This Day, July 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
July 10
48 BCE: In his
war with Pompey, Julius Caesar barely avoids defeat at the Battle of
Dyrrhachium. A month later, after
regrouping his forces, Caesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. While neither of the Roman leaders were candidates
for humanitarian of the year, Caesar was the better of the two; certainly from
a Jewish point of view. Pompey had shown
his contempt for the Jews when he desecrated the Holy of Holies. Caesar, on the other hand, took a benevolent
attitude towards the Jews and did not mistreat them.
138: The Roman
Emperor Hadrian died. From a Jewish perspective, Hadrian would have to rank as
one of the worst of the Roman Emperors.
He triggered the Bar Kochbah Revolt with his anti-Jewish decrees that
included a ban on circumcision and the announcement that he was going to build
a Temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem thus turning the sacred city of the Jews into
a pagan shrine. The three yearlong rebellion was a savage one at the end of
which over half a million Jewish rebels were killed. Furthermore so many towns and villages were
laid waste that home of the Jews became a veritable wasteland. While the Romans may have one the victory
must have been a hollow one since, when making his report to the Senate,
Hadrian omitted that standard victory statement, “I am my army are well.” Hadrian took his vengeance on the Jews. He had a Torah scroll burned on the Temple
Mount. He renamed Jerusalem Aelia
Capitolina and changed the name of the country from Judea to Syria Palestina.
We are reminded of Hadrian’s evil each year at the High Holiday season when we
remember the martyrs who slain by him for continuing to teach the Torah. Ironically, Hadrian’s handpicked successor
would repeal many of Hadrian’s anti-Semitic decrees. But the damage was one and the fate of the
Jews of in Eretz Israel continued on a downward spiral.
988: The City
of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey. Since the earliest
mention of Jews dates from 1079, there were no Jews among the founders. During the first half of the 20th
century the Portobello section of Dublin was known as Little Jerusalem because
it was the center of the Irish Jewish community. Ironically, the most famous Jewish “citizen”
of Little Jerusalem never really lived there because he was “Leopold Bloom, the
fictional Jewish character at the heart of the James Joyce novel Ulysses,
lived at 52 Clanbrassil Street Upper.”
1236: In
Anjou, France, “crusading monks trampled three thousand Jews to death and
destroyed the community.” (The History of the Jewish People)
1290: King
Ladislaus IV of Hungary died. His reign was not one of the high points in the
history of Hungarian Jewry. The Synod of Buda which was held during his reign
decreed that every Jew appearing in public should wear on the left side of his
upper garment a piece of red cloth; that any Christian transacting business
with a Jew not so marked, or living in a house or on land together with any
Jew, should be refused admittance to the Church services; and that a Christian entrusting
any office to a Jew should be excommunicated.
1391: As news
of the Spanish riots reached Majorca, riots broke out all over the island.
Despite the efforts of Francisco Sa Garriga, the local viceroy, in many towns
the entire Jewish community was destroyed and its inhabitants either converted
or murdered. Over 110 families converted; the remnants fled to North Africa.
Although the following year a number Jews were again invited to reside there, a
blood libel 40 years later ended the 800-year old Jewish community.
1509:
Birthdate of Protestant religious leader and theologian John Calvin. According to at least one commentator, Calvin
“generally had a more benevolent view of the Jews” than did other Protestant
reformers such as Martin Luther. “Although
at times his remarks could be acerbic, he nevertheless taught that the Bible
indicated a time when Israel would be restored by coming to faith in their
Messiah. In speaking about the Jews,
Calvin said, "I
extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, When
the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to
the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole
Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the
Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God's
family.” “As Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be
fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God
Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God
had preferred to all other nations...God distinctly claims for himself a
certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar
nation...God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their
fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he
loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, that
the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void." One of the issues
confronting Christians was the determination of the proper age for
Baptism. Calvin believed in the baptism
of infants. He saw baptism as analogous
to circumcision – a rite by which the child is sealed in the faith of his
fathers. Since God had ordained
circumcision for Jewish infants, it was obvious that He intended for Christian
to undergo their version of the ritual as infants as well.
1548:
Eighteen hundred marranos were released from the prisons of the Portuguese
Inquisition
1615:
Fifty-one year old British diplomat and unsuccessful negotiator during the
conflict between James and Parliament and whom William Rubinstein, the author
of works on English and Anglo-Jewish history described as the real author of
Shakespeare’s works in his 2005 work The Truth Will Out passed away
today.
1709:
In New York, Moses and Rachel Asher Levy gave birth to Michael Levy, the
husband of Elisabeth Levy with whom he had six children.
1733:
George Frederick Handel conducted the premiere performance of “Athalia” at the
Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, UK. This was one of many times that the German
born British musical giant used Jewish Biblical tales as the theme for his
musical masterpieces. In this case, his work was based on the literary
masterpiece by Racine which is fairly accurate depiction of this Jewish Lady
Macbeth.
1752:
Rachel and Abraham Nones, the parents of Benjamin Nones and the mother-in-law
of Miriam Marks were marred today.
1761:
Hillel and Abigail Seixas Judah gave birth to Isaac Judah who “is generally considered to be the first reader of
the Congregation Beth Shalom in Richmond, VA.”
https://archives.cjh.org/agents/people/37971
1767:
George Goldsmid married Rebecca Cohen in Amersfoort, Holland.
1778:
The French King, Louis XVI, allies his nation with the American revolutionaries
and declares war on Great Britain. French support of the newly created United
States was a decisive factor in the success of the American Revolution which
gave birth to a nation that has provided Jews with unparalleled opportunities
for success and safety. At the same
time, the king’s support of the American cause helped to bankrupt France; a
bankruptcy which was a key element in bringing about the French Revolution
which changed France into a land where Jews were able to flourish during the 19th
and first half of the 20th century.
1781(17th
of Tammuz, 5541): Tzom Tammuz
1781:
Esther Mordecai and Philip Moses Russell who “was a surgeon’s mate at Valley
Forge during the Revolutionary War” gave birth to Zipporah Russell who married
Isaac D. Mordecai and became Zipporah Russell Mordecai the mother of Isaac,
John and Samuel Mordecai.
1782:
In Mogador, Morocco, “Eliahu Ha’Levi ibn Yuli a Shab as-Sultan (a court Jew) to
Mohammed ben Abdallah, Sultan Sidi Muhammed III” and his wife gave birth to
Moses Elias Levy, the father of David Levy Yulee, the future U.S. Senator from
the state of Florida.
http://www.jewish-american-society-for-historic-preservation.org/images/Moses_Elias_Levy-5b.pdf
1794(12th
of Tammuz, 5554): Benjamin Koperlik, the son of Abraham and Esther Koperlik
passed away today in what is is now the Czech Republic.
1800(17th
of Tammuz, 5560): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the first time in the 19th
century and the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.
1817:
Simon Seev Hirsch, the German born of Chaja and Samuel Hirsch and his wife Lea Hirsch
gave birth to birth Friederika Dreifuss, the wife of Emanuel Dreifuss.
1829:
Birthdate of Filosseno (Philoxene) Luzzatto, an Italian scholar, who devoted
himself to the study of Sanskrit and Semitic Languages. A native of Trieste, he
was the son of Samuel David Luzzatto
1830: Birthdate
of Camille Pissarro. Of Sephardic extraction, he became an important
Impressionist painter and teacher. He mostly painted the busy streets of Paris
and landscapes. He was associated with Monet and Corot. In the last years of
his life he achieved recognition, and although suffering from an eye ailment
painted 160 works in the last three years of his life.
http://www.camille-pissarro.org/
1832:
Birthdate of Rockland, ME native and Baptist Minister Isaac Smith Kalloch who
was ambushed and shot by Charles de Young , the editor-in-chief of the San
Francisco, after which Kalloch’s son shot and killed Charles de Young, the
Louisan born Jew who had opposed Kolloch’s bid to become mayor of San Francisco.
1833:
Birthdate of “Goellleim, Germany” native Samuel Wolf Strauss the husband of
Babette Baum.
1835:
In Lublin, Tadeusz Wieniawski, Sr. and Regina Wieniawska gave birth to
violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski the husband of Izabella Wieniawska and
the brother of Joseph Wieniawska
1837:
Thirty-four year old Moritz Moses Jacob von Goldschmidt and Anna Netti von Goldschmidt
gave birth to Theodor von Goldschmidt.
1839(28th
of Tammuz, 5599): Seventy-two year old Philadelphia native Joseph Mordecai the
third son of Moses and Elizabeth “Esther” Mordecai and the husband of Esther
“Hetty” Marache the daughter of Solomon and Rebecca Marche who had lived in
Virginia and South Carolina passed away today in Charleston.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=94445515
1845:
John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell gave birth to
William Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart who married Ellen Odette Cuffe,
Countess of Desart, the daughter of German banker Henri Louis Bischoffsheim who
has been described as “the most important Jewish woman in Irish history.”
1849:
The United States Department of the Interior is established. Joel D. Wolfsohn
who served as Assistant Secretary of the Department from in the final months of
the Truman Administration appears to be the highest ranking Jew to have served
at the Department of the Interior. He served from July 10, 1952 through
February 20, 1953.
1850:
Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States upon
the death of President Zachary Taylor, 16 months into his term. In 1851,
Fillmore expressed his opposition to ratifying a treaty with Switzerland that
would allow the Swiss to discriminate against American Jews. The Senate did not ratify the treaty. In
1852, Fillmore became the first President to try and appoint a Jew to the
Supreme Court when he offered the position to Judah P. Benjamin, the U.S.
Senator from Louisiana. Benjamin
declined the offer.
1851:
In Makó, about 200 km south-east of Budapest, the son of Elize (Berger) and
Fülöp Pulitzer (born Politzer) gave birth to Albert Pulitzer, the founder of
the New York Morning Journal and the younger brother of published Joseph Pulitzer,
the name-sake of the Pulitzer Prizes.
1855:
Birthdate of Isaac Newton Seligman, the New York born son of Joseph Seligman
who was an “American banker and communal worker.” Educated at Columbia Grammar
School and Columbia College, from which he graduated in 1876, Seligman was one
of the crew which won the university eight-oar college race on Saratoga Lake in
1874. In 1878, after having finished an apprenticeship in the firm of Seligman
& Hellman, New Orleans, he joined the New York establishment, of which he
became head in 1880, on the death of his father. A trustee of nineteen
important commercial, financial, and other institutions and societies,
including the Munich Life Assurance Company, St. John's Guild, and the McKinley
Memorial Association, and he has also been a member of the Committee of
Seventy, of Fifteen, and of Nine, each of which attempted at various times to
reform municipal government in New York; of the last-named body he was
chairman. He has served as a trustee of Temple Emanu-El, the Hebrew Orphan
Asylum and the United Hebrew Charities. (From the Jewish Encyclopedia)
1856:
On Staten Island, Joseph Seligman and Babette Steinhart gave birth to Columbia
graduate Isaac Newton Seligman, the husband of Guta Loeb, a “member of the
winning Saratoga boat race in 1874” and the director of numerous railway
companies.”
1857:
Birthdate of Nachman Freudmann, the husband of Salomea Eisenbach and the father
of “Polish pianist and composer” Ignaz Friedman.
1857:
The correspondent for the New York Times writes from London today that
the House of Lords will vote tonight on the “Jew Bill” and if it is rejected,
Rothschild will resign immediately.
1861:
During the Civil War, Philadelphia Henry Jacobs began serving with Company F of
the 28th Regiment.
1861:
During the Civil War, Jacob Stein began serving with Company A of the 37th
Regiment.
1862:
Today, “the Chief Rabbi, Dr. N.M. laid the foundation stone” for the Bayswater
Synagogue on Chichester Road.
