April 29
711: According to some sources the date on which an army led by Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar marking the start of the Moslem conquest of the Iberian Peninsula with all that would come to mean for the Jewish population during the next seven centuries.
1221: Honorius III issued “Ad nostram Noveritis audientiam” a Papal Bull obligating Jews to carry a distinctive badge and forbidding them to hold public office.
1280(21st of Iyar, 5040): French rabbi Issac ben Joseph of Corbeil, the son-in-law of Jeheil ben Joseph of Paris, passed away today.
1614(20th of Iyar, 5374): Polish Halakhist and Talmudist Joshua ben Alexander HaCohen Falk, author of commentaries on Arba’ah Turim and Shulkhan Arukh passed away today.
1520: A Sephardic Jew known as “Shealtiel” to whom Elijah Miztahi, the Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman had transferred the power of tax collection was returned to the office after having lost the job in 1518 in what may have been a power struggle between the Romaniot and Sephardic Jewish communities.
1624: In France, Richelieu assumes as Prime Minister of Louis XIII. Although Louis had reaffirmed the expulsion of the Jews in a declaration issued in 1615, Richelieu would write a letter (which Louis would sign) in 1632 allowing the Jews of Metz to remain in that city. There is no evidence that Richelieu was philo-Semitic. Rather he realized that having just captured Metz, the city would lose some of its commercial value if the Jews were expelled.
1659: In a dispute arising out of the business of trapping and shipping beaver pelts, Asser Levy as attorney in fact for Abraham Cohen, "Jew at Amsterdam," appeared in the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens (Municipal Court) of New Amsterdam to demand from Cornelis Janss Plavier the money he had received from Cohen. Plavier admitted the loan. Levy refused to accept a 460 guilder payment, and demanded imprisonment or public sale of Plavier's goods. The Court ordered the defendant to pay any balance due on the loan
1679(17thof Iyar, 5439): Joshua da Silva, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London who was followed in office by Jacob Abendana passed away today.
1699: In Paris the French Academy of Science holds its first public meeting at the Louvre. While the Academy includes many Jewish members today, including David Baltimore and Israel Gelfand, this was not always the case. For example, Madame Curie was denied admittance because she reportedly had at least one Jewish parent. Poor Madame Curie – she was Polish and not Jewish but then facts never get in the way of bigotry.
1769: According to some, the birthdate of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Others use the date of May 1, 1769. Regardless of which date is used, Wellington comes up short of the mark as far as Jews are concerned because of his opposition to their emancipation when he was Prime Minister.
1770: Birthdate of Lazarus Gumpel the native of Hildesheim, who became a successful businessman in Hamburg where he helped to found a Reform Temple in 1817.
1774(18th of Iyar, 5534): Jews living in Colonial America celebrate their last Lag B’Omer as subjects of King George III.
1793(17th of Iyar, 5553: Rabbi Yechezkel ben Yehuda Landau passed away.He was an influential authority in halachah (Jewish law). He is best known for the work “Nodah bi-Yehudah,”by which title he is also known. Landau was born in Opatow, Poland, and attended yeshiva at Vladimir and Brody. In Brody, he was appointed Dayan (rabbinical judge) in 1734, and in 1745 he became rabbi of Jampol. While in Jampol, he attempted to mediate between Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschütz in a debate - "The Emden-Eybeschütz Controversy" - that "had disrupted Jewish communal life for many years". His role in the controversy is described as "tactful" and brought him to the attention of the Prague community where he asappointed rabbi in 1755. He also established a Yeshiva there; Avraham Danzig, author of “Chayei Adam,” is amongst his best known students. Landau was highly esteemed not only by the community, but also by others; and he stood high in favor in government circles. Thus, in addition to his rabbinical tasks, he was able to intercede with the government on various occasions when anti-Semitic measures had been introduced. Though not opposed to secular knowledge, he objected to "that culture which came from ", in particular Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Pentateuch. His main work entitled “Nodah bi-Yehudah”("Known in Judah"), is one of the principal sources of Jewish law of his age. This collection was esteemed by rabbis and scholars, both for its logical discussion and for its independence with regard to the rulings of other Acharonim as well as its simultaneous adherence to the writings of the Rishonim. Other works include “Dagul Mervavah on the Shulkhan Arukh” and “Tziyun le-Nefesh Chayah”(abbreviated as Tzelach, named in reference to his mother, whose name was Chayah) on the Talmud.”
1801: In Darmstdat, Germany, Alexander Wollf, “a merchant well versed in the Talmud” and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Abraham Alexander Wolff, the future leader of the Copenhagen Jewish community.
1805: Eliza Aarons married Simon Levy, a merchant, in Charleston, SC.
1811: In Prague, Markus Löw Popper and Esther Popper gave birth to Isaias Popper.
1819: Birthdate of Moses Angel who succeeded H.A. as Mast of the Talmud Torah Department at Jews’ Free School in 1840 before becoming Headmaster of JFS.
1830: Birthdate Adolph Sutro the native of Aachen, Germany, the brother of Otto Sutro, the 24th mayor of San Francisco who was also the city’s first Jewish chief executive.
1833: Birthdate of Michael Friedländer, a native of Posen who became principle of Jews’ College In London created one of the most popular English translate of Guide to the Perplexed by Maimonides.
1835: In Charleston, SC Charlotte Lazarus, the youngest daughter of Marks Lazarus married Dr. De La Motta.
1840: Birthdate of Leopold Jacoby, the son of a cantor who “received his doctorate” in 1867 and became and M.D. in 1870.
