner of a
medical supply company and dressmaker Hannah Kohn gave birth University of
Pennsylvania trained architect and U.S. Navy veteran Arthur Eugene Kohn, “an
architect who co-founded the firm Kohn Pedersen Fox in 1976 and whose ambitions
led it to become, within a few years, a rival to long-established international
architectural firms and one of the most prolific designers of skyscrapers in
the world…” (As reported by Paul Goldberger)
https://www.design.upenn.edu/post/memoriam-eugene-kohn-1930-2023
1931(2nd of Tevet,
5692): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah
1931: Dr. Alexander Rosenfeld,
vice president of the World Maccabee Association, spoke this afternoon over
WLPH from the Lyric Theatre, Brooklyn.
He talked about the forthcoming Maccabee Jewish Games which will be held
in Tel Aviv in March, 1932 and in which more than 3,000 Jewish athletes from
all parts of the world are expected compete.
1932:
“Biography” a play written by S.N. Behrman premiered on Broadway at the Guild
Theatre.3.
1932:
The NBC Blue Network broadcast episode number three of “Flywheel, Shyster, and
Flywheel” starring Groucho and Chico Marx,
1933(24th
of Kislev, 5694): Kindle the first Chanukah candle
1933(24th
of Kislev, 5694): Seventy-eight-year-old German American violinist and prolific
composer Theodore Moses Tobani whose most famous composition in “Hearts and
Flowers” passed a way today
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/12/13/90659703.html?pageNumber=23
1933:
In Strasbourg, Polish born Rabbi Oscar (Ovadia) Eisenberg and his wife gave
birth to French television producer Josy (Yossef ) Eisenberg.
1934:
In New Orleans, the sale of the Roosevelt Hotel to The New Orleans Roosevelt
Corporation headed by Seymour Weiss was finalized today.
1935:
Heinrich Himmler begins the Lebensborn Project.
1935:
It was reported today, the Associated Real Estate Corporation, under the
leadership of its president Richard M. Leder, has acquired the last parcel of land
on Lydig Avenue giving it control of a block of land containing 22 store
fronts.
1936(28th
of Kislev, 5696): Parashat Miketz; Fourth day of Chanukah
1936:
At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Nathan Perilman is scheduled to deliver a sermon “A
Strange Call to Arms.
1936:
At West End Synagogue, Rabbi Gustave Falk is scheduled to deliver a sermon
“Synagogues, Old and New.”
1936:
At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon
on “What Is Worth Dying For?”
1936:
At Temple Israel, Rabi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon on
“One Drop of Blood and Many Drops of Water.”
1936:
In Chur, Switzerland, Dr. Eugence Curti, the attorney for David Frankfurter who
has been charged with murdering the leader of the Nazi Party in Switzerland,
delivered his summation which included a plea for mercy saying that “the
sentence of eighteen years demanded by the prosecution was ‘too severe’ and
pleaded with the court of ‘justice and humanity.’”
1936:
U.S. premiere of Camille, “an American romantic drama directed by George Cukor
and produced by Irving Thalberg and Bernard H. Hyman.
1937:
Jewish writer Arch Oboler caused more controversy with his script contribution
to today’s edition of The Chase and Sanborn Hour. In Oboler's sketch, host Don
Ameche and guest Mae West portrayed a slightly bawdy Adam and Eve, satirizing
the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. On the surface, the sketch did not
feature much more than West's customary suggestive double-entendres, and today
it seems quite tame. But in 1937, that sketch and a subsequent routine
featuring West trading suggestive quips with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie
McCarthy cause a furor that resulted in West being banned from broadcasting and
from being mentioned at all on NBC programming for 15 years.
1937: The Palestine Post
reported numerous assassinations, attempted murders, hold-ups and robberies
perpetrated by Arab terrorists all over the country. In Haifa, Elimelech
Gromet, 13, the victim of a terror attack in the Hadar Hacarmel quarter, died
of his wounds. Sheikh Khatib, an Arab notable, and his bodyguard were murdered
in the town's Arab quarter. In Jerusalem all gates of the Old City, except for
the well-guarded Jaffa and Damascus gates, were closed from early in the
evening until late the following morning.
1937: The Polish Dombrowski Brigade (part of the 13th IB) formed a
Jewish Company from the 2nd PalafoxBattalion (Palafox was a Spanish patriot
from the Napoleonic invasion), called The Botwin Company, today at
Tardadientes, and named after Naftali Botwin (a famous Polish Jewish radical,
executed in 1924 for assassinating a Polish Secret police agent).
https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/features/the-jews-of-the-spanish-civil-war-a-forgotten-story-1.60438
1938: Friedrich Münzer, the German classical scholar who had lost
his teaching position and most of his friends after he was classified as a Jews
and who would eventually die at Theresienstadt wrote to his colleague Ronald
Syme at Oxford University “that the changed situation ‘deeply depressed’ him,
but that he still considered himself better off than many others.”
1938: Birthdate of David Gurfinkel, the Tel Aviv native who became
a leading Israeli cinematographer.
http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/gurfinkel.htm
1939:In eastern areas of Greater Germany, two years of
forced labor is made compulsory for all Jewish males aged 14 to 60.
1939: Jews are expelled from Kalisz in the Warthegau region of
Poland; many flee to Warsaw.
1940: The Salvador, a ship that set out from Varna,
Bulgaria, a month ago, with 350 Jewish refugees aboard sinks in the Sea of
Marmora with 250 Jewish refugees, including 75 children being drowned. T. M.
Snow, head of the British Foreign Office's Refugee Section, notes that
"there could have been no more opportune disaster from the point of view
of stopping this [Jewish refugee] traffic [to Palestine]."
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.631302
1941: “The
Wolf Man,” a horror film written by Curt Siodmak was released today.
1941: Adolf
Hitler announced plans for the extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the
Reich Chancellery
1941: In the second action in two weeks, the Germans killed another
estimated 12,000 inhabitants of the Riga Ghetto.
1941: The German Army of Occupation began a house to house search in Paris
looking for Jews.
1941:The SS Struma set sail from Constanţa, on the Black
Sea
1941:
Romania declared war on the United States.
1942(4th
of Tevet, 5703): Parashat Miketz
1942(4th of Tevet, 5703): Fifty-nine-year-old Benjamin
Pinkowitz, the husband of Mollie Finkelstein Pinkowitz and the father of George
Pinkowitz, the World War II veteran who supplemented his income as a teacher by
working as a pharmacist after having married Cecelia Glick Pinkowitz, passed
away today after which he was buried at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten
Island.
