February 25
161 BCE: Jewish soldiers led by Judah Maccabee defeated Nicanor, the Syrian general who had boasted that he would destroy the Temple and mount Judah’s head on the gates of Jersualem.
138: The Emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor. For Jews Hadrian stands out as one of the cruelest of the Roman emperors. He is the one who defeated Bar Kochba. It is said that Hadrain was more evil than Titus because he did not just make war against the Jewish people. He made war against Judaism by banning its practice. In one of those many ironic twists of fates, Antionious Pious, his hand-picked successor reversed the decrees of Hadrain. He allowed the Torah to be studied and is laws obeyed. He reinstituted the ban on imperial statues in synagogues and he allowed the Jews to practice the rite of circumcision.
1308: Coronation of King Edward II. One of this uniquely incompetent monarch’s claim to fame is that he was the first King of England to reign over a realm without any Jews since the Norman conquest in 1066. Edward’s father, Edward I, had expelled the Jews in 1290.
1304: Birthdate of Ibn Battuta, the Moslem Moroccan explorer who visit large segments of Asia and Africa where he chronicled meetings with various groups including Jews in India and China.
1333: Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveler, visits Jewish communities in India
1336: Alfonso X of Castile was persuaded by the apostate Alfonso of Valladolid to ban the prayer Aleinu. Alfonso alleged that the prayer was anti-Christian. As a result, many Jewish communities excised a sentence from the prayer which has only been printed in recent years in only some prayer books. The offending line which was taken out comes just before the time when everybody bows and recites “Va-ananchnu Kor’im – But we bend our knees…” The line that was taken out reads “For they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god which helps not.” If you read the entire prayer and insert this line, the following line makes a lot more sense. According to several commentators the offending line had nothing to do with the Christians but had been placed there to refer to all heretics and that its origins were found in Isaiah (30:7 and 45:20). Further evidence refuting the claim that it was anti-Christian can be found in the fact that it was composed in the third century by Rav Abba Arucha head of the Academy of Sura (Persia) which was not a Christian country. Ashkenazi prayer books dropped the line but Sephardic prayer books i.e. those in the land of Islam, retained the line. Today it can be found in some Ashkenazi prayer books including those in the Artscroll Series.
1451: Nicholas V issued a papal bull banning all social intercourse between Christians and Jews probably caused by a fear of Christians being attracted to Judaism. A Christian who converted to Judaism and the Jews who helped him were usually subject to the death penalty in most Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries. It is amazing that with the Church's attitude towards Judaism, and with the contempt that Jews in which Jews were held, that there should be such a fear of "Jewish missionizing".
1570: Pope Pious V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I. This was one of the steps on the road to loosening the stranglehold that doctrinal Christianity had on Western Europe. As the Church’s grip on Europe weakened it opened up the way to a religious toleration that was highly beneficial to the Jewish people.
1593: Pope Clement VIII issued “Caeca et Obdurata Hebraeorum perfidia” (the blind and obdurate perfidy of the Hebrews) a papal bull which expelled the Jews from the Papal States, effectively revoking the bull Christiana pietas issued in 1586 by his predecessor Pope Sixtus V.The bull was a culmination of Clement VII's tightening of the anti-Jewish measures of his predecessors which began with his elevation to the papacy in 1592. The bull gave Jews three months to leave the Papal States (with the exception of Rome, Ancona, and the Comtat Venaissin of Avignon). The main effect of the bull was to evict Jews who had returned to areas of the Papal States (mainly Umbria) after 1586 (following their expulsion in 1569) and to expel Jewish communities from cities like Bologna (which had been incorporated under papal dominion since 1569). For the Jews remaining within Rome, Ancona, or the Comtat Venaissin, the bull re-established mandatory weekly sermons. The bull also resulted in the relocation of Jewish cemeteries to Ferrara and Mantua. The bull alleged that Jews in the Papal States had engaged in usury and exploited the hospitality of Clement VIII's predecessors "who, in order to lead them from their darkness to knowledge of the true faith, deemed it opportune to use the clemency of Christian piety towards them" (alluding to Christiana pietas).
1795: First New York City performance of “Sheva, The Benevolent” by English playwright Richard Cumberland which features, Sheva, “the Jewish moneylender as the benevolent hero.”
1799: Napoleon defeat the army led by Al Jazzar as he made his way from Khan Younis to Gaza.
1799: Napoleon captured Gaza. (Yes, the same place in the news today). This was his first encounter with "Palestinian" Jews.” It is said that he offered “the reestablishment of ancient Jerusalem” as a Jewish homeland in return for Jewish loyalty.
1806: Birthdate of Rabbi Salomon Ulmann the French rabbi who among other things organized the Central Conference of the Chief Rabbis of France
1840: Birthdate of German philosopher, the Kantian, Otto Liebmann
1841: Birthdate of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French artist who painted “Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers” (most commonly referred to as Pink and Blue).The painting portrayed the 2 daughters of the banker Louis Raphael Cahen d'Anvers, the blonde, Elisabeth, born in December 1874, and the younger, Alice, in February 1876, when they were respectively six and five years old. The artist produced many portraits for the families of the Parisian Jewish community at the time. Renoir was commissioned to paint many portraits for this family, which he had met through the collector Charles Ephrussi, proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_and_Blue_(Renoir)
1844: Birthdate of Leó Frankel, the Hungarian born revolution who active in the First International and a member of the Paris Commune that was formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War.
