March 1
286: Roman Emperor Diocletian raises Maximian to the rank of Caesar. Diocletian was determined to restore greatness and stability to the Roman Empire. He was far more concerned about the Christians whom he saw “as the sole cause of the dissolution of the Empire, on account of their persistent struggle against the Roman state religion and their zeal for conversion” than he was about the Jews. When he attempted to unify the empire by ordering all of those under his reign to accept his divinity and “bring sacrifices to his cult,” Diocletian exempted the Jews. The only negative note of import surrounding Diocletian and his Jewish subjects had to do with accusation that they had mocked him because of his early origins as a swineherd. Judah III, the Patriarch, actually had to appear before the Emperor while he was in Tiberias to answer the charge. Judah assured him that while some may of spoken disrespectfully of Diocletian the swineherd nobody had uttered any words of criticism against Diocletian, the emperor. The explanation assuaged Diocletian but it has been used an example of the dangers of speaking L’shon Hara.
293: Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesares, thus beginning the Tetrarchy. This move on the part of Diocletian was part of an attempt to ensure a smooth transition of power after Diocletian resigned as Emperor. The plan would fail and would result in 19 years of turmoil that would end only when Constantine took the throne. For the Jews, this would mean an end to great Yeshiva at Tiberias. Those who could would flee to Caesarea where they would a haven at the yeshiva begun by Abbahu.
317: Crispus and Constantine II, sons of Roman Emperor Constantine I, and Licinius Iunior, son of Emperor Licinius, are made Caesares. Lucinius and Crispus would be killed, the latter by his father Emperor Constantine I. Constantine II would continue the anti-Jewish policies of his father. Among other things, he decreed that any Christians who converted to Judaism would forfeit their property to the state.
1105:Birthdate of Alfonso VII who in 1130, started a school in Toledo which begins to spread Hebrew and Arabic learning as well as ancient Greek knowledge through Western Europe
1274: Gregory X issued Turbato Code, a Papal Bull that forbade Christians from “embracing Judaism.”
1349 (Adar 10): Riots broke out in Worms (Germany). Many Jews fled to Heidelberg. Others in desperation set fire to their homes or were murdered. An estimated 420 people died that day. Their property was seized by the town.
1565: Portuguese settlers founded the city of Rio de Janeiro. For the first two centuries of its existence, Jewish life in the city was hindered by the reality of the Portuguese laws against Judaism and the Inquisition. “New Christians” played an active role in the city’s commercial and social life but records show that at least 300 of these New Christians were found guilty by the Inquisition of secretly practicing Judaism. After Brazil gained its independence in 1822 and adopted a constitution in 1824 that allowed for religious toleration, more Jews began arriving in the city and played a more active role in its growth and prosperity. Today, Rio has the second largest Jewish community in Brazil.
1655: The Magistrate of New Amsterdam wrote a ruling making an attempt to expel the Jews. It read, in part, "Resolved that the Jews, who came last year from the West Indies and now from the Fatherland, must prepare to depart forthwith." (“The Patroons of the West India Company decided, however, that the Jews owned most of the stock in that organization they would have to be left alone.”
1655: The Sheriff of New Amsterdam as plaintiff filed suit against the defendant Abram de la Sina, a Jew, for the crime of keeping his store open during the hour the church gave a sermon.
1670: “A solemn proclamation was made in all public places that ‘for the glory of God’ all Jews should, on penalty of imprisonment and death, leave Vienna and Upper and Lower Austria before Corpus Christi Day, never to return. Hirz Koma and a physician named Leo Winkler, “made a last attempt to propitiate the emperor by offering him 100,000 florins and, in addition, 10,000 florins a year.”
1790: The Pennsylvania Packet featured an advertisement offering the skills of Abraham Cohen as Hebrew tutor
1792: Francis II, who relied on Bernhard Eskeles for “financial advice” became King of Hungary and Croatia.
1803: Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state. Under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance there was not to be any religious qualification for states formed in the region including Ohio. The first record of Jewish settlement in Ohio relates to the city of Cincinnati. By 1824, there were enough Jews living in the “Queen City,” that the Jews formed a congregation called the Sons of Israel. The twenty-four members of the congregation were not able to raise enough funds for a building until 1836. Max Lilienthal and Isaac Mayer were the first two rabbis in the state. By the time of the Civil War, the Jewish population was large enough that it sent almost 1,200 of its sons to fight in the Union cause.
1806(11th of Adar, 5566): Chaim Yosef David Azulai ben Isaac Zerachia passed away. Born in Jerusalem in 1724, he was the great-great grandson of Abraham Azulai who was a noted student of the Talmud and Kabbalah, community leader and prolific author.
1810:Georgetown College was chartered in Washington, D.C., making it the first Roman Catholic institution of higher learning established in the United States. Today Georgetown has approximately 1,600 Jewish students out of a student boy of 13,000 students. The school offers approximately 35 Jewish Studies Courses.
1822: In Brno, Joshua Philipp Feibelman Gomperz and Henriette Auspitz gave birth to Max von Gomperz the sugar merchant who was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Creditanstalt
1823: In New York, Solomon Henry Jackson published “The Jew,” an anti-missionary journal. This is thought to be the first Jewish publication to be published in the United States. Jackson is also known for translating and publishing the first Sephardic Siddur in America. He published an English-Hebrew version in 1826.
