1133: Birth of King Henry II of England during whose reign Jews would prosper as reported by visitors including Abraham ibn Ezra and Isaac of Chernigov as well as the money that flowed to his coffers through the estate of Aaron of Lincoln and “the Saladin tithe.”
1179: The Third Lateran Council opens at Rome. At the end of the meeting the council would adopt the following as matters of canon law: "Jews should be slaves to Christians and at the same time treated kindly due of humanitarian considerations."”The testimony of Christians against Jews is to be preferred in all causes where they use their own witnesses against Christians."
1245: As the Mongols continued their sweep across Christian Europe, Innocent IV issued “Dei patris immense,” a Papal bull urging them to be baptized. These are the same Mongols who had destroyed the kingdom of the Khazars in 1239. Apparently the Mongols were no more impressed with Christianity than the Khazars had been since the latter, in a legendary contest, had chosen Judaism over Islam and Christianity.
1291(3rd of Nisan): Sa’ad al-Da’ulah, Jewish grand vizier under the Mongol ruler of Persia Argun Kahn was assassinated today.
1328(15th of Adar, 5088): After the death of Charles the Fair, Pedro Olligoyen, a Franciscan friar, used the Jews as a scapegoat against French rule. Starting today, Shabbat, all the Jewish houses were pillaged and then destroyed. Approximately 6000 Jews were murdered with 20 survivors. Among the dead were parents and four younger brothers of Menachem ben Zerach, “then barely twenty years old who became a scholar of commanding influence.” He was saved by “a compassionate knight” who was a friend of the young Jew’s father.
1563: Havazzelet ha-Shaon, a commentary on the Book of Daniel by Rabbi Moses Alshekh was published for the first time today.
1616: The Roman Catholic Church decreed that the Copernican theory was “false and erroneous” and that teaching or believing in the earth orbiting the sun was prohibited. For one view of Copernicus and the Jews see
1696: Birthdate of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. His fresco, “The Sacrifice of Isaac” is an example of how European artists used the Hebrew Bible as an inspiration and resource. It also is an example of how deeply entrenched Judaism is in the fabric of Western Civilization
1737: The Dragon, a fifteen ton sloop built in Lewes, Delaware was registered today by three individuals including Daniel Nunez who in 1743 registered the sloop Sally and the twenty ton sloop Molly of which he was part owner and Master. (Editor’s note- some show the date as 1738)
1767: In Boulay-Moselle, Jacob Bernard Fould, “a small-time wine dealer” and his wife gave birth to Beer Léon Fould, “the founder of the Fould banking dynasty.”
1783: King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski granted rights to Jews of Kovno.
1792(11th of Adar, 5552): Moses Alexander (Moshe ben Abraham) passed away today in London.
1798: Today French troops completely overran Switzerland, leading to the collapse of the Old Swiss Confederation where Jewish settlement had been limited to a couple of communities and creation a month later of the Helvetic Republic.
1814(13th of Adar, 5574): Seventy-four year old Solomon Pappenheim, the son of Rabbi Seligmann Pappenheim of Zulz, who was the associate rabbi at Breslau and the author of a three volume work on Hebrew synonyms passed away today.
1815: Birthdate of Austrian banker Friedrich Freiherr Schey von Koromla, the father of Charlotte Przibram and the maternal grandfather of biologist Hans Leo Przibram
1817: Birthdate of Sir Austen Henry Layard whose excavations at Ninveh helped to provided historical context for the events described in the Bible and whose discovery of the library of Ashurbanipal provided a copy of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” a flood story that in some respects parallels that of Noah and helped to establish the historicity of the event.
1820: Dutch city of Leeuwarden forbade Jews to go to synagogues on Sundays.
1828: Jacob ben Eliezer HaCohen married Keila bat Benjamin Zeev Wolf HaLevi today at the New Synagogue.
1832: In Frankfurt am Main, Charlotte and Anselm von Rothschild, a chief of the Vienna House of Rothschild gave birth their second oldest daughter Hannah Mathilde Rothschild who was known for her musical skills and who married the banker Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild, a cousin of her father with whom she had two daughters, Adelheid and Minna Caroline Rothschild.
1851: In Beisegola, Russia, David Atlas and his wife gave birth Elazar Atlas, the bookkeeper turned literary critic.
1856: In New York, Esther (Nathan) Lazarus and Moses Lazarus gave birth to Agnes Marx.
1856: Michael Heymanson married Adelaide Jewell today at the Great Synagogue.
1858: In Vienna, Simon and Marie Spitzer gave birth to Dr. Franz Spitzer
1861: Dr. Fischer delivered a paper at tonight’s meeting of the New York Historical Society entitled “The History of the Inquisition in America” that included a description of the life and death by fire of the dramatist Antonio José da Silva. Da Silva wrote most of his plays while imprisoned in a dudgeon and faced the auto de fe rather than betray the faith of his fathers.
1861: William H. Seward began serving as Secretary of State under President Abraham Lincoln. Seward had visited Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine in 1859 and it is thought that his talk about that visit may have been the factor that prompted Lincoln’s comment that when his term was over he wanted to visit the “Holy Land” during his travels aboard with Mrs. Lincoln.
1863(14th of Adar, 5623) Purim
1863: In New York, more than three thousand Jews and their friends gathered tonight at the Academy of Music to for the second annual grand ball of the Purim Association. The first grand ball took place last year and it was great success. Many of the guest came in costumes including “one lady who was dressed … in garments made entirely of Frank Leslie's paper, and was decidedly a feature of the night, as were "Joan of Arc,""Old Aunt Dinah,""Mehitabel Ann,""Old Mother Goose,""Pocahontas,""Anne Boleyn" and the "Dame aux Camelias.” One lady was dressed in the height of fashion, in garments made entirely of Frank Leslie's paper, and was decidedly a feature of the night, as were "Joan of Arc,""Old Aunt Dinah,""Mehitabel Ann,""Old Mother Goose,""Pocahontas,""Anne Boleyn" and the "Dame aux Camelias.” Myer S. Isaacs and his committee are to be congratulated for putting on such a successful event which was orderly and entertaining.
1869: Birthdate of Michael von Faulhaber who was Archbishop of Munich from 1917 until 1952 who opposed the Nazis on certain issues but demonstrated the anti-Semitism compatible with European Christianity as manifested by his work with Amici Israel among other things.
1869: The first edition of the Jewish Times appeared in New York City. Mortiz Ellinger was the publisher.
1870: In Cambridge City, Indiana, Michael H. and Rachel Levy Franklin gave birth to Leo Morris Franklin who served as Rabbi of Detroit’s Temple Beth El for over four decades.
1871: In Zamość, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg and Line Löwenstein gave birth to German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.
1871: The clause of the Constitution of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel “establishing an endowment fund for widows and orphans” “went into effect” today which meant that “the widow and orphans of a deceased member became entitled to receive $1,000 besides monthly benefits.”
1873: In Kovno, Lithuania (part of the Russian Empire), Fanny Sapira Morris and Jacob Samuel Samuels Morris gave birth to Hyman Morris who was the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Leeds.
