September 10
134 CE: The great Talmudic sage, Rabbi Akiva, was taken captive by the Romans, and executed five days later in Caesarea, Israel. Rabbi Akiva had been a 40-year-old shepherd who could not even read the Aleph-Bet. One day, he came across a stone that had been holed out by a constant drip of water. He concluded: If something as soft as water can carve a hole in solid rock, how much more so can Torah -- which is fire -- make an indelible impression on my heart. Rabbi Akiva committed himself to Torah study, and went on to become the greatest sage of his generation, with 24,000 students learning under him at one time. The Roman authorities eventually arrested him for "illegally" teaching Torah. As he was being tortured, Rabbi Akiva rejoiced in fulfilling the biblical command to "love God with all your life." As he died, Rabbi Akiva uttered the words of Shema Yisrael. His self-sacrifice for Torah continues to inspire Jews till today.
1191: During the Third Crusade, King Richard., the Lionhearted, captured Jaffa but throughout the remainder of 1191 and into the summer of 1192, he was unable to realize his ultimate goal of recapturing Jerusalem. Richard was facing Saladin, the Muslim leader who readmitted the Jews to Jerusalem in 1190. Richard would leave the Holy Land and end up in an Austrian dungeon. His brother Prince John would pillage the English people to raise the ransom; the Jewish people were a special target for the Richard’s avaricious brother who would one day become King of England.
1199(8th of Tishri): Maimonides wrote to Samuel Ibn-Tibbon, who as translating the "Guide to the Perplexed from Arabic into Hebrew. The letter included advice on how to do this as well as plea that Ibn-Tibbon not undertake his planned trip from France to Egypt to visit him. The distance was too great and he would be too busy since to see him for more than an hour since each day except Shabbat he must travel from Fostat to Cairo where he spends half a day ministering to the Sultan and his court. Then he travels back to Fostat where he is besieged by Jews, Moslems, et al all seeking his medical skill and advice.
1337: In Deckendorf , Bavaria Bavaria Bohemia Austria
1349: Jews who survived a massacre in Constance Germany were burned to death.
1487: Birthdate of Pope Julius III. As far as Popes went Julius was not the worst of the lot. He did allow the burning of the Talmud and other “harmful books.” At the same time he condemned the use of the “blood libel” and the forced Baptism of children without the consent of their parents.
1663: Letters of denization were issued to Jacob Lumbrozo, a Sephardic Jew who was the first of his faith to settle in Maryland. Denization was a level below full citizenship but included a several rights including the right to buy and own real estate.
1671: The Jewish community of Berlin
1691: Eighty-six year old English Biblical school Edward Pococke whose works included “the Porta Mosis, extracts from the Arabic commentary of Maimonides on the Mishnah, with translation and very learned notes” as well as a series of English language commentaries of several of the Jewish prophets. passed away today.
1718: The Collegiate School New Haven , Conn.
1768(28th of Elul, 5528): In Newport, Rhode Island, Aaron Lopez does not open his businesses today because of Shabbat.
1852: The New York Times reported that Lionel de Rothschild, "that eminent Hebrew," is resigning from Parliament since he cannot take his seat. "The Jewish Colossus has, as it said, come to the conclusion that the post of 'dummy representative' confers no credit on him while it is a decided disadvantage to the city" of London.
1854: Birthdate of American journalist Poultney Bigelow who during the 1890’s presented himself as an expert on “the persecution of Christian Jews” and who, unlike others, represented “the Czar as a kindly man overruled by fierce and venal bureaucrats.”
1855 (27th of Elul 5615)Rabbi Sholom Rokeach, also known as the Sar Sholom (“minister of peace”), the first Belzer Rebbe passed away. Born in 1779, Rokeach’s father was Rabbi Elazar, a member of the Brody Kloise sages. His grandfather was Rabbi Elazar Rabbi of Brody until 1736, then Rabbi of Amsterdam. Rabbi Sar Sholom grew up as an orphan, in his uncle's home in the polish town of Skohl. This uncle, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Ramraz, his mother's brother, was the head of the Jewish law courts in that town. The uncle raised him, taught him Jewish tradition, and married his daughter Malka to him. In the town of Skohl he was influenced by Rabbi Shlomo (Flam) the Rebbe of Skohl (also known as Reb Shlomo Lutzker). Rabbi Shlomo was the personal writer and second hand of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, the successor to the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chasidus. Since his uncle (and father in law) was opposed to Hasidus, Rabbi Sholom would secretly be let down the window by his wife, to learn at Rabbi Shlomo Lutzker's Beis Midrash during the nights. He composed several songs - most still sung by the Belzer Chasidim, including one tune, to "Tzur Mishaelo", sung during the Shaleshudes third ritual meal on the Sabbath, which is still popular today. Many of his speeches, teachings, writings and ideas, have been saved in an onthology named "Midbar Kadesh". He reigned as rebbe from 1817 till 1855. He was a disciple of the Seer of Lublin.:
1857: Birthdate of Flora Langerman Spiegelberg, the "grand lady of the southwest frontier.” Spiegelberg was born in New York City United States Reform Temple Nuremberg America Sante Fe , New Mexico Santa Fe Santa Fe Santa Fe Santa Fe
1858: The City Items column published today reported that “Yesterday was kept strictly holy by those of our citizens who profess the Jewish faith. The day, until sunset, was observed with fasting and prayer. During the morning the Synagogues were all open and were thronged with worshippers.” “The day was not a mere nominal Day of Atonement since “all the Jews’ stores in the city were closed.”
