April 2
742: Birthdate of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was both King of the Franks and the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite pressure from the Catholic Church and the mighty Pope Gregory, Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects and they played a prominent part in his realm. Unfortunately, after his death in 814, his successors were unable to continue to his policies towards the Jews of Christian Europe.
1118: Baldwin I, who arrogantly styled himself King of Jerusalem. For Jews nothing more be said then that he was a brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and a leader of the bloody First Crusade.
1279(Nisan, 5039): A number of London Jews were martyred following ritual charges. You will note that during the Easter Season there is a significant increase in these reports for several centuries in different parts of Europe.
1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople. The siege would lead to the downfall of the Byzantine capitol which would improve the lot of the Jews living in the city as well as opening it up to settlement by Jews living Crete, Transylvania and Slovakia.
1550: The Jews were expelled from of Genoa.
1678(10th of Nisan): Rabbi Judah Ashael ben David del Bene author of Kisot le-Bet David passed away
1738(12thof Nisan, 5498): Joseph Oppenheimer was hanged. Oppenheimer, the finance minister, was arrested after the sudden death of Prince Karl of Wurttemberg. He was offered a pardon on condition of agreeing to be baptized. Although not a practicing Jew, he refused and was placed in a cage in the center of Stuttgart declaring "I will die as a Jew; I am suffering violence and injustice." He died while shouting Shema Yisrael.
1756: Benjamin D’Israeli, the Anglo-Jewish merchant who was grandfather of the British Prime Minister married his first wife, Rebecca Mendez Furtado.
1755(21st of Nisan, 5515):Aryeh Leib ben Saul Lowenstam passed away in Amsterdam. Born in Cracow this Polish rabbi was a member of long line of Jewish sages including his grandfather Rabbi Hoeschl of Cracow and his father Saul who served as rabbi of Cracow from 1700 to 1704,
1770(7th of Nisan): Rabbi PInchas Zelig of Lask, author of Ateret Paz passed away
1787: Ephraim Hart “he was registered as an elector of the Shearith Israel congregation” in New York City.
1791: Forty-two year old Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (known simply as Count Mirabeau) a leader of the French Revolution who was an admirer of Moses Mendelssohn and whose support of Jewish emancipation can be seen in his statement “Confer upon” the Jews “the enjoyment of civil rights and they will enter the ranks of peaceful citizens, passed away today.
1806: Birthdate of Gabriel Riesser, youngest son of Lazarus Jacob Riesser and an advocate for the emancipation of the Jews of Germany.
1817(16th of Nisan, 5577): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer
1825(14th of Nisan, 5585): Shabbat HaGadol; Erev Pesach
1825: “The special privileges granted to the Portuguese Jewish citizens of Suriname were terminated by order of the Dutch crown. Thenceforth, Jews in the Dutch colonies were accorded the same rights as the other inhabitants, and all privileges, concessions and exceptions of whatever nature were abolished.” (As reported by the Suriname-Jewish Community)
1826: In Ancona, Italy, “Anna Costantini, a young girl, was torn from her family and forced into baptism.”
1840: Birthdate of Émile Zola. This non-Jewish French author would become a leading player in the Dreyfus Affair. His J”Accuse would be an indictment of the French military establishment and the anti-Semitic forces that swirled around this entire act of injustice.
1844:"The building” housing the Great Synagogue in Sidney “was consecrated today with the music for the ceremony in the hands of Isaac Nathan, father of Australian music, who was also associated with the music at St Mary's Cathedral. For the occasion Nathan composed settings for Baruch Habba ("Blessed be he that cometh") and Hallelujah.
1846: The last letter in the correspondence between Grace Aguilar and “the philanthropist Miriam Moses Cohen who acted as an agent for her publications in America” was sent today.
1863: During the Civil War, food shortages cause hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand that the Confederate government release emergency supplies, in what became known as the Richmond Bread Riots. In her honor’s thesis entitled The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy, MIDN 1/C Katherine R. Titus wrote that while the rioters targeted speculators and government offices “Richmond citizens also targeted foreigners and Jews. The city had a tradition of blatant anti-Semitism. Once the War erupted, many Richmond citizens openly blamed the Jews and foreigners in the city for speculation and charged them with disloyalty. Sallie A. Putnam, for instance, believed that the Jews in Richmond profited from the war. She exhorted, “They were not found, as the more interested of the people, without the means to purchase food when the Confederate money became useless to us from the failure of our cause.” Major John W. Daniel contended that local stereotypes allowed the rioters to target Richmond Jews. After the War, he reminisced, “certain people down there were credited with great wealth. It was said that they had made barrels of money out of the Confederacy, and the female Communists went at them without a qualm of conscience.”
1865:Twenty Jewish men signed a constitution that became the framework that would guide the future of Reform Jews in Akron, Ohio.
1869: Michael Henry became editor of The Jewish Chronicle – position he would hold until his death in 1875.