1874: “A Gang of Swindlers” published today J. Moritz Ehrenberg, a college educated middle class Hungarian born Jew as the leader of a group of con man who have preyed on members of the American financial community in many cities. Michael Mandel, an Austrian born Jew and Henry Hertz, a Russian born Jew are two of his comrades in these larcenous schemes for which they have been imprisoned in New York and Missouri.
1876: It was reported today that a Purim reception will be held at Delmonico’s 4 days after the actual celebration of the holiday on the Jewish calendar.
1876: Birthdate of Francis Deak Pollak, the native of NYC and Columbia Law School Graduate who was a partner in the firm of Sullivan and Cromwell and served as a trustee of the Jewish Agricultural and
Industrial Aid Society.
1876: Karl Goldmark’s “Rustic Wedding Symphony premiered in Vienna today.
1878(30th of Adar I, 5638): Rosh Chodesh Adar II
1879: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi David Levy officiated at the wedding of Isaac Levy of Thomasville, GA and “Rachel Elias, the daughter of the late Levy Elias.”
1879: In New York, Judge Gildersleve is scheduled to rule on an application compelling the 3 Salomon brothers to pay six dollars a week in support of Mrs. Fanny Solomon, their 70 year old mother. She had petitioned the court for a payment of support. The sons had contested the matter claiming that their mother was financially capable of taking of herself.
1880: The would-be assassin of General Melilkoff, a leading figure in Russia, who was to be hanged today, said while be interrogated that he had converted from Judaism because it was impossible for a Jew to live in St. Petersburg.
1880: Publication of “Was Shylock A Jew”
1882(14th of Adar, 5642): Purim
1882: In Vienna, Albert Salomon von Rothschild and Bettina Caroline de Rothschild gave birth to Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild who had to pay the Nazi twenty-one million dollars to gain his freedom.
1884: Gustav Jacob Born and his first wife Gretchen Kauffmann gave birth to their daughter Kathe.
1884: In the wake of an order expelling all Jews holding foreign passports from Odessa and other Russian cities, The Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Internal Relations, St. Petersburg said that it could not provide Jewish citizens of America with Russian permits of residence.
1885: Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen completed his terms U.S. Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur during which he dealt with problems related to the persecution of Jews in Russia and Russian discrimination against American Jews trying to do business in the Czar’s empire.
1885: In Vienna, Dr. Alois Klemperer and Eugenie Jenny Klemperer gave birth to Gustav Klemperer
1887: In Great Britain Jewish novelist Benjamin Leopold Farjeon and Margaret Jefferson gave birth to Herbert Farjeon, a major force in “the British theatre from 1910 until 1945.”
1890: “Dancing For Charity” published today described the charity ball given by the Purim Association has raised between ten and twelve thousand dollars for the United Hebrew Charities.
1890: In Baltimore, MD, Benjamin and Rose Nathan Perlman gave birth to Philip B. Perlman who was appointed as U.S. Solicitor General by President Truman in 1947, making him the first Jew to hold that post.
1890: As Mr. and Mrs. Lazar Anezes and their four children are detained by the Commissioners of Emigration as paupers and the United Hebrew Charities work for their admission by offering “to go surety for them” Judge O’Brien granted a writ of habeas corpus.
1890: “Lipschutz Won Another Game” published today descried the third game of the match between Jewish chess champions Eugene Delmar and Samuel Lipshcutz at the Manhattan Chess Club which Lipschutz when Delmar “resigned” after the 49th move.
1891 In one of the earliest manifestation of popular non-Jewish support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Blackstone Memorial was sent to President Benjamin Harrison. The petition was the creation of Reverend William Eugene Blackstone and called for U.S. government support in the endeavor. It was signed by 431 prominent Americans including John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and future President William McKinley and was supported by a myriad of newspapers including the New York Times,Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. Harrison’s lack of response may have been another sign of the ineptitude that would lead voters to deny him a second term a year later.
1892: Kansas Congressman Funston was brought to tears during his visit to Ellis Island today when he saw the conditions under which the immigrants were living. A member of the House Committee on Immigration, Funston was so moved by what he saw that he took money from his own billfold and gave it to some of those whom he encountered.
1892(6th of Adar, 5652): James Solomon Moore who had suffered a stroke two years ago passed away this evening in New York City. Born at Konigsberg, Germany in 1821, he moved to England at the age of 17 where he pursued his studies while living with his uncle, P.B. Moore. He came to the United States during the 1840’s and in 1849 joined the California Gold Rush. After a successful business career, he became interested in economic theory and his advocacy of removing tarries earned him the title of “The Father of Free Trade.” He married Amelia Moore in 1854 and was a member of B’nai Jeshrun at Madison and 65th Street.
1892:In New York Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes was shot in the abdomen at his home by a beggar named Jose Mizrachee. Born in England, he had been the rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel of New York and an active member of the Jewish community, who, among other things, established the Jewish Theological Seminary and The American Hebrew. Misrachee followed the rabbi home from the synagogue and forced his way into the house and shot him during a botched robbery attempt. The rabbi’s wife and baby were in the house at the town. Emergency surgery spared Mendes and permanent harm. Mizrachee is described as an “Arabian Jew” who came to the United States in 1890. He was well known to the victim and other members of his congregation for his aggressive begging habits and his failure to be content with any “alms” that were given to him.
1893: R.H. Mcay & Co. was advertising the sale of “Passover Goods for the Holiday” including “Matzoths, Matzoth Flour and Potato Flour” for nine cents a pound on the fifth floor of its new building.
1893: It was reported today that tickets for the upcoming Purim Ball will cost ten dollars and they may be purchased from M.H. Moses as well as several other Jewish businessmen. Those wanting a box for the event must contact S.B. Solomon or Simon Schafter.
1893: At today’s meeting of The Central Labor Federation, “the Hebrew printers said they had conferred with Typographical Union, No.6”
1894: “Russian Hebrew Immigrants published today described some of the controversy surrounding the admission Jews to the United States. According to the Bureau of Immigration many of the Russian Jews are actually coming from South America where they have been living in agricultural communities financed by the Baron Hirsh Funds. The colonies in Argentina have failed and the Jews have come to the United States where they have been allowed to settle as long as they meet the legal requirements regarding health and financial responsibility. Despite criticism, the Bureau cannot turn people away because of their religion.
1894: In the New York, Assemblyman Danforth E Ainsworth, a Republican from Oswego County made use of the term “Jew pawnbrokers” while addressing the legislature.
1895: “Fortunate Hebrew Foundling” published today described the work of Henry S. Allen who has secured a place for a homeless waif at the orphanage run by the Hebrew Guardian Sheltering society.
1896: In New Haven, Pennsylvania, Aaron and Jennie Marcus gave birth to Jacob Rader Marcus, the Reform Rabbi who founded the American Jewish Archives at the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, Ohio. He passed away in 1995 at the age of 99.
1898: “Notes of Forthcoming and Recent Publications” published today described an article by Israel Zangwill written by Israel Zangwill “for the Sunday School Times on the second Moses – Moses Maimonides – without a knowledge of whom the old Hebrew prover ‘From Moses to Moses there was non like Moses,’ is meaningless.”
1898: “Bargain Books” published today listed The Jew at Home by Joseph Pennell as costing $.10
1898: “Colonel Picquart, who was disciplined for giving testimony favorable to the case of Emile Zola,” the defender of Dreyfus, “at the recent trial of the author, fought a duel with swords today in the riding school of the Military School with Colonel Henry who testified against Zola.”
