November 22
1220: Frederick II, who would become the protector of the Jews in Frankfurt in 1236, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor today by Honorius III.
1280: The 3 year reign of Pope Nicholas III whose bull Vineam sorce encouraged conversion through "sermons and other means" came to an end today. (Jewish Virtual Library)
1307: Pope Clement V issues the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. The Templars were a group of Christian Knights who took their name from the fact that their first headquarters was located on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in an area believed to be on the site of the ruins of Solomon’s Temple.
1348: Riots reached the Germanic lands of Bavaria and Swabia. Eighty towns, including Augsburg, Munich, and Wurzburg were attacked
1547:Asolo, Italy was the scene of one of the few pogroms recorded in Italy. Ten Jews in a town of thirty were killed, and their houses robbed with no apparent motives.
1580: In Poland, the Council of the Four Lands adopted an ordinance that limits the extent of land leasing, known as arenda that is permitted to any individual. The prevention of competition for arenda was one of the council’s major concerns.
1617: Ahmed I, Ottoman Sultan, passed away. During his reign, Ahmed contracted small pox. The treatments prescribed by his physicians proved ineffectual. The widow of Solomon Eskenazi, who had served as a court physician was called in and she saved the Sultan.
1793: Strasbourg prohibited circumcision and the wearing of beards Further It ordered the burning of all books in Hebrew. Strasbourg is located on the border between Germany and France. As such it has changed hands numerous times.
1795(10th of Kislev, 5556): Vrouwtje Frumet David Lintz-Cohen passed away. Born at Amsterdam in 1737, she was the daughter of David Levie Juda-Moshe Lints-Cohen and Bele Simon Samson Levie-Drukker and the widow of Kalman Isaac Shochet
1797: In London, Levy Salomons and Matilda de Metz gave birth to Sir David Salomons, 1st Baronet, a leading figure in the 19th century struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom who was the first Jewish Sheriff of the City of London and Lord Mayor of London, and one of the first two Jewish people to serve in the British House of Commons.
1800 (5th of Kislev): Philosopher Solomon ben Joshua Maimon passed away
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13043.html
1808: In London Hanna Barent Cohen and Nathan Mayer Rothschild who “had just established the London branch of the banking business of the Rothschilds” to Baron Lionel Nathan Rothschild.
1811: Birthdate of David Woolf Marks, a leading Reform Rabbi in the UK who was the first Rabbi to serve at The West London Synagogue, the country’s first (and oldest) reform congregation.
1813: Today, a codicil was attached to the original will of Benjamin D’Israeli, the grandfather of the Earl Beaconsfield, Great Britain’s first Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.
1819: Birthdate of Joseph Seligman, the native of Bavaria, who founded Seligman Brothers and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1819: Birthdate of Mary Anne Evans, who, under the pen name of George Elliot wrote Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was 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.
1826: Birthdate of Italian patriot Enrico Guastalla who fought in the wars that led to the unification of Italy.
1845: In the UK, Charlotte von Rothschild and Lionel de Rothschild gave birth to their third son Leopold de Rothschild who was also the youngest of their five children.
1848: Jonas Phillips Levy married Frances (Fanny) Mitchell today. Born in 1807, he was the younger brother of Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy and the son of Michael Levy and Rachel Phillips. This native of Philadelphia, commanded the U.S.S. America during the Mexican-American War. He continued his career as a merchant and sea captain until his death in New York in 1883.
1852: It was reported today that Baron James Rothschild has just been named as a recipient of the Order of the Iron Crown, Second Class. It is ironic that the award which conferred the status of nobility should have been awared at a time when the Jews of Austria are worried about a possible loss of rights.
1852: An article published today entitled “The Austrian Jews” reported that Jews of Austria are worried that they will lose all of the gains they have made since the revolution and will be forced to return to the repressive status under which they lived prior to 1848. The author contends that the Jews will continue to enjoy most of their newly won rights including that of acquiring real estate and living where they please. They will once again be banned from holding any state position that “brings them in contact with the public in a judicial capacity.
1854: Two hundred people gathered at the Chinese Assembly Rooms tonight to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the Hebrew Benevolent Society in New York City.
1857(5th of Kislev, 5618): Forty-three year old Austrian published Wolf Pascheles passed away today.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pascheles_Wolf
1858: Denver, Colorado is founded. Jews have been active in Denver from its very beginning. Fred Z. Salomon and his brother Hyman led the first large pack train into the settlement that would become Denver. The two were "fifty-niners" who were later joined in Colorado by their brother Adolph. A native of Strelno, Posen, Prussia, Fred worked at various trading centers in New Mexico Territory before leading a supply train from Independence, MO to Auraria, the village across the river from the soon to be created Denver. Fred devoted his life to business and cultural ventures in the Mile High City. He started a brewery which the Rocky Mountain News “noted speedily decreased the local consumption of strychnine whiskey and Taos Lightning.” In 1860, Fred and Hyman started what would become the Denver Water Company. Fred “helped organize the Auriaria and Denver Chess Club and literary Society, later the Colorado Pioneer Society the Denver Public Library and the Denver B’Nai Brith Lodge.” In a time when rail travel was critical to commercial success, the elder Salomon helped lead the fight to bring the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads to Denver. Fred also found time to serve as territorial treasurer. Such total identification with his adopted hometown stands in stark contrast with the decision of member of the Denver Club - the name of the “chess and literary society head helped found” to bar Jews starting in 1881. Other Jews connected with Denver in its early days were Otto Mears who arrived in Colorado in 1852, and Sam Flax, who after several false starts, meet success in the restaurant and hotel business. [For more information about Denver Jewry see the website of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society and Pioneer Jews by Harriet and Fred Rochlin.]
1858: The New York Times published a copy of a letter that appeared in this week’s Jewish Messenger addressed to the President of the Hebrew Congregation in the United States and others from Sir Moses Montefiore, the President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews. The letter called for the American Jewish community to join its co-religionists in England, Holland France in seeking the support of their government in having the Mortara child returned to his parents and to avoid any such future seizures. It summarized the threat that the seizure Edgardo Mortara posed to Jews and “every other denomination of faith” except the Roman Catholics. Montefiore reiterated that this was not just a matter of religious freedom. The behavior of the Catholic Church placed “in peril, personal liberty, social relations and the peace of families.”
1858: It was reported today that “our Jewish fellow-citizens will shortly hold a mass meeting in one of our large public halls, to denounce the unjustifiable abduction of Mortara’s child by the Roman inquisition. The Israelitish communities of France, Holland and England have already considered the subject, and a meeting of the Jews of Philadelphia has recently been held to take action in the same matter.
1860(8th of Kislev, 5621): Sixty-seven year old historian Isaak Marcus Jost passed away today.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8931-jost-isaac-marcus
1870: The Ladies Bikur Cholim Society held their 9th annual ball tonight at the Apollo Hall. Due to inclement weather, the event was not well attended.
1875: Vice President Henry Wilson passed away today making Thomas W. Ferry, the President pro tempore of the Senate, next in line if the President of the United States should pass. Perry, along with President Grant, would attend the services consecrating Adas Israel in Washington, DC in 1876. This meant that the two top leaders of the United States government attended the consecration of a Jewish house of worship for the first time in the nation’s history.
1877: Seligman Hirsch, a New York fur dealer was found guilty of receiving stolen goods. He was defended by Albert Jacob Cardozo. Under the law, Hirsch could have been sentenced to five years in prison but in response to the jury’s recommendation for mercy, the judge sentenced the Jewish businessman to only two years in the state prison.
1878: It was reported today that New York has 375 houses of worship, 25 of which are synagogues of Jewish Temples.
1879: David McAdam is scheduled to deliver a lecture tonight at the Young Men’s Hebrew Union in Clarendon Hall followed by musical and literary entertainment.
1879: The Young Ladies Charitable Union, an organization made up of 72 Jewish woman chaired by Julia Richman, are scheduled to host a fund raiser at the Opera House on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The entertainment will include nine tableaux representing the nine muses and a children’s pantomime followed by an evening of dancing. The money raised will go to supply New York’s poor with shoes. Last winter the Union provided over 900 pairs of shoes for the needy.
1880: It was reported today that there are 3 and a half million people living in Holland, 100,000 of whom are Jews. A million are Catholics and the rest are Protestants.
1882: It was reported today that Herr Meyer killed Captain Emerich in a duel fought at Wurzburg. Meyer had challenged the gentile over a matter of honor.
1884: Sir Moses Montefiore has had another attack of the bronchial affection just after the celebration of his one hundredth birthday, and is now confined to his bed at his home near Ramsgate.
1885: The San Francisco Call reported today that the late Senator William Sharon had bequeathed $5,000 to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of San Francisco.
1885: It was reported today that the annual Charity Ball sponsored by the Purim Association will be held in February of 1886.
1885: It was reported today that Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler will officiate at Temple Beth-El’s Thanksgiving Services in New York City.
1886: Based on information that first appeared in the London Times, it was reported today that Levy Isaacs, an old German Jewish peddler who dealt in sponges and jewelry died as a result of house fire at his home on Ashburner Street, Bolton.
1886: Following the recent Massachusetts State Supreme Court decision requiring the enforcement of the state’s Sunday closing laws, it was reported that the police have been making a list of the peddlers who were buying supplies at the Jewish businesses on Salem Street yesterday, Sunday. Up until now, the police have not enforced the law where Jewish businessmen are concerned because the Jews closed their businesses on Saturday in observance of their Sabbath.
1888: Rabbi Alexander Kohut will officiate at the funeral services for Simon Lederer who will be interred in Cypress Hills.
1889(28th of Cheshvan, 5650): Seventy-two year old Levi Ali Cohen the Dutch physician and author who was also “a member of the committee on Jewish affairs in Holland” for twenty years.
1890:Mrs. Philip J. Joachimsen, presented “a report of the past year’s work done by” the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of which she is the President. During the past year, home run by the society has admitted 153 children, discharged 179 children and is currently caring for 566 children.
