November 6
355: Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of Gaul. Constantius II followed the pro-Christian and anti-Jewish policies of his father, Constantine The Great. Julian would follow his cousin as Caesar and enter history as Julian, the Apostate. Julian was a Pagan who sought to reverse the Christianizing policies of his two predecessors. He reversed the rules against the Jewish people and was reportedly planning to allow them to re-build the Temple; a plan that was aborted by his assassination.
1095: At the Council of Claremont, Pope Urban II summoned Christians to retake the Holy Land from the Moslems, alleging that they destroyed Christian holy places. A combination of religious, economic and social motives resulted in the overwhelming response that became known as the First Crusade. The Pope formed an army headed by special knights (i.e. Raymond, Godfrey, etc.). A "people's" army also joined, encouraged by Peter the Hermit and other local clerics. There would eventually be a total of eight Crusades, but only the first four were of any real significance. The Crusades meant death and destruction for the Jews of Europe and the Levant. The “People’s Army” would lay waste to the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria as they marched across Europe. After all, why wait until they got to Palestine to kill the enemies of Christ when they were living right there in Europe? Of course, plundering and pillaging the Jews of their wealth was just an unexpected benefit of religious zeal.
1441: In Worms, the guilds of the “bakers, butchers and marketmen” enacted regulations aimed at the city’s Jews.
1494: Birthdate of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. By 1517 the Islamic Ottoman Empire, ruled by Selim I, took Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes. Suleiman was so taken with the city of Jerusalem and its plight (having suffered centuries of neglect under Mameluke rule), that he ordered the construction of a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City. He reigned from 1520 to 1566. There is not room here to acquaint you with all of the military and cultural accomplishments of the Ottoman Empire’s longest serving sultan. Like many living under his rule, the Jews benefited from his policies. The Ottomans had taken Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes three years before he came to the throne. Sulieman was so disgusted with the effect of Mameluke neglect of the city that he built “a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City.” “Suleiman was renowned as a just and fair ruler, choosing his subordinates according to merit rather than social status or popularity. In 1553 Suleiman declared a law to stop the persecution of Jews via Blood libels, decreeing that all accusations of the slaughter of Christian children by Jews be referred to the Imperial Divan where the courts would expose these lies. The preparation of the law included the input of Moses Hamon, a favorite doctor and dentist of the Sultan. Another symbol of the Muslim-Jewish tolerance was the building of a synagogue and mosque which was built by Suleiman.”
1593(11th of Cheshvan, 5354): Rabbi Abraham Menachem Rapoport author of Minchah Beluah, passed away
1632: Christiana, who made Clement X end the custom of chasing the Jews through the streets of Rome during carnival and who issued a declaration in 1686 placing the Jews of Rome under her protection, began her reign as Queen of Sweden.
1637: Italian Jewish Hebraist Gai Solomon wrote Johannes Buxtorf a Swiss born Christian Hebraist that “he had emigrated to Botzen, a town in Tyrol, where he had become the tutor of the two sons of a rich man named Jacob Moravia.”
1637: In a second letter written today in Latin with a Hebrew introduction Gai Solomon wrote to Buxtorf about Hebrew books that the latter had not seen and which he would later purchase on his behalf.
1643(24th of Cheshvan, 5404): Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai, the native of Fez who “was a Kabbilistic author and commentator, passed away today at Hebron
1796: Catherine II, “whom the Boyars called The Great,” died. Many of her predecessors on the Russian throne had done all they could to keep Jews from living in the empire. Catherine’s aggressive foreign policy helped to lead to the dismemberment of Poland. With one fell swoop, Catherine undid all their efforts when she gained the Jews of a large part of Poland and Lithuania. Despite some early dabbling at enlightened treatment of her Jewish subjects, Catherine began the policies that would create the Pale of Settlement.
1805(14th of Cheshvan, 5566): Meir Obornik, a Biblical commentator in the style of Moses Mendelssohn who translated the Joshuaand Judges into German passed away today in Vienna.
1807: Birthdate of Seligman Baer Bamberger who served as the rabbi at Wurzburg for 38 years
1815: Birthdate of Rabbi and educator Max Lienthal
1816: The Four Great Powers – England, Russia, Austria and Prussia – sent a second note demanding that Frankfort repeal its ordinances that discriminated against the Jews, in part because the regulation “of the affairs of the Jews had been reserved for the Bundestag.”
1819: Seventeen year old Joël Jolson was baptized and became Lutheran lawyer and politician Friedrich Julius Stahl.
1904: Elections in Italy result in the return of 13 Jewish candidates, among them 3 new members for the Chamber of Deputies.
1928: Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president, beating the Democrat candidate. Alfred E. Smith. Smith was a Catholic, but he received a large Jewish vote. What counted in America was that the he was from New York which had a large Jewish population and he espoused programs that appealed to the working class and newly enfranchised immigrants. This was the profile of the large mass of Jewish voters. In a strange quirk of history, the conservative Quaker from Iowa would appoint Benjamin Cardozo, a liberal Jew from New York, to the Supreme Court. Hoover viewed this as such an unremarkable act, that he covers it in one paragraph in his multi-volume autobiography.
1931: Counselor-at-Law by Elmer Rice premiers at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Austrian-born actor Paul Muni (originally Muni Weisenfreund) in the starring role.
1934: Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority, the major New Deal project overseen by David Lienthal.
1972: “Guess Who’s for Richard Nixon” published today described the improbable voters supporting Nixon’s bid for re-election including Rabbi Herschel Schacter, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations; and David Luchins, who headed the 1972 Jewish Youth for Humphrey.
1995: In the following article entitled “The Unvanquished,” Michael D. Lemonick describes how a group of young Jews “survived the Nazis, studied in Germany and liberated themselves” which runs contrary to usual picture of Jews seeking to flee the Home of the Holocaust.
