February 11
55: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome clearing the way for Nero to become Emperor Would things have been better or worse if Britannicus had ruled instead of Nero? Nobody can say for sure since there is no record of his views on the Jewish people, Judea or Jerusalem. . Nero’s record regarding the Jews is a mixed bag (at least he did blame them for burning down Rome), he did appoint four inept governors to rule over Judea and appointed Vespasian to put down the Jewish Revolt when it began in 66. Given the rest of Nero’s behavior, the world (including the Jewish world) would have been better off with Britannicus.
1147 (24 Adar): The Jews of Wurzburg were attacked without warning by a band of Crusaders. “More than twenty among them met a martyrs death including Rabbi Isaac ben Eliakim…The humane Bishop of Wurzburg assigned a burial place in his own private garden for the bodies of the martyrs and sent the survivors to a castle near Wurzburg.”
1201: In Worms, the Jews took up arms to fight alongside the city's non-Jewish residents against an attack by Otto. At that time, Jews were still permitted to bear arms in various cities in Germany, although this privilege was soon to be abolished
1250: During the Seventh Crusade, the three day Battle of Al Mansurah comes to an end with the French forces under the command of the anti-Semitic King Louis IX suffering a crushing defeat.
1349: Jews of Uberlingen, Switzerland were massacred.
1482: By a Papal order, seven new Inquisitors were nominated, among them Tomas de Torquemada who led the Spanish Inquisition that brought an end to the fabled Spanish Jewish community.
1490: In Spain it was declared that no Jew or convert ever be allowed to rule over any Muslims. This was part of Spanish/Muslim negotiations leading up to the eventual surrender of Granada, the last Muslim territory in Iberia.
1491: Isaac ben Judah ibn Katorzi produced the first printed copy of at Naples the Sefer ha-Shorashim a lexicon by Rabbi David Kimhi, known as RADAK.
1531: King Henry VIII is recognized as head of the Church of England, thus helping to unravel papal control of the British Isles, weaken the control of the Catholic Church and help the forces of what might be loosely called Protestant Christianity. Over the long haul, this was beneficial to the Jews since the rise of Protestants in the Netherlands and England would prove to be beneficial to their acceptance and provide escape from the Church approved Inquistion that had driven them out of Iberia and kept them from New World Settlements in Latin America and French controlled Canada.
1535: Birthdate of Niccolò Sfondrati who as Pope Gregory XIV followed the comparatively benevolent policies of his predecessor Sixtus V.
1673: In England, According to the Conventicle Act of 1664 any prayer meeting of more than five persons not according to the Book of Common Prayer would be considered seditious. The act had been originally designed as a device against the Puritans but soon Jews were prosecuted as well. The Jews requested from the King to either allowed freedom of worship or be allowed to leave the country with their possessions. Charles II ordered the Attorney General to desist from prosecuting the “offenders”.
1689(21st of Shevat): Rabbi Moses ben Galante of Jerusalem, author of Zevah ha-Shelamim passed away
1772: Birthdate of Lew Way, the English clergyman who in 1808 found he London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews and who “traveled at his own expense through Holland, Germany, and Russia, in order to study the condition of the Jews, ameliorate their social and political status, and urge the Christians to missionary work among them”
1795: “Sheva, the Benevolent,” an adaptation of English playwright Richard Cumberland's “The Jew; or the Benevolent Hebrew”, the first English language play to feature a Jewish moneylender as the benevolent hero of a stage comedy had its American premiere in Philadelphia, PA.
1802(9thof Adar I, 5562):Joel Löwe the Biblical commentator “who was a follower of Moses Menedlssohn” and “biurists” – that group of commentators who helped to lay “the foundation of a critical historical study of the TaNaCh” passed away today.
1811: Birthdate of French banker and booklover Aaron Euryate Felix Solar.
1812(28th of Shevat, 5572): Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim passed away. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia,Sinzheim was born in 1745. He was the son of R. Isaac Sinzheim of Treves and brother-in-law of Herz Cerfbeer and the first rabbi of Strasburg. He was the most learned and prominent member of the Assembly of Notables convened by Napoleon I. He was entrusted with task of answering the questions laid before the assembly by the imperial commissioner; a task which he accomplished in such an admirable fashion that he won the approval of the Emperor himself.
1814: Norway's independence is proclaimed, marking the ultimate end of the Kalmar Union, the union of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. As part of its declaration of independence, Norway acquired its first constitution. “This document was relatively liberal, but in §2 it stated that the official state religion was Lutheran Protestantism and that Jews and Jesuits were forbidden from entering the kingdom. The lobbying to change this paragraph was led by the national poet, Henrik Wergeland. In 1851 the ban was indeed reversed, six years after the Wergeland's death.”
1826: University College London is founded under the name University of London. As the first university to open its doors to Women, Roman Catholics and Dissenters, UCL was also the first to admit Jewish students. This traditional link of the College with the Anglo-Jewish community is very much alive today.University College London houses the largest department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in Europe. The department is the only one in the UK to offer a full degree course and research supervision in Jewish Studies at the BA Honours, MA, MPhil and PhD levels in every subject of Hebrew and Jewish Studies - philology, history, and literature - covering virtually the entire chronological and geographical span of the Hebrew and Jewish civilization from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern period. Degrees can be completed on a full- or part-time basis.