1891: Birthdate of German born historian Victor Ehrenberg whose illustrious family includes his sons Sir Geoffrey Elton, the British historian and physicist Lewis Elton.
1892: It was reported today that until the Hungarian parliament passes the bills for the state recognition of the Jewish religion “special regulations to enforce the registration of children of mixed marriages would be made.”
1893: Birthdate of Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich one of the original Bolshevik’s who survived all of the purges and would actually live longer than the Soviet Union existed.
1895: Samuel Greenbaum, a prominent New York lawyer was reported to have expressed the view that the Jews of New York would “take no notice” of the Dr. Hermann Ahlward the German anti-Semite who is scheduled to deliver a series of lectures in the United States. Echoing the sentiment of most other Jews, Greenbaum said “the Jewish people do not have anything to fear from…this disciple of German anti-Semitism” because “the American people are not like to be influenced by the wild and unfounded accusations which in the stock in trade of anti-Semites.”
1896: Michaelis Machol, the Rabbi of the Sparrow Avenue Temple, plans on delivering a talk today expressing his opposition to the Thanksgiving message issued by President Cleveland that invokes the image of Jesus “as a mediator between man and God.” This would not be his last entrance into the Separation of Church and State fray. In 1901, Machol joined other rabbis and lay leaders in “protesting the decision of the board of the Cleveland Public Schools to begin each school day with the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the 23rd Psalm.”
1896: “President Cleveland Criticized” published today provided expression of rabbinic displeasure over Grover Cleveland’s Christologically laced Thanksgiving proclamation including Cincinnati Rabbi David Phillipson’s state that the Jews “feel excluded from the invitation to observe the day.” (Full disclosure – some of his indignation might have been politically motivated since Phillipson was a Republican and Cleveland was a Democrat.)
1896: The Hebrew Institute will be the site of the Harmony Musical Society’s concert this evening.
1896:”Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the rabbi at Temple Sinai, “predicts the downfall of the Jewish Sabbath. He declares that the seventh day tradition of the race is doomed, wiped from the Hebraic calendar swallowed up in the necessity of adapting the religion to the customs of the countries in it may be transplanted. (Just as the Jew has kept the Sabbath, so has the Sabbath kept the Jew – from the Saturday morning service.)
1897: In a speech delivered today, Reverend Samuel Frender, a convert to Christianity told a meeting of Methodist clergyman that “the average Jew believed that Christians had a prejudice against them.”
1897: Charles Schapiro…the young Russian Jew who shot and killed Louis Lieberman at a wedding at 123 Henry Street” and tried to kill his sweetheart Yetta Gordon was arraigned in the Essex Market Court” today
1897: In a move that might surprise some advocates of the separation of church and state, a summary of Rabbi Gustave Gottheil published included his expression of displeasure over Tammany Hall’s victory “in the recent election” saying that “he had wished the election had gone the other way.”
1899: In Paris, the Senate sitting as a High Court for the trial of the conspiracy, which has already heard testimony from the President of the League of Anti-Semitic that the demonstrations he arranged were anti-Dreyfus protests and not a plot to overthrow the Republic, resumed its deliberations today. The Senate was investigating charges of treason that included many leaders of the anti-Semitic movement in France who were also anti-democratic rightists.
1902: Birthdate of Emanuel Feuermann. Born in Galicia, this world class cellist found fame playing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He died unexpectedly in 1942 as the result of an infection contracted during a minor surgical procedure.
1909: Birthdate of Mikhail Leontyevich Mil a founder of the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, which is responsible for many of the well-known Russian helicopter models, notably the Mil Mi-24 'Hind'. He passed away in 1970.
1909: Speaking in Yiddish, twenty-three-year-old Clara Lemlich addressed a crowd of thousands of restless laborers at New York City's Cooper Union. “I am one of those who suffer from the abuses described here, and I move that we go on a general strike.” The audience of workers had been listening for hours as numerous labor leaders decried current working conditions in New York's garment industry but who nonetheless advocated caution when considering a strike. Lemlich's words and passion stirred the crowd. The chairman of the event came to her side and called out “Will you take the old Hebrew oath?” Although not an exclusively Jewish gathering, most in the crowd raised their right arms and pledged with him in Yiddish: “if I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may my hand wither from the arm I now raise.” And so began the “Uprising of the 20,000,” a critical turning point in American labor activism. In the months that followed, thousands of garment workers, mainly young Jewish and Italian women walked picket lines and confronted police brutality. The Jewish women, including Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and Pauline Newman, who worked tirelessly to organize and sustain the strike effort, insisted that their concerns extended beyond wages and hours. They fought for dignity in working conditions and for women's right to union recognition. While the strike was only partially successful, it set off a wave of general strikes from 1909-1915 in cities across the United States. As a result, U.S. labor leaders who had long dismissed the needs of women workers and ignored the work of female activists had to accept the centrality of women's needs within the American labor movement. (Jewish Women's Archives)
1910: Birthdate of Ervin György Patai, who as Raphael Patai would gain fame as an ethnographer and anthropologist.
1914: A review of Zionism by Professor Richard H. Gottheil was published today.
1914: Stamp Tax for Jewish Relief” published today described positive response to “the one self-taxation stamp issued by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews” that has included the formation by the Young Men’s Hebrew Associations of “Enlistment Clubs” where each members has pledged to contribute 10 cents a week.
1914: According to an announcement made tonight by the American Jewish Committee “the Turkish Government has assured the State Deparment…that is will not expel Russian Jews residing in the Ottoman Empire. (The important impact of this was on the Jews of Palestine, a large number of whom had come from Russia starting in the 1880’s and were viewed as potential enemies by the Turks who were fighting the Czar)
1914: “At a conference of the lodges affiliated with the Workmen’s Circle and other Rumanian organizations representing 5,000 members” held today, “it was decided to protest against the loan that a delegation from Rumania will be requesting from the United States.
1917: As Allenby’s forces, including the 38th and 39thBattalions known as the Jewish battalions, made their way towards Jerusalem, Turkish forces made three fruitless counter-attacks in an attempt to dislodge the British from Nebi Samwil.
1917: Woodrow Wilson became the first president to publicly endorse a national Jewish philanthropic campaign when he sent a letter to Jacob Schiff, today calling for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign, which was raising funds for European War relief.
1918: As Poles and Ukrainians clash in the anarchy that followed the breakup of the Russian Empire Polish forces began a two day attack on the Jewish community of Lemberg (Lvov).
1921: Birthdate of comedian and comedic actor Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield passed away in 2004. His ill-fitting black suits and shirts with the too-tight collar were as much a part of his comedic signature as was the lament, “I don’t get no respect.”
1922: Grigori Sokolnikov began serving as People’s Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR.
1923: Birthdate of film director Arthur Hiller.
1923: Birthdate of Hanna Meierzak, the German child actress who made Aliyah in 1933 where she gained fame as actress Hanna Maron.
1927: George Gershwin's "Funny Face," premieres in New York City.
1931: In article entitled “Palestine Goes to the Theatre”, Jean Jaffe reports approvingly on the wide scope of theatrical productions offered by the Jewish community including productions of Shaw’s “Devil’s Desciple” which was produced under the Hebrew names “Bechor Hasatan”, Upton Sinclair’s “The Pot Boiler” and Zweig’s “Jeremiah.”
1933: Incorporation of the Anti-Nazi League
1934: "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" was first heard on Eddie Cantor's radio program. And you thought that “White Christmas” was the only Christmas song with a Jewish connection.
1934: In an effort to curb “excessive rentals,” Tel Aviv’s Municipal Council vote to impose “regulations for the fixing of a maximum rate of rent for all business and residential property.”
1936: Emir Abduallah fails in his attempt to convince Palestinian Arabs to give testimony before the Peel Commission.
1936: Birthdate of Fred Wilpon the Bensonhurst native who made his fortune in real estate before he purchased the New York Mets.
1936: Birthdate of Dr. Albert Bernard Ackerman. A native of Elizabeth, NJ who graduated from Princeton and Columbia Medical School, Ackerman was a founding figure in the field of dermatopathology who trained a generation of doctors to recognize skin diseases under the microscope
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Beirut four persons lost their lives and more than 60 were wounded in demonstrations protesting the closing down by French authorities of several Lebanese political organizations. Over 300 arrests were made. Palestine was not the only scene of unrest in the Middle East prior to World War II.
1937(18th of Kislev, 5698):
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Vienna the local Jewish community conducted a winter relief appeal for funds to feed some 1,800 needy residents daily.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that 2,000 delegates attended the Palestine Conference in Warsaw. They were addressed by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Ben-Zvi would gain fame as the second President of Israel.
1938: Beersheba, after having been in the hands of Arab rebels since it was abandoned by the government civil authorities six weeks ago, was occupied by British troops today. All towns in Palestine that the Arab rebels had seized are now controlled by the British military although Arab terrorists are still active.
1939: The Balfour Players are scheduled to perform “Trial,” “a play concerning the Jews, Arabs and English in Palestine by Miss Shoshanah Bat Dori at the Heckschler Theatre on Fifth Avenue.
1939(10th of Kislev, 5700): Moissaye Joseph Olgin, a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator in the early 20th century passed away. He found the Morgen Freiheit, a New York City Yiddish Newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, among whose stated aims was the promotion of the Jewish labor movement and the defeat of racism in the United States.
1939: Supreme Court Justice Julius Miller said today that “payment to the German government of $3,700 from the $60,000 estate of Mrs. Lucy A. Peck will be authorized if proof is submitted that such a payment will result in the release of Mrs. Peck’s brother,” 71 year old Rudolf A. Strauss, a Jew currently being held in a German prison.
1939: “Harry A. Jung, honorary general manager of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation…made public today letters to Representative Martin Dies,” chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee denying “that he or the federation had any connection with Nazi organizations.”
1939(10th of Kislev, 5700): In Warsaw, Poland a Jew killed an officer. As punishment for the crime, all 53 male inhabitants of his building were summarily shot.
