December 4
771: King Carloman dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne King of the entire Frankish Kingdom. Following the death of their father, King Pepin the Short, the two brothers had each ruled a portion of the realm. The sharing was not a peaceful process. For once the consolidation of political power in the hands of one monarch worked to the advantage of the Jewish people since Charlemagne was favorably disposed to his Jewish subjects even to the point of willingly defying the edicts of powerful prelates.
1075: Anno II, the Archbishop of Cologne passed away, an event reported to have been lamented by the Jews who lived in a Jewish Quarter first mentioned during his episcopate.
1110: The Syrian harbor city of Saida (Sidon) surrendered to Crusaders. The Crusader success would prove to be only temporary. Sidon was one of the original Phoenician trading cities and it is the same Sidon from which Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in the summer of 2006.
1197: During the Third Crusade, the wife and daughters of Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymous of Worms were murdered and his was mortally wounded. Born in 1165 in Germany, Rabbi Eleazar was “a Kabbalist, Halachic scholar and religious poet. In Sefer ha Hokhmah (The Book of Wisdom) he described the loneliness he felt after the death of his family and his teacher Judah he-Hasid. He passed away in 1230, leaving behind a body of writings that has influenced Kabbalists down to our own times.
1259: Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agreed to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels. There was nothing positive in this for the Jews in this. Louis IX attacked the financial well-being of his Jewish subjects, going so far as to expel them as a way of financing the Seventh Crusade. He also burnt 12,000 Jewish books including copies of the Talmud. Henry also attacked the financial well-being of his Jewish subjects, milking them for all they were worth. When the Jews sought to leave his kingdom, he stopped them as a way of protecting a valued source of tax revenue.
1334: John XXII, the second of the Avignon Popes passed away. Sangisa, the sister of John XXII, urged her brother to ban the Jews from Rome. At first he ignored her. But finally, in 1321, He gave in and issued an order of expulsion. The Jews responded with fasting and “fervent prayers. At a more practical level, they turned to King of Robert of Naples for support and sent a delegation to Avignon with 20,000 ducats for the Pope. This combination of divine and temporal intervention worked since the Jews were allowed to remain in Rome.
1489: The Spanish army captured Baza from the Moors. The Battle of Baza was part of the lengthy conflict between the Catholics and the Moors. Slowly but surely, they were driving the Moslems of Spain back across the Mediterranean to North Africa from whence they had come over seven hundred years before. Within 3 years, the Moors would be driven from the Iberian Peninsula and Spain would be united as a Catholic Kingdom. This would lead to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
1539: The Turkish Sultan known as Suleiman the Magnificent occupied Baghdad. Suleiman’s reign, which lasted until 1560, marked the zenith of Turkish power. The sultan, like his predecessors, employed a Jewish physician. Jews held positions of prominence at court and in the world of commerce. Unfortunately, the continued prosperity of the Jewish community always depended on the caprice of the various Sultans who occupied the throne.
1642: Cardinal Richelieu, the “power behind the throne” during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV passed away. The decrees issued in their name were probably the product of this churchman turned “chancellor” including Louis XIII reaffirmation issued in April, 1615 of the ban on Jews living in France and Louis XIV’s declaration granting the Jews of Metz the right to conduct business after the French took the city in 1632.
1655: Oliver Cromwell convened a gathering of English notables at Whitehall to decide if the Jews should be readmitted to England. Cromwell was a strong proponent of readmission as were most of Cromwell’s military and government leaders. Members of the Millenarian and Sabbatarian sects also favored readmission. Opposition came from the merchants and the mainline Christian clergy. When realized that he would be unable to gain the complete support for his plan to readmit the Jews to England so he dissolved the Council rather than suffer defeat. The conferees did agree that that there was no legal reason not to re-admit the Jews since they had been expelled by royal decree and not by an act of Parliament. In the mean time, Cromwell accomplished his goals through a round-about manner and by 1657 there were enough Jews in London who felt confident in being able to practice their faith in public that they purchased a private home to be used as a synagogue.
1655: Middelburg, Netherlands forbade the building of a synagogue.
1674: French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette erected a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan, in present-day Illinois. His log cabin became the first building of a settlement that afterward grew to become the city of Chicago. Chicago is of course, the home of one this country’s largest and most vibrant Jewish communities as well as some of the finest Jewish families around including that of my aunt and uncle, Dr. Jacob and Betty Levin and that renowned photographer and alum of the College of Jewish Studies, Harvey Luber and his wife.Just think, if it had not been for Marquette, there would not have been a home for Chagall’s Windows (the Art Institute) Sarah Lee Bakery or a Crate & Barrel (the latter two were founded by Jews in Chicago).