1898: “New Jewish Synagogue” published today described plans for the construction of a new synagogue being built by Congregation Hand-in-Hand, the first such building to take place in the Borough of the Bronx. The congregation, which received a gift of $1,000 from Baroness Hirsch for its building fund, has been meeting at the North Side Republican Club Hall
1899: “Rabbis Will Meet in Cincinnati” published today described the decision of reform movement to hold its Annual Central in March instead of July because March marks the birthday of Dr. I. M. Wise and the rabbis wish to honor the man who mentored so many of them.
1900:“Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan,” “a play in one act by David Belasco premiered today at the Herald Square Theatre in New York.”
1900: Today Otto Jaffe, the German born Irish businessman who helped turn The Jaffe Brothers into the “largest linen exporter in Ireland before becoming Lord Mayor of Belfast was “knighted at Dublin Castle by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
1900: Birthdate of Lilli Schlüchterer who gained famed as the German Jewish doctor Lilli Jahn “who gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her letters to her five children which she wrote during her imprisonment in the labor camp Breitenau before being deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz where she was murdered.
1901(14th of Adar, 5661): Purim
1901: Birthdate of Yocheved Ba-Miriam the Russian born Israeli poet who made Aliyah in 1928 who “never wrote another poem” after her son Nahum (Zuzik) Haaz “died in the Israeli War of Independence.”
1901(NS): Birthdate of Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky who gained fame as Philadelphia architect Louis Isadore Kahn.
1902: Mizrachi (literally: "Eastern", but actually derived from the Hebrew acronym for "Spiritual Centre") was established by Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines as a religious Zionist organization based on the Basel Program and commitment to the Torah. Their slogan is "Eretz Israel for the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel." Mizrachi is a worldwide religious Zionist movement. Its main ideal is that Torah should be the spiritual center of Zionism. In Israel, it initiated the Ministry of Religion and helped pass laws for "Kashrut" and Sabbath observance in public life and in the Israel Army. During WWII, it participated in the American Zionist Emergency Council.
1902: Leopold Greenberg, one of Herzl's most devoted followers and representative in London suggests that Herzl should appear before the Royal Commission in London.
1902:26th of Adar I, 5662: Fifty-four year old New York businessman Leonard Lewisohn passed awa at the London home of his son-in-law Charles S. Henry. A native of Hamburg, Mr. Lewisohn came to the United States when he was 16 years old. He was President of the United Metals Selling Company and a philanthropist who had mad generous contributions to numerous Jewish charities.
1902: Reports of the death of Leonard Lewisohn “caused some weakness in the stock market where Amalgamated Copper declined 1 and 3/8 points.
1902: In response to the death of Leonard Lewishon who was trying “make a bull market in coffee” the coffee market opened 10 to 20 points lower than the day before but regained its losses by the close of business
1902: Louis Seligisberg, who represented the business interests of Leonard Lewisohn announced that his death would not affect the coffee business of the firm
1903: Birthdate of Irving Kahal, the native of Houtzdale, PA, the songwriter who collaborated with composer Sammy Fain (Samuel E. Feinberg)>
1903: A committee was appointed to secure a site for a new building at Hebrew Union College.
1904: The Criminal Chamber of Cassation grants Dreyfus a re-investigation of his case.
1905: Birthdate of László Benedek the native of Budapest who “worked as a writer and editor in Hungarian cinema until World War II when Louis B. Mayer helped him escape and brought him to Hollywood where he directed his first film for MGM in 1944 as a stand-in.”
1906: A description of the Pogrom in Russia provided by Abraham E. Lubarsky, a wealthy tea merchant from Odessa who has escaped to safety in New York included praise for the “Soma Borona (Self Defense)” which “is composed of armed young Jews” that Cossacks “have learned to fear.”
1909: Alianza Hispano-Israelita formed in Spain to bring about the return of Spanish Jews.
1909: Oscar Solomon Straus completed his terms as the third U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Straus had been appointed by Theodore Roosevelt and left when William Howard Taft took office. A year later Straus would return to a post he had held before, U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire.
1913(26th of Adar I, 5673): One hundred five year old Abraham Isaac Trager, a rabbi from NYC, passed away today at Columbia, SC.
1913: Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, “the newly chosen English Chief Rabbi” is scheduled to set sail for London today aboard the Mauretania today, when it is rumored that Dr. Moses Hyamson, “his principal competitor for the position” is sailing from England to New York where he is expected to become the rabbi of Orach Chaim, replacing Rabbi Hertz who had held that position.
1913: Mrs. Philip Stein is scheduled to lecture on “To and From Jerusalem” at today’s meeting of the Isaiah Woman’s Club at the Isaiah Temple in Chicago.
1915: Birthdate of French mathematician, Laurent Schwartz. His considerable mathematical work, including the theory of distributions, won him the Fields Medal in 1950. During World War II the Schwartz hid his Jewish identity by using numerous aliases including that of Laurent Sélimartin. He passed away in 2002.
1915: It was reported today that Dr. Robert Tuttle Morris the former President of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists believes that “Zangwill’s melting pot theory…is absurd biologically” because “the Jews are not going to cross with the Aryans” which means “they are not melting away” and they have “a sort of racial feeling that they must come again to rule the earth” which “keeps them together.”
1915: As of today, the Fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $532,937.14.
1916: Pianist Lois Adler is scheduled to perform during ‘the 18th regular Sunday afternoon concert” at the Chicago Hebrew Institute today.
1916: Thanks to the efforts of Isidore Hershfield of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society who was sent to Poland by HIAS, the German authorities have granted the Jews of the Governmental District of Warsaw postal privileges which will enable them to send letters asking friends and relatives for financial assistance and informing of them of lifestyle events such as births and deaths.
1916: “The sixteenth concert of the fourth season of the Sinai Orchestra” conducted by Arthur Dunham is scheduled to take place this evening at Sinai Temple in Chicago.
1917: As of today there are 200,000 Jews living in the province of Kalisch, “of whom 100,000 are destitute” and 500,000 Jews in the district of Warsaw “of whom half are in want…”
1918: Constantin C. Arion, who said that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” began his service as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs today.
1918: President Wilson ordered the removal of the sentence “The foreign born and especially Jews, are more apt to malinger than the native born” which had inadvertently been included in the manual sent to medical advisory boards in February.
1919: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow who served “as a member of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, which went to France in July, 1918” wrote today that “I am in Paris for several days and busier than ever. My last trip covered...a vast area all the way from Marseilles to Brest” where I opened up a number of centers for the Jewish War Board and delivered “a great many addresses.”
1919: In a letter published in the New York Times Emir Feisal wished “the Jews a hearty welcome home” and asserted “our two movements complete one another.” “There is room in Syria for both of us” he concluded.
1919: Birthdate of Albert J. Rosenthal, who as dean of Columbia Law School in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped increase the number of women on the school's faculty.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1921: Birthdate of Milton “Milt” Kaiman the native of Hurleyville, NY, who was a standup comedian appearing on numerous variety and talk shows as well as a frequent actor on television shows and movies whose sole Broadway credit in “The Passion of Josef D” – one of those “Jewish culture things” since it was written by Paddy Chayefsky and starred Luther Adler and Peter Falk.