1940: Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes to Lord Lloyd, the Secretary of State for the Colonies who is an opponent of Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel, cautioning him to make that Jewish internees on island of Mauritius be treated humanely.
1941(2nd of Kislev, 5702): Kurt Koffka passed away. Koffka was born and educated in Germany. The famed psychologist moved to America in 1928. With Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, he co-founded the Gestalt school of psychology. Koffka became in time the most influential spokesman of Gestalt psychology. He applied it to child development, learning, memory and emotion. The name Gestalt, meaning form or configuration, emphasizes that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychology grew as reaction against the traditional atomistic approach to the human being where behavior was analyzed into constituent elements called sensations. He made an influential distinction between the behavioral and the geographical environments - the perceived world of common sense and the world studied by scientists.
1942 (13th of Kislev, 5703): “Dr. Benzion Mossinsohn, noted Hebrew educator, Zionist leader and a member of the Jewish National Council died…today in the Hadassah Hospital at the age of 64, after a long illness. He was the found and head of the Herzlia Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, the leading secondary school in Palestine.” Dr. Mossinsohn visited New York for the first time in 1912 as a representative of the Gymnasium of Jaffa “the first strictly Jewish school to be established in Palestine in 2,000 years.” During the visit, Mossinsohn addressed a gathering at Cooper Union during when he declared “Palestine is the land in which to solve the Jewish problem. It will be the land of our salvation if we make it a center of culture and not merely a center for immigration.” Mossinsohn visited the United States again in 1936, the same year in which his son was killed by a land mine explosion that took place during the multi-year long Arab uprising. By now he was President of the World Confederaton of General Zionists and head of the Herzlia Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.
1943: Lebanon gains its independence from France
1943: Birthdate of former MK Naomi Blumenthal who “was one of the founders of the Beersheba theatre” and who served as Deputy Minister of National Infrastructure under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
1943: More than 1000 Jewish patients at a Berlin mental hospital are deported to Auschwitz.
1943(24th of Cheshvan, 5704): Professor Martin Pappenheim, the Viennese psychiatrists passed away today in Tel Aviv at the age of 62. He was the father of Else Pappenheim, MD Austrian-American psychiatrist and neurologist and a colleague of Sigmund Freud.
1943(24th of Cheshvan, 5704): Lyricist Lorenz Hart passed away New York at age 48
1943: Lebanon gains independence from France.
1944: The U.S. Sixth Army Group notified the Alsos Mission that the capture of Strasbourg which was home to a German nuclear laboratory was imminent
1944: Birthdate of Yitzchak Mordechai, a native of Iraq who made Aliyah in 1949. He became a decorated member of the IDF before beginning a political career that included service as Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport.
1944: Protectors of Jews in Budapest, Hungary, meet with Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg at the city's Swedish legation
1945: In Brooklyn, Morty and Sylvia Okun Bernstein gave birth to Allen J. Bernstein who greatly expanded the high-end Morton’s of Chicago steakhouse chain during his 17 years as chairman, applying what some in the industry called a Big Mac approach to filet mignon. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1945: The British claim that members of “Jewish underground” took arms from the RAF stationed in Ras el Ain, Syria.
1949: Birthdate of David J. Skorton, who had served as President of the University of Iowa before becoming the 12th president of Cornell University in 2006
1955(7th of Kislev, 5716): Sixty year old Shemp Howard, a member of the Three Stooges, died of a heart attack following an evening out with friends watching boxing matches
1955: Today, two year after the death of Joseph Stalin, a “Military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union withdrew the indictments against the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) members due to the lack of evidence.”
1957: Simon & Garfunkel appear on "American Bandstand" as "Tom & Jerry"
1963: John F Kennedy 35th U.S. President was shot dead in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy enjoyed a great of deal of political support among Jewish voters. He appointed two Jews to his cabinet – Abe Ribicoff to H.E.W. and Arthur Goldberg to Labor. Kennedy would appoint Goldberg to the Supreme Court as a replacement for Felix Frankfurter.
1963: In Austin, TX, “the women of Augas Achim…were working in their new kosher kitchen, mixing potato salad for the several hundred people including Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who were expected to attend the dedication of the new synagogue which was to take place tomorrow. (As reported by Cathy Schechter; full disclosure – I taught pre-bar mitzvah at Agudas Achim five years later)
1965:Man of La Mancha” a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman and music by Mitch Leigh opens”at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre in Greenwich Village Irving Jacobson, a veteran of the Yiddish Theatre playing “Sancho Panza” (Only in America could a Jew play a major role in play set in what would become the Land of the Inquisition)
1967: Birthdate of tennis star Boris Becker. According to an interview Becker gave in 1999, his mother was Jewess from Czechoslovakia.
1967: English professional football player George Cohen”s “37th and final England appearance came in a 2–0 win over Northern Ireland at Wembley” today
1967: The U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242 as a result of the Six Day War fought in June of that year. The resolution would provide the basis for Israel’s attempts to trade land for peace.
1967: U.N. Secretary General Thant raises issue of restrictions placed on Syrian Jews at the U.N. Security Council during Resolution 242 on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Intervention on behalf of the Jews fails.
1968: First interracial kiss on network television takes place between Captain Kirk played by William Shattner, and Lt. Uhura. (Shatner is Jewish.)
1969(12th of Kislev, 5730): Bertha Solomon passed away today at the age of 77. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/solomon-bertha
1974: The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status. For the PLO, this was a reward for a variety of terrorist acts including the slaughter at the Munich Olympics. What the UN members failed to understand was that others would see this as an approval of terrorism as an instrument for the advancement of their own agendas. There is a direct line between the UN’s action and the radical Islamic terrorists that are confronting the West in the 21st century
1978(22nd of Cheshvan, 5739): San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was Jewish, were assassinated in City Hall by a former city supervisor, Dan White. Dianne Feinstein, who was then the President of the San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, was the first to discover Harvey Milk's body. Feinstein who was the first female president of the Board of Supervisors was then sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco in Moscone's stead. In 1979, she was elected to the first of two full terms as mayor. In 1992, she won a special Senate election to replace Pete Wilson who had left his seat to become governor of California. She was re-elected in 1994 and 2000.
1981: Sir Hans Adolf Krebs passed away. The son of a Jewish physician, Krebs was forced in 1933 to leave Nazi Germany for England. The German-born British biochemist who received (with Fritz Lipmann) the 1953 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery in living organisms of the series of chemical reactions known as the tricarboxylic acid cycle (also called the citric acid cycle, or Krebs cycle) - the basic system for the essential pathway of oxidation process within the cell.. These reactions involve the conversion - in the presence of oxygen--of substances that are formed by the breakdown of sugars, fats, and protein components to carbon dioxide, water, and energy-rich compounds. The Krebs cycle explains two simultaneous processes: the degradation reactions which yield energy, and the building-up processes which use up energy
1984: In New York, Karsten Johansson and Melanie Sloan whose Ahskenazi family had lived in the Bronx gave birth to actress Scarlett Johansson.
1985: U.S. premiere of “Fever Pitch” that last film directed by Richard Brooks, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Hyman and Esther Sax.
1985: According to the Tower Report Al Schwimmer, a middleman and consultant for Israel's Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, fouled up one arms shipment today when he allowed the lease to expire on three transport planes in Tel Aviv. At the time, weapons for Iran were en route to Tel Aviv: when they arrived, there were no planes to take them to Iran. As a result, the arms delivery to Iran was days late, and no hostages were released. Mr. Schwimmer had been trying to save what amounted to a day's leasing cost. ''I have never seen anything so screwed up in my life,'' General Secord is reported to have said.
1988: William Andreas Brown was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel
1990: Margaret Thatcher resigns as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thatcher was seen by many as philo-Semitic and a supporter of Israel. She had been a member of Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley and Conservative Friends of Israel and during her career had five Jewish members of her cabinet.
1991: U.S. premiere of Mark Rydell’s “For the Boys” co-starring Bette Midler, James Caan and George Segal.
1991: U.S. premier of “Beauty and the Beast, an “animated musical romantic fantasy film” with music by Alan Menken.
1994(19th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty-eight year old Viola Spolin, leading innovator in American theatre passed away today in Los Angeles.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/07/1906/this-week-in-history-birth-of-viola-spolin-creator-of-theater-games
http://www.spolin.com/violabio/
1993: Edward P. Djerejian was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
1995: Ehud Barak finished his term as Minister of Internal Affairs.
1995: Chaim Ramon began serving as Minister of Internal Affairs in a government headed by Shimon Peres.
1995: Gonen Segev began serving his second term as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure.
1997: It was reported today the President Bill Clinton was the first recipient …of the Man of Peace Award, established by the Rabin Foundation and the Peres Foundation, two ''peace centers'' financed in part with money from the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize the men shared with Mr. Arafat. Mr. Clinton asked the foundations to devote the $75,000 in prize money to pay for scholarships for Americans to study in Israel.”
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941by Victor Klemperer, Freud: Conflict and Culture, edited by Michael S. Roth in association with the Library of Congress and A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellmanby Rosemary Mahoney
1999: In an article entitled “Final Sabbath for a Spiritual Hub; A Synagogue That Embodied an Earlier Bronx Is Closed” Barbara Stewart provided the following description of the MosholuJewish Center.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/22/nyregion/final-sabbath-for-spiritual-hub-synagogue-that-embodied-earlier-bronx-closed.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
2000(24th of Cheshvan, 5761) Shoshana Reis, 21, of Hadera, and Meir Bahrame, 35, of Givat Olga, were killed, and 60 wounded when a powerful car bomb was denotated alongside a passing bus on Hadera's main street, when the area was packed with shoppers and people driving home from work. 60 were wounded in the blast.
2001(7th of Kislev, 5762): Eighty-three year old Norman Granz, American jazz musician and record producer passed away.(As reported by Richard Severo)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/arts/norman-granz-who-took-jazz-smoky-clubs-put-it-concert-halls-dies-83.html
2002(17th of Kislev, 5763): IDF tracker Sgt.-Maj. Shigdaf (Shai) Garmai, 30, of Lod, was killed when an Israel Defense Forces Givati Brigade patrol near Tel Qateifa, in the Gaza Strip, came under Palestinian gunfire. Hamas claimed responsibility.