1837: Birthdate of Egyptologist Georg Moritz Ebers, the Berlin native who “discovered the Ebers Papyrus at Luxor” which dates from 1550 BCE.
1843: The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York passed a resolution prohibiting the performing of ceremonies at funerals of persons intermarried with Christians.
1851: Noting the appearance of Jews in Utah, Lorenzo Brown wrote in his diary today that he had seen “some Hungarian Jews living in the ward--emigrants bound for the [California] mines...forced to leave their native land because of the revolution.”
1852: The New York Times reported that a funding raising ball has raised $1,034 which will be donated to "The Hebrew Hospital" in New York City.
1858: The New York Times reported that in February of this year, Lord John Russell's bill that would modify the oath of office so that Jews could serve in Parliament had been "debated and read for a second time" in the House of Commons. [This was in the days before the transatlantic cable. Gaps between events and published reports are responsible for some of the inconsistencies in providing specific dates for events]
1858: Birthdate of German born philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel. Simmel’s family was Jewish, but when his father died, Simmel’s Catholic guardian converted him to the Church of Rome.
1860:“Gang of Rogues Started on a Traveling Tour,” published today, reported that “Five Polish and Prussian Jews, who have long been known to the police authorities of” New York City “as expert pickpockets and daring burglars… started on a Western traveling tour” yesterday evening. Information of their departure was given by two members of the gang, who have lately sundered relationship with their old associates.” According to these two, “the gang has for a long time gone by the name of the ‘Order of Vatabeds,’ a name till now kept private among the members.” Since it was impossible for the police to detain them in New York, “telegrams were sent to Albany, Buffalo and Dunkirk, stating the fact of their departure, and putting the public and Police on guard against their arrival. The names of the traveling troupe are Samuel Levy, alias "Old Levy"; Morris M. Goldstein, alias Goldever; L. Truebart; Michael Roberts, alias "Big Roberts," and Henry Wcyman. Most of them have served terms in foreign state prisons.”
1860: London Town Talk published today provides a gossipy and negative view of William Ward’s elevation from Baron of Ward to Earl of Dudley. His elevation was attributed not to his virtue but to his wealth. According to the unnamed author the role of money should come as no surprise since it was “Baron Rothschild’s millions” that made Lord John Russell an advocate of the bill to remove “Jewish disabilities” when it came to taking the oath to serve in Parliament.
1861: The first train of the Florida Railroad arrived in Cedar Key providing the first link between Florida’s Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico’s ports. The railroad was the creation of David Levy Yulee, the first Jew to be elected to the United States Senate. Unfortunately for Yulee, the business success was short-lived due to the Civil War which began a month later. Yulee supported secession and served in the Confederate Congress so you might say he was the architect of his own doom
1861: Birthdate of American author Henry Harland. A lawyer by trade he began his literary career by using the pen name Sidney Luska under which he wrote his first three novel’s As It Was Written, Mrs. Peixada and The Yoke of the Torah which were known as his “Jewish Trilogy.”
1861: The New York Times reported that The Knoxville (Tenn.) Whig gave “a first rate” description of a “Jew” named Mordecai who distinguished himself a few weeks” ago since by presenting $10,000 to the Governor of South Carolina. The Whig stated that “Mordecai who is a druggist, visited New-York, Philadelphia and Boston, just before he did this act, and represented to his creditors that he was insolvent, and settled with them by paying 50 cents on the dollar.” [By this time, South Carolina had seceded from the Union so the money was going to support the Rebel government.]
1865: The Medal of Honor was issued to Private Benjamin Levy for bravery displaced during fightigat Glendale, VA in 1862.
1866(14th of Adar, 5626): Purim
1866: The Purim Ball, the last of the three great events of New York’s Winter Social Season was held this evening.
1867: Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the Union. The Jewish community in Nebraska pre-dates statehood. Services were conducted in Omaha in the 1860’s. The oldest congregation in the state, Temple Israel, was founded in 1871 along with a burial society. The town of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln at this time and Lincoln became the state capital. Lincoln, Nebraska’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, also known as the South Street Temple was Lincoln’s first Jewish congregation. The Temple was founded in 1884, principally by German immigrants. The year 1884 must have been an auspicious one for Cornhusker Jews, since that is the same year in which the first synagogue building in the state was dedicated at Omaha. It was the home of Congregation Israel now known as Temple Israel.
1870: J.K. Buchner published Di Yiddshe Zeitunge, the first Yiddish weekly to be published in the United States. The language itself was more of a German Yiddish than the eastern European variant of the patois. The politics were conservative rather then socialist in direction.
1874: The first day of the annual Purim Reception at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York is scheduled to begin at eleven o’clock this morning.
1875: It was reported today that a Jewish furniture dealer named Beyfus has brought suit against a weekly London newspaper claiming that he and his son have been defamed as money-lenders by the publication.
1876: In Savannah, GA, the cornerstone is laid for the new home of Mikveh Israel. The new structure was required because the congregation had outgrown the old building.
1877: The Purim Association is sponsoring a Purim calico masked reception at Delmonico’s in New York City. The association had originally planned on sponsoring a fancy dress ball but changed its plans because of the current economic problems.
1878: It was reported that George H. Hepworth is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Our American Homes” at a meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at Lyric Hall later this week.
