This Day, April 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
April 16
1457 BCE: Egyptian
forces under Thutmose III defeated a group of rebellious Canaanite Vassal
States at the Battle of Megiddo. This would have taken place while the
Israelites were slaves in Egypt. The strategic position of Megiddo would make
it the site of many battles including one between Egypt and the Kingdom of
Judah in 609 BCE and the British and the Turks in 1918. This is the same
Megiddo where Solomon kept horses and chariots, and which is thought to be the
site of the mythic Battle of Armageddon.
537 BCE (1st of Iyar,
3223): According to the Book of Ezra, the foundation of the Second Temple was
laid on this date.
69: Otho, Roman Emperor, commits suicide ending his short-lived reign. Otho was the second of the four men to hold the position of Emperor in the Year of the Four Emperors. According to some, it was the instability that Otho and his compatriots brought to the Empire that led to Titus destroying the Temple instead of merely settling for the defeat and humiliation of the Jews of Judea.
73: According to some calculations this is the day that Masada fell to the Romans after several months of siege, ending this Jewish Revolt against Rome. Of course, this was not the final revolt.
778:
Birthdate of King Louis I or Louis the Pious France. Louis continued the
favorable policies towards the Jews adopted by his father, Charlemagne.
Although considered to be a weak ruler (who wouldn’t have been if had to follow
Charlemagne) and quite pious, he protected his Jewish subjects from the clergy
and the nobles. He continued to allow
them settle in any part of his dominion and out of sympathy for his Jewish
subjects, changed the Market Day from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday.
1158: In Genoa, the
name of a Jewish trader, Jusuphus Judeos, appeared for the first time on an
official deed drawn up “from the public notary Giovanni Scriba.
1198: Fredrick I. the
Duke of Austria who employed a Jew named “Schlom” as his Munzmeister or Master
of the Mint, and who had been a part of the “German Crusade” that began in 1197
“fell ill and died today while returning from Palestine to Acre.”
1203(26th of
Nisan, 4963): “German synagogal poet” Menahem Ben Jacob Ben Solomon whose
great-grandfather Simson, was living in Worms at the time of the First Crusade
and was surnamed "Ha-Darshan," passed away at Worms today.
1319:
Birthdate of King John II of France.
During the Hundred Years War, John was captured by the English and held
for ransom. Desperate for funds, John’s
son who was serving as Regent during his father’s imprisonment negotiated a
deal with Manessier de Vesoul that would allow Jews to return to France in
return for their financial support of the impoverished kingdom. Once John was ransomed, he gave into pressure
and reneged on some of his son’s promises.
1520: “The
Revolt of the Comuneros,” an uprising by the citizens of Castile against the
rule of Charles I who continued to exclude Jews from Spain and supported the
Inquisition began today.
1581: Today in
Tomar the Portuguese Cortes (feudal parliament) acclaimed the King of Spain
Felipe II, “who was a symbol of ‘Tyranny’ in Spinoza’s Political Writings” and
who expelled the Jews from Milan” as Portugal's Filipe I as part of the Iberian
Union.
1592: The Maharal
“set off for the holy community of Poznań and there for the second time became
head of the yeshiva and head of the rabbinical courts of all the Diaspora of
Poland.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/maharal-of-prague-joanna-weinberg
1641:
“Don Lope de Vara y Alarcon, alias Judah the Believer, appeared before the
Inquisition to repudiate a previous spurious defense which he had offered to
the tribunal against its charge of heresy.”
Don Lope was a Christian (not a Convserso) who converted to
Judaism. Eventually he would be burned
at the stake because he referred to recant and return to Christianity. (As
reported by Abraham Bloch)
1669(15th of Nisan):
Rabbi Jonah Teomim of Metz, France, author of Kikayon de-Yonah passed away
1681: A rescript issued
today “repeated that Jews were not to come into Denmark without a special
Geleitsbrief.”
1729(17th of
Nisan, 5489): Seventeenth and 18th century “German rabbi and
Talmudic author” Jacob Eliezer Braunschweig passed away today.
1741(30th of
Nisan, 5501): Abraham Spitz, “who purchased the freedom of Imprisoned Jews from
Buda” passed away today.
1744: The South
Carolina Gazette reported today that “on Sunday, the 8th instant the
Charles-Town, on of the Government’s Gallies having sailed over the Bar to
convoy a Sloop, met with a sudden hard Gale of Wind, oversent and sunk, 10 men
were drowned and among that was Mr. Hart the Jew.”
https://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/The_Jews_of_South_Carolina_B_A_Elzas_1905.pdf
1745: “The Jacobite
forces under Charles Edward Stuart” whose invasion had caused panic among many
of London’s financiers, except most notably Sampson Gideon” who provided the
government with money and support, were defeated today at the Battle of Culloden
which ended a major threat to the Hanovarian English monarchy.
1746: An
army commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, loyal to the British
government defeated Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart at the Battle of
Culloden. George Frideric composed “Judas Maccabaeus” a three-act oratorio “as
a compliment to the victorious Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.” The oratorio was based on the characters
known to all who have celebrated the holiday of Chanukah.
1753:
Two days before the first Pesach Seder, “The Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753”
“a bill which permitted “Jewish immigrants to England to become naturalized
citizens with receiving the Sacrament of the Lord”s Supper” and had been introduced by George Montagu-Dunk,
2nd Earl of Halifax” was passed today by the House of Lords.
1764(14th
of Nisan, 5524): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach celebrated that Abigail
Smith, who would gain fame as Abigail Adams wrote to her future husband and
second President of the United States, John Adams.
1767(17th
of Nisan,5527): Third Day of Pesach observed for the last time while Charles Towsend
was Prime Minister of England.
1774(5th
of Iyar, 5534): Parashat Tazria-Metzora read today for the last time before the
British officially closed the Port of Boston in retaliation for the Boston
Party.
1775(16th
of Nisan, 5535): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer
1775: In
New York City, Myer and Elkaleh Myers gave birth to Richmond tobacco dealer and
Revolutionary War Veteran Samuel Myers, the husband of Sarah Myers and Judith
Moses Myers.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/myers-samuel
1775: As
Jews munch on their matzah, in Boston, General Gage moved forward with plans to
“disarm and the rebels and to imprison the rebellion’s leaders” whom a spy had
told him yesterday were sending delegates “to other New England Colonies to see
if they would cooperate in raising a New England arm
1782: Eighty-two-year-old
Gulta bat Yehiel was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Road) Jewish
Cemetery.”
1783(14th
of Nisan, 5543): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach
1784:
Hendele Mozes Gankfort and Simon Simon, both of whom were natives of Holland
gave birth to Yeshayahu Simon.
1786(18th
of Nisan 5546): Fourth Day of Pesach
1786: In
Worcester, MA, Rachel Brittin and Josiah Lunn, both natives of Bucks County, PA
gave birth to Jesse Lunn.
1789(20th
of Nisan, 5549): Sixth Day of Pesach observed on the same day that George Washington
who was preparing to leave his home for his inauguration in New York wrote in
his diary, “About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life,
and to domestic felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and
painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York in
company with Mr. Charles Thompson, [sic] and Colonel Humphries, with the best
dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with
less hope of answering its expectations.”
1794(16th
of Nissan, 5554): Second Day of Pesach
1794:
One day after he had passed away, 75-year-old Barnet Davis was buried today at
the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.