1942: MGM
released “White Cargo” starring Hedy Lamarr to the cinematic audience.
1942: The
Jews of Volhunia revolt against a German round-up.
1942 Jewish prisoners at a labor camp in Lutsk, Ukraine, armed
with knives, bricks, iron bars, acid, and several revolvers and sawed-off
shotguns, revolt against Germans and Ukrainians. The uprising is crushed.
1942: The
U.S. Army Medical Corps established an evacuation hospital at Tlemcen, the
Algerian city whose “most important place pilgrimage of all religions was the
Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town.”
1943: The chairman of the Jewish Council in Wlodzimierz Wolynski,
Poland, the site of street massacres in 1942, assures the remaining ghetto
residents that they will be safe
1943(15th
of Kislev, 5704): The day after his 57th birthday, Nice born, French
composer Marcel Lattès was murdered at Auschwitz today.
1943:
Birthdate of Hana Spitzer, the native of Kfar Pines who gained famed as Rabbi
Hanan Porat, Israeli educator and MK.
1943(15th
of Kislev, 5704): Thirty-six year old Wanda Abenaim Pacifici, the wife of
Riccardo Reuven Pacifici who was murdered at Auschwitz, was murdered today at
the same death camp.
1944(26th
of Kislev, 5705): Second Day of Chanukah
1944(26th
of Kislev, 5705): Forty-two-year-old Regina Jonas, the Berlin native who was
“the first woman ordained as a rabbi, was murdered at Auschwitz today.
1944(26th
of Kislev, 5705): Sixty-seven-year-old Columbia trained lawyer and life-long
music aficionado Lewis Montefiore Isaacs, the son of Meyer and Maria Solomon
Isaacs and the husband Edith J. Rich “the editor of Theatre Art Monthly, who found time to serve as the Borough
President of Manhattan and to write guides to “Koenigskinder” and “Hansel and
Gretel” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/12/13/86738953.pdf
1944:
“After sustaining very heavy casualties from enemy artillery fire and the cold
weather, the entire First Division,” including Samuel Fuller of the 16th
Infantry Regiment “was sent to a rest camp today.”
1945: The
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution of U.S. aid to
open Palestine to Jewish refugees.
1946: Arabs
call for a general strike to protest the alleged abduction of an Arab in
Salame, Palestine by the Haganah.
1946: Two
illegal Arab Armies were merged by the Arab High Committee into the Arab Youth
Movement.
1946:
Birthdate of Steve Goldsmith, Harvard professor and former mayor of
Indianapolis, Indiana.
1947:
Gordon P. Merriam, chief of Division of Near Eastern Affairs, refers Dr. Irving
E Medoff of New Jersey to the United Nations after he had written to the U.S.
State department concerning his interest in organizing an air force group to
operate in Palestine. Merriam’s referral
is based on the U.S. view that matters pertaining to Palestine are under the
control of the UN.
1947:
Birthdate of Irving Azoff, the native of Danville, Illinois who went from
booking bands while in high school to being named the “most powerful person in
the music history” in 2012.
1947: King
Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia promised that the Arabs will protect and maintain
American oil operations at the same time expressing the hope that the U.S. will
correct its “mistake” on the issue of Palestine Partition
1947:
British foreign minister Ernest Bevin asks the Jews for a moratorium on
“illegal immigration” while the mandate is still in power.
1947:UN Trusteeship Subcommittee announces that
internationalized Jerusalem will only have a police force which can call on UN
Security Council if more order is needed. Legislature is legally
"rigged" so a minority group will keep a balance of power between
Jewish and Arab factors.
1947: The
Arab League voted to provide funds, weapons and volunteers for an impending
Palestine war designed to thwart the United Nation’s partition vote. An Arab Liberation Army under the command of
an Iraqi staff officer named Ismail Safwat Pasha established its headquarters
outside of Damascus and gave field command to Fawzi al-Qawujki a veteran
terrorist leader of the uprisings during the 1930’s.
1947(29th
of Kislev, 5708): An Arab gang stopped a BOAC truck leaving Lydda Airport. The Arabs told the Arabs on the truck to run
away. The three Jews – Yitzhak Jian,
David Ben Ovadia and Joseph Litvak - were then shot dead.
1948:
“Bicycle Thieves” an Italian film was released today in the United States thank
to the distribution efforts of Joseph Burstyn and Arthur Mayer through their
company Burstyn-Mayer, Inc.
1948:
Israel and Transjordan let Christians travel to Bethlehem for Christmas
pilgrimages
1948: “Less
than two weeks after the signing of the final cease-fire, the ‘Valor Road’ was
opened by Ben-Gurion as a secure by-pass for travel from Jerusalem to the
coast. The road replaced the famous
‘Burma Road’ and made it possible for Jews to travel the fifteen miles from the
Judean hills to the coastal settlements without having to brave Arab sniper
attacks.
1948: Today, Harold Rosenwald, "an associate of Edward
C. McLean, Mr. Hiss' attorney," issued a statement by Hiss which said:
"...I repeat the denial... I did not at any time deliver any official
documents to Mr. Chambers or any unauthorized person”
1949(21st
of Kislev, 5710): Abraham Baron, the Riga born executive secretary of HIA and
trade union organizer passed away today in Brooklyn.
1949: The
U.S. asks Israel and Jordan not to do anything which would disrupt relations
with other Arab states or the Vatican.
1949:
Birthdate of Anglo-Jewish historian David Samuel Harvard Abulafia, the 2020
winner of the Wolfson History Prize for The Boundless Sea: A Human History
of the Oceans who is married to another famous historian Anna Sapir Abufia.
(Can you imagine what a Shabbat dinner would be like at their house?)
https://www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/past-winners/2020-winners/boundless-sea/
1950: One day after he had passed away, funeral services were held
for 72 year old Herbert Marcus, Sr. the Louisville, KY born son of Jacob and
Delia Marcus and high school troop, who after moving went from janitor in a
Hillsboro, TX general store, to life insurance salesman in Dallas to being the
co-founder of Neiman-Marcus Department Store and philanthropic community leader
as can be seen by his service as President of Temple Emanuel, founder of the
Southwestern division of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and
“primary fund raiser for S.M.U.