1879: In a modern case that is harkens back to the fifth commandment, in the Court of General Sessions, Judge Gildersleeve heard charges from seventy year old Fanny Salomon that she had been abandoned and refused support by her three sons – Alfred, Leopold and Felix. The sons responded by contending that their mother was financially secure and was merely to parsimonious to pay for her own upkeep.
1880: It was reported today that Lee & Shepard is about to published “The Exodus of the Children of Israel” by Francis Underwood and Brugsch Bey that uses the latter’s research to provide that the Red Sea has been mistaken for the Sea of Reeds in the Exodus narrative.
1880: It was reported today that Ernest Renan, the French scholar who is an expert on ancient eastern civilizations and Semitic languages is scheduled to deliver a series of lectures in London. Renan’s knowledge of Hebrew is such that he was the chair of Hebrew at the College de France, a position from which he was ousted because he challenged the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.[Renan would eventually write a three volume history of Israel.]
1881: Ida (Kuhn) Cohen and Eduard Cohen gave birth to Sophie Cohen
1881: Twenty-three citizens of Salt Lake City met to form B’nai Israel. Under the direction of President Henry Siegel $2,600 was spent on a lot which would be the site of Utah’s first synagogue.(As reported by Jack Goodman)
1885(14th of Adar, 5645): Purim
1886: First organized Arab attack on a Jewish settlement in what would become Eretz Yisrael. The attack was waged against Petak Tikvah, the first all Jewish village to be built in Palestine during modern times. The early settlers had a difficult time of it facing not only Arab marauders but malaria as well. The land on which the village was built was purchased by English Jew named Hayyim Amzalak who had moved to Palestine in 1830. Money for draining the malarial swamps in the area was given by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Much of the labor was supplied by Russian Jewish immigrants.
1888: Rabbi Joseph Silverman begins serving as spiritual leader for Temple Emanu-El replacing the legendary Gustav Gottheil. Silverman is the first American born rabbi to serve a congregation in New York City.
1890: Birthdate of Theresa Ferber Bernstein the Krakow born American artist who settled in Manhattan in 1912 whose husband William Meyerowitz was a well-known artist in his own right.
1891(21st of Adar I, 5651): Sixty-seven year old Bernhard Sondheim passed away today in New York. Born in Hesse Homburg, he and his family moved to Georgia when Sondheim was nine years old. Eventually he settled in New York where he established a successful import business. He was a member of the 10thRegiment of the state militia and served as Vice President of the Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society, a position he held at the time of his death.
1891: With less than two months until the start of Passover, The Passover Relief Association, which provides matzoth and items to New York’s less fortunate Jews, finds itself with only $173.45 in its treasury. Considering the fact that the association spent $675.24 and the fact that the population of needy Jews has greatly increased, the association is in need of donations which can be sent to its members including the chairman, Benjamin Saidel.
1891: Today the United States trustees of the fund created by the late Baron de Hirsch to provide for the needs of immigrants coming to America will draw the $2,400,000 set aside for this purpose from the banks in Paris.
1892: It was reported today that the next meeting of the Hebrew Technical Institute will take place at Temple Emanu-El
1892: Carl Wiser played the role of Shylock in the German version of “The Merchant of Venice” at New York’s Thalia Theatre
1892: As of this afternoon, 21 year old Joseph Seigler who worked in his father’s dry good store is the only new case of typhus reported today.
1892: As New York City continued to deal with the latest outbreak of typhus fever, public health officials ordered all synagogues on the Lower East to be fumigated.
1893: “Jewish Women’s Achievements” published today outlined the plans for the presentation of papers to delivered at the upcoming Parliament of Religions “which is to be a feature” of the upcoming World’s Fair. The papers which will be prepared by some of New York’s leading Jewish ladies will highlight the unique contributions of such groups as the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum
1894: According to the testimony of Benny Weiss, Charles Krumm gave two ten dollar bills to Ward Man Jeremiah Levy of the Eleventh Police Precinct “in pursuance of an arrangement with the policeman.” (Arrangement is a euphemism for bribe)
1894: Over the last six months (10/1/93 – 3/1/94), the United Hebrew Charities spent $103,102.40 providing aid to the needy as opposed to $46,498.22 “for the corresponding period of the preceding year.”
1895: The National Council of Women, an organization whose members included Jewish, Protestant and Catholic women, opened the penultimate session of its annual triennial meeting in Washington D.C.
1895: “Russians Arrested on Suspicion” published today relied on telegraphs from the Vienna correspondent of the Central News to described arrests made in Kiev and Odessa of those thought to be “engaged in revolutionary plots’ many of whom were Jews.