1864:
Carl-Hyman Marcuse and Sophie Lewis, the parents of Wyatt Earp’s mistress Sadie
Marcus, gave birth to Henrietta Marcus.
1865:
“Miscellaneous: The Jews In the Papal States” published today reported that
“The Vicar-General of Velletri has issued an order permitting Jews to remain
ten days in that town upon lawful and honest business. During that time they
must net return to their lodgings later than 1 o'clock in the morning, or leave
before dawn. They are forbidden to approach all monasteries, academics and
other pious places under episcopal jurisdiction, and in their intercourse and
conversation with Christians they are to refrain from familiarity. The
violation of any of these dispositions is to be punished by imprisonment and a
fine of five crowns, to be applied to pious establishments.”
1865:
The party under the command of Captain Charles Wilson that had made the most
recent and most accurate survey of Jerusalem arrived in England.
http://www.templemount.org/wilson1.html
1866:
“In the village Shekhman, Tambov Governorate in Russia (now Tambov Oblast),”
French surgeon Serge Abrahamovitch Voronoff, the son of “Abram Veniaminovich
Voronov, a distiller and Rachel-Esther Lipsky was circumcised today in a
synagogue.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/04/26/88355625.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/05/bernard-vaynshteyn-weinstein.html
1869: New York City Builder Alexander Sender Jarmulowsky, the
Polish born son of Moszko Jarmulowski and Feiga Jarmulowski, and his wife
Rebecca Jarmulowsky gave birth Louis Jarmulowsky,
1869:
Birthdate of Kovno native and Syracuse realtor Mark Gais
1870:
Birthdate of Brooklyn Polytech alum and Columbia Law school trained attorney
Mitchell May who served in Congress, was
“an Assistant District Attorney,” and Secretary of State of New York before
serving for 18 years as “a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000276
1870:
In Selma, AL, founding of Congregation Mishkan Israel whose membership included
Simon Mass, M.J. Meyer, Aaron Maas, Leon Thalheimer, J.C. Adler, B.J. Schuster,
Nathan Kahn and M.L. Sterne.
1871:
In Brooklyn, Nathan May and Matilda Mulhauser gave birth to Columbia School
graduate Mitchell May, the Congressman from the 6th New York
Congressional District, Secretary of State of New York, state Supreme Court
Justice and husband of Pauline Joli.
1871:
Birthdate of French author Marcel Proust.
The following excerpt from “Marcel Proust” provides an
interesting insight into Proust’s Jewish origins and his literary treatment of
his ancestors on his mother’s side. “Marcel Proust was the son of a Christian
father and a Jewish mother. He himself was baptized (on August 5, 1871, at the
church of Saint-Louis d'Antin) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never
practiced that faith and as an adult could best be described as a mystical
atheist, someone imbued with spirituality who nonetheless did not believe in a
personal God, much less in a savior. Although Jews trace their religion through
their mothers, Proust never considered himself Jewish and even became vexed
when a newspaper article listed him as a Jewish author. His father once warned
him not to stay in a certain hotel since there were "too many" Jewish
guests there, and, to be sure, in Remembrance of Things Past there are
unflattering caricatures of the members of one Jewish family, the Blochs. Jews
were still considered exotic, even "oriental," in France; in 1872
there were only eighty-six thousand Jews in the whole country. In a typically
offensive passage Proust writes that in a French drawing room "a Jew
making his entry as though he were emerging from the desert, his body crouching
like a hyena's, his neck thrust forward, offering profound `salaams,'
completely satisfies a certain taste for the oriental." Proust never refers to his Jewish origins in
his fiction, although in the youthful novel he abandoned, Jean Santeuil
(first published only in 1952, thirty years after his death), there is a very
striking, if buried, reference to Judaism. The autobiographical hero has
quarreled with his parents and in his rage deliberately smashed a piece of
delicate Venetian glass his mother had given him. When he and his mother are
reconciled, he tells her what he has done: "He expected that she would
scold him, and so revive in his mind the memory of their quarrel. But there was
no cloud upon her tenderness. She gave him a kiss, and whispered in his ear:
`It shall be, as in the Temple, the symbol of an indestructible union.'"
This reference to the rite of smashing a glass during the Orthodox Jewish
wedding ceremony, in this case sealing the marriage of mother to son, is not
only spontaneous but chilling. In an essay about his mother he referred, with
characteristic ambiguity, to "the beautiful lines of her Jewish face,
completely marked with Christian sweetness and Jansenist resignation, turning
her into Esther herself"--a reference, significantly, to the heroine of
the Old Testament (and of Racine's play), who concealed her Jewish identity
until she had become the wife of King Ahasuerus and was in a position to save
her people. The apparently gentile Proust, who had campaigned for Dreyfus and
had been baptized Catholic, was a sort of modern Esther. Despite Proust's silences and lapses on the
subject of his mother's religion, it would be unfair, especially in light of
the rampant anti-Semitism of turn-of-the-century France, to say that he was
unique or even extreme in his prejudice against Jews. And yet his anti-Semitism
is more than curious, given his love for his mother and given, after her death,
something very much like a religious cult that he developed around her. His
mother, out of respect for her parents, had remained faithful to their
religion, and Proust revered her and her relatives; after her death he
regretted that he was too ill to visit her grave and the graves of her parents
and uncle in the Jewish cemetery and to mark each visit with a stone. More
important, although he had many friends among the aristocracy whom he had
assiduously cultivated, nevertheless when he was forced to take sides during
the Dreyfus Affair, which had begun in 1894 and erupted in 1898, he chose to sign
a petition prominently printed in a newspaper calling for a retrial. The
Dreyfus Affair is worth a short detour, since it split French society for many
years and it became a major topic in Proust's life--and in Remembrance of
Things Past. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a Jew and a captain in the
French army. In December 1894 he was condemned by a military court for having
sold military secrets to the Germans and was sent for life to Devil's Island.
The accusation was based on the evidence of a memorandum stolen from the German
embassy in Paris (despite the fact that the writing did not resemble Dreyfus's)
and of a dossier (which was kept classified and secret) handed over to the
military court by the minister of war. In 1896 another French soldier, Major
Georges Picquart, proved that the memorandum had been written not by Dreyfus
but by a certain Major Marie Charles Esterhazy. Yet Esterhazy was acquitted and
Picquart was imprisoned. Instantly a large part of the population called for a
retrial of Dreyfus. On January 13, 1898, the writer Emile Zola published an
open letter, "J'accuse," directed against the army's general staff;
Zola was tried and found guilty of besmirching the reputation of the army. He
was forced to flee to England. Then in September 1898 it was proved that the
only piece of evidence against Dreyfus in the secret military dossier had been
faked by Joseph Henry, who confessed his misdeed and committed suicide. At last
the government ordered a retrial of Dreyfus. Public opinion was bitterly divided
between the leftist Dreyfusards, who demanded "justice and truth,"
and the anti-Dreyfusards, who led an anti-Semitic campaign, defended the honor
of the army, and rejected the call for a retrial. The conflict led to a virtual
civil war. In 1899 Dreyfus was found guilty again, although this time under
extenuating circumstances--and the president pardoned him. Only in 1906 was
Dreyfus fully rehabilitated, named an officer once again, and decorated with
the Legion of Honor. Interestingly, Theodor Herzl, the Paris correspondent for
a Viennese newspaper, was so overwhelmed by the virulent anti-Semitism of the
Dreyfus Affair that he was inspired by the prophetic idea of a Jewish
state. In defending Dreyfus, Proust not
only angered conservative, Catholic, pro-army aristocrats, but he also
alienated his own father. In writing about the 1890s in Remembrance of
Things Past, Proust remarks that "the Dreyfus case was shortly to
relegate the Jews to the lowest rung of the social ladder." Typically, the
ultraconservative Gustave Schlumberger, a great Byzantine scholar, could give
in his posthumous memoirs as offensive a description of his old friend Charles
Haas (a model for Proust's character Swann) as this: "The delightful
Charles Haas, the most likeable and glittering socialite, the best of friends,
had nothing Jewish about him except his origins and was not afflicted, as far
as I know, with any of the faults of his race, which makes him an exception
virtually unique." It would be misleading to suggest that Proust took his
controversial, pro-Dreyfus stand simply because he was half-Jewish. No, he was
only obeying the dictates of his conscience, even though he lost many highborn
Catholic friends by doing so and exposed himself to the snide anti-Semitic
accusation of merely automatically siding with his co-religionists.”
1875(7th
of Tammuz, 5635): Parshat Chukat
1875(7th
of Tammuz, 5635): Joseph Levi, the husband of Rachel Levi and Sarah de Jacob
Baïz y Oliveira Isidro passed away today in St. Thomas.
1876: The New York Times featured a review of Clarel:
A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land a two volume American epic poem by
Herman Melville, “Clarel,” the longest poem in American literature, is divided
into four parts – Jerusalem, The Wilderness, Mar Saba, Bethlehem – and
epilogue.
1876: In San
Francisco, Jacob and Fannie (Worms) Goldman gave birth to librarian Belle
Goldman, the “superintendent of the San Francisco branch libraries and
stations” who was a member of Temple Emanuel.
1877:
According to reports circulating on Wall Street today, Mr. Gabriel Netter “of
the Jewish banking house of Netter & Co…had received a letter from Saratoga
signed ‘Wilkinson,’ saying that the Grand Union Hotel proprietors would be
happy to extend all the accommodations the hotel affords to Mr. Netter and his
family.” Mr. Netter refused to confirm
or deny if he had received such a letter.
But, if he had, he had no intention of responding.
1877: In
Berlin, Harry and Caroline Breslau gave birth to Ernst Ludwig Bresslau
1877: The
fourth council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation opened this morning
at St. George’s Hall in Philadelphia and as the first order of business elected
B.F. Peixtto President.
1878:
Approximately 300 people attended a banquet at the Plankinton House given by
the Jews of Milwaukee in honor of the delegates of the Hebrew Council meeting
here.
1879: Mr.
William B. Hackenburg, President of the Sixth Council of the Union of American
and Hebrew Congregations, called the morning session of the Council to order at
9:30 A. M. today. Dr. Samuel Hirsch of Philadelphia delivered the opening
prayer. Among other matters of business,
the delegates debated whether or not to fund a project that would raise money
for the purchase of land so that Jewish immigrants could become farmers.
1879: In
Chicago, “Leopold and Charlotte (Stein) Sonnenschien gave birth to Rush Medical
College trained physician Robert Sonnenschein, the husband of Flora Kieferstein
and professor of Oto-Laryngology who was a member of Chicago’s Sinai Congregation.
1879:
Delegates to the Sixth Council of the Union of American and Hebrew
Congregations hold a banquet at Delmonico’s for which “a competent Jewish
caterer has been engaged to supervise the preparation of the dinner.”
1880: In
Russia, Solomon and Mary Kranzberg gave birth to St. Louis, MO businessman
Samuel Kranzberg, the husband of Rose Sylvia Fitter and President of the
Northwestern Bottle Company who showed a particular interest in the Jewish
Hospital, the Jewish Orphans Home and Hebrew Free Schools of St. Louis while
serving as a director of the Jewish Federation of Charities of St. Louis and
the national director of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society.
1881: The New York Times published an
extensive review of Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine translated by
Emma Lazarus. The reviewer does not see
any irony in the work of the apostate Jew being translated by a leading
American Jewish poetess.
1881:
Birthdate of NYC native and professional illustrator Irma Maduro Peixotto.
https://www.askart.com/artist/Irma_Maduro_Peixotto/133926/Irma_Maduro_Peixotto.aspx
1881: It was
reported today that Sir Edward Poynter is about to begin another of his larger
than life historical paintings which is titled “Visit of the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon.” The canvas will be 8 feet by 5 feet depicting the queen ascending the
steps to the throne of the Jewish monarch.