1950: Paula Ackerman became the interim "spiritual
leader" of Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi after her husband,
who was the congregation's rabbi, passed away. (As reported by the Jewish
Women’s Archives)
http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/12/1950/paula-ackerman
1951: Yosef Sprinzak, the
Speaker of the Knesset became acting President of Israel when Chaim Weizman
became so ill he could not fill the position.
1952:The Jerusalem
Post reported that the Political Committee of the UN General Assembly
passed, by 32 votes to 13, with 13 abstentions, a strongly worded resolution
calling for direct Arab-Israeli negotiations.
1952: As HUAC continued its investigation of Rutgers Professor
Moses Finley, the Board of Trustees adopted a resolution declaring "It
shall be cause for immediate dismissal of any member of faculty or staff to
fail to cooperate with government inquiries.”
1952: “Berta Gersten, who has just returned from a tour of Britain
and France” is scheduled to “appear as a guest star” tonight at the Avalon
Theatre in the Bronx.
1952(24th of Kislev, 5713): In the evening, kindle the
first Chanukah light
1952:” After an interruption of several months due to his involvement
in a severe automobile accident’ Rabbi Joseph Jasin will deliver his first sermon
today on “The First Candle” at the Free Synagogue of Los Angeles.
1953(6th of Tevet, 5714): Parashat Vayigash
1953:
Birthdate of Ben Shalom Bernanke,
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
1954(17th of Kislev, 5715): Seventy-seven-year-old author Ezra
Selig Brudno, the Valozhyn born son of Hannah Model and Isaac Brudno, the Yale
trained attorney and husband of Rose Hess with whom he raised two children
Lincoln and Emily passed away today in Shaker Heights, OH.
https://case.edu/ech/articles/b/brudno-ezra
1954: It was reported today that Joseph Floch’s recently closed showing
of his works was described as “Landscapes and figures in studio interiors are
luminous in tone, impassive in mood; and leave it to brushwork and color to
enliven them.”
1955(27th of Kislev, 5716): Third day of Chanukah; kindle 4th
candle in the evening.
1955: “The Rose Tattoo” a film version of the play by the same name
written by Hal Kanter, directed by Daniel Mann and produced by Hal Wallis was
released today.
1955(27th of Kislev, 5716): Operation Olive Leaves, under the
command of Ariel Sharon came to a successful conclusion with the destruction of
all the Syrian gun emplacements attacked by the IDF. Among the casualties were
ten wounded including Rafael Eitan and six dead including Yitzchak Ben
Menachem, a hero of Israel's War of Independence “who was killed by a Syrian
hand grenade.” “Casualties in the operation included Rafael Eitan (wounded in
his stomach) and Yitzhak Ben Menachem (surnamed “Gulliver” because of his height),
an Independence War hero who had replaced Motta Gur as Company Commander.
1956(8th of Tevet, 5717): Sixty-four-year-old German born
screenwriter and director E.A. (Ewals Andre) Dupont who fled to the United
States when the Nazis came to power passed away today in Los Angeles.
1957(19th of Kislev, 5718): Sixty-nine-year-old Harvard
educated lawyer and veteran of the American Expeditionary Force Arthur E.
Manheimer, “the former president of the National Jewelers Association” and
husband of Ruth Manheimer with whom he had two sons – William and Kent – passed
away today.
1960(23rd of Kislev, 5721): Eighty-five-year-old to Estelle A.
May Affedler, the wife of Louis J. Affelder, the Pittsburgh civil engineer and
civic leader with whom she had three children Mrs. Emanuel, Mrs. S. Lewis
Merritt and Paul B. Affelder, the music critic for the Brooklyn Eagle passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/13/99901883.pdf
1962: U.S. premiere of “Freud: The Secret Passion,” an “American
biographical film drama based on the life of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud” with music by Jerry Goldsmith and featuring David Kossoff as “Jacob
Freud.
1963: Kenya gains its independence
from the United Kingdom. Jews began to settle in Kenya in the early years of
the 20th century.In
1904, The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation was established in 1904 and the 20
families living in Nairobi built the country’s first synagogue in 1913. The
community saw some growth after World War II. In 1955, “Israel Somen, the
president of the Board of Kenya Jewry, was elected mayor of Nairobi.” A small
Jewish community has continued to exist which has not been always been the case
of former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa.
Israel and Kenya continue to enjoy positive relations.
1963: “The Cardinal” the movie version of the novel with the same name
directed by Otto Premininger, with music by Jerome Moross and promotional
posters by Saul Bass was released in the United States today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cardinal#/media/File:The_cardinal.jpg
1964: “Casablan,” or “Kazablan” a film adaptation of a play of the same
name that substitutes Ashkenazim and Sephardim for Montagues and Capulets,
premiered in New York.
1965 A memorial service is scheduled to be
held this morning in the Blumenthal Auditorium of Mount Sinai Hospital for fifty-seven year old
Russian born and Columbia trained physician Dr. Sidney Tarachow, the former
member of the faculty of Iowa State University and director of the division of
psychoanalytic education of the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and clinical
professor of psychiatry
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/12/06/95918385.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1966: A 27 year member of Local 338 writes to the national union
headquarters expressing his despair over the deteriorating conditions in the
bagel industry which are leading to cuts in pay, benefits and the number of
jobs available for bakers.
1966: “A Man for All Seasons” the film version of the Broadway play
directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann was released in the United States
today.
1967(10th of Kislev, 5728): Forty-nine-year-old City College
graduate and WW II Marine Corps Veteran, Irving Gitlin, the New York born son
of Jacob and Celia Gitlin who was a leading producer of documentaries for CBS
and NBC passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/12/13/84922044.pdf
https://www.emmys.com/bios/irving-gitlin
1968: In response to repeated terrorist attacks against Israeli aircraft
“a heliborne paratroop force raided Beirut Airport and destroyed Lebanese
aircraft today.”
1968(21st of Kislev, 5729): Sixty-six year old German born
neurosurgeon and author Carl F. List who in 1934 came to the United States and
lived in Grand Rapids, passed away today.
1970(14th of Kislev, 5731): Parashat Vayishlach
1970(14th of Kislev, 5731): Just days before his 81st
birthday “Russian and Soviet avant-garde artist, Cubist painter, stage designer
and book illustrator” Nathan Isaevich Altman passed away today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Altman#/media/File:Natan_Altman_(selfportrait,_1911,_GRM).jpg
1970:
Birthdate of Jennifer Connelly who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress
2002 for A Beautiful Mind and the 2002 Golden Globe 2002 for same role.
1971(24th
of Kislev, 5732): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.