1833: Birthdate of Auguste Scheurer-Kestner he became an ardent defender of Dreyfus going so far as to take up the case with Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Billot and President Felix Faure.
1837: Eliezer Eduard Hirschel Kann and Hyacintha Kann gave birth to Dorothea Jacobson.
1841: Hannah Weil and Benjamin Bloomingdale gave birth to Lyman Gustavus Bloomingdale the co-founder of Bloomingdale’s Department Store.
1842: Birthdate of Ludwig Barnay, “the son of the secretary of the Jewish congregation in Budapest who went on to become a leading German actor.
1846(15thof Shevat, 5606): Tu B’Shevat
1851: In Sarrebourg, Lorraine, France thirty-one year old Kalmus Calmann Levy (Calmann Levy) married Paulin Levy.
1859: The New York Times reported that Jews of San Francisco were scheduled to hold a meeting to express their feelings over the kidnapping of “the Mortara child” and the refusal of the papal authorities to return him to his parents. [The Mortara Affair had a galvanizing effect on Jewish communities throughout the world, especially in Western Europe and the United States. The public displays and attempts to get governments to act on behalf of Jewish victims, which is commonplace today, was almost unheard of one hundred and fifty years ago.]
1859: Heidenheimer, TX, which was named in honor Sampson Heidenheimer who along with his brother Isaac owned grocery stores in Galveston was located along the Santa Fe railway which was chartered today to join Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, with Santa Fe, New Mexico
1861: Edwin Booth appeared as Shylock for the first time at The Winter Garden in New York City. According to the reviewer, “first to last, Mr. Booth preserved with thorough faithfulness the varying passions which from time to time usurped the heart of the Jew.” In playing Shylock, Booth was following in the footsteps of his father Junius Brutus Booth who had previously this creation of Shakespeare’s pen.
1865(15th of Sh'vat, 5625) Tu B'Shvat
1868: Birthdate of Nachman Syrkin, the Russian-born American Zionist leader. He may have been the only American to have attended the First Zionist Congress and the Versailles Peace Conference. He was an early advocate of what became the Kibbutz Movement.
1868: In Savannah, GA, Mikveh Israel, a synagogue that had followed the Sephardic Minchag began its shift from the Orthodox to Reform Judaism today “with the addition of a musically-accompanied choir and the elimination of observance of the second day of festivals.”
1869: Jeannette and Aaron Schüler gave birth to Jewish German poet and playwright Else Lasker-Schüler
1874: Birthdate of George Alexander Kohut an Hungarian-born American writer and bibliographer. He was educated at the gymnasium in Grosswardein, at the public schools in New York, at Columbia University (1893–1895), Berlin University, and the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1895–97). In the year 1897 he became rabbi of the Congregation Emanu-El, Dallas, Texas, a post which he occupied for three years. In 1902 he became superintendent of the religious school of Temple Emanu-El in New York, and was assistant librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Kohut was the author of: The Index to the Italian words in the "Aruch,""Early Jewish Literature in America,""Sketches of Jewish Loyalty, Bravery, and Patriotism in the South American Colonies and the West Indies,""Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America," and “A Memoir of Dr. Alexander Kohut's Literary Activity," and many other monographs on historical subjects and on folklore. He also edited "Semitic Studies in Memory of Dr. Alexander Kohut". Kohut established a library of Judaica at Yale in 1915, an important collection made by his father, Alexander Kohut, and the "Kohut Endowment" to maintain and improve the "Alexander Kohut Memorial Collection". He passed away in 1933.
1874(24thof Shevat, 5634): Eleanor Ezekiel passed away in Philadelphia, PA
1874: Dr. Jacob Da Silva Solis Cohen a Sephardic Jew who served with Union forces during the Civil War before returning to Philadelphia signed the death certificate of Eleanor Ezekiel.
1875: Abraham H. Keinski, a Polish Jew, was arraigned at the Yorkville Police Court on charges that he was responsible for burning down a hat store that he owned which was located on Third Avenue. The prisoner was released after posting $5,000 in bail.
1880(29thof Shevat, 5640): Asher Bijur passed at 4 o’clock this afternoon at his home on West 53rd Street at the age of 54. He was born at Posen in 1825 and came to the United States when he was 20 years old. He began his business career by manufacturing cigars and then moved into the leaf tobacco trade. He leaves behind a widow and two sons.
1881: Mr. Arbuckle, a pianist who had been engaged to play a benefit performance at the Park Theatre for the benefit of synagogue in Brooklyn explained his side of the conflict with another pianist named Joseffy.
1881: Birthdate of Louis Ginsberg. Born in Russia, he came to the United States at the age of 22. After working in West Virginia and Illinois, he settled in Marietta, Ohio, where he established the Producers’ Supply and Tool Company and became a pillar of the community serving as Secretary of B’Nai Israel, President of the Local Jewish War Suffers’ Society, Director of the Hebrew Immigration Society and a generous supporter of the Red Cross.