2002: U.S. Premiere of “The Emperor’s Club” starring Kevin Kline.
2003(27th of Cheshvan, 5764): Two Israeli security guards, Ilya Reiger, 58, of Jerusalem, and Samer Fathi Afan, 25, of the Bedouin village Uzeir near Nazareth, were shot dead at a construction site along the route of the security fence near Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. The Jenin Martyrs' Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.
2004: Having assembled the largest and most comprehensive listing of the names of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, along with biographical details, photographs and nutshell memoirs, Yad Vashem makes the information available online at www.yadvashem.org.
2005: Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007, Merkel would receive an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel."
2005: After 26 years, Ted Koppel calls it quits as host ofABC ’s late night news show, Nightline. Begun before the 24/7 world of cable news turned television news into tabloid entertainment, Koppel started a show that proved that some Americans wanted something a little more substantive than “Here’s Johnny” at the end of the day.
2006(1st of Kislev, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
2006: During an exclusive interview with members of the University of Wisconsin Hillel staff, Ben Karlin ('93), a Senior Writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” admits that Sukkot is his favorite Jewish holiday because he “likes lulavs and loves etrogs.”
2006: U.S. premiere of “The Fountain” directed by Darren Aronofsky who also wrote the screenplay and co-starring Rachel Weisz.
2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, the Yuval Ron Ensemble present an evening of pan-Middle-Eastern Diaspora music anchored by Haifa-born vocalist Najwa Gibran.
2007: (12 Kislev 5768) Yahrzeit of Solomon Schechter founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and architect of the American Conservative Jewish movement.
2008: The movie, “Old Days,” set in a retirement home with a decidedly Jewish feel opens at the Big Apple Film Festival in New York
2008: As part of the Israeli Voices series the 92nd Street Y presents Yoni Rechter who has made a great contribution to the Israeli music scene.
2008: In Arlington, Virginia, children's author and illustrator Sallie Lowenstein, author of Waiting for Eugene and The Festival of Lights, leads a discussion, "From Memory to Story: How a Childhood in Burma Became a Novel in the Future," on the origins of her new young-adult book, In the Company of Whispers.
2008: 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s pro-civil rights stance attracted and energized a significant segment of the Jewish populace. His sympathy for the state of Israel can be seen in the following speech which he delivered during his campaign for the presidency.
Prophecy is a Jewish tradition, and the World Zionist movement, in which all of you have played so important a role, has continued this tradition. It has turned the dreams of its leaders into acts of statesmanship. It has converted the hopes of the Jewish people into concrete facts of life. When the first Zionist conference met in 1897, Palestine was a neglected wasteland. A few scattered Jewish colonies had resettled there, but they had come to die in the Holy Land, rather than to make it live again in greatness. Most of the governments of the world were indifferent. But now all is changed. Israel became a triumphant and enduring reality exactly 50 years after Theodore Herzl, the prophet of Zionism, had proclaimed the ideal of nationhood. It was the classic case of an ancient dream finding a young leader, for Herzl was then only 37 years of age. Perhaps I may be allowed the observation that the Jewish people - ever since David slew Goliath - have never considered youth as a barrier to leadership, or measured experience and maturity by mere length of days. I first saw Palestine in 1939. There the neglect and ruin left by centuries of Ottoman misrule were slowly being transformed by miracles of labor and sacrifice. But Palestine was still a land of promise in 1939, rather than a land of fulfillment. I returned in 1951 to see the grandeur of Israel. In 3 years this new state had opened its doors to 600,000 immigrants and refugees. Even while fighting for its own survival, Israel had given new hope to the persecuted and new dignity to the pattern of Jewish life. I left with the conviction that the United Nations may have conferred on Israel the credentials of nationhood; but its own idealism and courage, its own sacrifice and generosity, had earned the credentials of immortality… Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom. It is worth remembering, too, that Israel is a cause that stands beyond the ordinary changes and chances of American public life. In our pluralistic society, it has not been a Jewish cause - any more than Irish independence was solely the concern of Americans of Irish descent. The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been repeatedly endorsed by Presidents and Members of Congress from both parties. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment. Yet within this tradition of friendship there is a special obligation on the Democratic Party. It was President Woodrow Wilson who forecast with prophetic wisdom the creation of a Jewish homeland. It was President Franklin Roosevelt who kept alive the hopes of Jewish redemption during the Nazi terror. It was President Harry Truman who first recognized the new State of Israel and gave it status in world affairs. And may I add that it would be my hope and my pledge to continue this Democratic tradition - and to be worthy of it….The Middle East needs water, not war; tractors, not tanks; bread, not bombs. There is already little enough available in the way of financial and physical resources for either side to be devoting its energies to huge defense budgets. The present state of tensions serves only the worst interests of Arab and Israeli alike. But a new spirit of comity could well serve the highest ideals of both. For the original Zionist philosophy has always maintained that the people of Israel would use their national genius not for selfish purposes but for the enrichment and glory of the entire Middle East. The earliest leaders of the Zionist movement spoke of a Jewish state which would have no military power and which would be content with victories of the spirit. The compulsions of a harsh and inescapable necessity have compelled Israel to abandon this hope. But I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate. And I cannot believe that the Arab world would not find a better basis for unity in a united attack on all their accumulated social problems - an attack in which they could benefit immensely from a closer cooperation with the people of Israel. The technical skills and genius of Israel have already brought their blessings to Burma and to Ethiopia. Still other nations in Asia and in Africa are eager to benefit from the special skills available in that bustling land. Why should the Middle East alone be cut off from this partnership? And why should not the people of Israel receive the blessings available to them from association with the Arab world? When we think of the possibilities of this association, an emotion of soaring hope replaces our somber anxieties about the Middle East. Ancient rivers would give their power to new industries. The desert would yield to civilization. Disease would be eradicated, especially the disease that strikes down helpless children. The blight of poverty would be replaced by the blessings of abundance…”For the entire text see
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/JFK+Pr-Pres/1956/002PREPRES12SPEECHES_56NOV25.htm
2008: An experimental Israeli music ensemble, the Givol Choir and David Moss, an innovative American singer and percussionist perform three separate shows at the historic Ha'adumim Building near the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv.
2008: Seeking to ensure that President George W. Bush's promises to Israel are transferred to the new US administration, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert left for Washington tonight for his final meeting with the outgoing American leader.
2009: The Lost Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors or/of special interest to Jewish readers including A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis byLouis Breger
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors or/of special interest to Jewish readers including Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer is part of literary family. His brother Franklin is an editor with the New Republic. His brother Joshua is a journalist. And is if that was not enough, he married novelist Nicole Krauss in 2004.
2009: An experienced guide from the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy, a nonprofit Jewish educational organization, leads a tour in which attendees “discover 150 years of Lower East Side history on Shteibl Row, noted for its abundance of 19th-century one- and two-room synagogues.”
2010:Salman Rushdie, the author living under the threat of a fatwa, is scheduled to speak at the 92nd Street Y in NYC.
2010:NoVA State Legislators' Reception 2010 which gives the Jewish community a chance to Hear our state legislators identify their top priorities and address the Jewish community's state platform, is scheduled to take place at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia (JCCNV)
2010: The Leo Baeck Institute in cooperation with Manhattan School of Music is scheduled to present “Adventures in Listening: Kurt Masur, A Film by Amit Breuer”
2010:The IDF's new Head of Military Intelligence, Major-General Aviv Kochavi, formally assumed his new position today and was promoted from the rank of brigadier-general.
2011: A forum hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the subject of ridding the world of nuclear weapons which representatives from Israel and Arab states are schedule to attend is scheduled to come to an end in Vienna.
2011: Rabbi Dr. Levi Cooper a teacher at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and serves as the spiritual leader of Kehillat HaTzur VeHaTzohar in Tzur Hadassah is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of lectures entitled “Maharal: The Mystic as Legal Scholar” at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
2011: Sharon Steinberg, the Cantor at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, VA, is scheduled to give the last lecture in the series entitled “An Overview of Jewish Liturgical Music” as the JCC of Northern Virginia.
2011: Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decided today to open a criminal investigation against Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, for alleged incitement to racism. The decision to investigate Eliyahu came after he was quoted making several anti-Arab comments in interviews with the media.
2011:The Military Advocate General filed indictments today against two Palestinians from the village of Halhoul near Hebron, who confessed to throwing a rock that killed Asher Hillel Palmer and his son as they drove near Kiryat Arba in September.
2012: In Melbourne, Australia, “The One That Got Away” is scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.
2012:The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to offer an introductory course for students and researchers wishing to use its extensive photo archive.
2012: In the U.S., Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim holiday based on Sukkoth
2012: The IDF Spokesman’s Office said today it was looking into a photograph circulating widely on Facebook in which 16 IDF soldiers arranged their uniformed bodies on the sand, to spell out the Hebrew words “Bibi loser” — in a deft physical critique of Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s failure to send ground troops into Gaza during the just-ended Operation Pillar of Defense.
2012:Shin Bet officers and police arrested the terrorists who bombed a bus in Tel Aviv on Wednesday several hours after the device exploded, the agency revealed this evening
2012(8th of Kislev, 5773): Twenty-eight year old Boris Yarmolnik, the IDF reserve officer who was wounded in a rocket attack yesterday, passed away today following an unsuccessful surgical process designed to save his life.
1220: Frederick II, who would become the protector of the Jews in Frankfurt in 1236, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor today by Honorius III.
1280: The 3 year reign of Pope Nicholas III whose bull Vineam sorce encouraged conversion through "sermons and other means" came to an end today. (Jewish Virtual Library)
1307: Pope Clement V issues the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. The Templars were a group of Christian Knights who took their name from the fact that their first headquarters was located on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in an area believed to be on the site of the ruins of Solomon’s Temple.
