February 21
362: Athanasius returns to Alexandria so he can lead the fight against various Christian heretics such as the Arians. His negative views about the Jews were really part of his fight against Christian heretics. His “anti-Jewish rhetoric served to stigmatize Christians who resisted” the efforts of Athanasius “to reform the Alexandrian (local) practices of Lent and Easter along more international (catholic) lines.” For more on this view of his works and writings one should read “Jewish Flesh and Christian Spirit in Athanasius of Alexandria” by David Burke, Journal of Early Christian Studies - Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 453-481
1513: The papacy of Julius II came to an end. His greatest claim to fame was that he gave Michelangelo the paint brush for the Sistine Chapel. Samuel Sarfatti, a Jewish physician, took care of the Pope’s health needs. His papacy was a period of benign neglect for the Jews. Julius was more interested in temporal pleasure than doctrine so he pretty much left the Jews alone; not a bad deal considering what other Popes did to the Jews.
1519: Upon the death of Maximilien, the Jewish community at Regensburg numbering approximately 800 souls, (one of the oldest in Germany,) was expelled. The synagogue was destroyed and a chapel, built in its place. About 5,000 gravestones were taken from the Jewish cemetery and used for building the Christian house of worship.
1520: Birthdate of Moses Isserles, the Ashkenazic rabbi from Cracow best known for writing HaMapah (The Table Cloth) a “gloss” on The Shulchan Aruch (Set Table) of Joseph Karo. Karo relied primarily on Sephardic sources. Isserles used Ashkenazic sources to create a table cloth that would cover the set table thus making Caro’s work viable for the large number of Jews living in Northern and Eastern Europe.
1619(7th of Adar): Rabbi Ephraim Solomon ben Aaron of Luntshits, author of Keli Yakar passed away
1665: Emperor Maximilian II granted permission to Christophe Plantin, whose work included the Plantin Polyglot Bible the first four volumes of which were the “Old Testament” which contained two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin translation, to print Hebrew books in Antwerp
1677(19thAdar I, 5437): Philosopher Baruch de Spinoza passed away. His philosophy and his life are too complex for this simple summary page. I did not understand why he was banned from the Jewish community when I first read about him as a Religious School student. His philosophy baffled me when I first read it at Tulane. Since I do not fake it, I suggest you begin your quest at
1683: Birthdate of Johann Christoph Wolf, the “German Christian Hebraist” who created the 4 volume Biblotecha Hebrae published between 1715 and 1733 which among other things provided many Christians with their knowledge of the Talmud for more than 150 years.
1730: The papacy of Benedict XII came to an end. In 1727, he had issued Emanavit Numer that laid down the conditions under which Jews could be forcibly baptized. Two years later, he issued Alias Emanarunt that “forbade the selling of goods by Jews.” (For more see The Inquisition: A History by Michael C. Thomsett)
1743: George Frederic Handel's oratorio, "Samson" premiered in London. The musical was based on the figure depicted in the Book of Judges and is another example of how Jewish culture enriched the culture of the Western World.
1821: Birthdate of Elisabeth "Eliza, or Élisa" Rachel Félix better known only as Mademoiselle Rachel. She gained fame as an actress and as the mistress of the rich and famous including Napoleon III.
1838(26thof Shevat, 5598): Fifty-nine year old French linguist Atntoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, the son of Abraham Silvestre, a Jewish notary, and the father of journalist Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy passed away today in Paris.
1843: A committee of representatives, including eight from the Great Synagogue, met for the second time in two days under the chairmanship of Isaac Cohen in the Vestry room in Duke's Place
1848: Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. Marx was not Jewish but his father was. This fact has not stopped a myriad of anti-Semites including Adolph Hitler from equating Judaism with Communism.
1851: In Aldgate, London, Isaac and Leah Isaacs gave birth to Barnet Isaacs who gained fame as diamond and gold mining entrepreneur Barney Barnato who claimed that his birthdate was July 5, the same as contemporary Cecil Rhodes.
1852: 1st of Adar, 5612): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1852: Pope Pius IX wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, “insisting that he revoke the right of the Jews to live outside of the Ghetto.”
1856: A blood libel case occurred in Constantinople, with Jews being targeted with violence from Greeks, Armenians, and Turks. This occurred only three days after the Ottoman "reforms" which were to bring equality.
1860: In Esztergom, Hungary, Rosalie Wiess and Phillip Schwartz, a captain in the Hungarian Army gave birth to Julius Schwartz, the husband of Annette Hirschman, who served as a Lt. of Artillery in the Hungarian Army until 1880, and came to the United States where he served as Richmond County (NY_ Park Commission, worked as manager for the Equitable Life Insurance Society for Staten Island and President of the Staten Island Hebrew Benevolent Society and Free Loan Fund.