[Note – Poynter had already drawn on Jewish themes when he painted
“Israel in Egypt” in 1867.
1881: “German
Army Volunteers” published today provided a detailed account of the recruiting
and service paradigms in the Kaiser’s military including the fact that “the
sons of Jews, seldom, if ever compete for commissions because they know they
could not get them.”
1881: It was
reported today that Tavistock House, the home for many years of Charles
Dickens, has been purchased by Jews’ College a twenty-five year old day school
in London that was established as a day school for training rabbis.
1882: This
morning, 250 Jewish exiles arrived in St. Louis, MO. These European refugees,
who have terrible tales to tell about their treatment in the Old World, are
destitute so they are being cared for by a local committee of their
coreligionists.
1882: It was
reported today that the first free excursion-boat trip of the season sponsored
by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will take place later week.
1882: In Far
Rockaway, NY, Samuel and Jennie Korn gave birth to Columbia and NYU trained
political scientist turned realtor Harold Korn, the husband of Ruth Sichel who
was a shipping manager with the Red Cross during WW I, an active Republican and
a leader in the Jewish community as could be seen by his with the American
Jewish Historical Society and the JTS Endowment Fund Campaign.
1883: The SS Lydian Monarch arrived in New
York from London. Among the passengers
were five Jewish families from Poland.
According to these passengers, their tickets had been paid for by either
the Hebrew Society in London or the Hebrew Ladies’ Society of London. While the English Jews had provided them with
passage, they had not given them any more money which meant that they were
destitute. The new arrivals have no one in the United States to sponsor them.
1883: An
announcement was made today in Nyreghhaza, Hungary at the trial of the Jews who
have been charged with murdering a Christian girl, that a coachman who was an
important witness for the defense has committed suicide.
1883: Lipman
Levi presided over the opening session of the 10th annual council of
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
Two hundred and fifty delegates representing approximately 125
congregations filled Eureka Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio where the first order of
business was to choose permanent officers to serve the Union in the coming
year.
1885(27th
of Tammuz, 5645): Hyam
Solomon Levy-Yuly, the London born son of Mr. and Mrs. Judah Levy-Yuly and the
husband of Hannah Levy-Yuly passed away today in Morocco.
1885: In Pine
Bluff, AR, Bertha and Isaac Dreyfus gave birth to H. Artie Dreyfus, the brother
of Ruth, Hugo, Jerome and David Dreyfus.
1886:
Birthdate of Cincinnati, OH native and University of Cincinnati and Harvard
trained attorney Dr. Nathan Isaacs, the WW II veteran and Professor of Business
Law at Harvard who “was an American delegate at the first World Jewish Congress
in Geneva” and “president of the Association for Jewish Culture and Education
and the Menorah Educational Conference.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/12/19/99329432.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1886:
Birthdate of Joseph Bruce Perskie, the native of Alliance, NY, graduate of Penn
law school, state Supreme Court judge and an officer of the Federation of
Jewish Federation of Jewish Charities and B’nai B’rith.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/05/30/90813220.pdf
1886:
Birthdate of Arthur Klausner who, in 1942 was transported from Prague to
Ujazdow where he was murdered.
1887(18th
of Tammuz, 5647): Fast of Tammuz observed since the 17th fell on
Shabbat
1887: In New
York, Celia Siegel and Joseph Fertig gave birth to CCNY trained teacher and NYU trained lawyer Moses
Maldwin Fertig, the husband of Mathilda Wohl and unsuccessful candidate for President of
the New York City Council who was “president of the Bronx Young Men’s Hebrew
Association” and who was responsible for the passage of the Lockwood-Fertig
Bill which provided for equal pay for schoolteachers in New York City.
1887: It was
reported today that the Sanitarium for Hebrew children has raised $1,779 so far
this year so it can provide free boating excursions for poor children and their
mothers living in the tenements of the Lower East Side.
1888: “Mr.
B.F. Peixotto of New York, who delivered the oration at the dedication of the
Jewish Orphan Asylum” in Cleveland “20 years ago, will deliver the oration
today at the dedication of the new building just completed at a cost of
$200,000.”
1888: Actor
and playwright, Charles Klein, the London born son of Herman Klein and the
former Adelaide Soman, married Lillian Gottlieb today in Manhattan.
1889: A
spirited debate took place this morning at the Hebrew Union Convention in
Detroit over whether or not there should be a special Jewish celebration of the
upcoming 400th anniversary of the discovery of America which is to
take place in 1892. Josiah Cohen of
Pittsburgh spoke on behalf of the eastern delegates, most of whom favored a
uniquely Jewish celebration. Israel
Cohen of Chicago spoke on behalf of the western delegates, most of whom favored
participation in the celebrations planned by the secular society and saw no need
for a special Jewish event. In the end, the convention voted to adopt the
report of a committee that had been formed to study the matter and had state
that a uniquely Jewish celebration was “inexpedient,” “unnecessary” and “would
be entirely out of place.”
1889: “The
Hebrew Council” published today described a meeting of the Sunday School Union
which listened to a report by Dr. Mielziner,
the Professor of Talmudic Literature at Hebrew Union College.
1889: “Need
Hebrews Apply?” published today
described the on-going controversy surrounding the nomination of state Senator
Jacob A. Cantor for membership in the exclusive Harlem Club. While some
expressed the opinion that if the members could vote on the nomination a
majority would support Cantor enough of the members supported the sentiment that
“in this club we draw the line at Hebrews” that there were more than enough
“blackballs” available to defeat Cantor’s nomination.
1889: After
registering at the Brunswick Hotel and going to her rooms at the fashionable
Brunswick Hotel in Ocean Beach, NJ, Mrs. Joseph Davis was told by the
proprietor that he had learned that she was Jewish. Since it was the policy of the hotel not to
rent to Jews, she and her children would have to leave the hotel. He told her she could stay the night but she
left immediately and took shelter at the cottage of leather merchant Moses
Strauss.
1890: Wyoming becomes the 44th state to
join the Union. Wyoming had granted
women the right to vote in 1869 while it was still a territory. When it joined the union, it was the first
state to give women the right to vote.
Two of those who took advantage of this political power and the “freer
ambiance” were Bertha Frank Myers of Cheyenne and her daughter Elsie. Bertha Myers was a native New Yorker who came
to Cheyenne in 1873 as the bride of a prominent merchant, William Myers. Bertha was known as an expert horsewoman,
bicyclist and the first motorist in Cheyenne.
The mother of four was active in civic and Jewish communal fairs. She was a driving force in the fundraising
for Cheyenne’s first Reform Temple. She
also started the local Sunday School in which she and her daughter served as
teachers for twenty years.
1890: “Anxious
For Arbitration” published today described the fight between the cloak
manufacturers and their employees” which James H. Hoffman, Hyman Blum and M.W.
Platzek of the United Hebrew Charities have offered to serve as intermediaries
in an attempt to reach a settlement.
1890: Daniel
Frohman, the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, who has been in Europe for the last
month resting and gathering new material for his productions, spent a few hours
at his office for the first time since the end of May.
1890: As of
this date, contributions totaling $4,862.25 have been received by the
Sanitarium for Hebrew Children to provide free summer excursions
1891: It was
reported today that for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1891, 405,654
immigrants arrived in New York of whom 33,504 were from Russia “most of whom
were Jews.”
1892(15th of
Tammuz, 5652): Seventy-nine-year-old Sarah Moses, the Charleston, SC born
daughter of Rebecca Phillips and Isaiah Moses who were married in 1807 and the
wife Aaron Alexander whom she married in 1836 and with whom she had nine
children, passed away today.
1892: It was
reported today that “Max Margolis of Wilna, Berlin and Columbia College” will
present a series of lectures this summer on “Jewish Literature From the Close
of the Scripture Canon to the Close of the Talmud” which covers a period from
100 BCE to 600 CE.
1892:
The alumni of the Hebrew Union College will have a re-union this afternoon at
Temple Beth-El in New York City
1892: The
third annual Convention of American Rabbis will end with an evening session at
Temple Israel in Harlem.
1892:
“L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, carries an article
supporting the ancient myth that Jews kill Christians for their blood.”
1893: “A
Lively Week For Germany” published today described the opening of the new
Reichstag in which “the Jew-baiter” Hermann Ahlwardt is sitting next to
“Liebermann von Sonnenberg, his Anti-Semitic colleague.
1894: Samuel
Gompers expressed his support for the striking Pullman workers. He said that if Pullman’s claim that the
company could not raise their pay because they were building the railway cars
below cost merely to provide work for their laborers were true, Pullman had no
reason to fear submitting the issues to arbitration.
1894: Samuel
Gompers is leaving on the evening New York Central train for Chicago where he
will be attending the meeting of the Executive Council of the American Federation
of Labor.
1894: “Lecture
To East Side Mothers” published today described a lecture delivered by Dr.
Solotaroff at the Hebrew Institute in which he emphasized “the value of
sterilized mile and the reasons why it is to be preferred to boiled and plain
milk.”
1895: Dr. Max
Landsberg and Dr. Gustav Gottheil are scheduled to be the first speakers at the
opening session of the annual Central Conference of American Rabbis which opens
tonight in Rochester, NY
1895: The will
of Moses Heidelbach was filed for probate in the Surrogate’s office today.
1895:
Birthdate of Nahum Goldman, the native of “Vishnevo, Russian Empire, a shtetl
in the Pale of Settlement (now Vishnyeva, Belarus” “the founder and longtime President of the
World Jewish Congress who attended the Tenth Zionist Congress with his father
while still a high school student.
1895: “Schools
Before Christ’s Times” published today provided a detailed review of Historical
Survey of Pre-Christian Education by S.S. Laure which included the observation
that among the Romans and Greeks “there was apparently no conception that
education was…a human right” and that it was only for the aristocrat. But in other places, including Judea,
theoretically nothing stood “between the lowest member of the community and the
best the State could offer in the way of education except poverty.”
1896: It was
reported today that 77 year old Isaac Bramfield will not survive the gunshot
wound he sustained when he was accidentally shot by William Johnson.
1896: Birthdate
of Minsk native Julius Michael Levine who in 1914 came to the United States
where operated a delicatessen and served in the U.S. military during WW I.
1896:
Birthdate of New York native and Long Island College Hospital trained plastic
surgeon and author Dr. Gregory L. Pollock.
1897:
Well-known attorney and author Daniel Greenleaf Thompson, a non-Jew who was a
member of the Jewish Historical Society passed away today.
1897: In
Russia, Bernard and Ada Shulgold gave birth to award winning artist and Pittsburgh,
PA resident William Robert Shulgold.
https://gvartscouncil.org/ndc/shulgold
1898: Three
days after she had passed away at the age of 73, Hanna Barder, the wife of
Louis Barder was buried at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.
1898: In
Atlantic City, NJ. Rabbi Henry H. Meyer offered the opening prayer at the first
session of the second annual summer assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society
1899: In
Poughkeepsie, NY, five merchants were arraigned before the Recorder on charges
of having violated the Sunday Closing Laws. Among them was Aaron Friedman, “a
Jew who closes his store on Saturdays.”
Friedman was fined 5 dollars after being convicted; a conviction which
his attorney says he will appeal.
1899: “Blue
Laws in Worcester” published today described the renewed enforcement in this
Massachusetts town “of the old blue laws relating to Sunday business” closures
which “grew out of the recent determination…to stop the Jews from doing
business on the Sabbath.”
1900:
Birthdate of Sacha Baraniev, the native of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, who gained fame
as newspaperman and screenwriter Sidney “Sy” Barlett.