2009: Beginning of Chabad’s New York Weekend
2010: Rivka Zohar, famed Israeli singer, is scheduled to perform at Bnei Zion Hall in New York.
2010(29th of Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty-eight year old Robert J. Lipshutz,"who as White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter played an important behind-the-scenes role in negotiations leading to the Camp David peace accords, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11lipshutz.html
2011: Annual Afternoon Tea featuring Karen Bergreen, author of “Following Polly,” is scheduled to take place at the JCC of Northern Virginia Annual Jewish Book Festival.
2011: Calvin Goldscheider, the Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Judaic Studies at Brown University, is scheduled to discuss his recent book, "A Typical Extraordinary Jew: From Tarnow to Jerusalem", which tells the story of a charming Polish Jew, Shmuel Braw (1906 – 1992) who lived through the traumatic historical events that shaped Jewish experience in the twentieth century in the Adas Israel Freudberg Memorial Sisterhood Library
2011(9th of Cheshvan, 5772): Ninety-two year old Hal Kanter, the Savannah born Jew who made everybody from Eddie Cantor to Bob Hope to Jerry Lewis sound funny to their audiences passed away today.
2011: The Upshernish of Menachem Mendel Blesofsky is scheduled to take place this evening in Iowa City, Iowa.
2011: The 33rd Annual St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, which claims to be the largest Jewish book festival in the United States, is scheduled to begin this evening.
2011: The Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to present “The Valiant and the Indifferent – Honoring Rescuers, Commemorating Kristallnacht.”
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=yyvh5xbab&v=001QcKplmKMacE5kypHlw0kGqBUtOim6n4sXYW0oxVitPf2LPfhWTcUz2d2jTxtVV6HjlzjXgjHNHhnxDQDCBDHID0Yr5Bamt0bD_xbOre0pLCLTUgLvi400reKvDIjhGHWR3NYjLgmzq0%3D
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to hold its 51st annual meeting where it will celebrate the Giant Food Archival Project. The Giant was the name of what became a leading supermarket chain which was founded in 1936 by Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman. Although the Giant was not “a Jewish store,” in the 1950’s the men who worked at the fish counter at the Spring Valley store knew what to grind if you wanted to make Gefilte fish and the Giant was the first chain store in Washington to carry fresh baked challah.
2011: Peace Now activists said tonight that the words "price tag" had been sprayed on the walls of the building where the movement operates in Jerusalem.
2011: Police announced today that they have arrested a suspect in last month's stabbing attack in which a Jewish youth was seriously injured in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood. The suspect, 20-year-old Zaid Abd al-Rahman from the village of Beit Iksa near Ramot, was arrested several days ago in a joint, police, IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation. A media ban on the arrest was lifted today.
355: Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of Gaul. Constantius II followed the pro-Christian and anti-Jewish policies of his father, Constantine The Great. Julian would follow his cousin as Caesar and enter history as Julian, the Apostate. Julian was a Pagan who sought to reverse the Christianizing policies of his two predecessors. He reversed the rules against the Jewish people and was reportedly planning to allow them to re-build the Temple; a plan that was aborted by his assassination.
1095: At the Council of Claremont, Pope Urban II summoned Christians to retake the Holy Land from the Moslems, alleging that they destroyed Christian holy places. A combination of religious, economic and social motives resulted in the overwhelming response that became known as the First Crusade. The Pope formed an army headed by special knights (i.e. Raymond, Godfrey, etc.). A "people's" army also joined, encouraged by Peter the Hermit and other local clerics. There would eventually be a total of eight Crusades, but only the first four were of any real significance. The Crusades meant death and destruction for the Jews of Europe and the Levant. The “People’s Army” would lay waste to the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria as they marched across Europe. After all, why wait until they got to Palestine to kill the enemies of Christ when they were living right there in Europe? Of course, plundering and pillaging the Jews of their wealth was just an unexpected benefit of religious zeal.
1441: In Worms, the guilds of the “bakers, butchers and marketmen” enacted regulations aimed at the city’s Jews.
1494: Birthdate of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. By 1517 the Islamic Ottoman Empire, ruled by Selim I, took Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes. Suleiman was so taken with the city of Jerusalem and its plight (having suffered centuries of neglect under Mameluke rule), that he ordered the construction of a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City. He reigned from 1520 to 1566. There is not room here to acquaint you with all of the military and cultural accomplishments of the Ottoman Empire’s longest serving sultan. Like many living under his rule, the Jews benefited from his policies. The Ottomans had taken Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes three years before he came to the throne. Sulieman was so disgusted with the effect of Mameluke neglect of the city that he built “a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City.” “Suleiman was renowned as a just and fair ruler, choosing his subordinates according to merit rather than social status or popularity. In 1553 Suleiman declared a law to stop the persecution of Jews via Blood libels, decreeing that all accusations of the slaughter of Christian children by Jews be referred to the Imperial Divan where the courts would expose these lies. The preparation of the law included the input of Moses Hamon, a favorite doctor and dentist of the Sultan. Another symbol of the Muslim-Jewish tolerance was the building of a synagogue and mosque which was built by Suleiman.”
1593(11th of Cheshvan, 5354): Rabbi Abraham Menachem Rapoport author of Minchah Beluah, passed away
1632: Christiana, who made Clement X end the custom of chasing the Jews through the streets of Rome during carnival and who issued a declaration in 1686 placing the Jews of Rome under her protection, began her reign as Queen of Sweden.
1637: Italian Jewish Hebraist Gai Solomon wrote Johannes Buxtorf a Swiss born Christian Hebraist that “he had emigrated to Botzen, a town in Tyrol, where he had become the tutor of the two sons of a rich man named Jacob Moravia.”
