March 23
1369: King Pedro of Castile who employed Abraham ibn Zaral as his physician was beheaded by his rival and brother, Henry of Trastamara marking the end of their civil war for control of the kingdom. . Henry “was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. . He was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. During their struggle for control, Henry continuously depicted Peter as "King of the Jews," and had some success in taking advantage of popular Castilian resentment towards the Jews. During his reign, “Henry of Trastamara instigated pogroms beginning a period of anti-Jewish riots and forced conversion] in Castile that lasted approximately from 1370 to 1390.”
1475: Trent (Italy) was the scene of one of the more notorious ritual murder libels. A Franciscan monk, Bernardinus of Feltre, had recently arrived and began preaching Lent sermons against the Jews. A week before Easter a boy by the name of Simon drowned in the river Adige. The monk charged the Jews with using the body for its blood. The body washed up a few days later near the house of a Jew who brought it to the Bishop Honderbach. Seventeen Jews were tortured for over two weeks. Some confessed while being tortured and 6 Jews were burnt. Two more were strangled. A temporary hiatus was called by Pope Sixtus IV, but after five years the trial was reopened and 5 more Jews were executed. The papal inquest agreed with the trial, Simon was beatified, and all Jews were expelled for 300 years. The trial served as the basis for anti-Semitic writings for hundreds of years. Only in 1965 was Simon de –beatified
1490: The first dated edition of Maimonides'“Mishneh Torah” was published. Maimonides was born in Cordova, Spain in 1135. His family fled as one group of Moslem rulers replaced another. Eventually he settled in Egypt where he was a distinguished physician for the ruling Moslems as well as head of the Egyptian community. According to one source he provided medical advice for both Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted. He died in 1204 and is buried in Tiberias in Israel. Simply put, the Mishneh Torah was "an orderly restructuring of the entire legal literature of the Talmud." The Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law) is "one of the most distinguished codes of Jewish law...”
1555: Pope Julius III passed away. Despite opposition, Julius allowed Jewish refugees from Spain settle in Ancona in northeast Italy. He spoke out against the blood libel and opposed baptism of Jewish children without the approval of their parents. At the same time, he was unable to stand up to the power of the Inquisitor General from the Holy Office and he acquiesced in the burning of numerous copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books.
1712(15th of Adar II): Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Koidonover author of Kav ha-Yashar passed away
1714: Duke Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Courland
1784: Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas returned to New York City from Connecticut and took up his position as “Minister.” He returned while New York City was evacuated by the British, and most of the members of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue were in the safety of Connecticut and Philadelphia. Seixas was very patriotic, and was thanked by President George Washington at one time. Seixas instituted a recital of a prayer for the government in English, it having been always read in Spanish prior to this time.
1801: Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle. Paul’s reign was a comparatively short one, starting in 1796 with the death of his mother Catherine the Great. The shortness of his time on the throne was a good thing for the Jews of Russia. In 1799, Paul sent one of his closest advisors, Gabriel Derhavin to Belorssia. Derhavin decided that the problems in that part of the realm, as well as the rest of Russia were caused by the Jews “who were irredeemably corrupt.” He was planning on urging the Czar to move most of the Jews to the “frontier territories or drive them from the empire altogether.” These and other harsh measures would have become the law of the land if Paul had not been killed and replaced by his comparatively more enlightened son, Alexander I.
1806: Rachel and Moses David Friedman gave birth to Zanwel Friedman.
1807(13th of Adar II, 5567):Ta'anit Esther
1811: Birthdate of German medical doctor Carl Friedrich Stahl.
1831: Eighty-eight year old Christian-Hebraist Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi passed away.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12896-rossi-giovanni-bernardo-de
1827: Marcus De Vries married Kaat Van Rook
1837: Birthdate of Joseph Wieniawski, Russian pianist and composer.
1846: In New York, Moses and Esther Lazarus gave birth to Josephine Lazarus.
1847: Samuel Joans married Esther Cashmore, the daughter of Moshe Kashman at the Great Synagogue.
1848: In Manchester, UK, Charles Sydney Grundy and his wife gave birth to English dramatist Sydney Grundy who combined with Edward Solomon to produce two comic operas – “The Vicar of Bray” and “Pochoantas” - and produced “An Old Jew” at the Garrick in 1894, five years before Zangwill’s “Children of the Ghetto.
1849(29thof Adar, 5609): Fifty-four year old Hananeel de Castro, the husband of Deborah de Jacob Mendes da Costa who was the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews at the time of the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840 passed away today.
1853: While delivering a speech welcoming Father Gavazzi, the celebrated Roman patriot and orator to the United States, Reverend Dowling pointed out a peculiarity of the American experience. “This government, alone of all others, never persecuted or endeavored to persecute Jews.”
1854: In Louisville, KY, Adolph and Frederick Brandeis gave birth to Alfred Brandeis, the husband of Jennie Brandeis and brother to Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1856: In Philadelphia, Isaac and Henriette Kohn gave birth to Sophie Kohn who became Sophie Pfaelzer when she married Philadelphia jewler Morris Moses Pfaelzer
1861: “The Hebrew Son” is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden Theatre in NYC.
1862: During the American Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin completed his short stint as “acting” Secretary War. Benjamin continued to serve as Secretary of State.
1862: Eighty-one year old Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who successful thwarted the plan of Jacques Isaac Altaras to settle 40,000 Russian-Jewish families in Algeria passed away today.
1863: According to “The Books of the Week” column published today, Scribner’s has published "Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, -- Part 1, Abraham to Samuel" by Arthur Penryn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. According to this Stanley “the roots of the Jewish Church must be sought deep in the Patriarchal Age, its prelude commencing with the Call of Abraham, then from the time it takes determinate shape and recognized status with the Exodus, the first great period extends to the absorption of the ancient and primitive constitution in the new institutions of the Monarchy. This “period is generally called by the name of the Theocracy; its great characters are Abraham, Moses and Samuel. It embraces the first revelation of the Mosaic Religion, and the first foundation of the Jewish Church and polity." Two future volumes will continue to describe the history of the Jews up to Roman times. The second volume will describe the period of the Monarchy. The third will describe the period “from the Captivity to the destruction of the Jewish Capital and State by the Emperor Titus.”