1853: In the House of Lords, the Earol of Aberdeen moved the second reading of the Bill for removal of Jewish Disabilities and strongly urged the removal of this most interlating restriction on the civilie liberties of a section of British subjects. The Earl of Shatesbury opposed the bill and moved it bread that six months. He trembled at the consequences to Christianity if Jews were admitted on a cvil equality with Christians. Such measures would expel Christianity from the ear but they might destroy it in Great Britain. The Earl of Albermarle, the Archbishop of Dublin and the Bishop of St. Davids supported the bill while the Bish of Salisbury, Early of Darnley, Earl of Harrowby and others, opposed it on religious grounds. The bill was defeated with 115 voting for it and 164 voting against it.The Earl of Aberdeen has addressed the House of Lords telling them that he had changed his mind about the Jewish Disabilities Bill. Two years ago he had voted against the bill. Now he was prepared to vote for it because “he reagred the exclusion of the Jews from civil privileges as a remnant of the spirit of persecution which prevailed in former times throughout Christendom.”
1852: In New York City, Asher and Abigail Kursheedt gave birth to Israel Baer Kursheedt
1861: Major Alfred Mordecai's letter repeating his request for a transfer reached Washington, DC where it is read by his new commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ripley. Ripley refused the request on two counts. First, he needed Mordecai, whom he considered one of his ablest subordinates to remain at the arsenal in New York so that he could produce the munitions desperately needed to fight the war. Second, the army could not maintain the discipline it needed to fight a war if officers were allowed to dictate their term of services based on personal desires. The U.S. Army's most prominent Jewish officer would have to choose between serving or resigning.
1861:Maryland's House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union. As was the case with their fellow citizens, Jews in Maryland were divided over the issues of slavery and secession. It would seem that more of the Jews favored Union and opposed slavery than did not. For example, the Lloyd Street Synagogue was a stop on the Underground Railway. Har Sinai’s Rabbi David Eihnorn was published Sinai, an abolitionist newspaper and Einhorn was forced to leave town by a mob that was threatening to tar and feather him.
1861: Birthdate of Lajos Blau, a Hungarian scholar, educated at three different yeshivot, who became a teacher of the Talmud at the Landesrabbinerschule and later a professor of the Bible, the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, and the Talmud. He died in 1936.
1861: Newly inaugurated President Abraham Lincoln appointed Abraham Jonas to serve as Postmaster of Quincy, Illinois.
1864(23rd of Nisan, 5624): Author and translator of poetry David Samosch passed away.
1865: It was reported today that a Jewish shoemaker named Godfrey J. Hyams was the first witness called to testify against William J. McDonald who is on trial in Canada on charges of “ making torpedoes, hand-shells, Greek fire, and other explosive missiles” to be used by Confederate agents against the United States.
1865: P. J. Joachimsen delivered a eulogy honoring the late President Lincoln at the Jewish place of worship in New Orleans, LA.
1870: The Baltimore Sun reports that the late Dr. George Frick, a resident of Baltimore, bequeathed $100.00 to the Hebrew Society of Baltimore.
1871: Fromenthal Halevy’s “Charles VI,” a grand opera in five acts was performed for the first time in Barcelona.
1871: Birthdate of German born philosopher and psychologist Louis William Stern.
1875: In Kensington, London German-born Jewish stockbroker, Victor Rubens, and Jenny Rubens, née WallachPaul Alfred Rubens “an English songwriter and librettist for some of the most popular Edwardian musical comedies” who “suffered from consumptive disease for nearly his entire adult life” which did not keep his from contributing to the success of dozens of musicals.
1878: Birthdate of Friedrich Adler the native of Laupheim who would be murdered during the Shoah in 1942.
1880(18th of Iyar, 5640): Lag B’Omer
1881(30th of Nisan, 5641): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1881(30th of Nisan, 5641): Sixty three year old French sculptor and photographer Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon passed away.
1882: Pogroms returned to Ukraine with an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence at Balta in Podolia Province.
1883(22nd of Nisan, 5643): 8th day of Pesach
1883: The New York Times featured a review of Travels in Palestine: Egypt, Palestine and Phoenicia – A Visit to Sacred Lands by Philip Bovet.
1885: Birthdate of Czechoslovakian writer and journalist, Egon Erwin Kisch. Kisch was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During World War I, he traded in his pen for a rifle in the Austrian Army. He continued his writing career after the war including a stint in Berlin. He was forced to flee the Nazis, first to Republican Spain and finally to Mexico where he spent the war. He returned to Czechoslovakia after the war where he died in 1948 as the Communists were coming to power. When the German magazine “Stern” founded a prestigious award for German journalism in 1977, it was named the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize in honor of Egon Kisch.
1887: Horace J. Young was arrested on charges of having abandoning his wife Clara, the eldest daughter of Julius Praeger, a prominent New York Jewish businessman
1887: In New York, Ida (Kuhn) Cohen and Eduard Cohen gave birth to Edwin Cohen
1889: The Young Women’s Hebrew Association will host a celebratory event this evening as part of the events marking the centennial of George Washington taking the oath of office as the first President of the United States.
1890: Rabbi David Levy officiated at the wedding of Hannah D. Moses, daughter of J.L. Moses and Thomas Moultrie Mordecai at the Hasell Street Synagogue in Charleston, SC
1891: An article entitled “Greeks Persecutes Jews” published today describes attacks by Greeks at Corfu on the Jewish population. The body of a dead child had been found in the Jewish Quarters and the Greeks spread a report that that it was a Christian girl who had been murdered by the Jews for their Passover celebration. The dead child was the daughter of Jewish leader whom the Jews claimed was murdered by the Greeks to provide an excuse for their rioting and plundering. The threat became so severe that the 6,000 Jews had to close their shops and take refuge behind a military cordon surrounding the Jewish Quarter.
