November 3
166 BCE (15th of Cheshvan, 3595): Mattathais ben Yochanan passed away.
361: Roman Emperor Constantius II died. Constantius II enhanced the anti-Jewish policies begun by his father. Under his rule, converting to Judaism became a combination of trip down the road to economic ruin and a capital offense. He prohibited Jews from marrying Christian women and from converting Christian women to Judaism. Christian slaves owned by Jews were freed and it was a capital offense for Jews to circumcise slaves in their household. He decreed that Christians who converted to Judaism would forfeit their property to the state.
644:Umar, the “2ndCaliph of the Rashidun Caliphate” who visited Jerusalem in 637 where changed the policy of the Byzantines and encouraged Jews to return to the city and deliberately instituted offering of Moslem prayers on the site of the destroyed Temple” was assassinated by the Persians today.
1394: Enforcement of an order expelling all Jews from France that had Charles the VI had signed on Yom Kippur. The pretext for issuing the order on September 17, 1394, was a report that a Parisian named Denis Machuit who had converted to Christianity had returned to Judaism.
1534: Pope Paul III decided that the bulls of his predecessor, Pope Clement that favored the Marranos and expressed opposition to the Inquisition should not be issued.
1507: An edict was issued today that “again decrees that whatever had belong to the Jews of Grodno before their expulsion must be returned to them.”
1604: Birthdate of Osman II, a Sultan who reigned during the 17th century which was a period of decline for the Ottoman Empire and its Jewish subjects. Unlike many of his predecessors, it appears that Osman did not employ an Jews as court physicians or close advisors.
1643(21st of Cheshvan): Rabbi ben Mordecai Azulai, author of Or ha-Hamah passed away
1654: David Abrabanel Dormido, presented a petition calling for the re-admission of the Jews to England Oliver Cromwell, the English Lord Protector. Dormido, was a leading Amsterdam Jew, who had been entrusted by Manasseh ben Israel to handle negotiations aimed at gaining the re-admittance of the Jews into England. Cromwell recommended that the Council accept the petition, but the matter stalled and Cromwell was forced to find another way to reach his goal.
1766: Twenty-seven year old German mathematician Thomas Abbt who befriend Moses Mendelsohn before he became famous, passed away today.
1777(3rd of Cheshvan, 5538):Aaron ben Meir of Brest, the Belarusian rabbi and advocate of the Pilpul whose “response may be found in Meḳor Mayim Ḥayyim a work by his grandson, Jacob Meir of Padua passed away today in Brest-Litovsk.
1780(5th of Cheshvan, 5541): Seventy-two year old Isaac Mendes Seixas, a native of Lisbon, Portugal, passed away today at Newport, Rhode Island
1783: At the end of the American Revolution, The American Continental Army was disbanded. The majority of the small Jewish community in the United States supported the Revolution. Among those who fought for the cause were: Francis Salvador of South Carolina who literally lost his scalp while fighting for the American cause, Mordecai Sheftall of Georgia who served as Commissary-General for the state’s troops, David Franks who had the mis-fortune of serving as aide-de-camp to Benedict Arnold, Isaac Franks who was captured at the Battle of Long Island but escaped to fight another day and Solomon Bush who rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel, possibly making him the highest ranking Jew to serve in the Continental Army.
1787: Seventy-six year old Robert Loth, a Bishop of the Church of England who was awarded a Doctorate in Divinity by Oxford University, for his treatise on Hebrew poetry entitled Praelectiones Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews) in 1754 and whose translation of Isaiah would be rated as the best English version by scholars in the 19th century passed away today.
1807: After his first had passed away in 1804, today in Philadelphia sixty-three year old Jacob I Cohen married “the widow Rachel (Polack) Jacobs, a descendant of the first Jews in Savannah, GA.
1810: Birthdate of German Reform rabbi Leopold Stein who “composed for the Reform ritual the song "Tag des Herrn," to be sung to the music of "Kol Nidre" on the eve of the Day of Atonement.”
1810: In Zagare, Lithuania, Rabbi Zev Wolf and his wife Leah gave birth to Rabbi Yisroel ben Ze'ev Wolf Lipkin, also known as "Yisroel Salanter" or "Israel Salanter" the father of the Musar movement in Orthodox Judaism
1817: Eighty-seven year old “Sarah Rachele bat Nathaniel” was interred at the “Hope Street Burial Ground.”
1823: In Bavaria, Abraham and Bella Kohn gave birth to Isaac Kohn the husband of Henrietta Yetta Kohn.
1826: The French version “Margherita d'Anjou,” an operatic melodramma semiseria in two acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer premiered at Theatre Odéon in Paris
1835: Two days after he had passed away, 61 year old Joel Barnett, the husband of Sarah Moss with whom he had four children was buried today at “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.
1835: In Hungard “Alois (or Abraham) Fleischmann, a Jewish distiller and yeast maker, and his wife Babette gave birth to Charles Louis Fleischmann, the husband of Henriette Robinson Fleischman with whom he had three children – Julius, Bettie and Max and the brother of Maximllian with whom ccreated America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible. Yes, Fleischmann’s yeast is Kosher.
1837: Birthdate of German actor Ludwig Chronegk, the native of Brandenburg-on-the-Havel who “was the stage-manager and "Intendanzrath" of the famous Meininger troupe established at Weimar by Duke George of Meiningen.”
1839: Issuance of The Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane a proclamation that “launched a period of reforms” in the Ottoman Empire which held to improve the situation of Turkish Jews.
1841: Abraham Segenberg married Mary Levy at the New Synagogue today.
1846(14th of Cheshvan, 5607): Rabbi Abraham Auerbach, nephew of Joseph David Sinzheim who survived the Reign of Terror in France and whose seven sons included Rabbi Benjamin Hirsch Auerbach, passed away today in Bonn, Germany.
1847: Samuel Barnett married Phoebe Judah at the Great Synagogue today.
1847: Elias Isaacs married Kate Benjamin today.
1847: Kehillat Anshe Ma'arab, the first Jewish congregation in Chicago, was established today, when a constitution was adopted and signed by fourteen members. Morris L. Leopold, a young man of twenty-six, born in Laubheim, Württemberg, was elected president (As reported by the Jewish Encyclopedia)
1852: Catherine (nee Levy) Davis, the wife of Noah Davis with whom he had four children – Isaac, Marcus, James and Jane – was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1860: The first neighborhood outside the old city wall of Jerusalem was dedicated. The site was purchased by Sir Moses Montefiore five years earlier and known as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. Although there was initial resistance to leaving the "security" of the old city walls, it soon led to the establishment of dozens of new neighborhoods.
1862: David D. Meyers, who would rise to the rank of Corporal before his discharge, began his service today a member of Company A of the 154th Regiment.
1867: Enrico Guastalla, the son of Jewish family from Milan, was among those who fought with forces of Garibaldi today at the Battle of Mentana.
1867: In Hamburg as Reform and Orthodox community clashed, statues for a new DIG (Ashkenazi Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg) were enacted in a new constitution that provided for tolerance among the DIG members as to matters of the cult and religious tradition. “This unique model, thus called Hamburg System (Hamburger System), established a two-tiered organization of the DIG with the college of representatives and the umbrella administration in charge of matters of general Ashkenazi interest, such as cemetery, zedakah for the poor, hospital and representation of the Ashkenazim towards the outside. The second tier formed the so-called Kultusverbände (cult associations), Associations independent in religious and financial matters by their own elected boards and membership dues, but within the DIG, took care of religious affairs.” Effectively, the new system allowed for community cohesion while allowing the Reform to have their own house of worship using their own prayer books and rituals.