1679: Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, passed away. Born in 1588, “Thomas Hobbes was foremost among the seventeenth century political philosophers who led the Western world across the fault line separating classical from modern political philosophy. In doing so, he, like his other colleagues, had to confront not only classical political philosophy but the Bible. From the first of his writings to the last he consistently confronted Scripture. Reading Hobbes reveals both the ambiguity and the ambivalence of his confrontation with the Bible. Hobbes wished to assault orthodox or conventional Christian belief but at the same time is drawn to the Hebrew Scriptures, not only because it is necessary for him to confront it for the sake of his argument or because of the Bible's own elemental and compelling power. His struggle foreshadows and is even paradigmatic of that of modern man. The most neglected aspect of Hobbes's attempt to solve the theological-political problem is his reliance on divine punishment of the iniquitous sovereign.” He uses the murder of Uriah by King David to discuss this part of his political philosophy. In his writings, Hobbes elaborates a conception of the Messiah in his political treatises that is unusual because it seems to combine Jewish and Christian elements. He asserts that Jesus is the Messiah in the sense of being the earthly king of the Jews as well as the Son of God and king of heaven. To clarify Hobbes's position and to highlight its strangeness, it is compared with the views of Moses Maimonides and Blaise Pascal. Hobbes emerges from this comparison as a spokesman for a kind of "Jewish Christianity," whose purpose is not to return to the early Jewish sects that embraced Jesus as a new Moses but to humanize the Messiah and to redefine Christianity for a new age of secular happiness. Hobbes thereby inaugurates a new kind of biblical criticism which the Deists of the enlightenment era developed and which continues today. This incomplete entry about Hobbes reinforces the many different ways in which Jewish Culture as opposed to Jewish people influenced the development of Western Civilization.
1762: Catherine II of Russia permitted foreigners to settle and travel in Russia "Kromye Zhydov." However Jews were still forbidden to settle there. Catherine II may have been the Great to some Russian nobles but she certainly was certainly.
1772(OS): Birthdate of Dov Ber of Mezeritch, known as the Maggid, the leading disciple of the Baal Shem Tov and his successor as leader Chassidic Judaism.
1790: The citizens of Trnava, addressed a petition to the Diet in Hungary at the same time as the Jews did asking that their rights be upheld. The Diet approved the petition of the Jews and sent word to King Leopold II.
1791: In London, the first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper was published. In 1891, Rachel Sasoon Beer, the granddaughter of David Sasoon and daughter of Sasoon David Sasoon was named editor of the Observer making her the first female editor of a national newspaper. During her tenure as editor “The Observerachieved 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.”
1811 (18th of Kislev, 5572):Rabbi Baruch Mezhibuzher the son of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov’s daughter, Adel, and her husband, Rabbi Yechiel Ashkenazi passed away. He was born in 1753 in Mezhibuz, the town from which his illustrious grandfather led the Chassidic Movement. He was one of the Rebbes (Chassidic masters) in the 3rd generation of Chassidism, and had thousands of followers.
1829: A fired destroyed the building housing Congregation Mikveh Israel in Savannah, Georgia. The building had been consecrated in 1820 making it the first synagogue to be built in “The Peachtree State.” Fortunately, the congregation’s Torah Scrolls were saved from the fire.
1852: Today’s edition of the Times of London devoted sixteen columns to the speech given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, on the subject of taxation. The speech, which was well received, contained proposals to change the Tea Duties and the Income Tax. The lengthy article also included copies of the tables that Mr. Disraeli used.
1853:The "Shaare Zedek Hebrew National School," erected in the rear of the Henry-street Jewish Synagogue, was consecrated this afternoon. The congregation to which the School is attached has been in existence about sixteen years. The ceremonies began at 3 pm with religious services that included a sermon by Rabbi H.A. Henry who has been chosen to serve as the school’s superintendent. Services were followed by a “banquet” in one of the school’s room. Mr. Mendel Joseph, President of the Building Committee, addressed the attendees. The meal included the recitation of the proper Hebrew prayers both before and after eating.
1858: A crowd of 2,500 Christians and Jews gathered tonight in New York City to express their indignation over what has come to be called the Mortara Affiar. The event was chaired by Jonas Phillips, the ex-President of the Board of Common Councilmen. Among the resolutions passed were ones that recalled the response of the United States government to the Damascus Affair in 1840. The speakers all separated the actions of those involved in taking of the Mortara family from the Roman Catholic religion and stated their respect for their fellow citizens who were adherents of that religion. Among those in attendance was Mr. A.M. Phillips Levi from Montreal who had traveled from Canada to express that Jewish community’s solidarity with the other Jewish communities that had expressed their outrage and called for a return of the Mortara child to his parents. The speakers included leaders of the Jewish community as well as prominent non-Jews including Chauncey Shaffer, Esq. and Reverend Blair, a Methodist clergyman.
1860: Birthdate of actress and singer Lillian Russell, the native of Iowa who married the Anglo-Jewish composer Edward Solomon in 1884, two years before he was arrested for bigamy.
1861(1st of Tevet, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
1864: Romanian Jews were forbidden to practice law.
1864: A meeting was held today in Philadelphia, PA that resulted in the establishment of Maimonides College, “the first Jewish theological seminary in” the United States. The school which was designed to train rabbis for the numerous synagogues opening this country began operating in 1867. It closed its doors 6 years later in 1873 due to a lack of support.
1866(26th of Kislev, 5627:Evelina Gertrude de Rothschild passed away during childbirth. She was a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England. Her father Lionel assumed sponsorship of the first school for girls in Israel, opened in Jerusalem in 1864, renaming it the Evelina de Rothschild School.