1891: In Philadelphia, PA The Society Hachnasath Orechim, or Wayfarers' Lodge which was organized in 1890 was chartered today.
1892: As attempts are made to limit immigration, especially the immigration of Jews from eastern Europe, the joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States on Immigration and Naturalization resumed its investigation at the Post Office Building.
1892: As the first group of Russian Jews left Montreal to begin establishing farms in the Canadian Northwest, it was reported that if this group is successful Canadian Jews expect another 10,000 to eventually follow in their footsteps.
1892: Among the bequests made by the late Hannah O. Beebe of Yonkers was one of $50 to Jacob Freshman to be used by him for “the relief of Jews as he deems best.”
1893: “Bismarck on Anti-Semitism” published today provided a summary of an interview the German leader gave on his views toward the Jews. Based on his education, he said he “was never a friend of the Jews” which helps to explain why he opposed emancipation in 1847. His views changed in 1869 when Jewish leaders supported his programs for national development. The current reappearance of anti-Semitism following the losses suffered during a period of speculation “is natural” because the people confuse “capitalism with Judaism.”
1893: “Ahlwardt’s Baseless Charges” published today describe the conclusions of the Reichstag subcommittee that had examined the documents submitted by Hermann Ahlwardt, the leading anti-Semite, which he claimed proved that current and former officials were guilty of corruption. The committee said there was nothing in the documents to prove the accusation. Ahlwardt’s real contention was that the Jews had corrupted the German political leaders.
1894: In Quincy, Illinois, Council No 2 of the National Council of Jewish Women was formed with Mrs. J.H. Lesem as President and Mrs. Jeanie Nelke as Secretary
1894: The Board of Directors of Mount Sinai Hospital held a special meeting today adopted a special resolution expressing their sense of loss caused by the recent death of Jesse Seligman.
1894: The Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum adopted a “Tribute to the Memory of its deceased President, Mr. Jesse Seligman” co-authored by Edward Lauterbach, Oscar S. Straus and Sigmund Bach.
1895: Plans were published today about an upcoming meeting at Temple Emanu-El where the ladies of the congregation will discuss the upcoming benefit for the Hebrew Technical Institute and Educational Alliance.
1895: Samuel Untermyer of Guggenheim, Untermyer and Marshal represented the Wall Paper Company before Justice Lawrence in the Supreme Court who was hearing a case involving injunctive relief by National Wall Paper Company.
1897: “New Publications” provided a detailed review of the New American Supplement to the Latest Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica which includes a section on “the story of Judaism and the history of the Jews” written by Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch.
1898: Birthdate of Philip Palew, the native of Brooklyn, a WW I veteran who worked as an orthopedic surgeon and served on the faculty of New York University.
1898: Ali Ferruh Bey, the Ottoman Ambassador in Washington, "wrote to Istanbul in order to alert the Sultan that the aim of the Zionists was 'to establish an independent government in Palestine.' In his letter, he urged Sultan Abdul Hamid to 'take certain measures to rectify the error committed by his forefathers in allowing non-Muslim communities to settle in Palestine.' The Sultan took heed; measures were instituted to restrict the sale of land in Palestine to foreign Jews, and to oblige all Jewish visitors to leave cash deposits to ensure that they would leave the country after the visit." [For more on this see Martin Gilbert's interesting work, "In Ishmael's House;"]
1900(30thof Nisan, 5660): Eighty-seven year old Baron Mortiz von Cohn, the Dessau banker “who administered the private fortune Wilhelm I, who did not conceal his anti-Semitism during World War I, passed away today.
1901: An anti-Semitic riot broke out in Budapest.
1907: In Rzeszów, Austria-Hungary, Dr. Oskar Zinnemann and his wife Anna (Feiwel) Zinnemann gave birth to Academy Award winning director Alfred “Fred” Zinnemann.
1910: The Jewish bank in Salonika authorized the creation of a loan fund for relief of families of Jewish soldiers.
1912 In Danzig, Dr. Isaac Landau and Betty née Eisenstädt gave birth to Moshe Landau the fifth President of the Supreme Court of Israel.
1912: A codicil was added to the will of Dr. Arthur Schnitzler required that his funeral be a simple affair without obituaries, guard of honor, funeral orations or the wearing of mourning attire. The codicil also requires “that a needle be thrust through his heart to remove any doubt of his death.”
1913: A strike by 4,000 kosher bakers, members of the Journeymen Bakers’ International Union was scheduled to begin today in New York.
1916: In Ireland, “the Easter Rising”, to an end today.
1916: Simon Wolf wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing expressing his concern over reports “that there is to be an outbreak against the Jews of Russia at the coming Russian Easter” and asking him to check with the embassy in St. Petersburg to see how reliable this report is.
1917: Morgenthau resigns his as Ambassador to Turkey.
1917: During World War I, British forces under General Murray suffer a second defeat at Gaza. This defeat cost Murray his job and led to his replacement by General Allenby who would successfully prosecute the war against the Ottomans.
1918: “Jewish Draftees Given Send-Off At Camden” published today described a dinner given for Jews boys who are about to join the Army which included an address by State Treasurer William T. Read who was representing Governor Edge and an address by Camden Mayor Charles E. Ellis who “lauded the patriotism of the Camden boys.”
1919: The six-man German delegation headed by Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau arrived at Versailles to take part in the negotiations that would mark the formal end of World War I. The treaty would be attacked by the Nazis and tied to the Jews. None of the negotiators were Jews but the facts never get in the way of anti-Semitism.