1896: Theodor Herzl and Nathan Birnbaum meet for the first time. Nathan Birnbaum was born in Vienna, and lived there from.1864-1908, and again from 1914-21. In 1882, together with two other students in the University of Vienna, he founded “Kadimah,” the first organization of Jewish nationalist students in the West. In 1884, he published his first pamphlet, Die Assimilationsucht(“The Assimilation Disease/Mania”). He founded, published and edited Selbst-Emancipation!(“Self-Emancipation!”) The periodical promoted “the idea of a Jewish renaissance and the resettlement of Palestine.” It incorporated and developed the ideas of Leon Pinsker. In 1890, Birnbaum coined the terms “Zionist” and “Zionism,” and, in 1892, “Political Zionism.” In 1893, he published a brochure entitled Die Nationale Wiedergeburtdes Juedischen Volkes in seinem Lande als Mittel zur Loesung der Judenfrage(“The National Rebirth of the Jewish People in its Homeland as a Means of Solving the Jewish Question”), in which he expounded ideas similar to those that Herzl was to promote subsequently. Birnbaum played a prominent part in the First Zionist Congress (1897) and was elected Secretary General of the Zionist Organization. However, he and Herzl developed ideological differences. Birnbaum had begun to question the political aims of Zionism and to attach increasing importance to the national-cultural content of Judaism. Birnbaum eventually left the Zionist movement and later became a leading spokesman for Jewish cultural autonomy in the Diaspora. He stressed the Yiddish language as the basis of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and was chief convenor of the Conference on Yiddish held in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1908. This was attended by leading Yiddish writers, and proclaimed Yiddish as a national Jewish language. Birnbaum propagated his ideas in writing and by lecturing in many Jewish communities. In the years preceding World War I he gradually abandoned his materialistic and secular outlook, eventually embracing full traditional Judaism. He may be seen as the forerunner of the modern Baal Teshuvah movement. His most famous book of this period was Gottesvolk (“God’s People”) first published in German and Yiddish in 1917 (translated into English in a shortened form by J. Elias in 1947 titled "Confession"). In 1919, he became the first Secretary General of the new Agudath Yisrael Organization. Dissatisfied with the spiritual complacency of the religious masses, he initiated a movement, the Order of the Olim (“[Spiritual] Ascenders”), to consist of small groups of people dedicated by their way of living to raising spiritual awareness within the larger Jewish society, thus leading toward a Jewish spiritual renaissance. Disturbed by the urbanized focus of Jewish life, he promoted the establishment of agricultural communities and other groups living a style of Jewish life more in conformity with nature. Settlement in Eretz Israel was to be for the prime purpose of fulfilling the spiritual role of the Jewish people. He lived in Berlin from 1912-1914, and again from 1921-1933. After the rise of Nazism, he left Germany for Scheveningen, Netherlands, where he edited Der Ruf("The Call"), a platform for his ideas. He died there in 1937.
1896: “Gifts on Purim” published today based on information that first appeared in The American Hebrew described the near disappearance of “the custom of sending gifts on Purim to friends” a custom, “that can easily be restored.”
1896: “The Mexican Inquisition” published today described the publication of two papers by the American Jewish Historical Society – “Trials of Jorge de Alemdia by the Inquisition in Mexico” by Dr. Cyrus Adler and Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America” by George Alexander Kohut – which provide a hitherto untold story of the early Jews living in Latin America.
1897:”Old Bibles In A New Home” published today “rich and curious library of the American Bible Society” which includes “an ancient Hebrew roll found in a synagogue in the interior of China” that “is supposed to date back to the year 900 and is supposed to have been used for centuries.”
1897: It was reported today that the Yale Divinity Students who visited New York last week learned about “the magnitude of the problems confronting charitable organizations” including the United Hebrew Charities whose director N.S. Rosenau told them “We have been faced since with an unprecedented rush of immigration” since 1890 because the Russian have driven 400,000 people to the United States.
1898: “Get-Together Clubs Meet” published today included a summary of a speech, “The United Hebrew Charities and the Unemployed” by N.S. Rosenau in which the director described “the problem of Jewish labor in New York saying that their natural limits of ability had kept them out of the work of the day laborer” and had “sent them into the garment trades” where “the Italians were already displacing them.”
1898: “Hope For Zionist Union” published today described efforts two unify the religious and secular supporters of the Zionist which, if successful will strengthen the movement designed to buy land for Jewish settlement in the Ottoman Empire. Representative of 26 different Jewish organizations including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Adam Rosenberg, E.D. Eisenstein and Dr. Moses Mintz are working on the effort led by Columbia Professor Richard Gottheil.
1899: Sixty-one year old Farrer Herschell, the 1st Baron Herschell whose father Rabbi Ridley Haim Herschell who had converted to Christianity and founded the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews passed away today.
1900: In France, a bill calling for amnesty of all matters related with the Dreyfus Affair is introduced by the Senate
1903: In an article entitled “Light on the Jewish Question in Romania,” the New York Times summarizes an article that first appeared in The Romanian Bulletin that defends King Charles (a.k.a. Carlos I) against accusations that he is the prime mover in the persecution of his Hebrew subjects. The article depicts him as being sympathetic to their plight, but as constitutional monarch, all but powerless to defend the Jews against “unscrupulous ministers” who do not share his enlightened views of Romanian Hebrews.
1904: Israel Schochat, founder of Ha-shomer arrived in Palestine.
1911: Birthdate of chess grandmaster Harry Golombek
1914: Birthdate of Aaron Ruben the Chicago native who gain fame as a producer, writer and director for some of the most popular television comedies of the 1960s and ’70s, notably “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and “Sanford and Son
1915: Rabbi Emil Hirsch was reported today to be among the 29 clergymen who are trustees of the Church Peace Union founded by Andrew Carnegie designed to promote “a new moral leadership to prevent armed conflict” – specifically to limit and/or end the World War that had begun in 1914
1915: “Dr. (Samuel) Schulman Tells Why He Opposes Return To Palestine Movement” published today quotes the President of the Metropolitan League as saying that “In America we are Americans, and if there are those who wish to perpetuate Jewish customs and narrow nationalism, let it be done in Palestine, not here in America. The highest work of the Jews is not to teach customs but how different races and peoples may live together in accord and harmony.”