1860: An Imperial decree issued today granted the Jews of Lower Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary, Voywodina, and the Banat, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and the Littoral Districts, the right of possessing real property. They cannot, however, exercise the rights of patronage, jurisdiction, or scholastic representation, attached to such possession.
1860: Uriah P. Levy was appointed Commodore and given command of the U.S. Navy’s Eastern Mediterranean fleet. A Jewish officer in the Navy at this time was rather unusual. Levy dealt with his share of anti-Semitism during his career including a court-martial at the end of which he was fully exonerated. Levy waged a successful fight to end flogging as a form of punishment in the Navy. He was an ardent admirer of Thomas Jefferson. After Jefferson’s death, Levy bought Monticello and restored it to its former luster. The restoration included reclaiming Jefferson’s library which numbered about 2500 volumes. When Levy passed away in 1862, he left the estate to the people of the United States. Levy was proud of his Jewish heritage. He served as the first president of Washington Hebrew Congregation which is still one of the dominant Reform congregations in Washington, D.C. Forty-three years after President Monroe had made Levy a lieutenant, President Buchanan gave him command of the Mediterranean Squadron. With command came the Navy's highest rank: Commodore. The American fleet and frigates from Russia and Sardinia boomed out a thirteen-gun salute in the harbor at La Spezia as the pennant bearing a single star ran up the main mast of his flagship, USS Macedonian.
1861(111thof Adar I, 5621): Hayyim Nissim Abulafia, a descendant of Hayyim Abulafia who “had come to Tiberias in the middle of the 18th century” who had served as chief rabbi of Jerusalem since the fall of 1854 following the death of Isaac Kobo, passed away today.
1863: The Illustrated London News published an article new Bayswater Synagogue for which the foundation stone had been laid in July of 1862 and which would be dedicated in July of 1863.
1865: Cécile Anspach and Baron Gustave de Rothschild gave birth to Aline Caroline de Rothschild who became Lady Sassoon when he married Edward Sassoon in 1887. She passed away in 1909 having given birth to two children – Philip Albert Gustave David and Sybil Rachel Bettie Cecile.
1866: At Rotterdam Johanna Hijmans became Johanna Kann when she married 26 year old Maurice Kann.
1867: Birthdate of banker and patron of the arts Otto Hermann Kahn. While his name is unknown today, in his time Otto Kahn was a major financial and cultural figure in the United States and Europe. Kahn began his banking career in Germany. But he reached greatness after moving to the United States in 1893 where he became a partner in the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Described as Wall Street Wizard, he helped “reorganize the U.S. railroad system, finance the Allied effort in World War I and encourage banking reform after the 1929 stock market crash.” He organized and bankrolled theMetropolitan Opera Company. He also supported a whole slew of artists many of whom were unknown and struggling at the time. Among the many recipients of his support were Hart Crane, George Gershwin, Arturo Toscanni, Eugene O’ Neil, Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Ezra Pound. The eclectic Kahn was also a favorite of the inventor Thomas A. Edison who kept a picture of the banker-philanthropist on the wall of his New Jersey Home. Kahn accomplished this and a lot more despite anti-Semitism and anti-German feelings in the United States. He passed away in 1934. Here is something to think about. If a man with a resume like Kahn can be so quickly forgotten, how many of today’s “important people” will be remembered fifty years from now?
1874: Benjamin Disraeli replaced William Gladstone as Prime Minister. Disraeli was born Jewish, but his father had him baptized. The conversion came over a dispute that the elder Disraeli had with the local synagogue. Since he was not Jewish, Disraeli was not limited by English law in pursuing his political career. At the same time, he was the target of anti-Semitic barbs and he was quite proud of his Jewish heritage.
1875: According to “Poland Today” described conditions in the present day Russian province which has shrunk from 282,000 square miles to 48,863 square miles under the rule of the Czars. While the majority of the population is Roman Catholic, “the money in Poland is chiefly in the hands of the Jews.”
1877: The 200th anniversary of the death of the great Dutch Jewish philosopher on the secular calendar was marked by the publishing of “Baruch Spinoza.”
1879: "The Reformer and Jewish Times; A Journal of Progress in Religion, Literature, Science, and Art" published its final edition today. It first appeared in 1869 as “The Jewish Times: A Journal of Reform and Progress.”
1880: According to “The Elder Disraeli’s Tomb” published today, the tomb of Benjamin Disraeli, the grandfather of the Prime Minister which is located at the Spanish and Portuguese Cemetery in the Mile-end-road has been repaired. The need to recut and repaint the tombstone should come as no surprise since the elder Disraeli was buried in 1816. No repairs have been made on the tombstone of the Prime Minister’s grandmother who was buried in the same cemetery.