1884(15thof Shevat, 5644): Tu B’Shevat
1885: Birthdate of Sir Sidney “Solly” Solomon Abrahams the native of Birmingham who served as the 26th Chief Justice of Ceylon.
1886: A charity ball sponsored by the Purim Association will be held this evening at the Metropolitan Opera House.
1889(10th of Adar I, 5649): Simon Mussina, merchant, newspaper editor, and attorney passed away. [This lengthy entry is intended to provide a sense of what American Jewish life was like for those who lived outside of a few major metropolitan areas.] Born in 1805, to Zachariah and Nancy Mussina in Philadelphia, PA, Simon learned the mercantile business from his father. In 1821 Simon and his father took a business trip to Mobile and Clark County, Alabama, where Zachariah drowned while crossing a swollen creek. The family fortune of gold disappeared in the drowning, and Simon was left to support his mother and several younger brothers and sisters. He set up a mercantile store in Clark County, then moved to Mobile, where he developed one of the largest mercantile businesses in the South. Before 1836 a fire burned his savings, and that year he moved to Matagorda, Texas, with his family. He bought the Matagorda Bulletin and edited it until 1840, when he moved to Galveston, where he edited the National Banner to advertise his vast holdings of West Texas lands. When Austin became the state capital, Simon sold the Banner and returned to Matagorda to assume editorship of the Bulletin. He subsequently moved to Galveston, where he established a large drugstore. When the Mexican War started he went to Matamoros, bought land at Point Isabel on the Rio Grande, acquired controlling interest in a Matamoros newspaper, the American Flag, and developed it into one of the most popular newspapers of the time. At the end of the war he served as one of the surveyors who laid out the town of Brownsville. Mussina became a close friend of Sam Houston, who encouraged him to become the chief plaintiff against Judge John C. Watrous, charged with corrupt decisions on land claims in and about Brownsville. The litigation lasted most of Mussina's life. In 1868 he moved to Austin and began proceedings for the La Vega land grant, an eleven-league grant that embraced a part of eastern Waco. This case, too, stayed in litigation. In his sixties Mussina became a member of the State Bar of Texas and established himself as one of the most astute land attorneys in the state. From 1870 to 1873 he served as president of the board of trustees for the state blind and insane asylums and in 1871 he served as alderman for the city of Austin. Mussina never married, but he reared his father's family.” His sister, who had married a Presbyterian minister of Galveston, buried him from that church in Galveston.
1890: Isaac Jacobs was fired from his job as a janitor at Etz Chaim (The Tree of Life), a Hebrew School of which Isaac LIbermann and Hermann Rothstein are the trustees.
1890: A meeting took place at Temple Beth El this evening during which the young people discussed ways of helping the city’s poor Jews many of whom “live on the east side between 42nd and 86th streets from 5thAvenue to the River.”
1890: Among the recipients of the theatrical license fund which was distributed today was the United Hebrew Charities which received $1,500 out of total of $38,200.
1890(21stof Shevat, 5650): Solomon Eppinger passed away today.
1890: This and final day of the annular meeting of Grand Lodge, No.1 of the Independent Order of Free Sons Israel. The Jewish fraternal order’s newly elected officers are: Grand Mater – Louis B. Franklin; First Deputy Grand Master – Joseph Steiner; Grand Treasurer – Raphael Lehman; Grand Secretary – H.I. Goldsmith.
1892: In New York, the authorities expressed their concern today “over the worst outbreak of typhus…that has occurred since the organization of the Health Department.” The outbreak was most severe among recently arrived Jewish immigrants from Russia.
1893: In his lecture on the history of Morocco and Gibraltar delivered today, Professor Albert S. Bickmore reported that the population of Tangier totaled about 15,000 people of whom 4,000 were Jews.
1894: Birthdate of Isaac M Kolthoff, the Dutch born chemist who was considered by some to be the “Father of Analytical Chemistry.” He passed away in Minnesota in 1993 a month after his 99th birthday.
1894: It was reported today that the fifth and final volume or Ernest Renan’s History of the Jews “has had a unique reception in Paris. “In an interview, Pere Henri Didon speaks tenderly of Renan, and almost approvingly of this closing work” which was published posthumously.
1894: “Diminutive Bride and Groom” published today described the nuptials of Maurice Bear and Bertha Levy, a leading member of the Birmingham, Alabama, Jewish community, both of whom are no more than four feet tall.
1894: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a talk on “The Mistakes of Ingersoll About Moses” at Temple Emanu-El.
1895(17thof Shevat, 5655): Mrs. Hannah Steinberger, the wife of William Steinberger who teaches Hebrew and German, was found dead “in the miserable quarters” she occupied with her three children in a tenement on the Lower East Side.