1900:
Birthdate of Warsaw native Chemjo Vinaver the composer who came to the United
States in 1938 before settling in Israel in 1967.
http://www.emanuelnyc.org/composer.php?composer_id=93
1901:
Thirty-one year old Dr. Max Ballin, the German born son of Jacob and Clementine
Ballin married Carrie Leppel today in Leadville, CO before moving to Detroit
where he practice surgery and served as Lt. Col in the Medical Corps during WW
I.
1902: In
Chicago, “Nathan Julius and Clara Oesterricher” gave birth University of
Cincinnati education and Hebrew Union College ordained Rabbi Maurice N.
Eisendrath, “the first President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations,
noted for social activism and out-spoken opposition to the Viet Nam War.
1903: Birthdate
of Dr. Karl Rudolf Werner Best the native of Darmstadt, SS-Obergruppenführer
and Nazi Party leader and the Third Reich's Plenipotentiary
(Reichsbevollmächtigter) in Denmark whose post-war death sentence was changed
to 12 years of which he only served three, much to the dismay of the Danish
people.
1904: The
Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society is scheduled to begin today in
Atlantic City, NJ
1905:
Birthdate of Polish native Maurice B. Pekarsky who came to the United States in
1921 and was ordained in 1933 by Hebrew Union College after which he began a
lifetime of service to Hillel including serving as Director of the Jewish
College youth organization at the University of Chicago starting in 1940.
1905: The
Ninth Summer Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society continued for a third
day in Atlantic City, NJ.
1905:
Williamsburg, VA native and University of Virginia trained attorney Sidney
Teister who lived and worked, for a time, in Portland, Oregon married Betty Kline with whom he had two children –
William and Ruth.
1906(17th
of Tammuz, 5666): Tzom Tammuz
1906: At a
gathering tonight on the East Side, attended by a large number of Jews who have
family in Bialystok, the ignored the claim that American intervention could
make matters worse and adopted a resolution that read in part “Let the
President of the United States…address the Czar of Russia through Secretary of
State Elihu Root in behalf of the Jews and the whole civilized world will
applaud him.”
1907: “The
first art exhibition and talk, begun under the auspices of the Art Extension
Committee for the purposes of creating, a popular interest in art, was given
this afternoon at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls, Second Avenue and
Fifteenth Street, with an audience of fifty girls.”
1908:
Birthdate of Brooklyn native, Robert “Buck” Halpern who “played guard at the
City College of New York from 1926-1928” and “then played as a guard in the NFL
with the Staten Island Stapletons in 1930.”
1908: “A
convention of the American Federation of Zionists” is scheduled to begin today
at Atlantic City, NJ.
1908: Levie
(Louis) Hillesum the father of diarist Esther (Etty) Hillesum published his
Latin thesis De imperfecti et aoristi usu
Thucydidis (On Thucydides' use of the imperfect and the aorist, also
awarded cum laude).
1908: In
Denver, CO, the Democratic National Convention which Samuel Untermyer had
attended as a delegate from New York came to an end to after nominating William
Jennings Bryan for President of the United States. This was Bryan’s third and
final run. When he ran for the first
time in 1896 he said of the Jews “I do not know of any class of our people who,
by reason of their history, can better sympathize with the struggling masses in
this campaign than can the Hebrew race." In 1920, Bryan was one of a 100
leading citizens who signed “The Perils of Racial Prejudice, a statement that
urged "all those who are molders of public opinion" to "strike
at" The International Jew, which it characterized as "un-American,
un-Christian agitation." The International Jew was a notorious
anti-Semitic work published by automobile make Henry Ford Sr. (As reported by
the Virtual Jewish Library.
1909(21st of
Tammuz, 5669): Parashat Pinchas
1909: Several
meetings were held in New York tonight to mark the fifth anniversary of the
death of Dr. Theodor Herzl including one at the Educational Alliance on
Broadway where the attendees sang “Hatikvah” and another in the Hamilton Fish
Park “under the auspices of the Austrian-Hungarian Zionists.
1910:
According to the American Jewish Archives, birthdate of Polish born conductor
and composer Chemo Vinaver who escaped to the United States in 1938 and after a
successful career made Aliyah in 1960 and who “was the second husband of the
poet Mascha Kaléko” and the father of playwright Steve Vinaver. (According to some sources, Vinaver was born
in 1895 and I have not been able to resolve the discrepancy.)
http://www.emanuelnyc.org/composer.php?composer_id=93
1910: In
London, “Isadore and Anna Kertman Stein, immigrants from Ukraine who owned a
butter-and-egg store” gave birth to Claire Styne the sister of songwriter July
Styne who became Claire Styne Bregman while she married composer and conductor
Buddy Bregman.
http://www.jazz.com/encyclopedia/bregman-buddy-louis-i-bregman-ii
1911: In
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 15th annual summer assembly of the Jewish
Chautauqua Society led by Chancellor Henry Berkowitz continued for a fourth day.
1911:
Twenty-five-year-old University of Pennsylvania trained attorney and U.S. Army
officer, the Russian born son of Israel and Rebecca Wainer married Amy Elvin
Shephard today in Minneapolis after which he was awarded the Distinguished
Medal by the United States and Legion of Honor by France “for meritorious and
conspicuous service during World War I and reached the rank of Major in the
U.S. Quartermaster Corps while serving at Fort Snelling.
1912(25th
of Tammuz, 5672): Seventy-four year Nathan Mayer, a “physician and drama
critic” passed away today in Hartford, CT.
1912(25th
of Tammuz, 5672): Seventy-two year old Chicagoan Isaac Block passed away today.
1912(25th
of Tammuz, 5672): Seventy year Uniontown, PA, merchant Max Baum passed away
today.
1912: Four
hundred public school teachers, educators and New York notables were among
those attending funeral services for educator Julia Richman at Temple Ahawath
Chesed Shaar Hashomayim, Rabbi Isaac Moses delivered a eulogy in which he
praised Miss Richman for her many contributions while that the role of the
teacher is both important yet thankless.
1913(5th
of Tammuz, 5673): Eighty-seven year old Prague native and Czech trained
physician William Tausig who immigrated to New York in 1847 and moved on to St.
Louis a year later where he was elected Mayor in 1852 in which would mark the
start of decades of public service that included serving as St. Louis County
Judge, the raising of two regiments during the Civil War to turn back Rebel
raiders and the construction of the first road and railroad bridge across the
Mississippi River passed away today.
1914: The Government of Greece abolished office of
the Chief Rabbi of Salonica and placed the Jews of Salonica under the
jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbi of Athens. At this time, the position of Chief
Rabbi of Athens was vacant.
1914:
Birthdate of Rabbi Aharon Zelig Epstein who served as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva
Shaar HaTorah-Grodno in Queens, New York.
1914: In
Toronto, Julius Shuster (originally Shusterowich), an immigrant from Rotterdam
who had a tailor shop in Toronto's garment district and Ida (Katharske) Shuster
a native of Kiev in Ukraine gave birth to Joseph Shuster who along with Jerry
Siegel created the comic character “Superman” and was the cousin of comedian
Wayne Shuster.
https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/joe-shuster
1915(28th
of Tammuz, 5675): Parashat Matot-Masei
1915:(28th
of Tammuz, 5675): Fifty-four-year old vintner Henry Lachman, the Weaverville,
CA born son of Henrietta and Samuel Lachman and founder of the California Wine
Association passed away today.
http://www.jmaw.org/lachman-jewish-wine-california/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22743802/1915-henry-lachman-obituary/
1915: Sixty
year old Ernst Henrici, the grammar schoolteacher who became a leading
anti-Semitic politician passed away. In 1882 he participated in the first
International Anti-Jewish Congress in Dresden. His anti-Semitic diatribes led to
the burning of the synagogue at Neustettin.
1915: British
General Sir Ian Hamilton wrote from the General Headquarters of the
Mediterranean Expeditionary Force today:
“It may
interest you to know that I have here, fighting under my orders a purely Jewish
unit As far as I know, this is the first time in the Christian era such a thing
has happened. The men who compose it
were cruelly driven out of Jerusalem by the Turks and arrived in Egypt with
their families absolutely destitute and starving. A complete transport corps was there raised
from them for voluntary service with me against the Turks whom they naturally
detest. These troops were officially
described as ‘Zion Mule Corps,’ and the officers and ranks and file have shown
great courage in taking water and supplies and up to the fighting line under
heavy fire. One of the private soldiers
has been specially recommended by me for gallantry and has duly received from
the King the Distinguished Conduct Medal.”
1915:
Birthdate of Saul Bellow. Born in Quebec to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Bellow
was educated in the United States. A Nobel Prize winning author (1976) some of
Bellow’s more famous works include Herzog, The Adventures of Augie
March and Humboldt’s Gift. It was this last work published in 1975
for which he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1976.
1916: It was
reported today that there are 341 Young Judaea Clubs in the United States and
Canada and that there are 3,500 Young Judeans living in New York.
1916: It was
reported today that the United Synagogues of America has voted “to send three
delegates to the conference of the American Jewish Committee” which is “to be
held in New York today.
1916(9th
of Tammuz, 5676): Lt. Isidore David Marks, the Birmingham, England born son of
David and Jeanette Marks died today at Contalmaison while serving with the 10th
Battalion of the Duke Wellington’s West Riding Regiment on the Western Front during WW I.
1917: The
Board of Directors of the Federated Orthodox Jewish Charities met at the Hotel
Sherman this evening where it approved a budget for the month of $9, 758.87 for
the various organizations it supports including the Marks Nathan Orphan Home
and the Moses Montefiore Hebrew School.
1917: Today
Walter E. Sachs, who has been a partner in Goldman-Sachs since 1910 married his
first wife Emanie Louise Nahm whom he would later divorce.
1918: In the
Netherlands, “The Jewish Correspondence Bureau of the Hague today” said that it
has learned from Berlin that the “Pan Germans are agitating for a tax on Jews.”
1919:
Fifty-nine year old Baltimore born Naval Academy graduate Brigadier General
Charles H. Lauchheimer, “the Adjutant and Inspector of the United States Marine
Corps” during World War “became seriously ill” and was admitted to the hospital
today,” where he would die in 1920.
1919(12th of
Tammuz, 5679): Abraham Jacobi passed away. Born in 1830, he was a pioneer of
pediatrics, opening the first children's clinic in the United States. To date,
he is the only foreign born president of the American Medical Association.
1920(19th
of Tevet, 5680): Parashat Shemot
1920: In the
United Kingdom, textile manufacturer Henry Pasamount and his wife gave birth to
Sir Leslie Porter.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-leslie-porter-6149848.html
1920: Leon
Kamaiky, “one of the European Commissioners of the Hebrew Sheltering and
Immigrant Aid Society” who has been studying the society’s programs in Europe
and who is preparing a report on changes that will need to be made is scheduled
to sail for America today aboard the SS Aquitania.
1920: “A
Lemberg dispatch reports that Professor Israel Friedlander” and Rabbi Max
Cantor of the Free Synagogue, “were killed by bandits” while “distributing
funds for the American Joint Distribution Committee.”
1921: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today Babette Reutlinger, the widow of
Emanuel Reutlinger and member of Temple Ansche Chesed and the Seventh Avenue
Sisterhood followed by burial at Washington Cemetery.
1922:
Birthdate of Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist who took part in the plot to assassinate
Hitler.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/last-member-of-hitler-assassination-plot-dies-at-90/
1923: As a reminder that all violence in the area of the original British
Mandate had nothing to with the Jews “the Transjordanian Government has sent
airplanes to the scene of fighting” where “five hundred armed men of the
Huweitat tribe” attacked a 500 camel salt caravan belonging to the Saradiyah
tribe.” (Editor’s note – Transjordan was part of the Palestine Mandatory
territory that the British illegally used to create an Arab state. This is why many Jews felt that all of the
land west of the Jordan was supposed to be a Jewish homeland.)