1880: It was reported today the Jewish leaders in New York City have an issued an appeal to their co-religionists throughout the United States to make generous contributions to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Paris based charity that provides financial support and educational opportunities for Jews living under the Czar and the Ottoman Sultan. It is suggested that leaders take advantage of the upcoming Purim festivities and address their congregations on the Sabbath of Remembrances on the need for providing financial support.
1881: Birthdate of Rabbi Jonah Bondi Wise “an American Rabbi and leader of the Reform Judaism movement, who served for over thirty years as rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan and was a founder of the United Jewish Appeal, serving as its chairman from its creation in 1939 until 1958.”
1882: It was reported today that the reports of British Consular officials have “to a certain extent” exaggerated “the seriousness of the anti-Jewish riots in Russia” especially when it comes to “the reports of loss of life” and attacks on Jewish women. Only about “100 Jews were shamefully” mistreated in Warsaw of whom only 10 or 12 have died because of their injuries. However, the reports of property destruction were not exaggerated.
1883(14th of Adar I, 5643): Purim Katan
1886: In Massachusetts, founding of the Lynn Hebrew Benevolent Society which meets the first Sunday of each month and is supported by an auxiliary society – the Ladies’ Hebrew Circle.
1889: Birthdate of Otto Wasserzug, the son of Berlin banker who gained fame as actor Otto Wallburg who would win an Iron Cross while serving on the Eastern Front in WW I which did save him from being murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.
1889: Birthdate of Moritz Neumann, one of the many Jewish men from Leinsteinach who served in the German Army during WW I.
1892: As New York City continued to deal with an outbreak of Typhus, the SS Etruria which had been “detained at Quarantine” because she had a large “number of Russian Jews among her steerage passengers” was allowed to dock today. The Health Officer order the seventy Russian Jews to remained on board until “their baggage” had been “thoroughly fumigated.”
1890(1stof Adar, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1892: “Non-Success of Russian Jews” published today which relied on information first published in the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Voskhod has examined the conditions “of Jews who left Russia during the persecutions of the last 18 months.” According to this monthly Jewish publication, those who went to Palestine want to return to Russia because the agricultural settlements “have been failures.” And things are so bad for those who went to United States, “that were a society formed…to pay” their expenses “two thirds would gladly avail themselves of its funds and return.” (This report may reflect the philosophic stance of Voshkod as much as it does the conditions of the people it described.
1891: In Pittsburgh, PA on Shabbat, the rabbi at Poale Zedeck Congregation on Grant Street was prevented from preaching his announced sermon by Rueben Miller, the Vice President of the synagogue who was to be the topic of the talk.
1892: “A Great Hebrew Hospital” published today provided a lengthy history of Mount Sinai Hospital which began as the Jewish Hospital. In addition to all of its other accomplishments, it “was the first hospital in the city to admit women to membership on its house staff.”
1893: Mr. Weinstock wrote from Sacramento, CA to Pierre Botkine of Century Magazine asking about the status of Jews in Russia “who enter the Greek Catholic Church.” Specifically, he wanted to know if conversion brings “full civil and political rights.”
1895: Birthdate of Szmul Zygielbojm (Zygelbojm or Zigelboim) “a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile” who in 1943 “committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust.”
1895: Alfred Dreyfus was “removed from his prison and transferred to an icy cell in a naval cruiser” which would carry him imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
1896: Students' party at "Kadimah". The students give Herzl a great ovation.
1897: Birthdate of Meir Ya’ari, the native of Galicia who made Aliyah in 1920 where he help to found Kibbutz Artzi before serving in as a member of Israel’s first Knesset.
1897: In correspondence bearing today's date, “leading members of the Jewish community in Tripoli sent a letter to the President of the Alliance that gave a grim picture of Jewish life in rural Tripolitania." The Jews reported that they were living as “dhimmi.” An Arab mob had destroyed the synagogue in the village of Zliten and in another village the authorities refused to find those who had murdered one Jew and injured his companion.
1897: The Board of Trustees of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum is scheduled to meet today where they will take up Emanuel Lehman’s offer to provide $100,000 “for the endowment of an industrial and provident fund for the benefit of graduates of the asylum.”
1898: As the trial of Emile Zola, the publisher of the Aurore enters its final days it was reported today that “public feeling against the Jews is so overwhelming that” his conviction is a foregone conclusion.
1898: It was reported today that Jews in Trenton, NJ are are still upset with the anti-Semitic remarks of William J. Cossley, the Prosecutor in Mercer County.
1899: It was reported today that “Max Regis, the former Mayor of Algiers” and “notorious Jew-baiter…has been sentenced…to three years’ imprisonment” and ordered “to pay a fine of 1,000 francs” for press offenses and glorify murder and pillage at meetings in Algiers and Paris.” (These meetings were part of the anti-Dreyfus violence that swept France.)
1900: Birthdate of Henry Cohen, the British physician and lecture who was honored as the 1st Baron Cohen of Birkenhead for his contributions in the field of medicine.