1898: Birthdate of Physicist Leo Szilard. Born in Hungary, Szilard was a refugee from Hitler’s Europe who first sounded the alarm about the need to build an Atomic Bomb. He worked with Einstein on the letter that Einstein would take to FDR in 1939. This effort led to the Manhattan Project.
1898: During the trial of Emile Zola, Lt. Col George Picquart “described his mission to Tunis” which he made under the orders of General Leclerc “when the Dreyfus began afresh.
1902: Birthdate of Arne Jacobsen, Danish architect and designer.
1903: In a letter to the Grand Vizir, Herzl summarizes his proposal – the Ottomans will allow Jewish colonization in Palestine in exchange for a loan of 2 million Turkish pounds.
1904: Birthdate of Koppel Shub Pinson the native of Postaway who came to the United States in 1907 who in 1945 “was appointed Director of Education and Culture for Jewish Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee” which enabled him continue his work of providing aide for Holocaust survivors.
1904: Florence Lowenstein, the daughter of Sophia Mendelsohn Lowenstein and Benedict Lowenstein and Louis Marshall gave birth to economist George Marshall whose interest in conservation led him to be
an early leader of both The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club. His role in the civil rights movement led to him serving three months in prison after having been cited for Contempt for Congress when being investigated by the infamous and inappropriately named House Committee on Un-American Activities.
an early leader of both The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club. His role in the civil rights movement led to him serving three months in prison after having been cited for Contempt for Congress when being investigated by the infamous and inappropriately named House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1905: Pope Pius X publishes the encyclical Vehementer nos.Vehementer Nos was a papal encyclical by the French law of 1905 providing for the separation of church and state, it denounced the proposition that the state should be separated from the church as "a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error". It is safe to assume that what Pius really meant was that there could be no separation of state from the Catholic Church since he only recognized the validity of the Catholic Church. His view towards Jews can be seen in his response to Herzl’s 1904 request for Papal support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine Pius X responded: We are unable to favor this movement …. The Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore, we cannot recognize the Jewish people.”
1909: Birthdate of writer and movie director Joseph L Mankiewicz
1909: Birthdate of Max Baer, American boxer. Baer was a heavyweight fighter who knocked out Max Schmeling, the German champion and symbol of Hitler's Germany, in 1933. Baer had a Mogen David sown on his shorts. However, he may really not have been Jewish. According to some, his mother was a Christian and his father was only "a nominal Jew." For more on the subject of Max Baer, and Jews in sports, you might want to read Ellis Island to Ebbets Field.
1910: The Turkish Council of State approves statutes, which will allow a Jewish bank to be opened in Salonica.
1910 (2nd of Adar I, 5670): Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Russian born scholar, teacher and philosopher passed away. Following the pogroms that began in 1881, Lilienblum took the unusual stance, for an Orthodox rabbi, of supporting the settlement of Palestine by the Jewish people as the only realistic course of action if Jews were ever to be safe. This is yet another example of Zionism that pre-dated Herzl.
1911(13th of Shevat, 5671): Baron Albert von Rothschild of the Austrian branch of the House of Rothschild passed away at age 66.
1912(23rd of Shevat, 5672): Fifty-six year old Washington Seligman, the “son of James Seligman who founded the banking firm of J&W Seligiman & Co and brother of Mrs. Benjamin Guggenhieim and Jefferson and De Witt Seligman” took his own life today. He left a note saying “I am tired of being sick all my life” – a reference to the illnesses that he has confronted over the last quarter of a century.
1914(15th of Shevat, 5674): Tu B’Shevat celebrated for the last time before the start of World War I which opened a four decades of world-wide cataclysm
1914: Menucha and R’Shneur Zalman gave birth to Rabbi Yisroel Shimon Kalmanson.
1914:Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel completed his first term as Post-Master General in the cabinet of Prime Minister Asquith
1915: As of today the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $468,792.05
1915: “The prediction that the present war will do away with anti-Semitism altogether in Germany and the assurance that by ‘lessening the power of the nobility and democratizing the people’ it already has removed most of the anti-Semitic prejudices are expressed in a statement given by the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, to Dr. S. Melamed of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung published in that paper” today.
1915: The Red Cross Fund of which Jacob H. Schiff is the treasurer received an additional $162.50 today bringing the total collections to $457,583.86.
1915: “The Jews in Serbia” published today contains the assessment by Mabel Grouitch, the American born wife of Serbian diplomat Dr. Slavo Grouitch of the Jewish condition in Serbia which she says “is the one country in the world next to England and America where people of the Hebrew race enjoy the fullest of religious and civil rights.
1916: Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control
1916: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel completed his second term as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His replacement would be Edwin Samuel Montagu, another prominent member of the Anglo-Jewish community.
1917: In Chicago, Natalie Marcus and Ascher “Otto” Schechtel, a jewelry store manager gave birth to Sidney Schechtel who gained fame as author Sidney Shelton wjp won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in1947 for writing The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award in1959 for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 89.
1917: At the Halkett Hotel, Jersey, Catherine Jacobs and W.A.R. Hill gave birth to their daughter Elizabeth Annette.
1918: Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Jerusalem, approved a plan put forth by British army engineers designed to alleviate the water shortage in Jerusalem.