1873: It was reported today that last month’s overflow of the Tiber River created a novel situation in Rome. Some of the Jews whose homes were flooded have been temporarily lodged in the Covent of Ara Caeli one of the religious orders recently disbanded by the new, republican government of Italy. In the new Italy, including the formal Papal States, there is no distinction of citizenship based on religion.
1875: Mr. Emanuel B. Hart appeared before a special meeting of the Board of Police to request that anti-lottery laws not be enforced in matters pertaining to the Hebrew Benevolent Fair. Hart told the board that if the laws were strictly enforced the fair would not be able to raise the funds to support local charities. The members of the Board denied the request saying that the police would halt any drawing that violated the lottery laws.
1878: It was reported today that Romanian leaders continue to oppose granting Jews full rights as citizens as promised by the Treaty of Berlin. As non-citizens, Jews are not allowed to own land which means Romanian nobles can borrow money from Jews without fear of losing their estates when they default on the loans. If Jews were citizens were made citizens, the nobles could no longer swindle them out of the money owed.
1880: It was reported today that in Germany, “The Jewish question continues to attract much public attention. Newspapers are debating it, pamphlets are pouring forth, tumults are taking place among the students and an occasional fracas still occurs in the streets.”
1880: It was reported from Berlin that in light of the wave anti-Semitic agitation sweeping German, a large number of “eminent Jews” are meeting to consider ways of defending themselves including the establishment of a newspaper to support their position.
1880: It was reported that an article published in the Grenzboten seeks to refute that Chancellor Bismarck is sympathetic to the anti-Semitic movement championed by Court Chaplain Stoecker.
1880: Sarah Bernhardt is scheduled to give her last two performance in New York – a matinee during which “Hermani” will be repeated followed by an evening featuring “Frou-Frou,” “La Dame aux Camelias” and “En Passant.”
1881: The first edition of the Los Angeles Timesis published. Sam Zell bought the Tribune company, including the LA Times, in 2007 making him the first Jewish owner of the paper.
1882: U.S. Army Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr. a West Point graduate and hero of the Civil War was promoted to the permanent rank of Lt. Colonel. He was brevetted to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the last months of the Civil War “for distinguished served in the field…” For those of you who know anything about the U.S. Army, this means the rank was “temporary” and that for official purposes he returned to the rank of Major when peace arrived. Promotion in the peace time army was much slower. This promotion does reflect the high esteem in which Mordecai was held as will be seen when reaches the rank of full Colonel.
1882(23rd of Kislev, 5643): Twenty-three year old Mortiz Zuckerman, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, hanged himself today apparently because he had lost his job and was unemployed.
1884: Mrs. Mandelbaum, the “fence” who disappeared from New York arrived at Oelan at three o’clock this afternoon with a package of lace that she tried to sell to several local “rich people.”
1884(16thof Kislev, 5645): An unidentified 5’9” Jew approximately 48 year in age committed suicide at 7 p.m. when he shot himself while sitting on a bench near the Farragut monument.
1888: Aline Caroline, daughter of Gustave Samuel de Rothschild and Sir Edward Albert Sassoon gave birth to Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, the grandson of Albert Abdullah David Sassoon.
1888: In Brooklyn the weeklong fair that is a fundraiser for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum will come to an end this evening.
1889: Commissioner Hermann von Wissmann, the leading German official in East Africa met the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition and took it to Bagamoyo where a banquet of welcome was held. Emin Pasha was a Silesian born Jew named Isaac Edward Schnitzer who converted to Christianity and then to Islam so that he could further his career in the Ottoman Empire.
1889: Members of a party of fifty Jews passing through Pittsburgh on its way to Jerusalem would not comment on the possible outcome of their “pilgrimage, saying that the future depends entirely upon the laws of the country, concessions which may be secured” and the desire for future settlement.
1891: The Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway line reached Deir Aban (today's Beit Shemesh) as it made its way from the seacoast to the City of David.
1892: It was reported today that the Monetary Conference at Brussels is debating the plan presented by Albert de Rothschild.
1892: It was reported today that those Jews who convert to Greek Orthodoxy in compliance with the Moscow Chamber of Commerce’s requirement for them to be able to do business in the city “will still be placed on probation for three years” and required to live in village five miles from Moscow.
1892: Birthdate of Francisco Franco. Whatever his other short-comings, Franco has a surprisingly positive record when it comes to the Holocaust. For most of the war, he did not close the border with France to escaping Jews. He did not return Jewish refugees to the Nazis and allowed many of his foreign legations to provide letters of transit making it possible for thousands to escape Hitler’s Henchmen.
1893(25thof Kislev, 5654): Chanukah
1894: Alderman “Silver Dollar” Smith was arrested between 2 or 3 o’clock this morning on charges that he had attacked a saloonkeeper named August J. Gloisten. During his arraignment this morning Smith said that he had been born in Germany at which time he was named Charles Finkelstone. He got his nickname of “Silver Dollar” came from the fact that 1,000 silver dollar pieces were embeeded in the floor of his saloon at Essex Street. “Silver Dollar” Smith was Charles R. Solomon a Tammany Hall leader of the 10th District. His saloon “was one of the sites of operation for the Eastman Gang, run by Jewish gang leader Monk Eastman…and a member of the Max Hochstim Association, also known as the Essex Market Court Gang.” Besides the silver dollars, Smith was known for hosting Passover celebrations at the saloon.