1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee received a cablegram from the Jewish Colonization Association of Petrograd describing the desperate condition of the “tens of thousands” of refugees from Poland” and the granting of official permission to organize assistance for the Jews of Galicia.
1917: The U.S. government released the plaintext of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public. Barbara Tuchman, the noted Jewish historian, wrote The Zimmerman Telegram a fascinating volume covering this little known event which had a major impact on America’s decision to enter World War I on the side of the Allies.
1919: Emir Feisal, the son of Emir Hussein, Grand Sharif of Mecca and the leader of the Arabs of Hejaz sent a letter to Felix Frankfurter. According to Martin Gilbert he wrote, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.” “I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and derived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is notional and not imperialist: our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success with the other. I look forward, and the people with me look forward to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once against take their place in the comity of the civilized peoples of the world.”
1920(11th of Adar, 5680): Tel Hai, a Jewish village in the Galilee is attacked by Arabs. Joseph Trumpeldor, the one-armed Jewish military leader and one of the Zionist movement’s first military heroes was killed in the ensuing battled along with five men under his command. “Trumpeldor was born in 1880 in Russia. Originally in training as a dentist, he volunteered for the Russian army in 1902. During the Russo-Japanese War he participated in the siege of Port Arthur, where he lost his left arm and was captured. Subsequently, he received four decorations for bravery, which made him the most decorated Jewish soldier in Russia. In 1906 he became the first Jew in the army to receive an officer's commission. In 1911 he emigrated to Palestine then under the Ottoman Turks, living for a time at kibbutz Deganya. When World War I broke out, he went to Egypt, where together with Vladimir Jabotinsky he developed the idea of the Jewish legion to fight with the British against common enemies and as a result, the Zion Mule Corps was formed in 1917, considered to be the first all-Jewish military unit organized in close to two thousand years, and the ideological beginning of the Israel Defense Forces. He saw action in Gallipoli, where he was wounded in the shoulder. Upon his return to Russia in 1918, he established the He-Halutz, a youth organization that prepared immigrants for aliyah (moving to Palestine), and returned to Palestine himself, then under the British Mandate. He was one of the founders of the Zionist Socialist movement in pre-state Israel.. After his death Trumpeldor became the symbol of Jewish "self-defence", and his memorial day on the 11th day of Adar is officially noted in Israel every year. Supposedly, his last words were, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country". There is no proof whether this is true.”
1921: The Political committee of the Zionist Organization met in London to discuss Churchill’s forthcoming visit to Palestine.
1921: Margery Merlyn Baillieu and Sidney Myer, the founder of Myer (Australia’s largest department store chain) gave birth to the first child, Ken. But since Myer had converted a year earlier and Baillieu was not Jewish, Ken would not be carrying on the “faith of his fathers.”
1921: In Berlin, “Alfred Kerr, the well-known socialist author and theatre critic for Berliner Tageblatt and Frankfurter Zeitung” and his non-Jewish wife gave birth to Sir Michael Kerr, the Lord Justice of Appeal who was believed to be “England's first foreign-born judge since the reign of Henry II.”
1922: John Schuburgh a member of the Middle East Department (of the British Government) sent a visiting Arab delegation a letter reiterating British support for the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
1922: Birthdate of Yitzhak Rabin(יצחק רבין). A Sabra, Rabin was a soldier-statesman who served as Prime Minister from 1974 until 1977. The scandal which drove him from office would open the way for the Right-Wing Likud to take power for the first time since the founding of the Jewish State. Rabin would return as Prime Minister in 1992. He would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking attempts to end the violence in the Middle East. Sadly, the man who had avoided death at the hands of Israel’s Arab enemies, met death at the hands of a Jewish fanatic bent on derailing the Peace Process. Would events been different had Rabin lived? We will never know. Just as a killer at Dallas had thwarted the American electoral process, so a killer thwarted the democratic process in Israel in 1995.
1926: Birthdate of Robert Clary. The French born actor gained fame playing the part of LeBeau on “Hogan’s Heroes.” The irony is that Clary was the only one of his immediate family members to survive imprisonment by the Nazis during World War II.
1928: Joseph Levy, writing in the New York Times described the ceremonies that marked “the recent inauguration of the plantation of the Balfour Forest at Ginegar, in the Valley of Jezreel, Palestine.” As part of the ceremony, Sir Alfred Mond delivered an address in which he “paid high tribute to Lord Plumer, the High Commissioner, for the devotion he has shown during his tenure in office and to the Jewish national fund. The entire cost of the Balfour Forest is being borne by the Jews of Great Britain. The project is part of the Zionist led reforestation project that is vital to the renewal of Palestine.
1931: The White House released President Herbert Hoover’s congratulatory message expressing his congratulations to Baith Israel Anshei Emes on the celebration of the 75th anniversary of its founding.
1932: On a radio broadcast on the day of Justice Benjamin Cardozo's confirmation, Clarence C. Dill, Democratic Senator for Washington, called Hoover's appointment of Cardozo "the finest act of his career as President"
1932: The Maccabee Association of the United States announced the members of the swimming and track and field teams that will be sent to compete in the Jewish Olympic Games that will take place at the end of March. The selection committee was chaired by Sol Goodstein.