1867: “After the Paris Exposition of 1867” which closed today, “the reviewer for The Times called Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon’s pictures ‘matchless,’ beyond praise’ and ‘the finest photographic portraits in the world.’”
1868: U.S. Grant won the Presidential election defeating Horatio Seymour. Grant was the first President to attend a synagogue service while in office. In 1876 Adas Israel Congregation in Washington D.C. was dedicated and Grant was in attendance. At the time, Adas Israel was an Orthodox Congregation. Today it is one of two Conservative congregations still in the District of Columbia.
1869: The Philadelphia Conference of Reform Rabbi opened today
1873: George de Worms, 2nd Baron de Worms and Louisa de Samuel gave birth to Percy de Worms the grandson of Solomon Benedict de Worms and Henrietta Samuel and the great-great-grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
1877: As conflict continues to swirl through the Balkans, it was reported today, that several Polish dissidents who may have been the intended recipient of arms being shipped secretly from Vienna have been arrested based on information provided by an un-named Jew from Gratz “who has turned state’s evidence for a consideration. [Editor’s note – the veracity of this report is open to question. It could have represented an attempt to stir up enmity between Poles and Jews; the image of the Jew selling out for money is as old as the calumny about Judas Iscariot]
1878: First settlers moved to Petach Tikva. Petach Tikva is Hebrew for Gateway of Hope. A group of Jews from Jerusalem bought land from a Greek landowner on the coastal plain. The initial settlement failed because of malaria and crop failure. Petach Tikva would rise again and a youthful David Ben Gurion would be one of the settlers.
1879: The Board of Trustees of Temple Beth-El met this evening to plan the funeral for the Rabbi David Einhorn, of blessed memory. Mrs. Einhorn, who had wanted the funeral to be a private affair agreed to allow for a more public event which will be conducted by Rabbi Kauffman Kohler, her son-in-law and the man who had succeeded Rabbi Einhorn when he retired as the spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El
1879: It was reported today that France has successfully reasserted herself in the field of foreign affairs. Among the areas where the French appear to be on the verge of accomplishing their goals is Romania where she has worked to convince the government of the need to fully emancipate her Jewish population. This is reported as a self-less act since the French have no national interest in accomplishing this.
1880: Rabbi Sigmund Mannheimer and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Eugene M. Mannheimer, the husband of Irma Shloss Mannheimer, who was buried in the Emanuel Cemetery in Des Moines, IA, after he passed away.
1881: It was reported today that the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum is planning on building a new facility that will house 600 children. Located between 136thand 138th street, the new structure will cost $250,000 which does not include the cost of the land.
1884: “Tried For Burning A Synagogue” published today draws on information that first appeared in the London Standard describes a trial In Hungary where five Jews have been charged with arson for their role in burning down a synagogue five years ago. The trial is expected to last two weeks since testimony is to be heard from 90 witnesses.
1884: Based on information that first appeared in the London Truth, that the Duke of Westminster has declined to renew Sir Moses Montefiore’s lease on the house in Park Lane that has been his home for several decades on the terms requested. Instead he has said that he will “accept the worthy old gentleman as a yearly tenant”
1885(25th of Cheshvan, 5646): Milton Silverman, the son of shoemaker Julius Silverman died as a result of a blow struck by Julius Rubiner, a Jew from Poland who owned a grocery store on Hester Street.
1888: In St. Petersburg, the police “have given notice that Jews will not be allowed to change their names or to reside in the capital without a permit.”
1885: At Maida Vale, London, “Benjamin Keysor, a Jewish clock importer and his wife gave birth to Australian war hero and businessman today. (As reported by Dudley McCarthy)
1887: Birthdate of New York City native Nathaniel Stanley “Nat” Fleischer, the boxing expert who found Ring Magazine.
1889: Professor Felix Adler is scheduled to speak at the funeral of August Henry Edinger, the patron of several Jewish charities which is to be held this morning at 9:30 a.m.
1889: It was reported today that 30% of the students at the four inns of court in England “who passed examinations qualifying them to be called barristers” have “names that are Jewish.”
1890(20th of Cheshvan, 5651): Sixty four year old Manuel Joël, the Jewish philosopher who wrote essays on Ibn Gabriol and Maimonides and succeeded Abraham Geiger as the rabbi in Breslau, passed away today.
1894: At Memorial Hall in Boston, 2,000 Jews attended “a mock funeral service” in which they rejoiced over the death of Czar Alexander III.
1894: George T. Selikovitsch, the former editor of the Jewish Eagle declined an invitation to speak at the “mock funeral” for Czar Alexander III saying that “he disliked the Czar but was unwilling to trample on the grave.”
1894: As European government’s mourned the death of Czar Alexander III, the Vienna correspondent for the London Standard reported that “some time ago a deputation petitioned the Czarevitch to intervene” on behalf of the Russian Jews. The heir to the Russian throne replied, “I despise and condemn the expulsion of your countrymen, but my hands are tied.” (The Czarevith, Nicholas II, proved to be as anti-Semitic as his late father)
1895: Thirty year old Dr. Lucian Mayer Langbank, who would be murdered during the Holocaust married Ernestine Langbank.
1895: The second annual concert of the Halevy Singing Society took place this evening at the Hebrew Institute Hall at East Broadway and Jefferson Street.
1895: It was reported today that in Paris, the anti-Semitic Libre Parole is making an effort “to elevate personal hatred of the Jews to the height of a great principle
1895(16th of Cheshvan, 5656): Just twenty days before his 94th birthday Barrow Jacob Montefiore the son of Eliezer Montefiore and Judith Montefiore and the husband Justina Lydia Montefiore who with his brother worked to develop a number of commercial ventures in Australia including the Bank of Australasia and founded the township of Montefiore, at the confluence of the Bell and MacQuarrie rivers, in Wellington Valley, passed away today in London.
1895(16th of Cheshvan, 5656): Forty year old Morris Deschner, forty-five Isaac Pensen and fifty-five old Jacob Shapiro, all Jewish tailors from Russia died today in a fire this morning at 7 Pelham Street which is “in the heart of the sweat-shop district.”
1895: The monthly visiting day at the Hebrew Sheltering Arms was not held because the place has been placed under quarantine because of the measles epidemic.
1895: “Youngsters In Politics” published today described a meeting co-hosted by the Hebrew Institute Street Cleaning League in which Mayor Strong addressed the Jewish boys and girls who have voluntarily joined together to keep the streets of the Lower East Side free from trash and garbage.
1896: William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the race of the Presidency. Like many populists of the day, Bryan dabbled in anti-Semitism. The image of the international Jewish bankers denying the “free silver” to American farmers and workers was a favorite of the time. (You have to know American history to follow this one.) Tom Watson of Georgia ran on the ticket with Bryan as the candidate for Vice President. Watson’s anti-Semitism was cruder and more blatant than many other of his contemporaries. Watson was a supporter of the Klan. In 1913, he was a leader in whipping up anti-Semitic sentiment against Leo Frank. Watson may not have actually been at Frank’s lynching, but he certainly played a major role in making it possible to put the noose around the innocent Frank’s neck.