1637: In a second letter written today in Latin with a Hebrew introduction Gai Solomon wrote to Buxtorf about Hebrew books that the latter had not seen and which he would later purchase on his behalf.
1643(24th of Cheshvan, 5404): Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai, the native of Fez who “was a Kabbilistic author and commentator, passed away today at Hebron
1796: Catherine II, “whom the Boyars called The Great,” died. Many of her predecessors on the Russian throne had done all they could to keep Jews from living in the empire. Catherine’s aggressive foreign policy helped to lead to the dismemberment of Poland. With one fell swoop, Catherine undid all their efforts when she gained the Jews of a large part of Poland and Lithuania. Despite some early dabbling at enlightened treatment of her Jewish subjects, Catherine began the policies that would create the Pale of Settlement.
1805(14th of Cheshvan, 5566): Meir Obornik, a Biblical commentator in the style of Moses Mendelssohn who translated the Joshuaand Judges into German passed away today in Vienna.
1807: Birthdate of Seligman Baer Bamberger who served as the rabbi at Wurzburg for 38 years
1815: Birthdate of Rabbi and educator Max Lienthal
1816: The Four Great Powers – England, Russia, Austria and Prussia – sent a second note demanding that Frankfort repeal its ordinances that discriminated against the Jews, in part because the regulation “of the affairs of the Jews had been reserved for the Bundestag.”
1819: Seventeen year old Joël Jolson was baptized and became Lutheran lawyer and politician Friedrich Julius Stahl.
1834: The Jews of Austria were forbidden to have the first names of Christian saints.
1839(29th of Cheshvan, 5600): Rabbi Hayim Rapoport, of Ostrowiec passes away. Rapoport was a member of a distinguished family of Jewish scholars. He was the author of a collection of Responsa called Maxim Chayyim.
1840: At Constantinople, Sultan Abd Al-Majid issued a firman declaring that Jews did not use blood in their ceremonies, and for any of the Sultan's subjects to say the Jews did was not truth. Moses Montefiore met with the Sultan and helped to secure this Decree. The Sultan issued the firman to protect the Jews of Rhodes and in Damascus, who were being persecuted by this old anti-Semitic remark.
1842: The first Jewish benevolent society in St. Louis was formed, Chesed v'Emeth ("Mercy and Truth"). Its purpose was to aid indigent Jews. In December 1846 the group formally incorporated as the Hebrew Benevolent Society (H.B.S.).
1853: In Hartford, Conn, Samson and Adelaide Wallach gave birth to Leopold Wallach, the prominent New York lawyer who was the father of Mrs. Max Morgenthau, Jr.
1853:Joseph Seligman and Babette Seligman gave birth to their daughter Sophie who married Morris Walter and became Sophie Seligman Walter.
1854: In Cincinnati, OH, Solomon and Fannie Kuhn Loeb gave birth to Therese Schiff.
1855: “Rachel’s French Critic” published today described career ofElizabeth-Rachel Félix the Jewish-French actress known as Mademoiselle Rachel,
1856: The first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot is submitted for publication. George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, would the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day. Its mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with a sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist and Kaballistic ideas has made it a controversial final statement of one of the greatest of Victorian novelists.
1858: According to the police reports published in the New York Times, “when the case of Henry Myers” who was “charged with assault and battery was called, Judge Osborn, the presiding judicial officer declared “Now you’ll see some hard swearing. They’re a parcel of Jews.”
1859: Birthdate of clergyman and author Madison Clinton Peters, the native of Lehigh County, PA whose works included Justice to the Jew, Haym Solomon, The Genius of the Jew, The Jews as a Patriort and The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud.
1859: In Poland (part of the Russian Empire) Chaja Szarka and Symcha Jakum Dancygier gave birth to Abraham Dancygier who gained fame as Adolphe Danziger De Castro whose multifaceted career included authoring Jewish Forerunners of Christianity which covered Jewish history from Hillel through Judah HaNasi
1860(21st of Cheshvan, 5621): Warder Cresson, who was known by his Jewish name - Michael Boaz Israel ben Abraham – after he converted to Judaism, passed away today in Jerusalem. Born in 1798, Cresson was a member of a Quaker family that traced its roots back to the earliest days of the founding of the American colonies. Like many men of his time, Cresson was captivated by questions of morality and religion. Unlike others, he found his answers in Judaism. Cresson was the first American to be commissioned Consul at Jerusalem and the time spent in that city may have been the cause of his conversion. At any rate, his family took him to court and tried to have him declared a lunatic for his change in religious beliefs. Having prevailed in court, Cresson returned to Jerusalem where he took an active role in the early projects aimed at having Jews settle in Palestine. Her married and had two children. “The Key of David” is his most famous literary effort. It is biographical in part. It was written at a time when he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs so it contains a comparatively harsh description of Christianity.
1860: Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States. The message of opportunity and defense of the Union represented by Lincoln and the recently created Republican Party resonated positively with many Jews. As President, Lincoln took action to make the Jews feel like “first class” citizens. In 1862 he signed an act of Congress that required Army chaplains to be Christian ministers. Now, Rabbis could officially serve in this position. Lincoln also rescinded General Grant’s notorious Order #10 that barred Jewish merchants from operating in the military theatre under his command.
1861: Birthdate of Scottish chemist Arthur Pillans Laurie who “in 1939 Laurie the notorious The Case for Germany, a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic work which praises Hitler…as a painter” and “continues with a revisionist defiance of Nazism that denigrates the Jewish people and socialism.”
