December 10
2011: The second round of weekend events that are part of Hamshoushalayim are scheduled to end today.
2011:Israeli professor Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in Stockholm today, and said that scientists have many duties, including keeping an eye on politicians. Israel has an impressive showing when it comes to Nobel winners, with 10 laureates in its 63-year history. Most recently, Israeli scientist Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute also won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2009, for her work on the ribosomes. Shechtman also won the Israel Prize in physics in 1998.
2012:The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to continue today with performances by Zion 80,Hasidic New Wave with Yakar Rhythms, and Mika Karney
2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Ninety-seven year old economist Albert O. Hirschman who helped to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/business/albert-o-hirschman-economist-and-resistance-figure-dies-at-97.html?hpw&_r=0
2012: The Washington Jewish Festival and the Hebrew Language Table are scheduled to present a screening of “There Was Once,” a film by Gabor Kalman, the focuses on the work of a high school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary to teacher her students about the once thriving and now non-existent Jewish community that existed in their city. She does this against the backdrop of a rising tide of right-wing extremism.
2012: The Sephardic Scholar Series is scheduled to continue this year with a free concert at the CUNY-Graduate Center with the New York Andalus Ensemble.
2012: Nechemya Weberman a 54 year old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Chasidic community in Williamsburg was convicted “of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.” (As reported by Sharon Otterman)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/hasidic-man-found-guilty-of-sexual-abuse.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0
2012: After nightfall, Jews worldwide will celebrate the third of the winter festival’s eight nights.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-mysterious-menorah-from-a-vanished-empire-goes-on-display-in-jerusalem/
2012: Todayin Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Sciences is scheduled to present the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, and the Nobel in economics to Alvin Roth. (As reported by Mark Shulte)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-york-jews-wont-stop-winning-nobel-prizes/
1475: Seventy eight year old Italian artist Paolo Uccello passed away. Like many artists of his time, Uccello produced what today would be called anti-Semitic art. Among his works was “Miracle of the Host”
1508: The League of Cambrai is formed by Pope Julius II, Louis XII of France, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Ferdinand II of Aragon as an alliance against Venice. From a Jewish point of view, this item presents a mixed bag. Ferdinand ruled over a kingdom that had expelled its Jews and was home to the inquisition. But Pope Julius employed a Jewish physician, Samuel Sarfatti and practiced a policy of “benign neglect” when it came to dealing with the Jewish people. While Venice had enacted its share of ant-Jewish laws (and in 1516 would create the first Ghetto), it was a better place for Jews to settle than other parts of Europe. This is attested to by the fact that many of the Sephardim who had been expelled from Spain made their new home in the city of canals, including Isaac Abravanel.
1675: A German Jew, Alexander Polak, became a citizen of The Hauge. He was the progenitor of the Polak Daniels family, and gave the congregation a cemetery in 1697.
1776: Birthdate of Abraham Mendelssohn, the son of Moses Mendelssohn and the father of Felix Mendelssohn. A successful banker, he would change his name to Abraham Ernst Mendelssohn Bartholdy and change his religion to Christianity.
1803(25th of Kislev, 5564): Chanukah
1804: Birthdate of German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. Jacobi was the German mathematician who, with the independent work of Niels Henrik Abel of Norway, founded the theory of elliptic functions. He also worked on Abelian functions and discovered the hyperelliptic functions. Jacobi applied his work in elliptic functions to number theory. He also investigated mathematical analysis and geometry. Jacobi carried out important research in partial differential equations of the first order and applied them to the differential equations of dynamics. His work on determinants is important in dynamics and quantum mechanics and he studied the functional determinant now called the Jacobian. He passed away in 1851.
1817: Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state. The Jewish community in Mississippi dates back to the 1840’s. There are Jewish houses of worship and cemeteries dotted in many towns across the state including Jackson, the state capital, Greenwood and Vicksburg. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) is located in Utica, Mississippi. Utica is also the home to Henry S. Jacobs Camp, the summer destination for thousands of southern Jewish youngsters in the last forty years. The Mississippi Jewish community has produced several prominent individuals including Shelby Foote and Rabbi Fred Davidow.
1826 (10 Kislev 5587): Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch was released from prison after being arrested the week after Sukkot on slander charges.