1870(1st of Nisan, 5630): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat HaChodesh
1874(15thof Nisan, 5634): Pesach
1877(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Chaim Bezalel of Bielitz, Poland, author of “Derekh Yivhar” passed away
1881: It was reported today that the population of Thessaly, which is moving from Turk to Greek rule includes 50,000 Jews and Muslims as well as 300,000 who are classified as Greeks.
1882:The New York Times reported that “the feast of Passover will commence tomorrow evening at sundown in accordance with the rabbinical ordinance which lays it down that it shall be celebrated from the evening of the 14thof Nisan and continues for eight days. It is regarded strictly as a feast of rejoicing and it’s a pleasant illustration of the liberalizing tendency of the age that many Jews make it a custom to send small presents of unleavened bread to the Christian friends”
1882: The New York Times publishes an excerpt from “Domestic and Artistic Life of Copely” by Martha Babcock Amory in which the author describes a dinner with Baroness Lionel Rothschild in 1857.
1883: After telling him that it was customary for newly engaged couple to announce their intention to become man and wife before an official at City Hall, the relatives of Pauline Moses to David Holtz to City Hall where an alderman performed a marriage ceremony; a fact not understood by Holtz because of his limited knowledge of the English language.
1886(26th of Adar): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Yellin, author of Yefeh Einayim passed away today
1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Shabbat HaGadol
1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Sixty-one year old Austrian mathematician Simon Spitzer who became a professor of analytic mechanics at the Vienna “Handelsschule” in 1870 passed away today.
1890: The Passover Association distributed free matzoth to over four thousand poor Jews this evening at the Goodfellow’s Hall on Essex Street in New York.
1890: The New York Times reported that the American Hebrew will be publishing a special Passover edition this Friday.
1890: It was suggested at today’s meeting of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the old Hebrew Orphan and Asylum on 77th Street could be used for the proposed new offices of the city’s Board of Education.
1891: Birthdate of Max Ernst founder of surrealism.
1892: Simon Schafer, M.H. Moses, Judge M.S. Isaacs and A.L. spoke at tonight’s meeting of the Purim Association which was held at the Hoffman House tonight.
1892: “Want To Hear Cleveland” published today described the ex-President’s popularity in New York as can be seen by warm reception his supporters receive when they address rallies of Russian Jews. The Russians barely understand English, but the sound of Cleveland’s name is enough to bring out shouts of approval..
1893(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
1893: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Silverman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Crucifixition.”
1893: It was reported today that in Germany “the Conservatives have definitely thrown over Rector Hermann Ahlwardt the Jew baiter and libeler.” However, their rejection has not stopped him from making public speeches and holding anti-Semitic rallies.
1893: “Fine British Weather” published today described the social and political events taking place in the UK including plans by “an organization of progressive young Jews…to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogue throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.
1893: Dr. Silverman is scheduled to give an address at Temple Emanu-El on “The Crucifixion.”
1893: The New York Times reported that “an organization of progressive young Jews has arranged to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogues throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”
1894: It was reported today that approximately 50 Jews, many of them women attended the evangelistic service at the Thalia Theatre Auditorium although there was no report of any of them coming forward to convert. (These services were part of a concerted effort by some Christians to convert Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century)
1896: The will of the late Charles S. Friedlander was filed with the Surrogate today for probate.
1896: The funeral for Dr. Aaron Wise was held this morning at Temple Rodolph Shalom, the New York congregation he had served as Rabbi for several years.
1896(19thof Nisan, 5656): Leonard Friedman, who is approximately 52 years old, passed away today at Lakewood, NU. A native of Germany, he came to the United States and after fighting his way out of poverty established Leonard Friedman & Co which over the last twenty years has become one of the leading tobacco houses in the United States.
1896: Funeral services were held for Dr. Aaron Wise, who had been rabbi at New York’s Temple Rudolph Shalom at the time of his death. The services at the Lexington Avenue Temple were attended by so many mourners that “not one half could gain entrance to the synagogue.” Several of New York’s leading clergy took part in the ceremony including Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler also of Temple Beth-El who delivered an address in German and Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel who delivered a eulogy in English in which he said of Wise, “The spirit of his words cannot die. The influence of the teacher has not limits as to time or space.” Burial followed the service in Union Field, Cypress Hills Cemetery.
1897: Reverend John Hall delivered a lecture on “Judaism and Christianity” in which he said “There is a distinction between Judaism as described in the Bible and the Judaism of the present generation.”
1897: A school designed to teach students how to cook food according to the laws of Kashrut opened today in Brooklyn in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population.
1897: In New York, Governor Frank Black appointed Jewish philanthropist and Republican party activist Edward Lauterbach to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.
1897: In Austria, Count Casimir Badeni resigned during a government crisis that was precipitated, in part, by his clash with the anti-Semitic partie
1898(10thof Nisan, 5658): Shabbat Hagadol
1898(10thof Nisan, 5658):Austrian pathologist and histologist Salomon Stricker passed away.