1858:Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt discovered Asteroid 54 Alexandria.
1860: Birthdate of the great Jewish historian Simon Dubnow whom the world could not be bothered to save so he was murdered in the cemetery at Riga by the Nazis. Although he was talking to the Jews of the Riga Ghetto when he said Yidn, shraybt un farshraybt"' (Jews – write and record)” he was reminding us all of the age old admonish to Zachor –Remember, which is a good enough reason to try one’s hand at history, at any level.
1866(1stof Tishrei, 5627): Rosh Hashanah
1871: It was reported today that The New Era, “a Hebrew magazine” that the days are long gone when the Jews could be thought of as forming their own nation. Living for so long among other nations of the world, they have identified with the nations in which they live. Thus Jews living in England are Englishman; Jews living in Germany are Germans, etc. When nations go to war, Jews find themselves fighting each other which is in violation of what had been a core value – loyalty. As to the establishment of modern Jewish state, “the idea of a restoration of a Jewish kingdom is an exploded theory and is now rejected by the great majority of our people.”
1871: In “Glories of the Temple at Jerusalem” published today, Reverend Buddington described the findings of the Excavations of Jerusalem project paid for by the Palestine Expedition Fund. The project began in 1868 and was completed in 1870 under the leadership of Charles Warren and Henry Brittles. Among other things, the British explorers found evidence of the burning of Jerusalem, “the seal of Haggai” and pavement dating from the time when Jesus was supposed to have been in the city.
1871: Miss Isabel Burton’s account of her recent visit to Hebron was published today. She described how the Moslems had co-opted the Cave Macpalah by building a mosque on the site and the limitations on placed on Jews trying to visit the site.
1874: It was reported today that Herr and Frau Heilbut had recently celebrated their Diamond (60th) Wedding Anniversary in Hamburg, Germany. The Municipal Council had closed the area where the festivities were taking place to all vehicular traffic. The celebration included services at the local synagogue, serenades by two choral societies and congratulatory visits from the Chief Burgomaster and the Director of Police. Among the gifts were a “a magnificently bound prayer-book with a large diamond set in the cover presented by the Empress of Germany” a long with a persona note from her Imperial Majesty. [The Jews of Hamburg had only recently won full civil rights as German citizens. This outpouring of official recognition gave a great deal of hope and comfort to the over 12,000 Jews living in a city whose Jewish citizens had included Moses Mendelsohn.]
1875: James Koppel Gutheim “was engaged as a guest rabbi to lead the inaugural services” for Temple Beth El’s new building in San Antonio, Texas.
1875(10th of Elul, 5635):Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman a noted authoress from Philadelphia, PA passed away today.“She was a regular contributor to The Masonic Mirror, published a volume of Tales for Children, and wrote essays descriptive of the women of the Bible and the Apocrypha. She also published a number of poems under the titles The Leper and Other Poems and The Muses.”
1876: “‘Becky Sharp’ On Stage” published today described a dramatization of Vanity Fair that had been performed in San Francisco, CA. (Thackeray’s novel contained several references to Jews, none of which were particularly faltering. Rhoda Swartz, a classmate of Becky’s is described as being the daughter of German Jew who was a slave owner. Of a group of Jews who are among the attendees at a bankruptcy auction she say “Look at them with their hooked beaks…They’re like vultures after a battle.” As described by Marcus Ballenger)
1877: “The Jewish New Year” published today describes the differences in the way in which “Orthodox and Reformed” Jews observe the just completed holiday. It points out that “the Jewish Church has in later years been somewhat divided on minor points, though” it is “thoroughly united in all material matters.” For example one group considers it proper to use an organ which the other prohibits its being played. One group observed the holiday for one day and blew the ram’s horn on Saturday; the other group only blew the ram’s horn on the second day of the holiday.