1924: In Washington, DC, Minnie Cohen and Benjamin Levine gave birth go
George Washington University trained attorney and U.S. Army Air Force WWII
veteran Irving Abraham Levine, the Maryland jurist and husband of Shirley
Routhenstein with whom he had two children, Karen and Susan.
1925: Jerome Koholberg Sr., an importer and his wife Edith “a writer and
charity worker” gave birth to Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. the pioneer of leveraged
buyouts who is the Kohlberg in Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Company.
1926: “The first international conference of liberal Judaism ever held
outside the United States opened in London today under the auspices of the
Jewish Religious Union for the Advancement of Liberal Judaism.”
1927: “Aaron Sapiro said tonight, upon his arrival in Chicago from
Western Canada, that he thought a settlement out of court of his suit for
$1,000,000 against Henry Ford would be practically concluded tomorrow.”
1928: Birthdate of Moshe Greenberg
– author, teacher and recognized expert in the field of Biblical Studies. Greenberg earned his PhD at Penn and did
post-doctoral work at the Jewish Theology.
He is on the faculty at Hebrew University and has taught at several
American schools including JTS and UC-Berkley.
He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Israel Prize. He was editor in chief for the Ketuvim
(Writings) sections of the new JPS translation of the TaNaCh. He was also the editor of the Book of
Ezekiel in the Anchor Bible series.
1928: The
London Daily Telegraph reported that “The Minister of the Interior at
Peking thought the Zionist wanted to purchase land in China for the purpose of
settling Jews there and promised a special treaty if the Zionists would
indicate the site for the proposed homeland and the approximate area
required.The Director of Lands had already proceeded with drafting an
agreement, when, through the British Minister at Pekin, the delegate managed to
explain he only required permission to raise funds among Jews in China for the
Palestine upbuilding work. This permission was granted. “ (As reported by JTA)
1928: The
New York Times describes the reaction of various Jewish newspapers in
Palestine to the recently published report of the Non-partisan Survey
Commission. Based on press reaction, readers may wonder how “non-partisan” the
Survey Commission really is. Doar
Hayom, a Jerusalem daily, praised the report since it agreed with the
conclusions about the need for “private initiatives and private holdings. Haaretz was critical of the reports
lack of support for communal agriculture settlements and the land purchases of
the JNF. Davar, a paper published
by the General Jewish Labor Federation was highly critical of the report seeing
it as an assault on all of the growth that has been accomplished under adverse
conditions including violent opposition from some Arabs.
1928: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today for Fifty-one-old Russian born “Rabbi
Solomon Polyacheck, a Professor of Talmud at the Elchanan Theological Seminary
who passed away two days ago.
1929: Karl
Radek, who had been born to a Lemberg Jewish family as Karol Sobelsohn, a
supporter of Trotsky in his battle for control of the Communist Party with
Stalin “signed a document capitulating to Stalin” which earned him “particular
disdain” because it included the betrayal of fellow Jewish Socialist Yakov
Blmkin.
1930: “The
recent incidents at Kovel, Poland, where forty Jews were reported injured in a
clash with street hoodlums, were characterized as merely street brawls, with
any chauvinistic feeling in them indirect and accidental, in a letter tent
today by Titus Filipowicz, the Polish Ambassador to the Federation of Polish
Jews in America.”
1930: “The
Daily Telegraph today published a report on Palestine by the Mandates
Commission of the League of Nations, in which the Limited number of British
troops in Palestine and inadequacy of the police force are blamed for the
spread of last Summer's disturbances.”
1931:
Birthdate of Jerry Herman “an American composer and lyricist, known for his
work in Broadway musical theater” including the “scores…Hello, Dolly!, Mame,
and La Cage aux Folles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Herman
1932: The foundation stone of the Oscar Straus
School was laid at Nathanyah. The event was attended by several many Jewish and
Arab notables. The project is being sponsored by the Naotaiah Colonization
Agency (Palestine Settlers Service of NYC.)
1932:In Amsterdam, Shlomo Roet and Johanna
Prince-Roet gave birth to Haim Roet, the youngest of their six children who
gained famed as the creator of “Unto Every Person There is a Name,” a memorial
project that involves annually tread the names of Nazi victims in public around
the world.”
1933: German newspapers publish their first
stories about the new concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican
(Reichskonkordat).
1933: "Prayer (Oh Lord, make me a movie
star)" written Rodgers and Hart, was registered for copyright as an
unpublished work today.
1933: Alfred Feld, who go on to become “longest
serving employee at Goldman Sachs with more than 80 years of service” began his
career today when he joined the firm “as an office boy today” at the office at
30 Pine Street.
1934: It was reported today that seventy-five
year old Dr. Franz Boas, the head of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia
University “is making a study of Indian languages of which he said there are
250.”
1934: One day
after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held this
afternoon for Sixty-five year old Hungarian native
and City College graduate Herman Weiss an attorney and Republican State
Assemblyman who was part of a bipartisan effort “to defeat Socialist
Assemblyman Louis Waldman” and who was president of the “Einigkelts Lodge of
the I.O.B.A.” followed by burial at Mount Zion Cemetery.
1934: The Polish
anti-Semitic organization Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny(ONR- NATIONAL Radical
Camp) is banned by Polish leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, three months
after its formation.
1935: “Dr. Lienhard Bergel, the dismissed
German instructor at the New Jersey College for Women, testified today before a
special committee of the trustees of Rutgers University investigating the
German Department of the women’s college, reiterating his contention that his
dismissal was based on his non-conformity with the pro-Nazi views of Dr. F.J.
Hauptman, head of the department” after which he produced a pamphlet take from
the Women’s College library “that contained passages expression Nazi opposition
to the Jews of Germany.”
1935: It was reported today that “the quota of
$25,000 set for the clothing industry and allied trades of Greater New York in
the United Jewish Appeal for the Jews of Germany and Eastern Europe was
oversubscribed at a dinner attended by more than seventy-five members of the
industry at the Metropolis Club, 105 West Fifty-seventh Street.”
1936: “Strenuous competition of foreign dealers
forced the bidding to unexpectedly high levels when the first of the famous
collection of drawings by old masters formed by the late Henry Oppenheimer was
offered at Christies's, today.”
1936: The Second International Conference on
Jewish Social Work has its final session in London. Among those attending the
conference was Professor Maurice Karpf who had written “The Jewish Community
Organization” for presentation at the conference.
1936: It was reported today that in Potsdam,
doctors declared that fifty-five year old Ludwig Lion, a Jewish physician had
committed suicide by taking rat poison while waiting in jail to stand trial
“for alleged race shame based on relations with an Aryan woman.”
1936: As of today these rabbis are the officers
of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America are
Eugene Kohn, president; Simon Greenberg, vice president; Alexander Basel,
treasurer; Henry Fisher, recording secretary and Arthur Neulander, corresponding
secretary.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that Joseph Katz, 16, was killed and
four quarry workers seriously injured when their bus was ambushed on a side
road off the Castel bends on the Jerusalem-Jaffa Road. Senior Arab public
servants submitted a memorandum to the high commissioner recommending a total
stoppage of Jewish immigration. Four dunams of fruit-bearing trees were
destroyed near Hadera.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that the body Yehiel Goldstadt, a
young halutz from Poland, who tried to smuggle himself into Palestine on a coal
transport ship, and apparently had been killed by sacks of coal falling on him
was discovered.
1936: As secret negotiations between Germany
and Austria became public it was reported that the Germans “desire to see the
Austrian question settled” and that the Nazis are demanding “immediate
Anschluss and a general program against the Jews in Austria.
1936: Birthdate of Lois Ada Goldberg, the
native of Chicago who gained famed as Lois Lilienstein, part of the trio
“Sharon, Lois & Bram.”
1936: “The Bride Walks Out” a romantic comedy
produced by Edward Small and a screenplay co-authored by Philip G. Epstein was
released in the United States today.
1937: Birthdate of Sandra Galitz who gain fame
as American pop singer Sandy Stewart and the wife of Moose Claptrap.
1937: In “Palestine Plan Only Small Part of
Larger Problem,” published today Anne O’Hare McCormick contends that the
problem in this part of the world “is not restricted to a tiny strip of
territory between the Syrian and Egyptian borders at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean” but actually “involves all of the Arabian Peninsula and reaches
across the African desert into Algeria.” (Editor’s Note – Apparently, we have
not learned the lessons she was trying to teach 80 years later.)
1938: National and State leaders
paid tribute to Associate Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo of the United States
Supreme Court at brief and simple funeral services held at Beth Elohim Cemetery
in Brooklyn. Justice Cardozo, who was known for his modesty, had expressly
requested that he be buried without eulogy.
1938(11th of Tammuz, 5698):
Alexander Zaid, who was born at Zima in 1886 and was “one of the founders of
Bar Giora and Hashomer passed away today.
1938(11th of Tammuz, 5698): Harvard
trained pediatrician Dr. Haskel Talamo, the son of Fannie and Jacob Meyer
Talamo and the husband of Madeline Taber Talamo passed away today after which
he was buried in the B’nai B’rith Lodge Cemetery in his hometown of Worcester,
MA.
1938(11th of Tammuz, 5698): A month
before his fifty-third birthday, Otto Eisler the son of Alois and Emilie Eisler
and the husband of Alice Eisler passed away today in his native Vienna.
1938: Government soldiers and police shot it
out with a band of Arabs near Dabbuyria, killing three of the terrorists. A
Jewish policeman serving with the government forces was killed during the
action and three British soldiers were wounded.
1939: “Arabs today bombed a Jewish home in a
suburb o Jerusalem, seriously wounding its owner, 42 year old Karl Shamgar, an
immigrant from Germany.” (JTA)
1939: Unless the British government relents, 16
year old Heinz Bernard will be expelled and forced to return to his native
Germany.
1939: It was reported today that the statute
which “decrees that the Fascist party in the only party permitted in Albania”
contains “another article that forbids the enrollment of any persons of Jewish
ancestry.”
1940:
The French government was established at Vichy. The French had surrendered after a mere six
weeks of fighting against the Germans. While
the French soldiers had acted with courage and fortitude, the French military
establishment behaved in a most craven and inept manner. The government at Vichy was headed by Pierre
Petain, hero of the Battle of Verdun in World War I. Pierre Laval was the political engine that
drove this fascist, collaborationist government. Vichy was so riven with anti-Semites and
wished to become part of the New German World order so badly, that the French
government actually began rounding up Jews before the Nazis even for them to do
so. After the war, Laval was executed
for his role. Petain was spared the
death sentence because he was an old man whom DeGaulle remembered as a giant
from the First World War.
1940: Leon “Blum was thunderstruck when a
majority of his Socialist comrades rallied behind the new government of Pierre
Laval.”
1941(15th of Tammuz, 5701): At Vilna 1,600 Jews
are tortured then driven into a barn and burned alive.
1941: The Jewish residents of the Polish town
of Jedwabne are accosted by their Polish neighbors and by peasants from
outlying areas, and are marched to the central market. In a day-long ordeal,
the Jews are tortured and subsequently herded into a barn, which is set ablaze
with kerosene. The massacre is not carried out by the Germans, who maintain
only a token presence in Jedwabne on this day.
The Polish role in the massacre only recently became common knowledge,
much to the shame of those living in Poland today. For more details about this
read Neighbors by Jan T. Gross
1941 Birthdate of Alain Krivine, “a leader of the
Trotskyist movement in France.”
1941(15th of Tammuz,
5701): In Liepāja, Latvia, Erhard Grauel, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 2
under the command of Erhard Grauel, murdered another 100 people today,
most of whom were Jews.
1941: In Poland’s eastern village
of Jedwabne 1,600 local Jews were burned alive by their neighbors – fellow
Poles – in a massacre that puts the lie
to the myth that only German Nazis killed Jews.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/polish-historians-book-on-killing-of-jews-exposes-raw-nerve/
1942: Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot
George Beurling, who would die while flying for the Israeli Air Force in 1948,
became an ace today when shot down his fifth enemy plane over Malta.