1895: Hermann Ahlwardt the German anti-Semitic agitator from Berline is scheduled to arrive in New York today aboard the SS Spree.
1897: The merit examination for the position of official Supreme Court reporter in the First Judicial District, which requires a fluency in “Hebrew jargon” is scheduled to be given today. (Hebrew jargon refers to Yiddish)
1898: The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum Band is scheduled to perform a fund raiser sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society at the Lexington Avenue Opera House.
1899: Dr. Isaac M. Wise, President of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati praised the late Baron Hirsch as ranking “among the greatest philanthropists of the century equaled only by his wife Baroness Hirsh. He did all the good one millionaire could possible do, or ever did do, for the poor, neglected and persecuted.” Wise was speaking in support of plans to build a statue in New York honoring Baron Hirsch.
1899(2ndof Tevet, 5660): Eighth of Chanukah, the end of the last celebration of the holiday during the 19th century.
1899(2ndof Tevet, 5660): Seventy-three year old Leopold Ullstein the founder and publisher of several successful German newspapers, including B.Z. am Mittag and Berliner Morgenpost passed away today. The Nazis would take over his publishing empire in 1934 and his son Hermman Ullstein would flee the country in December of 1938.
1900: Birthdate of Waldemar Levy Cardoso, the Algerian-Moroccan Jew born in Rio de Jenerio who became a Field Marshall in the Brazilian Army.
1903:Herzl reports in his diary: "The Russian members of the A. C., particularly Usshiskin, Jacobson, etc. are in open rebellion."
1908: Birthdate of Alfred Hershey. Hershey was an American biologist who, along with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1969. The prize was given for research done on viruses that infect bacteria. This was the famous "blender experiment" (1956). Hershey used an isotope- labeled phage to infect a bacterial colony and begin to inject their genetic material into the host cells. Then he whirred them in a blender to tear the phage particles from the bacterial walls without rupturing the bacteria. Upon examining the bacteria, Hershey found that only phage DNA , but no detectable protein, had been inserted into them. This showed that the DNA was sufficient to transfer to the bacteria all the genetic information needed to produce more phage. He passed away in 1997.
1910: The New York Times features a review of The Life of Benjamin Disraeli: The Earl of Beaconsfield by William Money. This is the first volume of a multi-volume work covering the years 1804 through 1837. The book sold for three dollars.
1912: Birthdate of David Amato, second son of Abraham Amato and father of Leah Amato Franco. A graduate of George Washington University, Amato had a successful career the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Board before accepting a position with the American diplomatic corps to help the Mexican government in the field of vocational rehabilitation.
1914: U.S. State Department informs American Jewish Committee that it will not expel Russian Jews who sought refuge in Turkey, but will permit them to become naturalized citizens.
1917: British forces under General Allenby “launched an assault on Turkish positions all around Jerusalem.”
1918: In Atlantic City, NJ, Rhea and Alfred Ettigner, 2 immigrant Jews, gave birth to Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger, a science fiction writer and physics instructor whose idea of freezing the dead for future reanimation repelled most scientists…and persuaded at least 105 game humans to pay $28,000 each to have their bodies preserved in liquid nitrogen at his Cryonics Institute in suburban Detroit…” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1923:Premiere ofCecil B DeMille’s original version of the "Ten Commandments."
1926: Einstein sent Max Born a letter today in which he said, Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice” (This is often paraphrased as “God does not play dice)
1927: Birthdate of John McCandlish Phillips Jr The New York Times reporter who wrote one of the most famous articles in the newspaper’s history — exposing the Orthodox Jewish background of a senior Ku Klux Klan official, Daniel Burros. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1928, Goldman Sachs launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. a closed-end fund with characteristics similar to that of a Ponzi scheme. “The fund failed as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, hurting the firm's reputation for several years afterward.
1928: Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn's musical "Whoopee" premiered in New York. Kahn was one of a number of Jewish lyricists who created hit songs for Broadway and Hollywood
1928: Members of "Kvuzat HaHugim" and members of "Tnuat HaMahanot HaOlim" from Haifa and Jerusalem founded Beit HaShita, the kibbutz named after the biblical town of the same name, where the Midianites fled after being beaten by Gideon. Eleven members of this idyllic Jewish community were killed during the Yom Kippur War meaning it lost “the largest number as a percentage of the population than any other community in Israel.”
1933(15th of Kislev, 5694): Emile Meyerson passed away. Born in 1859, Meyerson was Polish-born French chemist and philosopher of science whose concepts of rational understanding based on realism and causalism were popular among scientific theorists in the 1930s. An anti-positivist, he argued, for example in Identity and Reality (1908) that scientific knowledge attempts to reach beyond mere descriptive and predictive laws to an understanding of the nature of the reality beyond appearances. The human mind seeks the permanent behind phenomenal change, the identity within diversity as exemplified in conservation laws, such as the law of inertia and the law of conservation of energy. And yet this identity which our reason apprehends (or perhaps constructs) cannot embrace the totality of reality, for there is also change.