1899: At the Hebrews Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum, Chaplain Joseph Kauffman officiated at service were a “bronze tablet in memory of Samuel Lewisohn” was unveiled.
1899: “Disraeli and the Suez Canal” published today provided a summary an article by Arnold White that appeared in Harper’s Weekly describing the British leader’s role in facilitating the purchase of this vital waterway from which he gained no financial advantage.
1902: “Controversy Over Hen Fattened For Passover” published in today’s Atlanta Constitution described a complaint filed by Leo Fresh with police to retrieve the chicken that he was preparing to take to a “shocket” which had mysteriously ended up in the yard of a neighbor lady who planned to have it killed in a manner not consistent with the laws of Kashrut.1903: The High Court of Australia sits for the first time. In 1930, Isaacs Isaacs would become the third person to fill this position and the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia.
1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive where he finds out that an immediate counter-proposal is out of question. The size of the land and the duration of the contract are discussed.
1907: Birthdate of Irene Mayer Selznick famed as the producer of Street Car Named Desire.
1909: Ahmed Riza Bey, President of Turkish Parliament, offered Russian and Romanian Jews who were suffering tremendous persecution and attacks a chance to come settle in Turkey.
1911: The newly formed Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople expresses loyalty of all Jews of all parties to the Ottoman Empire.
1911:Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House today to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League in which she used the Triangle Fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:
1912(15thof Nisan, 5672): As TR and Taft battled for control of the Republican Party, observance of Pesach began
1912: Today “two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana which has grown to become a city of almost 70,000 people living in Israel’s Central District.
1912(15th of Nisan, 5672): Fifty women attended a Seder tonight at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building on Lexington Avenue. The attendance was limited by the size of the building underscoring the need to build a new facility.
1913:Today, Jews living in New York City brought copies of letters from family members living in Anatolia describing persecution by Greeks living in that part of the Ottoman Empire to the attention of the American Jewish Committee. They called upon the committee to intervene on the behalf of their co-religionists and to organize a protest against these outrages.
1914: The officers of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee met at the Broadway Central Hotel in New York. After the meeting, Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee, reported that Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Navy Daniels had sent letters announcing that Jewish soldiers and sailors would receive furloughs to celebrate Passover this year.
1914(6th of Nisan, 5674): Paul Heyes, the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away today at the age of 84. A native of Bonn, “he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910 ‘as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories.’ One of the Nobel judges, said that ‘Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe.’" [Considering what would happen to the Jews of German two decades after his death, this praise has a strange ring to it. Also, Heyes is living proof that winning a Nobel Prize is no guarantee to lasting fame, even among his co-religionists.]
1914: In New York, Mr. and Mrs. Percy Salomon gave birth to William Roger Salomon who would become a long time managing partner of the bond trading house Salomon Bros.
1917: President Wilson asked the United States Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. This was the first official step towards America’s entry into World War I as a combatant on the side of the Allies. While American Jews supported the war effort and served in all branches of the armed forces, there was an unintended downside for the Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. It was easier for American Jews to get aid to their suffering co-religionists when the United States was a “neutral.” Once it joined the Allied side, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) it would be much more difficult to get help to those living in the war torn areas under the control of these nations.
1918: One day after his death on the Western Front, a letter written by poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg which had been written three days earlier arrives in London. In the letter he describes life in the trenches.
1921: Professor Albert Einstein held a press conference aboard the steamship Rotterdam today in New York Harbor. During the conference Einstein talked about his Theory of Relativity and his support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
1923(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer
1922: “Two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana, a city in the heart of the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel with a population of 68,300, as of 2009.”
1925: According to a cable message that was made public today by Judge Jacob S. Stahl, President of the American Palestine Line steamship company, the SS President Arthur has arrived in Haifa. The liner with 500 prominent American Jews from all parts of the United States sailed on March 12 on her maiden voyage to inaugurate a regular service between New York and the Holy Land.
1925: At “the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hebrew University on April 2, 1925 Edmund Landau lectured in Hebrew on the topic Solved and unsolved problems in elementary number theory.
1925: The Vatucan’s Holy Office published a decree saying that the Catholic Church, whatever its other views on Jew maybe, “condemns hatred against the people elected by God, a hatred that today is vulgarly called anti-Semitism.” (For more see Under His Very Windows by Susan Zucotti)
1928: Birthdate of actress Rita Gam who was the wife of director Sidney Lumet and publisher Thomas Guinzberg (not at the same time) and the mother of producer Kate Guinzburg
1928: In Paris Olga (nee Bessman) and Joseph Ginsburg gave birth to Lucien Ginsburg who gained fame as Serge Gainsbourg, a poet, singer, songwriter, actor, director and finally controversial guest on French television talks shows.
1929: The rabbinical commencement exercises of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College, the first in three years and the first in the new building of the institution, were held today. Dr. Bernard Revel delivered an address in which he warned of the dangers of “religious illiteracy and urged that synagogues become centers of faith. Among those receiving diplomas were forty-one newly minted rabbis and 45 teachers.”