1971(24th
of Kislev, 5732): David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA and founder of NBC, passed away. Born in Russia 1891, Sarnoff reportedly studied to be a
rabbi before joining the Marconi Wireless Company as a telegraph operator. He became the leading figure in the creation
of RCA.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989773,00.html
1971(24th
of Kislev, 5732): Sixty-two year old philologist and linguist Yechezkel
Kutscher, the native of Sloavkia who made Aliyah in 1931 and pursued a career
which earned him the Israel Prize in 1961 passed away today.
1973:
“The Last Detail” featuring Gilda Radner and with music by Johnny Mandel was
released today in the United States.
1973(17th
of Kislev, 5734): Seventy-three-year-old Warsaw born composer Chemjo Vinaver
passed away today in Jerusalem.
http://www.emanuelnyc.org/composer.php?composer_id=93
1974:
Thirteen people were injured lightly or moderately In Jerusalem when an
explosive device went off in Ben Yehuda Street
1974:
“The Godfather Part II” featuring Less Strasberg, James Caan and Abe Vigoda and
edited by Peter Zinner premiered in New York City.
1975(8th
of Tevet, 5736): Eighty-nine-year-old Elias H. Margolis, the Polish born son of
Abraham Isaac Margolis and Chaya Feigel "Fanny" Margolis, and husband
of Dora / Dorothea Margolis passed away today in Akron, OH.
1975: In San Diego, CA,
Barry Bialik and Beverly Winkelman gave birth to actress Mayim Bialik, who
played Blossom Russo on “Blossom” and Amy Farrah Fowler on “The Big Bang.” “Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet,
was Mayim Bialik's great-great-grandfather's uncle”
1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): 8th day of
Chanukah
1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): One person was killed and 25
were injured during a grenade attack at Beersheba.
1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): Eighty-six year old French
filmmaker Raymond Bernard passed away today/
1978(12th of Kislev, 5739): American painter Norman Raeben died of heart
attack in the lobby of his apartment.
Born in Russia in 1901, he was “the youngest of the six children of
Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem.” “The pen-name 'Raeben' is probably derived
from his family-name 'Rabinowitz'.
Raeben moved to New York City with his family in 1914. He studied
painting from Robert Henri, George Luks and John French Sloan, who all belonged
to the Ashcan School. His studio was on the 11th floor of Carnegie Hall. His
students include Bob Dylan, Bernice Sokol Kramer, Carolyn Schlam, Andrew
Gottlieb, Janet Cohn, John Smith, Diana Postel, Lori Lerner and Rosalyn (Roz)
Jacobs. Raeben's mission was to teach the art of painting through intuition and
feeling, instead of through conceptualization.”
1979(22nd
of Kislev, 5740): Elka de Levie, the only Jewish gymnast of the triumphant 1928
Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928
to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, passed away.
1980:
Today, sixty-five-year-old Joseph Kagan (Baron Kagan, the founder of Kagan
Textiles “was convicted of four counts of theft after which he was “fined
£375,000 and served a ten-month sentence, first in Armley, then in Rudgate open
prison, Yorkshire.”
1981(16th
of Kislev, 5742): Parashat Vayishlach
1981(16th
of Kislev, 5742): Eighty-two-year-old Bessarabian born Anglo-Jewish economic historian
Sir Michael Moissey Postan, the Professor of Economic History at the University
of Cambridge, known as formally as Munia Postan” who married Lady Cynthia
Rosalie Keppel, daughter of the 9th Earl of Albemarle after the death of his
first wife, Ellen Power” passed away today at Cambrdige.
1986:
“¡Three Amigos! “a spoof the Magnificent Seven directed by John Landis,
produced by Lorne Michaels who wrote the script along with Randy Newman who in
turn created the music along with Elmer Bernstein was released in the United
States today.
1986:
In Atlantic City, NJ, Rabbi George Martin officiate at the marriage of Elisha
Anne Hoffman and Walter Untermeyer, Jr., the assistant district attorney of
Philadelphia.
1986:
Frank Rich’s review of “Dream of a Blacklisted Actor” Conrad Bromberg’s play
about his father, Edward Bromberg whose career was destroyed during the
McCarthy era was published today.
1988:Foreign Minister Shimon Peres urged the Palestine
Liberation Organization today to direct its diplomacy toward Israel rather than
the United States. ‘We criticize the Palestinian position and their
declarations because they have been looking for expressions that travel well in
Washington rather than for positions that make sense in Jerusalem,'' Mr. Peres
told a meeting of American and Israeli officials and academics. ''The
Palestinians must remember, as we do that coexistence between the Palestinians and
Israel must take place in the Middle East and not in North America,'' Mr. Peres
said. ''The Palestinians must not only talk peace - and I appreciate statements
in favor of peace - but behave peacefully,'' he said.
1988: European countries are pressing the Palestine Liberation
Organization and its Arab allies to moderate plans to seek United Nations
recognition of an independent Palestinian state, diplomats said today. The
effort came on the eve of a special meeting of the United Nations General
Assembly. Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, is to be the main speaker Tuesday
when the Assembly holds its first meeting in Geneva. The Assembly decided to
move here for its annual debate on the Palestinian question after the Reagan
Administration refused to give Mr. Arafat a visa to address the Assembly in New
York.
1989: In Soviets Trying to Become Team Player in Mideast”
published today, Alan Cowell describes the change in Russian Middle East policy
from one of confrontation to “partnership with Washington in the diplomacy of
the region.”
1990(25th of Kislev, 5751): Chanukah
1990:
A fund-raising dinner and dance is held at the Pierre to further the
restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side. The event also honors the founders of the
Eldridge Street Project, who include Brooke Astor, Joan K. Davidson, Simon
Rifkind and Joanna and Daniel Rose.
1990:
The 1991 fund-raising campaign of the UJA-Federation of New York opens with the
Lawyers Division annual Proskauer Award Dinner during which Ira M. Millstein, a
senior partner in the New York law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, receives
the award.
1990:
The Young Professionals of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University sponsor
a concert at Steinway Hall to raise money to help replace the instruments
Soviet émigré musicians in Israel could not take from the Soviet Union. The
pianist Dina Joffe and her husband, the violinist Mikhail Vaiman, and the
pianist Byron Janis, an officer of American Friends, are among those who help
to provide the evening’s entertainment.