1864(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim
1864: “Purim: Our Jewish Citizens in Their Glory” published today reported that Purim Association has given their “third Grand Fancy Dress Ball, at the Academy of Music. The Association was formed in 1862 by nine young men of the Jewish faith, its first ball was given at Irving Hall in 1862, its second at the Academy of Music in 1863, and its third at the same hall last evening. The festival of Purim is one of the oldest and most important festivals recognized by the Jews, commemorating, as it does, one of the most important events in their history as a nation. It was instituted by Queen Esther and by Mordecai about the year 510 B.C., and commemorates the remarkable deliverance of the children of Israel from the tyranny and machinations of Haman, who was Prime Minister to King Ahasuerus, who reigned from India unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces. Mordecai had been carried captive from Jerusalem, and with him the fair and beautiful maiden Hadassah or Esther, whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter. Esther being exceedingly beautiful and pleasing found favor in the eyes of King Ahasuerus, who married her and made her his Queen. About this time Haman was appointed to the high position of Prime Minister to the King, and he demanded and received homage from all except the Jew Mordecai, who not only refused to pay homage, but also refused to give any reason why he would not. Haman, highly incensed at the conduct of Mordecai, ordered made a gallows of extraordinary height, on which to hang him for the insult be had offered to one in high office and favored by the King. Queen Esther, hearing of this, informed the King of the relation which existed between her and Mordecai, and also of the great benefit Mordecai had done the King some time previous in informing of two men in his confidence, Bigthana and Teresh, who sought to lay violent hands upon the King and kill him. The King remembering all these things and the iniquity, or Haman, ordered him hanged upon the gallows erected for Mordecai, placed Mordecai in the position held by Haman, made him chief over the house of Haman, and released the children of Israel from bondage. This was celebrated by great rejoicing all over the land and, in every way the joy and happinees of the people was exhibited. From that to the present the festival of this deliverance of the Jews has been celebrated by the most extravagant expressions of happiness, calling upon each other at their houses, in every dress and guise which could possibly add merriment or joy to the occasion, and using every means they could devise for the utmost enjoyment and celebration of this great and happy event. Of late years their number has so increased that time would not allow them to visit all the friends they wished, nor would their houses hold all the friends they wished to entertain. To obviate this difficulty, nine young gentlemen on the Jewish faith, in the year 1862, organized the "Purim Association," the object of which was to collect all the parties together for the general enjoyment of the festival, and that all friends might meet. Thus far they have been particularly fortunate nothing has occurred to mar their pleasure, and they have also by this means been enabled to do a great deal of good. Last year they presented to the Orphan Asylum and other charitable institutions a handsome sum, and this year they intend, first, to present to the Sanitary Fair a good round sum, and then take care of the charitable institutions, as is their custom. The officers of the association, who have been and are working hard and steadily for the promotion of this society and its good influence, and to whom, in a great measure, the success of the ball is due, are as follows: M.H. Moses, President; Jos. A. Levy, Vice-President; A.H. Schutz, Treasurer. The hall was crowded with a most brilliant assemblage, who entered into the enjoyments of the occasion with a zest seldom equaled; the costumes were very rich and beautiful; the diamonds worn by the ladies magnificent and in brilliancy almost rivaled the bright eyes of their fail owners. Among the best of the characters represented were those of Mrs. Partington, Lucretia Borgia, Penobscot Squaw, Chippewa Chief, and Joan of Arc, several beauties of the Court of Charles H., the Duke of Buckingham, Faust, a Priest, and several Jewish maidens. Merriment reigned supreme within the hall. Wives, well-disguised, teased their liege lords almost to distraction; sweethearts by sly winks and actions, drove their devoted lovers almost frantic; husbands thinking they were not known or noticed, paid sweet compliments to fair maidens only to be rapped over the knuckles for not reserving them for their wives, and staid old bachelors and maidens entered into the spirit of the fun in a manner which fairly astonished themselves. Two Bands gave constant music, to which the feet of the merry dancers kept time. At twelve o'clock they unmasked and then what surprise was created. Husbands found they had been flirting all the evening with their own wives; lovers had been confidentially extolling the beauties of their sweethearts to their-sweethearts themselves; old maids had been telling old bachelors how disagreeable they thought that class of men to be, and old bachelors had been sympathizing, perhaps, with the old maids themselves, upon the unhappy condition of these unfortunate ladies. The mistakes, however, were speedily and amicably settled, and after the excellent supper prepared by the caterer, M.S. Cohen, had been fully enjoyed, were entirely forgotten.” New York Mayor Charles Gunther was among the dignitaries who attended the event.
1865: In Philadelphia, Joseph and Louisa Berg gave birth to Hart O.Berg, “a pioneer in the manufacture of machine guns, submarines, automobiles and airplanes” who married the former Lena Willets and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by France in 1901.
1866: James Disraeli who resided in Cromwell Place wrote his will today.
1867: Birthdate of Arthur Bornstein, the native of Breslau, Germany who was a dentist by training but whose real passion was writing as can be seen by the volumes of short stories he published starting in 1894.
1867: In Vienna, Dr. Michael Reiner and Agnes Reiner gave birth to Dr. Maximilian Max Reiner, the husband of Paula Reiner and the father of Herbert and Heinrich Reiner.
1868(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim
1868: In Cardiff, Esther Lyons, “18 year old Jewess” who was running away from her family “knocked on the door of Croome Villa, Roath, the home of the Reverend Nathanial Thomas, minister of the Baptist Tabernacle” in what would be the first act of a cause celeb that would sour relations between Jews and Baptists in South Wales “for years to come.{
1868: The University of California is founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act is signed into law. Today the University of California at Berkley has approximately 3000 Jewish students out of a student population totaling approximately 24,000. The school offers ten Jewish studies courses and a Major in the field.
1869: In Pila, Sieradz, Poland, Szaja Pilichowski and his wife gave birth to painter Leopold Pilichowski.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15770.html
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pilichowski_Leopold
1870: Jay Gould appeared before the New York State Senate Railroad Committee and that his opponents were being financed by “Jewish bankers” from London. (“Robber Baron” Jay Gould was attempting to use anti-British and anti-Jewish prejudice to deflect attacks on his unscrupulous business tactics when dealing with the Erie Railroad.)
1870: Herman W. Hellman, who in 1866 sold out his interest in a book and stationary business and then went into business for himself “sold his entire stock and fixtures to Harris and Jacoby” and left for a trip to Europe.
1871(1st of Nisan, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Nisan
1872: “Persecution of Jews In Romania” published today the reporter compared the attacks on the Jews with the suffering “in England in the days of Isaac of York” and calls upon the European Powers to intervene on behalf of the Jews if the government of Romania will not stop the attacks on its Jewish citizens.
1872: This evening, as Jews celebrated Purim, synagogues in New York “were all crowded” as they listened to the unique musical narrative of the story of Esther. “In the…strictly Orthodox synagogues such as those on Chrystie and Allen Streets, the audience stamped their feet or struck the ground with the heavy sticks whenever the detested name of Haman was pronounced.”
1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will host its final “entertainment of the season” this evening at the Standard Hall in New York City.
1877: Isaac Artom “was elected senator of the kingdom” today making him “the first Jew to sit in the Italian legislative body.”
1878: In Monaco Jewish court photographer Ignaz Schrecker and his wife Eleonore von Clossmann gave birth to Austrian composer and conductor Franz Schreker.
1879: It was reported today 800,000 Philadelphians are served by 564 houses of worship including 9 synagogues.
1879: Dr. Henry S. Jacobs will deliver a lecture this evening at the Norfolk Street Synagogue sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Union.
1880: In Russia an editorial entitled “The Yid is Coming” is published in the anti-Semitic journal Novoe Vermie.
1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Lubny, Russia. This would not be the first or the last time that death would strike the Jews of Lubny which is actually located in the Ukraine, In 1648 during the horror known as the Chmielnicki Massacres, thousands of Jews died at Lubny and other nearby towns. In October of 1941, the Nazis massacred the Jewish population as the German armies swept across the Ukraine. The rioting in 1881 probably was a mini-pogrom sparked by the killing of Czar Alexander II "at the hand of revolutionary bomb throwers." They presaged a series of such riots that would sweep much of Russia during the Spring and Summer of 1881.
1882: In Erlangen, Bavaria, mathematician, Max Noether and his wife gave birth to mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether.
https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm
1883(14th of Adar II, 5643): Purim
1886(16thof Adar II, 5646): Eighty-two year old Bina Oppenheimer, the daughter of David and Schiele Kahn and the wife of Lob Oppenheimer passed away today in New York City.
1886: Secretary Taylor of the American Yacht Club called the members together in a special meeting this evening to listen to a lecture by the popular Sephardic raconteur Mr. R.J. de Cordova on "The New York Stock Exchange." Instead of of lecture, Mr. de Cordova amused the "twoscore members" of the club humorous rhyming story about a stock broker in search of a rich wife, the daughter of a Pennsylvania farmer made rich by the discovery of petroleum on his farm and "a rejected bucolic lover" who happily marries the maiden after she loses her fortune while pursuing an extravagant urban lifestyle.