1905: During the Russian Revolution of 1905 the Chief of Police for the district that included Bialystok was killed. Attacks like this would become an excuse for the attacks against the Jews known as the Bialystok Pogrom that would take place in June of the following year.
1910: Samuel D. Warren, a former law partner of Louis D. Brandeis passed away today in Boston, MA
1914: Dr. John Tatlock and Marjorie Tatlock gave birth to Dr. Jean Frances Tatlock whom some contend was the mistress of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Tatlock was a Communist and this relationship would be used against him when his security clearance was lifted after World War II.
1915: Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of Dropsie College, presided over the opening session of the 23rd annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society which is being held at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City.
1915: “At a meeting of the Jewish Community, or Kehillah, held today at the Educational Alliance a report was approved calling upon the American Jewish Committee to take the leadership in plans for meeting ‘the greatest crisis that has overtaken the Jews in centuries’” – a crisis that “has been brought about by the war” and the problems of which “must be solved by the 3,000,000 American Jews.”
1915: “Life and Times of the Famous Jewish Historian” published today provides a review of Josephus by Norman Bentwich published by the Jewish Publication Society.
1915: Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey and Attorney General Warren Grice left Atlanta for Washington today where they will file a brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Leo Frank, “asserting the right of every state of the union to make and enforce its own criminal laws, from interference or supervision by the Federal courts.
1915: William Vincent Byars of St. Louis read a paper on the part played by the Gratz brothers in the development of trade in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys at the morning session of the annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society.
1915: Leon Huchner presented a paper on the life of Daniel Gomez a merchant in colonial New York at the afternoon session of the annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society.
1915: Another 600 or 700 refugees, most of whom are Jewish, arrived in Egypt today “reporting that the situation in Syria is going from bad to worse.”
1916: During World War I, 1,400 German guns fired the open salvo in the Battle of Verdun. The bloodletting would last for ten months at a cost over half a million French casualties and four hundred thousand German casualties. For the French, this pointless blood letting would lead to a pacifism when facing the threat of Hitler. Life in the trenches would lead to the creation of the Maginot Line which also helped to pay the way for France’s early collapse in World War II. In other words, a fairly straight line can be drawn from a battle in 1916 and the rise of Vichy and French collaboration with the Nazis that led to the death of so many Jews.
1918(9thof Adar, 5678): Fifty-two year old author and linguist Hedwig Lachmann passed away. (As reported by Hanna Delf von Wolzogen)
1918: During the fight to free Palestine from Turkish control, Australian units under the overall command of General Allenby drove the Turks from Jericho and reached the northern end of the Dead Sea. As a result of these victories, the British would become the mandatory power after the war and the Balfour Declaration would be worth the paper it was written on, for a little while at least.
1919: As the right wing reasserts its authority in Germany, a German aristocrat named Count Anton Arco-Valley shot Jewish born Bavarian political leader Kurt Eisner in the back and killed him as he on his way to the Munich Parliament.
1919: In Hungary, “the prime minister ordered the arrest of over one hundred prominent Communists including Bela Kun.”
1922: Birthdate of DJ Murray “the K,” referred to as the Fifth Beatle.
1922: Birthdate of Zivi Zeitlin, the native of Dubrovna who was raised in Palestine and became “an internationally renowned violinist known for interpreting the work of contemporary composers.” Zeitlin was 11 years old when he won a scholarship to Julliard making him the youngest person to win such an honor from the famed music school. In 1967, he became a professor at the Eastman School of Music.(As reported by Margalit Fox)
1925: In York, PA, Lewis and Nettie Wolfson Leibowitz gave birth to Herschel Weldon Leibowitz, “a Penn State University psychologist who was among the first scientists to explore how the mind can misinterpret what the eye sees at night, a phenomenon that contributes to traffic accidents.” (As reported by Benedict Carey)
1929: Sir Julien Cahn XI, a cricket team Sir Julien Cahn founded and captained for made its “first-class debut” in Jamaica.
1932(14th of Adar I, 5692): Purim Katan
1932(14th of Adar): Boris Schatz, founder of the Bezalel Art School passed away
1932: The New York Times featured a review of The Tragedies of Progress by Italian Jewess Gina Lombroso who is described as a severe critic "of the trend in our technical civilization"
1933: In Tyron, NC, Mary Kate Waymon and John Divine Waymon gave birth to Eunice Kathleen Waymon who gained fame as singer-songwriter Kathleen Waymon whose repertoire included “Eretz Zavat Halav and who recorded “Strange Fruit,” a song written by Abel Meeropol which was inspired after he saw “a photograph of two young men being lynched.”
1935: “When the Jewish-owned steamer Tel Aviv” docked today in Palestine “for the first time, the first passenger to land was” Georg Martini the correspondent for The Völkischer Beobachter the official newspaper of the Nazi Party.