1930: Isaac Isaacs completes his service as Puisine Justice of the High Court of Australia and begins serving as the as Chief Justice of Australia.
1930: Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. Part of his title included the honorific “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah” which is tied to the contention that the Ethiopian rulers traced their origin to a relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. During World War II, Orde Wingate would aid the king in his fight against the Italians. This is the same Orde Wingate who was stationed in Palestine before World War II. He was one of the few British officers who was supportive of the efforts of the Jews to defend themselves against the Arab who were attacking them. Wingate reportedly provided training for the Zionists in basic military tactics and weapons usage.
1931(15thof Nisan, 5691): Pesach
1931: U.S. premiere of “Skippy” directed by Norman Taurog who won an Academy Award, with a script co-authored by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz.
1931: As Jews gathered to observe the second Passover of the Great Depression Rabbis focused their holiday talks on the worsening economic conditions of the day and the need for reform. Sermons mixed holiday motifs and symbolism with the rise in unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. Using the Ten Plagues as his point of departure Rabbi Rosenblum of Temple Israel “declared that the unsettled economic condition of the world was the greatest plague of our era and that the leaders of government and business were responsible for the chaos and misery. Capitalism seems to be a Pharaoh…If Pharaoh listens he will not suffer ten plagues. If he does not, the very first plague will yet come to pass. It will be a revolution and blood.” At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Newman “said that Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, commemorated the release of the Israelites not only from political bondage but economic enslavement as well.” Rabbi Samuel Schulman broadened the scope a bit by pointing out the “power of religion to free or enslave man and emphasizing that real freedom required economic freedom which would allow for just and equal opportunity for every individual to use his powers in accordance with his ability and to receive just rewards.” (Sounds a bit like Marx and Moses meeting on New York’s fashionable east side.) But it was left to Rabbi Jonah Wise preaching at New York’s Central Synagogue to pull all elements of religion including Christianity together with the great crisis facing the nation. “Men are trained by loyalties to country, church and self to refuse to share life with foreigners, non-conformists and competitors. We shall never have security and morality until we learn to live at peace. We are making occasional breaches in the Chinese wall of creeds, tariffs and prejudices. Passover and Easter are supposed to be feasts of freedom and salvation. They are farces in the face of humanity starved in the presence of plenty and condemned to hatreds in fact while applauding love in theory.”
1934:Birthdate of Paul Joseph Cohen famed mathematician who developed a technique he called “forcing.” He won the Fields Medal in 1966.
1935: In Tel Aviv, the second Maccabiah Games opened “before 40,000 spectators at the Maccabiah Stadium. The German contingent marched flagless amid the fluttering colors of the other teams entering the venue. The American team including Janice Lifson, Doris Kelm and Lillian Copeland, placed “fourth in the women’s 100-yard relay final, the first of the swimming events.
1936: In an article entitled “Tel Aviv Prepares Its Greatest Fair” Joseph M. Levy describes plan for the upcoming Levant Fair slated to open at the end of this month.
1936: Birthdate of Shaul Paul Ladany, the Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben Gurion University and two-time Olympian who survived Bergen-Belson and the 1972 Munich Massacre.
1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Nathan Birnbaum passed away. Born in Vienna in 1864, Birnbaum coined the terms Zionists and Zionism in 1890. He was active with Herzl in the First Zionist Congress. However, he later drifted away from the movement becoming more concerned with a renaissance in Jewish culture and traditional Judaism. He left Germany after Hitler came to power and moved to the Netherlands where he continued his writings.
1937: In Albania, the Jewish community was granted official recognition by the government. The largest Jewish populations were located in Kavaje and Vlora. Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of who were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.
1941: Hungarian Premier Count Pál Telecki committed suicide rather than collaborate with Germany. This is only one small chapter in the complex story of Hungary’s involvement in World War II. For much of the war, Hungary’s Jewish population would remain comparatively untouched by the raging Holocaust. Only in the final year of the war would the final solution come to this eastern European state.
1942: Birthdate of Larry Selman whose life would captured in documentary “The Collector of Bedford Street.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1943:At the Thirty-eighth Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which opened its three-day meeting in the Hotel New Yorker today,speakers declared that only through the creation of an international structure of mutual responsibility will the world obtain a lasting post-war peace period.
1944: Today, 90 Jews who were captured by the Nazis at Chalcis, a port on the Greek island of Euboea are shipped to Auschwitz.
1944: In Haifa, British police discovered a cache of arms belonging to the Stern Gang following a bombing which caused the death of a Jewish constable and wounded a British policeman.
1944: At night, British authorities arrested more than sixty individuals many of whom were reported to be “members of the Jewish revisionist party known as the New Zionist Organization.”
1945: In a letter to Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Peter Bergson provides a description of the efforts of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (H.C.N.L.) to save the Jews of Europe and create a Jewish state.