1847: State University of Iowa was approved. What is now called the University of Iowa has certainly provided employment and educational opportunities for a fair number of Jews from the land of the Hawks as well a number of other places. The 28,000 student body includes approximately 600 Jewish undergrads and 200 Jewish grad students. The school offers ten Jewish studies courses and the campus offers students a choice of Hillel or Chabad. They also have access to Agudas Achim and its Rabbi, Jeff Portman, a mensch in the truest sense of the word. Several distinguished Jewish scholars have taught at the university including the late Dr. Jonathan A. Goldstein who provided the introduction and commentary for The Anchor Bible's Book of Maccabees and Dr. David Schoenbaum who has authored numerous works about German history as well as The United States and the State of Israel, a diplomatic history of relations between the United States and Israel from 1948 to 1993.
1848: Birthdate of Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé the French diplomat and archaeologist who provided “much of the earliest documentation about the Temple Mount. Because his work was done with the “full consent of the Muslim Counsel” he “work included the most complete and detailed mongraphs on how the mosques looked and their relationships to ancient Temple of Jerusalem.” De Vogue “was also known for his architectural studies of Jerusalem and its surroundings.” (For more on thisDigging Through the Bible by Richard A. Freund
1855: The Jewish residents of Lancaster PA organized Congregation Shaarai Shomayim which then took possession of the old Jewish cemetery.
1856: Professor O.M. Mitchell is scheduled deliver a lecture tonight entitled "Critical Examination of the Astronomical Allusions and Illustrations Employed by the Writers of the Sacred Books of the Hebrews" at the Brooklyn Athenaeum.
1858: Sir Anthony de Rothschild, Louis Nathan, Ephraim Alex and Marcus Samuel, the father of the first Lord Bearsted were among those who attended a conference designed to deal with the problems of “the strange and foreign poor” held in the chambers of the Great Synagogue in London.
1859: The first formal meeting was held at 31 New Bridge Street of the Board of Guardians which consisted of delegates from the London’s three leading congregations.
1860: Birthdate of Professor H.L. Sabsovich, the native Berdiansk, Russia who came to the United States in 1888 to serve as an agricultural chemist at Colorado State Agricultural College before becoming the “General Agent of the Baron De Hirsch Fund and the first mayor of the Jewish Agricultural Colony at Woodbine, NJ.
1861: Judah P. Benjamin began serving as Attorney General in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis.
1862(25thof Adar I, 5622): German educator Emanuel Hecht passed away.
1862: Birthdate of Stanisław Głąbiński Polish attorney and political leader who shared a cell in Lubyanka Prison with Rabbi Moses Schorr with whom he formed a close friendship before the Jew and Gentile met the same fate – murder by the NKVD in 1941.
1862: A fire broke at 6 o'clock this morning in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, on Lamartine-place. Damages which are valued at three hundred dollars, should be fully covered by insurance.
1865(29th of Shevat, 5625): Shabbat Shekalim
1867: Ralph Disraeli and his wife gave birth to British political leader Coningsby Disraeli, the nephew of Benjamin Disraeli.
1870(24thof Adar I, 5630): Seventy-two year old Danish poet Henrik Hertz passed away today.
1870: As a reminder that the battle over the separation of church and state which has been a cornerstone of Jewish success in the United States is on-going, a meeting was held at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in New York in which the attendees called for a national convention that would promote “constitutional recognition of Almighty God and the Christian religion in the United States.”
1871: Rabbi Stephen Wise of Cincinnati delivered a lecture on the Apostle Paul, the third and final in a series of addresses on the Origin of Christianity. The well attended event took place at Steinway Hall in New York City.
1876(30thof Shevat, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1877: It was reported that the Purim Association will host a masked ball at Delmonico’s on March 1st in celebration of this minor Jewish festival.
1877: A reception celebrating Purim was held today at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews. The event was hosted by the lady managers of the well-maintained facility located at 87th Street and Avenue A in New York City.
1877: Professor Felix Adler delivered a detailed laudatory address to a mostly Jewish audience at Standard Hall on the life and teachings of Baruch Spinoza. The 200th anniversary of the death of the famous Jewish Dutch philosopher provided the impetus for the “panegyric.”
1879” Birthdate of German silent film actor and director Julius Falkenstein who passed away the same year the Nazis came to power.
1880(13th of Adar, 5640) Ta'anit Esther
1881: It was reported today that the will of Louis Strauss of San Francisco includes bequests to the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society of San Francisco ($10,000), and the Jewish Orphan Asylum of New York ($5,000) as well as three other non-Jewish institutions.