1920: Birthdate of King Farouk I. Farouk was the last king of Egypt. He was the king who led Egypt into its ill-fated war with Israel in 1948. There are those who say that if Egypt had refused to join the other Arab states, there would never have been a war in 1948. When Farouk was ousted in 1952, the Israelis thought the new reform government would want to end hostilities. Unfortunately, the leader of the “Colonel’s Revolt,” Nasser, made destroying Israel the rallying cry for his Pan-Arab Movement.
1925: The White Star liner Olympic with Chiam Weizmann and Bernard Rosenblatt on board, arrived today from Southampton and Cherbourg twenty-four hours late because of the fog off the American coast.
1927(10th of Adar): Fifty-eight year old Composer Joel Engel passed away. Born at Berdyansk in 1868 he moved from Berlin to Palestine where he became “"the true founding father of the modern renascence of Jewish music."
1929: Dedication of the Nathan and Lina Straus Health and Welfare Center in Jerusalem.
1929: “Pope Pius XI signs a Concordat and Lateran Treaty with fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini. The pope agrees to discriminate against Jews and Protestants while gaining the assurance that Catholicism would remain the sole and official religion of Italy.” (Pious was, if anything, not consistent in this matter. Later he would condemn fascism and racism and support efforts to rescue Jews.)
1932: Birthdate of pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
1933:The national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) together with the Stahlhelm and the Agricultural League today once again formed a united Kampffront Schwarz-Weiß-Rot ("Struggle Front Black-White-Red" named after the colours of the German Empire) in an attempt to counter the Nazis which had outsmarted them during their march to power.
1935: Birthdate of Emanuel Zisman the native of Bulgaria who made Aliyah in 1949 and returned to his native land as Israel’s Ambassador to Bulgaria in 2000.
1936: Eighty-four year old William “Coin” Harvey author of the novel A Tale of Two Nations, “the most notable example of Populist anti-Semitism.”
1936: Richard Tucker married Sarah Perelmuth, the only daughter of Levi and Perelmuth who were also the parents of Yakob Perelemtuh who would gain fame as Jan Peerce.
1937: George Gershwin performed his Piano Concerto in F in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of French maestro Pierre Monteux” during which he “suffered coordination problems and blackouts during the performance” which were symptomatic of the brain tumor that would claim his life a few months later in June of 1937.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that an agreement was signed in Geneva providing for the status of German refugees who were to be furnished with travel documents, resembling Nansen passports, allowing them to work in the countries where they had been living for more than five years.
1938: The Palestine Post published a special Reporter's Report, a reproduction of a broadcast made on the Palestine Radio by Gershon Agron, the founder and editor of this newspaper, on the tragic situation of Jews in Romania where an authoritarian, anti-Semitic regime was deeply entrenched and had the solid backing of the king.
1939: Birthdate of Gerald “Gerry” Goffin the American lyricist and husband of Carole King.
1939: Physicist Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Fritisch published a paper on nuclear fission in the hour “Nature.” Her work contributed to the development of the atomic bomb. Meitner was the daughter of a Viennese Jewish family.
1941: Birthdate of Avraham Hirchson, an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Likud and Kadima between 1981 and 1984, and again from 1992 until 2009. “He also held the posts of Minister of Communications, Minister of Finance and Minister of Tourism. He resigned following allegations of corruption, and was ultimately convicted of stealing close to 2 million shekels from the National Workers Labor Federation while he was its chairman.”
1941: A pitched-street battle took placed between the NSB, a pro-Nazi Dutch movement and Jewish self-defense groups on the Waterloopein, a square in the center of Amsterdam.
1942 (24th of Shevat, 5702): Flight Lieutenant Michael Weizmann of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, the 25 year old son of Chaim Weizmann, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay. His body was never found.
1943(6thof Adar I, 5703): Sixty-seven year old Bess Houdini, the widow of Harry Houdini suffered a heart attack and passed away today in Needles, CA while aboard an eastbound train traveling from Los Angeles to New York City.
1943: The Nazis deported 123 children under the age of twelve without their parents from Paris to the chambers of Birkenau.
1947: Birthdate of Derek Victor Shulman, the native of Glasgow, the lead vocalist for the band Gentile Giant which included his brothers Phil and Ray, who became a Scottish musician and singer, multi-instrumentalist, and record executive.
1948: Birthdate of Dr. Arthur Gould Schatzkin, “an epidemiologist whose investigations into the connections between diet and cancer yielded new analytic tools and led to the discovery that eating fiber did not prevent the recurrence of polyps in the colon.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)
1948(1st of Adar I, 5708): Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein passed away.
1948(1st of Adar I, 5708): Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs GCB GCMG QC passed away, Born in 1855, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he was an “Australian judge and politician, the third Chief Justice of Australia, ninth Governor-General of Australia and the first born in Australia to occupy that post. He is the only person ever to have held both positions of Chief Justice of Australia and Governor-General of Australia. He also was an anti-Zionist.