1936: The Palestine Post reported on the daily work of the Peel Commission and included the rumor that one or two of the Commissioners were starting to feel the pressure of their continuous and arduous work.
1937: In Norwich, CN, Asher and Annette Libo gave birth to Kenneth Harold Libo “a historian of Jewish immigration who, as a graduate student working for Irving Howe in the 1960s and ’70s, unearthed historical documentation that informed and shaped “World of Our Fathers,” Mr. Howe’s landmark 1976 history of the East European Jewish migration to America” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1938: Ghalib Budairi, a member of a prominent Arab family was found by British troops tonight lying wounded on a street in Jaffa, the apparent victim of Arabs who, as part of their uprising, have been attacking Jews, Englishman and Arabs who are not supporting their efforts.
1938:Father Charles Coughlin gave a national radio address in which he attacked the "Jewish international banking houses." (As reported by Austin Cline)
1938: Tehilla Lichtenstein first took the pulpit as the leader of the Society of Jewish Science in New York City, giving a sermon entitled “The Power of Thought.” Her topic reflected the Society’s idea, borrowed from Christian Science, that God’s healing power lies within each individual. With this service, Lichtenstein became the spiritual leader of the Congregation of Jewish Science in New York—the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of any American Jewish congregation.
1940:August Marian Kowalczyk, was arrested today while trying to cross the border with Czechoslovakia so he could join the Polish Army in France and sent to Auschwitz. (He would become the last survivor of the breakout attempt from that camp in June of 1942.
1941: Nazi ordinances placed the Jews of Poland outside protection of courts
1942(25thof Kislev, 5703): Chanukah
1942(25thof Kislev, 5703): Fifty-nine year old Austrian “librettist, lyricist and writer” Fritz Löhner-Beda was murdered in Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp
1942: During the Holocaust, two Christian women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Filipowicz risked theirlives by setting up the Council for the Assistance of the Jews in Warsaw.
1943: During World War II, in Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile. Originally there had been two resistance movements in Yugoslavia – Tito’s which was multi-ethnic and included Jewish partisans and the Chetniks, led by a Serbian named Draza Mihailovich who would become an ally of the Axis and a practitioner of ethnic cleansing.
1945: By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations. This was a sign that the United States would not retreat into Isolationism as it had at the end of World War I. More importantly, by joining the UN, the United States was able to support measures that ended the British Mandate in Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
1946: Guy M. Gillette, the former U.S. Senator from Iowa who is president of the pro-Zionist American League for a Free Palestine, denied charges by Rabbi Judah Magnes that “A Flag Is Born,” a play sponsored by the league, “makes an open appeal for funds for the purchase of arms for terrorist groups in Palestine.” Gillette insisted that all funds raised by the Ben Hecht play go the Reparation Fund chaired by Hecht, Will Rogers, Jr. and Louis Bromfield.
1948:The UN General Assembly Political and Security Committee passes a British-Canadian plan for a council commission on Palestine to negotiate a final peace settlement. The plan calls for (1) commission members to be appointed by Big Five; (2) an international Jerusalem; (3) a small UN guard to protect commission; and (4) aid to refugees. (The plan will be dead on arrival since it does not recognized the realities on the ground and the continued unwillingness of the Arabs to accept the creation of the Jewish state,)
1949: In Norwalk, CT, Barbara Freedman Berg and Dick Berg gave birth to Pulitzer prize winning biographer Andrew Scott Berg.
1950(25thof Kislev, 5711): During the first winter of the Korean War, Chanukah
1950: In Passaic, New Jersey, Morris Goldberger and Edna Kronman gave birth to architect and Vanity Fair editor Paul Goldberger.
1951: AaronCopland’s “Pied Piper," premieres in New York City.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet approved the resignation of Lt.-Gen Yigael Yadin, the second chief of General Staff, and appointed Maj.-Gen. Mordechai Makleff as his successor. Yigael Yadin was one of those amazing figures who helped to form Israel in the early days of the Jewish state. A sabra, born in 1917, Yadin was the son of the famed Eliezer Sukenik of Dead Scrolls fame. Just prior to, and during the War for Independence, Yadin was the acting chief of staff of the Jewish military forces. After the war he was the first chief of staff of the IDF and created the mold for the military that is followed to this day. After leaving the military, Yadin pursued a career in archaeology which was so successful that almost overshadowed his military successes. He passed away in 1984.
1967(2nd of Kislev, 5728): Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz” passed away. The famed actor changed his from Lahrheim to Lahr. He was the last of the Jews in his family line.
1972(28thof Kislev, 5733): Seventy-seven year old Israeli political leader Kadish Luz passed away at Degania Bet.
1975(29th of Kislev, 5736): Hannah Arendt passed away.
1977:Neil Simon's "Chapter Two" premiered in New York City.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Anwar Sadat and the Egyptian government were disappointed by what they regarded as an insufficiently forthcoming Israeli response to Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem. Sadat was reported to be still expecting a 'dramatic' Israeli concession at the planned Cairo meeting which he hoped would advance the success of the reconvened Geneva peace conference. Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrived in Britain for a five-day official visit 'to renew the covenant signed by the British people and the Jewish people 60 years earlier on that unforgettable Lord Balfour Day, of November 2, 1917.'