1878:Moses Ottinger and Amelia Gottlieb Ottinger gave birth to their son Albert Ottinger a lawyer who played a prominent role in New York politics. A Republican, Ottinger ran for Governor of New York in 1928. He lost to a Democratic Party Ticket on which Herbert Lehman, who was also Jewish, was running as Lieutenant Governor.
1880: Simon Rosenheim, a Polish Jew went on trial today charged with having set fire to the Hester Street tenement house in which he lives.
1881: Based on information that first appeared in the Jewish World it was reported today that “Russia is at last taking active steps to suppress any further outrages” aimed at the Jews.
1882:`The Congress for the Safeguarding of Non-Jewish Interests, which opened in Dresden , Germany Europe was slowly, if gradually, rejecting anti-Semitism and moving to admit Jews as full participants in legal, commercial and social affairs. This meeting represented a major move backwards and, being held in Germany
1883: Communal elections which were supposed to have been held in Agram today were postponed following an outbreak of violence in which several houses occupied by Jews were attacked by a mob that did not disperse until two in the morning after the hussars fired several volleys in its direction.
1884: Law enforcement officers scoured the countryside around Montana, PA looking for the Polish miners who had attacked them when they attempted to arrest the miners after they had stolen the packs belonging to a Jewish clothing merchant whom they had refused to pay for the clothing they had ordered.
1885(1stof Tishrei, 5646): Rosh Hashanah
1885: In New York, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs delivered a sermon based “on the text in Isaiah: ‘For God is our King, and He will save us.’”
1885: In Alpena, Michigan, for the first time a professional cantor led services.
1886: Birthdate of Paul Burlin, a noted modern and abstract expressionist painter.
1886: Lawrence Barrett played the role of Shylock in tonight’s performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Star Theatre. Barrett’s portrayal stands out because unlike others he does not portray the Jew as loathsome caricature and portrays “the dignity of the representative of a shamefully abused race.”
1887: It was reported today that the term “That beats the Jews” when used in New York City is a “complimentary exclamation” that is used when a person accomplishes something that is particularly clever. As can be seen from the large number of businesses bearing German-Jewish names, Jews are increasingly successful in the world of commerce. In the public schools, Jewish children are almost half of the graduates and they excel in the field of mathematics. “The Jews are the great patrons of classical music and the dramatic arts” and their absence is felt when performances fall on their holidays. (Editor’s note – This complimentary description of New York Jews stands in stark contrast to the exclusionary movement that began in Saratoga Springs and the fearful response to the wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants which was beginning to swell the city’s population.)
1889: Sixty-four year old Samuel Cox, who while serving as a Congressman from Ohio spoke out against the treatment of the Jews in Russia, describing the Jews, in a speech given in the House of Representatives as a “broken-hearted and scattered race” upon whom “the Czar of all the Russia” uses “enormities of his rule” to persecute this people “with a lineage unrivaled for purity, a religious sentiment and ethics drawn out of the glory and greatness of Mount Sinai” passed away today
1889(14thof Elul, 5649): Twenty-seven year old British poet and novelist Amy Levy, the first woman who attended Cambridge University and whose friends included Eleanor Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde passed away today.
1890: Birthdate of author and playwright, Franz Werfel. Born in the old Austro-Hungarian, Werfel was a Jewish Czech who wrote in German. He was a contemporary of such famed intellectuals as Franz Kafka and Martin Buber. Werfel was one of the intellectuals brought to the United States California
1890: In Kiev, Fanny Shafferman and Henry Finkelstein, “a distillery worker studying to be a rabbi” gave birth to Rose Finkelstein who gained fame as Rose Finkelstein Norwood the American labor leader.
1891: The trouble in connection with the 100 Russian Jews who arrived on September 8 is no closer to being resolved today than it was on the day they landed.
1891: The platform of the New York Republican Party published today includes a “12thplank” that calls for the intervention of the national government to end “the cruelties and persecutions practiced upon the Jews in Russia” that “are abhorrent to the sense of justice of this people.”
1891: The New York Times publishes an editorial calling for strict enforcement of laws designed to keep Russian Jews out of the United States
1892: Mr. Thomas Sherman, the U.S. Consul in Liverpool, UK offered described the measures being used to keep sick immigrants from traveling to the United States including the fumigation of luggage belong to Russian Jews because of problems with small-pox.
1892: It was reported today that Samuel Ulmar is the only surviving member of a congregation started 34 years ago by French speaking Jews form Alsace
1893(29thof Elul, 5653): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1893: “Festival of Rosh Hashanah” published today described solemn nature of the New Year which Jews throughout the world will begin celebrating tonight as 5654.