1938: Semyon Dimanstein who had at one time been head of Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party, was arrested by Stalin. Within short order he would be condemned to death and executed.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that British troops, assisted by police, inflicted heavy casualties on a gang of armed Arabs halfway between Rosh Pina and Safed and that there were about 500 suspected Arab terrorists interned at El Mizra camp.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that R.E. Alderson, R.A.F. Squadron Leader murdered by Arab terrorists near Atlit was buried with honors at Ramle.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Jewish Agency, The Marine Trust Ltd. and other Jewish organizations asked the government to speed up the development of the Tel Aviv port in order to stop congestion and allow normal passenger traffic. The basin had to be deepened, the quay space doubled and another lighter basin added to the existing facilities.
1939: In a further move to impoverish the Jews, the German government order them “to surrender all objects made from gold, silver, precious stones and pearls.” (Like Haman, Hitler knew that anti-Semitism was a profitable “business.”
1940: Oberfuerher Richard Gluecks informed Himmler that he had found a "suitable site" for a new "quarantine Camp" at Auschwitz.
1940: Czech architect Otto Eisler arrived in Norway after fleeing his homeland which had been taken over by the Nazis who had imprisoned and tortured him.
1943: The Battle of Guadalcanal ended. Former champion boxer, Barney Ross won a Silver Star the second highest medal given for battlefield gallantry for his heroics during this grinding eight month long battle. Ross had enlisted at the age of 32 and fought in the first of the island hopping battles that would lead to victory over Japan in 1945.
1943: Dutch Roman Catholic bishops protested against persecution of Jews. This came as part of the response to Nazi recent roundups of Jews in Amsterdam. The "Righteous Gentiles" did make their attempts to help, but there were just too few of them.
1943: Birthdate of record producer David Geffen.
1943: Sir Harold MacMichael, High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine, broadcast a speech tonight on the eve of Red Army Day in which he “warmly praised the achievements of the Red Army.”
1944(27thof Shevat, 5704): Dov Lopatyn was killed by a landmine today. While serving as the head of the Judenrat in Lachwa he “refused the demand of the Einsatzgruppen that the Lakhva Ghetto inhabitants line up for deportation and led one of the first ghetto uprisings after which an untold number of the Jews escaped to the Pripet Marshes. It was there the Lopatyn joined the partisans with whom he fought until his death.
1944: Birthdate of Dr. Sander L. Gilmnan, the New York native and Tulane University alum whose accomplishments include the founding of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
1946: British soldiers and policeman are searching for those who attacked the police headquarters tonight in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The attackers in Tel Aviv were armed with machine guns and grenades and set-off at least 6 separate explosions. The attacks followed searches of Jewish settlements by the police that resulted in the seizure of rifles and “a clandestine radio.”
1946: Congressman Augustus Bennett, a New York Republican, with the support of Congressman Thomas J. Lane, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a resolution today in the House of Representative calling for a “Congressional investigation of the Palestine situation…The measure calls for a joint House-Senate committee to be sent to the Holy Land to investigate conditions there and report its findings to Congress.”
1947: Edwin H. Land demonstrated the first instant developing camera in New York City. It took only sixty seconds to develop a black and white photograph. Most of us know that such famous scientists as Einstein, Salk and Sabine were Jewish. But how many knew that this famous college dropout was Jewish as well? He is also given credit for creating improved lenses and sunglasses as well as providing research on new theories related to color perception.
1948: The Arab League voted to deny American oil companies pipeline rights in the Middle East until Washington altered its Palestine policy reinforcing efforts by Secretary of State George Marshall and others at the State Department to get President Truman to reconsider his support for the creation of a Jewish state.
1955: David Ben-Gurion succeeded Pinhas Lavon as Defense Minister.
1955(29thof Shevat, 5715): Seventy-six year old Dr. Alwin M. (Max) Pappenheimer the Columbia trained pathologist who was on the faculty at Columbia passed away today.
1956(9thof Adar I, 5716): Sixty-nine year old mobster and confederate of Al Capone Jake Guzik passed away on the South Side of Chicago.
1958: Birthdate of exercise expert Jake Steinfeld (Body by Jake).
1958: Egypt and Syria having formed the United Arab Republic (UAL ) elected the Egyptian dictator Gamiel Nasser as its new President. Nasser was a Pan Arabist - yes they show up year in and year out - who was determined to destroy the state of Israel as his means of uniting the Arab World. He failed on both counts.
1956(9th of Adar, 5716): Edwin Franko Goldman the founder of Goldman Band of New York City and the American Bandmasters Association passed away at the Montefiore Hospital in New York
1958: In Cambridge, MA, Elaine Salovey, a registered nurse, and Ronald Salovey, a physical chemist gave birth to their oldest child Peter Salovey, a descendant of the Soloveichik rabbinic family who became the 23 President of Yale University.