1978: Dianne Feinstein is named the 1st female mayor of San Francisco.
1978(4th of Kislev, 5739): Samuel Abraham Goldsmithpassed away. Born in 1902, Goldsmith was a Dutch-born U.S. physicist who, with George E. Uhlenbeck, a fellow graduate student at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, formulated (1925) the concept of electron spin. It led to recognition that spin was a property of protons, neutrons, and most elementary particles and to a fundamental change in the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics. Goldsmith also made the first measurement of nuclear spin and its Zeeman Effect with Ernst Back (1926-27), developed a theory of hyperfine structure of spectral lines, made the first spectroscopic determination of nuclear magnetic moments (1931-33), contributed to the theory of complex atoms and the theory of multiple scattering of electrons, and invented the magnetic time-of-flight mass spectrometer (1948).
1983:The Anatomy Lessonby Philip Roth, The Price of Power by Seymour M. Hersh and The Rosenberg Fileby Ronald Radosh are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.
1986: Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" premiered in New York.
1988(25th of Kislev, 5749): The First Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the second light
1988: The five Soviet citizens involved in the hijacking of an Aeroflot plane to Israel were sent back to the Soviet Union today in two Soviet planes.
1988: Israel's stock market in Tel Aviv was hit by a 24-hour strike by employees today, and share trading was halted. Israeli news reports said the market was expected to reopen today. The strike was called after contract negotiations stalled over who would arbitrate a dispute about seniority benefits, the Haaretz daily said.
1990: An Israeli military court sentenced 12 Palestinian guerrillas today to 30 years in prison for a foiled seaborne raid in May that prompted Washington to sever its contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli forces killed 4 Palestinians and captured 12 in the attempted speedboat raid on beaches near Tel Aviv. The captured men were convicted last month of membership in a terrorist group, illegal possession of arms and attempted murder. The Palestine Liberation Front, a P.L.O. faction led by Abul Abbas, was behind the assault.
1993: Daniel Schorr delivered the eulogy for the late composer Frank Zappa today on NPR.
1993:Talal al-Bakri's living came from selling vegetables in Hebron. His death came from traveling past this neighboring Jewish settlement. Someone in a group of Israelis waving submachine guns here today put a bullet in his head. Five Israelis have been arrested in connection with the case.
1994: Tony Kushner’s "Angels in America-Millennium Approaches" closes after 367 performances.
1995:The confessed assassin of Yitzhak Rabin suggested today that one of the slain Prime Minister's bodyguards had been an accomplice in the shooting. The killer, Yigal Amir, asserted that if he told everything he knew, it "would turn the country upside down." Mr. Amir spoke to reporters before the start of a hearing at the Tel Aviv Magistrate Court, where he was ordered held in custody for four more days. Police officers and the presiding judge, Dan Arbel, cut Mr. Amir off, as they have several times in the past, to prevent him from using the courtroom as a platform for his opinions. Israel Radio did not even carry Mr. Amir's voice in its news roundups today, referring to his statements only as "abusive language."
1997:"Diary of Anne Frank" opens at Music Box Theater New York City.
1997(5th of Kislev, 5758): Joseph Wolpe passed away. Born in 1915, Wolpe was aSouth African-born American psychotherapist who helped usher in cognitive behavioral therapy during the 1960s; he devised a treatment to help desensitize patients with phobias by exposing them to their fears incrementally. He worked on systematic desensitization with a methodology designed to treat people with extreme anxiety about specific events, situations, things, or people. His approach involved developing a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations, learning relaxation techniques, then associating these situations with relaxation, beginning at the bottom, or least anxiety-provoking, part of the hierarchy. He founded the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy and the Journal of Behavior Therapy.
1999(25thof Kislev, 5760): Chanukah
1999: Shanghai Jews were permitted to use Ohel Rache Synagogue for Chanukah services.
2001: The United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility recent deadly suicide attacks in Israel.
2002:On the morning of the second Hanukkah lighting and party President Bush met with Jewish leaders in the Roosevelt Room. Jay Lefkowitz, an observant Jew who was chief of the president's Domestic Policy Council, remembered that one participant stood up and said that some 60 years earlier, his father had been part of a delegation of Jewish leaders who sought to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to urge that the U.S. bomb railroad tracks to impede the Nazis' ability to kill Jews in concentration camps. The Jewish leaders never got a meeting, and Roosevelt never took action to thwart Hitler's genocide. He said it would divert resources from the effort to win the war. "Mr. President," the man said to Bush, "I think I can speak for everyone in this room when I say that if you had been president, there would be millions more of us alive today."
2004: After only a week on the job, Victor Bailovsky lost his job as Science and Technology Minister when his party left the governing coalition.
2004: Avraham Poraz completed his term as Minister of Internal Affairs.
2004: Eliezer Sandberg completed his term as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.