1348: Riots reached the Germanic lands of Bavaria and Swabia. Eighty towns, including Augsburg, Munich, and Wurzburg were attacked
1547:Asolo, Italy was the scene of one of the few pogroms recorded in Italy. Ten Jews in a town of thirty were killed, and their houses robbed with no apparent motives.
1580: In Poland, the Council of the Four Lands adopted an ordinance that limits the extent of land leasing, known as arenda that is permitted to any individual. The prevention of competition for arenda was one of the council’s major concerns.
1617: Ahmed I, Ottoman Sultan, passed away. During his reign, Ahmed contracted small pox. The treatments prescribed by his physicians proved ineffectual. The widow of Solomon Eskenazi, who had served as a court physician was called in and she saved the Sultan.
1793: Strasbourg prohibited circumcision and the wearing of beards Further It ordered the burning of all books in Hebrew. Strasbourg is located on the border between Germany and France. As such it has changed hands numerous times.
1795(10th of Kislev, 5556): Vrouwtje Frumet David Lintz-Cohen passed away. Born at Amsterdam in 1737, she was the daughter of David Levie Juda-Moshe Lints-Cohen and Bele Simon Samson Levie-Drukker and the widow of Kalman Isaac Shochet
1797: In London, Levy Salomons and Matilda de Metz gave birth to Sir David Salomons, 1st Baronet, a leading figure in the 19th century struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom who was the first Jewish Sheriff of the City of London and Lord Mayor of London, and one of the first two Jewish people to serve in the British House of Commons.
1800 (5th of Kislev): Philosopher Solomon ben Joshua Maimon passed away
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13043.html
1808: In London Hanna Barent Cohen and Nathan Mayer Rothschild who “had just established the London branch of the banking business of the Rothschilds” to Baron Lionel Nathan Rothschild.
1811: Birthdate of David Woolf Marks, a leading Reform Rabbi in the UK who was the first Rabbi to serve at The West London Synagogue, the country’s first (and oldest) reform congregation.
1813: Today, a codicil was attached to the original will of Benjamin D’Israeli, the grandfather of the Earl Beaconsfield, Great Britain’s first Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.
1819: Birthdate of Joseph Seligman, the native of Bavaria, who founded Seligman Brothers and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1819: Birthdate of Mary Anne Evans, who, under the pen name of George Elliot wrote Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was 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.
1826: Birthdate of Italian patriot Enrico Guastalla who fought in the wars that led to the unification of Italy.
1845: In the UK, Charlotte von Rothschild and Lionel de Rothschild gave birth to their third son Leopold de Rothschild who was also the youngest of their five children.
1848: Jonas Phillips Levy married Frances (Fanny) Mitchell today. Born in 1807, he was the younger brother of Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy and the son of Michael Levy and Rachel Phillips. This native of Philadelphia, commanded the U.S.S. America during the Mexican-American War. He continued his career as a merchant and sea captain until his death in New York in 1883.
1852: It was reported today that Baron James Rothschild has just been named as a recipient of the Order of the Iron Crown, Second Class. It is ironic that the award which conferred the status of nobility should have been awared at a time when the Jews of Austria are worried about a possible loss of rights.
1852: An article published today entitled “The Austrian Jews” reported that Jews of Austria are worried that they will lose all of the gains they have made since the revolution and will be forced to return to the repressive status under which they lived prior to 1848. The author contends that the Jews will continue to enjoy most of their newly won rights including that of acquiring real estate and living where they please. They will once again be banned from holding any state position that “brings them in contact with the public in a judicial capacity.
1854: Two hundred people gathered at the Chinese Assembly Rooms tonight to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the Hebrew Benevolent Society in New York City.
1857(5th of Kislev, 5618): Forty-three year old Austrian published Wolf Pascheles passed away today.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pascheles_Wolf
1858: Denver, Colorado is founded. Jews have been active in Denver from its very beginning. Fred Z. Salomon and his brother Hyman led the first large pack train into the settlement that would become Denver. The two were "fifty-niners" who were later joined in Colorado by their brother Adolph. A native of Strelno, Posen, Prussia, Fred worked at various trading centers in New Mexico Territory before leading a supply train from Independence, MO to Auraria, the village across the river from the soon to be created Denver. Fred devoted his life to business and cultural ventures in the Mile High City. He started a brewery which the Rocky Mountain News “noted speedily decreased the local consumption of strychnine whiskey and Taos Lightning.” In 1860, Fred and Hyman started what would become the Denver Water Company. Fred “helped organize the Auriaria and Denver Chess Club and literary Society, later the Colorado Pioneer Society the Denver Public Library and the Denver B’Nai Brith Lodge.” In a time when rail travel was critical to commercial success, the elder Salomon helped lead the fight to bring the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads to Denver. Fred also found time to serve as territorial treasurer. Such total identification with his adopted hometown stands in stark contrast with the decision of member of the Denver Club - the name of the “chess and literary society head helped found” to bar Jews starting in 1881. Other Jews connected with Denver in its early days were Otto Mears who arrived in Colorado in 1852, and Sam Flax, who after several false starts, meet success in the restaurant and hotel business. [For more information about Denver Jewry see the website of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society and Pioneer Jews by Harriet and Fred Rochlin.]
1858: The New York Times published a copy of a letter that appeared in this week’s Jewish Messenger addressed to the President of the Hebrew Congregation in the United States and others from Sir Moses Montefiore, the President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews. The letter called for the American Jewish community to join its co-religionists in England, Holland France in seeking the support of their government in having the Mortara child returned to his parents and to avoid any such future seizures. It summarized the threat that the seizure Edgardo Mortara posed to Jews and “every other denomination of faith” except the Roman Catholics. Montefiore reiterated that this was not just a matter of religious freedom. The behavior of the Catholic Church placed “in peril, personal liberty, social relations and the peace of families.”
1858: It was reported today that “our Jewish fellow-citizens will shortly hold a mass meeting in one of our large public halls, to denounce the unjustifiable abduction of Mortara’s child by the Roman inquisition. The Israelitish communities of France, Holland and England have already considered the subject, and a meeting of the Jews of Philadelphia has recently been held to take action in the same matter.
1860(8th of Kislev, 5621): Sixty-seven year old historian Isaak Marcus Jost passed away today.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8931-jost-isaac-marcus
1870: The Ladies Bikur Cholim Society held their 9th annual ball tonight at the Apollo Hall. Due to inclement weather, the event was not well attended.
1875: Vice President Henry Wilson passed away today making Thomas W. Ferry, the President pro tempore of the Senate, next in line if the President of the United States should pass. Perry, along with President Grant, would attend the services consecrating Adas Israel in Washington, DC in 1876. This meant that the two top leaders of the United States government attended the consecration of a Jewish house of worship for the first time in the nation’s history.
1877: Seligman Hirsch, a New York fur dealer was found guilty of receiving stolen goods. He was defended by Albert Jacob Cardozo. Under the law, Hirsch could have been sentenced to five years in prison but in response to the jury’s recommendation for mercy, the judge sentenced the Jewish businessman to only two years in the state prison.
1878: It was reported today that New York has 375 houses of worship, 25 of which are synagogues of Jewish Temples.
1879: David McAdam is scheduled to deliver a lecture tonight at the Young Men’s Hebrew Union in Clarendon Hall followed by musical and literary entertainment.
1879: The Young Ladies Charitable Union, an organization made up of 72 Jewish woman chaired by Julia Richman, are scheduled to host a fund raiser at the Opera House on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The entertainment will include nine tableaux representing the nine muses and a children’s pantomime followed by an evening of dancing. The money raised will go to supply New York’s poor with shoes. Last winter the Union provided over 900 pairs of shoes for the needy.
1880: It was reported today that there are 3 and a half million people living in Holland, 100,000 of whom are Jews. A million are Catholics and the rest are Protestants.
1882: It was reported today that Herr Meyer killed Captain Emerich in a duel fought at Wurzburg. Meyer had challenged the gentile over a matter of honor.
1884: Sir Moses Montefiore has had another attack of the bronchial affection just after the celebration of his one hundredth birthday, and is now confined to his bed at his home near Ramsgate.
1885: The San Francisco Call reported today that the late Senator William Sharon had bequeathed $5,000 to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of San Francisco.
1885: It was reported today that the annual Charity Ball sponsored by the Purim Association will be held in February of 1886.
1885: It was reported today that Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler will officiate at Temple Beth-El’s Thanksgiving Services in New York City.
1886: Based on information that first appeared in the London Times, it was reported today that Levy Isaacs, an old German Jewish peddler who dealt in sponges and jewelry died as a result of house fire at his home on Ashburner Street, Bolton.
1886: Following the recent Massachusetts State Supreme Court decision requiring the enforcement of the state’s Sunday closing laws, it was reported that the police have been making a list of the peddlers who were buying supplies at the Jewish businesses on Salem Street yesterday, Sunday. Up until now, the police have not enforced the law where Jewish businessmen are concerned because the Jews closed their businesses on Saturday in observance of their Sabbath.
1888: Rabbi Alexander Kohut will officiate at the funeral services for Simon Lederer who will be interred in Cypress Hills.
1889(28th of Cheshvan, 5650): Seventy-two year old Levi Ali Cohen the Dutch physician and author who was also “a member of the committee on Jewish affairs in Holland” for twenty years.
1890:Mrs. Philip J. Joachimsen, presented “a report of the past year’s work done by” the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of which she is the President. During the past year, home run by the society has admitted 153 children, discharged 179 children and is currently caring for 566 children.
1891: Birthdate of German born historian Victor Ehrenberg whose illustrious family includes his sons Sir Geoffrey Elton, the British historian and physicist Lewis Elton.
1892: It was reported today that until the Hungarian parliament passes the bills for the state recognition of the Jewish religion “special regulations to enforce the registration of children of mixed marriages would be made.”
1893: Birthdate of Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich one of the original Bolshevik’s who survived all of the purges and would actually live longer than the Soviet Union existed.