1881: It was reported today that Marion Calisch, young Jewess kindergarten teacher who disappeared mysteriously, has been re-united with her parents and taken home. The police are still investigating the matter since they do not find Ms Calisch’s explanation of events creditable.
1882: A mass meeting is scheduled to be held at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia during which the attendees will express their outrage at the treatment of Russian Jews by the Czarist government. The multi-denominational array of speakers will be expressing their sympathy with the plight of the refugees, some of whom have just arrived in the City of Brotherly Love.
1882: It was reported today that John W. Foster will be deliver a lecture on “The Czar and His People” before the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Chickering Hall. The New York event will be a benefit for Jewish refugees who have fled persecution in Russia.
1882: A Purim celebration for the Temple Beth-El Sunday School students was held at the Terrace Garden this afternoon in New York City.
1882: The Young Men’s Association of Temple Beth-El sponsored a grand ball in Terrace Garden. This Purim celebration was organized by Nathan Ullman, Louis Lowenfels and Samuel Eiseman.
1884: Birthdate of Else Feldman, the native of Leopoldstadt (Austria) who overcame poverty to become a leading socialist author and writer which did not keep the Nazis from murdering her Sobibor.
1885: Birthdate of Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, who personally saved Rachel Cohen and two of her children from the Nazi death camps.
1887: Relief expedition to rescue the apostate Jew turned Ottoman official Emin Pasha, under the command of Henry M. Stanley, left Zanzibar for its next stop, Banana at the mouth of the Congo River.
1888: Birthdate of John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953 through 1959. No, Dulles was not Jewish. But this patrician Cold Warrior did play a major role in American Israeli relations and his effect was less than positive. He sided with the Soviets in their support of Nasser during the Suez crisis of 1956. He led the forces that put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Sinai and Gaza leaving the terrorist bases in tact while propping up the Egyptian dictator. Dulles and Eisenhower’s misguided action led to the development of the independent French nuclear capability and to the Six Day War in 1967.
1891: Charles W. Foster began serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, a position which gave him considerable control over the increasing influx of Jews from Russia and Poland; a fact that would be duly noted later in appeals made to him by leaders of the American Jewish Committee.
1892: “No Mercy For the Jews” published today provided a detailed account of the report prepared by Colonel John B. Weber who had represented the 33rdDistrict of New York in the 49th and 50th Congresses and Dr. Walter Kempster on the “conditions and treatment of the Jewish subjects of the Czar. The report which was prepared for the House Committee on Immigration, “sets forth calmly, dispassionately and with a careful regard to accuracy...a state of things unheard of in modern times.”
1893: In Newark, NJ, “Max Bornestien, a Polish Jews…has retained counsel in a suit for damages alleging that the defendants, three constables “brought pork sausage into his house and ate them therein” defiling his property in such a manner “that he can no longer make use of it.”
1894: In Philadelphia, PA, a non-sectarian memorial service in memory of the late George W. Childs was held at Keneseth Israel.
1894: It was reported today that a member of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore has contributed a paper on the “The Booth” the famous family of 19thcentury thespians. According to the paper, they were originally a Jewish family from Spain named “Cabana.” When one of the ancestors settled in England he translated the family name into English and that back the family name – Booth
1895: “Once Famous, Now Forgotten” published today described the life of Bernard Bauer, the Hungarian Jew who converted to Catholicism, where, as Father Maria Berhnard he became a popular preacher in France and the confessor of Empress. This meant that he was following in the footsteps of Hermann Cohen, the Jewish pianist who converted and gained fame as Father Hermann.
1897(23rdof Adar I, 5657): Sixty-two year old author and historian Michael Bernays passed away today.
1898: A social event is scheduled to be held today to raise funds for Jewish hospital to be built in Brooklyn. Currently there are no Jewish hospitals in Brooklyn and Robert Strahl, Sigmund Wechsler and Charles Levy are among those leading the drive to remedy this deficiency
1899: It was reported today that the Junior Association of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews had participated in the annual Purim reception that had been held at the home on 106th Street.
1899: Paul Julius von Reuter founder of the news agency Reuters passed away. Reuter was born in 1816 and his name was Israel Beer Josaphat. He left his uncle's bank in the German town of Gottingeng and established what would become the world's greatest wire service in 1848. No Kaddish was said since he had converted and became a Lutheran in 1845 after having moved to London.
1901: Birthdate of Zeppo Marx, one of the famous Marx Brothers
1903: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the senior Rabbi at New York’s Temple Beth-El has been asked to serve as President of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the first and until recently, when a conservative seminary was established in New York, the only college in America designed for the education of Rabbis. 1903: “Zionist committees set out today to investigate the feasibility of a British proposal to have Jews colonize El-Arish” which is located on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
1903: Herzl receives a telegram from the commission in El Arish: "Vicinity has made a favorable impression."
1907: Birthdate of actor Shimen Rushkin. Born in Poland, he gained famed in America in televisions and a variety of films including Fiddler on the Roof and the original version of The Producers. He passed away in 1967.