1962: In Brooklyn, Norma and Al Lerner gave birth to Randy Lerner the billionaire businessman who took over ownership of the Cleveland Browns when his father passed away.
1962: Birthdate of Eliezer Sandberg, the Haifa native who has served as a member of the Knesset and held at least two cabinet posts.
1969(3rdof Adar, 5729): Two were killed and twenty more wounded in a terrorist bombing attack at Jerusalem supermarket.
1969(3rd of Adar, 5729): Itzik Manger (איציק מאַנגער) passed away. Born in what is now the Ukraine in 1901, Manger lived in various European cities as he wrote plays and poems in Yiddish. Towards the end of his life, he made Aliyah and lived in Tel Aviv. Itzik's Midrash and Songs of the Megillah were two of his more famous works, both of which drew upon Biblical themes.
1970: A Swissair plane bound from Zurich to Tel Aviv explodes and crashes shortly after takeoff; all 47 people aboard are killed.
1970: An Austrian airliner carrying mail for Israel from Frankfurt, West Germany, to Vienna is damaged by an explosion in flight; no one is hurt.
1971: In “Seeing the Sinai” Douglas Greener described his tour of the Wilderness 4 years after the Six Day War.
1973: Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, killing more than 100 people.
1974: Israeli forces left the territory on the western side of the Suez Canal. While the Yom Kippur War (October, 1973) began as a disaster for the Israelis, the military outcome was a triumph. Troops under Sharon crossed the Suez Canal and put a stranglehold on the Egyptian Army. The disengagement of 1974 led to the historic visit of Sadat and the peace treaty that followed.
1977: Birthdate of Birthdate of Jonathan Safran Foer an American author whose works include Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that there were at least 2,000 guests at the colorful opening of the 29th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Finance Minister Simha Ehrlich had set up a special police task force to study how to implement the Shimron Committee's recommendations on fighting the organized crime in Israel.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt withdrew its diplomatic mission from Cyprus after its 15 commandos were killed and some 50 injured in fighting Cypriot soldiers and PLO terrorists in an attempt to free a plane at the Larnaca airport, in which two Arab terrorists were holding Arab and Egyptian hostages.
1982: A revival of “Little Me,” a musical written by Neil Simon, with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh the cast of which included Bebe Neuwirth closed at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.
1982(28th of Shevat, 5742): Gershom Scholem passed away. Born on December 5, 1897, Scholem, was a Jewish philosopher and historian who was raised in Germany. He is widely regarded as the modern founder of the scholarly study of Kabbalah, becoming the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Scholem is best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism(1941) and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1958 and was elected president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1968.
1983(8th of Adar, 5743): Murray Seasongood, who served as Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio from 1926 through 1930 passed away today at the age of 104.
1987: The Syrian army marched into Beirut. This was part of Syria’s plan to rule “Greater Syria” a territory that would include Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. At the behest of the United States, Israel blocked Syria’s plans to seize part of Jordan in the 1970’s. As the bombing in Beirut this week reminds us, the Syrians still dominate the Lebanese political scene.
1988: In “Russia and the Jews: Photos of a Turbulent Past,” published today Chaim Potok used his critique of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum to provide a semi-sentimental journey through the world of Russian Jewry in the closing decades of the 19th century and the opening decades of the twentieth century.
1991: Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" premiered at Richard Rodgers Theater in New York City for the first of 780 performances.
1991: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher delivers the key note address at the retirement dinner honoring Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth,
1992: Israeli forces withdrew from two villages in southern Lebanon today, ending a 24-hour thrust against Shiite Muslim guerrillas who had fired salvos of rockets into northern Israel. Hours after the withdrawal, the villages were again filled with gunmen from the pro-Iranian Party of God, and fresh barrages of rockets were fired at Israeli border villages.
1992(17th of Adar I, 5752): In Granot Haglil, five-year old Avia Elizad was killed by a Katyusha fired by Arabs in Lebanon as she ran to meet her father who was returning from work. Her last words were “Daddy, Daddy!”
1992: A Palestinian fatally stabbed Russian émigré today in Kfar Sava, northeast of Tel Aviv. The assailant, from neighboring Kalkilya on the West Bank, stabbed the woman in the neck with a kitchen knife and wounded three other émigrés before being shot and subdued. Leaflets distributed in Gaza and signed by the Islamic Holy War movement took responsibility for the stabbing.