1923: In Brooklyn, Russian immigrants Sadye Tisch and Al Tisch a “former All-American basketball player at the City University of New York who owned a garment factory as well as two summer camps” gave birth to businessman Laurence Tisch, CEO of CBS from 1986 through 1995.
1924: In Seattle, WA, Moe and Rose Minnie (Cohn) Bernhard gave birth to producer, writer and real estate executive Harvey Bernhard, the husband of Lillian Vera Kramer.
1925: Birthdate of Menahem Stern, the native of Bialystok and son of a mitnaged father and Chasidic mother (talk about mixed marriages) who made Aliyah in 1938 and who began his climb up the academic ladder as “Lecturer of the History of the Jewish people in the Second Temple period.”
1926: “The Bohemian Dancer” a silent film based on a 1907 operetta directed and produced by Frederic Zelnik was released today in Germany.
1926: William Fox, the chairman of the United Jewish Campaign in New York City announced today that national campaign which will begin in April will be trying to raise fifteen million dollars of which six million dollars will be raised locally.
1927: In response to a call by Bishop Manning “for a joint effort by Protestant, Catholic and Jewish churches to preserve marriage and the home” Rabbi David de Sola Pool said “he believed that such cooperation between these three religious groups was feasible and that headway could not be made against the divorce evil without it.”
1927(1st of Adar II, 5687): Rosh Chodesh Adar II and Shabbat Shekalim
1927: David Louis Podell and Sara (Cissie) Podell gave birth to Margaret A. Shulman the wife of Mark Shulman.
1928(13th of Adar, 5688): Ta’anit Esther and Erev Purim
1928: Herbert Samuel’s successor as High Commissioner, Field Marshal Viscount Plumer, a distinguished WW I commander, opened Jerusalem’s first Arts and Crafts Exhibition which was held in the Citadel at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem.
1929:John D. Rockefeller Jr. spent the day viewing ancient and historic sites in Jerusalem, including the Mosque of Omar and the Holy Sepulcher.
1929: In the Bronx, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Halpern gave birth to Howard Marvin Halpern, “psychotherapist who wrote popular self-help books about severing or realigning burdensome relationships.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)
1930: In New York, Dr. Bernard Goodman and the former Alice Matz, the heir to a fortune created by “Ex-Lax” gave birth to Roy M. Goodman who was powerhouse among liberal Republicans when there really were such people.” (As reported by Richard Perez-Pena)
1930: Birthdate of David Lawrence Goldberg, the native of Crown Heights who gained fame as political consultant David Garth, the political guru behind the elections of Mayors John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
1932: Three members of the team of athletes assembled by the Maccabee Association of the United States to participate in the Jewish Olympic Games in Palestine sailed on the SS Aquitania. The three athletes included co-captains David White and Lesslie Flaskman representing the Maccabee Association of Boston and Harold Ginsburg representing the 92nd Stree Y.M.H.A. The other ten members of the team are to sail next week on the Majestic or the Conte Grande.
1932(27th of Adar I, 5692): Parashat Vayakhel and Shabbat Shekalim
1932(27th of Adar I, 5692): A week before her 85th birthday, rebbetzin Rosa Sonneschein passed away today.
1933: Last democratic election during Hitler's lifetime. Nationalists gain 52 seats, but not enough to establish a dictatorship by consent of Parliament. The Third Reich is born.
1933:When Jeanette Wolff, an outspoken critic of the Nazis, returned home from an election campaign today and was arrested by SA men.
1934: In Tel Aviv, while visiting relatives in Tel Aviv, Ruth Kahneman gave birth to Israeli economist and Nobel Laurette Daniel Kahneman, whose father “Efrayim “was picked up in the first major round-up of French Jews. He was a key pioneer and theorist of behavioral finance, which integrates economics and cognitive science to explain seemingly irrational risk management behavior in human beings. He is famous for collaboration with Amos Tversky and others in establishing a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and in developing prospect theory. Kahneman spent his childhood years in Paris, France and moved to Palestine in 1946. He received his B.Sc. in mathematics and psychology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1954, after which he served in the Israeli Defense Forces principally in its psychology department. In 1958 he came to the United States and earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. Currently a faculty member at Princeton University and a fellow at Hebrew University, he is the winner of the 2002 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his work in prospect theory, despite being a research psychologist and not an economist. In fact, Kahneman claims to have never taken a single economics course — he claims that what he knows of the subject he and Tversky learned from collaborators Richard Thaler and Jack Knetsch. In explaining why he entered the field of psychology, Kahneman once wrote: “It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.”
1935: A brothel run by Polly Adler was raided resulting in the only conviction for which the famed madam served jail time (24 days of a 30 day sentence).
1936(11th of Adar, 5696): Observance of the Fast of Esther since the 13th of Adar fell on Shabbat
1936: The men’s division of the New York campaign of the United Palestine Appeal is scheduled to “hold a luncheon rally at the Hotel Astor” today.
1936: It was reported today that “in the House of Lords, the government’s intentions” “to establish a legislative council for Palestine” “were assailed by peers of all parties, notably by the Marquees Lothian who predicted that the proposed council ‘would exaggerate racial difficulties, not heal them’” and would lead to Chaim Weizmann using “all of his powers of persuasion at the Colonial Office…to postpone or scrap this project.”
1936: “Responding to the appeal from Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, for funds to aide Jewish refugees in various parts of Europe, leaders of the United Palestine Appeal opened a campaign here today” with a luncheon at the Hotel Astor presided over by Nathan Straus, chairman of the campaign.
1936: Jewish leaders estimated that at least thirty people had been injured during the attacks by nationalist students in Warsaw who threw “firecrackers and stench bombs in several classrooms.”
1936: “The largest single group of Jewish refugees to reach” the United States “from Germany, 200 men, women and children arrived” today “on the United States liner Washing as quota immigrants” which meant “they were admitted as permanent residents on the basis, in most case, of avowals given by relatives here that none would become public charges.”
1936: “Sir John Simon, Minister of Home Affairs, admitted today in the House of Commons there was Jewish persecution going on in the East End of London which he a attributed to the Fascist movement” – a movement led by Sir Oswald Mosely – but “denied that police had shown any political bias in the matter” i.e. supporting the Fascists.
1936(11th of Adar, 5696):Rabbi Yosef Rosen, known as the Rogatchover Gaon (Prodigy/Genius), passed away in Vienna today. Born in 1858, and raised in the Belarusian city of Rogatchov, he served for decades as a rabbi in the Latvian city of Dvinsk (Daugavpils). He was an unparalleled genius, whose in- depth understanding of all Talmudic literature left the greatest of scholars awestruck. He habitually demonstrated that many of the famous debates between the Talmudic sages have a singular thread and theme. Rabbi Rosen authored tens of thousands of responsa on the Talmud and Jewish law. Many of them have been compiled in the set of volumes Tzafnat Paneach.