1794:
Birthdate of Bobenhausen, Germany native Merle Baer who eventually settled in
Baltimore, MD, the husband of Jonas Friedenwald with whom she had five children
before marrying Moses Stern with whom she had one son, Bernard Stern.
1799: French
general Jean Baptiste Kleber defeated the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Mount
Tabor and drove them across the Jordan River thus preventing them from reaching
Acre where they could attack the main French force under the command of
Napoleon This
the same Mount Tabor that was the staging area for the armies of Deborah and
Barak, as they faced the assembly of Canaanites and their chariots arrayed
below them on the plain to the west. It
is also the same Mount Tabor where the Midianite kings killed the brothers of
the Judge named Gideon. Both episodes
are described in the Book of Judges.
1802(14th
of Nisan, 5562): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach1804: Establishment of
the London Board for Shechita.
1805(17th
of Nisan, 5565): Third Day of Pesach
1805:
Birthdate of Bavaria native Abraham Lowenthal, the husband of Mary Laupheimer
with whom he had eight children in Baltimore, MD.
1811(22nd
of Nisan, 5571): Eighth Day of Pesach
1813(16th
of Nisan, 5573): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer.
1815: “As
shown by the diary of Friedrich von Gentz, the secretary of the Congress of
Vienna,” beginning today, Carol August Bucholz, “a German Christian lawyer” who
had been sent to Vienna by the communities of Lubeck, Hambrug and Bremen “was
in constant communication with the von Gentz concerning the issue of Jewish
rights.
181730th of Nisan, 5577): Rosh Chodesh Iyar observed a year to the
day before the U.S. Senate ratified the Rush-Bagot Treaty which improved
relations between the United States and Canada.
1820: Isaac Dreyfus, the Alsace, France born son of Jacob Dreyfus
and his wife Gertrude “Julie” Dreyfus gave birth to Samuel Dreyfus
1823: In Berlin, Johan Konstantin Eisenstein and Helene Pollack
who had converted from Judaism to Christianity gave birth to mathematician Ferdinand
Gotthold Max Eisenstein.
1824(18th of Nisan, 5584): Fourth Day of Pesach
1824: London born Esther Nathan and John Nathan gave birth to
Elizabeth Nathan
1826: In The Hague, Leonardus Levy Abraham Verveer and Caroline
Elkan gave birth to Dutch painter and engraver Elchanan Verveer.
1835(17th of Nisan, 5595): Third Day of Pesach
1835: In Hungary, Deborah Klein, the daughter of Rosa and Joseph Desberg,
and her husband of Julius Klein gave birth to future Cleveland resident Josep
Desberg Klein, the husband of Rose Klein and the father of Dr. Alfred Klein.
1837: Two days after she had passed away, 64-year-old Phoebe
Abrahams was buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery” today.
1838(21st of Nisan, 5598): Seventh Day of Pesach
1842: Today, as part of the Creole case during which Judah P.
Benjamin represented the insurance companies and stated in his argument that
the “a slave…is a human being” who “has feelings, passion and intellect, the
Admiralty Court in Nassau “ordered the surviving mutineers to be released”
today.
1843(16th of Nisan, 5603): Second Day of Pesach; 1st
day of the Omer.
1843: In Germany, Elizabeth and Moses Keyser gave birth to Amelia
Keyser who became Amelia Stein when she married Daniel Stein.
1844(27th of Nisan, 5604): Seventy-one-year-old Abraham de Lyon
Abrahams, the New York City born son of Joseph Abrahams passed away today.
1844:
Birthdate of Nobel Prize winning author Anatole France. The non-Jewish France joined his friend Émile
Zola in the Dreyfus case and was the first to sign Zola's famous article J'Accuse,
condemning the false treason indictment of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer. At
a 1904 International Congress of Freethinkers at Paris, France said, "The
gods advance, but they always lag behind the thoughts of men.... The Christian
God was once a Jew. Now he is an anti-Semite."
1845:
Birthdate of Solomon Brachman who would die just eight days before what would
have been his 35th birthday.
1846(20th
of Nisan,5606): Sixth Day of Pesah observed on the same day that nine covered
wagons left Springfield, Illinois on the 2,500-mile journey to California, in
what would become one of the greatest tragedies in the history of westward
migration known as the tragedy of the Donner Party.
1848:
Edward Falcke married Ann Russell today.
1849:
“Le prophète”
(The Prophet), an opera in five acts by Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer was
first performed today by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier
1850(4th
of Iyar, 5610): Solomon Cohen the son of Isaac Cohen and Judith Lyon, who
served as an ensign during the War of 1812 and was the wife of Eleanor B.
Cohen, passed away today in Charlestown.
1850: In Shutesbury,
MA, Nathaniel and Harriet Adams gave birth to Herbert Baxter Adams, the Johns Hopkins
University who has contributed “valuable papers on the services of” Haim
Solomon, “the patriotic Jew.”
1851(14th of
Nisan 5611): Ta’anit Berchorot; Erev Pesach
1851: Jeanetta Mallan
and Kent native Joseph Davis gave birth to Samuel Davis.
1851: “B’nai Israel,
the ‘Netherdutch’ Congregation dedicated its “handsome new home” which was
located “at 63 Chrystie Street, on the lower East Side” this evening.
1852: In Pest, Hermina
and J. Samuel Oppenheim gave birth to Emil Oppenheim, the father of Margit
Oppenheim and Maria Oppenheim.
1852: In New York,
Johan Levy, a merchant and sea captain and Francis Phillips gave birth to Jonas
Levy the New York Congressman who was the nephew of Uriah Phillips Levy.
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000268
1855: In St. Louis,
over 400 hundred people attended that cornerstone laying ceremony for the first
synagogue constructed in St. Louis and the first synagogue built west of the
Mississippi.
1856: Today, thirty-five-year-old
Philadelphia born jewelry businessman Moses Aaron Dropsie who read law under
Benjamin Harris Brewster, the future attorney-general of the United States who
ha been “admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1851” was admitted to practice before
the Supreme Court of the United States.
1856: Emanuel Dreifuss,
the German born son of Araon and Breunia Dreifuss and his wife Friederika
Dreifuss gave birth to Samuel Dreifuss who passed away at the age of three.
1857(22nd of
Nisan, 5617): Eighth Day of Peach; Yizkor recited for the first time during the
Presidency of James Buchanan, Jr.
1858(2nd of
Iyar, 5618): Sixty-three-year-old Alois Isidor Jeitteles the Austrian physician
who co-founded the Jewish weekly Siona with his cousin Ignaz Jeitteles passed
away today.
1861(6th
of Iyar, 5621): One year old Lucy Esther Goetz passed away today after which
she was interred at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.
1861:
In London, Caroline Lazarus and Mark George Simmons, the London born some of
Ellen Jacobs and George Gabriel Simmons gave birth to Walter Simmons.
1862(16th
of Nisan, 5622): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer
1862:
Sixty-five-year-old Max Samuel Mayer, the son of the rabbi in his native
Fruendal who became a Lutheran in 1834, five years after he earned a law
degree, and eventually became a Professor at the University of Tubingen (a
position that was open to him because he was no longer a Jew) passed away
today.