1896: “Mother and Son Buried” published today described the joint funeral services that were held for Abraham Fox and his mother Ernestine Fox who had died two days from the effects of consumption, the same illness that claimed Abraham’s life.
1897: In London, at the Central Synagogue, the Chief Rabbi, assisted by Rabbis Fay and Spero officiated at the marriage of Jacob Waley Cohen, “the eldest son of Nathaniel Louis Cohen” and Katherine Cohen “the fourth daughter of Arthur Cohen, Esq.”
1897: Two days after he passed away, 82 year old Clara Goldsmid, the wife of Moses Goldsmid, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”
1898:The Zionist Delegation leaves Jerusalem and goes back to Yafo. Herzl wants to leave the country immediately and they board the English orange freighter "Dundee" for Alexandria, Egypt.
1899(1st of Kislev, 5660): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1899(1st of Kislev, 5660): Belgian engraver Jacques Wiener who designed the first Belgian postage stamps and whose talent led to him being “decorated with the Order of the Knights of Leopold and the Prussian Eagle” passed away today.
1902(3rd of Cheshvan, 5663): Eighty-five year old philanthropist Ferdinand Reichenheim passed away in Berlin.
1902: In Vienna, Alma and Gustave Mahler gave birth to Anna Justine “Gucki” Mahler
1903: Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia. The first Jews who arrived in Panama in the early 16th century were Conversos, secret Jews. The Jews formed their first community in 1876. Within a decade after the revolution that created the independent Panama, there were approximately 500 Jews living in Panama. Two of the families living in Panama at that time were the Henriques and the Sassos. Vera Sasso, the daughter of a Sephardic merchant made her way to the United States where she became Vera Sasso Levy. She is the great-great-great- grandmother of Jacob and Rachel Levin.
1903(13th of Cheshvan, 5664: Mena Roos, wife of Aaron Roos passed away. Born in Bavaria in 1826, she was buried in Natchez, Mississippi, which at one time was home to a thriving Jewish community.
1905: As the violence during what would be called the “Russian Revolution of 1905” continued Jews were attacked by both sides as could be seen today when Jewish stores at Romny were burned to the ground during a riot that began when a rich merchant refused to take off his hat for a red flag while “The Black Hundreds” were attacking Jews at Smolensk. (The Red flag belonged to the left wing revolutionaries while the Black Hundreds were a right-win ultranationalist movement)
1905: Czar Nicholas II of Russia signs a document of amnesty for political prisoners.
1905: “The Russian People” published today provided a commentary on the current violence in Russia including the revelation that “the continuance of murderous assaults upon the Jews in Odessa and elsewhere is well-nigh incomprehensible” and that “these outbreaks against the Jews, which were generally believed to be encouraged by the local Government authority, were among the gravest evils under the autocracy.”
1905: In Odessa, “mobs pillaged a number of Jewish shops” including the “biggest wholesale grocery in the city owned by Rabinovitch” and “killed a physician and two assistants who were dressing wounds.”
1905: As a dispatch arrived at St. Petersburg, saying that “attacks on the Jews were continuing today” “Baron von Aehrenthal, the Ambassador of Austria-Hungary visited General Trepoff and called special situation to the situation in Odessa and Kiev and C.A. Spring-Rice, the British Charge d’Affairs demanded protection for the persons and property of British subjects at Odessa, Kiev, Rostoff-on-Don and Grodny.
1905: “Slaying Jews Everywhere” published today described the murderous assaults on the Jews at Rostoff-on-Don where all of the “rich Jewish establishments were sacked” while “all of the houses of the Christians” were spared and Minks where “fifty four bodies have been buried in the Jewish cemetery” and where funerals are taking place “every half-hour.
1905: “5,000 Victims of Odessa Mob” published today described the continuing massacre of the Jews in the Russian city where “Jews are being hunted down in the streets and killed and beaten, while their shops are given over to pillage.” “The Jewish women and children” have reported been “hacked to pieces” and the rioters “say they will not leave one alive.”
1905: In an interview this morning, “a leading General…argued that the disturbances” in Odessa “ were the result of the behavior of the Jews, who, he said rudely shocked Russian patriotism by the manner in which they celebrated the publication of the imperial manifesto” and “abused their new –found freedom by tearing down the national flag, hoisting revolutionary banners, insulting the Emperor and boasting that they along gave Russia freedom.
1905: Riots which had been organized by the police continued for a second day in Bachmut, Bessarabia.
1907: Birthdate of Georgetown University Law School graduated David Adelman who won “his first two consecutive titles in the shot put at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia” in 1929.
1908:William Howard Taft was elected 27th President. Taftwas the first President to attend a Seder while in office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, RI, he participated in the family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the National Jewish Welfare Board. This was probably a political fence-mending gesture designed to recapture some of the Jewish political support Taft lost when he failed to support efforts to halt anti-Semitic policies of the Czar aimed at American Jews.
1908: Morris Hillquite received 21.23% of the vote in today’s election where he was running for the House seat in the 9thCongressional District.
1910: Forty-two year old Parisian born Jewish journalist and politician Louis-Lucien Klotz began serving as Minister of Finance in the second government of Aristide Briand.
1911: Hundreds of Jews were left destitute by floods at Serres, Salonica.
1911: The New York Timesreports that the Russian Premier has “heeded to the plea of the Jews” and modified the order to expel the Jews from the province of Ekaterinoslaff.
1911(12th of Cheshvan, 5672): Seventy-five year old Rabbi Solomon Mosche passed away.
1911: Phillip Klein of Budapest, was created a Royal Counsellor by the Emperor of Austria.
1911: Today, “Professor Mahler was compelled to resign from the University of Prague because of” his support of the Zionism.’
1911: A Jewish teacher at government school for girls at Volo, Greece was dismissed as not being “qualified to instruct Christian children.”
1911: Today, in Turkey, the Chief Rabbi, in cooperation with the Patriarchs of Christians, who have similar grievances, took measures to prevent conversion of Jewish girls in Salonica to” Islam.
1912: A Jewish teacher in a government school for girls in Volo, Greece, was dismissed as not being qualified to instruct Christian children.
1912: A Jewish teacher in a government school for girls in Volo, Greece, was dismissed as not being qualified to instruct Christian children.
1913: In Pittsburgh, PA, Harry and Mary Levine gave birth to Milton Martin Levine, who “With his brother-in-law, Levine…devised what was eventually named Uncle Milton's Ant Farm, which was an instant hit in the fad-crazy 1950s.”
1913: The New York Timesreports on a study conducted by Abram Lipsky and published in the American Hebrew that examines the question of whether or not there is among the Jews of New York City a "Jewish vote" that can be depended upon for political purposes.
1913: Birthdate of Nathan “Nat’ Frankel who played guard and forward for the basketball teams at Samuel J. Tilden High School and Brooklyn College before spending a season with the Pittsburgh Ironmen of the Basketball Association of America.
1914: Meyer London defeated his Tammany Hall backed opponent in his bid for election to the House of Representatives. This made him the second member of the Socialist Party to be elected to Congress.