1836: Emory College was chartered in Oxford, Georgia. Today Emory University is located in Atlanta, Georgia. One third of the undergraduate student body is Jewish and in 2005 Hillel received a three million dollar grant to upgrade its services and facilities on campus. The university offers a two year graduate degree in Jewish Studies.
1848: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte won a four-way race and was elected President of France today.
1854: In Berlin tax-collector Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Henrici and his wife Wilhelmine gave birth to Carl Ernst Julius Henrici the anti-Semitic leader who founded the Social Nazi Party in 1881.
1855(1st of Tevet, 5616): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
1855: Birthdate of Mrs. James (Selina) Levi. The Dubuque native was the daughter of the founder of Iowa Jewry and one time held the record for being the oldest Jewish woman born in the Hawkeye State.
1858: The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York sent a letter to President James Buchanan which described a public meeting held on December 4 in which Jews and non-Jews gathered to demand the return of Edgardo Mortara to his parents. Those attending the meeting also petitioned the President to join with the several European nations who were protesting the kidnapping of the youngster by representatives of the Pope. This letter was a follow-up to a communication sent by the same group on November 20, 1858.
1858: Caleb Lyon delivered his second lecture on The Holy Land under the auspices of the Mercantile Library Association at Clinton Hall this evening. His lecture included a description of the mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea and “the silvery Jordan River.” He described his trip to Jerusalem which he said was populated by six thousand Jews as well as a visit to the Siloam Springs, the Wailing Wall and attendance at a Jewish wedding.
1861: An article entitled “Sold by a Jew Peddler” reported that John H. Bornisky had filed a complaint before Judge Osborne claiming that a Jewish peddler name August Seligman had sold to him seven pieces of linen, for the sum of $38 50. The sale was made by sample, and the complainant had paid the money upon the promise of Seligman to deliver the goods immediately. Since the goods were not delivered Seligman was arrested and held because bail had not been posted.
1861: Rabbi Arnold Fischel arrived in Washington, D.C. this evening. He hopes to meet with government leaders including President Lincoln in an attempt to change the law so that Jews can serve as chaplains with the Union Army.
1861: Moses Grinnell writes a letter of introduction to President Lincoln on behalf of Rabbi Arnold Fischel.
“Sir, permit me to present to you Rev .Dr. Fischell of this city who visits Washington as a delegate from the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, having been selected as chaplain to the Jews of the army around Washington estimated at about 8000. Dr. Fischell is of high literary abilities and greatly esteemed by distinguished men of all religious denimonations. Believe me, etc.”
1864: Sherman’s Union Army reaches Savannah in what history will call “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Among those with Sherman was Major General Frederick Knefler. The native of Hungary was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Union Army. He was commander of the 79th Indiana regiment before he was promoted to brigadier general for his performance at the Battle of Chickamauga and then to major general during his service with Sherman on his march through Georgia.
1870: It was reported today that ground has been broken for a new synagogue located at Lexington and 55th in Manhattan. Henry Fernbach who was the architect for the 34th and 44th street synagogues as well as one of the architects who worked on Temp[le Emmanuel, designed this building which he estimates will cost $180,000, [Today this synagogue is the Central Synagogue which was formed from the merger in 1898 of Shar HaShomayim (meaning Gate of Heaven), founded in 1839 by German Jews, and Ahawath Chesed (meaning Love of Mercy), founded in 1846 by Bohemian Jews. Its name was changed to Central Synagogue in 1920 symbolizing not only its location, but also its change to Reform Judaism.”]
1871: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has a published “a very discriminating criticism on the character of Shylock as a representative of the Hebrew nation.” According to the Messenger, “as an embodiment of the Jewish people Shylock stands forth strong in his love of religion, family and neighbors but impotent to remonstrate against injustice or to resent it.”
1874: During today’s meeting of the Board of Alderman in New York, a resolution authorizing the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society to sub-let the property they obtained from the City was referred to the Committee on Law.
1875: Today’s session of the Hebrew Charity Fair which closed at 4 o’clock because of erev Shabbat raised $1,155.65.
1876(24th of Kislev, 5637): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.
1876: It was reported today that the Purim Association will manage the upcoming Hebrew Charity Ball which is fund raiser for the United Hebrew Charities.