1948: U.S. premiere of “B.F.’s Daughter” produced by Edwin H. Knopf and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.
1948: British Forces arrive at the air field south of Beit Darass looking for arms that had been delivered to the Jews. They found nothing since the Jews had hidden the weapons in the surrounding collective settlements.
1950(15th of Nisan, 5710): First Day of Pesach
1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the Nationality Act which was expected to confer automatic Israeli citizenship on all Jewish residents, and some of the non-Jews, on July 14, 1952. The vote was 43 to 17. The Knesset defeated, by a vote of 25 to 16, a proposal made by Herut which would require all persons holding dual citizenship to give up one nationality within two years after becoming Israeli citizens.
1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that a report from The Hague stated that the German delegation to the reparations talks left for Germany for further consultations. The Israeli delegation denied that there was any "crisis" in the talks and explained that the preliminary, informative stage of deliberations drew to a close, and a formula for further talks had been agreed upon. The delegation hoped that this would allow for good progress in the further discussions and actual negotiations. A small letter bomb, containing 40 grams of modern explosives, was sent to the leader of the German reparations delegation at The Hague. It failed to explode when opened in the mail room of the German Embassy.
1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had completed "Operation Ma’barot," the winter-long assistance extended by various army units to new immigrants in their camps.
1954: In Hong Kong, a Centenary Dinner was held celebrating the 100 anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps which from 1932 through 1942 included Company H or “The Jewish Company.”
1958: Release date for “The Young Lions,” the cinematic treatment of Irwin Shaw’s novel of the same named produced by Al Lichtman one of the main protagonist of which is “Noah Ackerman”
1962:Frieda Caplan opened her specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market.
1965: Hochhuth’s play "Stellvertreter" was banned in Italy. In English, the play is called "The Deputy." It was a sensation at the time for its dramatic portrayal of the negative role Pope Pious XII played during the Holocaust in terms of saving the Jews from the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis.
1970: An Israeli Phantom jet piloted by Pini Nahmani was shot down over a Damascus suburb. Nahmani was imprisoned in the al-Mazza Prison in Damascus.
1972: Actor Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist in the early 1950s during the Red Scare.
1973(29thof Adar II, 5733): Seventy-four year old Jascha Horenstein, a native of Kiev who became a leading American conductor passed away today
1978: Birthdate of Nicholas Evan “Nick” Berg “the American freelance repairman” who was beheaded by Islamist terrorists in Iraq who were so proud of the act that they put the video on the internet.
http://articles.philly.com/2004-05-15/news/25381697_1_kesher-israel-nicholas-e-berg-memorial-service
1979: Menachem Begin visited Cairo, Egypt. The historic visit followed the historic peace treaty that Begin and Sadat had signed. Begin was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Egypt.
1982:Jewish militants opposing Israel's withdrawal from Sinai tried to reach the area by boat today after the army closed it to unauthorized civilians and set up roadblocks
1987(3rd of Nisan, 5747): Famed drummer and orchestra leader Buddy Rich passed away at the age of 69. According to some sources, only Rich’s father was Jewish. However, on the official Buddy Rich Website, Rich’s religion is listed as Jewish
1987:Theater of the Riverside Church offered a rare look at Israeli Experimentalist Theater and dance when it presented Tmu-Na today. The Tel-Aviv group, founded in 1982 by Nava Zukerman, takes its name from the Hebrew word for moving pictures. And that, essentially, is what this good-looking company presents on stage. But the work Tmu-Na chose for this New York debut engagement is a disappointing one. ''Five Screams,'' loosely based on ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' by Milan Kundera, sets a group of men and women on a journey through five ''screams'' that program notes identify as ''signals of disagreement with the absurdity of existence.'' The 90-minute work, which is set to snatches of music composed by everyone from Laurie Anderson to Johann Strauss, opens with ''The Journey'' and moves on to ''Anticipation.''''Obedience and Rebellion'' is next, then ''The Kitsch: The Total Acceptance of Existence.''''Five Screams'' ends with ''Resignation.'' There is nothing so mystifying, often, as elucidating program copy.What we actually see are somber encounters and separations that form a kind of cool if anguished ritual of surviving. There are moments when the performers' individual qualities shine through and give it all a fleeting poignancy or element of surprise. But there is something very familiar in the scattered chairs, the women's flowing hair and drab dresses, the men's casual and inexplicable brutality and the air of unspecified angst that hangs over ''Five Screams.'' Tmu-Na has clearly been influenced by Pina Bausch, who has had great success in Israel.This is diluted Bausch, however, and it says little about the lives and gifts of the performers who helped to create ''Five Screams,'' which was adapted and directed by Ms. Zukerman and Koby Meydan. The performers are Amnon Doyeb, Netta Moran, Phina Bradt, Rama Ben-Zvi, Yael Bechor, Mr. Meydan, Yael Sagi and Yossi Pershitz. ''Five Screams'' will be performed again tonight and tomorrow night at Riverside, 120th Street and Riverside Drive.