1914: Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire
1914: Mary Phelps Jacob won a patent for the first modern brassiere. Mary Phelps Jacob was not Jewish. But the woman who took the bra to its next level was. “During the flat-chested Flapper era in the 1920’s, a Russian immigrant named Ida Rosenthal noticed that a bra that fit one woman did not fit another woman of the same bra size. With the help of her husband William, they founded Maidenform. Ida was responsible for grouping women into bust size categories (cup sizes) and developed bras for every stage of life from puberty to maturity.” (And you thought this was all about Talmud, Torah and Nobel Prizes.)
1916: Joseph P. Tracy, the Adjutant General of the War Department wrote to Simon Wolf in response to the latter’s letter seeking help in getting a hardship reassignment for a soldier serving with Battery “F” of the Field Artillery saying that given the conditions described, the reassignment was possible and the solider should apply through appropriate channels.
1917(18thof Cheshvan, 5678): Parashat Vayera
1917: At Leeds, UK, Sir Montague Maurice Burton, “fonder of Burton, one of Great Britain’s’ largest chains of clothes shops and Sophie Burton gave birth to Arnold James Burton and Raymond Montague Burton.
1917: At Temple Beth-El, Rabbi Samuel Schulman delivered a sermon in which he “assailed prominent Jews who had advised” their co-religionists “to vote in a particular direction” saying that “it was an insult to the Jews to classify them in any respect, except that of religion.”
1917: “Emphasizing that there is no Jewish vote en masse and that the Jews are discriminating voters, Dr. Nathan Krass, the rabbi of Temple Israel in Brooklyn made an earnest appeal to Jews not to vote for Morris Hilliquit because he stands for things that are dangerous.”
1917: As the Russian Revolution moves to its climax, which means Russia, will drop out of the war leaving the Germans to turn the full weight of the arms against the Allies on the Western Front, plans are made to send three leading Zionists, including Vladimir Jabotinsky, to Petrograd to rally Russian Jewry to the Allied cause. One British official, Lord Hardinge, summed up the British expectations by writing, “With skillful management of the Jews of Russia the situation may still be restored by spring.” Alas, the Allies were a day late and a dollar short. They underestimated the power of the Bolsheviks and they overestimated the power of the Zionists and believed too much, like philo-Semites and anti-Semites, in the mythic power of “the Jews.”
1918:Today Private Abe Levinson of Company G, 167thRegiment received the “Distinguished Service Medal for extraordinary heroism in action near Croix Rouge Farm, northeast of Chateau Thierry on July 27.”
1918: “More than 15,000 persons representing the three great religious groups attended the United War Work Campaign meeting today in Madison Square Garden and heard…speakers for Protestants, Catholics and Jews call upon a America united religiously to support the seven war relief organizations’ campaign” to raise over $170,000,000 which begins next week.
1918: Poland proclaims independence from Russia after WW I. There were about three million Jews living in Poland. Many Jews were active in the movement for Polish Independence. From 1918 until 1921, Poland was wracked by a series of wars and internecine conflicts that included several Pogroms. There was enough concern among the Western Powers about Polish anti-Semitism that there was a series of explicit clauses in the Paris Peace Conference protecting the rights of minorities in Poland. In 1921 the March Constitution gave the Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance. Unfortunately, the Polish government did not always honor these guarantees.
1921: In his diary, Zionist leader Arthur Rupin describes how he convinced Montague David Eder that the four victims of Arab rioting should not be buried in quietly in the evening but should be interred following a dignified public funeral
1924(6th of Cheshvan, 5685): Frederick Abel, who rose to the rank of Captain during the Civil War passed away today in his home town of Brooklyn.
1924: Josiah Wegwood, the English political leader who would opposed the appeasement of Hitler and the British anti-Zionist policies in the 1930’s relinquished the role of Chancellor of the Duchy Lancaster.
1928: Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded while conducting some business affairs at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel. He died the next day at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan. The shooting was allegedly linked to a gambling event that Rothstein had participated in the previous month with several associates and acquaintances
1928: Premiere of B.P. Schulberg’s “Abie’s Irish Rose,” a film based on a play of the same name with a script co-authored by Herman Mankiewicz, that “tells the story of a Jewish boy, Abie Levy, who falls in love with and secretly marries Rosemary Murphy, an Irish Catholic girl, but lies to his family, saying that she's Jewish.”
1928: Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for President delivered a radio address tonight in which he condemned racial and religious bigotry and pointed that “hunger cold, poverty, oppression and war do not ask our religion” while “wage cuts are no respecters of Catholics, Jews or Protestants.
1929(30th of Tishrei, 5690): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
1929 (30th of Tishrei, 5690):Yakov Blumkin, the Checka and GPU agent was killed today – an apparent victim of Stalin’s drive to beat out Trotsky for control of the Communist Party and the USSR.
1932: German industrial leaders petitioned President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, thus putting the lie to the later claim that they had not been early supporters of the Nazis.
1933: Funeral services were scheduled to be held today for Samuel S. Piser, who is survived by his widow Cella Greenberg Piser and their three daughters – Mrs. Sylvia Heller, Mrs. Beatrice Kaye and Mrs. Gertrude David – following which interment will take place at the Waldheim Cemetery.
1933: “Scandal in Budapest” a comedy produced by Joe Pasternak with music by Nicholas Brodszky was released today in Germany.
1933: “The Tunnel” a Franco-German sci-fi film directed by Curtis Bernhardt who co-authored the script along with Henry Koster was released today in France and Germany.
1935(7th of Cheshvan, 5696): Dr. Harry Bernard Podlasky, the Milwaukee physician and Jewish community leader passed away today.
1936: President Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide over Republican Alfred "Alf" Landon. During this second term, FDR would appoint Felix Frankfurter as a Supreme Court Justice.
1936(18th of Cheshvan, 5697): Seventy-six year old Emily Grace Solis-Cohen, the daughter of David Hays Solis and Elvira Nathan Solis, the wife of Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen (her 1st cousin) with whom she had three children and whose support for Zionism including “raising funds for the School of the Parents' Education Association in Jerusalem” passed away today in her native Philadelphia.
1936: Birthdate of Manford Levy the most ardent Longhorn fan on the face of the earth and one of the nicest people to grace the face of the earth.
1936: “Opinion” a Jewish publication of which Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is the editor announced today it was sponsoring an essay contest on ‘How to Combat Anti-Semitism in America.’
1937(29th of Cheshvan, 5698): Alderman Nathan Promisle passed away today in his native Hartford, CT.
1938: In Hanover, Rabbi Emil Schorsch and his wife gave birth to Ismar Schorsch, the sixth Chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary.
1938:Dr. Simon Ginzburg of Tel Aviv announced the formation of an American campaign committee to help raise $50,000 for the Palestine Hebrew Culture Fund. He had come to the United States to promote the interests of the fund. “Dr. Ginsburg is the chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association of Palestine and honorary secretary of the Hebrew Pen Club of Palestine.” Plans are also in the works to “call a world conference of Hebrew writers, educators and laymen in connection with the World’s Fair in New York during May or June, 1939.”
1938: In Paris, Herschel Grynszpan received a post card from his sister Berta that described how his family had been forced to leave Germany and then were stranded on the Polish border because the Poles would not admit them.
1939: “Main Street Lawyer,” a crime drama written by Joseph Krumgold and Devery Freeman was released in the United States today.
1939: “Drums Along the Mohawk,” a movie version of the novel by the same name with a script by Sonya Levien and music by Alfred Newman was released in the United States today.