1991(5th
of Tevet, 5752): Israeli artist Moshe Elazar Castel, the native of Jerusalem
born in 1909 and son or Rabbi Yehuda Castel and his wife Rachel passed away
today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04040.html
http://www.soussanart.com/artist.php?id=4
http://www.soussanart.com/liste.php?artist=4
1993:
Today Mr. Rabin and Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, agreed in Cairo that they needed more time to resolve complex
security issues before self-rule could begin in roiling Gaza and placid
Jericho, and they gave themselves at least another 10 days.
1993:
Rabbi Helene Ferris officiated at the wedding of Robert Stanley Bannister and
Celia Ingrid Farber, the freelance author who wrote extensively about HIV and
AIDS and is the daughter of radio talk show host Barry Farber.
1993:
Under attack by some political leaders for dealing far less firmly with Jews
who commit acts of violence than with Palestinians, the Israeli Army today
ordered soldiers to take "strong action" against law-breaking
settlers in the occupied territories, including possible arrests and curfews.
1994(9th
of Tevet, 5755): Yosef Harmelin, the native of Vienna who came to Israel as a
teenager in 1939 and served two tours as director of Shin Bet passed away
today.
1994:
Israel and Jordan fleshed out their new peace treaty some more today, opening
temporary embassies in each other's country and saying they would exchange
ambassadors next month. For the first time, an Israeli flag flew openly in
Amman, and in a separate ceremony a few hours later, the Jordanian flag was
raised in Tel Aviv, where almost all countries put their missions to Israel.
Both embassies are in hotels for now, until permanent locations are found.
Israel has yet to name its ambassador to Jordan, which on Oct. 26 became the
second Arab country, after Egypt, to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state.
Amman has appointed Marwan Muasher, a former spokesman for the Jordanian
delegation to peace talks in Washington, as its ambassador, but he will not
begin his assignment for several more weeks.
1995(20th
of Kislev, 5756): Rabbi Moshe-Zvi Neria, the native of Łódź who became an
Israeli educator and MK passed away today.
1995(20th
of Kislev, 5756): Eighty-seven-year-old David Saul Marshal “a politician and
lawyer from Singapore who served as Singapore's first Chief Minister from 1955
to 1956” passed away today in Singapore.
1995: Israeli PM Shimon Peres
addressed both houses of the US Congress.
1996:
“After only 14 months at Disney, Michael Ovitz was fired” today.
1997: “Hugo
Pool” a comedy featuring Richard Lewis was released in the United States today.
1997:
“Deconstructing Harry” a comedy directed and written by Woody Allen,
co-produced by Letty Aronson and starring Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Billy
Crystal, Amy Irving and Julia Louis-Dreyfus among others was released today in
the United States.
1997: John
Marks, the former Berlin bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report wrote an
essay cautioning against letting the hunt for the stolen assets hoarded by the
Swiss and other European dangers overshadow the reality of the primary villain
of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany. “’No one
would argue that German evil absolves Swiss cupidity or French
collaboration. But it would be a very
odd paradox indeed if the partial eclipse of German culpability became a
permanent historical fixture” as the heirs of the Holocaust seek to regain the
property of their progenitors.
1999: The New York Times book section includes
a review of Jacob H. Schiff: A Study
in American Jewish Leadership by Naomi W. Cohen.
1999(3rd of
Tevet, 5760): Author Joseph Heller passed away.
He is best remembered as the author of Catch-22. a book whose
title has entered the English language (As reported by Richard Severo and
Herbert Mitgang)
2000:
“Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker” featuring Michael Rosenbaum was released
in the Uited States today.
2001:
Yasser Arafat bowed to long-standing Israeli demands by ordering the closure of
the offices of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The supposed closing had no effect in ending
the terrorism which enjoyed Arafat’s continued support.
2001: Four
people were injured when at Neve Dekalim as a result of Hamas bombing.
2001: Irv
Rubin, JDL Chairman, and Earl Krugel, a member of the organization, were
charged with conspiracy to bomb private and government property.
2001(27th
of Kislev, 5762): Three terrorists attacked a #189 Dan bus and several
passenger cars with a roadside bomb, anti-tank grenades, and light arms fire
near the entrance to Emmanuel in Samaria at 6:00 p.m. Ten people, including two
teenagers, were killed and 30 others were injured. The victims: Yair Amar, 13,
of Emmanuel; Esther Avraham, 42, of Emmanuel; Border Police Chief Warrant
Officer Yoel Bienenfeld, 35, of Moshav Tel Shahar; Moshe Gutman, 40, of
Emmanuel; Avraham Nahman Nitzani, 17, of Betar Illit; Yirmiyahu Salem, 48, of
Emmanuel; Israel Sternberg, 46, of Emmanuel; David Tzarfati, 38, of Ginot
Shomron; Hananya Tzarfati, 32, of Kfar Saba; Ya’akov Tzarfati, 64, of Kfar
Saba. Both Fatah and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
2002:Austria failed in its attempt to block a lawsuit by an
86-year-old American citizen who fled the Nazis in 1942 and whose uncle owned
the works. In a promising ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit said that Austria was not immune from a suit in American courts
when the interests of justice outweigh the inconvenience to a foreign country.
2002: New
York native and Columbia Law School graduate Stephen Friedman, a long-time
partner of Goldman Sachs became the 5th Director of the National
Economics Council today.
2003:
“Something’s Gotta Give” a delightful if improbable romantic comedy directed,
produced and written by Nancy Meyers with music by Hans Zimmer was released in
the United States today.
2003:
Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, president of the European Union,
proclaimed the body’s deep concern at the increase in instances of anti-Semitic
intolerance and strongly condemns all manifestations of anti-Semitism,
including attacks against religious sites and individuals.”
2003:Irwin Cotler, Canada's Minister of Justice and
Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul
Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election was sworn into Cabinet
today.
2004: The New York Times features a review of A
Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz; translated by Nicholas de Lange
2004(29th
of Kislev, 5765): Fifth Day of Chanukah
2004(29th
of Kislev, 5765): One hundred-one year old “Bernada Bryson Shan, the widow of
painter Ben Shahn” passed away today.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/arts/16shahn.html?_r=0
http://whitney.org/Collection/BernardaBrysonShahn
2005:Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. honored Gerald
Schoenfeld and four city leaders at his annual Jewish Heritage celebration
today.
2005: The
Israeli government voted to increase financial help for needy Holocaust
survivors. The aid comes in the form of
increased rent subsidies and 75% discount on drug purchases.