1934(14th of Adar, 5694): Purim
1934: As of this date, according to a report prepared by Morris Rothenberg, President of the ZOA, there are a quarter of a million Jews living in Palestine which marks a significant increase from the total of 85,000 Jews living there in 1921.
1934: Birthdate of gymnast Abie Grossfeld.
1934: Billy Wilder arrived in Paris from Berlin today and “settled in the Hotel Ansonia where he joined Peter Lore, Franz Waxman, Friedrich Hollaender and others who fled from Hitler and the Nazis and directed “Mauvaise Graine” which premiered later in 1934.
1935: Birthdate of Judith Rossner, author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
1936: Birthdate of Richmond, VA native Shirley Bernice Politzer who would gain fame as “Dr.Shirley P. Glass, a psychologist who strove to redefine the nature of infidelity” and the mother of Ira Glass, producer of “This American Life.”
1937: Winston Churchill retains Hungarian born Jew Emery Reves as his literary agent which would prove a boon to Churchill’s literary career and pocketbook.
1941: Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes to Colonial Secretary Lord Moyne expressing his displeasure with General Wavell who, “like most British officers is pro-Arab” and opposed to the Jews. This attitude extends to an unwillingness on the part of the British military to form additional Jewish military units to fight in the Imperial Army.
1941: Himmler inspected the Auschwitz concentration camp
1941: Bulgaria officially joins the Axis Powers - Germany, Italy and Japan
1942: On Purim Eve, the Germans ordered 5,000 Jews deported from Minsk.
1942: In Boston, Ruth Ashen and Sam Gruber, the owner of a junk business, gave birth to Howard Peter Gruber, best-selling author, CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and the owner of several pro teams.
1943: In Jerusalem, Aliza and Menachem Begin gave birth to Benny Begin who earned a doctorate in Geology from Colorado State University before following his father into the world of Israeli politics.
1943: In Amsterdam, a Jewish old age home for the disabled was raided.
1943: In a speech given before a crowd of 70,000 people at Madison Square Garden, Chaim Weizmann states, “Two million Jews have already been exterminated. The world can no longer plead that the ghastly facts are unknown or unconfirmed. This rally had been planned by the American Jewish Congress in an attempt to mobilize American public opinion in support of efforts to rescue Jews trapped in Hitler’s Europe.
1945: “Pope Spoke In Hebrew” published today described the visit of Pvt. Lou Herman who in civilian life was a cantor and other Canadian Jewish soldiers who were singled out by Pope Pius XII and speaking in Hebrew were blessed by the Pontiff who “raised his arms in the manner of the priests of the Hebrew faith” while giving the benediction.
1945: During the “Hunting Season” the British expressed their concerns that the Jewish Agency was interested in more than just going after terrorists when the High Commissioner to the Minster of Colonies wrote today that Unfortunately, the Jewish Agency's lists of so-called terrorists continues to include numerous people who have no terror connections, but politically speaking are undesirable to the Jewish Agency. This adds to the difficulties the police has in separating the sheep from the goats…”
1947: Jews responded violently to British Foreign Minister Bevin’s latest pronouncements about Palestine by conducting multiple attacks that resulted in the death of at least sixteen British military personnel.
1947: David Remez, Chairman of The Jewish National Council, announced tonight that the “Jewish population of Palestine will observe a self-imposed curfew for four hours” tomorrow night to express their concern for the refugees from Europe recently seized by the British.
1948: This month Henry and Phoebe Ephron gave birth to author Hallie Ephron one of four sisters all of whom are talented authors.
1950: It was revealed today that in the non-aggression pact being considered by Israel and Jordan included a promise that Haifa would become a free-port for Jordan thus giving the Arab state access to the Mediterranean.
1960(2nd of Adar): Hundreds of Jews, including some students of the local Chabad Yeshivah, were among the thousands of victims to perish in a devastating earthquake that struck Agadir, Morocco today
1969: Joseph Vogel the MGM executive who served as its President from 1956 to 1963 during which the studio produced the classic “North by Northwest” passed away.
1970: Birthdate of best-selling author Darin Strauss author of ”Half a Life, which won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography.”
1972: Naomi Bronheim Levine was appointed Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress (A. J. Cong.), becoming the first woman to take the helm of a major American Jewish organization that included both men and women as members.
1972(15th of Adar, 5732): Shushan Purim
1972(15th of Adar, 5732): Sixty- three year old Moshe Sneh passed away
1973: U.S. premiere of “The Thief Who Came To Dinner co-produced by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin who also directed the film featuring Alan Oppenheimer as “Insurance Man.”
1973: U.S. premiere of “Charlotte’s Web” with music by Richard and Robert Sherman.
1978: Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery.
1979: Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” opened on Broadway at the Uris Theater.
1982: PLO official Nabil Wadi Aranki was killed in Madrid
1985: Milwaukee businessman Herb Kohl purchased the Milwaukee Bucks. Kohl would go on to become one of Wisconsin’s two Jewish senators.
1987: In an article entitled “An Israeli Lawyer Dares Defend an Accused Nazi,” Francis X. Clines describes the challenges and criticism facing Yoram Sheftel, the Tel Aviv criminal lawyer serving as co-counsel in the defense of John Demjanjuk, the retired auto worker from the United States who is accused of being the infamous executioner of the Treblinka death camp.