1894: The funeral was held this afternoon at Cypress Hills Cemetery for Mrs. Abraham Greenspahn of Williamsburg but her husband would later come to believe that the body buried belonged “to a Christian woman” and was not his wife.
1895: English author and historian Sir John Robert Seely, author of Ecce Homoand Natural Religion passed away. He believed that “the Hebrew Scriptures express in poetic form…the spirit of modern science”
1892: It was reported today that Samuel Ulmar is the only surviving member of a congregation started 34 years ago by French speaking Jews form Alsace
1894: “First American Bible” published today described preparation and printing of the Bay Psalm Book in 1640 including the reliance on Bishop Bedell to provide an accurate translation from the Hebrew – a task he was able to perform because he had studied the language with “Rabbi Leo, the chief chachan of the synagogue in Venice.”
1894: Based on information that first appeared in The Denver Daily News, “Dream of the Ages” published today described “the recent and sudden growth of the Jewish population in Palestine” in which 100,000 Jews have entered that land in the last seven years “as the beginning of the realization of the dream of centuries, the first practical step toward the restoration of the Jews to their ancient lands.”
1895: Birthdate of Melville J. Herskovits, “inventor of African-American Studies.”
1895: Birthdate of Edwin R. Thiel the Seventh Day Adventist minister and archaeologist who The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, “a comprehensive work” that establishes the chronology of the Kings of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.
1897: In “A Jewish State Impossible” published today Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, the leader of the Reform Movement dismissed Zionist Congress held at as “a novelty, a gathering of visionary and impracticable dreamers who conceived and acted a romantic drama” and then “applauded it all by themselves.”
1897:(13th of Elul, 5657): At the age of seventeen Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn married a distant cousin, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina Schneersohn, daughter of Rabbi Avraham Schneerson of Chişinău, son of Rabbi Yisroel Noach of Nizhyn, son of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn
1898: It was reported today that approximately ten per cent of the 350,000 Jews living in “Greater New York” belong to the 32 synagogues and temples in the city.
1898: In Paris, the Ministerial Council convened to hear General Émile Zurlinden, the newly appointed Minister of War’s account and recommendations on the Dreyfus case adjourned early because Zurlindent, who was an honorable man did not feel he had all of the information.
1898: Temple Beth-El is reported to be making plans for providing religious services for Jewish soldiers serving in the local military camps during the upcoming High Holiday season.
1898: “Palestine Closed To Jews” published today provided the official Turkish declaration which stated “The entrance into Palestine is formally prohibited to foreign Israelites and consequently the imperial Ottoman authorities have received order to prevent the landing of immigrant Jews in the province.”
1899: The day after his conviction, Captain Dreyfus signed the Application to the Court of Revision.
1899: On the day after his conviction, Captain Dreyfus told his wife “I am not uneasy regarding myself as I shall soon be free; but I think of you and my poor children. They will be branded as the children of a traitor.” (Dreyfus had been sentenced to ten years but based on the time he had already served he thought he would be released in October)
1899: Evangelist Dwight L. Moody addressed a mass meeting at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn where he and other speakers expressed their displeasure with the verdict. Moody said that Dreyfus “is suffering for his race.
1899: In the Williamsburg section of New York, Reverend Roland S. Dawson responded to the Dreyfus verdict by telling worshippers at the Ainslie Street Presbyterian Church that “Justice and right are paralyzed in France before an unscrupulous military despotisms.”
1899: John Most addressed a mass meeting of Anarchist at the Thalia Theatre which was held to protest the verdict in the Dreyfus Case. Most said that “he had not come to shed tears over the verdict because tears would not do any good.”
1899: In Atlanta, GA, Mrs. David Eichberg received a letter today from the wife of Captain Dreyfus in which she said her husband could not accept a sword from the American people for which Mrs. Eichberg had been a leading fund-raiser.
1899: At the Baptist Temple in Brooklyn, Reverend Cortland Myers denounced the Dreyfus trail as persecution where the French have decided “Better that an innocent man go to prison and death than that the nation suffer.”
1899: In responding to the Dreyfus verdict, Dr. Madison C. Peters of Bloomingdale Church “took for his text the words from Isaiah, “Justice standeth afar off, for truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter.” In part he said, “France has gone mad…The civilized world stands astounded that in the closing days of the nineteenth century the bloodhounds of anti-Semitism should be let loose upon an innocent man.”