1936: The Spitfire went through its first test-flights. The famed fighter plane would play a key role in the defeat of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Thanks to the Spitfire and the spirited pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Hitler’s seemingly invincible legions were stopped for the first time; the British Isles remained free and would become the launching point for the Allied invasion of Europe which would save a remnant of European Jewry. Robert Roland Stanford Tuck, known as “Lucky Tuck” was one of the Jewish pilots in the RAF who flew the Spitfire. In his case he flew it at the Battle of Dunkirk where he earned a DSO. The Spitfire was the favorite plane of Ezer Weizmann the father of Israel’s Air Force and later President of the Jewish state. He had his own Spitfire which was featured in flyovers by IDF planes during various Israeli celebratory activities.
1937: U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull offered a public apology for New York Mayor LaGuardia’s suggestion that the “1939 New York World’s Fair would include a ‘chamber of horrors’ displaying that ‘brown-shirted fanatics who is menacing the peace of the world.’” (Hull’s comments came during the hey-day of Isolationism in the United States. His apology came in the same year that the United States ignored a Japanese attack on an American gunboat in China.)
1937: Despite an apology issued by the State Department, Mayor La Guardia said he stood by his declaration that Hitler is a “brown-shirted fanatic who is menacing the peace of Europe.”
1937: British author Mary Frances Butts who had been the wife of Jewish poet and published John Rodker whose career she had worked to further and with whom she had one child passed away today.
1937: The wave of Arab terror spread into southern Palestine when an Arab entered a Jewish orange grove near the colony of Less Tzionah and shot Vladislav Louga, a non-Jewish worker from Poland, in the stomach. Louga was rushed to a hospital in Tel Aviv where he is in critical condition.
1938(2nd of Adar II, 5698): Parashat Pekudi
1938: During his sermon at the Mount Zion Congregation, Rabbi B.A. Tinter said “the non-sectarian Temple of Religion to be erected at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 was ‘one of the greatest contributions the fair will offer to posterity.”
1938: In his sermon at Mount Neboh Temple Abraham L. Feinberg warned that “dictatorship in the style of Hitler and Mussolini has become so alluring to many, even in America.”
1938: During his sermon at the West Side Institutional Synagogue, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein said, “the present trial in Moscow is the greatest indictment against liberalism” because “liberalism brought about the breakdown of the autocracy of the Czar and ushered in through Communism the slavery of the body, mind and soul.”
1938: During a sermon at Temple Ansche Chesed, Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin said he “saw in the darkness of the California floods a ray of light in the thought that so many have rallied to the aid of those who have been so unfortunate as to have lived in communities swept away by rushing waters.” (Editor’s note – Eighty years later, we are still dealing with these same California floods.)
1939: The New York Times reported that Palestine Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eugen Szenkar has just completed four subscription concerts in a tour that included stops in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where the symphony played before audiences totaling 30,000 music lovers.
1939(14th of Adar, 5699): Purim
1939(14th of Adar, 5699): Moses Gaster, the Romanian born Jewish scholar who served as Hakam of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London passed away today at the age of 82. In addition to all of his other accomplishments he was the father of the renowned scholar, Thedore Herzl Gaster.
1940: The Jewish Labor Committee, representing about 500,000 members of Jewish labor unions in the United States, sent a cable to the Labor Party in England requesting the Laborites oppose the recent British restriction of Jewish land purchases in Palestine.
1940: A delegation consisting of Henrietta Szold, Mrs. Isaac Herzog, wife of the Chief Rabbi of Palestine and “others representing the Council of Jewish Women of Palestine” met with the British High Commissioner and gave him a memorandum protesting the recent change in the land laws that was intended to be forwarded to his superiors in London.
1941: Birthdate of Alain Boublil a Tunisian musical theatre lyricist and librettist, best known for his collaborations with the composer and co-religionist Claude-Michel Schönberg for musicals on Broadway and London's West End including: La Révolution Française (1973), Les Misérables (1980), Miss Saigon (1989), Martin Guerre (1996), The Pirate Queen (2006), and Marguerite (2008).
1942: At the “Selection” of Jews at Baranowicze, Poland those sent to the left were beaten and placed in trucks where they sent away to their death in a pit just outside of town. Those on the right looked on. Of the 12,000 Jews living in the town at the start of the war, 3,500 were killed that Purim.
1942: “49th Parallel,” a British war movie based on an original story by Emeric Pressburger who wrote the screenplay and starring Leslie Howard premiered in New York as “The Invaders.”
1943: In the Ukraine, over 1,000 Jews were murdered outside the Khmeilnik ghetto.
1943: Office of Strategic Services interviews Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jewish Austrian physician who had been doctor and confidant to Adolf Hitler and his family while the future Fuehrer was growing up, and who ministered to Hitler's mother Klara during her losing battle with breast cancer.
1944(10th of Adar, 5704): Max JacobFrench writer and painter, died at the Drancy, the French concentration camp at the age of 68. Born in Brittany in 1876, Jacob converted to Roman Catholicism in 1914. He spent most of the war hiding from the Nazis and their French fascist allies. He died while awaiting transport from France to a concentration camp in Germany Apparently his conversion was not enough to get the Roman Catholic Church to intervene on his behalf. His friends, who included the renowned Pablo Picasso, saw to it that he had a fine burial after the war, but were unable to do anything so save him from the fate common to most of the Jews of Europe, great and small alike.
1944(10th of Adar, 5704):Ernst Julius Cohen, “a Dutch chemist known for his work on the allotropy of metals,” was murdered today in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. Born in 1869, “Cohen studied chemistry under Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm, Henri Moissan at Paris, and Jacobus van't Hoff at Amsterdam. In 1893 he became Van't Hoff's assistant and in 1902 he became professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Utrecht, a position which he held until his retirement in 1939. Throughout his life, Cohen studied the allotropy of tin. Cohen’s areas of research included polymorphism of elements and compounds, photographic chemistry, electrochemistry, pizeochemistry, and the history of science. He published more than 400 papers and numerous books. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1926.
1945: While excavating the site near Crematorium II at Auschwitz, Soviet soldiers found a German canteen which contained the diaries of Salmen Gradowski.One of the entries read,“At almost each block, beside the men standing in line, bodies of three, four persons are lying. These are the victims of the night that have not lived to see the day. Even yesterday they were standing members of the roll-call and today they lie, lifeless, motionless. Life is not important at the roll-call. Numbers are important. Numbers tally…” Gradowski’s diary was published in a book entitled Amidst a Nightmare of Crime: Manuscripts of the Sonderkommandowhich describes life in the death camp through the eyewitness accounts of four Sonderommandos. For more about this work, Gardowski and the others who supplied the material see
1946: Birthdate of Martin Levi van Creveld “an Israeli military historian and theorist. Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.”
1947: Birthdate of Dr. John Kitzhaber the Oregon physician who served as governor from 1995 to 2003.
1947: As the Jews of Palestine endure their fourth day of living under martial law, banks in Tel Aviv are scheduled to reopen thanks to a shipment of coins and currency in an amount equal to thirty-two million American dollars having arrived from Jeruslaem. In an attempt to exercise greater control, the British suspended the press passes of correspondents which had enabled the journalists to enter and leave zones of military occupation.
1948: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver warned the U.N. Security Council today “that the Jews of Palestine would fight for survival even without the United Nations if the world organization is unable to carry out its own decisions” i.e. the Partition vote that created an Arab State, a Jewish state and a Jerusalem governed by an international body.
1948: Actor Eli Wallach married actress Anne Jackson in what marked the start of 66 year marriage that only ended with his death.