1939: In Los Angeles, CA, Arthur and Zelda Wolpe gave birth to Howard Eliot Wolpe, the “congressman who played a crucial role in passing legislation that imposed economic sanctions on South Africa in the 1980s, helping to bring an end to apartheid while overcoming two vetoes by President Ronald Reagan. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1940: Sixty-year old Lewis Wickes Hine who created a photographic record of Jews arriving at Ellis Island passed away today.
1941: Einsatzgruppe B reported 80,000 Jews have been killed in the Ukraine up to this point
1942: During World War II the Second Battle of El Alamein ended in Egypt with the British defeating the German and Italian forces under Erwin Rommel. This defeat was one of the turning points of the war because it ended the threat of Axis conquest of the Suez Canal which would have severed the British lifeline to India and Australia. It also ended the threat of genocide for the Jews of Palestine. The same killing units that had joined the German Army when it swept across Eastern Europe were posted to the Rommel’s forces. The threat was so real that the Jews had made plans for fighting a Nazi invasion in an attempt to ameliorate the impending slaughter.
1942: Nathan Goldstein was elected for the first time as New York State Attorney General on the Republican ticket.
1942: Forty-four year old Saul Adler of Ouachita Parish married Doshie Katherine Medaries of Lincoln Parish.
1942(23rd of Cheshvan, 5703) Jewish communities of Bilgoraj, Poland, and Ostryna, Belorussia, are destroyed at the Belzec and Auschwitz death camps, respectively.
1943(5th of Cheshvan, 5704): At Majdanek, 17,000 Jewish prisoners were mowed down by machine-gun fire.
1943(5th of Cheshvan, 5704): Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Grand Rabbi of Piaseczno, Poland, whose works included Esh Kodesh, “a compilation of weekly sermons that contend with complex questions of faith in the face of the mounting suffering of the Jews in the ghetto” was among those murdered by the Nazis – a fate made all the more tragic by the fact that this sage had survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
1943(5th of Cheshvan, 5704): The Nazis murdered 43,000 in Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival)
1943: Three hundred Jews at Borki, Poland, near Chelm, are put to work exhuming 30,000 corpses, mostly of Red Army POWs taken prisoner and murderedlate in 1941. The bodies are burned on massive pyres.
1943: The Germans undertake Erntefest(Harvest Festival), a planned massacre of Jews of three camps in the area around Lublin, Poland. About 18,000 are murdered at Majdanek, 10,000 at Trawniki, and 15,000 at Poniatowa. At Poniatowa, Jews who resist are burned alive in a barrack.
1943: Jacob Katz, a Jewish cleaner at the Budzyn, Poland, concentration camp, rescues seven elderly Jews by hiding them beneath mattresses.
1943: Riccardo Pacifici, rabbi of Genoa, Italy, is deported to Auschwitz along with 200 members of his congregation and 100 Jewish refugees from Northern Europe. The community in Genoa traced its roots to 511 C.E.
1943: Birthdate of pitcher Ken Holtzman who was often compared to that other Jewish southpaw, Sandy Koufax. Holtzman’s rookie season coincided with Koufax’s last in the majors. In his final game, Koufax pitched against Holtzman. At the end of a pitcher’s duel, youth was served and Ken beat Sandy.
1944: A trainload of Jews from the labor camp at Sered, Slovakia, arrives at Auschwitz. Because the camp's gas chambers are being dismantled, the 990 Jews on board are sent to work or to barracks rather than to their deaths.
1945: Anti-Jewish riots continued for a second day in Egypt.
1947: Four officers in the German Elite Guard – Oswald Pohl, Georg Loerner, Franz Eirenschmaltz and Karl Sommer – were sentenced to death as war criminals after their trial at Nuremberg and nine others were sentenced to 25 years in prison today.
1947: At Lake Success, NY, “the Soviet Union proposed today that Britain surrender the mandate in Palestine by January 1, 1948 and withdraw all of her troops by April 30,1948.”
1952:Mordechai Nurock became Israel’s first Minister of Postal Services which later became the Ministry of Communications.
1952: In Salt Lake City, Utah, Helen (née Davis), a bookkeeper and cashier, and Jerome Hershel "Jerry" Barr, gave birth to the first child Roseanne Cherrie Barr who gained fame as the star of the hit sitcom “Roseanne.”
1953: In Fort Worth, TX, Edwin Leon Nail and his wife Beverly Sue gave birth to Kathleen Sue Nail who gained fame as actress Kate Capshaw and the wife of Stephen Spielberg whom married after converting to Judaism.
1953: Stanley M. Isaacs garnered 65.14% of the election for New York City Council.
1955: “ ‘Israeli 'Hill 24 Doesn't Answer' at World” published today provides a review of one the earliest and what would prove to be one of Israel’s most enduring cinematic efforts.
1955: The third Knesset started with David Ben-Gurion forming the seventh government of Israel today
1955:Israel Bar-Yehuda replaced Haim-Moshe Shapira as Internal Affairs Minister in Israel.
1955: Operation Volcano was completed this morning when units from the Golan Brigade’s 12 Battalion destroyed all of “the targeted Egyptian emplacements” at Sachba capturing “22 military vehicles of various types, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, heavy machine guns, mortars, light arms and communications equipment’ while killing and/or capturing 136 of the enemy.
1956: During the Suez Crisis, British bombers attacked Egyptian ammunition dumps, airfields and military barracks.
1956: During the Sinai Campaign, Israel informed Dag Hammarskjold that she accepted the cease fire and that her forces had already halted 15 kilometers east of the Suez Canal.
1956: Among the large quantities of Egyptian military stores captured, Israeli soldiers found that captured Egyptian officers carried Arabic translations of Mein Kampf.
1957: CBS broadcast “The Changing Ways of Love” written by S.J. Perelman and starring Piper Laurie (Rosetta Jacobs), the opening program an 11 part anthology series The Seven Lively Arts which would include “A Few Folks and Their Songs” hosted by Theodore Bikel.
1957: William Reich passed away. Reich was born in Austria and trained under Freud. In 1933, he published The Mass Psychology of Fascism. When the text was banned by the Nazis Reich came to the United States. His work with orgone got him in trouble with the FDA and he ended up in prison. He passed away before he could gain parole.
1958(20th of Cheshvan 5719): Sixty-nine year old Samuel Fassler, the owner of a trucking company, founder of Fassler Iron Works before WW I and the City Commissioner of Buildings in New York, who was “a trustee of Yeshiva University” and “founder and president of the Ninth Street Day Nursery and Orphans Home while being the husband of “the former Ruth Schlanger with whom he had three children – Arnold, Mildred, and Selma – passed away today at his home on 5thAvenue.
1959:Elections for the fourth Knesset were held in Israel today. Voter turnout was 81.5%
1960: “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” directed by Dore Schary opened tonight at the Winter Garden Theatre.
1960: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services were held at Ohem Shalom in South Orange, NJ, for sixty-two year old Herbert R. Abeles, the husband of Etta Abeles with whom he had two children – Abby and Robert – and President of the Jewish Community Organizations of America
1960: Birthdate of Orig Yogev “an Israeli businessman who served as the appointed head of the Budget Division in the Ministry of Finance between 2002 and 2004 and who in 2009 was appointed Chairman of the Israel National Economic Council Advisory Committee.
1961: Eliyahu Sasson began serving as Minister of Communications.