1876: It was reported today that New York’s Hebrew Free School Association is serving 580 students and that the association’s President has announced that additional efforts will be made to provide more facilities for the youngsters.
1876: Rabbi Lukskar officiated at the funeral of 27 year old Abraham Stettaner (sp) at the Cypress Hills Cemetery. He was one of the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire.
1879: The New York Times publishes a lengthy article about the history of Chanukah which begins with the erroneous statement, “The Jewish feast called Chanukah or the Feast of Dedication will be honored by the adherents of the ancient faith on the 16th.” On the evening of December 16th, Jews will be lighting the 8th candle
1879(25th of Kislev, 5640): First Day of Chanukah
1880: It was reported today that a fundraiser is to be held to benefit the 44th Street Synagogue.
1881: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on hosting a ball in celebration of Chanukah at the Academy of Music that will feature several tableaus depicting events in Jewish history.
1882: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Associations is scheduled to take place at ten o’clock this morning in Manhattan.
1882: It was reported today that Alfred Steckler has obtained an injunction preventing the police from arresting several Jewish shopkeepers and workers for violating the Sunday Closing Laws. The injunctions were based on Section 264 of the Penal Code which permits people to work on the first day of the week if they “uniformly keep another day of the week as holy time” and that their labor does not disturb those “observing the first day of the week as holy time.” (In our world where everything it is 24-7-365 it seems hard to remember that Sunday Closing Laws were the norm and vestiges of them still exist such as the prohibition on buying and selling vehicles in Iowa on Sunday.)
1882: Birthdate Austrian-born British philosopher Otto Neurath. The Marxist radical and refugee from Hitler’s Europe passed away in 1945.
1882: It was reported today that the Jews are one of only “4 religious sects” (the others being Catholics, Episcopalian and Presbyterians) who have founded one or more hospitals in New York City.
1882: It was reported today that that the Prefect of Police has ordered the expulsion of all Jews “residing within the boundaries of St. Petersburg without official permission.”
1883: Birthdate of Shakhne Epstein the native of Vilna who came from a long line of “distinguished rabbis and maskilim.”
1884: It was reported today that the state of Connecticut has had a law on the books “designed to exempt Jews and Seventh Day Baptists who conscientiously observed Saturday as a day of religious worship from the penalties apply to a violation of Sunday laws.
1888: “He Wants To Be A Boss” published today described moves by Ernst Nathan to take control of “the Republican machine in Kings County (NY)” by asserting his role to dispense patronage following the election of Benjamin Harrison to the Presidency of the United States.
1889: It was reported today that the Montefiore Home Fair of 1887 which raised $158,000 was the most successful fundraiser sponsored by the Jewish community to date.
1889: It was reported today that this year’s Hebrew Educational Fair is being sponsored by the Hebrew Free School Association, the Aguilar Free Library and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Funds raised during this two long event will go the Hebrew Institute.
1890: In London, The Lord Mayor presided over a meeting at the Guildhall today “to consider the condtion of the Jews in Russia and to take action to secure some alleviation of their distress.”
1890: A benefit performance of the play “Ein Konigreich um ein Kind” presented by Amberg’s company “for the benefit of the building fund of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum” will take place tonight at New York’s Lexington Avenue Opera House.
1890: The forty-piece juvenile orchestra of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum perfromed at the Teacher’s Bazaar, an event designed to raise funds for teachers’ pensions.
1891: Birthdate of Nelly Sachs. Born in Berlin, Sachs was a German poet and dramatist who was transformed by the Nazi experience from a dilettante into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. Sachs found sanctuary in Sweden in 1940. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people." She passed away in 1970 and was buried in Sweden.
1891: “Our Foreign Relations” published today noted that President Harrison’s “references to the persecution and expulsion of the Russian Jews are just and temperate.” The President showed a “practical as well as a humane and sympathetic interest in persuading” to “abate her cruelties” when dealing with the Jews.
1892: Lucius Weinschenk, a member of the firm of Bryan, Weinschenk & Hirschel and prominent member of the Chicago Jewish country fled the United States “leaving a shortage in his accounts…of about $20,000.”
1893: Professor Felix Adler delivered an address at Carnegie Hall this morning on the teachings of Jesus Christ which began with a comparison between Jesus and “the older prophets of Israel.”
1893: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil delivered a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El on “Who Are the Enemies of Judaism?”