1887: Birthdate of Sidney Hillman. Sidney Hillman was a major figure in the American labor movement and became a leading advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of the two major unions in the garment industry from 1915 until his death in 1946. An untiring champion of the working class and the underprivileged, Hillman was a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organization, the CIO. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, we have lost a sense of appreciation for the improvement in the American way of life wrought by Hillman and similar giants of the American labor movement, many of whom were Jewish.
1887(27th of Adar): Seventy year old Posen born Rabbi Eliezer Landshuth, author of Amudei ha-Avodah passed away today at Berlin.
http://newspaperslibrary.org/articles/eng/Leser_Landshuth
https://www.virtualjudaica.com/Listing/Details/639179/Siddur-R-Hirsch-Edelmann-Eliezer-Leser-Landshuth-Koenigsberg-1845
1890: “Art Notes” published today described the ten illustrations of “The Merchant of Venice” by Edwin Abbey that will appear in the April edition of Harper magazine. They include “the figure of Portia exhorting the Jew” to show mercy and a “frontpiece” showing the Ducal Palace “with the Jew demonstrating why he does not love Christians.”
1890: The late Solomon Adler bequeathed $500 to both the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital and $250 to each of the following: Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York.
1891: Alice Goldmark, the niece of composer Karl Goldmark, married Louis Brandeis at her parent’s home in New York City and the moved “Boston’s Beacon Hill district” where their two daughters – Susan and Elizabeth – were born.
1891: “The Baron de Hirsch Club” published today described the accomplishments of the newly formed social club. Among the seventy-five charter members are Dr. Leon Sherurg, Elias Gluskin, Morton Britton, John W. Jacobus, William Bellamy, Louis Henderson and M.J. Rosinski
1892: It was reported today that after the claim of Adolf Grube for 1,600,000 rubles has been satisfied J.E. Guenxburg will only have 14 million rubles in his accounts with which to satisfy the rest of his creditors.
1893(6thof Nisan, 5653): Seventy-six year old Adolf Fischoff, the doctor turned Austrian political leader and author passed away today.
1893: Max Judd of Missouri has been nominated to serve as Consul General at Vienna. Judd, a native of Austria, came to the United States as a child and has lived in St. Louis for the last twenty-five years. A man of “well and fine education” “his appointment is the result of the almost universal request of the people of” St. Louis which speaks well of Judd and the regard in which the Jews of Missouri are held by the general population.
1893: W.H. Helm of Dumfries and his wife gave birth Sir Alexander Knox Helm, the United Kingdom’s first ambassador to Israel.
1893: A case involving the seizure by police of liquor which members of Boston’s Adath Israel’s congregation claimed was intended for use on Passover began making its way through the court system. The Jews claim that the vice president of the congregation was holding the liquor for his co-religionists which he will be distributing during Passover. The police claim that this is a ruse and is merely a way for the Jews to get around local liquor ordinances.
1893: Kosher slaughtering was prohibited in Saxony, which is in a part of Germany that Martin Luther had dominated during his rise to power. Some claim that the ban was part of the anti-cruelty to animal movement but this claim has a very hollow sound to it considering what else was going on in the society.
1895: Edwin Einstein, a New York Republican, was appointed to serve as Dock Commissioner today by a Mayor who was a Democrat.
1895: In Budapest, the House of Magnates rejected the clause of the Religious Freedom Bill that gave Jews equal rights with the Christians by a vote of 117 to 111.
1896: Birthdate of Jacob “Jake” Friedman, the native of Bridgeport, CT who in 1926 played “end” in three games for the Hartford Blues, an NFL team that existed for only year.
1896: Congregation B’nai Shalom which held services on “Sabbath and holidays,” included a Ladies Hebrew Association as an “auxiliary society” and was served by Rabbi Max Lewinthal was founded in Brookhaven, Mississippi today.
1896: “What Is A Christian Nation?” published today described the views of Dr. Gustav Gottheil who “claims that the so-called Christian nations are not so in fact and that the Jews are, from the ethical standpoint, the true Christian nation.” A Christian nation would make the Sermon on the Mount the basis for its Constitution entailing “the returning of good for evil, the breathing of a blessing upon those who curse us, the rendering of good for evil.” (Editor’s note –This view should provide food for thought for those who claim the U.S. is a “Christian nation.”)
1897: Mrs. Rebecca Kohut gave a talk today on “The Training of Children in Reverence in Jewish Homes” at the Manhattan Congregational Church.
1897: Oscar S. Straus, the former U.S. Minister to Turkey who has just returned to the United States said that he had met with Baroness de Hirsch while in Europe but did not care to discuss the details of continued financial assistance for immigrants from Europe who will be settling in the Western Hemisphere.
1899: Dr. Joseph Silverman delivered a lecture on the “Longevity of the Hebrews.”
1899: It was reported today that during the month of February the United Hebrew Charities had received 2,815 applications for assistance which covered 9,377 individuals. Jobs were found for 477 applicants while over 1,800 people were seen by either a doctor or a nurse. The charity raised over $17,000 during February and spent almost $13,000 in providing aid to the needy.
1900: Birthdate of Eric Fromm.
http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell9.htm
1902(14th of Adar II, 5662): Purim
1905: Penultimate session of the convention of the Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith meeting in New Orleans.
1907: In New York this evening, enough poor Jews presented their tickets which could be exchanged for 10 pounds of Matzoth and 5 pounds of floor to the store on Attorney Street, that 20,000 pounds of matzoth and 10,000 pounds of Matzah floor were needed to meet the demand.
1907: Birthdate of Solomon “Sol” Furth, the Brooklyn born track star nicknamed “Happy” who competed in the 1932 Olympics.
1907: When “a small boy with red brick hair” presented his ticket entitling him to 10 pounds of Matzah and 5 pounds of Matzah flour, he was told that “these matzoth are only provided for person of true Hebraic faith.” The lad replied, “Me name is Mickey O’Brien, but sure me mother needs the matzoth. We’re most staring and if it’ll do any good I’ll be an Irish Hebrew.” The lad got his matzoth and flour. [It was not unusual for non-Jews to show up for when free food was passed out at Passover time. The Jews did not seem to mind apparently remembering the words of the Haggadah inviting the poor to come and join us in eating at the Seder.]
1911(23rd of Adar, 5671): Daniel Abramovich Chwolson passed away.
http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2009/05/08/the-israeli-health-ministry-and-the-rehabilitation-of-daniel-chwolson/
1912(5thof Nisan, 5672): Ninety-year old communal worker Hezekiah Kohn passed away today in New York.
1913(14thof Adar II, 5673): Purim
1913: Eighty year old Civil War veteran Adam Mayer passed away today in New Orleans.
1914: Birthdate of Spencer Bernard Witty, the native of Waccabuc, NY who with his four brothers Frederic, Ephraim and Arthur, and a cousin, Irving expanded the business created by their grandfather David Witty into a “chain” of six store that sold classy, high end clothing for men.
1914: It was reportedfrom St. Petersburg “that as …Passover approaches more blood ritual allegations are being circulated.” In Uman, in the Ukraine, reports are circulating “that a Christian boy, Anton Zummer, who was working in a bakery at a machine for making matzoth…had his hand thrust in the machinery by the Jewish boys and lost a large quantity of blood which went to the making of the bread…Another report speaks of the finding of an 8-year old boy’s body under a railway bridged at Kovel…with the head, neck and chest pierced with wounds.” [This is the same Uman that is the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov which Jews visit each year at Rosh Hashanah.]
1915: The United Hebrew Community has sent out an appeal for more funds to so it can distributed matzoth and other food to the poor Jews of the Lower East Side before the beginning of Passover. Moses H. Phillips, President of the Hebrew Community said that the demand is greater this year than in years past and at least 90,000 pounds of food will be needed to feed the needy. The United Hebrew Community is only one of several Jewish organizations that will be distributing food at Passover time to their less fortunate co-religionists.