1962: Birthdate of Phil Katz, the programmer who created PZIP.
1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson who got 90% of the Jewish vote, soundly defeated Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who received 10% of the Jewish, to win a White House term on his own right. Senator Goldwater’s father was Jewish, but Goldwater was raised as an Episcopalian. Goldwater’s running mate was Congressman Miller who happened to be Catholic. Bigots characterized the ticket as the Arizona Israelite and his fellow traveler from the Vatican. During this second term Johnson would support Israel during the Six Day War in 1967. Among other things, when the Soviets threatened Israel when the war went against their Arab clients, Johnson sent the Sixth Fleet into the eastern Mediterranean to let the Russians know that their interference would not be tolerated.
1964(28th of Cheshvan, 5725): Bank manager Shimon Shalom, the father of Silvan Shalom, was murdered today during a bank robbery
1966: In Florence the Arno River began overflowing its banks threatening “hundreds of rare Jewish books, documents, archives and Judaica items, some of them centuries old.”1967: “Middle East: A Bitter Exchange” published today described the Israeli reaction to the sinking of the “Elath,” an Israeli destroyed by Egypt.http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,837441,00.html#
1968: The New York Times includes a review of Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories, Saul Bellow’s first work since the publication of Herzog.
1968: During what became known as the War of Attrition, IAF jets rise up to meet Egyptian MiG-17s attacking positions held by the IDF.
1969: The Lebanese government signed the Cairo Agreement which granted Palestinians the right to launch attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon in coordination with the Lebanese Army
1970: Bella Abzug was elected to the United States House of Reprsentatives.
1970: U. S. Premiere of “The Owl and the Pussycat” co-starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal.
1970: Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist, was elected President of Child. “He immediately set about nationalizing the banks and larger industries. The development was as alarming to the Jews as it was to the rest of the nation’s middle class citizens. At least 6,000 of Chile’s 30,000 Jews departed for Israel or the United States within months of his election.
1971: U.S. premiere of Fiddler on the Roof the movie version of the famous Broadway musical starring Chaim Topol
1972(26th of Cheshvan, 5733): Seventy-seven year old vaudevillian, musician and song-and-dance man Harry Richman best known for his role in “Putting on the Ritz” passed away today.
1971(15th of Cheshvan, 5732): Eighty-three year old Dr. Leon Banov, Sr., the son of Alexander and Sonia Banov and husband of Minnie Monash Banov with whom he had two children Morton and Leon, who followed in his father’s footsteps passed away today in Charleston after which he was buried at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Cemetery.
1973(8th of Cheshvan, 5734):Gustave "Gus" Levy a senior partner of Goldman Sachs since 1969 when he succeeded the legendary Sidney Weinberg passed away. Levy was born in 1910 in New Orleans, one of three children of Sigmund and Bella Levy. Levy briefly attended Tulane University before dropping out, moving to New York City, working various job in the financial sector, and then joining Goldman Sachs in 1933 to head the then one-man trading department for a salary of $27.50 a week. He remained at Goldman Sachs for rest of his career and rose to senior partner in 1969. Levy was known for his tremendous energy, short temper, intelligence, and generosity.
1977(22nd of Cheshvan, 5738): Eighty-five year old Armand Lunel the native of Aix-en-Provence, France “the writer, librettist, philosopher and teacher who was the last known speaker of Shuadit” passed away today.
1978(3rd of Cheshvan, 5739): Fifty-six year old Marian Winters passed away while appearing on Broadway in “Deathtrap.”
1979(13th of Cheshvan, 5740): Parashat Lech-Lecha
1979(13th of Cheshvan, 5740): Eight-four year old Dr. Marie Pichel Warner, the family planning specialist and husband of Dr. Benjamin Warner, passed away today.
1981: David Levy began serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
1988: Soviet Union agreed to allow the teaching of Hebrew
1989: “Bloodhounds of Broadway” a comedy featuring Dinah Manoff was released in the United States today.
1992: Jerry Nadler completes his service as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 67th District.
1992: Jerry Nadler was elected to House of Representative for New York’s 17th district.
1992: Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Jewish women senators, the first female senators from California, and the first two women to ever represent any state at the same time. An advocate and advisor on prison reform to California Governor Edmund (Pat) Brown; Feinstein became the first woman president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969. In 1979, she won election as the first female mayor of San Francisco after the brutal assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. In 1992, she won a special Senate election to replace Pete Wilson who had left his seat to become governor of California. She was re-elected in the 1994 and 2000 elections. Feinstein became the first female member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Inspired to run for Senate by the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, Barbara Boxer became a Senator after 10 years of service in the House of Representatives. She was elected to a second six-year term in 1998. The Senate's leading defender of a woman's right to choose, Senator Boxer authored the Family Planning and Choice Protection Act and helped lead the floor fight for passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
1992: Bill Clinton defeats George Bush and Ross Perot to become President of the United States. During Clinton’s presidency, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty. He also played a key role in brokering the peace accords between the Israelis and the PLO. When Rabin and Arafat shook hands in the presence of a beaming Clinton most people thought a new day had dawned in the Middle East. Unfortunately Arafat would never be able to make the leap from photo op to being the next “Anwar Sadat.” Of course, another Jew, Monica Lewinsky played a prominent part in another aspect of the Clinton presidency as did Mark Rich the man who was mysteriously pardoned by Bill as he literally walked out of the White Office.
1994: “Market Place; Big Winners, Big Losers in Snapple’s Life Story published today provides Floyd Norris’ view of the beverage company originally founded by Arnold Greenberg and Hyman Goldman.
1994(29thof Cheshvan, 5755): Eighty-seven year old Max Perlman, the husband of Helen Perlman and University of Wisconsin graduate who during WW II was given the rank of Lt. Col. by the British and Americans while he was working to help Jews escape from Nazi controlled Europe passed away today.
1998: Brian Schatz was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives from the 24thDistrict.
1998(14th of Cheshvan, 5759): Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, passed away. Born Robert Kahn, you might say was the high priest of the World of Action Heroes.
1998: In “A Holocaust Memoir in Doubt,” published today Doreen Carvajal discusses the controversy swirling around Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski.
2001: Sir Ernst Gombrich passed away. Born in Austria in in 1909 to a Jewish family that converted to a form of mystical Protestantism, Gombrich was left Austria in 1936 and moved to England where he became a renowned art historian. Although he never reversed his family’s conversion Gombrich had a strong Jewish identity. After the Nazis came to power he was always insistent on describing himself as an Austrian Jew.
2002: In an article entitled “Norman Podhoretz's Old-Time Religion” Judith Shulevitz reviews The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are and provides a vivid description of how Podhoretz manipulates the ancient text to fit his modern political agenda.
2002(28th of Cheshvan, 5763): Actor Jonathan Harris passed away. He was best known for his portrayal of Dr. Smith on Lost in Space.
2002: Brian Schatz was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives from the 25th District.
2002: FOX broadcast the first episode of season 14 of The Simpsons, the cartoon comedy featuring the theme music of Danny Elfman
2003: One person was injured when a bomb was detonated at Azzoun.
2003: FOX broadcast the first episode of season 15 of The Simpsons’ featuring the voices of Julie Kavner and Harry Shearer.
2003: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s appeal of a lower court order to remove his Ten Commandments Monument from the rotunda in Montgomery, Alabama.