1919: During the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, the Red Guards who had been “rounding up people they considered to be hostile to the new regime” as ordered by Eugen Leviné executed eight hostages today.
1920: Birthdate of composer Harold Samuel Shapero. Born in Lynn, Mass., one of Shapero's most famous works was the 9 Minute Opera. Shapero was an educator as well as composer. In 1951 Brandeis University hired Shapero to start its Music Department, and he was later chairman of the department and founder of its electronic music studio with the day's most advanced synthesizers. He taught at Brandeis until 1988 when he retired
1922(1stof Iyar, 5682): Rosh Chodesh
1922(1stof Iyar, 5682): Seventy-nine year old David Lindo Alexander, English barrister and a prominent member of the Anglo-Jewish community passed away. He was one of those who expressed “grave reservations” about what would become the Balfour Declaration and later joined “the anti-Zionist League of British Jews.”
1923: Birthdate of movie director Irvin Kershner. Born in Philadelphia, Kershner was a graduate of USC's film school. Oddly enough, he began his career producing documentaries for the USIA about the Middle East. Two of his most famous film credits were "Raid on Entebbe" and "Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back."
1924: David S. Landes, who would become “a distinguished Harvard scholar of economic history” was born today “on the kitchen table of his parents’ home in the Seagate neighborhood of Coney Island in Brooklyn.” (As reported by Douglas Marin)
1925: Dr. Florence Rena Sabin the first woman president of the American Association of Anatomists is elected the first woman member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
1926: Birthdate of Paul Baran, the Polish born American Jewish “engineer who outlined one of the core principles of the Internet in the early 1960s and went on to become an entrepreneurial businessman.
1926: Birthdate of Bob Tisch, CEO of Loews and owner of the NY (football) Giants
1927: Birthdate of Abraham Jacob Nathan who would gain fame as Abie Nathan a pilot, entrepreneur, peace activist and founder of the groundbreaking "Voice of Peace" radio station, died Wednesday at Tel Aviv's Ichilov hospital, the hospital said in a statement.
1927: Birthdate of Gertrude Neumark Rothschild “whose research helped improve light-emitting and laser diodes now used in many cellphones, flat-screen televisions and Blu-ray disc players, and who waged a successful copyright-infringement battle against some of the world’s biggest electronics companies that yielded tens of millions of dollars in settlements and licensing fees…”1927(27th of Nisan, 5687): Rachel Sassoon Beer passed away.She was the granddaughter of David Sassoon, editor of The Observer (1891–1904) and owner-editor of The Sunday Times (1893–1904). Rachel was born in Bombay to Sassoon David Sassoon, to the Sassoon family, who made their fortune in trade with the Far East. As a young woman, she volunteered as a nurse in a hospital before marrying Frederick Arthur Beer in 1887. Frederick soon suffered from an illness that changed his personality and led to his early death. Soon after her marriage to Frederick, Rachel began contributing articles to The Observer, which was then owned by the Beer family. In 1891, she took over as editor, becoming the first female editor of a national newspaper in the process.[1] Two years later, she purchased the Sunday Times and became the editor of that newspaper as well. Though "not . . . a brilliant editor], she was known for her "occasional flair and business-like decisions". It was during her time as editor that The Observer achieved one of its greatest exclusives: the admission by Count Esterhazy that he had forged the letters that condemned innocent Jewish officer Captain Dreyfus to Devil's Island. The story provoked an international outcry and led to the release and pardon of Dreyfus and court martial of Esterhazy. Frederick's death in 1903 triggered a breakdown in Rachel, with her erratic behavior culminating in a collapse. The following year she was committed and both newspapers were sold by her trustees. While Rachel subsequently recovered, she required nursing care for the remainder of her life. Rachel spent her final years at Chancellor House in Tunbridge Wells, where she died. She was interred in the Sassoon family mausoleum in Brighton. Among her relatives was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was her nephew. In her will she left a generous legacy to Siegfried, enabling him to purchase Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, where he spent the rest of his life. In honour of her request, Siegfried hung an oil portrait of his aunt over the fireplace.
1928: The New York Times published a report of a speech by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had just returned to the United States from Palestine, in which he asserted that the effects of the economic depression of the last two years are about to be overcome and that Eretz Israel is about to enjoy “growth and prosperity such as it has not known” before.
1929(19th of Nisan, 5689): Otto Jaffe, “a German-born British Jewish businessman who was twice elected Lord Mayor of Belfast passed away.
1929: Premiere of “The Woman One Longs For,” a German silent film directed by Curtis Bernhardt, with a script co-authored by Max Brod
1929: In Liverpool, Borach and Leah Moonman gave birth to Eric Moonman who served as a Laborite MP and President of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.”
1930: Birthdate of Solomon Wachtler, the New York Republican political leader, lawyer and Judge whose career ended in disgrace and imprisonment.
1931: Birthdate of editor and publisher Robert Gottlieb
1931: In Berlin,Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist gave birth the painter Frank Helmut Auerbach. In 1939, Auerbach’s parents made arrangements for him to go to Great Britain as part of the Kindertransport. They died in a concentration camp in 1942. Their son became a British citizen in 1947.