1862:
Franziska Montefiore, the daughter of Salomon Bernard Sichel and Fanny Sichel
and Joseph Mayer Montefiore gave birth to Edward Mayer Montefiore
1862:
It was reported the Jewish
dealers had been present when the cattle market opened on Monday but were
absent the following day because it was Passover; a fact that caused a drop off
in market activity.
1864(10th
of Nisan, 5624): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol
1864:
Copies of “A History of the World” by Philip Smith are now available. The
second part of this volume presents the history of Egypt including the “history
of the Hebrew Theocracy and Monarchy from the exodus to the destruction of the
kingdoms or Israel and Judah, and the Babylonian Captivity of the Jewish
nation.” The work includes information
based on newly revealed discoveries about the area.
1864:
Today’s “Literary Gossip” column reported that a new edition of Reverend Henry
Hart Milman’s “History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the
Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire by Constantine” by Henry Hart Milman,
the noted English clergyman has been published.
This work is part of trilogy, the other two works of which are “History
of Latin Christianity” and “History of the Jews.” Milman published “History of
the Jews in 1829 was unique for its time since it tried to portray the Jews as
a historical people and “minimized the miraculous.” This approach, which he used in his later
works, made him the target of attacks from Biblical literalists among
others. This portrayal of the Jews
actually impeded the career of this Christian minister.
1865(20th
of 5625): As Jews observed the Sixth Day of Pesach, Union forces under James
Wilson defeated the Confederates at a battle on the Alabama-Georgia border
which was the last major conflict of the Civil War and John Wilkes Booth
continued his escape across southern Maryland.
1867:
In New York Eva Powell and Civil War veteran Andrew Powell gave birth to
Columbia graduate Henry M. Powell “who was a prominent tax lawyer for than
fifty years” and the husband of Hazel Felleman Powell with whom he raised one
daughter, Myrtle Powell Levinson.,
1867:
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild married Emma
Louise von Rothschild, a cousin from the Rothschild banking family of Germany
in Frankfurt with whom he had three children Lionel Walter, Evelina
Rothschild-Behrens and Nathaniel Charles.
1868(OS):
Birthdate of Berdyansk native Yuliy Dmitrievich Engel who gained fame as “composer,
teacher and organizer Joel Engel” who made Alyiah in 1924.
https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Engel_Yoel
https://promusicahebraica.org/the-musical-tradition/composers/joel-engel
1871:
Three days after she had passed away, 23-year-old Gertrude Salomons, “the
second daughter of Aaron Salomons” and the former Adelaide Cohen was buried
today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1871: All civic limitations imposed on Jews of the
German Empire were lifted. It was thought that this would bring medieval
anti-Semitism to a conclusion.
1871:
In “Hebrew Charity” published today provided a most positive report on the
various benevolent activities engaged in by the Jewish community to alleviate
the suffering of their less fortunate co-religionists. Last fall’s Hebrew Charity Fair raised enough
funds to provide over $100,000 for Mount Sinai Hospital and over $33,000 for
the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum.
The Hebrew Benevolent Fuel Association, the B’nai Brit, the Society of
B’nai Abraham and the Society of Kesha Shel Barsel (Order of the Golden Crown)
are among other community-wide organizations aiding the needy. This does not include Mt. Sinai Hospital
(formerly the Jews Hospital) which now serves Jews as well as the general
population or the various aid societies sponsored by the 30 synagogues and
temples located in the city.
1872(8th of
Nisan, 5632): Moritz Reichenheim, founder of the Orphan’s Home passed away
today in Berlin.
1873(19th of
Nisan, 5633): Fifth Day of Pesach
1874: Birthdate of
Ashland, Ohio, native Louis M. Cahn, the Harvard lawyer and “first executive director
of the Jewish Federation Charities of Chicago who was the brother of Tillman
Cahn and Mrs. Fanny C. Holzheimer.
1874: In Rondout, NY,
Julius and Jenny (Voss) Basch gave birth to German trained research engineer
David Basch who was employed by General Electric in Schenectady, NY, who
married Marian W. Willard in 1917 and the death of his first wife Ruby Garcia
Chapman.
1875: The Jewish
Chronicle reported on the death of Posen born English School master Leopold
Neumegen who passed away on April 8th
and whose school at Highgate attracted many students whose parents “who
worshipped at Westminster School” and whose students included : Sir George Jessel, Sir
B. S. Phillips, Professor Waley, Professor Sylvester, Sampson Lucas, and Sebag
Montefiore.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11477-neumegen-leopold
1876(22nd of Nisan,
5636): 8th day of Pesach; Yizkor for Passover is recited for the
last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant.
1877:
Esther W. Scherck, the New Orleans born daughter Cecilia and Joseph Hart Marks
and her husband Isaac Scherck gave birth to Ernestine Mau Maude Liberman, the
future resident of Memphis, TN and the wife of Mortimer G. Liberman.
1879:
Birthdate of New York native and Columbia trained cardiologist Dr. Alfred
Einstein Cohn, “an authority on the human heart and one of the first physicians
to make electrocardiograms” who was the husband of Ruther Walker Price Cohn.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/07/23/84736623.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1879(23rd
of Nisan, 5639): Leyser Lazarus who had been elected President of the Jewish
Theological Seminary of Breslau in 1875 following the death of Zecharais
Frankel passed away today.
1880:
Two days after she had passed away, 71 year old Rosetta Phillips, “the daughter
of Abraham and Sarah Phillips” was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish
Cemetery.”
1880: David Smith, a
Jewish speculator and cigar dealer who has been a long-time resident of Chicago
has disappeared, reportedly leaving behind “fraudulent debts in the amount of
nearly $5,000.” It is thought that he may have gone to be with his daughter who
lives in Australia.
1880:
It was reported that The Young Men’s Hebrew Association held its 6th
annual reception last night at the Chickering Hall in New York City.
1880:
It was reported today, that David Smith, a Jewish speculator and cigar dealer,
has disappeared in Chicago leaving behind him debts totaling $5, 000. Smith has
a daughter living in Australia and it is thought he may have to seek refuge
with her.
1881(17th
of Nisan, 5641): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat
1881:
In Toledo, OH, Sarah and Benjamin Bellman gave birth to grocery store owner Sam
Bellman, the husband o Miss Hilda Michael and “a prominent member of the B’nai
B’rith and the Federation of Jewish Charities.”
1881:
According to “The Jews In Germany” published today Prime Minister Bismarck and
the Crown Prince Frederick William are not sympathetic to the movement sweeping
parts of Germany aimed at limiting the number of and opportunities for Jews in
Germany.
1881:
Pogroms spread to villages surrounding Elizavetgrad (Russia) where anti-Semitic
violence had broken out during Easter observances.
1881:
In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle. This happened
at the same time that Beersheba, the first of seven agricultural colonies
established in Kansas was being started by 60 Jewish families from Russia. Wyatt Earp, one of Masterson’s best friends
married a Jewish woman named Josie. Gene
Barry, a Brooklyn born Jew, played the title role in a television series about
the western lawman called “Bat Masterson.”
1881:
In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment made the annual
distribution of financial aid to a variety of charitable institutions including
a payment of $1,440 to the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and $240 for the
Zion Aged Relief Association.
