This Day, November 25, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
November 25
2348 BCE: According to
Archbishop James Ussher's Old Testament chronology, the Great Deluge
("Noah's Flood") began on this date.
407 BCE: Yedanaiah petitioned Bagohi, the governor of Yehud to rebuild the
Jewish Temple at Elephantine.
http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/templeauth.html
1120:
The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of
Henry I of England. The sinking of the
ship would lead to chaos since William was Henry’s only male heir. When Henry,
who treated his Jewish subjects well, passed away civil war broke out between the claimants to the throne. The crown went to King Stephen
who was opposed by the Empress Matilda. Both monarchs raised cash from the
Jews. Matilda had placed a levy on the Jews of Oxford and, on seizing the city,
King Stephen demanded a levy three and a half times that of Matilda. The king
forced payment by the simple expedient of burning the Jews’ houses one by one
until the full sum was paid. On the other hand, King Stephen did protect his
Jewish subjects from those who were going off to join the Second Crusade. Things would improve for England and the Jews
of England as well, when Henry I’s grandson, Henry II finally took the throne.
1177: Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and
Raynald of Chatillon defeats Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard. The Crusader victory was one of their last in
the Holy Land and only delayed the inevitable return of Jerusalem to Moslem
control. For Jews, Moslem control was
comparatively better than Christian control.
1215: During the Baron’s War, King John who signed the Magna Cart which
contains the following reference to the Jews: “If anyone who borrowed from the
Jews any amount, large or small, dies before the debt is repaid, it shall not
carry interest as long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he holds; and if
that debt falls in our hands [i.e., the king’s hands, following the Jewish
creditor’s own demise], we will take nothing except the principal sum specified
in the bond” sent a writ to
the justiciars saying "Send to us with all
speed by day and night, forty of the fattest pigs of the sort least good for
eating so that we may bring fire beneath the castle" at Windsor.
1277: Nicholas III began his papacy. “During his brief reign Nicholas
displayed a considerable zeal for the conversion of the Jews. His bull Vineam sorce encouraged conversion
through "sermons and other means." Copies of the document were sent
(1278–79) to the *Franciscans and provincial priors of the *Dominicans in
various provinces. Concurrently, however, he renewed the decisions of his predecessors
forbidding the forcible baptism of Jews and protecting them from attacks by
Christians. Nevertheless, several *Church councils and synods legislated
against the free intercourse of Jews and Christians. It is not clear whether it
was the supposed hostility of Nicholas or his mildness toward the Jews which
prompted Abraham b. Samuel *Abulafia to announce his intention of visiting the
pope to demand the release of captive Jews. (When he arrived, however, the pope
was already on his deathbed.)” (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)
1314: Coronation of Emperor Louis IV, the German ruler who gave Gottfried
von Eppstein permission to settle Jews in Eppstein, Homburg and Steinheim in
1335,
1357: Charles IV issued an edict protecting the Jews of Strasbourg. Two
years later, amidst rumors about well-poisonings, 1,000 Jews would be burned
and the remainder forcibly baptized.
Rumor trumped Royal Protection
1420: Pope Martin V favorably reinstates old privileges of the Jews and
orders that no child under the age of twelve can be forcibly baptized without
parental consent.
1489: A work popularly referred to as
“Abudarham's Siddur” was published for the first time in Lisbon. Actually the book was untitled by its author
David Abudarham, a Jewish scholar who lived in Seville (Spain) in the first
part of the 14th century. He
modestly referred to his work as “Ḥibbur Perush ha-Berakot
we-ha-Tefillot." In fact it was a
commentary on the various prayers tracing their origins and providing
information about their liturgical significance. This volume proved to be so popular that it
went through nine editions the last of which appeared in Warsaw in the middle
of the 19th century. The
printer was Eliezer Alantansi who used a lion rampant on a shield as his
printer’s mark. “In his first publication, the Tur Orah Hayyim (1485), it is
framed in red; in his second book, the Tur Yoreh Deah (1487), the frame is
black; in his third book, the undated Pentateuch [1487-88], the lion appears
without a frame. The designer and cutter is probably Alfonso Fernandez de
Cordoba, who, no doubt, created the beautiful types and ornaments for
Alantansi's books.”
1491: The siege of Granada last Moorish
stronghold in Spain began. When the siege is over, Spain will be united as a
Catholic nation and Jews will be confronted with the choice of conversion or
expulsion.
1491: Muley Abdu-Abdallah, the last Moorish ruler of
Granada signed a secret treaty with Ferdinand and Isabella, in which he agreed
to surrender the city and its surrounding territory at a future date (January,
1492). Included in the terms was a provision that Jews were to be allowed
the same rights of protection that were being extended to the Moors.
However, "relapsed Marranos" were given one month to leave the
city. After that time they would be turned over to the Inquisition.
Also, the Moorish King made the incoming Christian monarchs promise that no Jew
would serve as an "officer of justice, tax-gather, or commissioner"
if holding that position would mean that the Jew would have authority over any
Muslim.
1622: "Christian IV, King of Denmark,
addressed a letter to the Jewish Council of Amsterdam asking them to encourage
some of their members to settle in his state. He promised them freedom of
worship and other favorable privileges."
1624(24th of Kislev, 5385): Joseph Shalom de
Shalom, “the neo-Hebraic poet and the chazan of the first synagogue erected in
Amsterdam passed away today in Palestine.
1626: Sixty-year-old Edward Alleyn the English actor who
was the first to play the title role of “Barabas” in Marlowe’s “Jew Of Malta”
passed away today.
1638: Birthdate of Portuguese noble Catherine of
Braganza, the wife of King Charles II of England who employed Fernando Medes,
the Portuguese born Jew as her personal physician.
1642(13th of Kislev, 5403): Rabbi Meir Hakohen
Katz Ashkenazi, the Son of Rabbi Moshe Katz Ashkenazi, [Dayan Frankfurt] and
Gella Katz Ashkenazi and the husband of Meir Katz Ashkenazi passed away today.
1642(13th of Kislev, 5403): Meir Katz
Ashkenazi, the daughter of Rabbi Yitzhak Katz passed away today.
Father of Rabbi Yonah Menachem Nahum
1707(1st of Kislev, 5468): Jente
Opennheimer passed away today in Vienna.
1738: Birthdate of German mathematician Thomas Abbt who
in 1763 entered a competition that was sponsored by the Berlin Academy for an
essay on the application of mathematical proofs to metaphysics that was won by
Moses Mendelssohn whom Abbt “yearned” to have as “his close friend” and to whom
he “poured out…the deepest meditations of his troubled soul.”
1744: Austrian soldiers killed an untold number of Jews in Prague.
1761(1st of Kislev): The first Jewish social and civic club in North America
was founded in Newport, RI
1766: Abigail Sarzedas and Myer Polock gave birth to Isaac Polock who was
buried in Newport, RI when he passed away.
1769: Lazarus Eliezer Leiser Joseph van Geldern the son of Joseph Jacob
Juspa van Geldern and Braeunle Brunella van Geldern passed away in Duesseldorf
where he had been born in 1695.
1783: During the Revolution, American forces retake New York from the
British. Jews who had fled the British were able to return. Jews who were loyal
to the Crown left along with other Loyalists making their homes in Canada or
returning to England. Many of the Jews had taken refuge in Philadelphia,
including Raabi Gershom Mendez Seixas who returned to the pulpit at Shearith
Israel.
1783: Rebecca Franks and Lucius Levy Solomons gave birth to Rebecca (Becky)
Solomons
1795: In Dijon, France, Nathan Brunschwig and his wife gave birth to Colette
Brunswick the wife of Joseph Bing-Jacob and the mother of Rosine, Celestine,
and Elisa Alice Bing-Jacob.
1795: Stanislaus August Poniatowski
the last king of independent Poland, is forced to abdicate and is exiled to
Russia. This marks the last act in the
third and final partition of Poland.
“Polish” Jews now live in Austria, Germany and Russia. As a result of the partition of Poland,
Russia ended up with millions of Jews.
The Czars had worked long and hard to make and keep their empire “Jew
free.” Their greed for Polish land
created their “Jewish problem.” The
shift from Poland to Russia dealt a mortal blow to the welfare of the Jewish
people for the duration of the 19th century and on into the 20th
century.
1799(27th of Cheshvan, 5560): In Frankfurt am Main,
Benedict-Benedikt Moses Worms and Schönche Jeanette Worms gave birth to Zerline
Worms who became Zerline Beyfus after her marriage.
1799: York, PA native Solomon Etting and Rachel Gratz gave birth to Kitty
Etting, the wife of Richmond native Benjamin I. Cohen.
1802: In Prague gave Michael Klapp, the son of Wolf Klapp and his wife Sara
gave birth to Abraham Klapp
1806: Birthdate of French financier Isaac Pereire who was the grandson of
Jacob Rodrigues Pereire. During the 19th century, the Pereires were
financiers on a par with the Rothschilds.
Unlike the Rothschilds, the Piereires were Sephardim who traced their
ancestry to Portugal. (As reported by Meyer Kayersling, Isidore Singer and
Jacques Kahn)
1808(6th of Kislev, 5569): English born Moses Alexander passed
away today in Charleston, SC.
1818: Today’s “report of the
Administration of the Margraviate of Saxony shows that it intended to expel Joseph
Friedlander” effective November 1, 1819.
1823: Birthdate of Francis Joseph Schuster, the Frankfurt born merchant and
convert to Christianity who moved to Manchester in 1866 to continue his career.
1826: Birthdate of Hungarian born and University Ph.D. Joachim Jacob Unger
the rabbi at Iglau, Moravia whose “review of Gustav Mahler’s exam religion for
the second semester of the 1876-1877 school year” concluded that his
performance was ‘satisfactory’.
https://mahlerfoundation.org/mahler/contemporaries/johan-strauss-jr/
1829: Henry Abrahams married Ann Barnett today at the Great Synagogue.
1829: In Zerbst, Jakob Hirsch, a merchant, and Bertha Elkisch Bendix gave
birth to Jenny Hirsch wrote for the Bazar
under the pseudonym J. N. Heynrichs until 1864 when she became active in the
cause of women’s rights.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hirsch-jenny
1830: Birthdate of Breslau native Lina Bauer, who gained fame Lina
Morgenstern, the wife of Theodore Morgenstern whom she married in 1850 and who
was a noted author, feminist, pacifist and a member of the German Peace Society
as well as the mother of five children – Clara, Olga, Martha, Michael and
Alfred.
1831:Birthdate of German native and St. Louis resident Abraham Kramer, the
husband of Josephine Raff Kramer and the father of Philip, Johana, Mynee,
Carrie, Grace and Jesse Kramer.
1833: In Charleston, SC, Adeline and Levy I. Moses who had wed in 1832 gave
birth to Sarah A. Moses
1837: In London, Joseph and Jane Emanuel gave birth to George Joseph Emanuel
the husband of Elizabeth Emanuel with whom he had seven children.
1838: In New York Benvenida Solis and Leon Ritterband gave birth to Joseph
Ritterband, the first of their seven children.
1839: In Germany, Caroline and Lazarus Joseph Cohn gave birth to Seligman
Lazarus Cohn the husband of Sophie Cohn with whom he had seven children.
1838: In Dublin, Ireland, Caroline Ellen Picard and Isaac Abraham Harris
gave birth to Hannah Harris, the wife of Henry Simmons.