1988(15 of Nisan, 5748): Pesach
1989(26th of Adar II, 5749): Jack Ruby Lindo whose tombstone in the Anglican cemetery in Ocho Rio has a “large six-pointed Star of David” passed away today.
1992: Bernard Kouchner began serving as Minister of Health of France.
1992: Jack Lang completed his second term as Culture Minister of France.
1995: Two members of Hamas blew themselves up in Gaza City while preparing for an attack on Israel.
1995: In “Central Synagogue; A $500,000 Restoration of an 1872 Masterwork,” published today Christopher Gray traces the history of Central Synagogue, one of the most spectacular houses of worship in New York City, is a rare surviving example of early Victorian religious architecture. Construction sheds are now going up for a $500,000 restoration of the building's 1872 stone exterior. Central Synagogue, which was originally called Ahawath Chesed, was founded in 1846 by immigrants from Prague and the nearby regions of what was then Bohemia.
1998:”Israel Offers Pullout if Lebanon Bars Raids” published today described the conditions under which Israel will leave its neighbor to the north.
2000:The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “I Will Bear Witness:A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945” by Victor Klemperer; translated by Martin Chalmers and the recently released paperback edition of “Playing for Keeps:Michael Jordan and the World He Made”by David Halberstam
2000:Columbia University and the Jewish Campus Life Fund celebrates the dedication and cornerstone-laying, of the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, a new $11.5 million building that fulfills the long-held goal of creating a permanent home for Columbia's vibrant and diverse Jewish student community. The building is named for the family of Robert K. Kraft, a 1963 graduate of Columbia College and University Trustee since 1991. His lead gift in 1993 launched the building campaign for the Center.
2001: Scott Schoeneweis was awarded the honor of being the Angels' opening day starter today (his first such assignment) and he pitched effectively, yielding 3 runs and 8 hits in 7 innings; but Anaheim lost to Texas, 3-2.
2001: Pitcher Tony Cogan played in his first major league game as a player with the Kansas City Royals.
2002: As part of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF entered the booby-trapped camp at Jenin and “surrounded the headquarters of the Preventive Security Force in nearby Beitunia.”
2002: Israeli forces surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after 200 Palestinian terrorists took refuge inside. Instead of storming the church, the IDF surrounded the building a laid siege to the armed killers.
2002: Frieda Caplan's specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market, celebrated forty years in business.
2003: Milwaukee Brewers Pitcher Matt Ford appears in his first major league baseball game.
2005: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “the search for a new rabbi for Temple Judah has ended with the hiring of Rabbi Aaron Sherman.” Rabbi Sherman and his wife Stephanie Alexander recently purchased a home in Cedar Rapids. A graduate of Brown University, Rabbi Sherman has a Masters in Hebrew Letters and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000.
2006: Haaretz reported that Poland is going to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer.In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death. Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result. Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive. With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect,Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel. Researchers from Poland's Institute for National Commemoration (IPN) are slated to meet with Lerner tomorrow and to be present for the exhumation of the victims' remains, if found, at the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. The eight victims are Gitl and her five children (Miriam, 22; Hannah, 20; David, 17; Zvi, 15; and Haim, 13) and two young Jewish men known only by their surnames: Zefrin and Pomerantz. They were stabbed to death at their hideout in the small village of Pashgalini, near the family's hometown of Komarovka in eastern Poland, not far from the city Lublin. The family arrived at the hideout in April 1943, after a Polish farmer named Jan Sadovski found it for them. While the family was in hiding, Lerner's father, Yitzhak, was living in Warsaw under an assumed identity. He heard of his family's murder from a Polish friend who lived in the village. In November 1944, after the Red Army had conquered the area from the Germans, Lerner went to the village to investigate. His testimony, preserved in the Jewish archives in Warsaw, states that the murder was perpetrated by Sadovski and four other farmers - one of them being Joseph Radchuk. The testimony stated that the murder had been committed to steal the Lerner family's possessions and those of their two friends, who were wealthy people. Lerner Sr. met with Radchuk, who said he had witnessed the murder and admitted taking many of the family's possessions. Lerner Sr. filed several complaints with the Soviet authorities, but later learned that aside from Sadovski, who was tried and executed, nothing was done to his accomplices. After the war Lerner Sr. fled to Sweden and from there immigrated to Israel. He remarried, to a Holocaust survivor from a neighboring town in Poland and lived with her in Moshav Hibbat Zion. Lerner began investigating his family's tragedy in July 2003, when he accompanied his daughter's school trip to Poland and tracked down his father's testimony at the archives in Warsaw. On returning to Israel, Lerner decided to commemorate his father's life with a book and a documentary film, and headed back to Poland. He kept Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, and his deputy, Yosef Levy, apprised of all his movements there. He also made contact with the local Jewish community and Monica Kravchuk, chair of the Jewish heritage foundation in Poland. Research led to the home of the Ozdovski family, on whose land the Lerners' hideout had been located. The family, whose father apparently participated in the murder, said that the bodies were initially buried near the hideout, but were moved a year later to an unknown location because neighbors complained the place had become haunted. Lerner says that during an unannounced visit to the family's home, he spotted a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to his family and was mentioned in his father's testimony. Last October the researchers located Radchuk, who showed them where the bodies were reburied at the edge of the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. If the skeletons are found there, they will be flown to Israel on Tuesday and the funeral will take place in Hibbat Zion at the end of the week.