1881:
A review of “Buried Alive: Or Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia” reports
that the cast of characters includes a hypocritical “Jew who acts a pawnbroker
and money-lender to the other convicts” while observing his religious with a
great display of public piety. [The stereotype of the Jewish money lender
survived in Russian literature about Siberia only to be joined by another
stereotype – the Jewish revolutionary, be he communist, socialist or anarchist.
1882:
Jakob and Barbara/Babette Bondy gave birth to Antonie Wagner who died at Riga
in 1942 during the Holocaust.
1883: On the day after
his marriage to Pauline Moses, David Holtz endures a “violent lunatic” from his
wife.
1884(21st of
Nisan, 5664): Seventh Day of Pesach
1884: Thirty-four-year-old
German historian Ernst Bernheim married 22-year-old Amalie ("Emma")
Henriette Jessen
1885(1st of
Iyar, 5645): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1885: Birthdate of
Hungarian composer and music educator Leo Weiner.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Weiner
1885: In Rumania,
Hillel and Hannah Luttinger gave birth to Jaffa Agricultural College alum and
NYU and Bellevue Hospital Medical College training physician and bacteriologist
Paul Luttinger, the husband of Shirley Levey who was a lectured at the Sholem Aleichem
Volks Schule and a director of the Workmen’s Circle Sunday Schools.
1886: In Hamburg, the
former Mary-Magdalene Kohpeiss and Johannes Thalman give birth to decorated WW
I German war hero and Chairman of the German Communist Party Ernst Thalmann who
was one of the non-Jews murdered at Buchenwald.
1887(22nd of Nisan,
5647): 8th day of Pesach observed for the first time that Lord
Salisbury was serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1888: In Savannah, GA,
Zipporah Alice DeCastro Lazaron and Samuel Louis Lazaron gave birth to Morris
Samuel Lazaron, the graduate of HUC and longtime rabbi at the Baltimore Hebrew
Congregation which he finally left because of his strong anti-Zionist positions
who married Pauline S. Horkheimer in 1916 with whom he raised three children –
Clementine, Harold and Morris Lazaron
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lazaron-morris-samuel
1889(15th of Nisan,
5649): First day of Pesach
1889: Birthdate of
Silent Screen Star Charlie Chaplin. Many will consider the
Little Tramp as his greatest comedic triumph. Others will remember him
for The Great Dictator, "a talkie" that poked fun at
Hitler and Mussolini when the world was still having trouble standing up to the
Nazis and the Fascists. Born in England of Jewish parents, he was
forced to retreat to his native soil during the McCarthy Period. He
passed away on December 25, 1977. Interestingly, the lengthy obituary in
the New York Times makes no mention of Chaplin's ethnic origins.
1890:
It was reported today that Jesse Seligman was one of those be considered as the
Republican nominee in the upcoming mayoral race. It is felt that in addition to
drawing the “full Republican vote” he would also be able to attract a large
percentage of the Jewish vote.
1891(8th
of Nisan, 5651): Fifty-six-year-old Joseph H. Hepner, a Jewish immigrant from
Poland who came to the United States 8 years ago, took his own life at the
grocery store he has owned for the last three years on East Broadway.
1891:
Birthdate of Alfred Adler who was transported from Pilsen to Terezin in 1942 and
was later transported from Terezin to an “unknown place” where he was murdered.
1891:
Birthdate of Hartford, CT native George Fine, the husband of Charlotte S.
Friedman Fine and the father of composer Irving Gifford Fine.
https://www.irvingfinesoc.org/about\
1892(19th
of Nisan, 5652): Shabbat Shel Pesach observed for the last time during the
Presidency of Benjamin Harrison.
1893(30th
of Nisan, 5653): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1893:
At Temple Emanu-El, during his sermon which was a response to aggressive
attempts by Protestants to convert Jews, Rabbi Joseph Silverman “charged
corruption in the methods by which the Protestants are seeking to proselyte the
Jews” saying that “the Christian missionaries and the so-called ‘converted’
Jews are paid commissions for making converts and in order to make their
business brisk and produce a good showing they divide their commissions with
their ‘converts’.”
1893: The Reverend
Merle St. Croix Wright, pastor of the Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church delivered a
sermon condemning the Union League Club’s rejection of Theodor Seligman because
of his “race.”
1894: The doctors
reported today that four-year-old Jacob Green, the son of a Jewish peddler had
only suffered a broken collarbone when he fell from the fifth floor of his
tenement. Before he hit the ground, the boy landed on Morris Eisenberg
who was standing in front of the building. Despite great pain from what
turned out to be a broken shoulder, Eisenberg got the boy to the hospital where
he received prompt medical attention.
1895: The newly
incorporated Hebrew Infant Asylum of New York City is publicly committed to
provide care for Jewish orphans under the age of five. Among the trustees
are Jacob Fleishhauer, Minnie Frank, Jacob B. Seligman and Esther Wallenstein.
1895: In Kiev, “David
and Pessie (Burakowsky) Madison gave birth to Charles Allan Madison who in 1906
came to the United States where he earned a BA from Michigan and an MA from
Harvard while becoming a managing editor for publisher Henry Holt and Company
and raising one child with his wife Edith Hellman.
1895: Birthdate of
Proskuriv native Mischa Fishberg who gained fame as American violinist and
concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff.
http://pronetoviolins.blogspot.com/2012/08/mischa-mischakoff.html
1896:
Birthdate of Samuel Rosenstock, who gained fame as Tristan Tzara, poet,
playwright and founder of the Dada Movement.
He passed away in 1963.
1897(4th of
Nisan, 5657): Ta’anit Bechorot
1897: Two days after he
had passed away, Joshua Isaacs was buried today in the “Plashet Jewish
Cemetery” in London.
1897: The will of
Francis Danzig, the widow of Louis Danzig was filed for probate today.
1897: Fifty-nine-year-old
August Seligman passed away today at his home in New York City. A native
of Oppenheim, Germany, he came to the United States 45 years ago where he began
in the importing business before turning to the manufacture of corsets He was a
member of Temple Beth El and was active in Jewish fraternal
organizations.
1897:
Birthdate of John B Glubb the British officer who was the commander of Jordan's
Arab Legion. It was Glubb and those like him who trained the Jordanian
Army and made it in effective fighting force against the Israelis. The
Arab Legion was the only force to score a meaningful victory over the Jewish
fighters which left the Jordanians in control of the eastern section of
Jerusalem and what is now the West Bank. Nobody wanted to set up a
Palestinian State in the West Bank in those days.
1897(14th
of Nisan, 5657): The New York Times reported that “At sundown this
evening the Feast of Passover will begin, and will continue for seven days,
ending at sundown on April 22. The feast is celebrated generally by the Jews,
with services in the synagogues on the first and last days, and the evenings
preceding those days. The "matzoth," or unleavened bread, is used in
place of the usual bread during the week…Each family, however poor, manages to
live well by some means or other during the Passover week, the poorer ones
being assisted by others who are more fortunate.”
1898:
“Four days before the Spanish-American War was declared, Dr. Joseph M. Heller
who went to the Surgeon General of the Army and volunteered his services.
1899:
“Urge a Branch of a New Jewish Bank” published today reported that Richard J.H.
Gottheil of Columbia, Rabbi S.S. Wise and Rabbi Philip Jaches had addressed a
meeting in Brooklyn where it was proposed “to take action looking toward the
establishment of a permanent branching the United States of the New Jewish
Bank” which had recently been founded in London in an attempt
to further emigration to Palestine and to better the condition of the Jewish
nation.”