1895: Samuel Greenbaum, a prominent New York lawyer was reported to have expressed the view that the Jews of New York would “take no notice” of the Dr. Hermann Ahlward the German anti-Semite who is scheduled to deliver a series of lectures in the United States. Echoing the sentiment of most other Jews, Greenbaum said “the Jewish people do not have anything to fear from…this disciple of German anti-Semitism” because “the American people are not like to be influenced by the wild and unfounded accusations which in the stock in trade of anti-Semites.”
1896: Michaelis Machol, the Rabbi of the Sparrow Avenue Temple, plans on delivering a talk today expressing his opposition to the Thanksgiving message issued by President Cleveland that invokes the image of Jesus “as a mediator between man and God.” This would not be his last entrance into the Separation of Church and State fray. In 1901, Machol joined other rabbis and lay leaders in “protesting the decision of the board of the Cleveland Public Schools to begin each school day with the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the 23rd Psalm.”
1896: “President Cleveland Criticized” published today provided expression of rabbinic displeasure over Grover Cleveland’s Christologically laced Thanksgiving proclamation including Cincinnati Rabbi David Phillipson’s state that the Jews “feel excluded from the invitation to observe the day.” (Full disclosure – some of his indignation might have been politically motivated since Phillipson was a Republican and Cleveland was a Democrat.)
1896: The Hebrew Institute will be the site of the Harmony Musical Society’s concert this evening.
1896:”Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the rabbi at Temple Sinai, “predicts the downfall of the Jewish Sabbath. He declares that the seventh day tradition of the race is doomed, wiped from the Hebraic calendar swallowed up in the necessity of adapting the religion to the customs of the countries in it may be transplanted. (Just as the Jew has kept the Sabbath, so has the Sabbath kept the Jew – from the Saturday morning service.)
1897: In a speech delivered today, Reverend Samuel Frender, a convert to Christianity told a meeting of Methodist clergyman that “the average Jew believed that Christians had a prejudice against them.”
1897: Charles Schapiro…the young Russian Jew who shot and killed Louis Lieberman at a wedding at 123 Henry Street” and tried to kill his sweetheart Yetta Gordon was arraigned in the Essex Market Court” today
1897: In a move that might surprise some advocates of the separation of church and state, a summary of Rabbi Gustave Gottheil published included his expression of displeasure over Tammany Hall’s victory “in the recent election” saying that “he had wished the election had gone the other way.”
1899: In Paris, the Senate sitting as a High Court for the trial of the conspiracy, which has already heard testimony from the President of the League of Anti-Semitic that the demonstrations he arranged were anti-Dreyfus protests and not a plot to overthrow the Republic, resumed its deliberations today. The Senate was investigating charges of treason that included many leaders of the anti-Semitic movement in France who were also anti-democratic rightists.
1902: Birthdate of Emanuel Feuermann. Born in Galicia, this world class cellist found fame playing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He died unexpectedly in 1942 as the result of an infection contracted during a minor surgical procedure.
1909: Birthdate of Mikhail Leontyevich Mil a founder of the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, which is responsible for many of the well-known Russian helicopter models, notably the Mil Mi-24 'Hind'. He passed away in 1970.
1909: Speaking in Yiddish, twenty-three-year-old Clara Lemlich addressed a crowd of thousands of restless laborers at New York City's Cooper Union. “I am one of those who suffer from the abuses described here, and I move that we go on a general strike.” The audience of workers had been listening for hours as numerous labor leaders decried current working conditions in New York's garment industry but who nonetheless advocated caution when considering a strike. Lemlich's words and passion stirred the crowd. The chairman of the event came to her side and called out “Will you take the old Hebrew oath?” Although not an exclusively Jewish gathering, most in the crowd raised their right arms and pledged with him in Yiddish: “if I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may my hand wither from the arm I now raise.” And so began the “Uprising of the 20,000,” a critical turning point in American labor activism. In the months that followed, thousands of garment workers, mainly young Jewish and Italian women walked picket lines and confronted police brutality. The Jewish women, including Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and Pauline Newman, who worked tirelessly to organize and sustain the strike effort, insisted that their concerns extended beyond wages and hours. They fought for dignity in working conditions and for women's right to union recognition. While the strike was only partially successful, it set off a wave of general strikes from 1909-1915 in cities across the United States. As a result, U.S. labor leaders who had long dismissed the needs of women workers and ignored the work of female activists had to accept the centrality of women's needs within the American labor movement. (Jewish Women's Archives)
1910: Birthdate of Ervin György Patai, who as Raphael Patai would gain fame as an ethnographer and anthropologist.
1914: A review of Zionism by Professor Richard H. Gottheil was published today.
1914: Stamp Tax for Jewish Relief” published today described positive response to “the one self-taxation stamp issued by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews” that has included the formation by the Young Men’s Hebrew Associations of “Enlistment Clubs” where each members has pledged to contribute 10 cents a week.
1914: According to an announcement made tonight by the American Jewish Committee “the Turkish Government has assured the State Deparment…that is will not expel Russian Jews residing in the Ottoman Empire. (The important impact of this was on the Jews of Palestine, a large number of whom had come from Russia starting in the 1880’s and were viewed as potential enemies by the Turks who were fighting the Czar)
1914: “At a conference of the lodges affiliated with the Workmen’s Circle and other Rumanian organizations representing 5,000 members” held today, “it was decided to protest against the loan that a delegation from Rumania will be requesting from the United States.
1917: As Allenby’s forces, including the 38th and 39thBattalions known as the Jewish battalions, made their way towards Jerusalem, Turkish forces made three fruitless counter-attacks in an attempt to dislodge the British from Nebi Samwil.
1917: Woodrow Wilson became the first president to publicly endorse a national Jewish philanthropic campaign when he sent a letter to Jacob Schiff, today calling for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign, which was raising funds for European War relief.
1918: As Poles and Ukrainians clash in the anarchy that followed the breakup of the Russian Empire Polish forces began a two day attack on the Jewish community of Lemberg (Lvov).
1921: Birthdate of comedian and comedic actor Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield passed away in 2004. His ill-fitting black suits and shirts with the too-tight collar were as much a part of his comedic signature as was the lament, “I don’t get no respect.”
1922: Grigori Sokolnikov began serving as People’s Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR.
1923: Birthdate of film director Arthur Hiller.
1923: Birthdate of Hanna Meierzak, the German child actress who made Aliyah in 1933 where she gained fame as actress Hanna Maron.
1927: George Gershwin's "Funny Face," premieres in New York City.
1931: In article entitled “Palestine Goes to the Theatre”, Jean Jaffe reports approvingly on the wide scope of theatrical productions offered by the Jewish community including productions of Shaw’s “Devil’s Desciple” which was produced under the Hebrew names “Bechor Hasatan”, Upton Sinclair’s “The Pot Boiler” and Zweig’s “Jeremiah.”
1933: Incorporation of the Anti-Nazi League
1934: "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" was first heard on Eddie Cantor's radio program. And you thought that “White Christmas” was the only Christmas song with a Jewish connection.
1934: In an effort to curb “excessive rentals,” Tel Aviv’s Municipal Council vote to impose “regulations for the fixing of a maximum rate of rent for all business and residential property.”
1936: Emir Abduallah fails in his attempt to convince Palestinian Arabs to give testimony before the Peel Commission.
1936: Birthdate of Fred Wilpon the Bensonhurst native who made his fortune in real estate before he purchased the New York Mets.
1936: Birthdate of Dr. Albert Bernard Ackerman. A native of Elizabeth, NJ who graduated from Princeton and Columbia Medical School, Ackerman was a founding figure in the field of dermatopathology who trained a generation of doctors to recognize skin diseases under the microscope
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Beirut four persons lost their lives and more than 60 were wounded in demonstrations protesting the closing down by French authorities of several Lebanese political organizations. Over 300 arrests were made. Palestine was not the only scene of unrest in the Middle East prior to World War II.
1937(18th of Kislev, 5698):
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Vienna the local Jewish community conducted a winter relief appeal for funds to feed some 1,800 needy residents daily.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that 2,000 delegates attended the Palestine Conference in Warsaw. They were addressed by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Ben-Zvi would gain fame as the second President of Israel.
1938: Beersheba, after having been in the hands of Arab rebels since it was abandoned by the government civil authorities six weeks ago, was occupied by British troops today. All towns in Palestine that the Arab rebels had seized are now controlled by the British military although Arab terrorists are still active.
1939: The Balfour Players are scheduled to perform “Trial,” “a play concerning the Jews, Arabs and English in Palestine by Miss Shoshanah Bat Dori at the Heckschler Theatre on Fifth Avenue.
1939(10th of Kislev, 5700): Moissaye Joseph Olgin, a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator in the early 20th century passed away. He found the Morgen Freiheit, a New York City Yiddish Newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, among whose stated aims was the promotion of the Jewish labor movement and the defeat of racism in the United States.
1939: Supreme Court Justice Julius Miller said today that “payment to the German government of $3,700 from the $60,000 estate of Mrs. Lucy A. Peck will be authorized if proof is submitted that such a payment will result in the release of Mrs. Peck’s brother,” 71 year old Rudolf A. Strauss, a Jew currently being held in a German prison.
1939: “Harry A. Jung, honorary general manager of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation…made public today letters to Representative Martin Dies,” chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee denying “that he or the federation had any connection with Nazi organizations.”
1939(10th of Kislev, 5700): In Warsaw, Poland a Jew killed an officer. As punishment for the crime, all 53 male inhabitants of his building were summarily shot.
1940: Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes to Lord Lloyd, the Secretary of State for the Colonies who is an opponent of Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel, cautioning him to make that Jewish internees on island of Mauritius be treated humanely.
1941(2nd of Kislev, 5702): Kurt Koffka passed away. Koffka was born and educated in Germany. The famed psychologist moved to America in 1928. With Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, he co-founded the Gestalt school of psychology. Koffka became in time the most influential spokesman of Gestalt psychology. He applied it to child development, learning, memory and emotion. The name Gestalt, meaning form or configuration, emphasizes that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychology grew as reaction against the traditional atomistic approach to the human being where behavior was analyzed into constituent elements called sensations. He made an influential distinction between the behavioral and the geographical environments - the perceived world of common sense and the world studied by scientists.