1842: In Amsterdam, Eva Salomon Eva Salomon Levi, née Linse and Rabbi Tobias
Eliesar Boas gave birth Abraham Tobias Boas, the husband of Elizabeth who in
1870 arrived in Adelaide, South Australia where he lead the Jewish congregation
for 48 years.
1842: The first congregation of Easton, PA, which was founded in the year
1839, and whose members included Henry Rosenfeld, Michael Lederer, Solomon
Rhode, Samuel Backenheimer, Meyer Gardiner, Wolf Newburger, Emmanuel Schiff,
Isaac Menlein, Moses Cohen, Solomon Scheid, Samuel and Able, Adolph Hirsh and
Lewis Backeheimer was chartered today “under the name of ‘Covenant Peace’” with
Manis Cohen serving as its first Rabbi.
1847: In Frankfurt am Main, Simon and Johanna Hertz Lenz gave birth
Henrietta Lenz who became Henrietta Ungar when she married Adolph Ungar.
1850: Abraham Einstein and Helene Moos gave birth to Jakob Einstein a
younger brother of Hermann Einstein.
1852: A banquet celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Hebrew
Benevolent Society began at 8 pm in New York City’s Chinese Assembly Rooms on
Broadway. The evening raised over $5,000
in donations which ranged in amounts from $10 to $150.
1852: In Rome, NY, Benjamin Bloomingdale and Hanna Weil gave birth to
Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the husband of Adele
Bernheimer and President of the Retail Dry Goods Association who was a
Republican presidential elector and director of the “Jewish Protectory.”
1853: The New York Times reported that yesterday,
which was celebrated as day of Thanksgiving by the people of New York,
"the Jews laid the cornerstone of a new hospital for people of their
persuasion."
1853: “The Jews In Europe” published today focused on the
treatment of the Jews by the government of Austria. Reports “that the Austrian
Government has revived the system of intolerance against the Jewish subjects”
were misleading because “there was no need of a revival of the system of
intolerance, because the Austrian Government have at all times been cruel and
malicious against the unfortunate Jewish inhabitants.”
1856 (27th of Cheshvan): Danish philanthropist Simon Aaron Eibeschuetz
passed away
1856: Four days after she had passed away, Anne Cohen, the wife of Abraham
Cohen was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1858: Birthdate of Paul Haupt, the German born American Assyriologist who
“projected and edited the Polychrome Bible, a critical edition of the Hebrew
text of the Old Testament, and a new English translation with notes” and
published critical texts of the following with notes: Canticles (1902),
Koheleth (1905), Ecclesiastes (1905), Nahum (1907), Esther (1908) and Micah
(1910)
1858: Today Solomon Beyfus was admitted to the Freedom of the City of London
today “declaring that his father, Gotze Philip Beyfus late of Birmingham, was
teacher of languages and had lived at 7 Bury Street in the City of London, a
location adjacent to the Bevis Marks Synagogue.”
1859: Today, for the second time, the
Jewish Chronicle published an advertisement “for a German Lady to teach in her
own language and to give instruction in Hebrew” from a “Ladies’ school” in
Dover “where the number of pupils is small and where there are resident French
and English Governesses
1863: Max Maretzek, the Moravian born American-Jewish maestro conducted the
first performance of "Faust" in America.
1863: In Poland, Norma (Klein) Blankenstein gave birth to Brooklyn realtor
Louis Blankenstein, the husband of Hattie Tanz who was a member of the board of
the Brooklyn Jewish Center, a member of the board of directors of Chovey Torah
and a member of B’nai Moshe Joseph Synagogue.
1863: During the Civil War, the Union broke the Confederate stranglehold at
Chattanooga with the Battle of Missionary Ridge where Colonel Frederick
“Knefler was in command of the combined 79th Indiana and 86th Indiana infantry
regiments that led the unexpected charge up the center of the ridge and which
led to his being “complimented” for the unexpected charge up the hill and for
one of his fellow officers to write that Knefler ““richly merits a commission
as brigadier-general for his gallantry displayed in the charging and taking of
Missionary Ridge.”
1864: British
statesman Benjamin Disraeli declared in a speech: 'Man is a being born to
believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truth, he
will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.' Disraeli had been baptized at his father’s
insistence. Disraeli was proud of his
Jewish heritage and often vilified for it by his political enemies.
1865: In Cleveland, Ohio, founding of the Ungarischer Frauen Unterstutzungs
Verein which meets on the “third Sunday of the month” and “pays a sick
benefit.”
1868: Birthdate of Hungarian native Calvin Leichtman who in 1884 came to the
United States where he settled in Hazeltown, PA and was a member of the
Community Chest and B’nai B’rith
1869: New York businessman Daniel McFarland fatally shot New York Tribune reporter Albert Deane
Richardson in front of Daniel Frohman, Jew from Ohio who was working as a clerk
at the paper and would go to become a famous theatrical and film director.
1871: “The Bells, a play in three acts by Leopold Davis Lewis opened today
at the Lyceum Theatre in London for the first of 151 performances. “The Bells is a translation by Leopold Lewis
of the 1867 play Le Juif Polonais (The Polish Jew) by Erckmann-Chatrian.”
1871: A pair of pantaloons which had been left hanging in front of a Jewish
clothing store at No. 6 on Main Street in Brooklyn was stolen tonight.
1873: Birthdate of Russian born “Israeli engineer and businessman” Moshe
Novomeysky who “was an early developer of the Palestine Potash Company.”
1874: Carol Schurz delivered a lecture at the Steinway Hall in New York as
part of a course sponsored by the Hebrew Young Men’s Association.
1877: “Joseph II and the Jews” published today traces the history and impact
of The Toleration Edict promulgated by the Austrian monarch.
1880: Rabbi de Sola Mendes delivered
a talk in which he uses the “Passion Play” as an example of what he calls
“Religion Out of Place.”
1880: In Offenburg, Germany David
and Fanny Kahn gave birth to Adolf Kahn the husband of Bertha Kahn, both of
whom were murdered during the Holocaust.
1880: In Baltimore, MD, the former
Jennie Rohr and Saks 5th Avenue co-founder Andrew Saks gave birth to
William Andrew Saks.
1880: In London, Marie (nee de
Jongh) and Solomon “Sidney” Rees Woolf gave birth to author, publisher and
civil servant Leonard Sidney Woolf, the husband of fellow author Virginia
Woolf.
1880: It was reported today that
Arthur Lieberman, the Jew who committed suicide in Syracuse was a Nhilist from
Russia. He fled the country to avoid arrest after having written a pamphlet
espousing his beliefs. Apparently, he
shot himself because he was despondent over having to leave his family.
1881: Alexander and Ida Kursheedt
gave birth to Jessie Miller
1881: Leopold and Rebecca Kahn
Affelder gave birth to Harry Affelder, the brother of Jeanette, William and
Minnie Affelder.
1881: Birthdate of Jacob Fichman the
Moldavian born Hebrew writer who twice won the Biliak Prize and was awarded the
Israel Prize for literature in 1957, a year before his death.
1881: Birthdate Angelo
Roncalli. Roncalli would enter history
as John XXIII, the Pope of Reform who tried to improve relations between
the Church and the Jewish People
1881: “A large number of” Jewish immigrants from Russia were among the 1,338
passengers who arrived at Castle Garden aboard the SS Silesia.
1882: In Odessa, Ukraine, “Nokhem Mayer Shaikevitsch, a novelist and
playwright and Dinneh Bercinsky gave birth to Manya Shaikevitsch who gained as
American “journalist, playwright and artist Miriam Shomer Zunser, the wife of
Charles Zunsers and the daughter-in-law of poet Eliakum Zunser.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/zunser-miriam-shomer
1883: In Poland Norma (Klein) Blankstein and her husband gave birth to
Brooklyn realtor Louis Blankensein, the husband of Hattie Tanz and active
member of the Jewish community as can be seen by his membership in B’nai Moshe
Joseph Synagogue, the Brooklyn Jewish Federation, the Brooklyn Jewish Center
and Chovey Torah in Brooklyn
1883: “Peace in Galilee” published today described a visit to Bukeia, “an
interesting community of Jews who maintain that they are the descendants of
families who were not dispersed and that they are the only Jews in the whole of
Palestine whose direct ancestors inhabited the same spot and cultivated the same
land prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.”
1883: Pere Hyacinthe delivered a talk on “Catholic Reform in France” at New
York’s Presbyterian Church during which he said that “Judaism is recognized in
France, and I am glad of it.”
1884: The Brooklyn Academy was the scene for tonight’s Grand Ball sponsored
by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1885: It was reported today that there are 70 boys enrolled in the Hebrew
Technical Institute on Crosby Street.
1886: Mrs. Tillie Bernheimer (or Miss Lillie) provided Thanksgiving Dinner
for the children at the United Hebrew Charities’ Industrial School on St.
Mark’s Place.
1886: Birthdate of New Orleans native Percy Abraham Lemann, who matriculated
at VMI in 1902 where he was part of the Class of 1906
1886: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and cigar manufacturer Day J. Apt the
president of Jewish Welfaire Bureau in Miami.
1886(26th of Cheshvan, 5647): Seventy-two year old German born
Babette Mandelbaum Sanger, the widow of Eli Sanger who had passed away in 1877
and with whom she had ten children passed away today after which she was buried
at Beth El Cemetery in Ridgewood, NY.
1887: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman preached a
Thanksgiving Day sermon at Temple Emanu-El entitled “Religious Liberty” in
which he said “We meet today as Jews and Americans…as Jews in religion and as
Americans in citizenship.”
1888: It was reported today that the Industrial School sponsored by the
United Hebrew Charities plans to provide a Thanksgiving dinner at the school
this year.
1889: Jacob Levy, a recent Jewish immigrant from Poland was beaten today
when he mistakenly opened the door to the wrong apartment.
1890: Dr. H. M. Leipziger presented the claims of the Jews in Russia at
today’s meeting of the New York Bureau of the Siberian Exile Petition
Association a non-denominational group whose Executive Committee included Jacob
H. Schiff.
1890: The funeral for Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, the daughter of
Juliana and Mayer de Rothschild was held at the Willesden Jewish Cemetery.
1890: In Bristol, England, Barnett (Dovber) and Hacha Rosenberg, native of
Dvinsk gave birth to British poet Isaace Rosenberg who while serving as a
Private in the 11th (Service) Battalion of The King's Own Royal Lancaster
Regimentwas killed on the Western Front at the age of 27 on April 1, 1918. He was the author of Poems from the Trenches which are considered by some to be among the
most outstanding poems written during the First World War. “In The Great War
and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell's landmark study of the literature of the
First World War, Fussell identifies Rosenberg's Break of Day in the Trenches
as ‘the greatest poem of the war.’"
Break of Day in the Trenches
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid time has ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver - what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
He was killed on April 1, 1918 while fighting on the Western Front. His
self-portrait hangs in the British National Portrait Gallery.
1892: Birthdate of Dresden native Max Ehrlich “one of the great comics of
the pre-war Berlin whose last performance was reportedly at Auschwitz.
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/western-europe/westerbork/max-ehrlich/
1892: In Russia, Rebecca Seltzer and Samuel Weiner gave birth to Columbia
School of Pharmacy graduate and husband of Rebecca Polovnick Nathan Wiener who
in 1907 came to the United States where he was member of the ZOA and Chevra Anshe
Mir and who in 1921 went into the dress manufacturing business
1894(10th of Kislev, 5716): In Berlin, fifty year old Dr. Arnold Heinrich
Bodek, “also known Aaron Chaim” the husband of Malwine Malva Bodek, passed away
today.