1862: Dr. Thomas Torrance and Susan Watt gave birth to Dr. David Watt Torrance who arrived in Tiberias in 1885 where he soon tired of his attempts to convert the local population and began ministering to the sick and injured with such skill that he was viewed as a Chasid by the Jews living in and around the Sea of Galilee. (Torrance was not Jewish but he was part of a small stream of Anglo-Christians who may have come to convert but who stayed to improve the life of the local population)
1870: Birthdate of Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, whose distinguished career in public service include being name the 1st High Commissioner of Palestine.
1876:Johann Emanuel Veith, a Bohemian born Jew who became a Roman Catholic priest passed away today.
1876: Giacomo Antonelli, the Cardinal Secretary of State passed away today. During the Mortara Affiar, Antonelli refused to allow British to see the Pope about this matter. He declared it “a closed question.” Oddly enough, Antoneli was reputed to have Jewish ancestors, a condition not uncommon among Italian Catholics of a certain vintage.
1879: The funeral services for Rabbi David Einhorn of blessed memory took place this morning at Temple Beth-El in New York City. The services, which began at 9 a.m. were conducted in both German and Hebrew Rabbis. There were numerous rabbis from across the country and several local dignitaries in attendance. Two of Einhorn’s sons-in-law – Rabbis Kaufman Kohler and Emile Hirsch – and his close friend Rabbi Samuel Hirsch of Philadelphia presided over this solemn event which ended with burial in Green Wood Cemetery.
1879: Daniel Dougherty is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “The Stage” at a meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York City.
1881: “Judaism and Heine” published today described the Bible as the great treasure of the Jews which has been their gift to the world.
1882: It was reported today that Colonel Emmons Clark, the reform candidate for Sheriff in New York, has issued a statement denying claims that he has used his influence to keep Jews from serving under his command in the Seventh Regiment. While the Colonel has no role in choosing members of the regiment he is proud of the fact that there are Jewish members in each of the companies that make up the regiment. Clark’s version of events has been accepted by “the managers of the newspapers which is recognized as the organ of” the Hebrew “race.”
1884: Hovevei Zion was founded in Kattowitz, Poland
1884: In Budapest, Alexander Germanus and Rosalia Zobel gave birth to Julius Germanus the Islamologist, author and member of the Hungarian Parliament.
1885: It was reported today that “the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities” is enrolling Jewish girls aged ten and above where they will learn to sew by hand and machine at no charge.
1886: The Wendell Phillips Literary Society is scheduled to sponsor a “dramatic entertainment” this evening which is a fund raiser to for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society which is planning on building a new, more spacious home for the children in its care.
1887: Formation of Federation of Synagogues.
1888: “The Protestant Reformation” published today provides a review of the History of the Reformation by Philip Schaff in which the author says of Martin Luther that he hated “Popery” and that “his last books against…the Jews are the worst.
1888: It was reported today that Republicans in Merrill, Indiana, “stocked a room with whiskey and beer and sent carriages out among the Polish Jews of the neighborhood.” Once the Jews had been gathered together and joined in the revelry, the Republicans tried to convince them to vote for their candidates and failing that offered to buy their votes for two dollars a head. (Editor’s note – regardless of Party or locations, practices like this were all to common in the electoral until well into the first half of the 20th century.)
1889: It was reported today that in three days, Sir Henry Isaacs will installed as the Lord Mayor of London. He is third Jew to hold the position in the last 20 years.
1898: Birthdate of Louis Buckhater the son of a rabbi who “emigrated from Lithuania to Ireland” with his family at the age of 5 to escape anti-Semitism and who gained fame as “footballer and cricketer Louis Bookman
1892: Two days before the general election the Jewish Democrats of the Fourth Assembly District in New York City held “an enthusiastic meeting” at the Hebrew Institute at the corner of Broadway and East Jerfferson.
1892: “Beards” published today provides a brief history facial history including the observation that “the ancient Jews considered it the greatest insult that could be offered to a man to pluck his beard which may account in part for the wonderful state of preservation that tradition has connected with the beard of the Old World Male.”
1893: “Jews In Early England” published today provided a complete review of The Jews of Angevin Englandby Joseph Jacobs.
1893: On the day before elections are held in New York, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler wrote that “It has always been my rule as a clergyman not to meddle with politics” but that he is making an exception today because he feels “bound to publicly declare that so far as” he knows his “co-religionist there is no right-minded Jew in this country to whom law and justice, the welfare and good order of the State are not of paramount importance.”
1895: Based on reports circulating in Vienna today the Ottoman government is strictly enforcing emigration policies that will Jews to only Jews visit Palestine for 30 days and then only if they have a Turkish passport.
1895: “End Fusion Ticket Business” published today described the Republican leader Edward Lauterbach to the Tammany Victory which led him to decry ever being involved with any kind of Good Government political coaltion.
1895(19th of Cheshvan, 5656): Joel Müller, the German rabbi who left the pulpit to pursue an academic career that included a professorship at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies passed away in Berlin today.
1897: In Paris, Gladys and Stella Dreyfus left school for the last time telling their teachers that “they were going to London with their parents.” (They would not return because their parents would kill them as part of a murder suicide plot. The family was distantly related to the French Captain convicted of treason but their deaths had nothing to do with the scandal.
1898: A truce was agreed upon today between the Dope Sing Kong Saw (the Chinese Laundrymen’s Association) and the Hebrew Laundrymen’s Union which should bring an end to the “price war” between the competitors.
1899: “Hebrew Guardian Society” published today provided a summary of the annual report of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society which is led by Samuel D. Levy as President and Directors Clara Jacobs, Samuel D. Levy and Eli Bernays.
1900: Herzl writes to David Wolffsohn. He wants him to ask Jacobus Kann in The Hague whether he can raise £ 700.000 for a Turkish loan.