1899: “At The Play and With The Players” published today described the offerings for this season’s dramatic entertainment in New York including the performance of three dramas about Jewish life – “Ben Hur,” “The Ghetto” by Henrik Hyermann and “Children of the Ghetto” by Israel Zangwill – which will appear at The Broadway Theater
1904(1stof Tishrei, 5665): Rosh Hashanah
1904: Birthdate of Max Shachtman Polish-born American leftist who began as an associate of Lenin and evolved into anti-Soviet Socialist. A spokesperson of the downtrodden, he espoused the cause of rights for African-Americans in the 1930’s when the issue was barely a blip on most advocates of social change. He passed away in 1972.
1909: Dr. Sigmund Freud received an honorary doctorate from Clark University where he is delivering five guest lectures.
1910: Birthdate of Chicago native Harris Krakow who gained famed as heavyweight boxer King Levinsky.
1911: In Russia St Petersburg Kiev
1911: Delegates of the Mizrachi Party meeting in Berlin
1916: Birthdate of Haim Landau, the Cracow native who made Aliyah in 1935 after which he became a leader of the Irgun and held several ministerial posts while serving as an MK.
1919: Birthdate of Harry Schwartz, the New York native who became “an editorial writer for The New York Times from 1951 to 1979 and a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs who wrote and lectured extensively on the cold war and later on health care.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
1919: Foreign Minister Eduard Benex signed Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia
1922: Memorial services are held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in the Bronx , NY for the late Colonel Harry Cutler, a leader of the America
1923(29th of Elul, 5683): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1923: Birthdate of Israeli sociologist Shmuel Eisenstadt.
1923: Birthdate of Uri Avneri, Israeli author and politician who has traveled the political spectrum from membership in the Irgun to left-wing peace activist.
1924: Leopold and Loeb were found guilty of murder. The sons of two wealthy Chicago
1926(2nd of Tishrei, 5687): Rosh Hashanah Second Day
1926: Jewish policeman and firemen in Newark, NJ are to be excused from active duty because of Rosh Hashanah as ordered by the Director of Public Safety.
1934(1stof Tishrei, 5696): Rosh Hashanah
1935: Kurt Weil and his wife moved from Nichols, Connecticut to the St. Moritz Hotel in New York City.
1935: In Nuremberg, opening of the seventh Nazi Party Rally with a motto of Party Rally of Freedom, an allusion to Hitler’s renunciation of the Treaty of Versailles.
1937: The Palestine Post reported from Warsaw
1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Palestine Geneva
1937: In Boston, Dr. Louis K. Diamond and Flora Kaplan gave birth to Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Mason Diamond.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that Arab leaders from Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq, met at Bludan, Syria, to discuss Arab-British relations. All of them were highly critical of the Royal (Peel) Commission's findings and the suggested partition of Palestine
1938: Conservative Rabbi Israel H. Leventhal of the Brooklyn Jewish Center and Reform Rabbi Louis I. Newman of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan issued a joint statement urging American Jews to help raise funds for the Jews of Poland by contributing to the American Committee Appeal. Orthodox rabbis had already issued a similar appeal.
1938: The Third Betar Congress opens in Warsaw, Poland. “Betar is the Zionist revisionist youth movement established 1923, by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Betar is an acronym for ‘Brit Trumpeldor,’ and is also the name of Bar Kochba’s ancient fortress.
1939: Today, Sydney Simon Shulemson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He graduated from flight school in 1942. He joined RCAF 404 Squadron in Wick in Scotland, flying a Bristol Beaufighter. Shulemson downed a German flying boat on his first sortie. He pioneered techniques for rocket attacks on Axis ships in the North Atlantic. After the war, Shulemson located aircraft and recruited pilots for Israel's growing Israeli Air Force.
1939: After ordering 50 Jews to repair a bridge, General Halder shot them all in their synagogue. For some Halder is some kind of "hero." An anti-Nazi, he was part of an aborted attempt at a coup against Hitler prior to the war. Despite his high rank in the German Army, he was imprisoned because he was alleged to have been part of the plot to kill Hitler in July, 1944. But as this event during the early days of the Nazi invasion of Poland
1940: Rabbi Yaakov Ben Zion Mendelson “made an impassioned plea” at the convention of Knesseth ha-Rabbanim (the Assembly of Hebrew Orthodox Rabbis of America and Canada) “to all American Jewry for the support of war refugees.”
1941: Birthdate of American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould
1941: Pitcher Harry Feldman made his major league debut with the New York Giants.
1942: The Allies carry out an amphibious landing at Majunga, north-west Madagascar
1942: In Belgium Antwerp Mechelen , Belgium France
1942: Yehuda Joakob “Edi” Weinstein escaped from Treblinka and returned to his home town of Losice Poland November 8, 2007 edition of the Jerusalem Post would describe the 83 old Weinstein as being the last known survivor of Treblinka II.