1900(17th
of Nisan, 5660): Third Day of Pesac
1900: Birthdate of Polly Adler Russia, author of A
House is not a Home. Long before “Sex and the City” was a television show,
this famous Madame was providing the real thing.
1901:
Secretary of State Hay informed Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon the Charge
d’Affairs at Constantinople had anticipated the request of Solomon Hirsch of
Portland and had already lodged a protest with the government of Turkey
concerning its new regulations that would prevent “any foreigner o the Jewish
faith” from “sojourning” in Palestine for “a period longer than three months.”
1902:
It was reported today that “Robert Hunter, head worker of the University
Settlement” will deliver a lecture on April 24 on “The Musical Genius of the
Jewish Immigrants” during a recital “at the home of Mrs. James Speyer.
1903(19th
of Nisan, 5663): Fifth Day of Pesach
1903:
During the so-called Melvin Bellis Case, as rumors of pogroms began to
circulate, the Russian Minister of Justice telegraphed the Kiev District
Prosecutor ordering him to personally investigate the cause of Andrei
Yustschinkski’s death.
1904(1st
of Iyar, 5664): Parashat Tazria-Metzora; Rosch Chodesh Iyar
1904:
“Boston Notes” which was published today included a review of The Neighbor
by Professor Nathan S. Shaler which “includes consideration of the two serous
presented to Americans by the presence of the Jews and the Negroes” and which
provides a “history of the hatred of the Jews” that “will astonish all who have
previously studied the question rather carefully.”
1905:
Peddlers on the east side planned to be out selling their wares today even
though it was Sunday. Sigmund Schwartz,
President of the East Side Peddlers Association had told them that Police
Commissioner McAdoo had given them permission to ignore the laws because of the
approaching celebration of Passover.
1905:
In “How Passover Will Be Observed on the East Side; The Beautiful Sentiment of
Opening the Door to the Poor with Which This Time-Honored Jewish Festival Is
Initiated at the Seder Table," published today it was reported that ‘Next Wednesday evening, the first night of
Passover, thousands of the Children of Israel on the great east side will sit
by their firesides in faith, hope, and contentment. From the dim haze of
antiquity hunted from shore to shore, they have at last found peace -- in this
country of glorious freedom, where they can at least worship their God in
peace, and where their Passover comes without menace of riot and bloodshed.”
1906:
Twenty Jewish butchers working in Harlem were found guilty of selling meat
after midnight on Saturday. The
magistrate hearing the case said that he was fining them reluctantly and wished
that “the legislature would repeal this absurd law.”
1907:
In “The Roumanian Revolt” published today A.H. Fromenson, the Secretary of the
Independent Order of B’nai B’rith said
that the Roumanian uprising was not, as the New York Times had reported
“essentially agrarian and only incidentally anti-Semitic” but was “from its
inception entirely anti-Semitic” and trace their beginnings to attacks last
December on attacks on a concert sponsored by the Jewish Ladies’ Society of
Bucharest and that authorities had only taken action when the anti-Semitic
looters, emboldened by the successes attacked the property of Gentile land
owners.”
1908(16th
of Nisan, 5668): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer is
counted for the last time during the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.
1909(25th
of Nisan, 5669): Sixty-three-year-old Alfred Lipman Levy, the Wellington, NZ
born son of Jane and Solomon Levy and the husband of Mary Ann Levy and Annie
Levy whose business varied and successful business interests including sitting
on the boards of the Wellington Gas Company and the Welling Trust Loan and
Investment Company passed away today.
1910:
“Former Director of the Police Department of the Russian Empire and Associate
Minister of the Interior, Alexander Lopukhin” who has been exiled to Siberia
wrote to Premier Stolypin “that many of the proclamations inciting the people
to riots and massacres of the Jews were printed within the walls of the police
department and were distributed by that department.
1911:
During what would become known as “The Case of Mendel Bellis,” the Russian
Minister of Justice ordered the Kiev District Prosecutor to personally
investigate the death of Andrei Yustschinski; an investigation that would
include a second autopsy conducted by two professors from the Kiev Medical
School.
1912:
The RMS Carpathia, carrying hundreds of the Titanic survivors including
journalist Edith Rosenbaum and Elizabeth and Martin Rothschild, the aunt and
uncle of Dorothy Parker, began making its way to New York.
1912:
“In Częstochowa, Poland, Rabbi Awigdor Szapiro of the Kosnitz Hasidic dynasty
and his if gave birth to Alta Fajge Szapiro who gained fame as Faige
Teitelbaum, the wife Rabbi Joel Teitelbam, the first rebbe of the Satmar
Community and who as the Satmar Rebbetzin gained a following of supporters who
stood in opposition to her husband's successor, the second Rebbe of Satmar,
Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum.”
1913(9th
of Nisan, 5673): Sixty-five-year-old
Leo Speyer, who was a member of the New York Stock Exchange for 25 years and
was a director of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Association “died suddenly
today in his apartment at the Savoy Hotel in New York.”
1913:
Twenty-nine-year-old Lt. J.G. Albert Morris Cohen was “appointed as an aid on
the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Atlantic Fleet today.
1913:
Mrs. I.J. Robin, the president of the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society and
Mrs. Ignatz J. Reis, the president of the Conference of Jewish Women’s
Organizations were among those who spoke at conference day arranged by the
Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society of Chicago.
1914:
In Lithuania, Rabbi Nathan Milikowsky and Sara Milikowsky gave birth to Matthew
Milikowsky
1914:
Sixty-seven-year-old German anti-Semite Herman Ahlwardt died today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/04/18/100087049.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/997-ahlwardt-hermann
1914:
According to Dr. Ben Wildauer, a friend of Leo M. Frank, Dan S. Lehon of the
Burns Detective Agency hired C.C. Tedder today “paying him $500 cash, $250 as
an advance on his salary and $250 for expenses” as part of plan to have the
detective agency look at the possibility that perjured evidence had been used
to convict Frank, the Jewish factory who was convicted of killing a Mary Phagan
in one of the worst orgies of anti-Semitism in the history of United States.
1915:
Birthdate of Coleman Jacoby, the native of Pittsburg, PA a comedy writer who created laughter for many
famous names including Fred Allen, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason and Art
Carney. He passed away at the age of 95
in 2010.
1916:
Abraham K. Cohen, Samuel Fleishman and Joseph Levinson presided over “the
dedication of the B’nai B’rith Building of the Independent Order of the B’nai
B’rith tonight at the new headquarters on Broadway where attendees heard
speeches by Marcus M. Marks, Otto Irving Wise, Abraham K. Cohen and Herman
Asher followed by “a prayer for peace delivered by Herbert S. Goldstein.
1916:
Among the contributions reported today by The Central Committee for the Relief
of Jews Suffering Through the War were $31 from Rabbi L.J.Haas and $32 from
people in Wharton, TX.
1916:
Jacob Schiff, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Dr. J.L. Magnes and Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan
were among the speakers when “the new quarters of the Teachers’ Institute of
the Jewish Theological Seminary on the fifth floor of the annex to the Hebrew
Technical Institute” were dedicated this afternoon.
1916:
“Jews in America” published today provided a review of the 23rd of
the American Jewish Historical Society’s series of Publications that deals “in
the main with the history of Jews of America” including William Vincent Byars
discussion of the papers of 18th century Philadelphia merchants
Bernard and Michael Gratz.