1988(12th of Adar, 5748): Joe Besser one of the Three Stooges passed away.
1991(15th of Adar, 5751): Edwin H Landinventor of the Polaroid Camera passed away at the age of 81.
1991: Following the end of the Iraq War,Lufthansa plans to resume service to Tel Aviv today.
1993: In “Doubts Mar PBS Film of Black Army Unit,” published today Richard Bernstein describes the controversy surrounding a movie that is supposed to be a documentary about the 761st Tank Battalion’s role in the liberation of Jews held in concentration camps at the end of World War II. The tank battalion was an all-black unit and the film was supposed to be a tool to rejuvenate the alliance between Jews and African-American.
1993: Publication of E. M. Broner's The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality Through Community and Ceremony
1993(8th of Adar, 5753): “Two civilians in their twenties, Natan Azaria and Gregory Avramov, were stabbed to death in Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
1994: Ari Halberstam, a 16-year-old yeshiva student, was returning from a vigil for Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. While pulling onto the exit ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge, Halberstam’s vehicle was shot at by Rashid Baz, a Lebanese immigrant. He died five days later. (As reported by Seth Berkman)
1994: Publication of Gun, with Occasional Music, a novel by Jonathan Lethem.
1995: Publication of the paperback edition of Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem.
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of Unto the Soulby Aharon Appelfeld in which “Gadand Amalia, brother and sister, have been given the sacred duty of tending an ancient cemetery of Jewish martyrs near their village in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe and Isaiah Berlin John Gray’s study of the 20th century's premier Renaissance man that focuses on his liberalism, which was complex in that it acknowledged no one right path for human society.
2001(6thof Adar, 5761): Hamas claimed credit for the Mei Ami junction bombing which took place at Vadi Ara where one person was murdered.
2005: Completion of the Eleventh Daf Yomi Cycle begun in September, 1997. The next cycle begins on Wednesday, March 2, 2005.
2005: Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel was deported from Canada to Germany today where he “was arrested and detained in Mannheim prison” where he would await “trial for inciting racial hatred.”
2005: Penultimate broadcast of “Boston Public” co-starring Fyvush Finkel as “Harvey Lipschultz.”
2005: “Boris Lurie: Uneasy visions, uncomfortable truths” published today highlights the views of artist Boris Lurie the native of Leningrad who survived imprisonment in a string of concentration camps including Buchenwald.
2006: On the secular calendar Rosh Chodesh Adar, first day of the month of Adar.
2006: London Mayor Ken Livingstone began serving his four week suspension from office after being found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
2007: Fast of Esther observed on 11th of Adar since the 13th of Adar falls on Shabbat.
2007(11th of Adar, 5767): Meyer “Mike” Feldman, a White House advisor for President Kennedy, passed away at the age of 92.
2007: Celebration of the birthday of Muriel Rogers, doyen of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community
2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents The Path Of Our Fathers
2008: Beth Hillel Congregation in Wilmette, Illinois, presents a screening of the Argentinean film Legado a documentary about the arrival of the first Russian Jews in 19th century Argentina.
2008(24th of Adar I, 5768): St. Sgt. Doron Asulin, 20 of Beersheba and St. Sgt. Eran Dan-Gur, 20, of Jerusalem, were killed early Saturday as their Givati Brigade units operated against terrorists. Asulin served in the brigade’s anti-tank company and Dan-Gur served in the Shaked Battalion.
2008:On the second day of Operation Hot Winter which was aimed at disrupting terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces “carried out airstrikes at ammo warehouses, rocket factories, rocket warehouses and launching cells, combined with small incursions close to the border.
2009: Jonathan Schanzer, director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center discusses and signs copies of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
2009: The 120th annual Central Conference American Rabbis being held in Jerusalem comes to an end.
2009: The annual Koach Kallah comes to an end.
2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War by Alexander Waugh, A Mad Desire to Dance by Elie Wiesel and recently released paperback editions of The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal,by Lily Koppel and Swimming in a Sea of Death:A Son’s Memoir, by David Rieff.
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Future of Liberalism by Alan Wolfe
2009:Effective today the Glendale Uptown Home will become a nonkosher facility, leaving Philadelphia proper without a certified glatt-kosher nursing home.
2009: A revival of Rogers and Hart’s Pal Joey presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company .had its last performance
2010 (15thof Adar, 5770): Shushan Purim
2010:In a talk at Harvard University on "Identity, Diversity, and Human Rights," Canada Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella shared her family's Holocaust story and explained how it informs her view of human rights. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)
2010: “The 48 Ways to Wisdom,” a program cosponsored by The Jewish Renaissance is scheduled for this evening at Keter Torah Synagogue this evening in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
2010:In Jerusalem, The Kingdom of Alrov Mamilla Avenue is scheduled to celebrate Shushan Purim at its annual Purim carnival which will include a colorful parade with characters from the Megilla, clowns and jugglers, circus performances, circus workshops, magnet games, and whole lot more.
2010:Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was released from a German prison today after serving a five-year sentence.
2011: Israel LTD, film that records “a group of young Americans on their intensive bus journey across a strong and righteous Israel” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC in Manhattan.
2011:Today Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh accused Israel of financing and plotting the protests in his country and other Arab states.
2011:In reaction to clashes that took place a day earlier in the Gilad Farm outpost in Samaria, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today that "We cannot let citizens take the law into their hands."