1943(10thof Elul, 5703):Riva (Rebecca) Bernstein and Levie (Louis) Hillesum the parents of Esther (Etty) Hillesum died today either during their transport to Auschwitz or in the gas chambers immediately upon their arrival at the German Death Camp.
1943: Nine month occupation of Rome by the Nazis begins today.
1943: Jewish youths attack German troops at Miedzyrzec , Poland
1944: Fifty-two Jews hiding from the prior two days of SS reprisals at Topolcany , Slovakia
1945(3rd of Tishrei, 5706): For the first time since 1939, Jews of the world observe Tzom Gedaliah
1946: Birthdate of history professor Shlomo Sand, the Austrian born son of Polish Holocaust survivors who became a professor of history at Tel Aviv whose unconventional views can be seen in several of his works including The Invention of the Jewish People.
1947: Third baseman Al Rosen made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians.
1947: “Bomb Found on Jewish” published today in the Glasgow Herald described the resistance by Jewish refugees aboard the Empire Rival led by Mordechai Rosman and Paul Bergman to being placed in DP camps in Hamburg by the British after they had been turned away from landing in Palestine.
1948: Birthdate of Nimrod Dori, the native of Kibutz Hulata who perished at the age of twenty aboard the Israeli Submarine Dakar.
1950: According to reports published today, the government of Israel will be issuing a stamp at harvest time picturing Stahveet, a cow which has produced 100,000 liters of milk, which may be a world’s record.
1951:The executive body of the World Jewish Congress will begin its annual meeting at Geneva today. Described by its members as the most representative body of world Jewry, they will discuss and try to formulate a policy on a number of matters of pressing interest to Jewish groups throughout the world. “The resurgence of Germany as a leading independent power” is one of the major issues on the mind of many of the attendees. The attendees hope to prepare a position paper to be circulated among the leading Western nations expressing Jewish concerns which include the failure of Germany to accept responsibility for War Crimes, failure to build in self-guards against a resurgence of anti-Semitism and any attempt to pay reparations to those who suffered at the hands of the Germans. Rabbi Israel Goldstein is leading the U.S. delegation. Dr. Nahum Goldman is serving as presiding officer, a position he had filled at the recently completed Zionist Congress that had met in Jerusalem.
1951: JTA reported that the Jewish organizations of Argentina have brought to the attention of the Federal Ministry of Interior the wounding of a Jew in the nearby city of Avellaneda in what they describe as a serious outbreak of anti-Semitism. A 23-year-old Jew, Jacob Chermenitzky, was on his way to work early yesterday morning when he was accosted by three men waving pistols. First they made the young Jew shout "Viva Hitler" and "Death to the Jews" then they shot him at close range. Cherminitzky was seriously wounded
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett told reporters, while leaving for Luxembourg to sign the Israeli-German Reparation Agreement, "that without complacency I can say that this journey gives expression to the change which came about in the Jewish people with the establishment of the State of Israel, and the achievements which the state means for the Jewish people."
1952: After six months of negotiations, the Claims Conference and the German federal government signed an agreement embodied in two protocols. Protocol No. 1 called for the enactment of laws that would compensate Nazi victims directly for indemnification and restitution claims arising from Nazi persecution. Under Protocol No. 2, the German government provided the Claims Conference with DM 450 million for the relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, according to the urgency of their need as determined by the Conference. Agreements were also signed with the State of Israel.
1953: Birthdate of actress Amy Irving. Irving is the sister of director David Irving and the wife of Steven Spielberg.
1956: Birthdate of Israel archaeologist Eilat Mazar, the third in her line which began with her grandfather Benjamin Mazar.
1957: Pitcher Barry Latman made his major league debut with the Chicago White Sox.
1969:“Shocked and angered by news of the raid” on the Red Sea Coast which the Israelis called Operation Raviv, “Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser suffered a heart attack.”
1969: Designated hitter Ron Blomberg made his major league debut with the New York Yankees.
1970: Birthdate of Jeff Marx, the Florida native whose musical talents gave us the Tony Award winning “Avenue Q.”
1972(2nd of Tishrei, 5733): Rosh Hashanah Second Day
1977: Broadcast of the fifth and final Nixon Interviews with David Frost which were produced by Marvin MIntoff who was president of Frost’s production company.
1983(3rd of Tishrei, 5744): Shabbat Shuvah
1983(3rd of Tishrei, 5744): Physicist Felix Bloch passed away. Born in Switzerland
1988:Elazar Shach, a leading Haredi Rabbi who seemed to have quarreled with or disapproved of most Jewish leaders including the Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson wrote a letter today forbidding debate with Rav Adin Steinsaltz because he is a heretic.