1916:
Birthdate of “Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the leader of one the world’s largest
Hasidic sects, the Viznitz Hasidim.” (As reported by Joseph Berger)
1916:
France and Britain divided up the Middle East in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
France was
assured of Syria and the Mosul, with English gaining control of Northern Arabia
and Central Mesopotamia. Pre-state Israel was divided with France controlling
the Galilee, Britain the Haifa area and the rest of the region to be under some
sort of undefined international control.
1917(24th
of Nisan, 5677): Edouard Gaspard Marcel Kahn, “chief of battalion” was killed
today during WW I.
1917:
Twenty-four-year-old philosopher Walter Benjamin married Dora Pollak today
after which they went to a sanatorium in Dachau for treatment of his sciatica.
1917:
The American Jewish Relief Committee received telegrams today from the brothers
of Utah Governor Simon Bamberger – J.E. Bamberger and Herman Bamberger, “who
control large mining interests” – promising to match the Governors’ pledge to
contribute an amount equal to 10 per cent of the contributions from Utah.
1917:
Reports received today in New York from Jerusalem claim that “fully 50 per cent
of the population of Palestine and Syria are facing death by starvation” and
that “the only chance for relief is the capture of Jerusalem and the seaport of
Jaffa by British forces” which would “enable the Allies to bring supplies from
Egypt.”
1917:
Herman H. Lehman, Treasurer of the Joint Distribution Committee announced that
the committee received $180,000 today.
1917:
In Berlin, Dr. Albert Salomon, a prominent surgeon and his wife gave birth to
Charlotte, the artist who was gassed at Auschwitz in 1943.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Salomon#/media/File:Charlotte_Salomon_-_JHM_4351.jpg
1918(4th
of Iyar, 5678): 2nd Lt. Cecil Shekury, a native of Singapore and was
attending school in England in 1914 when the war broke out and he enlisted in
the Army was killed today.
1918:
Four days after he had passed away, 23-year-old Pvt. Charles Alexander Cassell,
a member of the Norfolk Yeomanry and the son of Solomon Cassell and Bloomer
Isaacs was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1918:
Dr. Hyman Gerson Enelow completed his services “as a member of the Overseas
Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board.”
1918:
“A protest against alleged ‘continuous unjust, unfair, and discriminatory
treatment’ of Jews in the war was with Secretary Baker today by Louis Marshall
of New York, head of the American Jewish Committee” including the complaint
“that not a single among the large number with the expeditionary forces in
France has been commissioned from the ranks” although many such commissions
have been awarded to others.
1919(16th
of Nisan, 5679): Second Day of Pesach
1919:
Furloughs granted to members of the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) so they
could observe Passover came to an end at midnight.
1920: A
union was founded to strengthen and develop friendly relations between Moroccan
Jewry and Spain.
1920:
The Twelfth Conference of the Bund continue to meet for a fifth day in Gomel.
1920:
Birthdate of Richard Nathaniel Goldman, a native of San Francisco who founded
Goldman Insurance Services for co-founded “the Goldman Environmental Prize,
which is given to six grass-roots environmental activists every year.” He pass away in 2010 at the age of 90.
1921(8th
of Nisan, 5681):Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol
1921:
Penultimate day of the conference of Reform Jews that has been meeting in
Washington, DC.
1922: Po'al ha-Mizrachi, the religious Zionist
labor movement, founded. Unlike many other Orthodox, the followers of
Mizrachi were ardent Zionist from the earliest days. They played a vital
role in the creation of Jewish Palestine under the mandate and the creation of
the state of Israel in 1948.
1922:
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Treaty of Rapallo which was effectively a
peace treaty between these two parties from WW I. The Russian and German empires that had been
warring parties had been replaced by these two national entities. The treaty drew the two “pariah states” of
Europe into an embrace that included training of the German Army in the Soviet
Union. Yes, in one of those great
ironies of history, Stalin would provide the training for the Wermacht that
would invade his country; an invasion that resulted in the death of millions of
Jews.
1923(30th
of Nisan, 5683): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1923:
“Dr. Fouad Bey, former Minister of the Interior and Social Welfare of Turkey
and a member of the National Turkish Assembly was the guest of honor at a
dinner at the Hotel McAlpin tonight given by the Sephardic and Ottoman
Societies of New York” whose members are “Jews of Turkish birth” living in New
York City.
1924:
While addressing a crowd of five thousand people tonight at Carnegie Hall,
William D. Guthrie “said there was no nobler page in American history than that
written by the Jews who had contributed more than $60,000,000 since the
armistice for the relief of suffering in the Near East” and “he pointed out
that much of this money had been spent on Christians and he wished Christians
had set as good an example as had the Jews.”
1925(22nd
of Nisan, 5685): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor
1925:
Jews who form the bulk of the population of Ryki, village in the vicinity of
Berlin, suffered the most when fire almost completely destroyed the village
today.
1926(2nd
of Iyar, 5686): Fifty-nine-year-old Daniel Lucien Espir the Paris born son of London
wine merchant Elie Camille Espir and Sophie Nymarck and younger brother of Ferdinand
Espir passed way today in Paris.
1926:
“Judge Mack and Rabbi Landman Debate Zionism” published today described the
presentation of the different opinions about Palestine held by Judge Julian W.
Mark and Rabbi Isaac Landman.
1926:
“The Wooing of Eve” a silent film written by Robert Liebmann was released in
Germany today.
1927(14th
of Nisan, 5687): Shabbat HaGadol; erev Pesach
1927:
Judge Otto A Rosalsky, the Vice President of the Jewish Educational Association
which is seeking to raise a half million dollars “to provide religious training
for the Jewish youth of New York City” said today “that the world more than
ever today must turn to the task of providing religious training for the young”
a sentiment echoed by Jonah J. Goldstein, the Chairman of the campaign who said
that “giving our youth a Jewish education is giving them a heritage that will
proved more valuable than merely earthly possessions.”
1927:
The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society is scheduled to hold a Seder at
425 Lafayette Street which will be attended by “the fifteen members of the
Hakoah soccer team of Vienna.”
1927:
The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society is scheduled to hold a Seder on
Ellis Island for approximately “150 immigrants temporarily detained there” as
well as for an untold “number of deportees.
1927:
Temple Anshe Chesed began its last Passover observance at its current location
at Seventh Avenue and 114th Street before moving into the facility
“being erected at West End Avenue and 100th Street.
1927:
Seventy-six-year-old Florence Earle Coates who “was among "artists and
intellectuals" who spoke out against the wrongful imprisonment and would
pen four poems relating to the affair: "Dreyfus" (1898),
"Dreyfus" (1899), "Picquart" (1902) and "Le Grand
Salut" (1906)” passed away today. (As reported by Sonja N. Bohm)
1927: Nathan
Straus, New York philanthropist, arrived on the White Star liner Adriatic after
a visit to Palestine. He said that he found steady progress there, in spite of
the crisis in Tel Aviv, which he said was temporary. Straus praised Lord
Plumer, the High Commissioner and reported that “friction between Arabs and
Jews was on the decline.