2004: The World Jewish Film Festival, the first of its kind in Israel and the Jewish world comes to a close in Tel Aviv.
2004: NPR features Kevin Rudd, foreign policy spokesman, in a segment on the Australian Labour Party and its policy toward Israel and the Jewish people in which he defends the party against charges of anti-Semitism and hypocrisy by Barry Cohen.
2005: In a major shift of public sentiment Israeli newspapers reported that Pro-Israel rallies held in front of Iran embassies across Europe. A wave of demonstrations in support of Israel swept across Europe as protestors gathered in front of Iranian embassies in a number of capitals. In France a demonstration organized by the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organizations and the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) gathered near the Iranian embassy in Paris.Protestors chanted out support for Israel and wore stickers reading "Israel est eternel" (Israel is eternal). Pro-Israel rallies were also held in Vienna, Austria, and Budapest, Hungary, where protestors drew up signs that read "Israel today, Europe tomorrow?"
2005: While bemoaning the defacing of the “beautiful highway landscaping in downtown” Las Vegas, Mayor Oscar Goodman “suggested that those who deface freeways with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television”
2005: A Broadway revival of StephenSondheim’s “Sweeny Todd” opened at the Eugene O’Neil Theatre.
2005: Officials in a Slovak town have apologized to local Jews for a pogrom that took place shortly after the end of World War II. "We express deep regret of the tragic event, which has no equivalent in our modern history in terms of its evil and inhuman character," said the statement by Topolcany municipal officials presented to representatives of the Federation of Jewish Communities at a meeting Sunday attended by more than 50 of the town's Jewish former residents. Topolcany today has a population of approximately 15,000. Some 3,000 Jews lived there before the war. About 10 percent survived the Holocaust and returned from concentration camps, only to face the anti-Semitic wrath of their neighbors, witnesses recalled. One of them was Ruzena Hornova, 90, who survived the pogrom after some "good-hearted people" from town warned her about it and she managed to hide. Jan Emila, Topolcany's deputy mayor, said it was hard to find proper words for the apology. Some councilors said they should wait for a comment from the Institute of National Memory. Frantisek Alexander, chairman of the Slovak Federation of Jewish Communities, told JTA that the apology "was a very good thing, in spite of being quite late. I do not think people have changed that much in the town from the time of the pogrom, but it was very important for them to hear the words of town officials on the subject." Alexander noted that the apology had been in the works for some time thanks to pressure from the federation. Israeli historian Robert Buchler said the riot against Topolcany Jews on September 24, 1945 was provoked by a rumor that a Jewish doctor was injecting children with a poisonous serum. During the pogrom, 48 people were seriously injured, according to the federation. During World War II, Slovakia was a puppet fascist state that cooperated with Nazi Germany. The regime paid Germany 500 German marks for each Jew deprived of Slovak citizenship and deported to concentration camps. Some 70,000 Slovak Jews were sent to extermination camps, where most of them perished. Another survivor of the pogrom, Dr. Jaroslav Gerhart, blamed it on the statements and positions of Slovak politicians, including Jozef Tiso, a priest and president of the wartime government. The issue remains controversial, even today. Less than a year ago, the Slovak public TV Company broadcast a documentary about the pogrom, but the film, which documented the hatred against Topolcany's Jewish population, caused unintended controversy. The station director halted the screening shortly before the scheduled broadcast because of extreme anti-Semitic statements made by one resident in the film. The station director said airing the program could violate laws against racial and national defamation. Critics, including Jewish groups, argued that the program needed to be seen so that an open debate about current anti-Semitism could be held in Slovakia. Following protests, the film was broadcast. For Jews living in Iowa, this story has special relevance since the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library located in Cedar Rapids will be hosting "The Tragedy of Slovak Jews," a special, temporary exhibition from the Museum of the National Uprising in Banska Bystrica, Slovak Republic. The exhibition addresses the tragic demise of the Jewish communities in Slovakia.
2007: In the early morning hours, one Hamas terrorist was killed and two others wounded when an IAF helicopter attacked a Hamas outpost in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israelis were responding to mortar attacks launched against from Gaza against southern Israel.
2007: The Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra under Doron Salomon presents its Balkan music program at the Givataim Theatre at the Tel Aviv Museum featuring Theodosii Spassov the greatest player of a unique type of flute called the kaval
2007: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to arrive in the evening for her eighth trip to Israel in 2007. The reported purpose of the trip is to bring pressure on Israel to ensure that the upcoming meeting between Arabs and Israelis in Annapolis is a success.
2007: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that seven out of ten of the 265 Kibbutzim in Israel are now at least partially privatized operations.
2008: “Mumbai’s Jews Suddenly Reconsider Their Serene Existence” published today provided a look at the changes in the life of India’s Jewish community in the wake of the terrorist attack “on Nariman House, the community center run by Chabad-Lubavitch” which left the rabbi and his wife among the victims.
2008:Centro Primo Levi presents a lecture by David Ruderman, the Director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and renowned expert in the history of ideas that shaped the identity and culture of Italian Jewry, entitled “Beyond the Dialectic of Ghetto Versus Integration: Towards a New Vision of Jewish Cultural History in Italy.”
2008: Time magazine includes a notice in its Milestones section about the recent death of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal who ran four Las Vegas casinos in the 1970s and was the inspiration for Robert De Niro’s character in Martin Scorese’s film “Casino” as well as a review of Philip Roth’s newest novel, Indignation which begins with the reviewer writing “The first thing to say about Roth’s Indignation is that it’s a terrible book.”
2008: The National Religious Party “announced a merger with the National Union, Tkuma and Moledet to form a new right-wing party, later named The Jewish Home.”
2009: Janice Lieberman, author of How To Shop for a Husband: A Consumer Guide to Getting A Great Buy on a Guy appears at the 31st Annual St. Louis Jewish Book Festival.
2010: Alina Treiger to become first female rabbi ordained in Germany since war” published today compares her life with that of Rabbi Regina Jones who died in Auschwitz.
2010: Centro Primo Levi, CDEC, Milan, NYU Skirball Department for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò are scheduled to present a symposium entitled “Racial Policies in Fascist Italy: New Documents and Perspectives.”
2010: The San Diego Jewish Book fair is scheduled to open this evening with a presentation by Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue and Unthinkable Choices
2010: The IDF, working with the Israel Security Agency (ISA), killed a senior Al-Qaeda terrorist in Gaza today. The terrorist was identified as 27-year-old Mohammed Jamal a-Nahmnam. He was plotting attacks against Israel and American targets in Sinai, Egypt, in coordination with Hamas.
2010: About 500 Jewish agencies joined a 75-minute conference call today focusing on security. The call was organized after the thwarted mail-bomb threat against two Jewish institutions in Chicago.
2010(26th of Cheshvan, 5770): Eighty-one year old Jerry Bock who composed the scores for such hits as “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Fiorello” passed away today. (As reported by Robert Bervist)
2011: In New York City, Israeli historian and journalist Gershom Gorenberg is scheduled to discuss the policies that threaten Israel's democracy, the little known history behind them, and the new direction that Israel needs to take to remain a democratic and Jewish state.
2011: Dr. Judith Hauptman, the E. Billi Ivry Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Did Women Study Torah in the Talmudic Period?” at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, MD
2011: President Obama called for keeping up international pressure on Iran amid news reports that Israel may be preparing for war with the Islamic Republic.
