This Day, December 5, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 563 BCE: Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations which exposed Cataline’s conspiracy to overthrow the government of Rome. There is no record of how Cataline felt about Jews, but Cicero...
View ArticleThis Day, December 6, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
DECEMBER 61060: Béla I of Hungary is crowned king of Hungary. In 1061 Bela changed the Market Day from the traditional Sunday to Saturday which may have been part of an attempt to remove the Jews from...
View ArticleThis Day, December 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
DECEMBER 743 BCE: The famous orator Marcus Tullius Cicero died. Cicero was a Patrician, member of the Senate and opponent of Julius Caesar. Following Caesar’s assassination, Mark Anthony and Octavian...
View ArticleThis Day, December 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 81522:David Reubeni left Khaibar today “and went to Nubia in northern Sudan, where he claimed to be a descendant of Muhammad. When he spoke to audiences of Jews, he told of large Jewish...
View ArticleThis Day, December 9, In Jewis History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 9 1212: In Mainz, coronation of Frederick II as King of Germany during whose reign the Jewish “community of Austria began to flourish” due to his “recognition that the Jews were a separate...
View ArticleThis Day, December 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 101475: 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...
View ArticleThis Day, December 11, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
DECEMBER 11 321: A letter from Emperor Constantine the Great regarding special taxes of this date provides the first evidence of Jews along the Rhine. 361: Emperor Julian, referred to as Julian the...
View ArticleThis Day, December 12, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 12 456 BCE (1st of Tevet, 3305): Ezra opened convocation on the problem of intermarriage.627: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian forces, commanded by...
View ArticleThis Day, December 13, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 13522 BCE: Darius I, the Persian monarch who allowed the Jewish people to re-build the Temple at Jerusalem strengthened his hold on his kingdom when he defeated Nebuchadnezzar III in a battle...
View ArticleThis Day, December 14, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
DECEMBER 14 164 BCE (3597): On the secular calendar date on which Judah Maccabee restored the service in the Temple in Jerusalem.1243: “King Henry III turned a confiscated synagogue into the chapel of...
View ArticleThis Day, December 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
DECEMBER 1537: Birthdate of Nero Claudius Augustus Germanicus 5th emperor of Rome. While legend remembers him as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned, Jews will remember him as the ruler who was...
View ArticleThis Day, December 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 161316: Öljaitü, the eighth Ilkhanid dynasty ruler in Tabriz, Iran, whom the former vizer Rashid-al-Din Hamadani the Jewish convert to Islam was found of guilty of trying to poison, passed...
View ArticleThis Day, December 17, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 17520 BCE (24th of Kislev): “The foundation-stone of the Temple was laid” (As reported by Jewish Encyclopedia)630: Modestus of Jerusalem who replaced Zacharias as Greek Orthodox Patriarch of...
View ArticleThis Day, December 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 181271: Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China. Reportedly, Marco Polo found several influential Jews at the court of Kubla...
View ArticleThis Day, December 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 19324: Licinius abdicates his position as Emperor leaving Constatine I, “the first Christian Emperor” in control of the Roman Empire much to the detriment of the Jewish people.1154: Coronation...
View ArticleThis Day, December 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 20 69: General Vespasianus occupied Rome on the same day that the Emperor Vitellius was murdered. Vespasianus is better known as Vespasian, the Roman general who was in charge of putting down...
View ArticleThis Day, December 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 2169: The Senate acknowledged Vespasian as emperor. This marked the end of the so-called The Year of the Four Emperors during which four individuals - Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian –...
View ArticleThis Day, December 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 2269: Emperor Vitellius is captured and murdered by the Gemonian stairs in Rome. Vitellius was the third of The Four Emperors. He would be succeeded by Vespasian, the man who put down the...
View ArticleThis Day, December 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 23962: Byzantine troops led by Nicephorus Phocas defeated Moslem forces and seized Aleppo. This temporary turn of events could not have been good for the Jews who had been living there since...
View ArticleThis Day, December 24, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin
December 241166: Birthdate of King John of England, the brother of Richard the Lionheart whom he followed to the throne in 1199 and also so rapacious a monarch that the English nobles banned together...
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