1928(26th
of Nisan, 5688): Seventy-seven year old Pavel Axelrod, the Jewish Menshevik
born Pinkhus Borukh, died in exile today in Berline.
http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSaxelrod.htm
1928:
In Brooklyn, Samuel and Lily (Lazell) Sylbert gave birth to “Richard
"Dick" Sylbert, a two-time Academy Award-winning production designer.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/27/local/me-sylbert27
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/movies/paul-sylbert-dead-oscar-winner-heaven-can-wait.html?_r=0
1929:
Violinist Efrem Zimbalist is scheduled to perform this on radio station WOR.
1930:
In Jamaica, Queens, NY, store owner Louis Herman and “the former Yetta Scheer,
a seamstress” gave birth to Dolphin researcher Louis Herman.
1930:
Birthdate of Herbert Jay Solomon who gained fame as Herbie Mann, a leading
American jazz flutist.
1931(29th
of Nisan, 5691): Rachel Bluwstein Sela passed away at the age of 40. She “was a
Hebrew poet who immigrated to Palestine in 1909 who was known by her first
name, Rachel, (רחל) or as Rachel the poetess (רחל המשוררת). Born in Saratov[ in Russia in 1890, she was “the eleventh
daughter of Isser-Leib and Sophia Bluwstein, and granddaughter of the rabbi of
the Jewish community in Kiev. During her childhood, her family moved to
Poltava, Ukraine, where she attended a Russian-speaking Jewish school and, later,
a secular high school. She began writing poetry at the age of 15. When she was
17, she moved to Kiev and began studying painting. At the age of 19, Rachel
visited Eretz Israel with her sister en route to Italy, where they were
planning to study art and philosophy. They decided to stay on as Zionist
pioneers. They settled in Rehovot and worked in the orchards. Later, Rachel
moved to Kvutzat Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where she
studied and worked in a women's agricultural school. At Kinneret, she met
Zionist leader A. D. Gordon who was to be a great influence on her life, and to
whom she dedicated her first Hebrew poem. During this time, she also met and
had a romantic relationship with Zalman Rubshov - object of many of her love
poems who later became known as Zalman Shazar and was the third president of
Israel. In 1913, on the advice of A. D. Gordon, she journeyed to Toulouse,
France to study agronomy and drawing. When World War I broke out, unable to
return to Palestine, she returned instead to Russia where she taught Jewish
refugee children. It may have been at this point in her life that she
contracted tuberculosis.
After
the end of the war in 1919 she returned to Palestine on board the ship Ruslan
and for a while joined the small agricultural kibbutz Degania, a settlement
neighboring her previous home at Kinneret. However, shortly after her arrival
she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, then an incurable disease. Now unable to
work with children for fear of contagion, she was expelled from Degania and
left to fend for herself. In 1925 she lived briefly in a small white house in
the courtyard of No. 64 Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem (courtyard of the
William Holman Hunt House). She spent the rest of her life traveling and living
in Tel Aviv, and finally settled in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in
Gedera…. She is buried in the Kinneret cemetery in a grave overlooking the Sea
of Galilee, following her wishes as expressed in her poem ‘If Fate Decrees.’
Alongside her are buried many of the socialist ideologues and pioneers of the
second and third waves of immigration. In recent years, Naomi Shemer was buried
near Rachel, according to Shemer's wish. Rachel began writing in Russian as a
youth, but the majority of her work was written in Hebrew. Most of her poems
were published on a weekly basis in the Hebrew newspaper Davar, and quickly
became popular with the Jewish community in the Palestine and later, in the
State of Israel. The majority of her poetry is set in the pastoral countryside
of Eretz Israel. Many of her poems echo her feelings of longing and loss, a
result of her inability to realize her aspirations in life. In several poems
she mourns the fact that she will never have a child of her own. Lyrical,
exceedingly musical and characterized by its simple language and deep feeling,
her poetry deals with fate, her own difficult life, and death. Her love poems emphasize
the feelings of loneliness, distance, and longing for the beloved; her lighter
poetry is ironic, often comic. Her writing was influenced by French imagism,
Biblical stories, and the literature of the Second Aliyah pioneers. In one poem
she identifies with Michal, wife of David. Rachel also wrote a one-act comic
play ‘Mental Satisfaction,’ which was performed but not published in her
lifetime. This ironic vignette of pioneer life was recently rediscovered and
published in a literary journal. Anthologies
of Rachel's poetry remain bestsellers to this day. Many of her poems were set
to music, both during her lifetime and afterwards, and are widely sung by
Israeli singers. Her poems are included in the mandatory curriculum in Israeli
schools. A selection of her poetry was translated to English and published
under the title ‘Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel,’ by the London
publisher Menard. In his foreword to the 1994 edition of ‘Flowers of Perhaps,’
the acclaimed Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai stated: ‘What may be most remarkable
about the poetry of Ra'hel, a superb lyric poet, is that it has remained fresh
in its simplicity and inspiration for more than seventy years.’ In 2011, Rachel
was chosen as one of four great Israeli poets whose portraits would be on
Israeli currency (the other three being Leah Goldberg, Shaul Tchernichovsky,
and Nathan Alterman).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Bluwstein#/media/File:His_06big_-_Degania.jpg
1931:
Birthdate of Ruth Bachravochova who was murdered eleven years later at Izbica.
1932:
In Karlovac, which at the time was part of Yugoslavia, Iva (Ischak) Goldstein
and his wife gave birth to Danko Goldstein who changed his name to Daniel Ivin
when he moved to Israel but later returned to his native Croatia where he
pursued a career as a writer and human rights activist.
1933(
20th of Nisan, 5693): Sixth Day of Pesach
1933:
“The newspaper El Sol, which is closed to the government, asks the Spanish
Republic, in a front-page editorial” on April 16 “issued a decree annulling the
order signed in 1492 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella order the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain.”
1933:
Based on a report “that Professor Albert Einstein has accepted a chair at the
College de France,” “it is now demanded that the thirteen Jewish and three
‘Marxist’ university professors who were ousted on April 7 should be forbidden
to leave” Germany “and take positions abroad.”
1934(1st
of Iyar, 5694): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1934:
“Kashruth Movement” published today described the efforts of Rabbi Solomon
Schienfeld, a leading Orthodox rabbi in Milwaukee to make sure that Jews
confined to the Muirdale Tuberculosis
Sanitarium “and other Milwaukee county public institutions” will have
“kosher foods on all Jewish holidays.
1934:
“Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson of Congregation Emanu-El and Mrs. Goldenson” are
scheduled to “be honored at a luncheon to be given under the auspices of the
executive board of Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations at the Harmonie
Club…”
1935:
As the Red Sox open their A.L. season, Moe Berg is the team’s third-string
catcher thanks to the efforts of Joe Cronin who signed after the Jewish
“odd-ball” had been released by the Cleveland Indians.
1935:
Birthdate of Steffi Sidney-Splaver, the daughter of famed Hollywood columnist
Sidney Skolsky, who as a young actress appeared in and then gave up acting to
become a Hollywood writer, publicist and producer. She passed away in 2010 at the age of 74.
1935:
Birthdate of American “character actor” Al Israel, one of those people you see
in an untold number of movies such as “Carlito’s Way” and “Scarface” but whose
name you never know.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=149420890
1936:
“Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington” the comedy for which Robert Riskin wrote the
Oscar winning script was released in the United States today.