1948: Oral arguments in the case of U.S. v Paramount Pictures, Inc, which had begun on February 9 came to a close.
1952(15thof Shevat, 5712): Tu B’Shevat is observed for the last time under the Presidency of Harry S. Truman.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that 19 persons were detained in Tel Aviv in an intense hunt for culprits responsible for the bombing of the Soviet Legation.
1953: The Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with Israel. The Soviet Union competed with the United States to be the first to recognize the fledgling state of Israel in 1948. Stalin hoped the new Jewish state would help to undermine the power of the British Empire in particular and Western democracy in general. Also, there were some in the Soviet Union who thought that Israel's socialists would lead the new nation into the Eastern Bloc. Since nobody really can say with total certainty what propelled Stalin and his associates behavior, we can only assume that the decision to break relations in 1953 was a combination of the anti-Semitism which was running rampant in the Soviet Union and/or the realization that the Arabs and not the Israelis would be a better foil to foster Soviet imperialism in the Middle East.
1953: President Eisenhower refused clemency appeal for convicted spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
1958: Seventy-year old Alfred Ernest Jones a British neurologist who was the first the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud’s biographer passed away. In 1919 he found marital bliss when he wed Katherine Jokl “a Jewish economics graduate from Moravia” who had been a classmate of Freud’s daughters.
1958(21st of Shevat, 5718): Terrorists killed a resident of moshav Yanov who was on his way to Kfar Yona, in the Sharon area.
1960(13th of Shevat, 5720): Victor Klemperer passed away. Born in 1881, he “was a businessman, journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specializing in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life, successively, in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and in the German Democratic Republic were published in 1995.”
1961: The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem
1968: Border fighting broke out between Israeli and Jordanian forces.
1970: In a sign of how the “poor food of eastern European Jewish immigrants” has become chic and trendy, bagels, seedless light rye and “a new marbled bread combining twists of black and regular pumpernickels are among 113 different varieties of breads, from nine Old-World-Style bakers, at Bloomingdale's Bread Basket, which opens today in the delicacies department.
1975: When asked in Parliament by a National Party MP if he supported Enthoven's liberal positions, Harry Schwarz replied "I make no secret of it. I am my brother's keeper".
1976 (10th of Adar I, 5736): Actor Lee J Cobb passed away at the age of 64. Some of Cobb’s most famous roles were in 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront and Death of a Salesman.
1976: Adlene Harrison became the first Jewish female mayor of a major American city when she was appointed mayor of Dallas.
1979:Under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi is swept from power with the success of the Islamic Revolution. Khomeini. When Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi held power, Iran was the world's biggest buyer of Israeli arms. The Islamic fundamentalist government which succeeded the Shah militantly damned Zionism up and down and hung a prominent Iranian Jew for "spying for Israel." In 1980, however, when the Iraq-Iran war began, Iranian representatives met in Paris with Israel's deputy defense minister and worked out a "Jews for arms" deal. Iran permitted Jews to emigrate and Israel sold Iran ammunition and spare parts for Chieftain Tanks and US-made F-4 Phantom aircraft. Channeled through a private Israeli arms dealer, this particular agreement appropriately ended in 1984, when Iran was slow in paying its bills. At the same time, under the Ayatollah and his successors, Iran would arm and train Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Nothing is ever straight forward in the swirl of the Middle East.
1979: “They're Playing Our Song,’ “a musical with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, and music by Marvin Hamlisch’ opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre.
1981: Birthdate of Michael Andrew “Mike” Seidman who played tight end for UCLA, the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts.
1986: Having been released from imprisonment by the USSR, Anatoly Sharansky leaves the country and begins his journey to Israel.
1988(22nd of Shevat, 5748):Rabbi Israel Raphael Margolies, “who spoke out on a variety of social issues and was a longtime civil rights advocate, died of complications from hypoglycemia” at his home in Teaneck, N.J. at the age of 72. Rabbi Margolies grew up in the Williamsburg and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn and graduated from the Jewish Institute of Religion in Manhattan, a seminary for the education of conservative and reform rabbis He served at Temple Emanu-el in Engelwood, N.J., from 1937 until 1953 and at Beth Am The People's Temple in Manhattan, from 1953 to 1981 From his pulpit, Rabbi Margolies frequently called for equality for minority group members and for women. He was a supporter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and once marched alongside him in a civil rights parade in Englewood Rabbi Margolies was often quoted for his opposition to the Vietnam War and for his belief in peaceful protest, and he was a founding member of the New Jersey chapter of SANE, a Washington-based organization that opposes nuclear weapons.”