1934: “The president of the court that is trying three youths in the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, Jewish labor leader, visited the scene of the murder at Tel-Aviv accompanied by three associate judges and the prosecution and defense counsel. The party then went to the vine-yard to which the murderers are supposed to have fled after the crime…The party also visited the grounds of the Jaffa prison and inspected the cell of Abdel Megid whose confession of the murder was produced by the defense in the preliminary investigation and then retracted by Abdel Megid. The judges sought to ascertain how he could have had lengthy conversations with Abraham Stavsky, one of the three accused. The prosecution alleges that Stavsky tried to arrange to have Megid take upon himself the guilt for the murder, whereas the defense counsel contends Megid was the murderer and that his confession was retracted under pressure by police.” [Ed. Note, The murder of Chaim Arosoroff is one of the “stains” on the Zionist movement. Unknown to many, the episode resurfaced when Prime Minister Rabin was murdered.]
1936: Major Tulloch, a former army friend of Churchill’s living in Jericho wrote to the British political leader stressing that ‘the vast majority’ of the poorer Arabs were only too willing to live with the Jews ‘were it not for the way they are terrorized by their ‘leaders’ and told not to in the Arab papers.’”
1936: Birthdate of Zubin Mehta. Born in Bombay India Mehta became a world famous conductor including serving as director of the New York Philharmonic. He has conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra since around 1970 and was named its music director for life in 1981.
1936: Birthdate of Jacob Rothschild. The official name of this member of the English branch of the House of Rothschild is Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild.
1936: Birthdate of Joan Sydney Friedman, the native of Chicago, who gained fame as “Joan Peters, a journalist whose 1984 book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, drew accolades and outrage by arguing that claims of a historical Palestinian homeland in Israel were invented.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported that the newly-arrived Palestine Partition Study Commission embarked on an extensive two-weeks-long tour of the country. The Commission had announced that it was offered the good offices of the High Commissioner to reside at the Jerusalem's Government House and that it was ready to receive, at any time, written statements from all persons who desired to place their views before them. Any persons wishing to appear before the Commission were asked to contact the Secretary at the High Commissioner's address.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that a unit of Royal Ulster Riflemen found a huge arms store and arrested 31 Arab suspected terrorists at the Gilat ed Bahr village near Nablus. A curfew was imposed on the whole neighborhood.
1938: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Vilna, Poland. The modern state of Poland was created at the end of World War I. Unfortunately, during the period between the two World Wars, anti-Semitism was part of the Polish political and social landscape. Apparently anti-Semitism was endemic to the Polish culture since there was a "min-pogrom" there after the Holocaust in 1946.
1939: After a year’s imprisonment physicist Lev Landau was released from the dreaded Lubyanka prison because fellow physicist Pyotr Kapista was brave enough to vouch for him. (It is important to remember those who work to protect Jews.)
.1940: Rudolf Hoess arrived at Auschwitz to set up camp.
1942: A German truck that refueled near the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto carried luggage belonging to "resettled" Jews who had already been murdered at the Chelmno death camp.
1942: Jews were forced to wear a Jewish Star in Netherlands and Vichy-France.
1943: As she began her trip back to England, Ensign F/27 Denise Madeleine Bloch - code name Ambroise – left Agen
1943(24th of Nisan, 5703): Near Kraków, Poland, Jewish women attacked their male SS guards while being transferred from one prison to another. Two women escaped but most of the others are killed.
1943(24th of Nisan, 5703): In Kraków Jewish Resistance fighters incarcerated since December 1942 were trucked to the concentration camp at Plaszów, Poland,. Most are killed after breaking out of the truck.
1943:Rabbi Israel Goldstein, a leader of the Synagogue Council of America was quoted in the New York Times today saying of the recently concluded conference that was supposed to provide aid for Jewish refugees and victims of the Holocuast, "The job of the Bermuda Conference was apparently not to rescue victims of Nazi terror but to rescue our State Department and the British Foreign Office. Victims are not being rescued because the democracies don't want them."
1944:Rose Warfman (née Gluck) was shipped to Auschwitz as part of Convoy 72. The transport consisted of 1004 Jews - 398 men and 606 women – as well as 174 children under the age of 18. Among the Jews shipped to the death cap was Itzak Katznelson, the Polish born dramatist and author.
1944: Kistarcsa, Hungary, was the site of the first deportation of Jews from Hungary to Birkenau Concentration Camp.
1945: U.S. Troops entered Dachau, the first of the S.S.-organized camps. It was founded in March 1933. Dachau was infamous for its pseudo-scientific experiments by German doctors and scientists. The liberating troops from Seventh U.S. Army fond fifty train wagons filled with emaciated bodies. Near the crematorium another huge pile of bodies were found. Of the 33,000 survivors found at Dachau, only 2,439 were Jews. Very few Jews were left alive to liberate. In the next few weeks another 27,000 Jews from the hundreds of camps and sub- camps would still die due to illness, exhaustion and the irreversible effects of starvation. The Americans later used it as a prison camp for Nazi war criminals. Rabbi Abraham Klausner was “the father figure” for the more than 30,000 emaciated survivors found at Dachau, 10 miles northwest of Munich, after it was and later for thousands more left in camps as the Allies tried to determine where they should go.
1945: A few after his liberation by U.S. troops at Dachau, “Edgar Kupfer, a 39 year-old German political prisoner noted in his diary: ‘I shall celebrate this all my life as a second birthday, as the day when I received the gift of a life anew.’”
1945: Jan Komski was among those who liberated today at Dachau. According to Mr. Komski, “the prisoners were told to remain indoors. It was strangely quiet. Then there was the sound of gunfire. Peering outside, he saw prisoners running through the barbed wire, which had been torn to pieces. ‘Then I see first one American, and then a second and a third. Within half an hour, the whole camp was decorated with flags of all nations, probably sewn together and hidden for a long time…’”
1945: Eli A. Bohnen, a chaplain with the 42 Infantry Division entered Dachau today, giving him the dubious distinction of being the first rabbi to enter the German hell-hole.