2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ousted Avraham Poraz from his position as Interior Minister. Poraz was a member of the Shinui party. When Shinui voted against Sharon’s budget, he removed all members of the party from his government.
2005: During his talk SPORT show today Charles Wolf described Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who had been killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, as "scum." Ofcom would later rule this comment to be in breach of the "Generally Accepted Standards" section of the Broadcasting Code and stated it was "seriously ill-judged".
2005: Opening session of the Conservative movement’s biennial convention in Boston, MA where leaders will be unveiling a more a liberal and aggressive outreach program.
2005: In an interview with Time Magazine, movie director Steven Spielberg said his new film "Munich," the story of Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics, is "a prayer for peace." The man who brought the world “Schindler’s List” and the “Shoah Project” is very proud of the fact that "Munich" doesn't demonize either the Israeli or Palestinian side. Spielberg says that “the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence." Such an evenhanded treatment does not seem to jibe with the facts. Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic Village, seized the Israeli Olympic team and later murdered them.
2006(13th of Kislev, 5767): Arthur Shimkin, Grammy Award winning producer of children’s records passed away at the age of 84. In one of those cultural ironies that are part of Jewish History, Shimkin produced the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer album sung by Jimmy Durante.
2006: While appearing on his late night television show, comedian Stephen Colbert jokingly took credit for the recent nuptials of two Jewish Democratic congressmen – Brad Sherman of California and Steven Rothman of New Jersey. Sherman married Lisa Kaplan, a State Department anti-Semitism expert. Rothman found his new wife, Jennifer Beckenstein on JDate.com. Jewish love- isn’t it grand?
2006: The Hebrew Free Burial Association (HFBA) “launched a Russian edition of their website to further reach out to members of that community. The HFBA was established in 1888 as a free burial society for Jews living on the Lower East Side. As Jews moved into other communities, the association widened its service area and today it is the largest burial society outside of the state of Israel.
2006: Dennis Prager continued to defend his contention that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress should be allowed to take the oath of office using a Koran because “the act undermines American Civilization”
2007: Michael Korda appeared at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Michael Korda has written the first major single-volume biography of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, exploring a great general and an important president—a man who won the war and kept the peace. Korda’s previous books include Charmed Lives: A Family Romance, Queenie,Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Heroand Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
2007: The Center for Jewish History presents a special screening of “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”, Brazil's Official Selection for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
2007: The Jewish Aggies, a student group at Texas A&M, lit the largest menorah in the state of Texas.
2008: Final night of the 2008 Oud Festival sponsored by Confederation House.
2008: At the Chabad House in Iowa City a genuine Simchah – the Brit Milah of the son of Avremel & Chaya Blesofsky
2008: The Labor Party is scheduled to hold its primary which was postponed after computerized voting systems malfunctioned in several locales around the country on December 2.
2008: A Kassam rocket landed near Sderot, causing no casualties or damage.
2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival features a matinee presentation of A Matter of Size (Sipur Gadol).
2009: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Friday Night Services mark the start of the Third Season of Musical Shabbat.
2009: Police arrested a man from Baka al-Gharbiya for orchestrating an extorition attempt aimed at McDonald's of Israel.
2010:Shalshelet’s 4th International Festival at Congregation Ansche Chesed, New York City.
2010: “Gruber’s Journey,” “The Debt,” “Mary Lou” and “Phovidilia” are scheduled to be shown tonight at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival.
2010: Gabe Finn was called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA.
2010: The 12th Jerusalem Film Festival opened at the Jerusalem Cinematheque
2010:Jerry Herman was among the five 2010 Kennedy Center Honorees who were feted at tonight's gala in Washington, D.C.
2010: In “'Candlelight': 2010's Hanukkah anthem” Monica Hesse traces the rise of the Maccebeats The field of Chanukah music was wide “open for the harmonizing Maccabeats, whose YouTube video of "Candlelight" (jauntily sung to the tune of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite") reached nearly 1 million views in less than eight days.
How a 14-Man A Cappella Group from Yeshiva University Created the Hanukkah Anthem of 2010:
Step 1: Flip your latkes in the air (sometimes)
"The whole message of Yeshiva University is that you can be an Orthodox Jew and participate in secular society," says Immanuel Shalev, who wrote the song's lyrics. The group had already covered Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," replacing the lyrics with Hebrew scripture. When Shalev found himself listening to Cruz singing "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes" and mentally replacing them with "I flip my latkes in the air sometimes, singing ay-oh, spin the dreidel," he knew he was onto something.
Step 2: Be resourceful
Uri Westrich, a medical student and Yeshiva grad, had made a video for the Maccabeats before - a rendition of "One Day" that reached a modestly successful 100,000 hits. The group asked him if he could direct their new idea. "I said, 'Let's add a reenactment! And let's add a Hanukkah party!'" He recruited three beefy friends to play the Greeks who battled the ancient Maccabees and rustled up some greenery for the Greeks' laurel wreaths.
"We basically wanted to hit our target audience of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York," Westrich says - the people who normally hired the Maccabeats for live performances. (From the Maccabeats Web site: "Having the Maccabeats is the perfect way to energize and enhance your Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Sheva Brachot, or simcha of any kind.")