1908: Continued massacres in Setatt drive Jews to Casablanca for safety. During this period the Jewish population of all Morocco is somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000.
1912(7thof Adar I, 5672): Eighty-one year old Rabbi Nachum Paltiel Bromson passed away today in Baltimore, MD.
1914: BirthdateMuriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, whose donation of artworks by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Alexander Calder greatly bolstered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s standing as an exhibitor of modern art. Muriel Kallis was on the only child of Maurice and Ada Nudelman Kallis. Her father was an engineer. As a child she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; she later took art courses at the University of Chicago. Mrs. Newman did not turn her back on her hometown; according to The Chicago Tribune, she donated more than 170 works to the School of the Art Institute. As an aspiring artist in her early years, Mrs. Newman became a denizen of New York’s artistic haunts, befriending noted Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning, Pollock, Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. By the late 1940s, while married to a successful businessman, Jay Z. Steinberg, she began acquiring works by those rising stars, paying, for example, $2,700 for a de Kooning canvas and $3,000 for a Pollock. Mr. Steinberg died in 1954, and a year later Mrs. Newman married Albert Hardy Newman, another successful businessman. The walls of their Chicago apartment were resplendent with her growing collection. In 1980, to the consternation of art institutions in her native Chicago, Mrs. Newman bequeathed her collection to the Metropolitan in New York.
Asked why, she said at the time: “I’m so involved with New York, and besides, the artists I knew loved the Met, particularly Franz Kline, who used to go there and study Ingres by the hour. I find the idea that their work should hang there now rather touching.” Eventually Mrs. Newman decided not to complete the gift before her death. In 2004 Gary Tinterow, the Met’s curator of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art, received a surprise call from Mrs. Newman, asking that he start planning the transfer. “I’m about to turn 93,” she told The New York Times last year, “and I think now is a great time to do it.” Mr. Tinterow said that Mrs. Newman’s donation “created, with one fell swoop, an extraordinary representation of postwar American Abstract Expressionism.”
The collection of more than 70 works includes the 5-foot-by-9-foot “Number 28,” one of the great canvases of Pollock’s classic period; de Kooning’s “Attic”; Motherwell’s “Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 35”; a Calder mobile, “Four Directions”; “Mecca,” a painting by Hans Hofmann; and an abstract version of Kline’s portrait of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. It also includes 30 examples of primitive art from Oceania, the Americas and Africa, among them a phallic house post from the Dogon people of Mali. Estimated to be worth $12 million to $15 million when first bequeathed in 1980, the collection is now valued in the hundreds of millions. “Mrs. Newman’s collection remains paramount in its quality, having been acquired by her soon after most of the works were made,” Mr. Tinterow said. “She had this extraordinary insight into the importance of this radical new style of art, and she acted upon it, seeking out the best examples of the best artists.” Mrs. Newman’s second husband died in 1988. Her son from her first marriage, Glenn Steinberg, died in 2004. Besides her grandson Peter, of Manhattan, she is survived by four other grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Speaking of her kinship with the great Abstract Expressionists, she told The Times in 1980, “I knew them well and loved their work.” She added: “At first I began to hang my own things next to them, but I soon realized I wasn’t making much of a statement. I really am not at heart a collector. I’m a failed artist — there’s no other way to describe it.” She died in Chicago, her hometown at the age of 94.
1915: “The Supreme Court of the United States today heard” Louis Marshall “head counsel for Leo Frank…on his appeal from the denial by the Federal District Court of Georgia of his petition for a write of habeas corpus.”
1919: The funeral for the Abraham Jesse Dittenhoefer, the native South Carolinian who was the last living elector to have voted for Lincoln in 1864, will be held at his home this morning at ten o’clock.
1919: Birthdate of Brooklyn born cellist Fred Katz.
1920: In Germany, the Nazi party endorsed its own platform consisting of twenty-five points. Seven of these points concerned the Jews.
1921: Greek authorities expropriate the old Jewish cemetery in Smyrna.
1923: The price of bread rose to 2,000 marks in Berlin. This hyper-inflation wiped people’s life savings and destroyed the basic faith of the middle class in many of the existing political and social institutions. It laid the groundwork for the rise of political extremism that would make the Communists and the Nazis the dominant political forces in the 1930’s.
1923:In an article entitled “Palestine Relief Work Extended,” Doctor Isaac M. Rubinow, the director of the Hadassah Medical Organization describes the positive changes that the work of the Hadassah doctors and nurses has had on the citizens of Palestine including Jews, Arabs, Moslems and Christians. When Dr. Rubinow went to Israel in 1919 the unit consisted of 43 nurses and doctors. Today four hundred medical personnel sponsored by Hadassah support five major hospitals and several field hospitals. As a sign as of its commitment to “heal the wounds of prejudice” all Hadassah hospitals and clinics are open to Moslems and Christians as well as Jews. To ensure equality of treatment, the staff members do not maintain a private practice and there are no private rooms in the medical facilities. Everybody is treated in a democratic fashion on modern hospital wards. The Hadassah Medical Organization has established a modern infant welfare plan under the management of pediatricians at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem and a department of school hygiene “which has saved thousands of children from blindness and other ailments by regular examination for and treatment of trachoma and various forms of skin diseases.”