1903: Racing driver Dorothy Levitt was summoned “to appear at Marlborough Street Assizes for speeding in Hyde Park.” The magistrate fined her £5 with 2s costs
1904: Elections in Italy result in the return of 13 Jewish candidates, among them 3 new members for the Chamber of Deputies.
1911: Édouard Alphonse de Rothschild, and Germaine Alice Halphen, gave birth to Jacqueline Rebecca Louise de Rothschild who gained fame as the multi-talented Jacqueline Piatigorsky.
1911: Birthdate of Florence Spurgeon who as Florence Zacks Melton, “took a material invented as a helmet liner for World War II tank crewmen and turned it into cushy foam-rubber slippers that have soothed billions of tired feet.” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1913: Mortimer L. Schiff announced at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce today that $500,000 had been offered to found a College of Commerce by a man who was not ready to have his name revealed. Few of the members present had heard of the gift, and the announcement was received with much enthusiasm. There were several people, who when they first of the donation, attributed to the famous Jacob Schiff. Such was not the case.
1914: One day after Great Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire, “Lord Herbert Samuel…met with Prime Minister Asquith to urge the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
1914:Gladys Guggenheim Straus and Roger W. Straus gave birth to Oscar Straus II the American businessman who became Chairman of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fred Lavanburg Foundation
1914(17th of Cheshvan, 5675):Baron Alexis George de Günzburg who “joined the 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars and then was attached as an interpreter to the Royal Horse Guard was killed today on the Western Front.
1917: Morris Hillquit, the Socialist Party Candidate placed third in today’s New York Mayoral election.
1917: Birthdate Joseph Bloch, a professor of piano literature at the Juilliard School in New York. A native of Indianapolis today Bloch earned a bachelor’s degree from the Chicago Musical College and, after service in Guam with the Army Air Forces in World War II, a master’s in musicology from Harvard. For five decades except for an interruption in the 1980s when he tried unsuccessfully to retire, every Juilliard pianist passed through Mr. Bloch’s classroom. His pupils included many of the best-known performers of the second half of the 20th century, among them Van Cliburn, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Misha Dichter, Jeffrey Siegel and Jeffrey Swann.
1926: Edith Gregor Halpert opened her Downtown Gallery on West 13thStreet in New York’s Greenwich Village. The gallery was revolutionary because it promoted “American modernists when their European counterparts overshadowed them.”
1928: Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president, beating the Democrat candidate. Alfred E. Smith. Smith was a Catholic, but he received a large Jewish vote. What counted in America was that the he was from New York which had a large Jewish population and he espoused programs that appealed to the working class and newly enfranchised immigrants. This was the profile of the large mass of Jewish voters. In a strange quirk of history, the conservative Quaker from Iowa would appoint Benjamin Cardozo, a liberal Jew from New York, to the Supreme Court. Hoover viewed this as such an unremarkable act, that he covers it in one paragraph in his multi-volume autobiography.
1928: Albert E. Ottinger, the Republican candidate for governor was defeated by FDR in an election that was decided by less than one per cent of the total vote.
1931: Birthdate of director Mike Nichols. Born in Berlin in, Nichols attended a segregated school for Jewish children. His father, a doctor, fled the Nazis by moving the family to New York City when Nichols was still a child. His greatest early fame came when he teamed with another Jew, Elaine May to create some of the most memorable comedy sketches of the mid-twentieth century.
1931: Counselor-at-Law by Elmer Rice premiers at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Austrian-born actor Paul Muni (originally Muni Weisenfreund) in the starring role.
1934: Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority, the major New Deal project overseen by David Lienthal.
1936: The Maccabees, the soccer champions of Palestine were tendered an official farewell at City Hall today by Mayor La Guardia. The mayor gave the players a New York City flag in exchange for the flag of Tel Aviv that the team had given him when they arrived in New York. Jeremiah T. Mahoney, honorary chairman of the tour committee and Benjamin Winter President of the Federal of Polish Jews in America also attended the farewell ceremony.
1937: Mussolini gave Von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, his approval of Hitler's plans for Austria. "Let events (in Austria) take their natural course. He was giving his approval to the German annexation of Austria which would take place in 1938. The annexation would prove to be quite popular with most Austrians, a fact they tried to soft-peddle after the war. For the Jews of Austria, the Anschluss meant they were now under the control of the Nazis and their racial laws.
1938: First anti-Semitic attack over the radio in the U.S. was broadcast.
1938: Herschel Grynszpan spent the night in a cheap hotel after having asked his uncle Abraham to send money to his family – a request that Abraham was loath to fufill because he said he had little to spare, and that he was incurring both financial cost and legal risks by harbouring his nephew, an undocumented alien and unemployed youth.
1938(12 Cheshvan, 5699): Sixty eight year old Abraham Liessin the Yiddish poet and editor of Zukunft passed away today.
1938(12 Cheshvan, 5699): Sixty eight year old Abraham Liessin the Yiddish poet and editor of Zukunft passed away today.
1939: Birthdate of Civil Rights Activist, Michael “Mickey” Schwerner who was murdered in 1964 outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi along with two fellow Civil Rights workers, Andrew Goodman (who was also Jewish) and James Chaney, an African-American. Their murder has become part of the folklore of the fight for equal treatment for all Americans.
1940: Birthdate of Ruth Wyler Messinger, a political liberal who served as Manhattan Borough President before running for Mayor. She is the CEO of American Jewish World Service and one those listed as “Forward Fifty” by The Forward.
1941: Popular German film star Joachim Gottschalk kills his family and himself rather than submit to the deportation and probable deaths of his Jewish wife and child.