1894: “Cheap Loans A Success” published today described the activity of the Provident Society, which had been established to lend money to the needy at a rate far below of the pawnshops whose founders included August Belmont and Jacob Schiff, had made half of its loans to Jews with the rest going mostly to “Americans and Germans.”
1895: Large crowds visited all of the booths and displays at the Hebrew Fair in New York City. Isaacs S. Isaacs is editor in chief of the Fair Journal. Rebecca Kohut is the business manager of the Fair Journal.
1896: A secretary for President-elect William McKinley wrote a letter to Rabbi Emanuel Schwab in response to one that Rabbi Schwab had sent to him congratulating McKinley on his election and telling the former Civil War major that he had voted for him.
1897(15th of Kislev, 5658): Charles Louis Fleischmann passed away. Born in 1835, he “was an innovative manufacturer of yeast and other consumer food products during the 19th Century. In the late 1860s, he and his brother Maximilian created America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible.”
1898: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the Spanish-American War. Following the war, a number of Jewish veterans settled in Cuba. By 1904, they were able to establish a synagogue in Havana.
1899: The National Jewish Hospital for Treatment of Consumptives opened today in Denver, Colorado.
1901: The first Nobel Prizes were awarded. In 1905, Adolph von Baeyer, a German chemist, became the first Jew to win a Nobel Prize. He won it in Chemistry for his work in synthesizing dye indigo.
1903: “The Early and the Girl” a two-act musical comedy for which Jerome Kern would write the song “How’d you like to spoon with me?” opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London.
1905: The Jews of Manchester, England called for a meeting to publicly protest the treatment of Russian Jews as typified by the Kishinev Pogroms.
1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize. Roosevelt never intended to keep the money that was part of the prize. Finally, in 1918, he was able to donate the money to a variety of charities. Among those receiving funds was the Jewish Welfare Board, which received $4,000 for War Activities. The funds were to be handled by the treasurer, Mr. Walter E. Sachs.
1909: Bessie Ida Ginsberg married Jesse Lasky, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures.
1910(9th of Kislev, 5671): Seventy-seven year old Michael Friedländer passed away. Born in Posen, and educated in Germany, he moved to England in 1865 when he back principal of Jews’ College in London, a position he held until three years before his death. His English translation of Maiimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is considered to be a classic. He was the father-in-law of Moses Gaster.
1910: German-Jewish author and translator Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1913: Birthdate of composer Morton Gould.
1915: Moise Cohen of Constantinople was appointed professor of finance at Ottoman University.
1916: Alfred Mond began serving as First Commissioner of Works under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
1917(25th of Kislev, 5678): First Day of Chanukah
1922: Due to travel problems, Albert Einstein was unable to attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony and deliver his Nobel Lecture.
1923: Dr. Arthur Ruppin tells the Keren Hayesod Council that “the housing shortage in Palestine has been relieved to a considerably extent by the establishment of the General Mortgage Bank of Palestine, which has invested more than $300,000 in mortgages, enabling the construction of 300 houses, chiefly in Tel-Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Tiberias.”
1923: Birthdate of Harold Gould. Born Harold Goldstein, Gould is one of those character actors whose face you know but name you don’t. One of his more memorable roles came in Paul Newman/Robert Redford hit, The Sting.
1929: Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Jewish son-in-law of Mark Twain, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a concert at Carnegie Hall tonight.
1930: As the U.S. economy moved further into what we now call The Great Depression, the savings bank in which many members of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood in New York had placed their money closed and no funds were made available to depositors. The collection of dues began to fall off at an alarming rate, and there was a high demand for financial aid from the Secret Relief Fund.
1934: Birthdate of Howard Martin Temin. Temin was American virologist who in 1975 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with his former professor Renato Dulbecco and another of Dulbecco's students, David Baltimore, for his co-discovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase. In 1961, Temin's formed a provirus hypothesis that cancer cells affect genetic material. The protein coat of certain viruses contains an enzyme that facilitates the copying of viral genes into the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the host cell. In 1970 he and Baltimore both independently isolated the enzyme, now called reverse transcriptase. The viruses that contain the enzyme are known as retroviruses. Temin also investigated how genetic information in the provirus transforms a normal animal cell into a tumor cell. He passed away in 1994.