1925: In Camden, NJ, Congregation Beth-El and the Council of Jewish Women hosted its Fourth Annual Ball.
1928: In New York City, Dr and Mrs. Henry Stern gave birth to Richard Gustave Stern,the best American author of whom you have never heard…” (As reported by Bruce Weber)
1928: Birthdate of Larry Gelbart, television producer responsible for the hit show “MASH.”
1928: Birthdate of Shlomo Kalo, a native of Bulgaria who survived the Holocaust and made Aliyah in 1949. He gained fame as a microbiologist as well as a poet and an author of works of fictions and non-fiction.
1932: Immigrant Adolf Hitler officially became a German citizen. Hitler was born in Austria. His Germanic connection was ethnic rather than political. His formal connection with the government of Germany began when he joined the Kaiser’s army in 1914.
1932: Premiere of “Behind the Mask” produced by Harry Cohn.
1933: The Literary Digest, the magazine that would go out of business after picking Alf Landon to win the election in 1936, published “Israel’s Alarm at Hitler’s Rise.”
1934: Birthdate of Meir Har-Zion a sabra who “was an Israeli military commando” and “a key member of Unit 101.”
1935: Birthdate of Sally Lowenthal, better known to most Americans as talk show hostess Sally Jesse Raphael.
1936: Rose Pesotta joined the Goodyear Rubber workers' sit-in as an organizer of the strike which temporarily closed the largest tire factory in the world.
1937(14th of Adar, 5697): Purim
1937: Children in Herrlingen, Germany dressed in Bedouin costumes as part of the Purim celebration.
1937: In London, Winston Churchill met Emery Reves for the first time. Reeves was a Hungarian born Jew whose birth name was Imre Rvesz who had become a leading literary agent for European democratic leaders, a role he would soon assume for Churchill.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Times of London criticized, in its leading article, the delay shown by the Colonial Office in appointing a new technical commission which would advise how to implement the proposed by the Royal (Peel) Commission and the League of Nations partition of Palestine.
1939: Heinrich Himmler reportedly issued a secret decree designed to get of Germany’s Jews by encouraging emigration. This report would seem to lack credibility given the impediments that the German government placed in the way of Jews leaving Nazi control.
1939: U.S. premiere of “Wife, Husband and Friend’ a comedy directed by Gregory Ratoff, co-starring Binnie Barnes with music by Alfred Newman.
1939: In Britain, the Picture Post published the first of two photo-journalist presentations that supported the call for Winston Churchill’s return to an active role in the Government. Stefan Lorant was the editor and designer for the Picture Post was the moving force behind the article. Lorant was a Hungarian born Jew who had worked in Germany before being imprisoned at Dachau in 1933.
1941: The 1941 February Strike (aka The Strike of February 1941) began today. The strike was organized in the Netherlands as protest following pogroms that had taken place in Amsterdam’s Jewish neighborhoods.
1941: One thousand, six hundred Jews were deported from Gora Kalwaria to the Warsaw Ghetto.
1945: Birthdate of Amram Mitzna “an Israeli politician and former general. He is the acting mayor of Yeruham, the former mayor of Haifa (1993–2003) and lead the Labour Party from 2002 to 2003.”
1946: Three RAF installations were attacked in Palestine tonight resulting in damage valued at $2,000,000,000. Fourteen planes were destroyed outright and another 8 planes were damaged so badly that they were beyond repair.
1947: Birthdate of Gary Rosenblatt who has served as editor for the Baltimore Jewish Times, The Jewish News of Detroit, The Atlanta Jewish Times and The Jewish Week of New York
1947: British Foreign Minister Bevin continues his anti-Semitic rhetoric attacking Zionism and defending theArabs who have been in Palestine “for 2,000 years.”
1947: The SS President Warfield set sail from Baltimore, MD on a voyage which would sail her into the history books as The Exodus.
1948: The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends. The Communist seizure of power was a major step in the hardening of positions during the early days of the Cold War. It galvanized pro-western forces in Europe to participate in what would become NATO. It also helped internationalists (many of whom were Jewish) in the United States to overcome isolationist opposition America taking the lead in opposing Soviet imperialism. For the Jews of Palestine who were already facing Arab attacks prior to the pending departure of the British, this turn of events was beneficial. With the approval of their Soviet masters, the new Czech government would allow the shipment of surplus ME-109 aircraft that was stored in Czechoslovakia to Israel at the moment of the creation of the Jewish state. In one of the great ironies of history, the first combat aircraft flown by Israeli pilots were former German fighter planes shipped from Communist Czechoslovakia.