1942: Dutch banker Jacobus Henricus Kann owner
of the Lissa and Kann bank, the delegate to the first Zionist Congress who
purchased the land for the first houses in Tel Aviv “wrote his daughter-in-law”
today “In a fortnight I will reach the age of wisdom. It took a long time to
reach this age. I wonder how did we
manage to bring the world to such an awful and chaotic state with so many people
at the age of wisdom !!!”
1942: The first Medical Experiments take place
at Auschwitz. 100 Women are taken from their barracks and sterilized through a
series of hideous experiments.
1942: “Five hundred and fifty-seven refugees
from Nazism who had been stranded in Portugal and unoccupied France” left
Lisbon today aboard the S.S. Nyassa. (As reported by JTA)
1943(7th of Tammuz,
5703): Thousands
of Jews from Lvov, Ukraine, are murdered at Kamenka-Bugskaya
1943: In Warsaw, the search for Jews continued
weeks after the Warsaw Ghetto had been destroyed. Thirty men were shot in the
Pawiak prison.
1943: Samuel Fuller and the rest of the 16th
Infantry, boarded landing craft for the assault Sicily, seized the beach and
“pushed into the hills beyond” where they hung to their territory despite being
hit hard with an armored counterattack by German tanks.
1944(19th
of Tammuz, 5704): Seventy year old Palukno, Vilna, native Jacob Ginsburg, who
in 1892 came to the United States where he was “one of the founders of the
American Jewish Congress, founded The Jewish World and served as
published of the Philadelphia Jewish World while raising his son Norman
with his wife Annie Ginsburg passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/07/11/86871165.pdf
1944(19th of Tammuz, 5704):
Eight-one year old landscape painter and engraver Lucien Pissaro, the oldest
child of impressionist Camille Pissarro “and his wife Julie Vellay and husband
of Esther Levi Bensusan passed away today
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-r1105344
1944: In France, U.S. Army Lt. Bert Katz is hit
in shoulder and left hand by German shrapnel.
The wound gets him a Purple Heart but not a ticket home which in this
case is Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Katz did
return home after the war where he became a successful businessman, a noted
philanthropist and a pillar of the Jewish community.
1944: German resistance fighter Robert Abshagen
was beheaded today for his role in anti-Nazi activities.
1945: Having left Marseille yesterday, “818
European Jews” “gather from German concentration camps” are continuing to sale
to Haifa on a voyage “arranged by the Supreme Allied Headquarters and UNRRA.”
1946: In Hunter, NY, the convention of The
Rabbinical Council of America “adopted a resolution favoring the establishment
of a universal memorial day for the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, the day
to be chosen in consultation with other rabbinical bodies in other parts of the
world.”
1947: Der
Tog (The Day) began publishing a serialized version of Oyf Fremde Vegn (On
Foreign Roads), a novel of Jewish life in America, today
1947: Tonight a group of refugees traveling in
170 trucks, under the leadership of Noah Klieger, “the commissioner of Mossad
Aliyah Bet” reached the port of Sete, a port on the Mediterranean coast of
France, where they were to board a vessel that would run the British blockade.
1948: During Operation Dekel, the 7th Armored
Brigade, a battalion from the Carmeli Brigade along with some elements from the
Golani Brigade captured Kuwaykat, Jiddin and Khirbat.
1948: With the end of the truce, a company of
sixteen and seventeen year old boys under the command of twenty-one year Oded
Chai set out to take the high ground west of Jerusalem. Chai, who was a veteran of the Jewish Brigade
died almost as soon as the attack had begun, the victim of a sniper’s
bullet. The new commander, Elaihu
Lichtenstein rallied the troops with a new battle cry, “For Oded” and reached
the summit of the hill. That hill is now
known as Mount Herzel. [Editors note: The source for much of the information about
the War of Independence comes from Israel by Martin Gilbert. Events like these remind us that every inch
of Israel was watered by the blood of Jewish fighters, many of whom never made
it out of their teens.]
1948:
Israeli forces attacked a bridgehead that the Syrians had established on
the west bank of the Jordan River. The
Syrians had seized the bridgehead during what was supposed to be the Four Week
Cease Fire. The Syrian air force
dominated the sky above the battlefield.
The Syrian artillery outraged the Israeli guns. Despite ten days of see-saw fighting, the
bridgehead would remain in Syrian hands.
1948(3rd of Tammuz, 5708): An
Egyptian Spitfire (yes the same Spitfires that had won the Battle of Britain)
“dropped a number of bombs on the Jewish sector of Jerusalem killing three
children.”
1948(3rd of Tammuz, 5708):
Seventy-eight year old Berlin native Else Preuß, the daughter of Carl Theodor
Liebermann and Antonie (Toni) Amalie Liebermann and wife of Dr. of
Jurisprudence Hugo Preuß passed away today in Paris.
1948: Two attempts by the Arab Legion to break
into the New City (Jerusalem) were thwarted.
1948(3rd of Tammuz, 5708): Lionel
Bloch who “flew with SAAF in Italy in latter half of WW II, crashed near
Quneitra today while providing air cover for Israeli troops who were being
attacked by Syrian AT-6s.
1948: Hortense Calisher's award-winning short story
"The Middle Drawer" was published in the New Yorker Magazine.
1949: In St. Louis, Edward Lewis, a salesman,
and “paralegal Suzanne Greensfelder Lewis gave birth Professor Jan Ellen Lewis,
the historian acknowledged to be one of the leading, if not the leading
authority on the life of Thomas Jefferson
1950: “Israeli authorities released two British
planes detained since last week for landing at Lydda Airport without
permission.”
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the government had decided to
subsidize the import of hides in order to keep shoe prices at their present
level.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Ministry of Labor
investigating the cause of the Castel quarry disaster in which seven workers
lost their lives resolved to issue strict regulations on the handling of
explosives and to impose severe penalties to discourage workers from violating
specific instructions.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that electricity consumption restrictions
were eased throughout the country.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that one thousand newcomers arrived
from Romania.
1952: Robert Lehman celebrated his third
marriage when he tied the knot with Elena Lyn today in New York.
1952: The cost-cutting measures at M-G-M studio
headed by Nicholas M. Schneck and Dore Schary were described today as being
necessary because of the “new operating and operating conditions” that have
“resulted in enforced economies at all Hollywood studios.
1952: Joel D.
Wolfsohn began serving as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Interior in
the final months of the Truman Administration. Up to that time, he appears to
be the highest ranking Jew to have served at the Department of the Interior. He
served from July 10, 1952 through February 20, 1953.
1953:
“Return to Paradise,” the film version of the book by the same name directed
and co-produced by Mark Robson and with music Dimitri Tiomkin was released
today in the United States.
1955:
“Sheep Ranchers” published today provides a review of The Rising Arrow a
book for pre-adolescents illustrated by Jacob Landau.
1957(11th
of Tammuz, 5717):
Sholem Asch, a Polish-born American Jewish
novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language passed away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholem_Asch
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Asch_Sholem
1957:
“The Pride and the Passion” an epic set in the Napoleonic era directed and
produced by Stanley Kramer was released in the United States today.
1958:
“Ira Haupt 2nd was admitted
to membership on the New York Stock exchange” today “and also to a general
partnership in Ira Haupt and Company” making the Haupt family “the only one
with three generations hold membership in the exchange at the same time.
1959:
In New York, “Acting Mayor Abe Stark,” a product of the Lower Ester, moved
today “to force the West Side Tennis Club to give up the Davis Cup and national
championship matches unless it dropped its discrimination against Negroes and
Jews.”
1960:
“The Rate Race” “ produced by William Perlberg, written by Garson Kanin, with
music by Elmer Bernstein and starring Tony Curtis and Don Rickles and featuring
Norman Fell was released in the United States today.
1961:
After being knighted in 1944, Simon Marks, the son of Hannah Cohen and Michael
Marks, the co-founder of Marks and Spencer today was raised to the peerage as Baron Marks of
Broughton, of Sunningdale in the Royal County of Berkshire.
1962(8th
of Tammuz, 5722): Rabbi
Yehuda Leib Maimon passed away. Born in 1875 in
what was then a part of the Russian Empire, he was one of the founders of the
Mizrachi movement in 1902. He would
later help develop the movement in the U.S. during WW I after he had been
expelled from Palestine by the Turks. He
returned to Palestine in 1919 where he worked to develop the Jewish home during
the inter-war years. The highpoint of
his career may have come when he helped draft Israel’s Declaration of
Independence, a document of which he was a signatory.
1963(18th
of Tammuz, 5723): Seventy-four year old Yiddish poet and anthologist Max Bassin the
husband of Miriam Berman Bassin and the father of Milton and Eugene Bassin
passed away today.
https://www.york.cuny.edu/library/about/bassin-collection
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/07/11/89541699.pdf
1963(18th
of Tammuz, 5723): Thirty-six year old Dr. Arthur R. Cohen, an associate
professor of psychology at Yale before accepting a similar position at who had
been a “visiting lecturer at Hebrew University and who was raising a son,
Simon, with his wife, Barbara Stutman Cohen passed away after fighting a losing
battle with Hodgkin’s disease.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/07/11/89541709.html?pageNumber=28
1963:
Two days after he had passed away, the funeral is scheduled to be held today in
the main sanctuary of Congregation Zichron Empraim for ninety-one year old
Columbia Law School trained attorney and realtor Benjamin Jonas Weil, the
husband of “the former, Juliana Pollock” with whom he raised two daughter and
the brother of L. Victor Weil with whom he expanded their father’s real estate
business into B.J.and L.V. Weil Company” while serving as “a trustee of the
Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and President of Congregation Zichron
Ephraim.
1964(1st
of Av, 5724): Rosh Chodesh Av
1964: One day after he had passed away funeral
services are scheduled to be held today for eighty year old
Chicago born University of Michigan alum and advertising executive Louis H.
Hartman who began his career with Lord and Thomas in 1922 and who raised bees
while raising his son Robert with his wife Ann Hoffman Hartman.
1964:
A recording of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" a song written by Jeff Barry and
Ellie Greenwich and originally recorded in 1963, as "Do-Wah-Diddy"
was released today.
1965:
Arthur Andrew Julian completed his service as Canada’s ambassador to Israel.
1966: The new Israeli Parliament building, the
Knesset was inaugurated.
1966: In Northampton, MA, “Joan Wallach Scott,
the Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey” and Donald Scott, a professor of
American history at The City University of New York (CUNY) gave birth to
Anthony Oliver Scott, “the grandnephew of actor Eli Wallach” who gained fame as
A.O. Scot, “the chief film critic of the New
York Times.
1967: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today at the Park Avenue Synagogue for seventy-two-year-old
retired Morris Fox the retired president of the Bent Glass Works, Inc and husband
of the former Violet Bloomgarden who “was active in researching and publicizing
Nazi crimes” and who and a former member of the executive committee of the American
Jewish Congress. “was a member of the National Commission on Jewish Affairs
1969: “Putney Swope” directed by Robert Downey,
Sr. whose paternal grandparents were Romanian Jews and whose mother was of
“half Hungarian Jewish ancestry” and co-starring Allen Garfield was released
today in the United States.
1969: “One Israeli soldier was killed and seven
were wounded” today as Israel fought an artillery duel across the Suez Canal
with Egypt while responding to Arab attacks “in the Jordan Valley” and “on the
Golan Heights.
1969(24th of Tammuz, 5729): The body
of the lone Israeli captured by Egyptian commandos when they raided an Israeli
tank depot on June 9, 1969 is found.