1895: In Pittsburgh, PA, Noah and Paula (Fineberg) Grobstein gave birth to
Carnegie Tech trained engineer and Washington College of Law graduate Albert
Grobstein, the husband of Ethel Sobel, 2nd Lt. in Ordinance
Department of the U.S. Army and settled in Washington, D.C.
1895: In Chicago, Il, Rebecca Goorvich and Morris Klasstorner gave birth to
Art Institute of Chicago trained sculptor Samuel Klasstorner, the winner of the
Frank G. Logan Medal in 1922 and a member of the Chicago Painters and
Sculptors.
1895: Herzl begins a two day visit Colonel Goldsmid, leader of the
British Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) Movement, in Cardiff, Wales.
1895: In Jacksonville, FL, founding of the Jewish Women’s League, an auxiliary
to Congregation Ahavath Chesed which had been founded in 1882 and was led by
Rabbi Jacob S. Raisin.
1896: After his return to Vienna, Herzl reworks the "Rede an die
Rothschilds" and a new work finally emerges: Der Judenstaat: Versuch
einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage or in English The Jewish State: An
Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question. “Theodore Herzl's
pamphlet Der Judenstaat,
The Jewish State, heralded the coming of age of Zionism…. In The
Jewish State, Herzl envisioned that diplomatic activity would be the
primary method for attaining the Jewish State and he called for the organized
transfer of Jewish communities to the new state. Of the location of the state,
Herzl said, ‘We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by public
opinion.’ Herzl's The Jewish State
included social innovations such as the seven-hour working day. In general, he
was interested in an economy where free enterprise and state involvement went
hand-in-hand. It was to be a modern, sophisticated and technologically advanced
and Europeanized society. The
Jewish State established Herzl as the leader of Zionism, and
the "father of the Zionist Idea." Zionist also provoked considerable
opposition, in particular from the assimilationst Jews of Central and Western
Europe. The book became required reading for all Zionists and was taken as the
basic platform of political Zionism. In conclusion, he wrote: ‘And what glory awaits those who fight
unselfishly for the cause! Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of
Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again. Let me repeat
once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We
shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own
homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth,
magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our
own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.’”
For more information about The
Jewish State and complete copy of the text see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/index.html, click on the icon “Israel” scroll down to Zionism, and then go to Excerpts
From Herzl's The Jewish State.
1896: Forty-six-year-old Vienna born playwright and convert to Catholicism “received
the Raimund Prize for his popular play The Little Man.”
1897(30th of Cheshvan, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1897: Dr. Gustav Gottheil will deliver a sermon entitled “The Most Religious
Day of the Year in America” during Thanksgiving Services at Temple Emanu-El
which begin at 11 a.m.
1897: At New York’s Agudath Yesharim(Jersharim), Rabbi J.P. Solomon will
officiate at the Thanksgiving Services starting at 3 p.m.
1897: Two days after he had passed away, 70 year old Morris Lack was buried
today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”
1897: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will lead Thanksgiving Services at
Temple B’Nai Jeshrun beginning at 3 p.m.
1897: “The children of the Industrial and Sabbath Schools of the United
Hebrew Charities will have a Thanksgiving Dinner today at 58 St. Mark’s Place
at noon.
1897: The Cadet Corps of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum provide a full dress
parade as part of the today’s Thanksgiving celebration.
1897: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam will hold services 3 pm.
1897: Emile Zola addressed a letter to Le Figaro that might have been called
“The Injustice of French Justice” since the author “intimated that he believed
Dreyfus was innocent” and that he had the proof for this belief. The letter ended “The truth is on the way;
nothing can stop it.”
1897: “To Begin Its Receptions” published today described plans for a series
of upcoming functions hosted by the Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant
Asylum.
1898: Birthdate of Regina Gotlop, the native of Tarnow, Poland who was part
of Convoy 25 that left Drancy for Auschwitz on August 28, 1942
1898: “Former Counsel General…Opposes Expansion” published today provided
the view Simon Wolf, the former United States Counsel to Egypt on how this
country should deal with Cuba and the Philippines, countries that were part of
the Spanish Empire until the recent U.S. victory in the Spanish-American
War. Wolf is opposed to annexation. He thinks that we should develop a special
relationship with both of them, in the way that England has with Egypt. But he believes that we must make them
independent and not annex them. (The
disposition of former parts of the Spanish Empire including Puerto Rico, Cuba
and the Philippines was “a hot political topic” at the end of the 19th
century and is interesting that a leading Jewish statesman would take the stand
for individual and national liberty as opposed to imperial expansion.)
1899: The final performance of “The Children of the Ghetto” will take place
tonight at the Herald Square Theatre.
1899: Mme. Nevada’s final performance this evening at the Metropolitan Opera
House was a fund-raiser for the benefit of the Hebrew Infant Asylum which is
need of help to pay for the “recent heavy expenditures” resulting from the
modernization and enlargement of its facility on Eagle Avenue and 161st
Street.
1899(23rd of Kislev, 5660): Eighty-seven year old Jewish merchant
and philanthropist Marcus Nordheim whose assets amounted to 10 million marks
part of which were used to establish the Nordheim Foundation, passed away
today.
1900: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Columbia trained architect Arthur
Schwartz who refused to practice law and instead gained famed as “a composer
who helped bring a new sophistication to Broadway songwriting in the 1930's,
with such tunes as ''Dancing in the Dark,'' and ''You and the Night and the
Music.” (As reported by Joe Pareles)
1900: At Cape May, NJ. Meyer S. Isaacs presided over the ceremonies held to
dedicate De Hirsch Hall, the new dormitory of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural
and Industrial School at Woodbine.
Woodbine an agricultural colony founded 12 years ago. With a population of 1,000, it is the most
successful De Hirsch funded colony in New Jersey.
1901: It was reported today Marks Arnheim has spent the last three days
looking for the person who has printed and distributed circulars urging a
boycott of his tailoring shop on the corner of Broadway and 9th
Street in New York.
1901: Thirty-one year old vaudevillian Lorne “Loney: Haskell, the Newark, NJ
born son of Louis and Lena (Levy) Lorne Levy who would go on to manage
Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre and serve as the Secretary of the Jewish
Theatrical Guild married Carrie Garson today in Jersey City, NJ.
1902: Birthdate of Morris Lapidus, the Russian-born American architect who
was responsible for the design of resort hotels in Miami and Miami Beach in the
1950’s.
1903: In Boston, the Sons of Zion is scheduled to host a ball today.
1903: Birthdate of New York City native Albert Gustavus Baum, the graduate
of Columbia and the Jewish Institute of Religion who served as “acting rabbi of
Temple Israel” before becoming the rabbi at “Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim”
in Alexandria, LA.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0412/ms0412.html
1903: Birthdate of Henri Samuel Sack, the Swiss-born, American holder of a
“doctorate in experimental physics who worked at Zurich University and was “a
resident associate in applied physics at Cornell University” becoming a full
professor in 1949 while working on “applied physics, supersonics, analog
computers and the elastic properties of solids.
1904(17th of Kislev,5665): Seventy-four-year-old Henry Strauss, a
native of Alsace who served in the 10th Mississippi Infantry and was
buried in the Beth Israel Cemetery, passed away today.
1905: Soprano Lina Abarbanell, the Berlin born daughter of Paul Abarbanell,
“a descendent of a prominent Sephardic Jewish family of Bulgarian descent, was
a well-known Berlin musical director” made “her debut today at the Metropolitan
Opera House as “Hansel” in “Hansel und Gretel.”
1905: Today, President Dabney of the University of Cincinnati spoke at
Hebrew Union College during the celebration marking “the 250th
anniversary of the settlement of Jews in America.”
1905: After 3 months, “Catch of the Season,” a two act musical produced by
Charles Frohman was performed for the last time at Daly’s Theatre in New York.
1905: Mr. Arnold Kohn said today “that although the contributions at the
State Bank” deposited into the fund for the Russian Jews “came mostly from the
poor” $20,000 has been deposited into the account.
1905: Jacob H. Schiff received a letter today from Jacob G. Schurman, the
President of Cornell University in which he enclosed his check “for the fund in
relief of the suffering Jews of Russia whose terrible condition appeals to the universal
heart of mankind.” Schurman, a native of
Canada whose family came from the Netherlands wrote, “The atrocities of the
Russian mob have been beyond all description or imagination. Such an exhibition of bigotry, intolerance
and racial hatred has seldom if ever, disgraced the history of the
mankind. And to crown the horrors of it,
the fiendish mob invoke the name of Jesus of Nazareth, who preached good will
to men…”
1906: “Threats of New Pogroms” published today reported that the authorities
in St. Petersburg give credence to “the threats of the reactionary parties” to
organize “Jewish massacres” “if the rights of the Jews are enlarged.
1907: Fifty-nine year Eernesto Nathan, the London born son “Sara Levi, an
Italian from Pesaro, and Mayer Moses Nathan” who “obtained Italian citizenship
in 1888” began serving as Mayor of Rome today, making him the first Jew to hold
this position.
1907: The Neu-Isenburg orphanage for Jewish girls (Mädchenwohnheim Neu-Isenburg) founded by Bertha Pappenheim began
operation today.
1908(1st of Kislev, 5669): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1908(1st of Kislev, 5669): A.M. Edelweiss passed away in Cuba.
1908: In Cedarhurst, NY, pathologist and Columbia faculty member Dr. Max
Pappenheimer and his wife gave birth award winning “biochemist and
immunologist” Alwin Max Pappenheimer, the brother of Harvard Professor John
Pappehnheimer.
https://www.aai.org/About/History/Past-Presidents-and-Officers/AlwinMPappenheimer
1909: In New York City, William and Gussie (Goldenberg) Feuer gave birth
Columbia Law School trained attorney Mortimer Feuer, a “partner firm Hays,
Feuer, Porter & Spanier” and the first vice president of the Amsterdam
Democratic who married Louis Younker Gottschall with whom he had two sons –
Thomas and Richard.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/12/18/78549458.pdf
1909: Turks resolve to grant all requested privileges to Jewish soldiers,
except kosher food
1910: Birthdate of Léon Poliakov, the Russian born French historian whose
field of expertise was Holocaust and anti-Semitism. In November 1950, Poliakov
wrote "The Vatican and the 'Jewish Question' - The Record of the Hitler
Period-And After," in the influential Jewish journal Commentary which was
the first article to consider the attitude of the papacy during World War II
and the Holocaust.
1911: “Replying to inquiries from Mr. O’Grady, MP, Sir Edward Grey, the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs” stated
“that the Government is aware of discrimination against English Jews
practiced by the Russian Government in the matter of passports; that no
agreement countenancing such discrimination exists between Great Britain and
Russia; and that so long as the ‘Russian regulations respecting person of the
Jewish faith are applied to all persons alike, irrespective of nationality,
which His Majesty’s Government have reason to believe to the case, they have no
treaty grounds for protest.”
1911: The “North Manchester Synagogue” adopted “resolutions regretting that
invitations to the forthcoming conference on the Chief Rabbinate have been
withheld from a number of congregations and declaring that no Chief Rabbi will
be recognized as spiritual head of British Jewry who has not been chosen by
votes of all Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and Ireland.”
1912: In the Box, Fanny and Sigmund Greenbaum gave birth to Dorothy
Greenbaum who became Dorothy Lovett when she married Morris Lovett
1912(15th of Kislev, 5673): Sixty-two year old Isidor Raynor who
represented the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland from 1887 to 1889 and
1891 to 1895 and served as U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1905 until today,
passed away.