2011: Amy Totenberg assumed office as the Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia which includes Atlanta, GA.
2011: In an “Anti-Semtism Double Header”Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Jews and Zionists are "trying to push the US into war" and are a cover for Satan, at the group's annual meeting near Chicago today while a report published by a British magazine today said the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, suggested that British journalists, including the editor of The Guardian, were engaged in a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear his organization.
2011(25th of Adar I, 5771):Marilyn Henry, a journalist and lecturer, died of cancer today four days short of her 58th birthday. She lived in Teaneck, NJ with her husband, Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer
2011(25th of Adar): On the Yahrzeit of those who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (March 25), Rabbi Shmuel Plafker led a memorial survey at the Hebrew Free Burial Association cemetery on Staten Island where 22 of the victims are buried (As reported by Joseph Berger)
2011:The postal services of Liberia, Gambia and Sierra Leone will simultaneously issue a set of three commemorative postal sheets today in memory of 12 Jews – men and women – who fought Apartheid and racism in Africa.
2011: On the 70th anniversary of the signing of the pact uniting Bulgaria with Germany as Axis partners The Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst, New York is hosting a public meeting as part of a campaign to convince “the government of Bulgaria to reveal the truth over its interaction with the Jews during the Holocaust.”
2011: A Merkava MK IV stationed near the Gaza border, equipped with the Trophy active protection system, successfully foiled a missile attack aimed towards it and became the first operational success of the system
2011: It was announced today that Frank Rich would be leaving the New York Times for New York magazine.
2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Charleston Film Festival in Charleston, SC
2012: “Tijuana Jews” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Etz Chaim in Toledo, Ohio.
2012: Miriam Gilbert is scheduled to deliver a lecture Shakespeare and ‘the likeness of a Jew’ Shylock, Fagin and Disraeli” will take place at the Iowa City Public Library
2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present: “Anti-Jewish Violence in Eastern Europe” an evening based on a book of the same name that “and Israel that investigates the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence, the local and transnational responses to pogroms, and instances where violence was averted.”
2012:Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein today ordered the police to open a criminal investigation into illegal building in the West Bank Shiloh settlement.
2012:Former Shas Minister Shlomo Benizri, who was released from the Maasiyahu Prison this morning, said Israel was the most anti-Semitic country in the world due to what he referred to as its "incitement campaign against the haredi community."
2013: In Ashburn, VA Beth Chaverim is scheduled to join hundreds of congregations throughout the United States in “Shabbat Across America!” that will include a screening and discussion of “Advice and Dissent” starring Eli Wallach.
2013:Release date for Put it in the Book, Howie Rose’s “autobiography and memoir of 50 years of Mets history”
2013:As sequestration goes into effect today, Israeli defense planners are bracing for a potentially dramatic cut in US assistance that may slash as much as $300 million in aid over the next seven months. (As reported by Haviv Rettig Gur)
2013(19thof Adar, 5773): Sixty-nine year old actress Bonnie Franklin passed away. (As reported by Douglas Martin
2013: Some 20,000 runners took part this morning in the Jerusalem marathon, which was won by Abraham Kabeto Katale of Ethiopia whose final time of 2:16:29 was a record for the course.
2013:Secretary of State John Kerry said today that Turkey’s prime minister had made “objectionable” remarks when he cast Zionism as a crime against humanity in comments earlier this week.
2014: In London, JW3 in partnership with the UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “Oscars Warm-Up Night” including a screening of “Searching For Sugar Man.”
2014: “A Prayer for Aliyah” and “The Jewish Cardinal” are scheduled to be shown at the 24th Washington Jewish Film Festival.”
2014: Observance of Tel Hai Day in honor of the memory of Joseph Trumpeldor
2014: Professor David Shneer is scheduled to host a seminar on “Post Holocaust American Judaism” in Boulder, CO.
2014(29thof Adar I, 5774: Shabbat Shekalim
2014: Two rockets landed near an IDF post in Mount Hermon early this morning. According to the IDF, the rockets “were most likely the spillover from the clashes in neighboring Syria, not a deliberate attack.” (As reported by Tova Dvorin)
2014: Renowned Religious Zionist leader Rabbi Haim Druckman has called on the Religious Zionist community to stay far away from tomorrow’s "million-man march" against the hareidi draft. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)
2014: Twentieth anniversary of the mortal wounding of 16 year old yeshiva student Ari Halberstram who was shot by Rashid Baz, an immigrant from Lebanon.
2014: At Tiftereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, Rachel Levin will join her classmates in the First Grade Consecration Service.
2015: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Why Not Say What Happened: A Sentimental Education by Morris Dickstein, We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler and Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 by Bruce Hoffman
2015: The 25th Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2015: F.I.U. is scheduled to host the 30th Anniversary Screening of “Shoah”
2015: The curtain is scheduled to come down on “The King of Second Avenue” which has been playing at Boston’s Charles Mosesian Theatre.
2015: “The exhibition Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 which explores how the experiences of German-speaking exiles and émigrés who fled Nazi Europe—many of them Jews—influenced the classic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age” is scheduled to come to an end at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.
2015: ““’Twas the Night Before Hanukkah” an “exhibition, which highlights the music of Hanukkah and Christmas, and the people behind some of the holidays’ songs” at the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to come to a close today.