1948: Publication of a review of Mark Hellinger’s final film, “The Naked City.”
1949: Operation Uvda, the final Israeli campaign of the War of Independence which is intended to secure portions of the Negev began oday.
1949:Negev Brigade forces set out from Beersheba to the Ramon Crater, through Bir 'Asluj. Golani forces simultaneously set out from Mamshit to Ein Husub on the first day of Operation Uvda, one of the final campaigns of the War for Independence.
1950: Jordanian political leader Samir Rifai Pasha has rejected King Abdullah’s request that he form a new government. Pasha’s refusal is tied to opposition to the non-aggression pact with Israel which was first made public on February 28, 1950. Despite Abdullah’s support, the pact seems doomed since Jordan’s political leaders do not.
1950: Iraq’s announcement that effectively, the Jewish population must leave the country within the next twelve months represents a reversal of its policy of not allowing Jews to move to Israel while completely dislocating “Israel’s immigration program for 1950.” The Jewish agency had budgeted for the absorption of 150,000 immigrants, including 50,000 from Arab countries and 50,000 from eastern Europe. Since there are approximately 150,000 Jews living in Iraq, the Israelis will have to find some way to raise additional funds allowing for the in-gathering of twice as many as Jews as had been originally planned.
1950: Daniel Frisch, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, underwent surgery today at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center today after having named Benjamin G. Bowdy, on the ZOA’s vice president, as acting president.
1952(8th of Adar, 5712): Sixty-six year old Rachael “Rae” Landy the Cleveland born nurse who helped create the health system in pre-World War I Palestine and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army passed away today.
1953: Birthdate of Michael J. Sandel, the Minneapolis born Harvard Professor “best known for his course ‘Justice.’”
1953: Stalin died disrupting plans for mass deportations of Russian Jews. The Soviet dictator was an anti-Semite. Unlike Hitler, he could curb his anti-Semitism when it suited his purposes. For example, he allowed the government of Czechoslovakia to sell modern arms to Israel at the moment of its birth. He later switched his views and followed an anti-Zionist as well as anti-Semitic policy.
1953: Lazar Kaganovich began serving as the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Soviet Union.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Lower House of the Bonn Parliament passed the first reading of the West German agreement to pay reparations to Israel and World Jewry for the Nazi persecution.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that in the Knesset, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion defined the role of the army in national life. The Knesset extended for a year the provisional military law currently in force, providing for prison terms for any form of propaganda intended to undermine the authority of the state.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Abill to legalize the requisition of land or property for the development, security or settlement, from the establishment of the State in May 1948, to the end of April 1, 1952, was presented for the second and third reading.
1954(30th of Adar I, 5714): Rosh Chodesh Adar II
1954(30th of Adar I, 5714): Forty-year old Donald Bloomingdale the son of Rosalie and Irving Bloomingdale and the onetime husband of Bethsabée de Rothschild passed away today.
1954: “The Girl in Pink Tights, a musical comedy with music by Sigmund Romberg; lyrics by Leo Robin; and a musical book by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields” opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.
1955: In the United Kingdom, Phyllis April Jaffé, child Lithuanian Jewish refugees and Stephen Eric Seabag-Montefiore, the descendant of “a line of wealthy Sephardic that included “his great-great uncle Sir Moses Montefiore” and veterans of both World Wars,gave birth to Nicholas Hugh Sebag-Montefiore the barrister turned author who wrote Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man, the ultimate “big book” about this moment in British history and who is the brother of historian Simon Sebag Montefiore who authored “the big book” on the history of Jerusalem. (Editor’s note – can you imagine what the dinner conversation was like in their home. Wow)
1955: Birthdate of Julien Dray, the native Oran which was then part of French Algeria, who became a leader of the French Socialist party.
1956:Erich Itor Kahn composer, pianist and Holocaust survivor passed away at the age of 50.
1957: Jewish comedian Phil Silvers in the role of “Sergeant Ernie Bilko” satirizes rock star Elvis Presley.
1962: “Rome Adventure,” a romantic comedy co-starring Suzanne Pleshette with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States today.
1962: In Washington, DC, “law professor and Kennedy administration member Abram Chayes and lawyer and former Undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force Antonia Handler Chayes” gave birth to Sarah Chayes “a former award winning reporter for NPR” and “a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”
1967(23rd of Adar I, 5727): Sixty-one year old Mischa Auer the native of Russia who transitioned from the Yiddish theatre to movies, which included a 1936 Oscar nomination passed away today.
1967: Last minute replacement Rodney Dangerfeld was the surprise hit of tonight’s Ed Sullivan Show on CBS.
1970: U.S. premiere of blockbuster “Airport” directed by George Seaton who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and called himself a “Shabbos Goy” produced by Ross Hunter with music by Alfred Newman.
1973: Baritone Robert Merrill (Moshe Millstein) “celebrated his 500th performance” at the Metropolitan today.
1973: Marcel Marceau appears at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, IA.
1974(11th of Adar, 5734): Solomon I "Sol" Hurok US impresario, passed away at the age of 85. Hurok was responsible for bringing a troupe of Yemenite Jews who had moved to Israel to perform in the United States. Thanks to these efforts Yemenite culture was introduced to Americans (Jews and non-Jews alike). Not only did this help to preserve an ancient part of the Jewish heritage, it helped create a positive image of Israel as a homeland for persecuted Jewry no matter where they lived.
1975(22nd of Adar, 5735): Thirty-eight year old Colonel Uzi Yairi who had become head of the Sayeret Matkal at the age of 31 was killed when rescuing hostages being held by Palestinian terrorists at the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv.
1975 After hearing gunfire from Tel Aviv’s Savoy Hotel, Private Moshe Deutschmann, a soldier from the Israeli army's Golani Brigade who was on home leave, grabbed his weapon, ran to the hotel after hearing gunfire and was mortally wounded during a firefight with terrorists who were trying to escape from the Saoy. Deutschmann was posthumously awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service.
1978: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” that would run for 147 performances began at the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre.
1978:The Jerusalem Post reported that the US State Department was upset and angered that between the time that Prime Minister Menachem Begin presented his peace plan to US President Jimmy Carter in early December, and when the same plan was submitted at the end of the month to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, significant changes were made in the text. The draft added Israel’s right to maintain security and “public order” in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and stipulated that only those Palestinians who accepted Israeli citizenship could buy land in Israel, while any Israeli could purchase land in the administered areas. The Americans demanded complete reciprocity.
1979: Twelve people were injured in Jerusalem when a terrorist bomb exploded on a bus at the Plaza Hotel.
1979: In Tel Aviv, a bomb exploded on a bus but nobody was injured.
1981(29th of Adar I, 5741): Seventy-five year old “Bernard Postal, associate editor of The Jewish Week, passed away today.
1982: Gail Winston and journalist Frank Rich gave birth to novelist Nathaniel Rich, the brother of screenwriter Simon Rich.
1982: “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can” produced by Scott Rudin and featuring David Margulies as “Walter Kress” and Ellen Greene as “Karen Mulligan” was released today in the United States.
1982: U.S. premiere of “Diner” with a script by Barry Levinson who also directed what would the first of four films set in post-war Baltimore, produced by Jerry Weintraub co-starring Steve Guttenberg and Ellen Barkin and featuring Paul Reiser.