1993: After a campaign sullied by charges of mischief and wrongdoing, Israeli rabbinical elders and political leaders chose Chief Rabbis today for the Ashkenazic and Sephardic branches of Judaism. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, 56, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, won the closely watched race to represent Ashkenazic JewsNS Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, 52, of Haifa, won the Sephardic contest
1993(30thof Shevat, 5753): Sixty-eight year old cartoon pioneer Harvey Kurtzman passed away today. (As reported by Richard D. Lyons)
1994(10thof Adar, 5754): Ninety-three year old Mary Woodard Lasker, the widow of Albert Davis Lasker with whom she established the Lasker Foundation passed away today. (As reported by Eric Pace)
1996(1st of Adar, 5756): Science fiction writer Horace Leonard Gold passed away at the age of 81.
19961st of Adar, 5756): Composer and former President of ASCAP Morton Gould passed away at the age of 82. (As reported by Bernard Holland)
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Kissinger Transcripts:The Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow,Edited by William Burr and Ex-FriendsFalling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailerby Norman Podhoretz
1999(5th of Adar, 5759): Gertrude Elion, winner of passed away.For more about this fascinating woman in her own words see
1999: At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Family Heritage Week, with special activities, including creating family trees and special tours, goes on through Sunday. Exhibitions include ''Jewish Life a Century Ago,'' with memorabilia from Jewish rituals and celebrations in Europe in the early 1900's; ''War Against the Jews,'' detailing events from 1933 to 1945, and ''Jewish Renewal,'' focusing on life after the Holocaust comes to an end.
2000: Ninety-two year old General Kenneth D. Nichols who played a key role in the development of the Atomic Bomb during WW II and who was one of the driving forces behind removing J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance passed away.
2002: The State Department declared that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was dead, a month after he'd been abducted by Islamic extremists in Pakistan.
2002(9thof Adar I, 5762): A Palestinian terrorist shot 22 year old Minhal Dragma during the killing spree known as the Second Intifada. (Don’t you just love how the terrorists come up with this jazzy names for murder?)
2002: A videotape was released titled “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.” The video shows Pearl's mutilated body, and lasts 3 minutes and 36 seconds.
2004: Bassam al-Asker, one of the murdering terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro was erroneously reported to have died today. (As of 2007, he was supposedly living in Lebanon having spent 14 years training terrorists in Iraq.)
2004(29thof Shevat, 5764): Eighty-four year old Milton “Milt” Rubenfeld who flew for the RAF and the USAAF in WW II before ‘becoming one of the five founding pilots of the IAF during Israel’s War of Independence” whose service was vital to the success of the Zionist cause passed away today in Florida.
2006: The Jewish author E. L. Doctorow was named the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The winning work was The March (Random House), his best-selling novel about Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating march through the Confederate South, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Doctorow, who also won the 1990 Pen/Faulkner Award for "Billy Bathgate," will receive a prize of $15,000 from the Washington-based organization, which is "committed to building audiences for exceptional literature and bringing writers together with their readers."
2006: Wafa Sultan, an American author and critic of Muslim society and Islam who trained as a psychiatrist in Syria took part in Al Jazeera's weekly 45-minute discussion program The Opposite Direction. She criticized Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently, and for not recognizing the accomplishments of Jewish and other members of non-Muslim society while using their wealth and technology. The video was the most discussed video of all time with over 260,000 comments on the video-sharing website YouTube. Sultan describes her thesis as witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose". It has brought her telephone threats, but also praise from reformers. Her comments, especially a pointed criticism that "no Jew has blown himself up in a German restaurant", brought her invitation to Jerusalem by the American Jewish Congress.
2006(23rd of Shevat, 5766): Abraham Lopez Cardozo passed away at the age of 91. The New York cantor was known for his efforts to preserve the music of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)
2007: Haaretzreported that only 19,264 people immigrated to Israel in 2006, down nine percent from 2005. It is the lowest number of immigrants recorded since 1988. Nearly 3 million people have immigrated to Israel since the country's founding in 1948, roughly one third of which immigrated during the 1990s. Some 300 people emigrated from India in 2006 - a fivefold increase from 2005. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, since 2002 - the year in which the major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union came to an end - there has been a consistent downward trend in immigration. In 2006, immigration was down to 1980s levels, during which time 9,000-24,000 people immigrated annually. In 2006, only 2.7 people immigrated for every 1,000 veteran residents. In 1990-91, at the height of immigration from the former Soviet Union, that figure stood at an average of 35 per 1,000, and from 1990-2001, it averaged 17 per 1,000. Starting in 2003, that figure fell to below 3.8 per 1,000 - also the rate during 1980-89, the period of lowest immigration in Israel's history.
2008: In New York, Susannah Heschel presents a lecture entitled “Biblical Scholarship and the Rise of Racism.”
2009: Shabbat Shekalim – Sabbath of the Shekel (5769)
2009: Two and a half weeks after United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon discovered five rockets ready to be launched toward Israel, a Katyusha rocket slammed into the western Galilee near the town of Ma'alot this morning, lightly wounding three people.