1941(16th of Cheshvan, 5702): This was the second of two successive days in which the Nazis took Rovno, Ukraine, 17,500 Jews to the forests at Rovno in the Ukraine and ordered them to dig five large pits. In the bitter cold they were ordered to strip and the all murdered over a two day period.
1941(16th of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis massacred 500 Jews of Kolomyya, Galicia and 15,000 Jews of Rowno, Poland.
1942: One thousand Jews were deported to Birkenau from Drancy. Drancy was the the “transit camp in a Paris suburb from which 70,000 French Jews were shipped to death camps in the East. Drancy was run by the French police until the summer of 1943 when the SS took over.
1942(26th of Cheshvan, 5703): The Nazis executed 12,000 Jews from Minsk.
1942: One day after the Gestapo arrested Rabbi Regina Jonas, the Nazis confiscated all of her proprerty “for the benefit of the German Reich.”
1943: Five weeks after escaping from a work detail at the Babi Yar, Ukraine, mass-murder site, about 14 Jews and Soviet POWs come out of hiding to greet the Red Army as it liberates Kiev, Ukraine.
1943: Fourteen survivors of the massacre at Babi Yar made it to the victorious Red Army in Kiev, and joined its troops.
1944: Two members of Lehi (the Stern Gang) – Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri murdered Lord Moyne in Cairo. This led to what some call, The Hunting Season, which the name given to the Haganah’s campaign to curtail the activities of Irgun and Lehi
1944: Thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent westward to Austria. For most Jews, this was a Death March. Exposure to the harsh European winter, exhaustion, snarling dogs and German bullets all took their toll. In an additional act of wives would bury their husbands, then be shot dead themselves and finally thrown into the same graves.
1944(20th of Cheshvan, 5705): Hungary's Arrow Cross murders 19 Jews in Budapest and drives close to 30,000 toward the old Austrian border.
1944: In the Bronx, Harold and Ruth Berg gave birth to James Berg, President of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, the collective bargaining agent for the owners of more than 4,000 residential and commercial buildings in the city.(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1945: Stanley Isaacs was relected to the New York City Council
1947: Meet the Press, billed as “America’s first televised, spontaneous press conference” made its television debut. Meet the Press was the creation of producer and moderator, Lawrence “Larry” Spivak. The half hour show was live and came on late on Sunday afternoon - a dead zone in television broadcasting. The show featured one guest, who ranged from American political leaders to the Prime Minister of France to the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and three journalists. The only things that the current iteration of the program has in common with the original are the name of the show, that it appears on Sunday and that it is broadcast on NBC.
1948: Birthdate of Sidney Blumenthal, journalist, author and advisor to President Bill Clinton as well as Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
1951: Premiere of “Let’s Make It Legal” a comedy with a script by I.A.L. Diamond and a score by Lionel Newman, the uncle of Randy Newman
1951: U.S. premiere of “Detective Story” a dark tale of a big city police precinct directed, produced and written by William Wyler, starring Kirk Douglas and featuring Lee Grant in her screen debut.
1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Knesset passed the first reading of a measure recognizing the World Zionist Organization as the agency authorized to coordinate the activities in Israel of all Jewish corporate bodies and associations engaged in the development of the country and the integration of immigrants. During discussions Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said he regretted his choice of words when he referred to American Zionist leaders as "bankrupt" because they failed to immigrate. However, he stood by the substance of his accusations. Ben Gurion, as an ardent Zionist, believed that the only authentic Jewish existence was in Israel.
1953: Israel complained to the United Nations truce supervision organization in Jerusalem today that armed Jordanians murdered a guard last night in an attack upon a post along the railway track north of Hadera in the coastal plain.
1956: During the Sinai Campaign, Golda Meir and Shimon Peres met with French officials. The two Israeli ministers were looking for French support in the face of Soviet threats to use missiles against Israel. The French Foreign minister told the Israelis that his government would “support Israel with everything we’ve got.” But, he also pointed out that the Soviets were more powerful and that their arsenal included missiles and nuclear bombs. As the two ministers flew back to Tel Aviv, the Eisenhower administration flip-flopped on its earlier statements. It demanded that Israel withdraw immediately from the Sinai or suffer the consequences. (The behavior of the United States during the Suez Crisis would cause the French to create their own nuclear weapons program. This would lead to De Gaulle’s decisions to take the French Army out of the NATO military command. This widening gulf between the French and Americans haunts the relationship between these two old allies to this very day.)
1956: President Eisenhower sent a message to Ben Gurion demanding that Israeli forces stop fighting immediately and withdraw from the Sinai.
1957: Birthdate of Lori Singer. The Texas born actress was the daughter of Jewish Canadian parents. Her film credits include starring roles in TheFalcon and the Snowman and The Man with One Red Shoe.
1958: Syria resumed its artillery bombardment of the Galilee, while Israeli workers were involved in a massive project draining Lake Huleh to obtain more agricultural land for the country. Under orders from IDF Chief of Staff Haim Liaskov, the Israelis fired back at their attackers.
1967: Birthdate of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, costar of the 1980’s sitcom My Sister Sam. Tragically, she is best remembered for her manner of dying. She was murdered in 1989 by an obsessive fan who had been stalking her for years.
1971: “The Incomparable Max,” a play co-authored by Jerome Lawerence based the works of Max Beerbohm, closed today after twenty three performances at the Royale Theatre.
1972: “Guess Who’s for Richard Nixon” published today described the improbable voters supporting Nixon’s bid for re-election including Rabbi Herschel Schacter, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations; and David Luchins, who headed the 1972 Jewish Youth for Humphrey.