From the evidence, he had been summarily executed by his captors. The attack and the execution set the stage for
the subsequent Israeli commando raid on Green Island, an Egyptian fortress in
the Gulf of Suez.
1971: Gloria “Steinem was one of over 300 women
who founded the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC)” today.
1971: Ed Rendell, future Mayor if Philadelphia
and Governor of Pennsylvania marries Marjorie Rendell in what is the most
common form of inter-marriage – a Jew marrying a Catholic.
1971: Hassan II of Morocco, a moarch who would
a vital role in bridging the gap between the Jewish state and the Arab world
and who later be described as "a friend to the governments of Israel in
their voyage toward peace with the Arab people” survives an attempted coup
d'état.
1972: Democratic National Convention opened in
Miami Beach, FL at which, in case of Jew versus Jew, Betty Friedan and Gloria
Steinem would clash on how the National Women’s Political Caucus should deal
with various issues.
1973(10th of Tammuz, 5733):
Seventy-five year old Frederick Marcus Warburg, the son of Felix and Frieda
Marcus, an alumnus of Harvard, partner at Kuhn, Loeb since 1931, a member of
the board of trustees of Smith College and the husband of Wilma Warburg passed
away today at Winchester City, VA.
1973: The Commonwealth of the Bahamas gains
full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. There were probably
between one hundred and two hundred Jews living in the Bahamas at this time.
The Bahamas Jewish Congregation, a modern orthodox congregation is located in
Nassau. The Community in Freeport, on Grand Bahama Island, the Freeport Hebrew
Congregation, is somewhat lesser in numbers than in Nassau, and is affiliated
to the Union for Reform Judaism. Its Synagogue, named the Luis De Torres
Synagogue is named for a Luis De Torres, a Marrano who sailed with Columbus and
who was the first person of Jewish heritage to reach the Bahamas.
1974: The second part of the Agranat
Commission’s three-part report was released today. The Commission had been established to
examine the failures before and during the Yom Kippur War. The report called
for the dismissal of some senior officers and resulted in changes in basic
military doctrine.
1975: Malcolm Toon presented his credentials as
U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
1975: Birthdate of Roi Klein, the native of
Raanan Israel, the son of Holocaust survivors who rose to the rank of Major in
the Golani Brigade before being killed in the 2006 War with Lebanon.
1976: It was reported today that the Foreign
Minister of Uganda has demanded UN condemnation of Israel’s raid on the Entebbe
airport. Israel’s Chief UN delegate
responded by telling the Security Council in no uncertain terms that that
Preside Amin and others had collaborated with the hijackers. As the clash
between the two diplomats came to a head, Herzog raised the issue of Dora Bloch
a 75 year old hostage with dual Israeli and British citizenship who had been
taken to a Ugandan hospital before the raid.
The Foreign Minister said she had been returned to the plane before the
raid. Herzog called this “a blatant
untruth” because a British official had visited her in the hospital the day
after the rescue mission.
1978: Anatoly Sharansky was on trial for
espionage and treason.
1979(15th of Tammuz, 5739): Eighty-four year
old orchestra leader Arthur Fiedler whose name is synonymous with the Boston
Pops and the spirit of Americanism that is connected with it every Fourth of
July passed away today.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1217.html
1979: “Having been Knighted in 1960,” Myer
Galpern “was given a life peerage as Baron Galpern of Shettleston in the
District of the City of Glasgow” today.
1980(26th
of Tammuz, 5740): Seventy-two year old Jersey City, NJ native and NYU alum
Joseph Krumgold , the successful scriptwriter and winner of two Newberry Medals
who was the husband of “the former Helen Litwin” and father of Adam Krumgold
passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/07/16/112163208.pdf
1981: “The Fox and the Hound” an animated film
version of the novel by the same name featuring the voice of Jack Albertson,
Paul Winchell and Corey Feldman was released in the United States today.
1981: PLO units that had occupied southern
Lebanon turning into “a state with a state” unleashed a massive rocket attack
on northern Israel.
1982(19th Tammuz, 5742): Parashat
Pinchas
1982(19th of Tammuz, 5742): Eighty-four-year-old
Baltimore native and Johns Hopkins graduate Reuben Oppenheimer, the Harvard
trained attorney and state court of appeals judge passed away today.
1982(19th Tammuz, 5742): Benjamin
Grossman, the husband of Helen Rovine, with whom he had had three children,
passed away today in Philadelphia, PA
1985(21st of Tammuz, 5745):
Sixty-eight year old Oscar nominated cinematographer Arthur Ornitz, the son of
screenwriter Samuel Orntiz passed away today in his native New York City.
1985: “Return to Oz” with music by David Shire and co-staring
Piper Laure (Rosetta Jacobs) was released today in the United Kingdom.
1987: “Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in
Paradise” a sequel to the 1984 comedy directed by Joe Roth and featuring Barry
Sobel was released today in the United States.
1987(13th of Tammuz, 5747):
Sixty-six year old “Alexandre P. Rosenberg, founding president of the Art
Dealers Association of America and for many years a prominent art dealer in New
York, died of a heart attack in London” today. (As reported by John Russell)
1988: Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Horowitz announced
the engagement of their daughter Michele Elyse Horowitz and Baruch College
graduate Seth Eli Adler.
1989(7th of Tammuz, 5749): Eighty-one year Mel
Blanc passed away today. Born Melvin Jerome Blanc on May 30, 1908, in San
Francisco, where his parents managed a ladies' ready-to-wear apparel business
he was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices." At one point he
supplied the voices for 90 per cent of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters.
Generations know him as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. In
talking about the Porky Pig role Blanc said they "called me in and asked
me if I could do a pig -- a fine thing to ask a Jewish kid.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc#/media/File:Mel_Blanc_4-15-05.JPG
1993(21st of Tammuz, 5753): Peretz Miransky, a
member of an influential young Yiddish literary group in Poland between World
Wars I and II, died today in a hospital in Toronto at the age of 85. “Mr.
Miransky won the National Jewish Book Award in the United States in 1980 and
twice won the J. I. Segal award of Canada for Yiddish poetry. He wrote fables
and poetry as a member of Young Vilna, a group of writers from Vilna who
adapted traditional Yiddish to express concerns of their generation. His early
manuscripts were lost when he escaped the German invasion in World War II. He
later recorded his early writings from memory in his first book, "A Light
for a Penny." After resettling in Canada in 1949, he worked as a shipper
for a store, then as a Canadian distribution agent for The Yiddish Daily
Journal, which had headquarters in New York City. Later he became an agent for
other Yiddish papers. After he retired in the mid-1970's, he wrote poetry full
time and published three collections.
1993: NBC broadcast the final episode of “A
Different World” a sitcom whose first season had been produced by Anne Beatts.
1994: Hedge fund manager, William Albert
Ackerman, “the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, “married
Karen Ann Herskovitz, a graduate of Harvard University and a landscape
architect” today.
1994(2nd of Av, 5754): Sixty-six
year old Pottstown, PA native Earl “Yogi” Strom the Coast Guard Veteran who in
1957 began his career as an NBA referee – a role in which he was considered to
be one of the best of all times and who raised five children – Margie, Susan,
Stephen, Eric and Jonathan -- with his wife Yvonne passed away today.
1998: U.S. premiere of Pi (π)
directed and co-produced by Daren Aronofsky who also co-authored the script and
starring Mark Margolis and Ben Shenkman.
1998: In an article entitled “Hadera Journal;
Jewish Family Heirloom: 15 Square Miles of Death,” Serge Schemann describes how
Zypora Frank, Polish born Jew, who survived the Holocaust reacted when she
learned that her family owned the land on which the infamous Auschwitz death
camp had been built.
1999: Today, producer Joel Silver “married his
production assistant, Karyn Fields.
2000: “In Paper Seen as Villain in Abuse
Accusations Against Rabbi” published today, Felicity Barringer described the
impact of an article by Gary Rosenblatt entitled “Stolen Innocence” that
described charges made against Rabbi Baruch Lanner concerning the abuse of
“teenagers in his charge.
2001: Two Palestinian terrorists shot 45 year
old Yosef Twito near Moshav Ahisemekh.
2001: Australia's entrants in the Maccabiah Games
gathered in Sydney this evening to prepare for a return to Israel, their first
since the disastrous bridge collapse killed four of their team members in 1997
and left many more fighting for compensation.
2002(1st
of Av): Rosh Chodesh Av
2002(1st
of Av): “IDF officer Capt. Hagai Lev, 24, of Jerusalem, deputy commander of a
Givati reconaissance unit, was killed by Palestinian sniper fire while
conducting a search for weapons smuggling tunnels in Rafah, in the southern
Gaza Strip. The Fatah Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the
shooting.”
2003: The British School of Archaeology in
Jerusalem, amalgamated within the Council for British Research in the Levant
(CBRL) in 1998, was officially renamed the Kenyon Institute today in honour of
Dame Kathleen Kenyon “the most influential female archaeologist in the 21st
century” known for her work at Jericho.
2004: Ninety-four
year old actress Inge Meyself “who was banned from performing 1935 until 1945
because her father, Julius Meysel, was Jewish, passed away today.
2005: Ben Stiller and
his wife Christine Taylor gave birth to their son Quinlin Dempsey.
2005: U.S premiere of
“Say Uncle” a comedy co-starring Lisa Edelstein as Sarah Faber
2005: The New York Times features
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer by
Scott Eyman.
2006: Jews
gather in major cities all over the world to show their solidarity for the
immediate release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped two weeks ago from
his army outpost.
2007: Today, the Chabad of Brazos Valley, also
known as the Chabad Center of Texas A&M, was founded by Rabbi Yossi
Lararoff and his wife Manya
2007: In Jerusalem, a concert at Israel Museum Celebrate the opening event of the
summer at the Israel Museum with a performance by the Jerusalem Symphony
Orchestra - Israel Broadcasting Authority, conducted by Daniel Kosov. The
performance includes pieces by Strauss, Haydn, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Bizet and
Britten, performed by the orchestra and outstanding young soloists from Israel
and abroad. Concert takes place in the Art Garden at 9pm and is included with
museum admission.
2007: The Conference on the Future of the
Jewish People opens in Jerusalem.
2007: Publication of The World Without Us
by Northwestern University trained journalist Alan Wiseman, the husband of
sculptor Beckie Kravetz
2008: At the public library in Iowa City,
Agudas Achim and Hillel sponsor an exhibit of art by Jack Balch who died in 1980
and who was the father of the late Iowa Economics Professor, Dr. Michael Balch.
Father and son were members of Agudas Achim.
2008: The Los Angeles premiere of “Parade” at
Tony Award winning musical that “dramatizes the 1913 trial of Leo Frank” took
place at the Neighborhood Playhouse of Palos Verdes
2008: Following a week of near-daily
Palestinian violations of the Israeli-Hamas cease-fire, two Kassam rockets
struck the western Negev. A faction of
Fatah claimed responsibility for the attack while eight Palestinians, members
of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were arrested
on suspicion of throwing Molotov cocktails at cars on the road near Mt. Scopus
2009: "Bruno" debuts in Britain and
the United States. The movie is Baron Cohen's follow-up to his 2006 hit
"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan," in which he played a clueless journalist on a U.S. tour.
2009: In Tel Aviv, Israel faces a team from
Russia in Day 1 of the Davis Cup Quarter-Final matches.
2010: The 7th AICE Australian Film Festival is
scheduled come to an end with a screening of “Beautiful Kate” in Tel Aviv.
2010: The Jerusalem Cinematheque, which is
currently in the midst of running its annual Jerusalem Film Festival this week
in the capital, released a statement this evening saying that comments made
last week regarding the possibility of Dustin Hoffman attending the event were
in fact misleading and incorrect.