1915: The fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $579,996. 53 as of today.
1915: The Zion Mule Corps, consisting of Jewish volunteers from Palestine, was formed to serve with the British Army. This was the first Palestinian Jewish military unit attached to a regular army in the modern times. The unit was organized under the command of Joseph Trumpeldor, an early military hero of the future state of Israel and Vladimir Jabotinsky who would become leader of what was known as the Revisionist Movement, forerunner of today's Likud part. The united fought against the Turks who were allies of the British. The success of the Zion Mule Corps paved the way for the Jewish Legion which was formed in 1918.
1915: Sixty-six year old “Judge Leonard S. Roan of the Court of Appeals of Georgia before whom Leo M. Franks was convicted and by whom he was sentenced to death on August 16, 1913 for the murder of…Mary Phagan” passed away today.
1915: According to family legend, today, in Brooklyn “Louis and Sarah Rabinowitz, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia” gave birth to Jacob Rabinowitz who gained fame as producer and talent-maven Jack Rollins. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/obituaries/jack-rollins-dies-at-100-sharpened-talent-like-woody-allens.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
1916: In St. Louis, at Rabbi Masliansky and Rabbi Abranowitz told those attending “a relief meeting” at “B’nai Emuno Synagogue” about “the sufferings of the Jews in the war zones” “more than $1,000 was raised through the sale of certificates bearing the recent proclamation of President Wilson naming a Jewish Relief Day.”
1916(18thof Adar II, 5676): Seventy-two year old Colonel Felix Rosenberg, the Civil War veteran who “came to Cleveland after the Civil War, was a brevet colonel in the Spanish-American War” and the “editor of Town Topics, a weekly publication devoted to local high society news” passed away today in Cleveland.
1917: As of today, it was reported that the People’s and Central Relief Committees are raising funds for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe along with the American Jewish Relief Committee led by Henry Morgenthau, Louis Marshall and Herbert Lehman.
1917: The United States Ambassador to Russia today sent a cablegram to the State Department stating “that the new Russian Government had taken its first important step toward the emancipation of the Jews by removing the education restrictions previously imposed under the old regime.”
1917: In a letter to the British and French Ambassadors to the United States, Oscar Straus, Chairman of the Public Service Commission expressed the opinion that “the great majority of the Jewish citizens of the United States are pro-Ally and not pro-German.”
1917: Birthdate of Yevgeny Khaldei the Soviet born Jewish World War II combat photographer whose work included one of the most famous of that genre showing a Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag as the Red Army triumphed in the Battle of Berlin. According to some reports Khaldei patterned the picture after the one of the flag raising over Iowa Jima, another iconic WW II photo taken by a Jewish photographer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstag_flag_original.jpg
1918(10thof Nisan, 5678): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol
1918: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El on 5th Avenue.
1918: Rabbi Krass is scheduled to deliver a sermon “A Lesson from The Copperhead” at Central Synagogue.
1918: Rabbi Enelow is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Basic Doctrines of Reform Judaism” at Temple Emanu-El.
1918: Rabbi M.H. Harris is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Great Sabbath” this morning at Temple Israel of Harlem
1918: Today’s issue of The Publisher’s Weeklyincluded Jewish Fairy Stories by Gerald Friedlander and illustrated by Beatrice Hirschfeld among its listings.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Fairy-Tales-Gerald-Friedlander/dp/0486419827
1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy. The ashes of the First World War were not even cool yet when the seeds for World War II and the Holocaust were being planted.
1919: Birthdate of Marvin “Mickey” Rottner the Chicago native who played guard for the Loyola University basketball team from 1939 to 1942 after which he played professional basketball from 1945 to 1948.
1919: Birthdate of Henry Foner, the native of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood who was a decorated veteran of the United States Army whose labor organizing activity included serving as president of the Joint Board of Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union.
http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_254/
http://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/archives/oralhistories/henryfoner.html
1921(13thof Adar II, 5681): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim
1921: KH-UIA was registered as a British limited company, whose members, together with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, were chosen by the WZO's Executive Board. KH-UIA's founders included such luminaries as Chaim Weizmann, Aharon, and Isaac Naidich. The first Directors were Barth Berthold Feiwel, Georg Halpern, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shlomo Kaplansky, Shemaryahu Levin, Issac Naidich, Israel M. Sieff (later Lord Sieff) and Hillel Zlatopolsky.
1921: Accompanied by Sir Herbert Samuel and T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) Winston Churchill left Egypt for Palestine to begin his projected four week long fact finding tour.
1922(23rdof Adar, 5682): Eighty-one year old Harav Moshe Nachum Wallenstein who was born in Pupa, Hungary, in 1841 and moved to Israel in 1864 where he served the community as a rabbi passed away today.
1922: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis and Elsie Alpern gave birth to Morton Alpern who gained fame as comedian Marty Allen.(As reported by Peter Keepnews)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/obituaries/marty-allen-wild-eyed-comedy-star-is-dead-at-95.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
1923: “Louis Marshall was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities at which campaign plans of the Charities were discussed.” (As reported by JTA)
1924(17th of Adar II, 5684): Moses Cattaui Pashe, President of the Jewish Kehillah of Cairo, Egypt passed away.
1926: Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, the Honorary Chairman of the Women’s Division of the United Jewish Campaign of New York hosted a tea at her Fifth Avenue home for “the women who are organizing teams of workers for the campaign to raise six million dollars that will start in April.
1926: Birthdate of Norman Clifford ‘Norm” Mager whose accomplishments with the CCNY and the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA were over-shadowed by his involvement in the point shaving scandal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/sports/ncaabasketball/norman-mager-78-player-tarnished-by-gambling-scandal-dies.html?_r=0
1927: In Detroit, anti-Semite and automobile manufacturer Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent was an important point today in the trial of Aaron Sapiro’s libel suit…when Judge Raymond banned a series of letters” that proved Mr. Ford and his weekly newspaper had been warned of the “falsity of the articles which are the basis for this trial.
1928: Birthdate of Mortimier H. Rydell, the multi-talented New York known as Mark Rydell whose accomplishments including directing one of the greatest westerns ever made – The Cowboys in which John Wayne actually acts instead of just portraying John Wayne.
1930: ““The Administrative Committee of the enlarged Jewish Agency is meeting in London today.
1930: The front page of the New York Times sports section featured a picture of Penn State Boxer David Stoop knocking out his opponent as Penn State University successfully defended its intercollegiate title.
http://images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/3.90.2015/image078.jpg
1931: In Warsaw, Mordechai Bernstein, a journalist and “the former Zelda Goldin, a seamstress and Spanish teacher” gave birth to Masha Bernstein who survived the Holocaust and Siberia to gain fame as Masha Leon, “the society columnist for The Forward.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/nyregion/masha-leon-dead-society-columnist-for-the-forward.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Shushan Purim
1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Sixty-five year old Boris Schatz, the Lithuanian born sculptor who became known as the "father of Israeli art," founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem passed away today.
http://www.schatz.co.il/en/boris
1933: Hitler “told the Reichstag today that Positive Christianity was the "unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people", and promised not to threaten the churches or the institutions of the Republic if granted plenary powers.”
1933: The Jewish War Veterans (JWS) launched a boycott of German goods in the United States today making it the first organization in the U.S. to launch such an economic action
1933: Birthdate of Shlomo Ofek the native of Poland who perished aboard the Submarine Dakar in 1968.
1933: Birthdate of Abraham “Abe” Cohen who after playing football and wrestling at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga went to play professional football for the CFL Hamilton Tiger Cats and one season for the newly minted AFL Boston Patriots in 1960.
1936: Darius Paul Dassault was promoted to the rank of Division General (général de division) in the French Army.