1993: Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival of “Life According to Agfa,” an Israeli film directed by Assi Dayan.
1993: First broadcast in the long-running television series “The X-Files” starring David Duchovny.
2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories by Amy Bloom, The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the Pitcher's Moundby Roger Kahn,Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identityby Israeli historian Omer Bartov, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injusticesby Elazar Barkan, Dreams of Being Eaten Alive: The Literary Core of the Kabbalahby David Rosenberg and Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitressby Debra Ginsberg.
2000: Radio personality and commentator Scott Simon married Caroline Richard. They are raising their two daughters as part of what “they consider to be a Jewish family.”
2003: At a banquet hosted by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Kerala Tourism Minister, K.V. Thomas gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a gift that “contained replicas of the Copper plates from the `Magna Carta' of the Jews of Kochi, which has the oldest synagogue outside Israel.”
2003: In Saskatchewan, Canada, the Rural Municipality of Willow Creek designed Beth Israel Synagogue and its cemetery as a municipal heritage site. The synagogue had been built by Jewish immigrants who came to Canada from Lithuania via South Africa and established the Edenbridge Hebrew Colony. The colony was part of the attempts to settle eastern European Jews in areas outside of the major municipal centers.
2005: The Jerusalem Post reported that replicas of the Sarajevo Haggadah - a 600-year-old Jewish manuscript - are to be sold to the public. Jakob Finci, the head of the Jewish community in Bosnia
2006: The Sunday New York Times featured a review of Jennifer Gilmore’s debut novel, Golden Country that details the complex history of two intertwined families: the Blooms and the Brodskys. Both are Jewish, both touched with genius and dishonesty, as they strive toward the twin goals of material success and social acceptance in America
2006: “For Your Consideration,” a film about the fictional filming of a 1940’s movie entiteld “Home for Purim,” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
2006: In an essay that appeared today in The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung German historian Arno Lustiger criticized “Günter Grass's treatment of his Waffen-SS membership in his latest book.”
2007: A lawyer representing Neta Shoshani, a student at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem, sent one last letter to the Ministry of Defense requesting all documents related to the event that took place in Deir Yassin.
2007: In a moment of great irony, Haaretzreported that at a time when a German television network had fired a popular news woman who had praised Nazi values in a book she had published, Jewish residents of Petah Tikvah were enduring a two year long reign of terror by neo-Nazi, skinhead gangs whose membership comes from teenage immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
2007: In “Little Trends, Big Impacts” published today, U.S. New & WorldReports, an American magazine,summarizes some of the findings found in Microtrends by Mark Penn including a heading styled “Pro Semites” which reports that “when Americans were asked how they feel about religious groups in the United States, Jews rated the highest of any, with a net positive of 54 percent…As love for Jews spreads, so do Jewish customs. Non-Jews are having bar mitzvahs. Americans consume over 8 million pounds of matzo per year – a sickening amount if divided only among the nation’s 6 million Jews.
2007: The New Republic features a review of The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany
2008:Neal Karlen, noted journalist and author, discusses his book, The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews at the U of Minnesota Bookstore in Coffman Memorial Union.
2008:The American Sephardi Federation presents the screening and discussion of “The Law Aliyah from Yemen
2008: The inaugural Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction will be conferred upon bestselling author Herman Wouk, author of The Winds of War and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Caine Mutiny, at the library's Thomas Jefferson Bldg., Special guests William Safire, Martha Raddatz and Jimmy Buffet are among those who will read from Wouk's work, while Wouk himself will read from his unpublished literary diaries.
2009:Rich Cohen discusses and signs Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History at Politics and Prose Bookstore
2009: At Tulane University, the Jewish Studies program begins its Fall Colloquium and Film Series.: The *Colloquium is devoted to the subject of “Cultural Judaism: Experience, Concepts and Rival Perspectives”The first lecture of the series presented today by Ronna Burger is entitled, “"In the Wilderness: Moses as Founder and Legislator"
2009:A class-action lawsuit accusing a Los Angeles Jewish cemetery of dumping remains to make room for new interments was filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court claims that Eden Memorial Park, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the United States, instructed groundskeepers to “secretly break concrete vaults with a backhoe and remove, dump and/or discard the human remains, including human skulls, to make room for new interments.”