1912: ‘The next regular meeting of the Junior Auxiliary of the Mother’s Aid
of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary is scheduled to be held at 2
o’clock this afternoon in the vestry rooms of
Temple Isaiah in Chicago, Illinois.
1912: The following article entitled “Daughters of Jacob Honor Ida Straus”
described the memorial ceremony commemorating the life of this Jewess who went
down with her husband on the Titanic.
In the presence of an audience of
600 persons, including all of the members of the Straus family, a memorial
tablet in honor of Ida Straus was unveiled yesterday at the Home of the
Daughters of Jacob, an institution for aged men and women at 301 and 303 East
Broadway. Impressive services marked the official dedication of the tablet,
which has been mounted upon the wall of the large auditorium to the right of
the main entrance.The large bronze casting bears the raised profile of Mrs.
Straus upon the centre, directly under the inscription; “The Ida Straus
Memorial of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob.” On one side are the words “Her
life was beautiful” and the date in the Hebrew calendar of Mrs. Straus’s birth,
“Shebat 14, 5609.” On the other side is the inscription “Her death was
glorious,” and the date of the Titanic disaster, “Nisan 28, 5672.” Below the
profile are the words:To the everlasting memory of Mrs. Ida Straus, one of the
noble and heroic daughters in Israel, the hospital wards of this home are
dedicated. She perished on the high seas in the Titanic disaster, together with
her husband, Isidor Straus, statesman, philanthropist, and merchant,
persistenly [sic] refusing to be saved that she might remain to cheer the last
moments of her life’s companion.
Beneath is this quotation:
Where thou Diest Will I Die, and There Will I Be Buried. RUTH
The Rev. Dr. Nathan Abramson opened the dedication services with a hymn,
in which he led a selected chorus of sixteen voices. The Rev. H. Pereira Mendes
delivered the opening prayer, in which he expressed the hope that the example
of the heroic and devoted wife in whose memory the tablet was erected and to
whose lasting fame the wards of the hospital were dedicated might be forever an
inspiration to the women of her race and ancient creed. Dr. Henry Fleischman, President of the
Educational Alliance, made the principal address. He lauded the modest charity
and kindliness of Mrs. Straus and the great unselfish works of her husband in
the public service. Other speakers were Joseph Barondes of the Board of
Education, the Rev. Dr. Schulman, pastor of the Congregation of Beth-El; the
Rev. H. Masliansky of the People’s Synagogue, and Gustavus A. Rogers, who acted
as Chairman. The most impressive incident of the dedication occurred when the
186 inmates of the home, led by Supt. Albert Kruger, filed slowly into the
auditorium and took their seats in the front rows. The oldest of the feeble and
decrepit men and women was said to be almost 108, and the youngest in the
procession more than 70 years old. Just before the close of the exercises they
arose and with quavering voices chanted aloud in unison a prayer for the
eternal happiness of their departed benefactress. Among those seated on the
platform were Mr. and Mrs. Percy Straus, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar S. Straus, Mrs.
Nathan Straus, Herbert Straus, Jesse I. Straus, Mrs. Weil, Mr. and Mrs. Lazarus
Kohns, and Mr. Lee Kohns. At the close of the exercises the members of the
Straus family group, together with a few intimate friends, made a tour of
inspection of the new hospital wards of the home.
1913: Birthdate of Robert Friend, the American born “poet and translator”
who made Aliyah and became “a professor of English literature at Hebrew
University.”
1913: Twenty-two-year-old Temple University grad and realtor Louis Kolsky
the Philadelphia born son of Abraham and Rebecca Kolsky, who went to become
“the youngest bank president in Pennsylvania” and who was a member of Beth
Sholom and Keneseth Israel married Reba Abrahamson, the daughter of Dr. Joseph
A. Abrahamson.
1914(5th of Kislev, 5675): Four days after having been captured
by the Russians while serving in the Austrian Army thirty-six-year-old Austrian
lawyer Ernst Lanzer, a patient of Freud died.
1914(5th of Kislev, 5675): While fighting on the Western Front
during WW I, twenty-seven year old Lt.
F.A. De Pass, a Jewish officer from London died while he and an Indian soldier
faced German machine-gun fire for two hundred yards, to bring in a badly
wounded Indian lying in No-Man’s Land.
1914: “Zangwill Lauds Schiff” published today defends Jacob Schiff saying
this his proposal “for a conference to end Prussian Militarism” does not make
him a “mouthpiece of Berlin” but shows him as one who draws on his Jewish background
and “speaks…with the voice of Jersualem.
1914: “Britain Will Protect Jews” published today provides the response of
the British Ambassador to questions about the British protecting the rights of
German Jews in lands they may conquer by saying that “Jews of all nationalities
who may come under British control can of course count on the same protection
and liberal treatment which England has always extended to them.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=940CE2DA1E3EE033A25756C2A9679D946596D6CF
1914: “For the Relief of Jews” published today provided a list of
contributors to the fund including Rabbi J.S. Levy of Waco, TX , Joe Matz of
Pocahontas, VA and Mrs. Charles Fryer of Muscatine, IA.
1915:
According to a dispatch from the Associated Press the Russians dynamited much
of Brest-Litvosk, destroying three quarters of the houses before retreating from
the Polish city and leaving a mass of refugees most of whom were Jewish and
were forced to seek refuge in the swamps where many of the “died of malignant
diseases.”
1915:
Max Meyerson, Commissioner of Education Isadore M. Levy, Magistrate Samuel D. Levy
and Abram I. Elkus were among the speakers at the Thanksgiving exercises held
by the Hebrew Sheltering Immigrant Aid Society tonight during which they
explained “the newcomers what reasons they had for being thankful” including
the fact that they were not being exposed to the “horrors in war-ridden
Europe.”
1915:
Today, following “a second consecutive poor harvest” and decrease in population
of “almost two-thirds” the state of Utah order the termination of title of the
Jewish agricultural colony at Clarion.
1915:
On Thanksgiving, Jacob H. Schiff spoke to the 450 inmates at the Montefiore
Home and Hospital for Chronic Invalids many of whom who “could not leave their
cots “and asked them to be thankful that America was enjoying peace.”
1915:
Philip Watenberger of the Bronx, presided over a meeting at McKinley Casion
where “some 3,000 persons” heard “an appeal for aid for the suffering Jews of
Poland, made homeless because of the war.”
1915:
Months after Leo Frank was taken from the Milledgeville prison, members of the
Knights of Mary Phagan burned a gigantic cross on top of Stone Mountain,
reportedly inaugurating a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was led by
William J. Simmons and attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors
of the original Klan.
1915:
It was reported today that among those being considered to replace the later
Dr. Solomon Schechter as President of the Jewish Theological Seminary are “Dr.
Buchler, head of the Jews’ College in London and Dr. Toznanski of the Jewish
Institute in Petrograd.”
1915:
In London, The Times publishes a
letter from Israel Zangwill takes issue with an interview it had published with
Jacob Schiff in which its correspondent apparently made it seem like Schiff
spoke for Germany. Zangweill contends
that he is “noblest of millionaires” engaged in “philanthropic work” who is one
of the most patriotic Americans I have ever known.” “Descended from a long-line of Jewish rabbis
and scholars (one of his ancestors was Chief Rabb of the Great Synagogue of London
in the eighteenth century) Jacob Schiff himself might sat to Lessing for a
portrait of ‘Nathan der Wise.’”
1915: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, the member of a prominent
Anglo-Jewish family succeeded Winston Churchill as the Chancellor of the Duchy
Lancaster in the government headed by Prime Minister Henry Asquith
1915(18th of Kislev, 5676): Eighty-three year old Michel Jules
Alfred Bréal, the French philologist who was responsible for the marathon being
part of the first modern Olympics passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03483.html
1916(22nd of Cheshvan, 5677): Parashat Chayei Sara
1916: According to an article written by a member of the Reichstag that
appeared in the Tageblatt today, “the Prussian Government has also been lucky
in solving the Jewish religious problem in Poland” because unlike the Czar’s
Government, “the German Governor of Poland has granted the Jews of Poland
far-reaching self-government respecting their religious institutions and has
accorded them all the religious rights recognized by State.” (Editor’s note – this is only one example of
why some Jews in the United States did not want to enter the World War on the
side of the allies because that would have been supporting the anti-Semitic
government of the Czar.)
1916: Synagogues on New York’s east side are scheduled hold memorial
services honoring Austrian Emperor Franz Josef who passed away earlier this
week.
1916: The replacement of Boris
Stürmer an anti-Semite “suspected of being pro-German” as Prime Minister in
Russia with Alexander Trepov “was hailed by liberals” and those who were
worried about Russia continuing the war against Germany.
1916: In Berlin, “during the
course of the discussion of the budget before the committee of the Reichstag”
it was suggested that Germany employ Jews in Poland while also looking using
“the population of occupied territories for work in Germany.”
1917: The New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women dedicated
the first shelter for “homeless and friendless” Jewish women discharged or
paroled from New York City and New York state jails. Speakers at the dedication
included the prominent rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Deaconess Young, who directed
another home for “friendless women” in the same neighborhood. Although the home
was founded to serve Jewish women, the president of the New York Council
section affirmed that “no unfortunate woman of any race, creed or color would
be refused aid if she needed it.”
1917: The Provisional Zionist Committee, chaired by Stephen S. Wise, “sent a
cable message of greetings and congratulation to the Zionist mass meeting what
held in London” celebrating the adoption of the Balfour Declaration.
1917: Today, during the “Battle for Jerusalem,” units of Auckland Mounted
Rifles defeated units of the Ottoman 3rd and 7th
Divisions at the Hadrah bridge and successfully crossed the span
1917: A mass meeting of Zionists
attended by Lord Walter Lionel Rothschild, Chaim Weitzman, President of the
British Zionist Federation and Rabbi Moses Gaster was held in London this
evening designed “to celebrate the promise by the British Government ot support
the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine.
1917: A contribution of $200 from Witty Brothers, the New York men’s
clothing store was among those listed today by the American Jewish Relief
Committee.
1917: Among the contributions listed today by the Central Committee for the
Relief of Jews Suffering through the War included $1,436 from the committee in
Dubuque, IA, $236 from the committee in Iowa City, IA, $135 from the committee
in Keokuk, IA, $300 from the committee in Mason City, IA, $301 from the
committee in Muscatine, IA and $286 from the committee in Ottumwa, IA.
1918: It was reported today that “the Administrative Committee for an
American Jewish Congress will meet tomorrow to fix a new date for the”
convening of the congress which is to deal with the questions of Jewish
nationality in Palestine and the guaranteeing of equal rights for Jews in
all the countries of Europe.
1918: The “Little Brother,” with a script co-authored by Milton Goldsmith
which was based on his work “The Priest and the Rabbi,” and produced and directed by Walter Hast
opened on Broadway at the Belmont Theatre.
1919: “Half Million Jews In Pogrom Protest” published today descried the
observance a “Day of Sorrow” which included 25,000 men, women and children
marched “in protest against the reported massacre of 100,000 Jews in Ukraine”
and a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall where Secretary of the Navy Daniels, Mayor
Hylan, Sentaro Medill McCormick of Illinois, Louis Marshall, Jacob Schiff,
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, Gustave Hartman and Morris
Rothenberg spoke to the overflow crowd.
1920: Thanksgiving observed in the United States.
1920: The 23rd annual convention of the ZOA is scheduled to begin
to in Buffalo, NY.