1936: In Hackensack, NJ, “the Board of Education voted unanimously at its meeting tonight not ban the ‘Merchant of Venice’ from the second year high school English course because of complaints” voiced “by Rabbi Irving Silman of the Hackensack Hebrew Institute.”
1936: “David J. Schweitzer, vice chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee outlined the problems facing the committee which is engaged in a $3,500,000 drive in this county, $1,500,000 of which” is supposed to come from New York,
1937: It was reported today that sixty-four year old Jacob de Haas one of the last surviving founding fathers of the Zionist movement had passed away
http://archive.jta.org/article/1937/03/23/2838214/jacob-de-haas-herzl-collaborator-dead-here-at-64
1937: The French Fascist, led by “La Cagoule” were thwarted in their attempt to overthrow the Third Republic when Leon Blum’s Popular Front government avoided a vote of “no confidence.”
1938: In New York, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland delivered his first address as national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal. After being introduced by Louis Nizer, associate chairman of the division and chairman of the Film Board of Trade, Rabbi Silver asked a luncheon meeting of more than 100 theatrical and motion picture executives to support the drive to raise $4,500,000 to support Zionist activities. He gave a glowing account of the progress that had been in creating a Jewish Homeland. He spoke specifically about the challenges created by the worsening situation in Europe and the efforts that have been to settle refugees, especially those from Germany, in Eretz Israel. Silver equated the Zionist work in Palestine with the fight against the rise of totalitarianism.
1938. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver spoke to a meeting of the Long Island Conference for Palestine at the Jamaica Jewish Center this evening. The more than 1,000 attendees representing thirty-four communities in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties adopted a resolution agreeing to raise $75,000 for the United Palestine Appeal.
1938: “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” a romantic comedy directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch and a screenplay co-authored by William Wilder was released today in the United States.
1938: In Paris, Adam and Pauline Kaufman gave birth to Michael Kaufman a “foreign correspondent, reporter and columnist for The New York Times who chronicled despotic regimes in Europe and Africa, the fall of Communism and the changing American scene for four decades”
1939: Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front whose books were burned by the Nazis arrived in New York today and “said he had come here to study America, learn the language and write a book dealing with the persecution of the Jews
1939: “Eleven members of the old and prosperous Italian Fornari family,” including forty year old Raffaele, his wife Celesete and their two children Vitoria and Alberto, “that traces its history in Rome back for 300 years arrived yesterday on the Italian liner Rex as refugees from the recent anti-Semitic edicts of the Fascist party.”
1940: The All-India-Muslim League called for a Muslim homeland in the Indian sub-continent. The British response would be to partition India into a Hindu state of India and a Moslem state, Pakistan. The demands of the by the Muslims living in India were part of a wave of Muslim nationalism that had been sweeping the lands of North Africa and the Middle East since the start of the 20th century. The conflict in Palestine should be viewed within that context. The similarity of the British response in Palestine and India (Partition) is also worth noting.
1940: David Samuel Margoliouth, the Oxford University Professor whose father Ezekiel had converted from Judaism to Anglicanism passed away today.
1942: Of the approximately 4,000 remaining Jews in Lublin, Poland 2,500 were massacred and the rest of them were deported to Majdanek for extermination. At the start of the war, 40,000 of the 125,000 inhabitants of Lublin had been Jewish.
1942: Birthdate of Yevhen Lapinsky who played on the Soviet Union Volleyball Team that won the Gold Medal at the Olympics in 1968.
1943 (16th of Adar II, 5703): Twenty-nine Jewish orphans at La Rose Orphanage in Les Accates, France, as well as Alice Salomon, the guardian who refused to leave them two months before, were gassed at the Sobibor death camp. The Alice Salomon mentioned here is not to be confused with the famed German intellectual who fled Nazi Germany before World War II and passed away in New York in 1948. At the same time, one must wonder who says Kaddish for this otherwise unknown brave soul and the 29 youngsters who were in her care.
1943: The Gestapo arrested Henri Krasucki, his mother and other members of the French resistance.
1943: In France, 4000 Jews were deported from Marseilles, interned briefly at Drancy, France, and then deported to Sobibór
1943: The Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple stood up in front of the House of Lords in London and pleaded with the British government to help the Jews of Europe. "We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility," he said. "We stand at the bar of history, of humanity, and of God." Ever since news of Hitler's plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe reached the public in late 1942, British church leaders and members of Parliament had been agitating for something to be done. Temple's plea marked the culmination of the clamoring.
1944: British Major-General Orde Wingate died in airplane crash while fighting the Japanese in Burma during World War II. ”Wingate was an unconventional person in many respects. Among his other unique qualities was that he was an officer in the British Army, who, while serving in Palestine during the 1930's supported the Jewish cause. Then Captain Wingate served in Israel from 1936 until 1939. Born in 1903 to a religious Christian family and a firm believer in the Bible, Orde Wingate passionately embraced the prophetic vision of Jewish redemption and the Jews' ultimate return to Eretz Yisrael. During his service in Eretz Yisrael, he worked to help realize that ideal. The son of a British officer, Wingate was born in India, received a military education, and was commissioned in 1923. He served in India and then in the Sudan, where he studied Arabic and Semitics, and acquired a familiarity with the Middle East. Wingate was recognized as a talented officer, and by 1936 he had earned the rank of captain. That same year he was transferred to Eretz Yisrael, and served there for the next three years. Wingate arrived in Eretz Yisrael as an intelligence officer at a time when small bands of Arab rioters were regularly attacking both the British and the Jews. To counter this offensive, Wingate organized and trained “Special Night Squads,” comprised primarily of Haganah fighters, which were successfully employed throughout the Yishuv. Their tactics were based on the strategic principles of surprise, mobility, and night attacks and they served effectively both as defensive and offensive units, successfully pre-empting and resisting Arab attacks. Wingate maintained good contacts with the heads of the Yishuv and the Haganah. He learned Hebrew, and he demonstrated his ardent belief that the Jews were entitled to their homeland in Eretz Yisrael. He also recognized the need for a working military force, and he dreamed of heading the army of the future Jewish state. Because of his efforts and support, he was called in the Yishuv “ha-yedid,” the friend. Wingate's intense support for the Zionist viewpoint, however, was controversial, and in 1939 the British succumbed to Arab pressure and transferred Wingate from Eretz Yisrael. His passport was stamped with the restriction that he not be allowed to re-enter the country. His personal involvement with the Zionist cause was thus curtailed, but many of those he trained became heads of the Palmach and, later, the Israel Defense Forces Wingate returned briefly to Great Britain, but, recognized for his military talent, he was transferred to further active duty. In 1941 he led the force in Ethiopia against the Italians and was a major figure in liberating the country. He then worked in Burma, organizing and training the Chindits, a special jungle unit that operated behind Japanese lines. Wingate was killed in an airplane crash in Burma in 1944, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Wingate's friendship for the Yishuv and his contributions to its defense has been recognized through the several places in Israel named for him, including the College of Physical Education near Netanya."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/wingate.html
http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Charles_Orde_Wingate.htm
1944: At Ioannina in Greece, 1,860 Jews were seized by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz.
1944: Birthdate of Michael Laurence Nyman the native Stratford, London the multi-talented musician who has done it all from concert pianist, to composing movie scores and to the creation of operas.
1945: Forty-three year old Elisabeth de Rothschild, the Catholic wife of Baron Philippe de Rothschild was murdered today at Ravensbruck concentration camp.
1947: The executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine ended its deliberations today. The committee has been meeting in Jerusalem to plan tactics for the upcoming special session of the United Nations being held to deal with the issue of Palestine.
1947: Birthdate of classical pianist Kaplinsky, the native of Tel Aviv who became a professor of music at Julliard.