1942 (13th of Kislev, 5703): “Dr. Benzion Mossinsohn, noted Hebrew educator, Zionist leader and a member of the Jewish National Council died…today in the Hadassah Hospital at the age of 64, after a long illness. He was the found and head of the Herzlia Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, the leading secondary school in Palestine.” Dr. Mossinsohn visited New York for the first time in 1912 as a representative of the Gymnasium of Jaffa “the first strictly Jewish school to be established in Palestine in 2,000 years.” During the visit, Mossinsohn addressed a gathering at Cooper Union during when he declared “Palestine is the land in which to solve the Jewish problem. It will be the land of our salvation if we make it a center of culture and not merely a center for immigration.” Mossinsohn visited the United States again in 1936, the same year in which his son was killed by a land mine explosion that took place during the multi-year long Arab uprising. By now he was President of the World Confederaton of General Zionists and head of the Herzlia Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.
1943: Lebanon gains its independence from France
1943: Birthdate of former MK Naomi Blumenthal who “was one of the founders of the Beersheba theatre” and who served as Deputy Minister of National Infrastructure under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
1943: More than 1000 Jewish patients at a Berlin mental hospital are deported to Auschwitz.
1943(24th of Cheshvan, 5704): Professor Martin Pappenheim, the Viennese psychiatrists passed away today in Tel Aviv at the age of 62. He was the father of Else Pappenheim, MD Austrian-American psychiatrist and neurologist and a colleague of Sigmund Freud.
1943(24th of Cheshvan, 5704): Lyricist Lorenz Hart passed away New York at age 48
1943: Lebanon gains independence from France.
1944: The U.S. Sixth Army Group notified the Alsos Mission that the capture of Strasbourg which was home to a German nuclear laboratory was imminent
1944: Birthdate of Yitzchak Mordechai, a native of Iraq who made Aliyah in 1949. He became a decorated member of the IDF before beginning a political career that included service as Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport.
1944: Protectors of Jews in Budapest, Hungary, meet with Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg at the city's Swedish legation
1945: In Brooklyn, Morty and Sylvia Okun Bernstein gave birth to Allen J. Bernstein who greatly expanded the high-end Morton’s of Chicago steakhouse chain during his 17 years as chairman, applying what some in the industry called a Big Mac approach to filet mignon. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1945: The British claim that members of “Jewish underground” took arms from the RAF stationed in Ras el Ain, Syria.
1949: Birthdate of David J. Skorton, who had served as President of the University of Iowa before becoming the 12th president of Cornell University in 2006
1955(7th of Kislev, 5716): Sixty year old Shemp Howard, a member of the Three Stooges, died of a heart attack following an evening out with friends watching boxing matches
1955: Today, two year after the death of Joseph Stalin, a “Military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union withdrew the indictments against the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) members due to the lack of evidence.”
1956: "A new Egyptian Nationality Code barred so called 'Zionists' from Egyptian nationality.
1957: Simon & Garfunkel appear on "American Bandstand" as "Tom & Jerry"
1963: John F Kennedy 35th U.S. President was shot dead in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy enjoyed a great of deal of political support among Jewish voters. He appointed two Jews to his cabinet – Abe Ribicoff to H.E.W. and Arthur Goldberg to Labor. Kennedy would appoint Goldberg to the Supreme Court as a replacement for Felix Frankfurter.
1963: In Austin, TX, “the women of Augas Achim…were working in their new kosher kitchen, mixing potato salad for the several hundred people including Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who were expected to attend the dedication of the new synagogue which was to take place tomorrow. (As reported by Cathy Schechter; full disclosure – I taught pre-bar mitzvah at Agudas Achim five years later)
1965:Man of La Mancha” a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman and music by Mitch Leigh opens”at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre in Greenwich Village Irving Jacobson, a veteran of the Yiddish Theatre playing “Sancho Panza” (Only in America could a Jew play a major role in play set in what would become the Land of the Inquisition)
1967: Birthdate of tennis star Boris Becker. According to an interview Becker gave in 1999, his mother was Jewess from Czechoslovakia.
1967: English professional football player George Cohen”s “37th and final England appearance came in a 2–0 win over Northern Ireland at Wembley” today
1967: The U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242 as a result of the Six Day War fought in June of that year. The resolution would provide the basis for Israel’s attempts to trade land for peace.
1967: U.N. Secretary General Thant raises issue of restrictions placed on Syrian Jews at the U.N. Security Council during Resolution 242 on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Intervention on behalf of the Jews fails.
1968: First interracial kiss on network television takes place between Captain Kirk played by William Shattner, and Lt. Uhura. (Shatner is Jewish.)
1969(12th of Kislev, 5730): Bertha Solomon passed away today at the age of 77. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/solomon-bertha
1974: The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status. For the PLO, this was a reward for a variety of terrorist acts including the slaughter at the Munich Olympics. What the UN members failed to understand was that others would see this as an approval of terrorism as an instrument for the advancement of their own agendas. There is a direct line between the UN’s action and the radical Islamic terrorists that are confronting the West in the 21st century
1978(22nd of Cheshvan, 5739): San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was Jewish, were assassinated in City Hall by a former city supervisor, Dan White. Dianne Feinstein, who was then the President of the San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, was the first to discover Harvey Milk's body. Feinstein who was the first female president of the Board of Supervisors was then sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco in Moscone's stead. In 1979, she was elected to the first of two full terms as mayor. In 1992, she won a special Senate election to replace Pete Wilson who had left his seat to become governor of California. She was re-elected in 1994 and 2000.
1981: Sir Hans Adolf Krebs passed away. The son of a Jewish physician, Krebs was forced in 1933 to leave Nazi Germany for England. The German-born British biochemist who received (with Fritz Lipmann) the 1953 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery in living organisms of the series of chemical reactions known as the tricarboxylic acid cycle (also called the citric acid cycle, or Krebs cycle) - the basic system for the essential pathway of oxidation process within the cell.. These reactions involve the conversion - in the presence of oxygen--of substances that are formed by the breakdown of sugars, fats, and protein components to carbon dioxide, water, and energy-rich compounds. The Krebs cycle explains two simultaneous processes: the degradation reactions which yield energy, and the building-up processes which use up energy
1984: In New York, Karsten Johansson and Melanie Sloan whose Ahskenazi family had lived in the Bronx gave birth to actress Scarlett Johansson.
1985: U.S. premiere of “Fever Pitch” that last film directed by Richard Brooks, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Hyman and Esther Sax.
1985: According to the Tower Report Al Schwimmer, a middleman and consultant for Israel's Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, fouled up one arms shipment today when he allowed the lease to expire on three transport planes in Tel Aviv. At the time, weapons for Iran were en route to Tel Aviv: when they arrived, there were no planes to take them to Iran. As a result, the arms delivery to Iran was days late, and no hostages were released. Mr. Schwimmer had been trying to save what amounted to a day's leasing cost. ''I have never seen anything so screwed up in my life,'' General Secord is reported to have said.
1988: William Andreas Brown was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel
1990: Margaret Thatcher resigns as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thatcher was seen by many as philo-Semitic and a supporter of Israel. She had been a member of Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley and Conservative Friends of Israel and during her career had five Jewish members of her cabinet.
1991: U.S. premiere of Mark Rydell’s “For the Boys” co-starring Bette Midler, James Caan and George Segal.
1991: U.S. premier of “Beauty and the Beast, an “animated musical romantic fantasy film” with music by Alan Menken.
1994(19th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty-eight year old Viola Spolin, leading innovator in American theatre passed away today in Los Angeles.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/07/1906/this-week-in-history-birth-of-viola-spolin-creator-of-theater-games
http://www.spolin.com/violabio/
1993: Edward P. Djerejian was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
1995: Ehud Barak finished his term as Minister of Internal Affairs.
1995: Chaim Ramon began serving as Minister of Internal Affairs in a government headed by Shimon Peres.
1995: Gonen Segev began serving his second term as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure.
1997: It was reported today the President Bill Clinton was the first recipient …of the Man of Peace Award, established by the Rabin Foundation and the Peres Foundation, two ''peace centers'' financed in part with money from the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize the men shared with Mr. Arafat. Mr. Clinton asked the foundations to devote the $75,000 in prize money to pay for scholarships for Americans to study in Israel.”
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941by Victor Klemperer, Freud: Conflict and Culture, edited by Michael S. Roth in association with the Library of Congress and A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellmanby Rosemary Mahoney
1999: In an article entitled “Final Sabbath for a Spiritual Hub; A Synagogue That Embodied an Earlier Bronx Is Closed” Barbara Stewart provided the following description of the MosholuJewish Center.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/22/nyregion/final-sabbath-for-spiritual-hub-synagogue-that-embodied-earlier-bronx-closed.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
2000(24th of Cheshvan, 5761) Shoshana Reis, 21, of Hadera, and Meir Bahrame, 35, of Givat Olga, were killed, and 60 wounded when a powerful car bomb was denotated alongside a passing bus on Hadera's main street, when the area was packed with shoppers and people driving home from work. 60 were wounded in the blast.
2001(7th of Kislev, 5762): Eighty-three year old Norman Granz, American jazz musician and record producer passed away.(As reported by Richard Severo)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/arts/norman-granz-who-took-jazz-smoky-clubs-put-it-concert-halls-dies-83.html
2002(17th of Kislev, 5763): IDF tracker Sgt.-Maj. Shigdaf (Shai) Garmai, 30, of Lod, was killed when an Israel Defense Forces Givati Brigade patrol near Tel Qateifa, in the Gaza Strip, came under Palestinian gunfire. Hamas claimed responsibility.
2002: U.S. Premiere of “The Emperor’s Club” starring Kevin Kline.