1945: Brigadier General Henning Linden led a group of reporters including Marguerite Higgins and a detachment of the 42nd (Rainbow) Infantry Division as the soldiers received the surrender of the camp commander, generating international headlines by freeing more than 30,000 Jews and political prisoners
1945: “The advance scouts of the US Army's 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, a Nisei-manned segregated Japanese-American Allied military unit, liberated the 3,000 prisoners of the "Kaufering IV Hurlach"[54] slave labor camp.”
1945: “An Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team (code name LUXE) led Army Intelligence to a "Camp IV" today where "they found the camp afire and a stack of some four hundred bodies burning... American soldiers then went into Landsberg and rounded up all the male civilians they could find and marched them out to the camp. The former commandant was forced to lie amidst a pile of corpses. The male population of Landsberg was then ordered to walk by, and ordered to spit on the commandant as they passed. The commandant was then turned over to a group of liberated camp survivors." (As described by Joseph Perisco)
1945: Corporal Henry Senger of the 292nd Field Artillery Observation Battalion captured the commandant of Dachau today.
1945: Joshua Kaufman, a Hungarian Jew, was the first “human being” that American G.I. Daniel Gillepsie saw when he entered Dachau today.
1945: Fritz Ascher was among the prisoners liberated by the Allies when they entered Berlin-Grunewald.
1946: Forty year old Lt. Col. Martin Gottfried Weiss, the commandant at Dachau was hung today following his conviction during the “Dachau Trials.”
1948: The Haganah captured the two Arab villages just east of Bat Yam, from which attacks on Jewish road traffic into Tel Aviv had frequently been launched.
1948: Following the evacuation by British forces, the Haganah secured the police station at Zemach – a small town at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, on the Haifa-Damascus road.
1948: Haganah troops occupied the policed fortress at Gesher at the Jordan River crossing of the Haifa-Damascus road. The Arab Legion attacked the fort and the nearby Jewish settlement at Gesher. They were so confident of victory that Transjordan Crown Prince Talal came to witness the attack. The Arab Legion failed to dislodge the under-strength, outgunned Jewish defenders and retreated across the Jordan River.
1949(30th of Nisan, 5709): Rosh Chodesh Iyyar
1950: In the only protest to Jordan’s annexation of what became known as the West Bank, Menachem Begin and two of his former aides called upon Israelis to resist this occupation of Eretz Israel by the Arab army. [Ed Note: You will not find any mention of a Palestinian State, etc in any of the response at this time.]
1951:Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein,an Austrian-British philosopher, passed away. Although he was raised as a Christian, when “Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss; Wittgenstein” became “a citizen of the enlarged Germany and a Jew under the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws, because three of his grandparents had been born as Jews. The Nuremberg Laws classified people as Jews (Volljuden) if they had three or four Jewish grandparents and as mixed blood (Mischling) if they had one or two. It meant inter alia that the Wittgensteins were restricted in whom they could marry or have sex with, and where they could work.” The irony of all of this is at Wittgenstein had gone to the Realschule with Adolf Hitler.
1952: At Carnegie Hall in New York, Sarah Churchill, daughter of Winston Churchill, read a message of support from her father at an event celebrating the fourth anniversary of Israeli independence and the first meeting of the American Zionist Council, an amalgamation of eith leading Zionist organizations in the United States.
1952(4th of Iyar, 5712): Yom HaZikaron
1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that according to the planned new legislation, just placed before the Knesset, the exclusive jurisdiction of the Rabbinical Courts was to be limited to marriage, divorce and alimony. A new Tenants' Protection Bill, altered in several fundamental respects, was also in preparation.
1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that Jerusalem's acute water shortage continued after the Municipality failed to pay to the Jerusalem Electric Corporation the agreed upon immediate payment of IL27,000, on account of an IL80,000 debt.
1953(14th of Iyar, 5713): Pesach Sheni
1955: Birthdate of comedian Jerry Seinfeld who gained fame and fortune as the lead in the television series "Seinfeld."
1956(18 of Iyar, 5716): During a prepared ambush whose perpetrators included “an Egyptian policeman and a Palestinian farmer”, Roi Rotberg, the kibbutz security office at Nahal Oz was shot off his horse, beaten and shot again after which then his body was dragged into Gaza where the post- mortem mutilation included having his eyes gouged out.
1957: Birthdate of English actor Daniel Day-Lewis the son of actress Jill Balcon and the grandson of film producer Sir Michael Elias Bacon who has won three Oscars for Best Actor
1957: Jane Evans, executive director of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, spoke about the need to ordain women rabbis in the Reform movement. , at a biennial general assembly meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), the synagogue federation arm of the Reform movement, and of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS), Jane Evans spoke to 1,000 delegates in favor of ordaining women rabbis.
1963 (5th of Iyar, 5723): Yom Ha’Atzmaut, יום העצמאות15th Anniversary of Israel
1965(27th of Nisan, 5725): Yom HaShoah
1965(27th of Nisan, 5725): Freda Resnikoff, founder of the Mizrachi Women's Organization (now AMIT) passed away.
1966: Sixty-nine year old Terrence MacDermot who served as Canadian Ambassador to Israel from 1954 to 1957 passed away today.
1971(4thof Iyar, 5731): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1974: Tonight ABC began broadcasting “QB VII” a mini-series based on a novel of the same name by Leon Uris
1975: The American Sephardic Federation and United Jewish Appeal sponsored a two-week visit for Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yossef to visit the United States. He came and met with both governmental and Jewish community leaders.