1948: “The Search” a “film directed by Fred Zinnemann which tells the story of a young Auschwitz survivor and his mother who search for each other across post-World War II Europe” was released today.
1948: David Ben-Gurion “cabled the United States State Department a warning that he and his colleagues would with all of their strength oppose any postponement of Jewish independence.” The U.S. State Department, the body that had done so much to keep Jews from getting to the United States during the Hitler period, was busy trying to sabotage President Truman’s support of partition and the creation of a Jewish state.
1949: “Detective Story” a three act play by Sidney Kingsley opened on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre.
1949: Israel and Lebanon signed an armistice agreement. Israeli troops withdrew from border towns they had occupied during the fighting. Lebanon would not become a major area of operations until decades later when the PLO was thrown out of Jordan and took refuge in Lebanon.
1949: In an attempt to break the deadlock between Israel and Transjordan over the shape of the border between the two states, Yigael Yadin, Walter Eytan, Moshe Dayan and Yehoshafat Harkabi (future director of Israeli Military Intelligence) went to meet King Abdullah at his villa in Shuneh Yigal. Yadin’s flawless recitation of a poem in Arabic served as an icebreaker. Despite initial setbacks, the two sides would reach an understanding that night.
1950: “The new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr. Alberto Gori, paid his first official visit to Israel today. He met the diplomatic corps and senior officers of the Foreign Affairs, Interior and Religious Affairs Ministries at a reception in Jaffa.”
1951(15th of Adar II, 5711): Michael H. Cardozo Jr. of 163 East Eighty-first Street, veteran attorney, passed away today in his office at 115 Broadway at the age 70. He was a cousin of the late Associate Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo of the United States Supreme Court.
1954: Mathematician Jacob Bronowski, the father of Lisa Jardine, “delivered his own Conway Memorial Lecture today.”
1956: New York State Supreme Court Justice Henry Epstein officiated at the wedding of actress Rita Gam, to Yale Graduate and WW II Marine Corps veteran “Thomas H. Guinzburg, the son of Harold K. Guinzburg, publisher of the Viking Press” today.
1957: The University of North Carolina led by Lennie Rosenbluth won the NCCA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, MO.
1959(13thof Adar II, 5719): Sixty-seven Sam Born, the Russian born American “candyman” who founded Just Born Company, maker of such sweet treats as Peeps passed away today.
http://www.justborn.com/
1962: Abraham Ellstein’s only opera, “The Golem” which he created with his wife Sylvia Regan premiered today at the New York City Opera a year and a day before he passed away under the baton of Julius Rudel who had fled his native Austria when the Nazis took over.
1962: In its review of the Broadway musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” The New York Timesproclaimed "The evening's find is Barbara Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne" By the time Streisand made her Broadway debut in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” she had already developed a loyal following as a singer. In performances at the Lion Club, one of New York City's premier gay clubs, and in other clubs around the country, the young Streisand developed her trademark outsider persona, impromptu one-liners, and theatrical delivery that brought audiences to their feet. Streisand's performance as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale was so successful that the role was expanded for her, with new songs added. Despite national acclaim for her performance, she was considered too Jewish, too eccentric, too unattractive, and too marked by her Brooklyn upbringing for a record contract. When Columbia Records finally released The Barbra Streisand Album in 1964, however, it remained on the charts for eighteen months. Streisand's movie debut in Funny Girl four years later, in the Oscar-winning role of comedian Fanny Brice, cemented her place among the stars of American theatre and film.
1963: Duke’s Art Heyman was named the outstanding player at the 1963 NCC Men’s Division I Basketball tournament which came to a close today
1963: Rolf Hochhuth's "Der Stellvertreter" (The Deputy), premiered in Berlin. The Catholic Church was outraged at the portrayal of Pius XII as being complicit in the murder of the Jews of Europe.
1964(10th of Nisan, 5724): Actor Peter Lorre passed away passed away at the age of 59. Born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein in what was then the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lorre gained fame as a character actor with parts in such films as Casablanca and Arsenic and Old Lace. In the 1930’s he played the title character the Mr. Motto detective films.
http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/The_Times_(25/Mar/1964)_-_Obituary:_Peter_Lorre
1969: Birthdate of Donte Phillip Spector, one of three children adopted by Phil Spector and his second wife.
1970(15thof Adar II, 5730): Shushan Purim
1970: Birthdate of Justin Craig Duberman, the native of New Haven who after growing up in Highland Park Illinois went on to play ice hockey for the University of North Dakota and made it to the NFL as a right wing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
1972 (8th of Nisan, 5732): Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager, who had been revered as Vizhnitzer Rebbe for 35 years, passed away in Israel tonight.
1973: CBS broadcast the last episode of daytime soap opera “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” created by Chicago native Irna Phillips.
1974: Senator Ted Kennedy arrived in Moscow today where he spoke with Brezhnev about the Middle East and immigration, two topics of importance to Jews in the United States and Israel.
1974: “”Leonid Zabelishensky was released from prison today.”
1975: In “Major Book on Holocaust” published today, Gerald F. Lieberman described the negotiations that are “under way between Israel and an American company for the publication of The Diary of Adam Czerniakow,” a document that a leading Jewish scholar in Brooklyn College termed of major importance in understanding the near destruction of European Jewry under the Nazis.
1978: The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line. The Blue Line was a demarcation between Israeli and PLO forces.
1979(24th of Adar, 5739): One person was murdered and 13 more injured in a terrorist bombing at Zion Square in Jerusalem.
1979: Abraham David Sofaer began serving as Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,
1980: In “The Two Faces of Israel’s Masada: Glory and Tragedy,” Carmia Borek describes the varying view of this famous Jewish landmark.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB061EFA395C11728DDDAA0A94DB405B8084F1D3
1980: Birthdate of Asaf Avidan an Israeli folk/rock musician known for his breakthrough debut album, "The Reckoning", which was created with a group of backup musicians under the name "Asaf Avidan and the Mojos". The album received positive critical reviews and earned Avidan a nomination for Best Israeli Artist at the upcoming MTV Europe Awards.
1980: Release date in the United States for “Christ Stopped at Eboli” (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli), a 1979 film adaptation of the book of the same name by Carlo Levi.
1981: Shimon Peres said in Tel Aviv today his party would make an effort to negotiate the future status of Jerusalem with Saudi Arabia and would look seriously at the possibility of peace with the Saudis.
1983(9thof Nisan, 5743): Eighty-four year old Rabbi Saul Lieberman passed away.
http://www.joshyuter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Saul-Lieberman-and-the-Orthodox-31.pdf
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/slieberman.html
1985: Jewish singer Billy Joel wed supermodel Christie Brinkley
1986(12th of Adar II, 5746): Rabbi Moshe Feinstein passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/25/obituaries/thousands-mourn-talmudic-scholar.html
1987(22ndof Adar, 5747): Eighty-five year old Morton Minsky, the last of the Minsky brothers, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/24/obituaries/morton-minky-is-dead-at-85-last-of-a-burlesque-dynasty.html
1987: CBS broadcast the first episode of the long running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” which would feature Tracey E. Bregman in the role of “Lauren Fenmore.”
1988: In Wellington, NZ, Israel national football team defeated Chinese Taipei, nine to nothing.
1988(5th of Nisan, 5748): Fifty-eight year old “Jim Jacobs, a boxing historian and a co-manager of Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion” passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/24/obituaries/jim-jacobs-tyson-s-co-manager-and-handball-titlist-dies-at-58.html
1989: In Philadelphia, Dr. Richard Cohen, who played tennis for the University of Pennsylvania and played professional tennis for two years and his wife gave birth to professional tennis player Julia Cohen, the sister of All-American tennis player Josh Cohen.
1989: Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe) announced that they had unlocked the mystery of cold fusion at the University of Utah.