1986: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Fast Time” produced by Amy Heckerling who directed the 1982 film on which the television series was based.
1987: Today, in Tel Aviv, Defense Minister Yithak Rabin, read a statement in English apologizing to the American government and the American people for the Pollard sypinng operation, an operation that Foreign minister Shimon Peres had characterized as a mistake.
1987: Yossi Sarad, a member of the Knesett, called for the dismissal of Rafael Etian from his job as chairman of the state-owned Israel Chemicals since he was the Defense Ministry official who organized the Pollard spying operation.
1993: In the United Kingdom premiere of “Toys” a comedy directed and co-produced by Barry Levinson who also co-authered the script and filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg.
1995: The New York Times features a review of The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition
by Anne Frank; edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler; translated by Susan Massotty
1996(14th of Adar, 5756): Purim
1997(26th of Adar I, 5757): Eighty-eighty year old Zalman Abramov the Israeli politician who had been born in Minsk, made Aliyah in 1920 and served as an MK from 1959 to 1977 passed away today.
1997: U.S. premier of “The Watermelon Woman” with music by Paul Shapiro whose specialties include Klezmer music.
1999: The Times of London featured a review of Brother Against Brother: Violence and
Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination by Ehud Sprinzak.
2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including The Unruly Life of Woody Allen: A Biography by Marion Meade, Law of Return: Short Stories by Maxine Rodburg and Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs, and Rituals by George Robinson.
2002(21stof Adar, 5762):Police officer FSM Salim Barakat (33), Yosef Habi (52), and Eli Dahan (53) were murdered today in Tel Aviv when a Fatah terrorist opened fire on diners at two restaurants.
2002: “The Vagina Monologues” with Idina Menzel opened at the West Side Theatre.
2003: Victor Brailovsky began serving as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
2003 (1 Adar II, 5763): Seventeen people were killed and 53 wounded in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus No. 37 in the Carmel section of Haifa, en route to Haifa University. The blast, which took place on the city's main Moriah Boulevard near the Carmel Center, turned the bus into a charred wreck and scattered bodies along the road. The bus driver, a Christian Arab from Shfaram, was moderately injured. Police said the bomb was laden with metal shrapnel in order to maximize the number of injuries and strapped to the bomber's body. This was the first suicide bombing in two months, following the bombing in the Neve Sha'anan neighborhood in Tel-Aviv on January 5, in which 23 people were killed. The Hamas spokesman praised the attack. The suicide bomber has been identified as a member of Hamas. A letter found on his body praised the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. The victims included the following all but two of whom died on the day of the attack:
· Kmer Abu Khamed, 12, from Daliyat al Karmel
· Yuval Mendelevitch, 13, from Haifa
· Smadar Firstatter, 17, from Haifa
· Avigail Lietel, 14, from Haifa
· Asaf Tzur, 16, from Haifa
· Daniel Harush, 16 , from Safed
· Tom Hershko, 16, from Haifa, and his father-
· Motti Hershko, 41, from Haifa
· Tal Kehrmann, 17, from Haifa
· Elizabeth (Liz) Katzman, 17, from Haifa
· Meital Katav, 20, from Haifa
· Moran Shushan, 20, from Haifa
· Anatoly Biryakov, 20, from Haifa
· Be'eri Ovad, 21 , from Rosh Pina
· Eliyahu Laham, 22, from Haifa
· Miriam Atar, 27, from Haifa
· Mark Takash, 54, from Haifa
2003: Victor Brailovsky begins servicing as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
2005: "Dear Esther," an Arizona Jewish Theatre Company production had its last performance in Phoenix, Arizona. The play is based on the life of Esther Rabb and her experiences as recorded in “Escape from Sobibor” about the 1943 uprising.
2006(5th of Adar, 5766): Eighty-four year old Haifa native Yael Alingham, the daughter of Yehiel Weitzman, wife of Conal Wolsey Allingham and the sister of Israeli pilot, politician and president Ezer Weizman passed away today.
2006: A restoration of a 1942 freight car, the type used to carry Jews to death camps went on display at the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Texas. The freight car is intended to symbolize the penultimate step in the industrialized mass murder of the Jews of Europe.
2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Absolute Convictions, a biography of Dr. Shalom Press by his son Eyal Press, The Case for Goliath:How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century by Michael Mandelbaum and Intuition by Allegra Goodman.
2007: CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Class” a sitcom created and produced by David Crane and starring Lizzy Caplan and Jon Bernthal.
2007: Opening of an exhibition styled “Studio Man Ray: Photographs by Ira Nowinski” at the
Judah L Magnes Museum.
2008: Sheldon Adelson ranked #12 on the list of The World’s Billionaires published today.
2008(28th of Adar I, 5768): Joseph Weizenbaum “a German-American author and professor emeritus of computer science at MIT” passed away.
2008: As part of “Hadassah on Tour,” Dr. Michael Wilschanski, the Director of the Pediatric Gastroenterology Unit of the Division of Pediatrics at Hadassah Medical Center, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, speaks in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.
2008: A Yarhtzeit on the civil calendar - Five Year Anniversary of the bombing of Egged Bus 53 carried out by a Hamas suicide bomber who killed 17 innocent civilians.
2008: Following the completion of Operation Hot Winter, today “Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office announced that Israel would maintain its pressure on Hamas.
2008: In “A City That Was and Is No Longer” published today, Aharon Appelfeld examines the history of Czernowitz
2009: Israeli model Bar “Refaeli received the World Style Award presented by the Women's World Awards for her "natural elegance, sense of style and compassion/.”
2009:Sherman Oaks-based mortgage banker Bruce Friedman, whose Friedman Charitable Foundation committed $10 million to the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles and $1 million to Brandon’s Village, a special-needs park in Calabasas, was indicted on securities fraud charges today by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
2009:Professor Anat Helman of Hebrew University delivers a talk and visual presentation exporing the deeper meanings of Israeli styles of the 1950s at Rutgers University entitled "Fashion and Identity in Israel in the 1950s."
2009:An exhibition of paintings by Simon Black who was raised in a close knit Jewish family in Prestwich and attended Stand Grammar in Whitefield came to an end.
2009:An Arab terrorist attacked police officers and civilians in Jerusalem with his bulldozer today
2010: The Washington DCJCC is scheduled to host Interfaith Couples Shabbat Dinner with Rabbi Tamara Miller explaining the rituals while attendees enjoy a traditional Shabbat Dinner.
2010: A major security exercise is scheduled to take place today at the Sha'ar Ha'ir building in Ramat Gan, next to the Diamond Center. The exercise will begin at 7 AM, and will entail movement of soldiers, police, rescue workers, and firefighters, who will practice life-saving and evacuation techniques in preparation for the possibility of a terror or gas attack in the area.
2010:Clashes broke out between Israeli police officers and Muslim rock throwers at the end of Friday prayers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem following a sermon on a recent Israeli decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites.