1973: Abe Beame defeated Mayor John Lindsay to become the first Jewish mayor of New York City. Born on New York’s lower East Side in 1906, Beame rose through the ranks and served two terms as comptroller before unseating the ineffectual but popular Lindsay. Beame inherited the worst fiscal crisis in the city’s history. Forced to slash budgets and reduce the city work force, Beame was a courageous but unpopular figure. He passed away in 2001. It does seem strange to many that New York, with its large Jewish population would have waited so long to have a Jewish mayor. Heck, gentile dominated Oregon had a Jewish senator twenty years before Manhattan et al had a Jewish chief executive.
1974: Ratz (the Movement for Civil Rights and Peace) left the governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Yithak Rabin.
1975: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring Pearl Bailey and Billy Daniels in all-black production opened at the Minskoff Theatre.
1977: PLO gunners fired katyusha rockets from across the Lebanese border at the seaside town of Nahariya. They killed one Israeli woman. She was a survivor of the Holocaust.
1987(14th of Cheshvan, 5748): Zohar Argov (a popular Israeli singer and a distinctive voice in the Mizrahi music scene passed away.
1987: The 27th episode of “My Sister Sam” co-starring Rebecca Schaeffer aired tonight on CBS.
1989: Kitty Dukakis wife of presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis is hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol. Mrs. Dukakis is Jewish.
1994: Michael Mark Appelbaum begins servings as Montreal City Councillor for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
1995: In his first court appearance on Yigal Amir, 25, asserted that he was required to kill Mr. Rabin under religious law because the Prime Minister was betraying Jewish lives and land to the enemy.
1995: In the following article entitled “The Unvanquished,” Michael D. Lemonick describes how a group of young Jews “survived the Nazis, studied in Germany and liberated themselves” which runs contrary to usual picture of Jews seeking to flee the Home of the Holocaust.
2001(20th of Cheshvan ,5762):(Capt. (Res.) Eyal Sela, 39, of Moshav Nir Banim, was shot dead in an ambush by three Palestinian terrorists on the southern Nablus bypass road.
2002(1st of Kislev, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
2002(1st of Kislev, 5763): Sgt.-Maj. Madin Grifat, 23, of Beit Zarzir was killed when a mine exploded during a routine patrol northeast of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. The Givati Brigade company commander was wounded. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
2003: The Chicago Sun-Times published the last column written by 91 year old Irv Kupcinet.
2003: In “Rabbi Asher Wade tackles questions of Holocaust, God at local lecture” Sherry Greenfield describes the upcoming lecture by Rabbi Asher Wade on "God didn't die in Auschwitz: Answering the question: Where was God in the Holocaust?" at the Beth Sholom Community Center in Frederick, MD.
2005: A mosaic and the remains of a building uncovered recently in excavations on the Megiddo prison grounds may belong to the earliest church in the world, according to a preliminary examination by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The church dates from some time in third or fourth century.
2005: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest including The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princetonby Jerome Karabel and Dean and Me (A Love Story) by Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan
2006: Borat, the cinematic creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was the leading box office hit over the weekend, grossing 26 million dollars in sales. This financial success is all the more amazing when you consider the limited number of theatres in which the film appeared.
2006: Sports Illustrated features two page retrospective on the recently deceased Arnold “Red” Auberach without mentioning the fact that he was Jewish. This is no small oversight when one considers the role of two Jews - Abe Sapperstien and Red Auberach - for opening up careers in professional basketball players to African Americans.
2006: U.S. News & World Report reported that “prosecutors in Argentina are placing blame on ‘the highest authorities’ of the then government in Tehran for the 1994 Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured more than 2000. Prosecutors are seeking arrest orders for former Iranian President Rafsanjani and seven others, alleging that they plotted to have Lebanon-based Hezbollah stage the bombing, the worst terrorist attack ever in Argentina.”
2007: The Diaspora Museum (Beth Hatefutsoth), marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War with the opening of an exhibition covering the Jewish nationalist spirit that Israel's incredible 1967 military victory ignited among Russian Jewry, setting of a struggle that began with a cry for free immigration to Israel and ended with the struggle to lead a free Jewish existence in the Soviet Union. Entitled, Jews of Struggle: The Jewish National Movement in the USSR, 1967-1989, the exhibition presents photographs, posters, rare footage, artifacts, rare documents, books, diaries, albums, letters and art
2007: At the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington 38th annual Book Festival, Walter Isaacson discusses his bestselling biography Einstein: His Life and Universe.
2007: Shalom Auslander reads from his biography Foreskin’s Lament at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, Iowa.
2007: In what appears to be a challenge to David Ben-Gurion’s old dream of “making the desert bloom” The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) released a report detailing the extent of recent agricultural development throughout the Negev and the underestimated impact of this development on the local ecology.
2007(25th of Cheshvan, 5768): Staff Sergeant Yariv Amitai of Moshav Hazor’im was killed in a Jeep accident along the border with Gaza.
2007: At rededication ceremonies at Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue Cairo, D. Gaber Baltagi recited one of his works in Arabic and Hebrew calling for peace among the nations followed by the sounding of loud Shofar blast.
2008: At ColumbiaUniversity, the Alliance Program presents a seminar entitled “Israel As A Jewish and Democratic State: A Reappraisal” moderated by Peter Awn, Director of the Middle East Institute.
2008: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel in a last ditch attempt to salvage something from the aborted “peace talks” held in Annapolis. Secretary Rice is forced to admit that none of the grandiose Bush talk about peace in the Middle East have become a reality.
2008: Rahm Israel Emanual accepted an offer from President-elect Barack Obama to become the White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration, which begins on January 20, 2009.
2009: Nobel Prize winning Israeli economist Daniel Kahneman “was awarded an honorary doctorate from the department of Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands.”