1950: "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca premiered on NBC. Writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. This was an early hour long variety - primarily comedy - show that dominated the airwaves in its weekend time slot. And it was live when live meant live. Yes, three of those mentioned above were Jewish. But by now you have come to expect a connection between Jewish and Humor
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that after Jordan asked Britain to intervene against what he called Israeli "aggression" and invoked the Jordanian-British pact of mutual assistance, the British government officially disclosed that it considered the possibility of stationing its armed forces on Jordanian territory.
1953:The Jerusalem Post reported that Hevrat Ovdim (the Histadrut's General Cooperative Society), together with the Histadrut's pension funds and other organizations, mobilized funds for the construction of the first huge hotel and rest house in Eilat. Eilat is Israel's southern port. Early on, the Israelis sought to make it a tourist haven as well as a port that would be a gateway to Africa and Asia. The blockade of Eilat by the Egyptians in 1967 was the official act of war that provided the justification under international law for what would become the Six Days War.
1954: Nasser became Egyptian premier. The “man behind the throne” who had masterminded the downfall of the Egyptian monarchy now took center stage and took his country down a road to repeated war with Israel as well as doom and disgrace.
1955(3rd of Adar I, 5715): Arab terrorists, one of whom “was found to be in possession of documents linking him to Egyptian military intelligence” murdered an Israeli civilian in Rehovot.
1957(24th of Adar I, 5717): Mark Aldanov, aka Mark A Landau, Russian born author and chemist passed away at the age of 70.
1957(24th of Adar I, 5717): B. P. Schulberg passed away. Born Percival Schulberg in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1892, he took the name Benjamin from the boy in front of him when registering for school to avoid mockery for his British name. He worked in the fledgling film industry in New York City until 1919 when he moved to Hollywood, California where he operated "Preferred Pictures" and was responsible for making Clara Bow a star. He joined Louis B. Mayer to form "Mayer-Schulberg Studio" but after Mayer became part of MGM, Schulberg would join with Adolph Zukor and became the head of Paramount Pictures. In an era when the film industry was filled with conservative studio executives, B.P. Schulberg was a "New Deal" liberal, described by Moving Pictures magazine as "a political liberal in the reactionary world of Mayer and Hearst." His wife Adeline Jaffe-Schulberg founded a talent agency taken over by her brother, producer/talent agent Sam Jaffe. She spent little time with Hollywood society women, instead working for charities that aided the poor and promoting socialism. She subsequently had a literary agency in New York. They were the parents of renowned novelist and screenwriter, Budd Schulberg, producer Stuart Schulberg, and writer Sonya Schulberg O'Sullivan.In a power struggle at Paramount, Schulberg left the studio in 1937 and remained out of the business until 1940 when he began producing for Columbia Pictures. He produced six films for Columbia in three years until he retired in 1943.
1960: Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic" premiered in New York City.
1963(1st of Adar, 5723): Melville J. Heskovits passed away.The American born anthropologist established African and African American studies in American academia. Herskovits's controversial classic The Myth of the Negro Pastis about African cultural influences on American blacks. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works.
1967:Birthdate of Jonathan Saul Freedland “a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. Freedland has previously written for The Daily Mirror and as of September 2005, he writes each Thursday for the London Evening Standard. He is the son of Michael Freedland, the biographer and journalist.
1965(23rd of Adar I, 5725): Eighty-year old Russian born pianist Leo Sirota who settled in Japan in 1929 where he lived for 15 years before moving to the United States where he taught and performed passed away today.
1969: One person was injured during a bombing at the British consulate in East Jerusalem.
1970(19th of Adar I, 5730): Latvian born American painter and print maker Mark Rothko born Marcus Rothkowitz passed away whose unusual work. includes the 1961 painting “Blue, Orange, Red.”
1971: Part One of a two part production of Clifford Odette’s “Paradise Lost,” co-starring Eli Wallach was broadcast for the first time on American Public Television.
1973: Steven Sondheim's musical "Little Night Music" premiered at the Shubert Theater in New York NY for the first of its 601 performances.
1975(14th of Purim, 5735): Purim
1983: Birthdate of “French-Israeli journalist” Jonathan-Simon Sellem.
1986: Birthdate of actor Justin Berfeld who plays Reese on “Malcolm in the Middle.”
1988(7th of Adar, 5748): Eighty year old William G. Braude who has served as a rabbi for 40 years at Congregation Sons of Israel and David, Temple Beth-El in Providence, R.I., passed away today. A native of Lithuania, he came to the United States in 1920 where he earned degrees from the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College. He also taught at Yale, Brown, Hebrew University and Leo Baeck College in London.
1988: Eighty-four year old Kurt Mahler, the German Mathematician who met Kurt Hirsch while in a British internment camp for “enemy aliens” (a strange appellation for somebody who had fled the Nazis) and eventually settled in Australia where he passed away today.
1988: Secretary of State George Schultz arrived in Israel today on the first of four day mission to the Middle East designed to explore reaction to recent American peace proposal. Shultz called on Israel to make ''decisions of historic proportions'' to help change the status quo in the Middle East when greeted by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres who responded by saying that this is ''a most demanding period of our life, facing probably the most complicated issue of the day.''