2010: Vandals have defaced a former Nazi concentration camp with anti-Jewish and anti-Turkish graffiti, Austrian authorities said today. The spray-painted graffiti extends about 10 meters (33 feet) along the wall of the former Mauthausen concentration camp, which is now a memorial site, according to police in Upper Austria province. The vandalism was discovered this morning and is being investigated, police said. Local politician Josef Ackerl, a Social Democrat, said the incident showed the urgent need to monitor the extreme right better. A similar incident happened in February 2009. The Nazis murdered or worked to death about half of the 200,000 inmates in Mauthausen's main camp and its affiliates. The camp got its name from the nearby town of Mauthausen, about 155 kilometers (96 miles) west of Vienna.
2010: Marc Trestman of the Montreal Alouettes Marc “won the Coach of the year award.”
2011:Ravid Kahalani, a veteran of Israel’s renowned Idan Raichel Project who uses his music to showcase his Yemenite-Jewish heritage is scheduled to appear in Berkeley, CA at opening night of the Jewish Music Festival.
2011: Israeli sculptor Ohad Meromi is scheduled to host a series of events as the culmination of his evolving New Commission project in New York City.
2011: Leonard I. Weinglass, filed brief on behalf Mumia Abu-Jamal that was part of “a post-conviction motion to vacate the conviction of his client,” (Weinglass was Jewish; Abul-Jamal was not)
2011(29 Adar I): Shabbat Shekalim
2011:A computer glitch which had been preventing the flow of natural gas at the Mari-B natural gas field operated by the Yam Tethys conglomerate off of Ashdod was fixed after several hours today.
2012: “A Child of the Ghetto” is scheduled to be shown at Prague in the Czech Republic.
2012: The second of the annual AIPAC Policy Conference capped off by an gala evening event is scheduled to take place in Washington, DC
2012:Yeshiva University Museum with Fantagraphics Books is scheduled to present: “Diane Noomin’s Graphic Details: Glitz-2-Go Book Launch.”2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Barak Obama at the White House.
2012: President Shimon Peres today praised US President Barack Obama's speech to the AIPAC annual policy conference, saying he had offered the maximum support for Israel that an American president could possibly offer.
2013: The field of candidates in today’s Mayoral election in Los Angeles includes Wendy Gurel a synagogue attending Christian married to a Jew whose 10-year-old son studies Hebrew and is being raised in the Jewish tradition, City Councilman Eric Garcetti whose mother is Jewish and City Councilwoman Jan Perry, an African-American who converted to Judaism while in college. (As reported by Bill Boyarsky)
2013: Iranian born Israel singer Rita Yahan-Faourz, known simply as Rita, sang in Persian, Hebrew and English at performance in the UN General Assembly Hall tonight.
2013: The London Sinfonietta, conducted by Brad Lubman, at the Royal Festival Hall in London gave the world premiere of Radio Rewrite for ensemble with 11 players, inspired by the music of Radiohead.
2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a lecture by Zalmen Mlotek entitled “100 Years of Yiddish Theater Music.”
2013: Defense Minister Ehud Barak is scheduled to meet with newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel today. This will be Hagel’s first meeting with a foreign defense chief since his confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
2013: The AIPAC conference is scheduled to come to an end in Washington, DC
2013(23rd of Adar, 5773): Eighty-seven year old actor and director Arthur Storch passed away today.
(As reported by Paul Vitello)
2013:The daughters of a Yiddish writer persecuted under communism reclaimed copies of his works today, following a prolonged legal fight to establish their ownership.
2013: The first Hebrew language edition of Playboy magazine was launched in Tel Aviv.
2013: Thousands attended the funeral of Menachem Froman in the Judean Desert settlement of Tekoa today, remembering the mystic rabbi and activist as a unique figure in Israel’s religious and political landscape.
2014: The Library of Congress is scheduled to host “Dancing in Jaffa,” Diane Nabatoff’s documentary about ballroom dance Pierre Dulaine.
2014: “The Women Pioneers” and “Shtisel” are scheduled to be shown at the 24thWashington Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The Jewish Study Center is scheduled to present “Two 20th-Century Theologians: Herberg and Soloveitchik”
2014: “If/Then” a musical featuring Idina Menzel is scheduled to open at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
2014: Today, IDF Special Forces intercepted a ship in the Red Sea carrying an Iranian arms shipment headed for the Gaza Strip
2014: The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the United States-Israel Strategic Alliance and Security Act, which is aimed at further enhancing the two countries’ already strong defense relationship
2015(14thof Adar, 5774): Purim
2015(14thof Adar, 5774): Eighty-eight year “award winning documentarian” Albert Maysles passed away today. (As reported by Anita Gates)
2015: The funeral for Chabad Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the husband of Esther Rochel Moscowitz and the father of nine children is scheduled to take placed today in Chicago.
2015: This evening the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a “Purim Spiel.”
2015: “The elections for the 20th Knesset have officially begun for thousands of Israeli diplomats across the globe” today. (As reported by Raphael Ahren
2015: “Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Channel 2 interview previewed today, calling his speech before Congress “bullshit,” and charging that his policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians endangered the Zionist dream. (As reported by Avi Lewis)
2016(25thof Adar I, 5776): Shabbat Shekalim
2016: The board of trustees of Oberlin College in Ohio “has denounced as ‘anti-Semitic and abhorrent’ social media post” by Joy Karega, a professor in the rhetoric and composition department that referred to ISIS as a “C.I.A. and Mossad organization.”
2016: The Jewish Children’s Regional Service (JCRS) which has been serving families since 1855 is scheduled to host its annual fund-raiser “The Jewish Roots of Celebration!”
2016: “Wedding Doll,” starring Moran Rosenblatt and Asi Levi is scheduled to be shown at the Charlotte Jewish Film Festival.
2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman, The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky, Well Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie by Noah Isenberg and Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905-1953 by Simon Ings.
2017: The Jewish Historical Society and Congregation B’nai Israel are scheduled to host “The Release of Natan Sharansky: The Back Story” during which “John Martin - former FBI agent and Director of the Department of Justice Internal Security Section - will discuss the behind-the-scenes negotiations leading to the release of former Soviet refusenik Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, and share never-before-seen film footage of Sharansky's 1986 historic crossing of the snow-covered Glienecke Bridge to freedom.”
2017: In Atlanta, The Breman Museum is scheduled to continue it “Bearing Witness” program during which Hungarian native Murray Lynn will share his story of survival.
2017: WLIW is scheduled to broadcast the television concert “Dudu Fisher in Jerusalem.”
2017: In London, Sarah Kaminsky spoke about Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life, the biography she wrote about her father.
2017: “An NYPD spokesman said” today “that the department’s hate crimes division had been notified of the “headstones toppled in a Brooklyn Jewish cemetery” yesterday.
2017: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to sponsor an “all-day festival to launch the special issue of the journal East European Jewish Affairs featuring “opening remarks by guest editor Anna Katsnelson” and including “panels on current issues in the field of Russian Jewish American cultural production, writers and visual arts.”
2018: The annual AIPAC Conference is scheduled to continue for a second day.
2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to co-sponsor a talk by Liliane Umubyeyi, a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda who “has been named Ultimate Campaigner of the Year for her work with Survivors Fund, of which she is a trustee.”
2018: President Trump is scheduled to meet in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with hopes of soon reaching a long-sought Mideast peace agreement, as both world leaders try to make international progress amid the strains of domestic investigations into each of their governments. (As reported by Joseph Weber)
2018: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.