1978(22ndof Nisan, 5738): Eighth day of Pesach
1978(22ndof Nisan, 5738): Ninety-five year old French pediatrician Robert Debré the father of Michel and Jean Louis Debré and the grandfather of Vincent, Francois, Bernard and Guillaume Debré passed away today.
1981: Yaacov Scherft successfully ejected from his F-4E Phantom II
1983(16thof Iyar, 5743): Eighty-six year old author and Zionist Johan J. Smertenko passed away.
1984: Hadashot, a Hebrew language daily newspaper was closed by the Israeli Military Censor for three days starting today because it had published an article about “the Ktav 300 Affair” without showing it to the authorities prior to publication.
1984:The lights in Temple Emanu-El were dimmed as 31 survivors of the Holocaust, all women dressed in black, slowly walked to 6 stands and lighted 216 candles in memory of the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
1985: “A Gigantic Death Camp” published today described the conditions at Bergen Belsen on the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Allied troops.
1990(4thof Iyar, 5750): Yom HaZikaron
1990: Release date for “Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair” a made for television movie based on the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the murder Leon Klinghoffer featuring Rebecca Schaeffer, of blessed memory, in the role of “Cheryl.”
1995: Final broadcast of NBC sitcom “Empty Nest” directed by Dinah Beth Manoff.
1996: The musical hit “Rent” premiered at the Nederlander Theatre. The original concept for Rent came from Billy Aronson a Jewish-American playwright and writer.
1998(3rd of Iyar, 5758):Yom Hazikaron
1998: In the evening, Israelis began celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of their country (although, according to the Western calendar, the anniversary fell on May 14th).
2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Was This Man A Genius? Talks With Andy Kaufman
by Julie Hecht, DazzlerThe Life and Times of Moss Hart by Steven Bach and Washington by Meg Greenfield.
by Julie Hecht, DazzlerThe Life and Times of Moss Hart by Steven Bach and Washington by Meg Greenfield.
2001: An exhibition entitled “Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections” opens at the Jewish Museum in New York City. These early years in Russia provide the key to Chagall’s long and prolific career. They also show how Yehuda Pen, the artist who was Chagall’s earliest teacher and mentor, influenced his art.
2001: Hamas claimed responsibility for today’s school bus bombing at Nablus.
2002: Cairo columnist Fatma Abduall Mahmoud declared, “With regard to this Holocaust swindle, many French studies have shown that this is nothing more than a fabrication, a lie and a fraud. But, I personally complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, ‘If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sign in relief without their evil and sin.’”
2003(27th of Nisan, 5763): Yom Hashoah
2004: Just months before his death Tzvi Tzur, the IDF’s 6th Chief of Staff,signed a letter of support in Ariel Sharon's plan to leave Gaza.
2006(1st of Iyar, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
2006: Ninety-seven year old Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini attended the session of the Senate in Rome where the candidate she supported was elected President.
2007: Maccabi USA sponsors a Tribute Brunch Honoring Richard Reff atWoodmont Country Club, Rockville, MD. Dr. Reff is a Washington, D.C. area orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine who supports the Richard B. Reff, M.D. Maccabi Youth Games Endowment Fund.
2007: An exhibit styled “Ben’s Lens” comes to a close at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Sydney, Australia. This “Photographic Retrospective by Ben Apfelbaum” follows the Jewish calendar of religious festivals, life-cycle ceremonies, carnivals, demonstrations and commemorations, documenting secular and religious Jewish life and culture in Sydney.
2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein by Martin Duberman. According to the review, Martin Duberman shows how Lincoln Kirstein, a "queer Jewish intellectual," became a cultural power.
2007: Israeli author David Grossman delivers the Arthur Miller Freed to Write Lecture at PEN’s World Voices Festival.
2007(11thof Iyar, 5767): Fifty-eight year Israeli Paralympic champion Eliezer Kalina who a leg while fighting in the Yom Kippur War passed away today.
2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents a screening of “The Cellar.”
2008:The 92nd Street Y presents“From Architecture to Infrastructure: Creating a Palestinian State” with C. Ross Anthony and Doug Suisman.
2008(24th of Nisan, 5768): Twenty-four year old Senior Airman Jonathan A.V. Yelner “was killed in Afghanistan when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device.” As reported by Maia Efrem
2009:The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents a lecture by Indiana University’s Jolanta Mickute entitled “Emancipation and Its Discontents: Jewish Women in Interwar Poland” that addresses the debate surrounding the emancipation of Jewish women in interwar Poland, and examines how the limits established by Jewish tradition, ethnicity, class, locale and gender shaped the Jewish women’s identities in the Polish host culture.
2009:The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents a lecture by Indiana University’s Jolanta Mickute entitled “Emancipation and Its Discontents: Jewish Women in Interwar Poland” that addresses the debate surrounding the emancipation of Jewish women in interwar Poland, and examines how the limits established by Jewish tradition, ethnicity, class, locale and gender shaped the Jewish women’s identities in the Polish host culture.
2009: As part of the ASF Books and Authors Series, The American Sephardi Federation features a presentation by Pearl Sofar author of “Baghdad to Bombay: In the Kitchens of My Cousins.” Sofaer was born and grew up in Bombay, India. She is a musician, artist, cantorial soloist, retired mediator and gourmet cook who shares many of the stories and recipes of her beloved family.