2011: Palestinian terrorists fired at Israeli security forces near Gaza today and Israel Defense Forces retaliated by firing at the source of the shooting, killing two. Israeli security forces were doing routine work on the border fence near the area of Kibbutz Zikim in the northern Gaza Strip when Palestinian terrorists fired at them. .
2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided today to freeze funding to UNESCO after it had granted the Palestinians membership. Israel transfers some $2 million to the UN cultural body yearly.
2012: Director Eytan Fox’s “Yossi” is scheduled to be shown at the UK Jewish Film Festival.
2012: In Springfield, VA, Adat Reyim is scheduled to sponsor a fundraiser “Casino Royim.”
2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the traditional minyan is scheduled to observe Jewish Book Month Shabbat celebrating two Living Literary Legends – Sir Martin Gilbert and Herman Wouk.
2012: Jewish and Arab protesters squared off in Jerusalem tonight, a day after a Jewish man was non-fatally stabbed in the predominately Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amoud.
2012: In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the 14th Street Y gets it power back today and announces that it will be open for business tomorrow.
2013: SIGD Celebration 2013 sponsored by the Ethiopian Jewish Community is scheduled to end today.
2013: Former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Schaefer Riley is scheduled to talk about interfaith marriage at the San Diego Jewish Book Fair.
2013: At Tikvat Israel in Rockville, MD, “Chocolate & Jewish Values: A Fair Experience” – a program which is designed to “promote overseas fair trade in the context of Jewish values – is scheduled to come to a close.
2013: Jeremie Bracka's hilarious one-man Israeli comedy "Arafat in Therapy" satirizes the Middle-East peace process through farce, mockumentary and autobiographical monologue is scheduled to have its final performance at the United Solo Theatre.
2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman, Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein and DOT Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives by Randi Zuckerberg
2013: One of the largest, if not the largest picture of Chabad Rabbis is scheduled to be taken this morning at the Annual International Shluchim Convention (Kinus Hashluchim) in Brooklyn, NY
2013: Brad Ausmus was named the 37th manager in the history of the Detroit Tigers,
2013:Chief of Staff Benny Gantz visited the soldiers who had been wounded in last Thursday's tunnel explosion on the Gaza Strip border. At the same time doctors are fighting to save the eyesight of Ahiya Klein, one of the soldiers wounded in the attack. (As reported by Maayana Miskin)
2013: “A pregnant Syrian woman gave birth at Safed’s Ziv Medical Center this morning. Her son is the first baby from a mother fleeing Syria’s civil war to be born in Israel. When the mother realized there was no one in Syria who could deliver her, she asked to be taken to the border, where she hoped Israeli soldiers would pick her up and send her to an Israeli medical center, she said. (As reported by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich)
2014: “A Letter to Mother,” the 1939 film which one of the last Yiddish movies made in Poland before the Nazi invasion is scheduled to be shown at the Center for Jewish History today.
2014: JTA Washington Bureau Chief Ron Kampeas, Israel Correspondent Ben Sales and Senior Correspondent Uriel Heilman are scheduled to participate in a telephone discussion on the state of U.S. – Israeli relations.
2014: In Sydney, “Gett, the Trial of Vivian Amsalem” and “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” are among the films scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.
2014: In London, The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to host “The Normality of Terror: the Heinrich and Margarete Himmler Correspondence.”
2014: The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments today for a second time in a case that combines Middle East policy with the dueling foreign policy roles of the president and Congress. It's a political hot potato that asks what U.S. passports should say about the birthplace of American citizens born in Jerusalem
2014(10thof Cheshvan): On this date 1656 from Creation, Noah and family entered the Ark. (Aish)
2015: The American Sephardi Federation and the Indian Consulate at NY are scheduled to present Blue Like Me: An Indian-Jewish Artist's Boundless Imagination and "Baghdadis & the Bene Israel in Bollywood & Beyond"
2015: As part of Holocaust Education Week, The Bloor Gladstone Library is scheduled to host “1492, The Other Path: Sephardic Jews in the Balkans which will include “a presentation that will share the history of Sephardic Jews in the Balkans, the fate of their communities during the Holocaust, and how a small group of Holocaust survivors and their children looked back on their years of co-existence with others to choose a path other than hate.”
2015: “Grove Press released Kliph Nesteroff's first book The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy (ISBN 0802190863) today to uniformly positive reviews.”
2015: The Leo Baeck Insitute is scheduled to present German-born Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer discussing his new biography, The Habit of Labor with Jane Eisner, Editor-in-Chief of the Forward.
2015: In “The Facebook Intifada” published today Michah Lakin Avni examined “What inspired to young Palestinian men to savagely attack my father and a busload of passengers?”
2015: Jewish Voices, an annual event with readings by prominent Jewish poets and writers who share from their personal collections is scheduled to take place in the auditorium of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.
2015: In Essex, UK, Joyce Michel is scheduled to discuss the life of Moses Edrehi in “Scholars, peddlers, or schnorrers? Tales of a Wandering Jew (and Son).”
2015: “In what archaeologists are describing as “a solution to one of the great archaeological riddles in the history of Jerusalem,” researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority announced today that they have found the remnants of a fortress used by the Seleucid Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes in his siege of Jerusalem in 168 BCE.
2016: In Washington, the historic 1876 synagogue is scheduled to literally make its next move before the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum finally settles into its new home at Third and F Streets, NW in Washington, DC.
2016: In Toronto, Canada, Holocaust Education Week is scheduled to continue with “The Power of Memoir and Storytelling: How do we Teach Others about the Past?” featuring authors Nate Leipciger and Theodore Fontaine.
2016: The Center for Jewish History and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research are scheduled to host the final session of “Mysticism and Morality: Clarice Lispector in Context” taught by Dr. Rebecca Ariel Porte.
2016: Friends and family prepare to celebrate the 80thbirthday of Manford Levy, a quiet pillar of the Little Rock Jewish community and the most ardent Longhorn and Dallas fan on the planet.
2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to present a lecture by Jordan Bernstein on Duties of the Heart by the Sephardic Rabbi Bahya Ibn Paquda followed by two Kabbalat Shabbat services and dinner.
2017: Two months after it had “premiered at the Telluride Film Festival” “Lady Bird” produced by Scott Rudin and featuring Beanie Feldstein was released in the United States today.
2017: As part of Homecoming at Tulane University, Hillel is scheduled to offer “Take-out Shabbat meals” so that students can host a Shabbat dinner with friends at home.”
2017: In the United Kingdom, Balfour Shabbat is scheduled to begin with a series of special events including “Friday night dinners.”
2018: In Attleboro, MA, Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to host “a Sabbath of Peace Gathering in memory of our Jewish brothers and sisters murdered at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh” that took place last Shabbat.
2018: Miha Rodman is scheduled to perform Asher Kravitz’s “The Jewish Dog” this afternoon at United Solo, “the world’s largest solo theatre festival.”
2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the History Center is scheduled to host a book signing for Barbara Feller, the Hebrew teacher par excellence, author of the newly released Road to Waubeek: Discovering Jay G. Sigmund.
2018: “The Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book and Arts Festival” is scheduled to open today at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston.
2018: “Working Woman” is scheduled to be shown this evening at the “12th Annual Other Israel Festival.”
2018(25th of Cheshvan, 5779): Parashat Chayei Sarah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/