1920: The Young Women’s Hebrew Association is scheduled to “hold services
dedicated to the memory of the late Jacob H. Schiff” this evening which the
entire neighborhood is invited to attend.
1921:” Speaking on "The Anti-Semitic Spirit in America," at a
meeting of the League for Political Education in the Town Hall this morning,
John Spargo, Socialist author and lecturer, said there was a campaign of
organized anti-Semitism in this country which was part of an international
system with headquarters in in Berlin in so far as he was able to learn.”
1922: Wake University “under head coach George Levene” lost to North
Carolina State for its third straight loss at home.
1923: Birthdate of philosopher and Harvard educator Israel Scheffler the
hold of an honorary D.H.L from JTS who was the husband of the former Rosalind
Zuckerbrod and the father of Laurie and Samuel Scheffler.
1924(27th of Cheshvan, 5685): Ninety-two year old Jules Worms, the French
painter and engraver who was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1876
passed away today after which he was “buried in Paris Montparnasse Cemetery,
Section 5.
1925: In Moscow, silent film actress Rachel Messerer-Plisetskaya and Mikhai
“Misha” Plisetski, a diplomat, engineer and mine director, gave birth to ballet
dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress Maya Plisetskaya.
1926: In New York, composer Irving Berlin and the former Ellin Mackay gave
birth Barnard trained writer Mary Ellin Berlin who became Mary Barrett when she
married Des Moines, IA nave Marvin Barrett in 1952.
1926: In Brooklyn “Jewish immigrants
Irene (Sperling) and Abraham Schisgal, a tailor, gave birth to playwright and
screenwriter Murray Schisgal whose hits include Luv and Tootsie.
1927(1st of Kislev, 5688): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1927(1st of Kislev, 5688): Morris Ganss, who had been born in
Maryland in August of 1865 and was the husband of Helen Peyer and father of
Harold Ganss passed away today after which he was buried in the Hebrew Cemetery
at Washington, D.C.
1927: Yehudi Menuhin was the soloist with New York Symphony Orchestra today
where he played the Beethoven Violin Concerto. His performance won audience
approval and critical acclaim and marked the start of tours through the United
States and Europe.
1928: In Syracuse, NY, David A. Brown of Detroit, “the national chairman of
the United Jewish campaign raise $25,000,000 Jewish activities” “declared
tonight at the first joint gathering of Zionists and non-Zionists” that “Jews
through the world will benefit from the agency recently formed in Palestine for
relief work under the coordinating support of all Zionist movements.”
1928: A photograph of “Masons Hillsborough Lodge No. 25” published today
included Henry Brash, Abe Maas and Isaac Mass provided evident of the level of
acceptance of Jews in the Tampa community.
1929: “Jewish leaders in New York city continued today to discuss with much interest the
statement of Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, Chancellor of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, interpreting Jewish aspirations in Palestine and urging a policy of
conciliation with the Arabs on the basis of a new constitution.”
1929: “Nine prisoners arrested at Jaffa as leaders of the anti-Jewish
boycott agitation are giving much trouble to the authorities here.”
1930(5th of Kislev, 5691): Austrian born and Chicago resident
Joachim Frachtenberg, the “prominent anthropologist and national field director
of the Palestine Foundation Fund “ who had been stricken with pneumonia several
days ago while conferring with Jewish leaders in Waterloo” passed away today in
Waterloo, IA.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1930/11/26/102192632.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1930: “The Voelkische Beobachter, an anti-Semitic of Adolf Hitler, today
launched an editorial attack Jews in Germany and Chicago.” (JTA)
1931: In Freeport, NY, child psychiatrist Joseph Solomon and historical
novelist Ruth Freeman Solomon gave birth to Stanford trained physician, “Dr. George
F. Solomon, one of the first scientists to see a link between emotions and
immunity and a pioneer in the field now known as psychoneuroimmunology…” (As
reported by Carmel McCoubrey)
1931: According to figures released by the census authorities, of the
1,035,154 inhabitants of Palestine, 387,525 live in Palestine’s major cities
including 90,526 in Jerusalem, 51,876 in Jaffa, 46,109 in Tel Aviv and 50,869
for Haifa. “There is an almost equal
number of men an women in nearly all the urban localities, the total being
197,307 males and 190,218 females.” Since the last census conducted in 1922,
“purely Arab areas showed less than a 1 per cent increase in population…while
the mixed Arab-Jewish residential localities showed a 30 per cent rise
indicating a higher measure of prosperity during the past decade.”
1932: U.S. premiere of “Rockabye” a drama directed by George Cukor and
produced by David O. Selznick.
1933(7th of Kislev, 5694): Seventy-three year old Sarah Hexter, a
native of Brandeburg, German who was the wife of Max Hexter with who she had
three children passed away today in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1933: Max Born received a letter from Werner Heisenberg in which he said he
had been delayed in writing due to a “bad conscience” that he alone had
received the Nobel Prize “for work done in Göttingen in collaboration — you,
Jordan and I.” Heisenberg went on to say that Born and Jordan’s contribution to
quantum mechanics cannot be changed by “a wrong decision from the outside.”
Jordan was Pascual Jordan a physicist who joined the Nazi party and became a
Brown Shirt. Heisenberg was an “Aryan” who stayed in Nazi Germany. Born was a Lutheran who was classified as a
Jew under Nazi Racial Law and would win his Nobel Prize in 1954.
1934: John Kenmuir reports that “not since the period immediately following
the World War have so many new places claimed attention from mapmakers as in
the last few months. Towns have seemingly appeared out of nowhere…” Included in this category is Tel Aviv, “the
second largest city in Palestine a country of age-old town. This thriving metropolis of 70,000 did not
even exist in 1909, its site being then a deserted area of rolling sand dunes
north of Jaffa.
1934: Dr. George Landauer, the head of the Jerusalem branch of the Central
Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine and Dr. Martin
Rosenbluth, from the London headquarters said today that “a minimum of 40,000
German Jews can settled in Palestine in a statement issued from offices of the
UJA in New York.
1935: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel who lost his seat
in the elections of 1935 ended his leadership of the Liberal Party today.
1935: “One Way Ticket,” a cinema version of the novel by the same name which
marked “the directorial debut” of Herbert Biberman was released in the United
States today.
1936: Tonight, the police “stormed Warsaw University in order to clear the
buildings occupied for two day by several hundred Fascist student” who were
demanding that Jewish students be segregated from the rest of the student body.
1936: “Pennies From Heaven,” a musical comedy produced by Emanuel Cohen and
with a screenplay by Jo Swerling was released today in the United States;
1936: Dr. Chaim Weizmann began his testimony before the Peel Commission by
dwelling “first on the tragedy of at least 6,000,000 superfluous Jews in
Poland, Germany, Austria and other countries who before the war found an outlet
in emigration to the United States and South Africa but who now find all gates
barred to them” which “lends grave importance to the question of a Jewish
national home in Palestine, the only spot in the world where Jews can turn
their eyes with the hope of being saved from moral, cultural and economic
stagnation” not to mention death.
1936: Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist
treaty that will be the basis of the Axis alliance. The treaty is another step towards World War
II and the Final Solution. At the time, the treaty seemed to be one more
diplomatic victory for Hitler, but the Japanese actually outsmarted the Little
Corporal. The treaty did not commit the
Japanese to take military action against the Soviets. Hitler fully expected the Japanese to attack
Russia when he invaded the Soviet state forcing Stalin to fight a two front
war. The Japanese never budged. Hitler was left to fight the Soviets on his
own and it was this Soviet ability to have face only the Germans that helped
chew up the divisions of the Wermacht. [If the Japanese had really been such
dedicated anti-communists you would have thought they would have joined the
Nazis in attacking the leading communist state of the time, the Soviet
Union. Of course the Japanese did not
having been bloodied by the Soviets in the late 1930’s. Even strange bedfellows do not always sleep
together]
1936: Cardinal Michael von
Faulhaber, the Archbishop of Muich, informed the Bavarian bishops that he had
promised Hitler that the bishops would issue a new pastoral letter in which
they condemned "Bolshevism which represents the greatest danger for the
peace of Europe and the Christian civilization of our country." In
addition, Faulhaber stated, the pastoral letter " will once again affirm
our loyalty and positive attitude, demanded by the Fourth Commandment, toward
todays form of government and the Führer. "
1936: Fifty-five-year-old Sir
Leon Levison, the son of Rabbi Nahum Levison, whose conversion to Christianity
and service as the first President of the International Hebrew Christian
Alliance did not prevent him from raising 200,000 English pounds to relieve the
suffering Jews during the World War or being “a fierce opponent of the Nazis”
passed away.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that the first death sentence was
passed, under the recently promulgated Defense Regulations, by a military court
on Sheikh Farhan e-Sadi, leader of a terrorist group, who was found guilty of
carrying firearms and ammunition. The Arab Defense Party appealed for clemency.
1937: The Palestine Post reported
that a large number of Jews had been attacked and beaten in riots in Memel,
Shavli and Wilkomir in Lithuania. This outburst of anti-Semitism took place two
years before the outbreak of World War II.
This is an example of the inherent European anti-Semitism that helped to
make the Holocaust possible and provided the Nazis with willing accomplices in
completing the Final Solution.
1938(2nd of Kislev,
5699): Fifty-five year old Jessie Sampter who made Aliyah in 1919 which led her
to work with Yemenite Jews and the establishment of “a vegetarian convalescent
home at Kibbutz Givat Brenner” passed away at Beilinson Hospital where she was
being treated for malaria and heart disease.
1938: “Submarine Patrol” a pre-war
Naval adventure film written by Jack Yellen was released today in the United
States.
1938: In Indianapolis, the former
Ruth Frand and Marvin Cohen who “owned a jewelry store and golf course in
Hollywood, FL” gave birth to University of Indiana graduate Stephen Frand
Cohen, the husband of Katrina vanden Heuvel and “an eminent historian whose books
and commentaries on Russia examined the rise and fall of Communism, Kremlin
dictatorships and the emergence of a post-Soviet nation still struggling for
identity in the 21st century…” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden))
1938(2nd of Kislev,
5699): Sixty-one year old Aaron Garber, the Lithuanian born Cleveland, OH,
attorney, Zionist and “a leader in the Bureau of Jewish Education” who was “a
founder and president of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools” passed away today.
http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/ins/garber/garber-history.htm
https://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/ins/garber/garber-obituary.htm
1938: In Owensboro, KY, a gold
course owner whose father had emigrated from Lithuania and his wife gave birth
Stephen Cohen, a product of the Russian Studies program at Indiana University
and holder of PhD from Columbia who went to become a “Professor of Politics and
Russian Studies at Princeton,” a prolific author and one of those who as of
2018, “continues to dismiss theories of Russian collusion” in the U.S.
Presidential elections.
1939: There were 1,000 German Jews
aboard the SS Vulcania as it left Italy tonight bound for New York City.
1939: Today is the deadline for the
Jewish population of Teschen to leave the city.
1939: Today, playing on their home
field Penn St. led by their Team Captain Spike Alter defeated cross-state rival Pittsburg.
1939: It was announced today that
American “with relatives in the Upper Silesia and Danzig areas of Poland may
send me to them through the Federation of Polish Jews in America at 225 West 34th
Street” in New York City.
1939: In the Bronx, the former
Esther Gevarter and attorney Meyer Feldstein gave birth to Harvard and Oxford
educated economist Martin S. Feldstein the husband of economist Kathleen Foley
and the winner in 1977 of the John Bates Clark Medal.