1934: Birthdate of Ryszard Przecicki, who as Richard J. Pratt, became one of the richest men in Australia.
1936: Jewish settlers erected the first of the “Tower and Stockade” settlements (Tel Amel) Nir David. These settlements on remote parcels of land purchased by the Jewish National Fund were set up overnight with the help of prefabricated towers and walls. They were usually put up overnight with the help of hundreds of volunteers. Eventually 118 of this type of settlement were erected throughout the Galilee, Bet-She'an Valley and the Jordan Valley. The secretive construction method was one way of avoiding Arab attacks.
1937: The Palestine Post reported on the brazen attack carried out in the heart of Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel. An Arab terrorist first exploded a bomb and then fired two shots, seriously wounding 13-year-old Elimelech Gromet. Another bomb was thrown in the Tel Arza quarter of Jerusalem, next to the Weismann carpentry.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that Sir Charles Teggart, who won his reputation as an indefatigable anti-terrorist fighter in Bengal, arrived in Jerusalem, to advise the government and police on new anti-terrorist tactics.
1939: Friedrich Ubelhor, governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district, issued a secret order for the establishment of a ghetto in the northern section of Lodz, where the Jewish Baluty slum quarter was situated. "Needless to say [stated his order] the establishment of a ghetto is only a provisional phase...the ultimate goal must be the total purge of this scourge."
1942: A transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.
1942: At Wola Przybyslawska, Poland, near the Parczew Forest, Nazis shoot seven Poles accused of aiding Jews.
1942: The Polish ambassador to Britain informs Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that the Polish government-in-exile can confirm that the German authorities are systematically exterminating the entire Jewish population of Poland and the rest of Europe.
1943: As Soviet troops began to break through German lines, the Germans (and local Rumanians) tried cover up their actions by killing the surviving inmates of the labor camp and destroying the camp itself in Tarasika Rumania. This type of action was repeated over and over as Soviet troops moved toward Germany.
1945: Birthdate of James Lee “Jimmy” Kessler, the founder of the Texas Jewish Historical society and the “first native Texan to serve as Rabbi of B’nai Israel, in Galveston Texas.
1945: The cover of Time features a montage of Nazi leaders standing trial at Nuremberg under the title “Hitler’s Heirs”
1945: Time published “War Crimes: Day of Judgment” describing the trial of Hermann Göring, Alfred Jodl, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Julius Streicher and Rudolph Hess
1945: "The Chalice of Nurnberg," published today by Time described the purposed of the trials in the words US. Prosecutor Robert Jackson who defined the need for individual responsibility and the establishment of a rule of International Law that would prevent such crimes from happening again
1945: “Treason: The Seeker” published today described the condition Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet who relished giving anti-Semitic and anti-American broadcast from his home in Italy. The latter earned him the dubious distinction of being one of the few Americans indicted for treason because of his radio broadcasts.
1945: President Truman names six U.S. members to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. London announces six members
1945: SS Captain Theodore Dannecker, a henchman of Adolf Eichman committed suicide after having been arrested by the United States Army.
1946: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver criticizes President Truman, expresses his opposition to Partition and recommends resistance to the British Mandatory Government.
1947: British leaders will not alter the Jewish quota that limits the Jewish immigrants 1,500 a month.
1947: Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori became the first Jewish woman, as well as the first American woman, to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences when she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine on. She won the prize jointly with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Bernardo A. Houssay. The scientists were honored for their research in identifying the "Cori Cycle" which explained how the body converts carbohydrates into sugars that supply muscles with energy. This research was particularly important in leading to the understanding and treatment of diabetes. Dr. Gerty Cori was born in Prague in 1896. Encouraged by her family, she enrolled at the Medical School of the German University of Prague, receiving her Doctorate in Medicine in 1920. Together with her husband, Cori immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1928. Carl took a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, NY and Gerty was hired as an assistant pathologist. The Coris persisted in working together despite the discouragement of many institutions that sought to hire only Carl. In 1931, they moved to St. Louis where Carl became the chair of the pharmacology department at Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was offered a position as a research assistant. When Carl was made chair of a new biochemistry department in 1946, Gerty was finally promoted to full professor. They won the Nobel Prize the following year. In 1952, President Truman appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Science Foundation.