1990: Release date of “Pretty Woman” the comedy filmed under executive produce Laura Ziskin and co-starring Jason Alexander (born Jay Scott Greenspan).
1992: “Broadway Bound” a made for television movie based on Neil Simon’s play co-starring Jonathan Silverman, featuring Jerry Orbach and Michele Lee and with music by David Shire was broadcast for the first time tonight.
1993: Judith Kaye began serving as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals
1993: A third revival of “3 Men On A Horse” a play co-authored by George Abbott with a cast that included Tony Randall, Jack Klugman and Jerry Stiller began previews at the Lyceum Theatre.
1994(11th of Nisan, 5754): Victor Lashchiver, employed as a guard at the Income Tax offices in East Jerusalem, was shot and killed by terrorists near Damascus Gate on his way to work. The Popular Front claimed responsibility for the attack.
1994: “Above the Rim,” “a sports film co-written, stored and directed by Jeff Pollack” was released in the United States today.
1995(21st of Adar II, 5755): Author and screenwriter Irving Shulman passed away at the age of 81.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-28/news/mn-47894_1_irving-shulman
1997(14th of Adar II, 5757): Purim
1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Vulnerable Observer Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart" by Ruth Behar and "The Journey Home Jewish Women and the American Century" by Joyce Antler. Among the more than 50 Jewish women chronicled in this tome are: Sonya Abuza, an overweight immigrant in Hartford who had been deserted by her husband, later became famous as a ''Gypsy of the footlights'' named Sophie Tucker. Henrietta Szold, the eldest of five daughters of a distinguished Baltimore rabbi, established Hadassah, the largest women's Zionist group in the world, in 1912. Ruth Gruber, who at 20 was declared the youngest person in the world to hold a doctorate, flew a secret mission for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II to help 1,000 refugees find asylum in Oswego, N.Y. Goldie Mabovich Meyerson was born in Kiev, was raised and married in Milwaukee, then moved to Palestine in 1921, where, known as Golda Meir, she became Prime Minister of Israel. In this unique volume, Joyce Antler, who teaches American studies at Brandeis University, blends history, anecdote and biography to emphasize the achievement of these women, who attempted to satisfy family, God and their own dreams at the same time. The book illuminates their struggles for identity as well as the sexism and anti-Semitism they encountered.
1998(25thof Adar, 5758): Eighty-one year old American poet Hilda Morely and cousin of Isaiah Berlin passed away today.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/hilda-morley
1999: Emanuel Zisman left The Third Way and continued serving as independent MK.
2000: During his meeting with President Ezer Weizman, Pope John Paul II “blessed the state of Israel” after which he visited Yad Vashem.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/speech.asp
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/portrait.asp
2001(28thof Adar, 5761): Eighty-seven year old Janice Levin, the art collector and philanthropist whose husband attorney Philip J. Levin passed away in 1971, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/janice-levin-87-philanthropist-of-the-arts.html
2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol
2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-three year old Oscar Winning set designer Richard Sylbert passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/movies/richard-sylbert-73-designer-of-oscar-winning-film-sets.html?scp=1&sq=richard%20sylbert&st=cse/
2003(19th of Adar II, 5763): Fritz Spiegl the Austrian-born musician, journalist, broadcaster, humorist and collector who fled to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis passed away today.
2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including Regarding "The Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag and "Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication From the Vietnam War" by Henry Kissinger.
2004: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the New York Department had increased uniformed and plainclothes patrols at synagogues and in predominately Jewish neighborhoods following an attack on Sheik Ahmed Yasssin, a founder of Hamas, in Gaza City.
2005: March Madness, the popular name for the national American collegiate basketball champion competition took on a Jewish twist. A sixteen year old feud was reignited by comments made by Deon Thomas a professional basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv about University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Coach Bruce Pearl, whose skill at bringing his unheralded hoopsters to the Sweet Sixteen may mark him as the next Red Auerbach.
2005: The Ensemble for the Romantic Century presented Fanny Mendelssohn: Out of Her Brother’s Shadow, a theatrical concert featuring the music of Fanny Mendelssohn at the Jewish Museum in New York.
2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Seventy-three year old Naftali Halberstam “the grand rabbi of the Bobov Chasidic Sect” passed away today.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/obituaries/naftali-halberstam-dies-at-74-bobov-hasidims-grand-rabbi.html
2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Eighty-five year old award winning British actor David Kossoff passed away today in Hatfield, Hertforshire, England.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1486283/David-Kossoff.html
2006: Judith Martin, known professionally as “Miss Manners” today “was a special guest correspondent on The Colbert Report, giving her analysis of the manners with which the White House Press Corps spoke to the President.”
2007(4th of Nisan, 5767: Paul J. Cohen, American mathematician, and winner of the Fields Medal, passed away.
http://paulcohen.org/
2007: Tal Friedman sang with “The Krayot” band in Tel Aiv today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tal_Friedman_23032007.jpg
2007: An international conference for Jewish theater professionals, artists, and aficionados hosted by The Association for Jewish Theatre in conjunction with the Jewish Theatre of Austria comes to an end.
2008: An exhibition organized by guest curator Murray Zimiles entitled “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel has its last showing at the American Folk Art Museum.
2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of "Liberty Of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality" by Martha C. Nussbaum.
2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Mark Evanier’s "Kirby: King of Comics" that describes the life and times of Jack Kirby, the son of Austrian Jewish immigrants who had such an impact on the comic book genre including the creation of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk and Captain America.
2008: As pilots began undergoing tests for cancer, a team of technical personnel from the Israel Air Force flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for consultations with their American counterparts and Lockheed Martin concerning the recent discovery of carcinogenic material in an Israeli F-16I.
2008(16th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum, an ultra-Orthodox educator and innovator who created a series of dial-in phone lines with lectures on sacred texts, died today at the age of 68http://forward.com/articles/13039/rabbi-eli-teitelbaum-dial-a-daf-creator--/
2009: At Rutgers University, Professor Martin Bunzl, director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois at Urbana delivers a lecture on Israel, Islamophobia, and the Right Wing in Europe entitled “The New Philo-Semitism.”
2009: Sports Illustrated magazine reported on the recent death of 86 year old Bill Davidson who amassed a fortune in the glass business owner the Detroit Pistons for 35 years and free spending philanthropists. The magazine also noted that Davidson had run track at Michigan and “was a charter member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
2009: The Aviv String Quartet, founded in Israel in 1997, performs at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.
2009: In the on-going sage of what was once the country’s leading kosher slaughtering operation four companies bid for the assets of Agriprocessors in an auction that began today. The bidding ended this evening night with offers reaching as high as $5.5 million.
2010: The AIPAC Policy Conference comes to a close.
2010: The New York Times Knowledge Network and the Israeli Consulate are scheduled to team up together to present the opening night of a weeklong event entitled The New Israeli Cuisine in which participants will take a tour through the fascinating evolution of Israel's culinary scene
2010: The Temple Mount Human Rights Group has scheduled a gathering for today in front of the Mashbir department store in Jerusalem. The theme of the gathering is, "The time has come for our liberation - to be a free people on our mountain" which plays on the chorus of the national anthem Hatikvah, which talks about the Jews being "a free people in our land". The group will call for freedom of religion for all groups on the Temple Mount, including the Jews. The group's chairman, Yehuda Glick, says the state, in response to the Supreme Court, determined there was no preventing freedom of religion at the site but was concerned about the security consequences. He added, "We will come with lambs and goats and demand that we be allowed to offer a Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount.
2010: The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel met this evening in Washington, D.C.