1939: In New York, Dr. Samuel H. Goldensohn is scheduled to deliver a sermon
entitled “The Sacrifices of Thanksgiving” on Saturday morning at Congregation
Emanu-El.
1939: In New York, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a
sermon entitled “How Would Your Rewrite the Bible” on Saturday morning at
Temple Israel.
1939: In New York, Rabbi Nathan Stern is scheduled to deliver a sermon
entitled “I Have Everything” on Saturday morning at West End Synagogue.
1939: In Baltimore, MD, “more than a thousand delegates to the Junior
Hadassah convention passed by acclamation today a resolution condemning the
British White Paper on Palestine and calling upon the British Colonial
Secretary, ‘for the sake of the honor of Great Britain,’ to abandon it.”
1939: Mrs. David De Sola Pool of New York, national president of Senior
Hadassah, Miss Nell Ziff of New York, president of Junior Hadassah and Rabbi
Isadore Breslau, director of the American Zionist Bureau in Washington
addressed today’s session of the Junior Hadassah Convention.
1939: In New York Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon
entitled “Changing Our Name and Changing Our Character” on Saturday morning
Congregation Rodeph Sholom
1939: The government in Bucharest published “the result of an investigation
concerning the citizenship of the Jews” living in Rumania according to which
only 63.5% of the Jews living in the country were really citizens.
1939: “Mrs. Isidor Achron of 45 West Eighty-First Street” said today she had
received word from her aunt in London that her cousin Moijzesz Kusewitsky,
chief cantor Poland who had been reported killed by a German bomb during the
Nazi capture of Warsaw “had escaped with his family to Bucharest, Romania.
1940: The Patria, a steamer
carrying illegal Jewish immigrants sank in Haifa port killing 250 of the
passengers. The Patria was a French steamer chartered by the British to ship illegal
immigrants who had previously made it to Palestine to detainment camps on the
British island of Mauritius. This removal of the Jewish immigrants was part of
a British campaign to placate the Arabs.
The plan was in violation of the terms of the Mandate. The plant was also a violation of basic human
decency since the Jews were seeking a safe haven from the advancing Nazi
armies. However, nobody has ever accused
the British Foreign office or the Arab leaders of that time of having an
overabundance of human decency when it came to dealing with Jews. The explosion on board the Patria was caused
by the Haganah who were attempting to disable the ship and force the British to
let the refugees land. Almost two
thousand of the Patria’s human cargo would end up staying in Eretz Israel while
another similar number would end up in internment camps. This was but one small event in the combined
British-Arab attempt to strangle the Yishuv.
1941: Following the German conquest of Belgium, the Jews “set up their own
coordinating committee” which the Nazi Security Police replaced with the
Association of Jews in Belgium or AJB.
http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205777.pdf
1941: German Jews were shipped east to Kovno. This gave the SS new targets for their
killing raids. In one day the Einsatzkommando reported the deaths of 1,159 men,
1,600 women and175 children. Four days later they reported killing another 693
men, 1,155 women and152 children.
1942: In the evening and continuing into the next day, the SS and Norway’s
State Police began rounding up all woman and children. In all, 532 Jewish women and children in Norway are arrested and
deported to Auschwitz. Although more than 700 Norwegian Jews were eventually
sent to Auschwitz, about 930 found refuge in Sweden.
1942: Jews hiding in Piotrkow
(Poland) were offered a chance to stay in the ghetto legally if they came out
of hiding. Some did, and they were killed by Ukrainians upon doing so.
1943: World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at
the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
1943(27th of Cheshvan, 5704): One of two dates given for the
suicide of 65 year old actor Paul Otto in Berlin after his Jewish ancestry was
discovered.
1944: Crematorium II at Birkenau was
dismantled by the Nazis and its remains were buried in attempt to hide the evidence
of the Final Solution.
1944: Birthdate of actor, self-styled political
commentator and game show host Ben Stein
1944: According to some sources
Himmler was responsible for the issuance today of a “general
prohibition…concerning the further killing of the Jews” – a claim which would
seem to fly in the face of the facts that an untold number of Jews continued to
perish under the most brutal of conditions.
1944: Warner Brothers release
“Arsenic and Old Lace” comedy that includes murder and mental illness produced
by Jack Warner with a score by Max Steiner and a screenplay by Julius and
Philip G. Epstein.
1945: Jewish underground attacks Palestinian coast guard; blows up two coast
guard stations in retaliation for capture of Greek schooner Demetrios which
brought 200 illegal immigrants to Palestine.
1946(2nd of Kislev,
5707): Ninety-year old Henry Morgenthau, Sr. the United States Ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire during WW I whose grandchildren included historian Barbara
Tuchman and long-time NY DA Robert M. Morgenthau passed away today.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/morgenthau.html
1947: The House of Representatives
overwhelming vote to approve citations for contempt of Congress citations against
the Hollywood Ten for the “defiance” of the mis-named House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC). “Of the
Hollywood Ten, six - John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester
Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel Ornitz — were Jews.”
1947: Funeral services were held
today at “Jeffers Community Chapel in Brooklyn for Isidor L. Marrow the
president of the Harwood Manufacturing Company and director of the Israel Zion
Hospital” and the husband of Rebecca Marrow with whom he had six children ---Alfred,
Seymour, Ruth, Sylvia, Lucille and Blanche.
1947: The movie version of the novel
“It Always Rains on Sunday” produced by Michael Balcon was released today in
the United Kingdom.
1947: Following yesterday’s
overwhelming vote to cite the Hollywood Ten for Contempt of Congress, the
Hollywood studios blacklisted them. “Of the Hollywood Ten, six - John Howard
Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel
Ornitz — were Jews.” (As reported by
Jennifer Lipman)
1947: “The Gangster” based The
Low Company a 1937 novel written by Daniel Fuchs who wrote the screenplay
and with music by Louis Gruenberg was released today in the United States
today,
1948: Arabs announce they will not negotiate with Israel except through UN.
1948: UN mediator Ralph Bunche
recommends to Political Committee that UN try another strong appeal for Israel
and Arabs to get together. He urges Israel's admittance to UN.
1948: Israel's Provisional
Government Council announces it will hold first general elections on January
25. Persons aged 18 years or more will be eligible to vote.
1948: Birthdate of French born, American educated,
film director Jonathan Kaplan
1949: Israel turns down the UN Palestine Conciliation Committee's plan for an
international Jerusalem. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett says Jews favored UN
control of Jerusalem at one time. They oppose it now, because if they lose
Jerusalem they will have to rescue it from Arabs. They recommend that
Jerusalem's old city be internationalized. Modern Jerusalem's holy places will
be accessible to people of all faiths.
1959: Birthdate of Yaakov Edri, the
native of Morocco who made Aliyah in 1959, earned two degrees from the
University of Haifa and pursued a political career that including service as an
MK and in several ministerial posts.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that fear for the safety of 2,500,000
Jews behind the Iron Curtain was voiced in the Knesset by Foreign Minister
Moshe Sharett when he read the government¹s statement on the Prague trials of
former leading Communists, accused of Zionism and espionage, which he called “a
farce in the form of a trial.”
1952: Premiere of Hans Christian Andersen produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with a
script by Moss Hart and starring Danny Kaye.
1953: “The Fake” a “British crime film” with music by Matyas Seiber was
released today in the United Kingdom.
1953(18th of Kislev, 5714): Seventy-three-year-old University of Frankfurt
and University of Munich trained American ornithologist Elsie Margaret Binger
Naumburg, the New York City born daughter o Frances Newgass and Guvstav Binger who
as a member of the Bird Department of
the American Museum of Natural History
specialized in South American birds passed away today.
1955: “The Big Knife,” the film version of the 1949 play by Clifford Odets
and co-starring Shelly Winters was released in the United States today.
1955(10th of Kislev, 5716): Fifty year old U.S. Chess Champion and
International Master Herman Steiner passed away today.
1956: In Boston, Massachusetts, Senator John F. Kennedy addresses a dinner
honoring Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel's Foreign Minister.
1957: U.S. premiere of “Bernadine” directed by Henry
Levin with music by Lionel Newman.
1957: Today, CBS broadcast “Beyond This Place,” an
adaptation of the novel of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by
David Susskind and co-starring Shelly Winters.
1959: “Once Upon a Mattress” with Nathan Parnes as
company manager opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre.
1960: Today, CBS news broadcast “Harvest of Shame” a
ground-breaking documentary about migrant farm workers directed by Fred W.
Friendly.
1961: Negotiations between representatives of the Israeli
government and King Hassan of Morocco came to an end with an understanding that
would make it easier for the Jews to leave for Israel.
1963: Following the assassination of President Kennedy,
“the Jewish Community Council held a memorial service at Washington Hebrew
Congregation that included “a tribute delivered by Supreme Court Justice Arthur
Goldberg.”
1964: Funeral services were held today for Brooklynite
Pincus Joseph Greenberg, the husband of Sadie Greenberg with whom he had had
five children.
1965(1st of Kislev, 5726): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1965(1st of Kislev, 5726): Seventy-five-year-old
pianist “Dame Myra Hess who…became wartime a wartime hero though her
morale-raising recitals at London’s National Gallery” passed away today.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hess-dame-myra
http://www.picturethispost.com/meet-dame-myra-hess-musicians/
https://www.duopianistscontiguglia.com/images/bbc_myrahess.pdf
1966: In a special edition on the Kennedy Assassination,
Life magazine published frames of Abraham Zapruder’s homemade movie that is the
photographic of this national tragedy.
1967: After 463 performance the curtain came down on the
original Broadway production of “The Apple Tree,” a musical with lyrics by
Sheldon Harnick, produced by Stuart Ostrow, directed by Mike Nichols and
co-starring Larry Blyden.
1967: A version of “Suszanne” a song that Canadian born
Jewish musician Leon Cohen created from his platonic relationship with Suzzanne
Verdal which had “entered The Billboard Hot 100 chat in October “peaked at
number 56 today.
1968(3rd of Kislev, 5729): Seventy-old
Hartford, CT, native George Fine, the husband of Charlotte S Friedman Fine and
the father of Irving Gifford Fine passed away today after which he was buried
at the Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon, MA.
1969: Birthdate of Israeli actress and comedian Orna
Banai
1970: “A Promise at Dawn” the film version of the 1960
novel by Romain Gary who co-authored the script with Jules Dassin who also
directed and produced the movie and starring Assi Dayan, the son of Moshe
Dayan, was released in the United States today.
1973: Three Arab terrorists hijacked a KLM jumbo jet
headed for New Delhi and forced the pilot to land at Abu Dhabi.
1973(30th of Cheshvan, 5734): Forty-five year
old debonair actor Laurence Harvey whose on screen persona was so different
from what one would expect from Lithuanian born Jew named Hirsch Moses Skikne
passed away today.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002131/bio
1974(10th of Kislev, 5735):
Eighty-two-year-old Abraham J. Krakow the co-founder and past president of the
Hampton Shirt Company founder the Old Timers at the Henry Street Settlement who
was the husband of the former Etherl Bortman with whom he had two daughters
passed away today.
1974: Appeal in behalf of Soviet Jewish prisoners, signed by over 600
politicians, academics, musicians, writers, stage and film actors published in
The Times in London.
1974: About 200 Riga Jews organize pilgrimage to Rumbuli on the anniversary
of the liquidation of the Riga ghetto; several arrested.