1991: The barrage of Iraqi scud attacks that began on January 18th came to an end today. During that period 39 missiles were fired into Israel.
1994(14th of Adar, 5754): Purim
1994 (14th of Adar, 5754): Eighty- year old Sam Eisenstadt was assaulted with an axe while walking in the center of Kfar Saba. Sam died of his wounds shortly afterwards.
1994: In one of the most shameful acts committed by a Jew, American-born Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers.
1996(5thof Adar I, 5756): One person died in the bombing of the Ashkelon bus station for which Hamas claimed responsibility.
1999: The Reuters News Agency commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of its founder, Paul Julius Reuter, by launching a university award in Germany.
1999: Disney named Bob Iger president of Walt Disney International, the business unit that oversees Disney's international operations, as well as chairman of the ABC Group. Disney called the change a promotion for Iger. But the company's insistence was initially viewed with skepticism, as some thought Iger was merely being removed from day-to-day authority at ABC since ABC had been struggling.
2000: Hilary Koprowski, a Polish Jew, was honored with a reception at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first administration of his oral polio vaccine. At the reception, he received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Tom Ridge.
2002(13thof Adar I, 5762): Sixty-five year old Avraham Fish and forty-six year old Aharon Gorov were murdered by members of Fatah outside of Tekoa.
2006: Tens of thousands of people marched through Paris in memory of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed two weeks ago in an attack that authorities say was partly motivated by anti-Semitism.
2006: American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a group of four journalists and a pair of U.S. cancer researchers have each won $1 million Dan David awards
2007: In Amsterdam, an exhibition styled “Looted, But from Whom?,” an exhibition about art objects which were either acquired by forced sale or stolen from their Jewish owners by the Nazis during the Second World War, closed.
2007: Yaakov Edri “was appointed be responsible for Israel’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations.
2007: Yaakov Edri “was questioned under caution on suspicion of having tried to receive personal benefits in return for promoting a police commander, Ya'akov Zigdon, whilst he was Deputy Minister of Internal Security” and denied the charges.
2007: The Sunday New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Bambi vs. GodzillaOn the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business by David Mamet, George Gershwin His Life and Work by Howard Pollack and Overture by Yael Goldstein.
2007: Corresponds to the 7th day of Adar which “traditionally marks the birth and the death of Moses. This is a minor fast date “observed by members of Jewish burial societies to atone for any acts of disrespect which they may unwittingly have committed toward the dead.”
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Life is a Cabaret: A Tribute to Fred Ebb” highlighting the decades long collaboration between Jewish lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander that produced such works as Cabaret, Zorba, Chicago, Woman of the Year, Kiss of the Spider Woman andCurtains
2008: Newsweekreported on the financial loss suffered by the New England Patriots owner, Jewish businessman Robert Kraft, as a result of the Pats failure to have a perfect 19-0 season. Anticipating a Super Bowl victory, Kraft had applied for trademarks to use phrases such as “19-0” and Perfect Season” on a litany of gear including greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, kites and temporary tattoos. The trademarks are worthless and sale of the merchandize never materialized.
2008: Timereported on the recent death of 14 term California Congressman Tom Lantos the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress. Lantos was sixteen when the Nazis occupied his native Hungary where he escaped the death camps and fought against the Nazis.
2009: In New York, famed Italian performer Moni Ovadiahis presents a performance “Kavanah” (intention and participation through a chant), a reflection on the Hebraic liturgical tradition and its complex maze of meanings and sources.
2009: A fresh exhibition in New York that has put a spotlight on postcards used during and after the turn of the 20th century meant to depict important aspects of Jewish life comes to a close
2009: Rosh Chodesh Adar 5769
2009: Two Kassam rockets were fired across the Gaza border into Israel today. One of the rockets fired from Gaza hit an agricultural area near a kibbutz in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, and rescue services were yet to find the second rocket.
2009: A British bishop whose denial of the Holocaust led Argentina to order him out of that country returned to England today. Richard Williamson, a bishop with the conservative Society of St. Pius X, was told to leave Argentina or face expulsion amid criticism over a television interview in which he said no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust. The controversial bishop had been excommunicated 20 years ago, but Pope Benedict XVI last month lifted the excommunication decree on Williamson and three other bishops.
2010: During a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee held today, Illinois Rep. Don Manzullo, a Republican, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to intervene on behalf of a gefilte fish factory in his district. The factory, Schafer Fishery is located in Thomson, Illinois. Manzullo is concerned about several hundred jobs at the fishery in his district and he said Israel had imposed a 120-percent tax on nine containers of Asian carp that had been made into gefilte fish patties. Drawing laughs, Clinton said she was up to a job that “sounds to me like one of those issues that should rise to the highest levels of our government.” “If not, we’re going to have to figure out what to do with nine containers of it,” she said, prompting Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House committee, to quip that perhaps the fish would end up at the next state dinner. Fresh and processed foods are subject to tariffs under the trade agreement between the US and Israel. “Carp is not exempt from customs in the framework of the free trade agreement between Israel and the United States,” said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “Having said that, we are obviously looking into the request by Congressman Manzullo and are trying to see whether something can be done.” Peled said two containers of gefilte had already arrived at the port in Haifa.“I don’t think there’s a lack of gefilte fish either in Israel or in the United States regarding Pessah,” Peled said. Nonetheless, he said, “we’re seriously looking at this request by a member of Congress.”