2009: The 92nd Street Y presents “It Started With a Dream: David Zippel—Lyrics He Wrote, Lyrics He Wishes He Wrote”during which the Jewish Tony Award-winner and multiple Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award nominee presents highlights from his own scores and shares his inspirations and personal favorites from the iconic Songbook canon.
2009: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, who leads a small congregation in suburban Chicago, will become the second woman to head the rabbinical assembly of Judaism’s liberal Reform movement.
2010: Family, students and friends, including American historians Jonathan Sarna and Kimmy Caplan will gather at 7 p.m. at Jerusalem’s Yedidiya Synagogue for a memorial symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Geffen, who for 60 years was considered the dean of the Southern Orthodox rabbinate in the US.
2010: The Jewish Agency for Israel is scheduled to open its three-day long meeting today in Jerusalem. The meeting had originally been scheduled to be held in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida.)
2010: The Israeli Ballet is scheduled to perform Don Quixote, at the Walt Whitman Theatre in Brooklyn, NY.
2010:A man hurled a suitcase containing a makeshift bomb at Cairo's main downtown synagogue in the early hours this morning, causing no injuries or damage, police said.
2010: The Washington Post featured a review of Pulitzer:A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris, a biography about the Hungarian born Jewish immigrant who changed the face of American journalism.
2011: The movies scheduled to be shown today at the Atlanta Jewish Film touch a wide range of Jewish emotions and themes since they include Diary of Anne Frank and American Tail, an animated film about “the immigrant adventure of Russian-Jewish mice that flee persecution in pursuit of the American dream.”
2011: Israeli pianist Idith Meshulam is scheduled to perform the second annual Music Of Now Marathon in New York City.
2011: Suez Canal officials said today that two Iranian naval vessels were expected to start their passage through the strategic waterway early tomorrow.If the ships make the passage, it would mark the first time in three decades that Iranian military ships have travelled the canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
2012: Sue Eckstein is scheduled to discuss her latest novel “Interpreters” in London as part of Jewish Book Week.
2012: Pam Fox is scheduled to discuss “A Place to Call My Jewish Home: Memories of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue 1911-2011” in London as part of Jewish Book Week.
2012: Joshua Cohen, Ruth Franklin and Adam Kirsch are scheduled to participate in “In the Beginning Were Words: The Greatest Jewish Books” at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan
2012: IDF and Israel Police forces conducting anti-smuggling operations foiled a potential terrorist attack when they discovered a powerful explosive device being brought into the country.The authorities believe the intended target was IDF forces that patrol the southern border. (As reported by the Jerusalem Post Staff)
2012: As tensions in Israel continue to rise due to threat of a nuclear Iran, the deputy head of the Islamic Republic's armed forces was quoted by a semi-official news agency as saying today that Iran would take preemptive action against its enemies if it felt its national interests were endangered "Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran's national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions," Mohammad Hejazi told Fars news agency.
2013: In London, The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to mark LGBT history month with a “screening two of the earliest sympathetic depictions of same-sex attraction in the history of cinema” which “were created in the German Weimar Republic.”
2013: The Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present a concert, “The Best of the Classics.”
2013: In New York, Temple Shaaray Tefila is scheduled to host a Klezmer Jam.
2013(11thof Adar, 2013): Fast of Esther
2013:Three men were found guilty today of planning a “spectacular bombing campaign” in the UK, including an attack on a synagogue.
2013: Today President Shimon Peres exhorted the European Union and its member states to place Hezbollah on their terror lists, and warned Lebanon against initiating violence against Israel.
2014: Congregation Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim in Silver Spring, MD is scheduled to host “Rockin’ Moroccan Shabbat Dinner” this evening.
2014: “Hundreds of copies of The Diary of Anne Frank and related books were vandalized in libraries in Tokyo, news reports said today. Library officials notified police after some pages of at least 265 copies of the diary and books about Anne Frank were found to have been ripped out at 31 libraries since January.”
2014: When attempts to disperse Palestinians who were throwing stones at soldiers beyond the border fence, IDF soldiers opened live fire at "the lower extremities of the main instigators" in an attempt to disperse them.
2014: In Iowa City, Avremel and Chaya Blesofsky invite the community to attend the brit of their son.
2015: Yevgenia Pikovsky, Elyakum Salzman – violin; Dmitri Ratush, Vladislav Krasnov – viola; Felix Nemirovsky, Yaacov Kashin – cello; Uri Arbel - double bass and Marianna Sorkin – piano are scheduled to perform a program of Russian music at the Eden-Tamir Music Cener.
2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the State Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio.
2015: In Oslo, “hundreds of non-Jews including many Muslims” are scheduled “to encircle the synagogue as a gesture of outrage at the shooting at the Danish synagogue by a Muslim fanatic” who murdered 37 year old Dan Uzin who was providing security during a bat mitzvah celebration. (JTA)