2006:Germany hosts a Holocaust conference in Berlin featuring
Raul Hilberg, considered one of the leading experts on Holocaust studies who
wrote the comprehensive multi-volume book, "The Destruction of European
Jewry."
2007: As
part of Chanukah festivities, the last of 18 performances of “Around the World
in 80 Days” directed Yaron Kafkafi takes place at the Nokia Stadium in Yad
Eliahu.
2007:
Opening session of the 46th Assembly of Women of Reform Judaism
(WRJ) in San Diego, California.
2007:Union for Reform Judaism 2007 Biennial Convention opens in
San Diego, CA. On the eve of the
conference, Meir Azari, rabbi of the Beit Daniel synagogue in Tel Aviv,
expressed his concern over the future of relations between the Reform Movement
in the United States and Israel.
2007: The
New York City Police arrested ten individuals suspected of carrying out an
anti-
Semitic attack against four Jewish students on the previous Friday night, the
fifth night of Chanukah.
2008:
“Nothing Like the Holidays” co-starring Debra Messing was released in the
United States today.
2008: USA
Network broadcast the final episode of “The Starter Wife” starring Debra
Messing who was Bat Mitzvahed in 1981.
2008: In
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah Friday Night Services features, the Second
Musical Shabbat of the 2008-2009 Season.
2008: “Adam
Resurrected” which follows the life of former Berlin magician and circus
impresario Adam Stein opens at the Quad City Cinema in New York City..
2008:The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation based in Salem,
Mass., shut its doors after saying it had lost all its money -- $8 million --
by investing with Bernard Madoff self-confessed creator of the largest Ponzi
scheme in history
2008:Reacting to an increasingly perilous economic
outlook, the leader of the Reform movement proposed that some of the movement's
synagogues could consider merging with Conservative congregations as a
cost-saving measure.
2009 (25 Kislev, 5770): First Day of Chanukah.
2009: The estate of songwriter Jack Lawrence, which includes
memorabilia from S.S. Andrea Doria which sank off the coast of Nantucket in
1956 with the kind of fanfare connected to the sinking of the Titanic is
scheduled to go on sale today.
2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival features
a screening of “The Wedding Song,” a film that tells the story of two
adolescent girls – one Jewish, one Moslem – living in Tunis in 1942 when the
Nazis occupy the city.
2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival features
screenings of “A Matter of Size” and “Adam Resurrected” starring American actor
Jeff Goldblum
2009: Opening night of the Sephardic Music Festival in New York
City.
2009: The Hub of the JCCSF and San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish
Museum present “Super 8 Hanukkah Festival.”
2009:Five Hamas men were arrested today, while trying to
infiltrate Israel from Egypt, carrying explosives, a gun, a silencer and
$15,000 in counterfeit bills, according to the announcement. During the arrest, two of the operatives were
wounded.
2009: A tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Les Misérables
the tuneful version of the 19th century novel with music by
Claude-Michel Schonberg, French lyrics by Alain Boubil and English Lyriscs by
Herbert Kretzmer began today, at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
2010:The Women's League Convention 2010 is scheduled to
hold its opening session at the Marriott Waterfront located in Baltimore, MD.
2010: Andy “Samberg and the other members of the Lonely Island
debuted their next digital short, titled "I Just Had Sex."
2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by
Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including And
the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding.
2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by
Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the
recently released paperback edition of Ayn Rand and The World She Made
by Anne C. Heller.
2010: “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy
Schiff, “Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant
Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes
by Stephen Sondheim are listed on The New York Times list
of the 10 Best Books of 2010
2010(5th of Tevet, 5771): Eighty-eight-year-old “Dan
Kurzman, who wrote military histories that illuminated little-known incidents
in World War II and an exhaustively reported account of the first Arab-Israeli
war, passed away today Manhattan. (As reported Daniel E. Slotnik)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/arts/26kurzman.html
2010(5th of Tevet, 5771):Eighty-two
year old “Jacob Lateiner, a concert pianist renowned for his interpretations
both of Beethoven and of 20th-century music, passed away today in Manhattan.
(As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/arts/music/14lateiner.html?_r=0
2011: Gabriel Bass, Rabbi Joanne Heiligman and Nina Bonos are
scheduled to participate in “Objects and Spaces that Influence Jewish Memory” a
panel discussion presented by Shaare Tefila in Olney, Maryland.
2011(16th of Kislev, 5772): Seventy-eight-year-old Bert
Schneider who produced such hits as “Easy Rider” “Five Easy Pieces” and “The
Last Picture Show” passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/14/local/la-me-bert-schneider-20111214
2011: The Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that Rabbi
YonaMetzger had received an offer to serve as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs
ends his term of office in 2013.
2011: The ReGroup Theatre Company staged 2 sold-out staged
readings of Kurt Weill’s “Johnny Jonson today at the 47th St Theatre, in New
York
2011: “A Happy End” Israeli playwright IIddo Netanyahu’s play that
follows acclaimed Jewish physicist Mark Erdmann, head of the atomic lab at the
University of Berlin, and his wife Leah through the arduous decision of whether
or not to leave Germany following the notorious elections of 1932 is scheduled
to be performed at the Martin E. Segal Center at the CUNY Graduate Center in
New York City.
2011: Israel's new ambassador to Egypt arrived in Cairo today,
Egyptian airport officials told the Associated Press, three months after
rioters ransacked the Israeli Embassy in the Egyptian capital.
2012: In New York, Jonathan Karp, the Executive Director of the
American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Culture Brokers’
Music Produces and Labels” a program that “traces the history of small
independent record labels that pioneered new forms of popular music from the
1960s to today, including rock & roll, Latin pop, and hip-hop.
2012: A public menorah lighting is scheduled for the Ped Mall in
Iowa City, Iowa
2012: Sufganyot and latkes will be served at the scheduled public
menorah lighting at the Grand Cities Mall in Grand Forks, North Dakota
2012: “Football is God” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem
Jewish Film Festival. (Attention American readers – this is a movie about you
call soccer, not the pigskin game)
2012: Mika Karney and the Kol Dodi Ensemble, Zion80 + Hasidic New
Wave & Yakar Rhythms are scheduled to perform at the Sephardic Music
Festival’s closing event.
2012: Pedro Hernandez “pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder
and one count of kidnapping the case of Etan Patz.
2012: “Settlement ends bitter battle over Mel Simon Estates”
published today”
http://www.ibj.com/articles/38466-settlement-ends-bitter-battle-over-mel-simon-estate
2012: King Abdullah II of Jordan announced that Jordan would host
Israeli-Palestinian meetings in February with the backing of the European Union
and the United States, a leading Arab daily reported today.