2010: As he arrived at Jerusalem District Court for the opening of his trial today Ehud Olmert became the first former prime minister in Israel's history to stand trial for alleged corruption.
2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Fast of Esther
2010(11thof Adar, 5770): “David Bankier, Professor of Holocaust History at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and holder of the John Najmann Chair at Yad Vashem passed away” today.
2010(11thof Adar, 5770): Eighty one Irish jurist Henry Barron who served as a justice on the Irish Supreme Court from 1997 until 2000 passed away today.
2010: “Andy Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century: In Retrospect” is scheduled to open at the Washington DCJCC.
2010: Novelist, critic and broadcaster Howard Jacobson is scheduled to appear at the Washington DCJCC.
2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Ninety-two year old Eugene L. Moore, a past commander of the Department of Florida Jewish War Veterans, passed in Boynton Beach, Florida.
2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Herta Herzog-Massing, “Austrian-American social scientist specializing in communication studies,” passed away
2011(21stof Adar I, 5771): Ninety-two year old Eugene Moore, a past commander of the Department of Florida Jewish War Veterans passed away in Boynton Beach, FL.
2011: Ahead of Time, “graceful portrait of the extraordinary life of 99-year-old American journalist and humanitarian Ruth Gruber whose efforts led to the rescue of 1,000 Jewish Holocaust refugees” and The Judge, a documentary featuring the former Chief Justice of Israel's Supreme Court, are scheduled to shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
2011: Today, the IDF instructed teachers to keep children from going outside to play in kindergartens located in towns near Gaza after two Grad rockets landed in Beersheba
2012: “The Death of Klinghoffer” an American opera, that critics including the two daughters of the late Leon Klinghoffer have described as anti-Semitic and as glorifying terrorism was performed in London for the first time.
2012: In London, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jeffery Goldberg and Maureen Kendler are scheduled to a new Haggadah edited by Foer and translated by Englander as part of Jewish Book Week.
2012; “Jewish solders in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at Young Israel of Woodmere in Woodmere, NY.
2012: “Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women” is scheduled to be shown at B'nai Sholom Reform Congregation in Albany, NY.
2012: HaOlam II, at the end of which the second official National Collegiate Jewish A Cappella will named, is scheduled to take place at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.
2012: Indian intelligence services have considerable evidence that Iran was behind this month's New Delhi terrorist attack, but are not releasing it in a bid to avoid public confrontation with the Islamic republic, an Israeli security source says.
2012: Hundreds gathered in front of Ministry of Interior offices in Tel Aviv today to protest the deportation of families whose petitions for residency permits were rejected.
2013: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to co-host “Arnold Bernstein and Gerd Bucerius,” a lecture and discussion on the relationship between shipping pioneer Arnold Bernstein and Gerd Bucerius, the lawyer and published who defended him against the Nazis.
2013: Burglars broke into the home of an employee at the Prime Minister's Office today. Initial reports indicate a computer was taken from the house, which is located in Moshav Beit Yitzhak in the Sharon.. (As reported by Yaniv Kubovich)
2013: Israel carried out a successful test of its upgraded Arrow III missile interceptor today. Defense sources said it was the first flight test of the advanced interceptor. (As reported by Gil Cohen)
2014: Graham Spanier who was president of Penn St. during the “child sex scandal” “was granted a stay in his defamation lawsuit until his criminal case is resolved.”
2014: Dr. Daniel Rynhold is scheduled to deliver a lecture “Rav Kook and the Heroism of the Holy” at the Skirball Center.
2014: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to complete her two day trip to Israel.
2014: Kay Menchel is scheduled to lecture on “The Short Stories of Bernard Malmud” at the JCC of Northern Virginia.
2014: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would neither confirm nor deny reports that the IAF had destroyed a shipment of weapons being sent from Syria to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
2014: “Participants in programs that bring young Diaspora Jews to visit Israel should be allowed to extend their stay without proving they are Jewish enough to make aliyah, a Knesset committee recommended.
(As reported by JTA)
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “YIVO, Freud, and American Jewry: Discourse on Eastern Europe as a Talking Cure” for American Jewish Ambivalence” in which Marcus Krah explores how American Jews in the 1940s-50s used competing narratives of aspects of the East European Jewish past - from the shtetl, to pogroms, to Hasidism and Socialism - to find meaning in their American present.
2015: On the heels of the terrorist attacks in Paris, The UK Jewish Film festival is scheduled to host a showing of “Cartoonists: Foot Soldiers of Democracy.”
2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Argentina and the Nisman Case: Why is it so Hard to Understand What Really Happened?”
2015: Jewish Disability Advocacy Day