2009(21stof Elul, 5769): Ninety-nine year old Lou Bender, depression-era Columbia University basketball star, passed past away today. (As reported by Vincent Malliozzi)
2009: Cass Sunstein was confirmed by Senate as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
2010(2nd of Tishrei, 5771): Rosh Hashanah II
2010:‘Ahead of Time’ is scheduled to open at New York’s Angelika Film Center
2010:A Kassam rocket fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip exploded in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council area this morning. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack. The rocket marked the fourth such attack on southern Israel from Gaza in the last two days since the Rosh Hashanah holiday began.
2010:At a news conference held today, University of Tennessee men’s basketball coach “acknowledged that he had lied to NCCA investigators looking into recruiting violations at the Knoxville school.
2010(2nd of Tishrei, 5771): Eighty-year old advertising executive Joyce Beber, co-founder of Beber Silverstein & Partners and promoter of Leona Helmsley’s business ventures, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
2011: Renaud Capucon and Yefim Bronfman are scheduled to perform Beethoven’s Violin Sonata no.5 in F major, op. 24 Spring at the 14th Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival.
2011: The Daniel Ori quintet is scheduled to play two sets featuring arrangements from their upcoming album “Emuna.” Ori is a native of Kfar Saba.
2011:Israel sent a pair of military jets into Cairo at dawn today to evacuate its embassy staff after six members had been trapped in the embassy overnight by thousands of protesters who invaded the building and tossed documents from the windows.
2011:In a televised statement tonight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the violent riots outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last night, during which a mob demolished the security wall surrounding the embassy and stormed the premises, forcing the Egyptian commando to evacuate six Israeli Embassy employees that were stranded inside the building in a special rescue operation.
2011:Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan today slammed US President Barack Obama, claiming he did not take interest in the Turkish-American citizen who died on board the Mavi Marmara during the 2010 IDF raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla.
2012: At the Toronto International Film Festival, premiere of a “Late Quartet,” a simply marvelous must see movie directed and co-produced by Yaron Zilberman, with a script by Seth Grossman and Yaron Zilberman.
2012: EMET is scheduled to host a noon time lecture entitled “11 Years After 9/11: What Went Wrong With American Policy?” in Washington, DC.
2012(23rdof Elul, 5772): Eighty-six year old Holocuast survivor Eli Zborowski who founded the American and International Societies for Yad Vashem passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
2012: Deploying military force against Iranian nuclear sites too early or without the United States' approval could ultimately be detrimental in preventing an Iranian bomb, former head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin said today.
2012:Following a string of "Price Tag" attacks in the West Bank over the past few weeks, Israel Police are set to launch a new unit that will help investigate such crimes, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich said today.
2102: A French Canadian adaptation of BeTipulis an Israeli television drama revolving around the personal and professional life of an Israeli psychologist, Reuven Dagan entitled "En thérapie" was shown for the first time on Canadian television.
2012: Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin called for the government to postpone continued construction of the separation barrier, during a visit to Gush Etzion today.
2013: MK Rabbi Dov Lippman and David Makovsky are scheduled to take part in a discussion entitled “Secular and Religious Jews in Israel: How to Shape a Better Future” at the JCC in Rockville, MD
2013: In Fairfax, VA, the JCCNV Special Needs Committee hosts a book club meeting that will discuss Touch of the Top of the World” A Blind Man’s Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See by Eric Weihenmayer.
2013: “Conference to Mark the 70th Anniversary of the Creation of the United Nations War Crimes Commission in 1943” co-hosted by the Weiner Library is scheduled to open in London.
2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond”
2013: Details of a deal to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control are highly murky, Knesset foreign affairs chief Avigdor Liberman said today, warning that the plan could potentially serve the interests of the Assad regime. (As reported by Stuart Winer)
2013: A leaflet distributed today by the Fatah-affiliated Al- Aksa Martyrs Brigades called for launching terror attacks against Israel as of this coming Friday. The group called on all its “units and sleeping cells” to start launching attacks against “the Zionist enemy.” It said that Palestinians should regard Friday as a “green light from our consciences to all our units and sleeping cells” to launch terror attacks against Israel. (As reported by Khaled Abu Toameh)
2013: Publication of Wilson, a biography of the 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Scott Berg
2014: Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman is scheduled to speak on “All the World: Universalism, Particularism and the High Holidays at Temple Emanu-El’s Skirball Center.
2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocuast Education is scheduled to host a screening of “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco” followed by a Q & A by Professor Ellen Eisenberg.
2014: Friends and family are scheduled to celebrate the birthday of Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky, the Lubavitch Leader of Iowa City.
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Abraham Sutzkever: The Power in Poetry Lecture”
2014: At the University of Connecticut, the Center For Judaic Studies is scheduled to sponsor a “Yiddish Tish.”