1989 (6 Adar I):Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary ("Rashag") passed away. He was born in 1898. His father, a wealthy businessman and erudite scholar, was a leading Chassid of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn
1991: Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe Arens, in a hastily arranged one-day visit to Washington, told President Bush today that Israel was suffering heavy "destruction" from Iraqi missile attacks and that its willingness to refrain from retaliating was wearing thin. In a 30-minute meeting with the President in the Oval Office, Mr. Arens reportedly detailed the effect of Iraq's missile attacks on Israel, telling reporters later, "We see sights of destruction in Israel that have not been seen in a Western country since World War II. Mr. Bush responded by reiterating his longstanding position that the United States appreciated Israel's restraint. The President also stressed how important this restraint was for the anti-Iraq coalition and expressed the hope that Israel would continue its policy. While Mr. Arens, vividly described the costs to Israel of the missile strikes, he made no aid request in his meeting with the President. While Mr. Arens's was meeting with President Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and other top Middle East experts, he was handed a note that another Iraqi Scud missile had landed in central Israel.
1991: This evening Iraq fired a scud aimed at Tel Aviv. It was the 12th attack against Israel since the start of the Persian Gulf War. Debris from the attack appeared to fall harmlessly in an unpopulated area causing no injuries or property damage.
1993: The Oslo Talks, which were being conducted in strictest secrecy, were resumed for another two days. Yossi Beilin sent Dr. Ron Pundak and Dr. Yair Hirschfeld “to a second round of talks at Sarpsbourg, Norway.
1994(30th of Shevat, 5754): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1994: Sheldon Silver assumed office as the 119thSpeaker of the New York State Assembly.
2001(17th of Shevat, 5761):Screenwriter, author and producer Sy Gomberg passed away at the age of 82. Born in New York City, he received an Oscar Nomination in 1951 for the script he wrote for “When Willie Comes Marching Home.” He also wrote and produced “The Law and Mr.Jones,” a legal sit-com in the 1960’s. Gomberg organized a Hollywood contingent to march with Dr. Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights protests.
2001: The Chicago Tribune published “Holocaust Suit, Book Claim IBM Aided Nazis.”
2001: In the following article entitled “IBM Technology Aided Holocaust, Author Alleges”
Michael Dobbs describes the efforts of Edwin Black to connect IBM to the Final Solution in IBM and the Holocaust2002: Israel attacked Palestinian security headquarters in Gaza City in response to unprecedented Palestinian rocket fire and a shooting attack on Israeli civilians.
2002: French premiere of The Heidi Chronicles a made-for-television film by Wendy Wasserstein based on her play of the same name.
2004: In what may be an explanation for the poverty suffered by Palestinians, “French prosecutors reveal that they had opened a money-laundering probe into the transfers of millions of dollars to accounts held by Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It had been discovered that nearly $1.27 million had been transferred with some regularity from Switzerland to Mrs. Arafat's accounts in Paris.”
2005: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that playwright Arthur Miller had passed away on February 10 at the age of 89. The Gazette, along with several other newspapers, was able to report on the life of this famous dramatist without once mentioning that he was Jewish. This despite the fact that one of Miller's first dramatic works dealt with the topic of anti-Semitism and that Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism when she married Miller. (They always mention the Monroe part.)
2007: The synagogue of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva “the first to be entirely renovated by the Jewish community of Poland since World War II, was reopened” today.
2007: Woodwind player Ned Rothenberg, whose newest release is “Inner Diaspora,” on the Tzadik label, performs at the New Art Center in Newtonville, Massachusetts.
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section features a review of Arianna Franklin’s A Mistress of the Art of Death, a novel set in Medieval Cambridge where the Jews are accused of killing Christian children and an Italian female doctor must discover the truth.
2007: “Wonder Wheel” recorded by the Klexmatics competed for a Grammy for best world of music album.
2007: The Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism is scheduled to convene today with an address by the Foreign Minister in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.
2008 (5th of Adar I, 5768): Eighty-year old Tom Lantos the only Holocaust Survivor to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives passed away. (As reported by David Herszenhorn)
2008: The 12th New York Sephardic Jewish Festival continues with showings of “Mortgage”(Mashkanta)followed by the New York premiere of “Black Over White.”
2009: Tel Aviv born magician Uri Geller “purchased the uninhabited 100-meter-by-50-meter Lamb Island off the eastern coast of Scotland, previously known for its witch trials, and beaches that Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have described in his novel Treasure Island”
2009:The Department of Academic Affairs offers an exclusive seminar with Dr. Asher Susser, past director and senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.
2009: Gaza terrorists fired three mortar shells at the Eshkol region
2009:Jewish students at York University in Toronto were forced to take refuge in the Hillel office tonight as anti-Israel protesters banged on the glass doors, chanting, "Die, bitch, go back to Israel," and "Die, Jew, get the hell off campus."
2010: The first class of the David Project which is designed to educate and equip people with knowledge about the Arab/Israeli conflict is scheduled to begin at Beit Shalom Synagogue, the Jewish Congregation of Maui.
2010: The 14th New York Jewish Sephardic Festival is scheduled to come to an end with New York premiere of “Children of the Bible,” a film about the “complex situations facing Ethiopian-Israeli youth.”
2010:Ihad Khatib, the IDF officer who was stabbed to death yesterday by a member of the Palestinian Authority, was laid to rest in his Druze community of Maghar today. Khatib, 28, a non-commissioned logistics officer in the elite Kfir Brigade, was attacked at Tapuach Junction, south of Nablus. Hundreds of people attended the funereal, including Major Tomer Levi, Khatib's direct commander, as well as the commander of the Kfir Brigade, Colonel Oren Abman.