2009 (5 Iyar, 5769): Yom Ha’Azma’ut – Israel Independence Day
2009: As part of the Independence Day Celebration, Israel Prize winners are formally honored including Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman, Professor Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University, archaeologist Amihai Mazar, medical researcher Professor Zvi Laron, Itamar Procaccia, Reuven Tsur, Israel Levin and the Israel Democracy Institute
2009: In the United States, Yom Ha’Azma’ut Celebrations include a concert by Israeli Hip Hop/Funk/Drum & Bass group Coolooloosh at Yale University, a Yom Ha'atzmaut Shukat NYUand a community-wide celebration at Ithaca College complete with live music, food, arts & crafts, games, a hookah circle, and much more.
2009:This month's poetry reading evening at the Kensington Row Bookshop includes Michael S. Glaser, the current Maryland Poet Laureate and author of “Being a Father.”
2009: Italian officials released Youssef Majed al-Molqi, the convicted of killing Leon Klinghoffer who was sentenced to 30 years for murdering Leon Klinghoffer was released from prison today “for good behavior.”
2010: Dutch documentary filmmaker Wolf “Willy” Lindwer “was bestowed with the Dutch order Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of his work for the Netherlands.”
2010: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Innocent” by Scott Turow.
2010:The PEN World Voices Festival, Center for Jewish History and the Consulate General of Israel are scheduled to present Eshkol Nevo, one of Israel's most exciting new voices in a program entitled “Homesick: Eshkol Nevo in Conversation with Michael Orthofer.”
2010(15th of Iyar, 5770):Devra G. Kleiman, “a conservation biologist who reintroduced into the wild the tiny endangered monkey known as the golden lion tamarin, and who learned so much about the lives of giant pandas that scientists could later help them reproduce in captivity, died in Washington” at the age of 67. At her death, Dr. Kleiman was a senior scientist emeritus at the National Zoo in Washington, with which she had been associated for nearly four decades.(As reported by Margalit Fox)
2010(15th of Iyar, 5770): Avigdor Arikha passed away the after his 81st birthday
2010: Reuven Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset said that he "would rather accept Palestinians as Israeli citizens than divide Israel and the West Bank in a future two-state peace solution"..
2011:Peggy and Murray Schwartz are scheduled to launch their new book, “The Dance Claimed Me: A biography of Pearl Primus” at the 92nd St Y
2012: Filmmaker Dani Menkin is scheduled to participate in a Q&A following a screening of “Dolphin Boy” at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2012: At Kibbutz Yehudah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dr. Steve Feller, renowned professor of physics and published author on the subject of coins and money is scheduled to deliver a talk on ancient Jewish coins.
2012: Four members of Adat Reyim are scheduled to lay a wreath “at the Tomb of Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery to honor Jewish service members who gave their lives supporting the war on terrorism.”
2012:Performance Iowa is scheduled to present “Music to Commemorate the Passover Season & The Holocaust,” a live 2 p.m. broadcast from the Caspe Terrace in Waukee, IA. Featuring University of Northern Iowa faculty members Hunter Capoccioni, double bass and Dmitri Vorobiev, piano, the program will include music by Ernest Bloch, Hermann Berlinkski, Yehuda Yannay, Maurice Ravel, Tony Osborne and Max Bruch. Cantor Gail Karp will perform traditional Hebrew and Yiddish songs. Three Des Moines-area Rabbi will participate in this special program. Rabbi Yossi Jacobson, Rabbi Leib Bolel and Rabbi David Kaufman all will speak on different topics.
2012:The Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2012: The Sunday Edition of CBC Radio One broadcast David Gutnick’s documentary “It wasn’t teatime: Ethel Stark and the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra “ which tells the story of how in 1940 Ethel Stark helped establish the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra, the first all-female Canadian symphony orchestra and one of only a couple in North America. At the time, women were not allowed to play in most symphony orchestras.
2013: Theilluminated manuscript, known as the Frankfurt Mishneh Torah is scheduled to be auctioned today at Sotheby’s in New York City(As reported by Ula Ilnytzky)
2013: The 15th annual Felicja Blumental Chamber Music Festival is scheduled to open at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform at the United States Holocaust Museum.
2013: Danny Kaye, Frank Loesser and Jule Styne are scheduled to be honored at a New York Pops Concert at Carnegie Hall.
2013: Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them joined President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel to mark the 20th anniversary of the dedication of the U.S. Holocuast Memorial Museum.
2013: The IDF and the Defense ministry unveiled Israel’s Dolphin-class submarine in a ceremony in Kiel, Germany.
2014: Stuart S. Kurlander is scheduled to receive the Lee G. Rubenstein Outstanding Leadership award this evening at the Washington DCJC Spring Showcase.
2014: “My German Friend” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival.
2014(29th of Nisan, 5774): Ninety-two year old Reuven Feuerstein “an Israeli clinical, developmental, and cognitive psychologist, known for his theory of intelligence which states “it is not ‘fixed’, but rather modifiable” passed away today.
2014(29th of Nisan, 5774): Eighty-eight year old Al Feldstein, “the soul of Mad Magazine” passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Reinventing Jewishness in Post-Communist Hungary: Anti-Semitism and Jewish Renaissance.”
2015:NMAJH Chief Historian and acclaimed scholar of American Jewish history, Jonathan D. Sarna, is scheduled to discuss the importance of Lincoln's legacy for Jews and for all Americans at the National Museum of American Jewish History.
2015: “Farewell Herr Schwarz” and “Transit” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2015: Shoah survivor Morris Rosen is scheduled to speak at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2015: “A Life with Asperger’s is scheduled to be show at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, VA.
2015: The Leo Baeck Institute and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to present a lecture by Jack Jacobs based on his latest book The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives and Antisemitism