2012: Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned two “price-tag” vandalism acts
carried out overnight in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
2013:
The Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to sponsor a
discussion led by Professor Mary Fulbrook and Professor Jane Caplan entitled “A
Small Town near Auschwitz – Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust.”
2013:
Eighty-nine-year-old German born, British educated and prize winning Israel
“molecular and cancer researcher” passed away today.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/tags/leo-sachs
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28621410
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/5/1664
2013:
Five U.S. families who were victims of the Iran-backed suicide bombing that
took place on Ben Yehuda Street in 1997 were “awarded $9 million in federal
court.”
2013:
“Ex-FBI agent who disappeared in Iran was on rogue mission for CIA, officials
say” published today provides an update on the status of Robert Levinson.
2013:
The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a
panel discussion “Do Words Kill? Hate
Speech, Propaganda & Incitement to Genocide”
2013:
“The Herd” and “Guilt by Fire” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem
Jewish Film Festival.
2013:
Today’s meeting of the URJ Biennial is scheduled to end with a Biennial Music
Festival that will include performances by Larry Milder and Rocky Mountain
Jewgrass at Taste and Thirst and Rick Recht and Max Jared performing at the Old
Spaghetti Factory
2013:
The 20-state council of CERN, the Center of European Nuclear Research that
operates the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss- French border, voted
unanimously tonight to accept Israel as a full member. (As reported by Judy
Siegel-Itzkovich)
2013:
As snow falls in Jerusalem, Arab youth find a way to turn it into a terrorist
event by throwing snowballs wrapped around a stone at Jews. (As reported by Gil
Ronen)
2013:
Due to “snow and the danger of skidding” “Highways 1 and 443, which connect
Jerusalem to the coastal plain, were closed today by police to traffic in both
directions until 6:00 a.m. (As reported by Gil Ronen)
2014:
Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” which is scheduled to open in movie
theaters across the United States today “will include, most famous of all
biblical miracles: the parting of the Red Sea. But its depiction will look
quite different from the one in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic “The Ten
Commandments.” (As reported by Bruce Parker)
2014:
The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present a performance by The
Singers of the Israeli Opera’s Meitra Opera Studio.
2014:
The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to “Birth of a Neighborhood: The
History of Battery Park City.”
2014:
“Seven people, including a family of five with young children, were lightly
wounded in the West Bank this afternoon when a Palestinian man hurled acid into
their car, before being shot and seriously wounded.” (As reported by Itmar
Sharon)
2014:
“Unidentified assailants opened fire on the Israeli embassy in Athens with a
Kalashnikov assault rifle in the early hours this morning but no injuries or
damage were reported.”
2014:
“Monologues from the Kishke,” a Yiddishpiel Theater musical celebrating Eastern
European food and culture “is scheduled to be performed at Tel Aviv’s Beit
Hatfusot.
2015:
In Arlington, VA, Congregation Etz Hayim is scheduled to host Ein Lanu Z’man,
the official band of Agudas Achim and Jewish radio rock star Hannah Spiro.
2015:
The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host a new
tour “Women of the Holocaust.”
2015:
Stage 48 is scheduled to host Dor Chadash and Hadag Nahash - one of Israel's
most popular hip-hop bands - for an unforgettable Hannukah party!
2015:
A memorial service is scheduled to held for today in honor of Christopher
Duggan, the author of Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s
Italy
2015(30th
of Kislev, 5776): Parashat Miketz, 6th day of Chanukah, Rosh Chodesh
Tevet I
2015(30th
of Kislev, 5776): Seventy-one-year-old former school teacher, “Evelyn
Lieberman, who was the first woman to serve as deputy chief of staff to a
president” passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2016:
Israel received the first shipment of the advanced F-35 which is part of the
on-going to American commitment regardless of administration to help the Jewish
state maintain a technological edge over its hostile neighbors.
2016:
At the JCC in Manhattan, Lorraine Aronowitz Danzig is scheduled to facilitate a
“stimulating, breezy discussion of Hell and Good Company (The Spanish Civil
War and the World it Made) by Richard Rhodes
2016:
Congress is scheduled to “formally end its session” this afternoon “without
taking acting on a bill targeting campus anti-Semitism” which had been
unanimously passed by the Senate but which Republican Congressman Bob
Goodlatte, “chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary did not
advance…through his committee.”
2017(24th
of Kislev, 5778): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah – Party
On!
2017:
Dikla Katz is scheduled to deliver a noon-time lecture at The Simon Dubnow
Insitute.
2017:
Janet Yellin is scheduled to preside over the Federal Reserve’s penultimate
meeting of 2017.
2017:
The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to offer the fourth and final part
of Yitzhak Lewis’ “Introduction to Gershom Scholem”
2017:
Jewish Book Month is scheduled to come to an end today. (Editor’s note – There is no better way to
end this event than by considering the works of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez
the authors Foxbats over Dimona which provided a unique view of the Six
Day War. Their latest work, The
Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973 takes advantage of their unique understanding
of the Soviet and Middle East cultures and the documents made available due to
the fall of the Soviet Union to create a thought-provoking tome which proves
that just when you think you know all there is to know about a subject,
somebody comes along and opens a new window.)
2018:
In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to “Dinner, Drinks and Drash”
during which Rabbi Ale Braver will lead a discussion on “The Meaning of
Kaddish.”
2018:
The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host The Orchestra of St.
Lukes performing “Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.”
2018:
“Israeli security forces apprehended four Palestinians today suspected of
conducting a shooting attack this week outside the West Bank settlement of
Ofra…”
2018:
While Jews in Toledo, OH are digesting the thwarting of an a planned attack on
their synagogues pattered the slaughter in Pittsburg, James Alex Fields, Jr.
the white supremacist who ran over a counter-protestor at the Neo-Nazi rally in
Charlottesville, VA is starting to serve his life without parole sentence after
having been found guilty by a jury in the college town tightly connected to
Thomas Jefferson, the President who coined the phrase “separation of church and
state.”
2018:
In, London, Stephen Laughton’s “One Jewish Boy” which is doubly controversial
because it deals the issue of rising anti-Semitism in the UK and because the
author “has arranged for a collection be made at the end of each performance
Medical Aid for Palestinains, Rabbis for Human Rights and Yad Vashem is
scheduled to be shown for a second night at the Red Lion Theatre in Islington.