1975: Suriname, a Dutch colony on the Northeast coast of South America gains
its independence from the Netherlands. According to The Virtual Jewish Library, “the Jewish community of Suriname is
one of the oldest in the Americas. Jews apparently arrived from Brazil (or
Holland) and settled in Suriname as early as 1639, and there is an extant ketubbah,
marriage contract, signed by a rabbi in 1643.” For part of its history, the Jewish community
was quite active and wealthy. By the end of the 20th century “200
Jews live in Suriname with the Nederlands Portugees Israelitische Gemeente
overseeing the community's activities. The two 18th century synagogues in the
capital, Paramaribo, have been restored. Neve Shalom is considered to be
Conservative, and both synaggoues hold weekly Shabbat services. The Ashkenazi
synagogue has a sandy floor, which is symbolic of the 40 years in the desert,
and was also supposed to have hidden the footsteps of the Conversos. Kosher
food is available in Suriname and there is a community newspaper, Sim Shalom
that is printed in Dutch.
For more information see www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Suriname.html.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
announced that his government had adopted the policy of promoting
communications with Israel in order to establish a comprehensive Middle Eastern
peace settlement. It was suggested that the proposed Israeli-Egyptian dialogue
would be held in the UN Sinai buffer zone.
1978: Prime Minister Menachem Begin met German Ambassador Klaus Schuetz.
This was the first time Begin had personally conferred with any German
representative. During the 1950’s Begin
had been a vocal opponent of accepting reparations from the Bonn government.
1979: Robert Strauss completed his service as Special Envoy for the Middle
East for President Carter
1979: Birthdate of Gerson Levi-Lazzaris,a Brazilian archaeologist,
descendent of Italo-Slovenian immigrants. Most of the Lazzaris are from Forno
di Zoldo, Veneto, from where most of them emigrated during the end of the XIXth
century, and also after the Second World War to Argentina, Australia, Brazil
and United States.
1979: As part of the Camp David Accords, Israel surrendered the Alma
oilfields
1981(28th of Cheshvan, 5742): Seventy-four-year-old actor Jack Albertson
passed away. Born to immigrant parents
in 1907, this Bay State native was a multi-talented entertainer. Some of his
more famous roles include a bit part as a postal worker in Miracle on 34th
Street, a starring role in the Broadway hit The Sunshine Boys and as the
cantankerous elderly Anglo in Chico and the Man.
1981: The Samuel Freeman House, designed by Rudolph Schindler was designated
a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument today
1983: Syria and Saudi
Arabia announced cease-fire in PLO civil war in Tripoli. There are a number of people who blame Israel
for all of the problems in the Middle East.
There is a growing chorus on the both the Left and the Right in America
who blame America’s problems in that region on United States support for
Israel. The Civil War in Lebanon is a
reminder that turmoil and violence exist in that region without regard to the
existence of Israel. In fact, the
argument can be made that Arab violence against Israel is merely another
manifestation of on-going Arab versus Arab conflicts.
1984(1st of Kislev, 5745): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1984(1st of Kislev, 5745): Sixty-five-year-old Caroline Margey
Massell Selig, the Atlanta, GA born daughter of Fannie Wolfson and Benjamin
Massell and the wife of Simon Stephen Selig passed away today after which she
was buried in the Westview Cemetery in Fulton County, GA
1987: Eighty-six-year-old Genevieve Brown, who had been marred to
All-American football player and Coach Ralph Horween (Ralph Horwitz) for 64 years
passed away today.
1987(4th of Kislev, 5748): Terrorist who “flew” into Israel
aboard hang gliders from Lebanon killed 6 Israeli soldiers and wounded six
others.
1987(4th of Kislev, 5748: Eighty-six-year-old Genevieve (Brown)
Horween who had been married to Ralph Horween, the All-American Harvard and NFL
football player and lawyer who founded the Horween Leather Company with his
brother, passed away today.
1987: U.S. premiere of “Three Men and a Baby” directed by Leonard Nimoy,
photographed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg, co-starring Steve Guttenberg
with music by Marvin Hamlisch.
1989(27th of Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety-four year old Professor Salo Wittmayer
Baron, who was recognized as one of the century's great historical scholars for
his sweeping multivolume history of the Jews passed away today. (As reported by
Peter Steinfels)
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/obituaries/salo-w-baron-94-scholar-of-jewish-history-dies.html
1990(8th of Kislev, 5751): Four Israelis were killed and 26 more
were wounded by an “Egyptian crossing the border.”
1990(8th of Kislev, 5751): Ninety-year-old clinical psychiatrist
Bettina Warburg Grimson, the graduate of Bryn Mawr and Cornell Medical School
who was the wife of the musician Samuel B. Grimson passed away today in
Manhattan.
1991: Birthdate of Mexican actor Joseph Sasson Entebi best known for his
role in the “children’s soap opera, “Amy, The Girl in the Blue Backpack.”
1992: The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into
the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993. “After the peaceful
division of Czechoslovakia in 1992, Slovakia gained its independence on January
1, 1993. Since Slovakia’s independence, such organizations as Maccabi and B’nai
B’rith have become active in the communities… During the immediate post-Cold
War period, the Czech Republic reopened diplomatic ties with Israel and Czech
President Vaclav Havel became the first leader from a previously Soviet
controlled Eastern European country to travel to Israel.”
1992: U.S. premiere of “Aladdin” an animated musical fantasy with Scott
Weinger providing the voice of “Aladdin” and music by Alan Menken.
1992: “The Bodyguard,” a “romantic thriller written and co-produced by
Lawrence Kasdan was released in the United States today.
1994: John Charles Walker, “an American agricultural scientist “and winner
of the Wolf Prize an Israeli award funded by Dr. Ricardo Wolf, the former Cuban
ambassador to Israel.
1995(2nd Kislev, 5756): Parashat Toldot
1997: This morning, “Mrs. Esther Weinstein, the president of the JCC (Jewish
Community Council of Cairo), together with Mr. Nabawi Sirag and Mr. Sasson
Somekh representing the Higher Council for Egyptian Antiquities Department and
the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo respectively, inaugurated, a library annex
situated inside the compound of Old Cairo's historic and recently restored Ben
Ezra Synagogue.”
1998(6th of Kislev, 5759): Ninety-two-year-old American Harvard educated philosopher
Nelson Goodman, the Sommerville born of son Ellen Woodbury and Henry Lewis
Goodman whose doctoral students included Israel Scheffler passed away today.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/
1998: “Very Bad Things” a very sick comedy directed by Peter Berg and
co-starring Jeremy Piven was released in the United States today.
1998: Funeral services were held to “at Sinai Memorial Chapel in San
Francisco, for fifty-six year Columbia graduate and Harvard Medical School
trained physician Robert S. Aaron, “a prominent psychiatrist” and “husband of
the late Mayre Rasmussen.”
1998: “A Bugs Life,” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, featuring Madeline Kahn,
with music by Randy Newman and edited by Lee Unkrich was released today in the
United States.
2000: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat spoke by telephone today
and agreed to maintain field-level security links that Israel had threatened to
sever a day earlier.”
2001: Peter Temes reviewed The Brigade: An Epic, Story of Vengeance,
Salvation and World by Howard Blum which described the role played this
Jewish unit in the British Army.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/books/books-in-brief-nonfiction-212652.html
2001: The New York Times featured
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest
including A Hero of Our Own: The
Story of Varian Fry by Sheila Isenberg, The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem
by Kanan Makiya, In The Shape of a Boar by Lawrence Norfolk and Memoirs:
A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science
and Politics by
Edward Teller with Judith L. Shoolery
2002(20th of Kislev, 5763): Seventy-six-year-old “Karel Reisz, a Czech
refugee who became a leading director of the British New Wave before making
"The French Lieutenant's Woman" and other Hollywood dramas” passed
away today. (As reported by Rick Lyman)
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/28/guardianobituaries.filmnews
2002: Theo Epstein was appointed
General Manager of the Boston Red Sox. In less than two years (2004) the Sox
would beat the hated Yankees for the American League Pennant and then win the
World Series thus breaking “the curse.”
The youthful Jewish executive would be hailed as part of a new
generation of baseball executives.
2002: In a review of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn’s Dvesti let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together) the
first of two volumes devoted to the history of Jews in Russia from the third
partition of Poland in 1795, when Russia, until then effectively without Jews,
suddenly acquired one million Jewish subjects, Daniel Pipes discusses the
Russian author’s attitude toward Jews and the role of Jews in Russian history.
2003: “The Bush administration,
in a rare rebuke to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has decided to rescind $289.5
million in American-backed loan guarantees for Israel as a punishment for
illegal construction activities in the West Bank, the Israeli Embassy
announced” today.
2004: Twenty-eight year old
Martin Wiese and three other neo-Nazis “have gone trial” for “planning to bomb
a new Jewish cultural in Munich” on November 9, 2003, a date which corresponded
to the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
2005: “The Ice Harvest” directed
by Harold Ramis which premiered at the Deauville American Film festival was
released in the United States today
2005: “One Six Right: The Romance
of Flying” a “film about the general aviation industry” starring Sydney Pollack
and Hal Fishman was released in the United States today.
2005: In a reminder that even in
the hell of the Holocaust, there were righteous people who did the right thing, Ruth Greiner, a Holocaust survivor and Joanna
Zalucka, her Polish protector were re-united.
2006: The Jerusalem Quartet takes
center stage marking the first time that Jerusalem Music Center musicians have
abandoned the safety of their lofty haven and descended to the level of the man
in the street by performing at the local YMCA auditorium.
2006: In an article entitled “A
Torah for the Next Generation” The
Washington Post reported on the efforts of members of Temple Emanuel in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, to write an entire Torah in time for the 150th
anniversary of the congregation which was founded in 1857.
2007: The Jerusalem
Symphony Orchestra with conductor, Daniel Kossov, soprano, Keren Hadar, tenor,
Yotam Cohen, and pianist, Yoni Fahri performs Humperdinck`s Hansel und Gretel: Vorspiel, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Mozart’s Symphony
in A Major, no. 29, performs a special benefit concert.
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of The
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Canadian born Jewish
commentator and social activist Naomi Klein.
2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of A
Pigeon and A Boy by Israeli author Meir Shalev, Young Stalin by
Simon Sebag Montefiore and Dough: A Memoir by Jewish author Mort Zacht
2008: In Manhattan, the 92nd
Street Y presents a program entitled, “Rabbi David Wolpe in Conversation with
Safran Foer” during which “Rabbi Wolpe, one of today’s leading voices of
contemporary religion, discusses his personal journey through life-threatening
illness, from the depths of darkness to the illuminating light of faith.
2008: David Korn-Brzoza’s
documentary “L'affaire Finaly” which examined the effort to have two Jewish
children who had been hidden by Catholics returned to their parents by David
Korn-Brzoza, was also broadcast by France 2, today.
2008: Israel closed its cargo crossings with Gaza today
because of Palestinians fired at least one rocket into Israel, just a day after
Israel had allowed vital humanitarian supplies to shipped into Gaza
2008: Premiere of “The Nutty Professor”
produced by Jerry Lewis, Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein and starring Jerry
Lewis.
2008(27th of Cheshvan, 5769):
Eighty-four-year-old Gerald Schoenfeld the
chairman of the powerful Shubert Organization, the largest and most important
theater owner on Broadway and in the United States passed away. (As reported by
Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/theater/26schoenfeld.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2009: At the Jerusalem Music
Center, the final performance "The Bald Soprano": a chamber opera by
Israel Sharon, based on a play by Eugène Ionesco.
2009: “The Jazz Baroness,” a
documentary about Nica Rothschild by her great-niece Hannah Rothschild airs on
HBO at 8 pm.