2011: “20 Years-Searching for the Answer,” an
exhibit that explores questions about the Armenian genocide through art is
scheduled to come to an end at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington
Hills, Michigan.
2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
announced today Israel's official recognition of South Sudan as an independent
state.
2011: Police are turning a blind eye to
ultra-orthodox efforts to block traffic on a central Jerusalem street every
Saturday, with hundreds of religious men often resorting to violence in a bid
to prevent cars from desecrating Shabbat, secular activists reported today
2011: Nirvana, a hypnotizing dance show from
Korea, that is touring Israel for the first time, is scheduled to be performed
at the Jerusalem Theatre.
2011: The New York Times featured
reviews of books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish
readers including Lee Krasner: A Biography by Gail Levin and Rene
Blum and The Ballets Russes: In Search
of a Lost Life by Judith Chazin-Bennahum
2011: The Galilee Music Festival is scheduled
to come to an end.
2011: The Jewish Women's Archive “2011
Institute for Educators” is scheduled to start today.
2011: In Israel, the “Conversion Bill
Moratorium” is scheduled to come to an end.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=202966
2011: An ancient rock inscription of the word
“Shabbat” was uncovered near Lake Kinneret this week – the first and only
discovery of a stone Shabbat boundary in Hebrew.
2012: CBS News Middle East correspondent Dan
Ravi who co-authored Spies Against Armageddon with Yossi Melman is
scheduled to speak tonight at the Historic 6th & I Synagogue in
Washington, DC.
2012: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are
a danger to Israel and threaten its long-term status as a center of Jewish
life, President Shimon Peres said this evening.
2012: Hezbollah arrested three people it
suspects of running a spy network for Israel and the United States, pan-Arab
news channel Al Arabiya reported today
2012: Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister of Israel,
was acquitted of corruption charges in two major matters by a court today but
was convicted in a third, closing a high-profile prosecution that cut short his
term in office and changed the course of Israeli politics and diplomacy.
2012(20th of Tammuz, 5772):
Seventy-four year old Dutch Jewish author Berthe Meijer, whose life intersected
with Anne Frank’s passed away today (As reported by Toby Sterling)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/dutch-holocaust-survivor-author-berthe-meijer-dies/
2012: Rabbi Joel Levenson of Congregation B'nai
Jacob, Woodbridge/New Haven, CT, gave the opening prayer at the U.S. House of
Representatives.
2013: “Koch” and “Wilt Chamberlain: Borscht
Belt Bellhop” are two of the two movies scheduled to be shown today at the 30th
Jerusalem Film Festival.
2013: “Israel: A Home Movie” is scheduled to be
shown at the Film Forum.
2013: The William Breman Jewish Museum and the
Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia are scheduled to sponsor “Commemorating
280 Years of Jews In Georgia.”
2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to
perform in Annandale, VA.
2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater
Washington in partnership Adas Israel Congregation, EntryPoint DC, andThe
Foundation for Jewish Studies are scheduled to sponsor a lecture by author
“Beth Kanter will share stories she collected while writing the book and guide
attendees in producing their own food writing.”
2013: Jewish-Palestinian journalist, politician
and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) member, Ilan Halevi, passed away
today in Paris at the age of 70
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=319442
2013: The first Haredi pre-military academy
funded by the Defense Ministry will open this August in the Jordan Valley. News
of its establishment today follows heightened tensions surrounding the issue of
haredi enlistment in the IDF and an attack against a haredi soldier carried out
by a mob of ultra-Orthodox men in Jerusalem lasr night. (As reported by Jeremy Sharon)
2014: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled
to host a conversation with Patricia Bosworth and Oscar winning Jewish actress
Lee Grant who was a victim of the Black List and author of I Said Yes to
Everything
2014: Terrorist rockets set off the warning
sirens in Jerusalem while other rockets hit a house in Ashdod and a home in the
Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council.
2014: “Despite ongoing rocket fire at Israel
from Gaza Strip, some 200 trucks of goods including food and basic products
passed into Gaza from Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza.” (As reported
by Yoav Zitun and Roi Kais.
2014: A 17-year-old Jewish girl is
pepper-sprayed at Paris’ Place du Colonel-Fabien square.
2014: In “Brooklyn, a Trove of Hebrew Books
From Centuries Past” published today described the volumes to be found in the
newly opened Chabad-Lubavitch Library.
2014: The Jewish community in South Africa
condemned the ANC’s comparison of Israel’s action in Gaza with those of Nazi
Germany. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)
2015: “Millions of Iranians took part in
anti-Israel and anti-US rallies across Iran today, chanting “Down with America”
and “Death to Israel” on Al-Quds Day, internationally observed annually on the
last Friday of the month of Ramadan.”
2015: “The Second Mother” is scheduled to be
shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled
to present a piano recital by Adi Neuhaus as part of its “Future Generation
Series.”
2015: “Amy,” “a new documentary cover the life
of the late Jewish-British singer Amy Winehouse” is scheduled to “hit U.S.
theatres nationwide” today.
2015: “WarCraft” “an exhibition of video
installations by Israeli artist Nevet Yitzhak” is scheduled to come an end at
the Yossi Milo Gallery
http://www.yossimilo.com/exhibitions/2015_05-nevet_yitzhak/
2015: The 35th International
Conference on Jewish Genealogy is scheduled to come to an end today.
2016: The Jewish Genealogical Society of
Illinois and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center are scheduled
to host a presentation by “Mike Karsen, past President of the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Illinois who explores the personal value of connecting
with one's roots, and shares a case study based on David Laskin's book,
"The Family," which illustrates how to locate U.S. records and those
held by Yad Vashem.”
2016: A celebration of life is scheduled to be
held this morning at the Brotherhood Synagogue to mark the passing of Julius
Kahn “a veteran of the coffee industry for over 60 years” whose wife Isabel had
passed away in 2012.
2016: Final screening of “The Kind Words” is
scheduled to take place at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema today.
2016: “Commemorations were held today in the
north-eastern town of Jedwabne to mark the 75th anniversary of the 10 July 1941
massacre of around 300 Jews during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163330
2016: The
New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including The Bridge Ladies: A Memoir
by Betsy Lerner, Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants by Peter
D. Kramer and You’ll Grow Out Of It by Jessi Klein along with an
interview with author Cynthia Ozick.
2017: Joseph J. Schacter is scheduled
to deliver his first lecture on "Majesty and Humility: The Life,
Leadership, and Legacy of Joseph B. Soloveitchik"
2017: In “Who Is Rob Goldstone,
Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian Connection?” published today Dave Goldiner examined
the role of this “British Jewish music publicist” in the 2016 U.S. Presidential
elections.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/376581/who-is-rob-goldstone-donald-trump-jrs-russian-connection/
2017: “Accompanied by clarinetist
Avigail Malachi-Baev and vocalist Inbar Goldman, Cellist Elad Kabilio of
MusicTalks, is scheduled to host “a musical journey through Yeshiva University
Museum’s exhibition City of Gold, Bronze and Light: Jerusalem between Word and
Image.”
2017: The Maccabiah’s night rights, considing
of three heats -- 5K, 10K, and a half marathon- 21K – is scheduled to take
place this evening in Jerusalem “with a celebratory party at the Hatachana
compound.”
2018: With the opening of the 2018
FIFA World Cup games, “Kulna Jerusalem” and the Tower of David Museum are
scheduled to host an event in which “about 100 young people from East and West
Jerusalem will compete in 2 penalty-kick contests, one for men and one for
women, which will occur simultaneously with professional goalies in the stands
– famous goalies from the past together with current ones.
2018: “The Testament is scheduled to
be shown at the Axelrod Israel Jewish Film Festival.
2018: Israelis brace for an increase
in terrorist attacks and condemnation from the usual international
Pro-Palestinian groups following yesterday’s “closure of the Kerem Shalom as
incendiary kites and balloons continue coming from Gaza into Israel scorching
thousands of acres Israeli farmland and woodland.”
2019: The Jewish Community Center of
San Francisco, Robert Conway is scheduled to lead a discussion on “the influence
of Roman art in America.”
2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to
host a “special preview” of “Transit,” a film based “on the eponymous 1944
novel by Anna Seghers
2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker
Center is scheduled a performance of Venice Baroque Orchestra, which is part of
a celebration of 114 years “of free classical music for New Yorkers.”
2019: In Cedar Rapids, the Hadassah
Book Club is scheduled to discuss Never Nosh A Matzo Ball: A Ruby the Rabbi’s
Wife Mystery by Sharon Kahn.
2020: The Contemporary Jewish Museum
and National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host a virtual
“performance by a Gibraltar-born guitarist who draws on influences from his
Sephardic ancestry, jazz and flamenco.”
2020: AJC New England is scheduled to
present online “The View From the House: Representatives Don Beyer and Pete
Olson on the No Hate Act” a piece of legislation designed to provide law
enforcement and the public with more solid information on hate crimes which are
on the rise the United States.
2020 B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is
scheduled to live-stream a “Virtual Kinder Shabbat.”
2020: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled
to broadcast a live concert sponsored by The Eden Tamir Center featuring the
winners of the Haim and Esther Kalmi Piano Competition.
2020: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah
is scheduled to host “Kabbalah Shabbat Services in the Silber Outdoor Sanctuary
in a mask wearing, social distance observing environment where congregants will
take note of the passing this week of Dr. Daniel Kaufer, the cousin or Carolyn
Simon who provides so much of the glue that keeps the Jewish community a
community.
2020: The Breman Museum in partnership with the Savannah Jewish
Federation, Savannah Jewish Educational Alliance, and the Southern Jewish
Historical Society is scheduled to host a Zoom webinar by Dr. Marni Davis,
Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University, which will “tell
the story of Atlanta's old Jewish neighborhood: how it grew, why it declined,
and what's been left behind.”
2021(1st of Av, 5781):
Rosh Chodesh Av; Parashat Matot-Massei
2021: The Eden-Tamir Center is
scheduled to present “Variations for Two Pianos with the piano duo of Tami
Kanazawa and Yuval Admoni
2021: “As Israel gets a COVID reality
check, doctors are increasingly pressing for the country to launch an all-out
effort to vaccinate some 200,000 over-50s who have so far refused the vaccine
and are at most risk of serious illness if infected.” (As reported by Nathan
Jeffay)
2021: The Jewish Climate Action
Network is scheduled to present, online, “Rosh Chodesh For All Creation.”
2022: The National Library of Israel
is scheduled to host a conversation with author Ruth Gruber and architect Sam
D. Gruber on “New Realities of Jewish Heritage in Europe.”
2022: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to
present “A Mitsve to be Joyful – Hasidic Dance, Song, and Storytelling, with
Bruce Bierman.”
2022: “The Israeli Film Series 2022”
sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the
Quad Cities is scheduled to begin today with a screening of “Cresendo.”
2022: LSJS is scheduled to host “A
Day Tour of Ramsgate” provide of the exploration of the Jewish heritage beyond
London
2022: The wedding of Ukrainian
refugees Yakov Poluden and Malaka Burkeeva is scheduled to take place today “thanks
to the support of many individuals and organizations - including a $15,000
donation to help pay for the ceremony from the Altneu - a new congregation on
the Upper East Side that was founded by Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt and his wife
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt last fall.” (As reported by Julia Gergely)
2022: Two days after the funeral
services for 88 year old Stephen Strauss and Jacki Sundheim, a North Shore
Congregation Israel staffer, both of whom were killed in the shooting attack on
an Independence Day parade on July 4, 2022, “questions remain about whether gunman
Robert Crimo III, should have been able to legally purchase firearms in
Illinois.”
2023: The Knesset is expected to approve the first
reading of the “reasonableness bill’ today. (TOI)
2023: While some entertainers are
refusing to perform in Israel, The Black Keys, an American two-man rock group is
scheduled to perform in Israel for the first time today.