2009: The 40th Annual Book Festival sponsored by the JCC of Greater Washington continues with a presentation by Fashion Institute of Technology Professor Helene Verin sharing the story of Beth Levine, the trend-setting designer who led shoe fashion from the early 1950’s through mid-1970’s
2009: Beginning of Chabad’s New York Weekend
2010: Rivka Zohar, famed Israeli singer, is scheduled to perform at Bnei Zion Hall in New York.
2010: Lauren Beth Denenberg married Alex Bettman, the son of Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, tonight at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
2010(29th of Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty-eight year old Robert J. Lipshutz,"who as White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter played an important behind-the-scenes role in negotiations leading to the Camp David peace accords, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11lipshutz.html
2011: Annual Afternoon Tea featuring Karen Bergreen, author of “Following Polly,” is scheduled to take place at the JCC of Northern Virginia Annual Jewish Book Festival.
2011: Calvin Goldscheider, the Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Judaic Studies at Brown University, is scheduled to discuss his recent book, "A Typical Extraordinary Jew: From Tarnow to Jerusalem", which tells the story of a charming Polish Jew, Shmuel Braw (1906 – 1992) who lived through the traumatic historical events that shaped Jewish experience in the twentieth century in the Adas Israel Freudberg Memorial Sisterhood Library
2011(9th of Cheshvan, 5772): Ninety-two year old Hal Kanter, the Savannah born Jew who made everybody from Eddie Cantor to Bob Hope to Jerry Lewis sound funny to their audiences passed away today.
2011: The Upshernish of Menachem Mendel Blesofsky is scheduled to take place this evening in Iowa City, Iowa.
2011: The 33rd Annual St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, which claims to be the largest Jewish book festival in the United States, is scheduled to begin this evening.
2011: The Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to present “The Valiant and the Indifferent – Honoring Rescuers, Commemorating Kristallnacht.”
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=yyvh5xbab&v=001QcKplmKMacE5kypHlw0kGqBUtOim6n4sXYW0oxVitPf2LPfhWTcUz2d2jTxtVV6HjlzjXgjHNHhnxDQDCBDHID0Yr5Bamt0bD_xbOre0pLCLTUgLvi400reKvDIjhGHWR3NYjLgmzq0%3D
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to hold its 51st annual meeting where it will celebrate the Giant Food Archival Project. The Giant was the name of what became a leading supermarket chain which was founded in 1936 by Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman. Although the Giant was not “a Jewish store,” in the 1950’s the men who worked at the fish counter at the Spring Valley store knew what to grind if you wanted to make Gefilte fish and the Giant was the first chain store in Washington to carry fresh baked challah.
2011: Peace Now activists said tonight that the words "price tag" had been sprayed on the walls of the building where the movement operates in Jerusalem.
2011: Police announced today that they have arrested a suspect in last month's stabbing attack in which a Jewish youth was seriously injured in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood. The suspect, 20-year-old Zaid Abd al-Rahman from the village of Beit Iksa near Ramot, was arrested several days ago in a joint, police, IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation. A media ban on the arrest was lifted today.
2011:The Jewish Federations of North America’s (JFNA) General Assembly opened today in Denver, Colorado amid questions of how much funding the Jewish federations will continue to provide to the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
2011(9thof Cheshvan, 5772): Seventy-eight year old Israeli author and journalist Peretz Kidron passed away. A native of Vienna, his family escaped to Britain at the time of the Anschluss and he eventually made his to Israel where he lived at Kibbutz Zikim.
2011: Irish blogger and author John Connolly, a member of the Anglican Friends of Israel who has criticized the General Synod of the Church of England for endorsing the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, a group he claims has an anti-Israel bias and a history of misleading the public about its own activities” scooped everybody when he published a picture of “Irish politician Chris Andrews smiling and shaking hands with Bashar Al-Assad of Syria.”
2012: “The Price of Kings: Shimon Peres” is scheduled to have its British premiere at the UK Jewish Film Festival.
2012:Colorado voters adopted a newly permissive approach to marijuana following a campaign spearheaded by Jewish activist Mason Tvert. (As reported by Ben Harris)
http://www.jta.org/2012/11/12/news-opinion/politics/jewish-pot-activist-mason-tvert-hits-new-high-with-marijuana-legalization-vote-in-colorado#ixzz2jj6mlvHQ2012” Mill Creek entertainment released a DVD version of “Yellowneck” a film about Confederate deserters and Seminole Indians with a musical score by Laurence Rosenthal.
2012: In the U.S. elections are scheduled to be held for President, the House of Representatives, one third of the United States and host of state and local positions. Among the candidates is Shelly Adler who is running in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District. Mrs. Adler late husband had held the seat until he was defeated in 2010.
2012: The United Nations today condemned the Syrian military’s breach of the demilitarized zone between the Israeli and Syrian Golan Heights on Saturday, calling it a violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement.
2012: An explosion tore through the Gaza - Israel border this morning, injuring three IDF soldiers.
2013: “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers,” a film based on The Prime Ministersby Yehuda Avner produced by Richard Tank is scheduled to open in Los Angeles. (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)
2013: “Child Refugees” Five Portraits from the Kindertransport” is scheduled to come to an end at the Wiener Library in London, UK.
2013(3rdof Kislev, 57754): Josef Harish, “an Israeli jurist who served as Attorney General between 1986 and 1993” passed away today at Tel Aviv
2013: A three-judge panel at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court unanimously acquitted former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman of fraud and breach of trust charges this morning, clearing the way for him to retake his cabinet post. (As reported by Elie Leshem and Haviv Rettig Gur)
2013: The year-round Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to show “AKA Doc Pomus.”
2014: “The Art Dealer” is scheduled to be shown on the opening night of 18thannual UK Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938-48: Beyond Idealization and Condemnation”
2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host “Science Confronts Race: A Contested History.”