1947: A detachment of Palmach soldiers was attacked while paroling the water pipeline near the Arab village of Shu’ut in the Negev. The commander of the Palmach assured his men that they had nothing to worry about since the head man of the village had been a friend of his. But in the Arab’s undeclared war on the yet to be born Jewish state, friendships did not always matter.
1948: Speaking in the House of Commons as leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill raised the question of why the British government continued to refuse to recognize the state of Israel since nineteen other countries including the United States and the Soviet Union had already done so. He appeals to Parliament to end its “sulky boycott” of the Jewish state
1948: Despite opposition from some of his ministers, Ben Gurion pressured the cabinet into committing to move the Israeli government to Jerusalem “without further delay.” Ben Gurion dismissed the fears of his opponents that the move would anger world opinion by pointing out that the occupation of the Old City and the West Bank by the Jordanians had changed the equation.
1948: Israel agrees to UN truce mission's request to let a trapped Egyptian force withdraw from Faluja in Negev. Was it only 6 months ago that the Egyptians invaders were bombing Tel Aviv and heading toward the “Jewish city” with the intent of driving the Jews into the sea.
1948: The Israelis devised Operation Horev, a new offensive plan designed to drive the Egyptian army out of the remaining areas of Mandatory Palestine south-west of Beersheba, along the western edge of the Negev.
1950: Ralph J. Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche was the first black American to receive the award. He was honored for bringing an end to the war between the Israelis and the Arabs that began in 1948 when the Arabs began their unsuccessful attempt to drive the Jews into the sea.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at the end of the 30-day mourning period for the first president of the State of Israel, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, his successor, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, took the pledge of office.
1955(25th of Kislev, 5716): Chanukah
1956(6th of Tevet, 5717): David Shimoni, Israeli poet, writer and translator, passed away.
1961: Birthdate of Oded Schramm, who melded ideas from two branches of mathematics into an equation that applies to a multitude of physics problems from the percolation of water through rocks to the tangling of polymers.
1963: In Chamberlin v Dade County Board, the Florida State Supreme Court heard “new arguments in a challenge to public school students in Miami, Florida, being required to read passages from the Bible and recite the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of every school day” (As reported by Austin Cline)
1964: In Israel, the government resigned when “Ben-Gurion demanded that members of the Supreme Court Investigate the Lavon Affair.
1966: “A musical version of the Mossinsohn play, ‘Casablan’ starring Yehoram Gaon, opened today on the Alhambra Stage in Tel Aviv.”
1966: Israeli Samuel Yosef Agnon and German-Jew Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1970: A small group of local Jewish activists gathered on the International Union of Electrical Workers plaza which was across the street from the Soviet Embassy. The group was protesting the verdicts of treason and death sentences of 11 Soviet citizens, 9 of them Jewish.
1975: Activist Andrei Sakharov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted by his Jewish wife, Yelena Bonner.
1978: The New York Times features reviews of children’s books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “My Noah’s Ark” by M.B. Goffstein and “Hanukah Money” by Sholem Aleichem with illustrations by Uri Shulevitz.
1978: Richard Shepard reviews “The Girl From Tel Aviv,” a throwback to “the Yiddish musical theater of bygone years, the type of theater that provided escapism for the Lower East Side, which always enjoyed tsoress on stage and had more than enough of its own waiting at the exit.”
1978: In Oslo, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accept 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The two men earned the prize for breaking the cycle of violence. More to the point, their work has stood the test of time. These two certainly earned their award.
1980: Future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer began serving as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
1981: Jules Pfeiffer’s "Grownups" premieres in New York NY.
1984: In “Jewish Federation Shifts Policy on Hospital Gifts” published today Ronald Sullivan described changes the organization is making in its distribution of five million dollars to local medical facilities
1986: Michiko Kakutani reviewed “Letters from Westerbrook” the posthumously published diaries of Etty Hillesum that describe life in Holland under the Nazi occupation. Westerbrook, where Miss Hillesum and a large number of Dutch Jews were held, was, in reality a transit camp with the next stop being Auschwitz
1986: Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepted the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
1987(19th of Kislev, 5748): Yasha Heifetz passed away. Born in 1901 in what is now Lithuania, Heifetz joined a long list of world class Jewish violinist.
1989: The Intifada enters its third year today.