2018:
The GPJFF and the National Museum of American Jewish History are scheduled to
host a screening of “The Ancient Law” at the Museum of American Jewish History.
2018:
In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled “Roman Vishniac Rediscovered,” a
curator’s tour that examines “the behind scenes story” of his “extraordinary
photographs.”
https://culture.pl/en/gallery/selected-photographs-by-roman-vishniac-image-gallery
2019:
In Silver Spring, MD, Leisure World Clubhouse II is scheduled to host a
screening of “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” and Aviva Kemper film.
2019:
In San Francisco, the JCRC is scheduled to kick off its “yearlong Democracy
Initiative with a resource fair and sets by “You’re Funny But You Don’t Look
Jewish” comedians Joe Nguyen and Samson.”
2019:
At the URJ Biennial in Chicago, Rabbi Neil is scheduled to lead a session on
“Community Organizing: Running an Effective Social Justice Campaign.”
2019:
In Los Gatos, CA, the Addison-Penzak JCC is scheduled to host a “group construction
of what organizers say will be California’s largest Lego menorah.”
2019:
The opening night reception for Utopia:
Visions and Traditions, an exhibition co-curated byDeborah Ugoretz and Tine Kindermann to see how visual
artists grapple with diverse traditions of envisioning a better future is
scheduled to take place this evening in Manhattan at the Stanton Street Shul.
2019:
In the wake of the failure to form a government, today “the people of Israel
are left without a functioning government, resulting in stagnation, red tape,
unbearable bureaucracy, underpaid paid workers” and a dysfunctional health
system whose lack of funds poses a threat to the very lives of some of the
society’s most vulnerable people. (As reported by YNET)
2019:
In the wake of the anti-Semitic attack on Jews in a Jersey City kosher market,
Jews are left to shopping at a grocery store to the list of deadly Jewish
activities which have included going to the synagogue and wearing a kippah.
2020:
In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host a virtual “Chanukah Under
the Stars” complete with Havdalah, Chanukiyah Light and games with the Tifeeth
Israel Family.
2020:
The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present a “Hanukkah Concert” which will be
“a live goulash of Jewish, Yiddish and Klezmer sounds, folk songs and
sing-alongs—featuring rising musicians Rebekkah on violin, Mateus on accordion,
and Adah Hetko, a Yiddishist, singer/songwriter, and lead vocalist with the
Western Massachusetts klezmer-band Burikes.”
2020:
On it’ Third Digital Night of Hanukah, the Jewish Museum in London is scheduled
to a presentation by Dr. Beverley Jacobson, CEO of Norwood.
2020:
PJ Library and the Addison-Penzak JCC are scheduled to lead a Havdalah
celebration and then read stories in Russian, Hebrew and English for children
eight years and younger wearing their pajamas in what may be the first ever
virtual “Pajamukkah Party.”
2020:
The National Museum of American Jewish History, for which Mitchell Levin is an
“official content provider,” is scheduled to co-host a “magical evening where
Harry Houdini and David Copperfield are inducted into the Ed Snider Only in
America Gallery Hall of Fame.”
2020(26th
of Kislev, 7801): Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Vayayshev;
2021:
David Radzynski, Concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic, “one of the youngest
violinists to lead a major world orchestra today is scheduled to lead a
Masterclass at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music today.
2021:
The National Library of Israel is scheduled to present online Tahneer Oksman,
Associate Professor of Academic Writing, Marymount Manhattan College lecturing
on “Family, History, Memory: Notes on Some Jewish Graphic Novels.”
2021:
Bradley Shaw is scheduled to lead a walking tour of the Synagogues of the Lower
East Side sponsored by the Museum at Eldridge Street.
2021:
Twenty-four Stanford University Hillel undergraduates will not be leaving for
Israel today as originally scheduled to the outbreak of the Omicron variant.
2021:Julia Jassey and
Isaac de Castro, Co-Founders of Jewish on Campus and both ASF Broome &
Allen Scholars, are scheduled to honored today at the ADL’s “Concert Against
Hate” for “Fighting Antisemitism” as “Creators, Conveners, Influencers”!
2021:
As the United States faces a renewed outbreak of the Corona Virus, in Mayfield
Heights, OH, Temple Ner Tamid is scheduled to host a day-long health fair.
2021:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to travel to Israel on a
state visit today during which he will meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
and Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid
2021:
Based on earlier reports, the Israeli government is scheduled to be revisiting
its guidelines concerning testing and quarantines which were imposed to combat
the outbreak of the Omicron variants.
2021:
The Jewish Book Council is scheduled to sponsor via Zoom The Jewish Seminar for
Adult Readers.
2022:
In Partnership with the Shapell Manuscript Foundation The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to
present an in-person event that
will begin with a virtual tour of the Shapell Roster of Jewish Service in the
American Civil War, an ongoing reappraisal of
the military service of Jews who served in the Union and Confederate Armies and
Navies from 1861 – 1865 guided by Adrienne DeArmas (Director,
Shapell Roster) and Professor Jonathan Sarna
followed by “the launch of a new book, Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The
Union Army, authored by Professor Adam D. Mendelsohn, in conversation with
Professor Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan), current Editor-in-Chief
of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, and author of GI
Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation.
2022:
JDC Archives Fellow Walter Francis is scheduled to host a webinar on "Building
Memory: Jewish Communal Reconstruction in Postwar Tunisia, 1945-1967"
2022:
Project Melissa, an exhibition featuring the work of Israeli video-at and
installation artist Eden Auerbach Orfat is scheduled to come to an end today in
Manhattan.
2023(29th
of Kislev, 57884): Fifth Day of Chanukah
2023:
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host “Take
a Bite Out of History” during which Rabbi Deborah Prince will lecture on the
Jewish connection to the chocolate trade and its significance to trade during
colonial times.
2023:
The world premiere of “Zionism and Anti-Zionism” with Dr. Einat Wilf, a new
series produced by Zoa Tara Zeigherman is scheduled to take play at the UCLA
Hillel in Los Angeles.
2023:
As December 12 begins in Israel, yesterday evening “Holocaust survivors from
around the globe will have marked the start of the fifth day of Hanukkah
together with a virtual ceremony, as Jews worldwide worry about the
Israel-Hamas war and a spike of antisemitism in Europe, the United States, and
elsewhere,” the UN General Assembly prepares to discuss the situation in Gaza in response to requests from Chair of the
Arab Group and Chair of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation and
the Hamas held hostages begin day 67 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)