2010: The UK expelled an Israeli diplomat owing to claims that an embassy official from that country forged passports, and David Miliband gave a public warning against travel to Israel because of identity theft concerns
2010: As German authorities pursue suspected Nazi war criminals to the last, a court in Aachen convicted an 88-year-old former SS soldier today on charges of killing three Dutch civilians in reprisal for attacks by Dutch resistance fighters in 1944. The case against the former soldier, Heinrich Boere, who is now a stateless person, was depicted by German analysts as one of the last major war crimes trials.
2010: The ex-convict who killed a Canadian Jewish leader in Barbados last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Curtis Joel Foster, 25, was sentenced today in a Barbados court for killing Terry Schwarzfeld, who had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel.
2011: The 75-minute dramatic oratorio, “From the Fire,” is scheduled to be presented in New York City to mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and bring attention to contemporary examples of unsafe working conditions.
2011: Kathryn Gleason, a professor of Archaeology and Landscape Architecture at Cornell, who has excavated at Herod's tomb and other sites in Israel is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the 92nd St Y entitled “Archaeology In Israel: Herod's World .”
2011: Today a committee of the Knesset is scheduled to debate whether J Street is sufficiently "committed" to Israel to be called a pro-Israel organization.
2011: “Two rockets exploded in Beersheba this morning, and ten mortar shells fell in the Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils..”
2011: Seventy-nine year old actress Elizabeth Taylor who converted to Judaism in 1959, had two Jewish husbands (producer Mike Todd and crooner Eddie Fisher) and was such an ardent supporter of Israel and Jewish causes such as the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, that her films were “were banned by Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and Africa” passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/23/local/la-me-elizabeth-taylorlong-20110324
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/23/elizabeth-taylor-obituary
2011(17, Adar II, 5771): “One woman died and 50 were injured after an explosion took place at a bus station in central Jerusalem this afternoon. Police said that a bomb exploded outside Egged bus number 74 at a station opposite the Jerusalem Conference Center (Binyanei Ha'uma) in the center of town. Fifty people were injured in the attack.
2011: It was reported today that “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is trying to identify more than 1,000 children in photos that date from when they were scattered across Europe at the end of World War II and taken in by relief agencies. The museum’s “Remember Me” project seeks the public’s help in identifying 1,100 children among tens of thousands who were uprooted by the war.(Associated Press)
2011(17, Adar II, 5771): Famed defense attorney Leonard I. Weinglass passed away today at the age of 77. (As reported by Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25weinglass.html
2012: “Gripsholm,” a movie about Berlin cabaret life in the inter-war years featuring the life of a German-Jewish publisher as the leading character, is scheduled to be shown in Atlanta, GA.
2012: “Remembrance and “Ahead of Time” are schedule to be shown at the NoVA International Jewish Film Festival in Fairfax, VA.
2012: As a part of the movement started by National Day of Unplugging Jews will begin a weekend complying with the Sabbath Manifesto.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/Themes_and_Theology/sabbath-manifesto.shtml
2013: Barak Obama is scheduled to return to the United States after completing his first trip to Israel since being elected President.
2013: Violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Agnela Yoffe are scheduled to perform at the High School of Fashion Industries.
2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Shabbat HaGadol
2013: “After the Houston Astros put him on waivers,” today “the Oakland A’s picked up Nate Freiman, “the 26-year-old first baseman, who dominated opposing pitchers during Team Israel’s World Baseball Classic bid last year and who hit .278 for Houston during Spring Training, with 1 HR, two doubles, no walks and 7 whiffs in 36 at-bats.
2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-three year old Canadian born American bodybuilder Joe Weider who along with his brother carved a special niche in the world competitive bodybuilding passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/sports/joe-weider-founder-of-a-bodybuilding-empire-dies-at-93.html
2013: The worsening crisis in Syria necessitated restoring relations with Turkey, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page this evening, explaining the reasoning to his apology to Ankara over the death of nine Turkish activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla.
2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry began nitty-gritty efforts at re-starting talks between Israel and the Palestinians with a late night meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
2013: An IDF jeep on patrol near the Syrian border was hit by gunfire this evening. The IDF said the shots were fired from Syria, and that it was "checking the circumstances surrounding the incident."
2014: Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to return to Miami, for a concert featuring Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 in C minor which is being dedicated in memory of Dr. Shulamit Katzman, who was a devoted supporter of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
2014: A youth center in Jönköping in southern Sweden is vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs, including “Jewish pigs,” “you’ll burn in hell,” and swastikas.
2014: “Billionaire diamond magnate Lev Leviev” one of the “most successful Bukharian Jews” and “Israeli philanthropist” was photographed today “writing in a Torah scroll wit Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov and defense minister Moshe Yaalon.”
2014: Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to perform his only New York recital at 8 p.m.
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Jewish Poetry Now: Celebrating the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry”
2014: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service (one of America’s premiere provider of social services for the Jewish community) is scheduled to hold its Annual Meeting this morning at the Uptown Jewish Community Center.
2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host Robert H. Gillette, author of The Virginia Plan that described the plan of department store own William B. Thalhiemer’s plan to rescue the students of Gross Breesen Institute and create “a safe haven on Burkeville, VA farm.
2014: “The Jewish Cardinal” with “Moses on the Mesa” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.
2014: “The Zigzag Kid” is scheduled to be the last picture shown at this year’s Houston Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the Chair of Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to host a lecture “Tortosa” presented by David Goldstein
2014: “The mystery of where Islamist hackers got phone numbers and email addresses to send threatening text and email messages grew today, when it emerged that a database belonging to the IsraelDefense magazine and web site had been hacked over the weekend.” (As reported by David Shamah)
2014: “The Foreign Ministry’s Workers Union today declared a full-blown general strike, shutting down the ministry’s headquarters in Jerusalem and all Israeli embassies and consulates across the world.´(As reported by Raphael Ahren)
2014: “Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix: A Retrospective,” is scheduled to come to a close at The Jewish Museum in New York City
2015: “Touchdown Israel – Tackle Football in the Holyland” is scheduled to be sown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival
2015: Dr. Tom Barton is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Battle Over Jews in Medieval Spain” in Carlsbad, CA.
2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to stop in Beaufort, South Carolina, for a visit to Beth Israel Congregation – formerly Orthodox, now “all-inclusive” – to talk with community members about maintaining religious traditions and Jewish identity in a small town.
2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “France, Jewish Identity and the Holocaust: Yellow Stars of Tolerance and Cojot.”
2016: YIVO is scheduled to present “Mixed-Sex Dancing in Yiddish Culture.”
2016:Hadassah Humanitarian Mission to Cuba is scheduled to begin today.
2016: “Next Stop” a “play that follows two Israelis humorously navigating the confusion of dating life in New York City” is scheduled to open at the Broadway Comedy Club.
2016(13thof Adar II, 5776): Fast of Esther; in the evening read the Megillah – for more see
2017: The ten day Israel Culinary Trip to Israel sponsored by the Streicker Center is scheduled to begin today.
2017: “A months long wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States that prompted evacuations, heightened security and fears of rising anti-Semitism gave way to an unexpected twist” today when a Jewish 18 year old who holds dual Israeli and American citizenship who reported has a brain tumor was arrested and “His father was ordered held for eight days on suspicion that he might have been aware of the threats…”
2017: Today “The Republican-led Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, ignoring objections from Democrats that David Friedman lacked the temperament for such an important diplomatic post.”
2017: The American Society for Jewish Music is scheduled to present “Your New House: Wedding Songs, Gender and Memory in an Indian Jewish Community.”
2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host George Prochnik speaking on “Stranger in a Strange Land – Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem.
2018: Daylight saving time begins at 2:00 A.M in Israel
2018: A Hebrew language performance of the Israeli play “Scoop” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Roy Arias Theatre in New York City.
2018: This morning, the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.”
2018: BowTie theatres in Hartford and New Haven, CT. are scheduled to host screenings of “Itzhak,” a film about the life of violinist Itzhak Perlman.