2006: Jaclyn Leibson Mintz, daughter of Dale Mintz, the national director of women’s health and advocacy for Hadassah and editor of “The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness” and Stephen A. Mintz were married in a ceremony officiated at by Rabbi A. Rothman.
2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development” by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton and the recently released paperback edition of “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein.”
2007: “Nightrise” the third book in The Power of Five series, by Anthony Horowitz was released in the United Kingdom today.
2007(14thof Nisan): Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Jewish calendar
2007 (14th of Nisan): In the evening, Pesach begins with the first Seder.
2007: The New Republic Magazine featured a review of George Konrad’s autobiography, “A Guest In My Own Country: A Hungarian Life.” Konrad, like the more famous Elie Weisel, survived the Holocaust in Hungary, but spent his adult life in the land where he had faced almost certain death.
2007: Erev Pesach, Newsweek Magazine featured an article entitled “American Jews: The List—Choosing the Chosen” in which three American Jewish multi-millionaires list the top fifty rabbis in the United States. Following the criteria used by this trio, the Rabbis we read about Bnei Berak in the Haggadah would not have made the list.
2007: Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell “has won the auction for the Tribune Co.” The 65 year old native of Highland Park, Illinois has bought the company whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune.
2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Jewish Luck.” which was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. “Based on Sholem Aleichem's series of stories featuring the character Menakhem Mendl, “Jewish Luck” revolves around the daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. Despite Jewish oppression by Tsarist Russia, Menakhem Mendl continues to pursue his dreams and his continued persistence transforms him from schlemiel to hero as the film uncovers the tragic underpinnings of Sholem Aleichem's comic tales. Notes Village Voice critic Georgia Brown, "The movie's best inter-title translated from Isaac Babel's Russian: `What can you do when there is nothing to do?'" A dramatized version of the Menkhem Mendl stories was first staged by the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, under the direction of Alexander Granovsky, who later made this silent film. “Jewish Luck” features some of the finest artistic talents of Soviet Jewry during this period. It has been speculated that the cinematography done by Eduard Tissé inspired the filming of particular scenes in one of his later projects, Sergei Eisenstein's “The Battleship Potemkin.” The original Russian inter-titles were written by Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who later became a victim of the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s.”
2009: Professor Amy-Jill Levine, of Vanderbilt University, delivers an address at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, entitled “Misunderstanding Judaism/Misunderstanding Jesus.”
2009(8th of Nisan, 5769): A terrorist infiltrated Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank and killed Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli boy, by striking him in the head with an axe. The terrorist also attacked a 7-year-old boy with the axe, hitting and wounding him in the head. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and is in moderate condition. Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and an organization calling itself the Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the attack, although this has not been confirmed.
2009: Today in an interview to the Radio Liberty Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg denounced the FSB as an institution harmful to Russia and the ongoing expansion of its authority as a return to Stalinism
2010: Krista Tippe, host of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith and author of, Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, is scheduled to appear with Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More are scheduled , to get together for a dialogue about the role of faith in their lives at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.
2010: “Musical Shabbat” is scheduled to return to Friday Night Services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2011:Professor Yosef Shiloh, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School, the first Israeli to receive the prestigious Clowes Award presented by the American Association for Cancer Research is scheduled to be honored at the AACR Annual Meeting that opens today in Orlando, Florida. The prize includes a $10,000 grant, a commemorative plaque, and funding to attend this prestigious event.
2011:Former Israel Olympian, Shaul Landry, a surviving member of the 1972 Munich delegation, is scheduled to celebrate his 75th birthday today by walking his age in kilometers.http://www.jpost.com/Sports/Article.aspx?id=212351
2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-two year old Morris Parloff, a member of the "Ritchie Boys," a German-speaking unit of the U.S. Army that did intelligence work and psychological warfare in World War II, and who later became a psychotherapist, researcher and an administrator at the National Institute of Mental Health, passed away today. Parloff was among the surviving members of the Ritchie Boys featured in a 2004 documentary.
2011(27thof Adar II, 5771): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Traditional Saturday Morning Minyan celebrated Shabbat Ha-Chodesh.