Step 3: Achieve local, then national, fame
After the song was uploaded, Shalev was in the library when he noticed that everyone around him seemed to be whistling the song. He went to grab a slice of pizza, and the cashier congratulated him.
The video was widely blogged online, hitting influential ones like BoingBoing.net. The Maccabeats were invited on CBS's "Early Show," and the video appeared on "Today." The chief rabbi of London phoned to see about a possible video collaboration. They heard from Jay Leno's people, but that's still up in the air.
Meanwhile, "Every four minutes, I'm getting another request," says Maccabeat director and singer Julian Horowitz. "They keep asking, 'When are you going to be in Israel on tour,' or 'When are you going to be in London?" says Horowitz, pointing out that the group won't be going anywhere but to final exams. "It's like they think we're the Rolling Stones."
Step 4: Win your elders' respect
"Last night, we opened up for Matisyahu, you know, the first celebrity Orthodox reggae artist," Shalev says. The Maccabeats are all fans, so this was a huge honor.
And although the Maccabeats were supposed to be just the opening act, "It was obvious," Shalev says modestly, "that the crowd was very, very excited about us."
2011: “The Kissinger Saga: Walter and Henry Kissinger, Two Brothers From Feurth,” is among the films scheduled to shown on the second day of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
2011: The Temple Sinai Sisterhood Chanukah Bazaar is scheduled to take place a New Orleans’ largest Reform congregation.
2011: As a sign of the vibrancy of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community Diane Handler and Robert Becker are scheduled to host Temple Judah’s first annual adult congregational cocktail party.
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth and the Transformation of American Sports” by Mark Ribowsky, “Balzac’s Omeltte” by Anka Mulstein (the great-great-granddaughter of James de Rothschild) and “MetaMaus” by Art Spiegelman as well as three children’s books about Chanukah: “The Golem’s Latkes” by Eric A. Kimmel, “Chanukah Lights” by Michael J. Rosen and “The Story of Hanukkah” by David Adler.
2011: The epicenter of an earthquake felt across northern Israel today was in the Hula and Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) area, the Geophysical Institute of Israel stated. The earthquake's Richter scale impact was 3.8 and was felt by residents of Metula, Kiryat Shmona, and Tiberius
2011: Israel’s decision to release frozen public funds to the Palestinians last week came after Germany insisted it did so as a condition for the completion of the sale of a submarine, a German newspaper reported today. The Welt am Sonntag quoted sources as saying Germany had told Israel it could not go ahead with the purchase of the submarine unless it made political concessions.
2011: A commemorative plaque to pianist and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in Polish and English was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw in the presence of his wife, Halina (Grzecznarowski) Szpilman, son Andrzej and Wilm Hosenfeld's daughter Jorinde
2012: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to honor Baron David de Rothschild at its 87th Annual Benefit Dinner.
2012: Professor Jonathan Sarna is scheduled to discuss “When General Grant Expelled the Jews with Jonathan Karp, Executive Director, American Jewish Historical Society at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. (A book and an evening not to be missed)
2012: Rabbi Bruce Aft of Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to lead a discussion of “A Century Catholic-Jewish Relations” under the auspices of the JCCNV.
2012(20thof Kislev): For Chabad Chasidim “the 20th of Kislev is like the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Just as the two days of Rosh Hashanah are considered a single “long day” (יומא אריכתא ) so the 19th and 20th of Kislev are considered a single long day marking the redemption of the Alter Rebbe and a turning point in the history of Chassidut. The 19th of Kislev was the day on which the Alter Rebbe was released from prison and acquitted of the charges against him. But, what happened on the 20th of Kislev? Historically, after the Alter Rebbe was released, he was taken to S. Peterburg to the house of a wealthy local Jew. It seemed all good and well, but that house was the house of one of the greatest mitnagdim, those who opposed the Chassidic movement and were responsible for the Alter Rebbe’s incarceration in the first place. And so, the Alter Rebbe had to stay with this Jew and his family for a few hours until he left his house on the 20th of Kislev. (From the teachings of Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh)
2012: “Insular and Torn, Straight From Hasidic Brooklyn” published today provides a review of ‘My Name Is Asher Lev’ playing at the Westside Theatre.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/theater/reviews/my-name-is-asher-lev-at-the-westside-theater.html?adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1354665583-RbTgbfAMtciUo0m8rSGgdA
2012: French police today announced that they had arrested a man and a woman in connection with the Toulouse shootings in March, in which Mohammed Merah, a French-Algerian Islamist, killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, several days after gunning down four French paratroopers in two separate attacks.
2012: Tzipi Livni, the head of the Hatnua (The Movement) party, today lambasted the government for its handling of the fallout from the Palestinians’ successful UN status-upgrade gambit, saying that its apparently punitive decision to construct thousands of housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, including in the controversial E1 corridor between the capital and the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, was detrimental to Israel’s security interests.
2013: In Coralville, Iowa, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Chanukah Party
2013: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor Light Up the Night: Community Menorah Lighting at Mosaic District
2013: “The Art of Spiegelman” and “Through the Eye of a Needle,” a film about Holocuast survivor and artist Nisenthal Krinitz is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.