2009: In
Jerusalem, Beit Avi Chai presents "One Spring for
Me": The love story of Leah Goldberg.
Among the
poems that will be part of the performance are “Shir ha-haflaga,” “Ve-lo haya
beinenu ela zohar,” “Ani halakhti az,” “At telkhi ba-sadeh,” “He-halil,”
“Laila,” “Selihot,” “Ha-har ha-yarok,” and many more.
2010: In
Jerusalem, comedian David Kilimnick is scheduled to present his Thanksgiving
Special, ‘My Family Made Me in America'
2010: The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu,
today strongly denounced a Palestinian Authority paper that denies any Jewish
connection to the Western Wall, the iconic holy site and place of Jewish
worship in the Old City of Jerusalem, describing the report as “reprehensible
and scandalous.”
2011: Downtown Shabbat, a Carlebach-inspired service led
by Cantor Larry Paul and musician Robyn Helzner is scheduled to be held at the
Historic 6th & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.
2011: While
tens of thousands of protesters are amassing in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the
Sinai Peninsula is heating up.
2012(111th of
Kislev, 5773): Eighty-four-year-old“writer, composer, jazz fanatic and
sweetheart” Sol Weinstein passed away today.
http://www.oy-oy-7.com/sol.html
2012: The Jerusalem
College of Technology (JCT) is scheduled to bestow an honorary degree on
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird (As reported by the Canadian Jewish News)
2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors
and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Far From the Tree
Parents: Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, Iron
Curtain:
The Crushing of Eastern Europe,1944-1956
by Anne Applebaum and Saul Steinberg: A Biography by Deidre Bair.
2012: The Center for
Jewish History is scheduled to present “Family Stories at the Center: Young
Historians.”
2012: “Hava Nagila” is
scheduled to shown tonight at the close of the Jewish International Film
Festival in Australia.
2012: Syrian
fire pierced Israel for the second time in a day Sunday night, as bullets fired
from across the border struck next to a military vehicle near the border.
2012: More than
123,000 Likud members have the power today to shape the face of their party’s
list for the 19th Knesset, and political analysts say they will use it to move
the party further to the right.
2013
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the community-wide
Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service.
2013:
The Black Institute, in partnership with Bend the Arc, the Jewish Labor
Committee, and the Russian-Speaking Community Council of Manhattan and the
Bronx, Inc. (RCCMB), is scheduled to host a forum to commemorate the 50th
Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking in support of Jewish civil
rights in the Soviet Union.
2013:
“The Silver Line, the only free confidential telephone helpline offering
information, friendship and advice to older people in the United Kingdom” which
“was established by Dame Esther Rantzen” was “launched nationally” today.
2013(22nd
of Kislev, 5774): Ninety-eight-year-old “Alfred Feld, whose more than a eighty
years of service at Goldman Sachs made him the bank’s “longest serving
employee” passed away today. (As reported by Susan Craig)
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/alfred-feld-goldmans-longest-serving-employee-dies-at-98/
https://www.financial-planning.com/news/alfred-feld-goldman-sachss-longest-serving-worker-dies-at-98
2013:
“A remarkable archaeological find in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem
includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house. The
ancient sites were located in routine archaeological digs conducted ahead of a
planned expansion of Route 38, the main access road to Beit Shemesh. The
building is the oldest ever found in the area, and constitutes remarkable
“evidence of man’s transition to permanent dwellings,” researchers said today.”
(As reported by Hativ Rettig Gur)
2013:
“President Shimon Peres awarded his Presidential Medal of Distincition to
author Elie Wiesel today in New York City.” (As reported by JPost)
2014:
In Melbourne, “Life as a Rumor” and “The Dove Flyer” are scheduled to be shown
at the Jewish International Film Festival.
2014:
In a speech Finance Minister Yair Lapid delivered this moring to the Sderot
Conference for Society, he “slammed Likud saying the ruling party was ‘so
detached that they are leading to us to completely pointless elections.’”
2014:
Amir Benayoun, “a popular Israeli singer was disinvited today “from an upcoming
event at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem after he released a song many
saw as expressing racist sentiment against Arabs.” (As reported by Lazar
Berman)
2014:
“Israel received a short reprieve from a wet, stormy week this morning, with
more rain and wind expected throughout the rest of the week.” (As reported by
Lazar Berman)
2015:
The 92nd St Y is scheduled to host its annual Israeli Folk Dancing
Thanksgiving Marathon this evening.
2015:
The Israel Antiquities Authorities announced today that it had granted eight
year old Itai Halpern a certificate of honor for “discovering the head of a
statue from the First Temple period and giving this important archaeological
discovery to the Antiquities Authorities’ officials.
2015:
In Toronto, Jars Balan, an author, editor, and literary translator who has
published numerous scholarly and journalistic works on Ukrainian and
Ukrainian-Canadian themes delivered a lecture on “Rhea Clyman: A Forgotten
Canadian Witness to the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933.”
2015:
“An IDF soldier was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack at the Fawwar
junction near Hebron shortly before noon today.”
2016(24th
of Cheshvan, 5777): Ninety-one-year-old Sulzburg, Germany, native and State
University of New York at Buffalo graduate Erich Bloch who helped developed
supercomputers at IBM before serving as director of the National Science
Foundation passed away today.
https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0230.htm
2016:
“Maya Ben Zvi was hosting a wedding party at her popular restaurant, Rama’s
Kitchen, in the Jerusalem hills community of Nata” today when the decisions was
made to evacuate” just a short time before “the entire” went up in smoke – the
victim of wildfires that have been burning out of control since the first part
of the week.
2016:
Untold thousands of Israelis have been forced to flee in the face of raging
wildfires.
2016:
“The People vs. Fritz Bauer” and “Sand Storm” are scheduled to be shown at
Melbourne as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.
2016:
“The Lion” produced by Harvey Weinstein is scheduled to be released today in
the United States after having premiered at the Toronto International Film
Festival.
2016:
Sabra Éyal Hai is scheduled to perform at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg.
2017(7th
of Kislev, 5778): Parashat Va-yaytay;
2017:
The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host Agnes
Schwartz,
the native of Budapest, telling her story of how the “family maid, Julia
Balazas” hid her from the Nazis and protected her the effects of Allied
bombing.
2017:
“Let Yourself Go!” and “No Pay, Nudity” are scheduled to be shown at the 21st
UK International Jewish Film Festival.
2017:
Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to
contemplate Jewish books outside of our “comfort zone” including The Jews of
Arab Lands, Among the Righteous and In Ishmael’s House
continues today.
2018(17th of
Kislev, 5779): Ninety-five-year-old American
professor Randolph L. Braham, the author of The Politics of Genocide: The
Holocaust in Hungary and the foremost expert on the genocide of the Jews in
his home country of Hungary passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2018:
The New York Times features reviews
of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Trinity, Louisa Hall’s based on the life of J. Robert
Oppenheim, All-Of-A-Kind Family Hanukkah, a children’s book written
Emily Jenks and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Meet The Latkes by Alan
Silberberg and We Can Save Us All by Adam Nemett.
2018:
The Lior Milliger Quartet, featuring Lior Milliger , “an Israeli born Saxophone
player, improviser and composer and
graduate of Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in composition and
performance who has recorded and performed in Israel, Europe and New York City”
is scheduled to appear this evening at “Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3.”
2018:
This afternoon, “Chassida Shmella Ethopian Jewish Community,” in “collaboration
with Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host “the 9th Annual SIGD
Celebration” complete with “Ethiopian culinary specialties” and dancing in the
Ethiopian style.”
2018:
In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Back to Berlin.”
2018:
“Beit Avi Chai” is scheduled to host a lecture by Professors Haim Be’er and
Hananel Mack on “Key Figures in the Mishna and the Talmud: Abaye, Homa and
Rava.”
2018:
In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a walking tour of the V&A
that “profiles its history and architecture before focusing on highlights with
a Jewish association.
2018:
AJEX, the Jewish Military Association of the UK is scheduled to feature a
lecture by Paula Kitiching in which she “will explore the final year of the
First World War and the role that Anglo Jewry played as the guns stopped firing
and life returned to a peacetime footing.”
2019:
In Bristol, the Watershed Cinemas is scheduled to host a screening of “Solomon
and Gaenor” as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival.
2019(27th
of Cheshvan, 5780): Yahrzeit of Deborah D. Levin, wife of Joseph B. Levin with
whom she had three children – Judy, Mitchell and David.
2019:
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to cede the four ministerial positions
he holds, following his indictment by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in
three corruption cases.” (As reportedby Itamar Eichner and Kobi Nachshoni)
2019:
Political America is expected to respond to Michael Bloomberg’s unorthodox run
for the Democratic nomination for President which began over the weekend with a
23 million dollar media blitz.
2019:
In San Francisco, the Jewish Community Library is scheduled to present “The
Rediscovered Musical: Stempenyu” during which “a forgotten and never-staged
novella-musical written by Sholem Aleichem is discussed by Cantor Sharon
Bernstein and U. of Chicago Illinois professor Karen Underfill.”
2020:
In Ohio, Congregation Tikvah is scheduled to host via Zoom the Midweek Mishnah
Class with rabbi Ronald.
2020:
The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dr. Yosef Garfinkel lecturing on “The
Evidence of the Bible as History.”
2020:
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to host Cedric Cohen-Skalli
as he discusses his new book Don Isaac Abravanel: An Intellectual Biography
2020:
B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom a stud of the
Mishnah, “the New Scripture with Rabbi Alan Lettofsky.”
2020:
Israelis parents can begin making plans for the opening “high schools in green
and yellow virus areas” on November 29 following yesterday’s unanimous vote by
Israel’s coronavirus cabinet yesterday to allow for these reopening.
2021:
Thanksgiving
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-thanksgiving
https://reformjudaism.org/whats-jewish-about-thanksgiving-lots
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/do-jews-celebrate-thanksgiving/
2021:
Among those planning to celebrate Thanksgiving are “Joseph Gitler, the founder
and chairman of Leket Israel, that national food bank who moved to Israel 21
years ago, David Parson, the vice president and senior spokesman for the
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem who has lived in Israel for the last
24 years and forty-year old Amal Ras who “moved to the Palestinian Territories
a few years ago when her husband started a business venture in Ramallah. (As
reported by TOI)
2021:
Based on previously published reports, those in Israel celebrating Thanksgiving
in Israel will dining on Turkeys that weigh between nine and 13 pounds, which
by American standards are on the medium to small size. (TOI)
2021:
While some Americans are complaining about the cost of Turkey, they will not
get much sympathy from their American Jews who, according to the price
advertised by one major food chain online, are paying 2.99 as opposed to 1.99
per pound for traif Turkey.
2022:
The Eden-Tamir Center is scheduled to host a concert featuring “Outstanding
Pianists who were competition winners.
2022:
Tulane University, the home of the Tulane Jewish Studies program is scheduled
to try and win its tenth game of the season, which is an amazing fete.
2022(1st
of Kislev, 5783): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
2023(12th
of Kislev, 5784): Parashat Vayetse
For
more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2023:
The Eden-Tamir is scheduled to host Flute Sounds in Ein Kerem: When Classic Meets
Jazz which is a crossover program which will be performed under the
instructions of the Home Front Command.
2023:
As November 25 begins in Israel, in an example of the reverse of the old adage
that crime does not pay, Hamas enjoys a ceasefire and 39 “terror convicts” in
exchange for the release of 13 women and children while the rest of the Hamas held hostages begin day 50 in captivity.
(Editor’s
note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just
providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time)