1989: In “The Arab Uprising After Two Years: Voices From Both Sides” published today, Joel Brinkley examines the impact of the Intifada on average Arabs and Israelis.
1990: In Canada, Herb Gray, a member of the Liberal Party stepped down as the leader of the Opposition
1992: In “Hafetz Hayim Journal; The Rabbis' Almanack of Seventh-Year Farming” Clyde Haberman described the implementation of the Sabbatical Year in modern day Israel
1994: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. Arafat betrayed Rabin, Peres and all who supported the peace process as can be seen by his continuing support of violence in the Middle East up until the day of his death.
1995: Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin, addressed a crowd of nearly 15,000 people crowded into Madison Square Garden today to honor the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.
1996: Three hundred Palestinian students “suddenly barged onto the walled campus of Hebron University, closed by the Israelis since last March, and declared that they would stay until it was reopened.”
1999(1st of Tevet, 5760): Rosh Chodesh is observed for the last time in the 20th century.
2000: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak submitted his resignation.
2000: The New York Times book section includes a review of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai whose “poems capture the joy of ordinary experience.”
2001(25th of Kislev, 5762): Chanukah is celebrated for the first time in post 9/11 world.
2005: Deputy Chief Gertrude D.T. Schimmel, “ the second highest ranking woman ever in the New York Police Department described her training in 1940 when she wrote today “we didn’t box or do the two-mile rue but other than that the police academy training for women was the same as for men.”
2005: The first Asiatic elephant to be conceived in Israel through artificial insemination was born at the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem. The Biblical Zoo joined the project to preserve the Asiatic elephant, which faces extinction, several years ago. The zoo's next goal is to mate the still-adolescent elephant bull Teddy -named after Jerusalem's former mayor, Teddy Kollek -with elephant cows around the world, again through artificial insemination.
2006: Reflections from the Heart, an exhibition of the works of CHIM (David Seymour) at the Albin O. Kuhn Library came to an end today.
2006: Celebration of Yud-Tes Kislev, the 19th of Kislev. “The 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev is celebrated as the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism. It was on this date, in the year 1798, that the founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was freed from his imprisonment in Czarist Russia. For Chassidim this event is more than a personal liberation. They see this as a watershed event heralding a new era in the revelation of the ‘inner soul’ of Torah.
2006: Under the title of “The Schindlers of the Middle East” The Washington Post book section features a review of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands by Robert Satloff.
2007: The New Republic features a review of The Book of Psalms: A Translation With Commentary translated by Robert Alter. Over the centuries, The Book of Psalms has gained popularity with a wide variety of religious groups and leaders. However, this has led to translations and interpretations that fit their different agendas and often has meant drifting far from the original meaning of the words. Alter attempts to release this trend. “He has deliberately set out to evacuate these covert (and usually Christological) assumptions” that distort or completely alter what the Psalmists actually created.
2007(1st of Tevet, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
2008: Peter Yarrow, the Peter in “Peter, Paul and Mary” appears at the Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as he promotes “The Peter Yarrow Songbook Series.”
2008: Baal teshuvah Andy Statman who is at home with Klezmer and Country music joined Bela Fleck and the Fleckstone in a concert at the University of Buffalo.
2008: The month-long exhibition “The Nature of Dreams: Israeli photographs, selection from the collection of Yosefa Drescher Fine Art” has its final showing at Trinity College in Hartford. Artists featured during the exhibition included Noa Ben Shalom, David Harris, Menahem Kahana, Joel Kantor, Alex Levac, Shimon Lev, Tamir Sher, Ilan Spira, and David Rubinger.
2008 (13 Kislev): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of Ravina II who passed away in 475 CE the same year in which he finished editing the Gemara portion of the Talmud Bavli ("Babylonian Talmud"), completing the work of his teacher Rav Ashi.
2008: At Princeton University, Dennis Ross former special Middle East Coordinator under the Clinton administration and consultant for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy delivers a speech entitled "Whither the Middle East?"
2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end.
2009: Screenwriter Steven Karras discusses and signs his first book, The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.
2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a screening of “Brothers,” a film that depicts the struggle of 2 brothers to come to terms with their political and religious beliefs when they reunite in Israel after years of silence.
2009: “Avatar,” the science fiction film co-produced by Jon Landau premiered in London.