2003(27th of Cheshvan, 5764): Two Israeli security guards, Ilya Reiger, 58, of Jerusalem, and Samer Fathi Afan, 25, of the Bedouin village Uzeir near Nazareth, were shot dead at a construction site along the route of the security fence near Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. The Jenin Martyrs' Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.
2004: Having assembled the largest and most comprehensive listing of the names of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, along with biographical details, photographs and nutshell memoirs, Yad Vashem makes the information available online at www.yadvashem.org.
2005: Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007, Merkel would receive an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel."
2005: After 26 years, Ted Koppel calls it quits as host of
2006(1st of Kislev, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
2006: During an exclusive interview with members of the University of Wisconsin Hillel staff, Ben Karlin ('93), a Senior Writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” admits that Sukkot is his favorite Jewish holiday because he “likes lulavs and loves etrogs.”
2006: U.S. premiere of “The Fountain” directed by Darren Aronofsky who also wrote the screenplay and co-starring Rachel Weisz.
2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, the Yuval Ron Ensemble present an evening of pan-Middle-Eastern Diaspora music anchored by Haifa-born vocalist Najwa Gibran.
2007: (12 Kislev 5768) Yahrzeit of Solomon Schechter founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and architect of the American Conservative Jewish movement.
2008: The movie, “Old Days,” set in a retirement home with a decidedly Jewish feel opens at the Big Apple Film Festival in New York
2008: As part of the Israeli Voices series the 92nd Street Y presents Yoni Rechter who has made a great contribution to the Israeli music scene.
2008: In Arlington, Virginia, children's author and illustrator Sallie Lowenstein, author of Waiting for Eugene and The Festival of Lights, leads a discussion, "From Memory to Story: How a Childhood in Burma Became a Novel in the Future," on the origins of her new young-adult book, In the Company of Whispers.
2008: 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s pro-civil rights stance attracted and energized a significant segment of the Jewish populace. His sympathy for the state of Israel can be seen in the following speech which he delivered during his campaign for the presidency.
Prophecy is a Jewish tradition, and the World Zionist movement, in which all of you have played so important a role, has continued this tradition. It has turned the dreams of its leaders into acts of statesmanship. It has converted the hopes of the Jewish people into concrete facts of life. When the first Zionist conference met in 1897, Palestine was a neglected wasteland. A few scattered Jewish colonies had resettled there, but they had come to die in the Holy Land, rather than to make it live again in greatness. Most of the governments of the world were indifferent. But now all is changed. Israel became a triumphant and enduring reality exactly 50 years after Theodore Herzl, the prophet of Zionism, had proclaimed the ideal of nationhood. It was the classic case of an ancient dream finding a young leader, for Herzl was then only 37 years of age. Perhaps I may be allowed the observation that the Jewish people - ever since David slew Goliath - have never considered youth as a barrier to leadership, or measured experience and maturity by mere length of days. I first saw Palestine in 1939. There the neglect and ruin left by centuries of Ottoman misrule were slowly being transformed by miracles of labor and sacrifice. But Palestine was still a land of promise in 1939, rather than a land of fulfillment. I returned in 1951 to see the grandeur of Israel. In 3 years this new state had opened its doors to 600,000 immigrants and refugees. Even while fighting for its own survival, Israel had given new hope to the persecuted and new dignity to the pattern of Jewish life. I left with the conviction that the United Nations may have conferred on Israel the credentials of nationhood; but its own idealism and courage, its own sacrifice and generosity, had earned the credentials of immortality… Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom. It is worth remembering, too, that Israel is a cause that stands beyond the ordinary changes and chances of American public life. In our pluralistic society, it has not been a Jewish cause - any more than Irish independence was solely the concern of Americans of Irish descent. The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been repeatedly endorsed by Presidents and Members of Congress from both parties. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment. Yet within this tradition of friendship there is a special obligation on the Democratic Party. It was President Woodrow Wilson who forecast with prophetic wisdom the creation of a Jewish homeland. It was President Franklin Roosevelt who kept alive the hopes of Jewish redemption during the Nazi terror. It was President Harry Truman who first recognized the new State of Israel and gave it status in world affairs. And may I add that it would be my hope and my pledge to continue this Democratic tradition - and to be worthy of it….The Middle East needs water, not war; tractors, not tanks; bread, not bombs. There is already little enough available in the way of financial and physical resources for either side to be devoting its energies to huge defense budgets. The present state of tensions serves only the worst interests of Arab and Israeli alike. But a new spirit of comity could well serve the highest ideals of both. For the original Zionist philosophy has always maintained that the people of Israel would use their national genius not for selfish purposes but for the enrichment and glory of the entire Middle East. The earliest leaders of the Zionist movement spoke of a Jewish state which would have no military power and which would be content with victories of the spirit. The compulsions of a harsh and inescapable necessity have compelled Israel to abandon this hope. But I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate. And I cannot believe that the Arab world would not find a better basis for unity in a united attack on all their accumulated social problems - an attack in which they could benefit immensely from a closer cooperation with the people of Israel. The technical skills and genius of Israel have already brought their blessings to Burma and to Ethiopia. Still other nations in Asia and in Africa are eager to benefit from the special skills available in that bustling land. Why should the Middle East alone be cut off from this partnership? And why should not the people of Israel receive the blessings available to them from association with the Arab world? When we think of the possibilities of this association, an emotion of soaring hope replaces our somber anxieties about the Middle East. Ancient rivers would give their power to new industries. The desert would yield to civilization. Disease would be eradicated, especially the disease that strikes down helpless children. The blight of poverty would be replaced by the blessings of abundance…”For the entire text see
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/JFK+Pr-Pres/1956/002PREPRES12SPEECHES_56NOV25.htm
2008: An experimental Israeli music ensemble, the Givol Choir and David Moss, an innovative American singer and percussionist perform three separate shows at the historic Ha'adumim Building near the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv.
2008: Seeking to ensure that President George W. Bush's promises to Israel are transferred to the new US administration, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert left for Washington tonight for his final meeting with the outgoing American leader.
2009: The Lost Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors or/of special interest to Jewish readers including A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis byLouis Breger
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors or/of special interest to Jewish readers including Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer is part of literary family. His brother Franklin is an editor with the New Republic. His brother Joshua is a journalist. And is if that was not enough, he married novelist Nicole Krauss in 2004.
2009: An experienced guide from the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy, a nonprofit Jewish educational organization, leads a tour in which attendees “discover 150 years of Lower East Side history on Shteibl Row, noted for its abundance of 19th-century one- and two-room synagogues.”
2010:Salman Rushdie, the author living under the threat of a fatwa, is scheduled to speak at the 92nd Street Y in NYC.
2010:NoVA State Legislators' Reception 2010 which gives the Jewish community a chance to Hear our state legislators identify their top priorities and address the Jewish community's state platform, is scheduled to take place at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia (JCCNV)
2010: The Leo Baeck Institute in cooperation with Manhattan School of Music is scheduled to present “Adventures in Listening: Kurt Masur, A Film by Amit Breuer”
2010:The IDF's new Head of Military Intelligence, Major-General Aviv Kochavi, formally assumed his new position today and was promoted from the rank of brigadier-general.
2011: A forum hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the subject of ridding the world of nuclear weapons which representatives from Israel and Arab states are schedule to attend is scheduled to come to an end in Vienna.
2011: Rabbi Dr. Levi Cooper a teacher at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and serves as the spiritual leader of Kehillat HaTzur VeHaTzohar in Tzur Hadassah is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of lectures entitled “Maharal: The Mystic as Legal Scholar” at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
2011: Sharon Steinberg, the Cantor at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, VA, is scheduled to give the last lecture in the series entitled “An Overview of Jewish Liturgical Music” as the JCC of Northern Virginia.
2011: Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decided today to open a criminal investigation against Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, for alleged incitement to racism. The decision to investigate Eliyahu came after he was quoted making several anti-Arab comments in interviews with the media.
2011:The Military Advocate General filed indictments today against two Palestinians from the village of Halhoul near Hebron, who confessed to throwing a rock that killed Asher Hillel Palmer and his son as they drove near Kiryat Arba in September.
2012: In Melbourne, Australia, “The One That Got Away” is scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.
2012:The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to offer an introductory course for students and researchers wishing to use its extensive photo archive.
2012: In the U.S., Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim holiday based on Sukkoth
2012: The IDF Spokesman’s Office said today it was looking into a photograph circulating widely on Facebook in which 16 IDF soldiers arranged their uniformed bodies on the sand, to spell out the Hebrew words “Bibi loser” — in a deft physical critique of Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s failure to send ground troops into Gaza during the just-ended Operation Pillar of Defense.
2012:Shin Bet officers and police arrested the terrorists who bombed a bus in Tel Aviv on Wednesday several hours after the device exploded, the agency revealed this evening
2012(8th of Kislev, 5773): Twenty-eight year old Boris Yarmolnik, the IDF reserve officer who was wounded in a rocket attack yesterday, passed away today following an unsuccessful surgical process designed to save his life.
2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host “Discovery and Recovery” – a behind the scene tour of the Iraqi Jewish Archive at the National Archives.
2013: “Fox Dedicates Music Building to Oscar-Winning Composer Lionel Newman” published today described the ceremony during which “Twentieth Century Fox renamed its historic Fox Music Building in honor of film and television composer Lionel Newman.”
2013: “Kol HaMusica” is scheduled to broadcast a noontime concert by Tatiana Rubina.
2013: “The archaeologists who have been exploring the Canaanite site, known as Tel Kabri, announced today that they had found one of civilization’s oldest and largest wine cellars.” (As reported by John Noble Wilford)
2013: “Isaac Herzog, the son of a former president, took the helm of Israel’s Labor Party and thus Parliament’s opposition today, vowing to restore the party’s historic focus on promoting peace with the Palestinians and to mount a vigorous challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-leaning government.” (As reported by Jodi Rudoren)
2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE.
2014: In Melbourne, “The Last Mentsch” and “The Go-Go Boys” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.
2014: “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn and “Hora 79” are scheduled to be shown at the 18thannual UK Jewish Film Festival