2010:After a media blackout was lifted today, the defense establishment revealed that the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) had foiled a Hamas attempt to kidnap an IDF soldier in December, 2009 when five Hamas men were arrested while trying to infiltrate Israel from Egypt, carrying explosives, a gun, a silencer and $15,000 in counterfeit bills, according to the announcement.
2011(7th of Adar I, 5771):Ninety-two year old Roy Gussow, an abstract sculptor whose polished stainless-steel works with swooping contours gleam in public squares and corporate spaces, died today in Queens. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi
2010: An exhibition entitled “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf” opened today at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco.
2011: Release date for “Just Go with It” with a screenplay co-authored by Allan Loeb starring Alan Sandler who also co-produced this remake I.A.L. Diamond’s “Cactus Flower.”
2011: “Surviving Hitler: A Love Story” and “Ingelore” are two documentaries scheduled to be shown at The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
2011: “Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment” is scheduled to be shown at the 21st Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival.
2011: Temple Judah is scheduled to host a Musical Shabbat in Cedar Rapids, IA.
2011:In initial statements, Jewish groups congratulated Egyptians on ousting Hosni Mubarak today and expressed hope for continued peace with Israel.
2011: The last in a series of three concerts featuring the works of John Cage and Morton Feldman took place at Carnegie Hall. They were a unique duo – a Jew from New York a California transplant who dabbled in all sorts of eastern religions.
2011: U.S. premiere of ‘Just Go With It” a comedy produced by and starring Adam Sandler based on I.A.L. Diamond and Abe Burrows’ “Cactus Flower” with a script by Allan Loeb.
2012: In Olney, MD, Shaare Tefila Congregation is scheduled to host a Community Erev Shira in Celedbration of Tu B’Shevat.
2012: The Anat Cohen Quartet, featuring works by Israeli woodwind virtuoso Anat Cohen, is scheduled to make its debut performance at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre in New York City.
2012: IAF aircraft struck four terror targets in the Gaza Strip tonight, in response to a Kassam rocket that was fired from Gaza a few hours earlier at the Eskol Council area.
2012:As the body count rises in Syria, a group of activists held a candlelight vigil tonight outside the Russian embassy in Tel Aviv to protest Moscow’s defense of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
2013: Temple Shaaray Tefila is scheduled to host “The Feminine Face of Spirituality” which will explore essays and poetry that will help to “reveal the feminine voice (bat kol) embedded in Jewish traction.”
2013: Speaking in the Knesset for the first time since becoming an MK, Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid lambasted the ultra-Orthodox community, saying the country’s Haredi minority can’t hold the rest of the country hostage.
2013(1st of Adar, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Adar
2013: Four veterans of the battle for Jerusalem ensured a monthly female prayer service, complete with prayer shawls, went ahead undisturbed at the Western Wall for the first time in 24 years. Then the former fighters departed, and the women were arrested (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)
2014: The Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El is scheduled another lecture by Dr. Daniel Rynhold on “Rav Kook and the Heroism of the Holy.
2014: “Aftermath” and “Brave Miss World” are scheduled to be shown at the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture’s 24thannual Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Masterpieces & Curiosities: A Medieval Aquamanile.
2014: “The president of the largest Reform Jewish organization in the world welcomed MK David Rotem’s full apology for reportedly saying the movement is “not Jewish.”
2014: “The filming of “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on the book by Israeli author Amos Oz, began today in the Nahalot neighborhood. Portman, who appears as Oz’s mother, is making her debut as a director.” (As reported by JTA)
2014: “The Jerusalem District Court granted Hadassah hospitals’ request for a stay of proceedings today, temporarily protecting them from creditors, and appointed two trustees to formulate a rehabilitation plan for the hospitals, which are currently struggling with a deficit of NIS 1.7 billion ($482 million.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)
2014: “Scientists from the Technion and Hebrew University are this year’s winners of the Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research, given out by the Technion’s Rappaport Institute. Prof. Yair Reisner of the Weizmann Institute of Science will be recognized for his work in bone marrow transplant therapy, while Dr. Yaakov Nahmias of Hebrew University will receive the award for identifying a grapefruit molecule that can block viruses.” (As reported by David Shamah)
2014: “The Israeli Air Force attacked targets in the Gaza Strip overnight after two rockets launched from the Hamas-controlled territory landed in the southern part of the country earlier in the day.”
2015: Gail Sherman, Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, is scheduled to lead a discussion about Nathan Englander's powerful short story, What We Talk About when We Talk About Anne Frank at theOregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
2015: Lucinda Franks, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the widow of Robert Morgenthau, is scheduled to speak about TIMELESS: Love, Morgenthau and Me
2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Joseph Bau; From Schindler’s List to Syria.”
2015: In London, Ben Quash, Professor of Christianity and the Arts at King's College, London, is scheduled to speak about Love in the context of the current exhibition “Your Jewish Museum: Love.”