2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Achziv,” a film that documents the unique story of Eli Avivi, President of "Achziv Land," from the time of the War of Independence when Eli appropriated a deserted Arab village called A'Ziv.
2009: The Israel Aerospace Industries made the first delivery of the Heron UAV to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) today. The ten unmanned aerial vehicles will be used in Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference, a series of special workshops and meetings in Russian, English, French, Hungarian, Serbian and Spanish which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end in Jerusalem.
2009: A four day conference entitled "A Century of Yiddish:1908-2008" came to a close in Jerusalem
2010: On Human Rights Day, the community is scheduled to hold a ceremony that will remember the Soviet Jewry Struggle and commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Washington, D.C. Vigil that became part of efforts to make it possible for Russian Jews to leave the Soviet Union.
2010: Daniel Burman, who lives and works in Argentina as one of its leading filmmakers today, and Jorge Gurvich, also an award-winning filmmaker who left Argentina for Israel are scheduled to present a program entitled “Argentina’s Jewish Community Through Filmmaker’s Eyes at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival.
2010: The 12th annual Jerusalem Festival is scheduled to come to a close.
2010: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Kadima chairwoman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni at the State Department in Washington today, only a few days after the U.S. and Israel announced that talks between Jerusalem and Washington over a new freeze on West Bank settlement construction in exchange for a set of U.S. guarantees had hit a dead end.
2010: Rain began falling on different parts of Israel this afternoon, beginning what was expected to be a stormy weekend. Tel Aviv received its first raindrops early in the afternoon, along with Haifa, Netanya, Ra'anana and Kfar Saba.
2010: Thousands of people participated in a march celebrating International Human Rights Day in Tel Aviv this morning.
2010: Hundreds of people attended the funeral of former Knesset speaker and Holocaust-survivor advocate Dov Shilansky at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv this morning. Shilansky served for 19 years as a Likud member.
2011: As part of the Scholar-In-Residence Weekend at Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Dr. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita of the University of Chicago is scheduled to lead the Shabbat Torah Study.
2011: Producer Aviva Kempner is scheduled to see the 2011 WJFF Visionary Award recipient at the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival followed by a screening of her documentary “Partisans of Vilna” the theme of which is "We will not allow them to take us like beasts to the slaughter."
2011: The second round of weekend events that are part of Hamshoushalayim are scheduled to end today.
2011:Israeli professor Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in Stockholm today, and said that scientists have many duties, including keeping an eye on politicians. Israel has an impressive showing when it comes to Nobel winners, with 10 laureates in its 63-year history. Most recently, Israeli scientist Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute also won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2009, for her work on the ribosomes. Shechtman also won the Israel Prize in physics in 1998.
2012:The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to continue today with performances by Zion 80,Hasidic New Wave with Yakar Rhythms, and Mika Karney
2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Ninety-seven year old economist Albert O. Hirschman who helped to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/business/albert-o-hirschman-economist-and-resistance-figure-dies-at-97.html?hpw&_r=0
2012: The Washington Jewish Festival and the Hebrew Language Table are scheduled to present a screening of “There Was Once,” a film by Gabor Kalman, the focuses on the work of a high school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary to teacher her students about the once thriving and now non-existent Jewish community that existed in their city. She does this against the backdrop of a rising tide of right-wing extremism.
2012: The Sephardic Scholar Series is scheduled to continue this year with a free concert at the CUNY-Graduate Center with the New York Andalus Ensemble.
2012: Nechemya Weberman a 54 year old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Chasidic community in Williamsburg was convicted “of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.” (As reported by Sharon Otterman)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/hasidic-man-found-guilty-of-sexual-abuse.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0
2012: After nightfall, Jews worldwide will celebrate the third of the winter festival’s eight nights.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-mysterious-menorah-from-a-vanished-empire-goes-on-display-in-jerusalem/
2012: Todayin Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Sciences is scheduled to present the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, and the Nobel in economics to Alvin Roth. (As reported by Mark Shulte)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-york-jews-wont-stop-winning-nobel-prizes/
2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor a reading and discussion of The Reason I Jump by Naokj Higashida.
2013: “The Congress” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.
2013:Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) is scheduled to begin distributing free Christmas Trees at Nazareth. (This is not typo or a joke)