2011(27thof Adar): Yahrzeit of Zedekiah “the last king of the royal house of David to reign in the Holy Land. He ascended the throne in 434 BCE, after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (to whom the kingdom of Judah was then subject) exiled King Jeconiah (Zedekiah's nephew) to Babylonia.In 425 BCE Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonian rule, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem (in Tevet 10 of that year); in the summer of 423 BCE the walls of Jerusalem were penetrated, the city conquered, the (first) Holy Temple destroyed, and the people of Judah exiled to Babylonia. Zedekiah tried escaping through a tunnel leading out of the city, but was captured; his sons were killed before his eyes, and then he was blinded. Zedekiah languished in the royal dungeon in Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar's death in 397 BCE; Evil Meroduch -- Nebuchadnezzar's son and successor -- freed him (and his nephew Jeconiah)” today. Ironically, Zedikiah died on the same day on which he was freed.
2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the West Chester Jewish Film Festival.
2011:Early this morning, in the southern town of Khan Yunis, IAF aircraft bombed a car carrying four senior Hamas operatives who, according to Israel, were on their way to Sinai with plans to kidnap or attack Israelis vacationing on the peninsula.
2011: The Israeli Counter-Terror Bureau urged Israelis today to leave the Sinai Peninsula immediately, after revealing that Israeli intelligence agencies had obtained concrete information of plans by terrorists to kidnap or attack Israeli nationals vacationing there over the upcoming Pesach holiday. The bureau said that some terrorists were already in the Sinai.Israel is also concerned about reports of the Egyptian police abandoning Sinai in the face of growing Beduin violence and the territory turning into a breeding ground for Global Jihad. The Counter-Terror Bureau noted today that the terror cell planning the attacks against Israelis in Sinai was using local Beduin to help carry out the attacks.
2011:Naama Shafir, a Sabbath-observing Israeli, scored a career-high 40 points to power the University of Toledo women's basketball team to the school's first national postseason championship in any sport. Shafir hit 13 of 27 shots as the host Rockets defeated the University of Southern California, 76-68 today for the Women's NIT title. The victory also marked the first women's national championship for a Mid-American Conference team in any sport. Shafir, a 5-7 junior guard from the small northern Israeli town of Hoshaya, also sank 13 of 18 free throws in the game. Following the victory on Saturday afternoon, Shafir walked home and held off interviews until long after the conclusion of Shabbat. Shafir is believed to be the first female Orthodox Jew to be awarded a Division I athletic scholarship. She led the Rockets this season with averages of 15.3 points and 5 assists per game. She had been courted by Boston University and Seton Hall before enrolling at Toledo. Getting the OK to play in the United States was no easy layup: Shafir obtained permission from an Orthodox rabbi in Israel to play games that coincided with the Jewish Sabbath, but not to practice, according to The Associated Press. Other special measures have been enacted to accommodate Shafir’s Sabbath observance: For road games, she checks into a hotel within walking distance of the host arena with a coaching staff assistant, bringing with her frozen kosher meals from Detroit. (As reported by JTA)
2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old “Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism” passed away today at his home in Iowa City, Iowa. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-year old Borscht Belt tumbler Lou Goldstein passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)
2012:Hillel C. Neuer and Bari Weiss are scheduled to discuss “From Eleanor Roosevelt to Qaddafi: An Insider's Account of Human Rights at the UN” at the 92nd Street Y.
2012: “Kosher deli in England a Titanic survivor’s legacy” published today tells the story of restaurant started almost a century ago by a Jewish survivor of the aquatic disaster.
2013(22nd of Nisan, 5773): Final Day of Pesach
2013: Elem, a non-profit organization for runaway homeless and neglected Israeli and Arab youth in distress is scheduled to host an evening of dinner and drinks to support Israeli Jewish and Arab Youth at Risk prepared by some of New York’s finest chefs.
2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon toured the Golan Heights this afternoon, and vowed that Israel would prevent the proliferation of weapons "that could threaten us in the future" to radical elements in Syria
2013:Israel launched its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip today since the Egyptian-mediated truce ended November’s eight-day bout of fighting. The airstrike came in response to the firing of a projectile from Gaza, which had exploded in an open area of southern Israel’s Eshkol region. Israel had not responded to a previous attack that came while President Obama was visiting the region in March.
2013: Following the shots fired from Syrian territory into the Golan Heights today, IDF tanks returned fire at a Syrian military target across the border, successful destroying whatever had been doing the shooting.
2014: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to present “Mah Nishtanah: Posing New Questions, Telling New Stories – An evening of inspiring Passover learning.”
2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Chai Fantasy” – a panel discussion about fantasy literature and Judaism.
2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy-eight year old Sandy “Grossman, who won eight Emmys, directed broadcasts of 10 Super Bowls, 18 N.B.A. finals, 5 Stanley Cup finals and Olympic hockey” passed away today.
2014: Pierre Moscovici completed his service as Minister of Finance for France.
2015: Alex Schiffman Shilo is scheduled to speak today the “First Person 2015 Series” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2015: WQXR is scheduled to broadcast “A Musical Fest for Passover with Itzhak Perlman.