1936:
In Bucharest, Rumania, “the Liberal Party combined with the National Peasant
Party” today demanded “that the government put an end to the activities of the
Iron Gaurds” and others that are part of “the extreme right wing anti-Semitic
Fascist movement.”
1936:
In the Netherlands, “Het Volk, the leading Labor newspaper” said the German
“consulate distributed copies of a Nazi publication, ‘Germans Abroad’ which
contains an article that is an insult to Amsterdam’s Jewish population.”
1936:
Dr. Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Rabbi Lazar Schonfeld soliciting his
support for Yeshiva College.
http://yu.edu/libraries/digital_library/einstein/33.html
1937:
When a caretaker opened the gates at a Jewish cemetery this morning he “found
sixteen tombstones overturned” and damage to the cemetery wall in several
places which was “believed to have been” done by the Nazis.
1938(15th of Nisan, 5698):
First Day of Pesach
1938:
On the first day of Pesach, Rabbi David de Sola Pool at the Spanish and
Portuguese Synagogue said " The Passover message of freedom is a ringing
call to- man to struggle to preserve his civic liberty and his freedom of thought,
speech and conscience." Speaking to a crowd o 2,500 at Temple Emanu-El,
Rabbi Samuel Goldenson stressed the necessity for Jews “to reaffirm the
importance of liberty and freedom.” He
also drew a comparison between the plight of the Jews of Egypt and plight of
Jews living in totalitarian states in Europe.
1938:
Arturo Toscanini conducted the Palestine Orchestra in Tel Aviv. “The program
was a repetition of that given in Haifa earlier this week, but tonight’s
performance was even more brilliant because the better acoustics at the Tel
Aviv Hall.”
1939:
Birthdate of New York native and NYU alum Harvey Golub, “a senior partner with
McKinsey and Company” and the CEO of American Express.
1939: Stalin requested the creation of a British,
French & Russian anti-Nazi pact. Stalin was not blind to Hitler's
ambition. He sought an alliance with the West. However, London and Paris
dithered because they were concerned about joining forces with the Communist
dictator. Fearing isolation and having to fight the Germans alone,
Stalin negotiated a non-aggression pact with Hitler which freed the Nazis to
attack Poland and then turn against the West. By the time the Germans
attacked the Russians, a new government was in power in London.
When Churchill was asked if he would aid Stalin, Churchill said that he
would help the Devil if he were fighting the Nazis.
1939:
Sensing opportunities with the Soviet Union, Mussolini welcomes the notion of a
pact of solidarity with that country.
1940(18th
of Nisan, 5700): Sixty-nine year old Esther Greenebaum, the daughter of Adolph
and Johanna Loeb and the wife of Henry Naphtali Greenebaum with whom she had
four children – Charlotte, Sarah, Michael and Henry – passed away today in
Chicago.
1940:
Before going to Griffith Stadium to watch the opening game of the baseball
stadium, President Roosevelt met this morning with Treasury Secretary Henry
Morgenthau, Jr.
1940:
On opening day at Griffith Stadium, the home of the Washington Senators,
President Roosevelt accidently smashed the camera of a Jewish photographer.
Irving
Schlossenberg was a photographer with the Washington Post. After FDR had thrown the ceremonial “first
pitch,” Schlossenberg convinced him to do it a second time so that he could get
a better picture. Unfortunately,
Roosevelt’s second pitch went wild and smashed Schlossenberg’s camera. Schlossenberg went on to serve as a combat
photographer with the United States Marine Corps hitting the beach in the first
wave at four different landings – a fete that help to earn him four bronze
stars.
1941:
Germans invade Sarajevo, and with the help of Muslims (of whom they had
incited) looted and destroyed the main Sephardic synagogue. All Jews
were ordered to surrender their radios.
1941: German troops and local Muslims looted
and destroyed the main synagogue in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
1941(19th of Nisan, 5701): Aron Beckermann
became the first Jew to be shot by the Germans for resistance in France.
1942: SS officials in the Ukraine informed
authorities in Berlin that the Crimea is judenrein (purged of Jews).
1943:
Today “Rabbis Solomon Foster, Louis M. Levitsky Joachim Prinz and David H.
Wise, all of whom head large congregations” issued statements today “trhough
Major Howard J Lepper, area director of the War Manpower Commission” urging
Jews workings in New Jersey war production plants to say at work during
Passover when Jews normally do not work during the first two and last two days
of the holiday observance.
1943:
“Rabbi Irving Miller, Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress who has
arrived in London from New York, said today that the time had come for an
earnest and effective effort to save the Jews in Europe from total destruction.”
1944:
After forcing the Jews to register, the Hungarian government confiscated the
property of the Jewish population.
1944:
The Parczew partisans, fighters in irregular military groups participating in
the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators
during World War II “participated in the take over the city of Parczew today.
http://chelm.freeyellow.com/partisans.html
1944:
In impressive
services held this afternoon at the Central Synagogue, Lexington Avenue at
Fifty-Fifth Street, three American Jewish leaders including S.W. Baron, J.N.
Rosenberg and W. Rosenwald received the honorary degree of Doctor of Hebrew
Letters from Hebrew Union College
1945:
“Representatives of a non-Jewish group head by the Bishop of Wellington, NZ,
the Right Reverend Herbert S. Barbe Holland, issued a statement today urging
“the opening of Palestine to Jewish victims of oppression.”
1945:
“Foe Killed Manila Jews” published today described how at least seventy-five
Jews were killed in February during the Battle of Manila including fifty-five-year-old
“Alexander M. Bachrach, the owner of the Manila Motors and Hixbar Mining
Companies who was bayoneted at his home.”
1945:
“Summer Welles, former Undersecretary of State, called today for the
establishment by the coming international organization of an international
trusteeship over Palestine to replace the present British mandate.”
1946(15th
of Nisan, 5706): On the first day of Pesach, American
journalist Mrs.
Margaret Ashton Stimson Lindsley entered Acre Prison so that she could
interview imprisoned members of the Irgun.
The British had turned down her requests to review the prisoners, so
Mrs. Lindsley took advantage of the British practice of allowing family members
to visit prisoners on Pesach. Mrs.
Lindsley pretended to be a member of the first family of Revisionist Zionism,
the Jabotinskys, so she could join them on a visit to jail. There she interviewed Eri Jabotinsky, son of
the Revisionist Zionist leader, Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. a leader of the
Irgun's "aliya bet" underground railroad, which smuggled tens of
thousands of Jews from Europe to Palestine in defiance of British immigration
restrictions and his 17-year-old cousin Peleg Tamir, who was also an Irgun activist.
1946:
Birthdate of Little Rock, AR native Margot Adler, the granddaughter of Alfred
Adler, the author whose writing on Neopaganism showed how far she had moved
from her from the faith of her grandfather.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/business/margot-adler-68-journalist-and-priestess-dies.html?_r=1
1947: Bernard Baruch the famed Jewish financier and
unofficial advisor to several Presidents reportedly coined the term “cold war”
to describe the relationship between the U.S. and the Soviets.
1947(26th
of Nisan, 5707): Fifty-eight-year-old Russian born and Long Island Hospital
College of Medicine trained roentgenologist Dr. Frank Liberson, the husband of
Rose Liberson with whom he had three children Dr. Sarah Liberson, Sylvia
Lipkowitz and Dr. Isaac Liberson who died last December – and “the inventor of improvements
in X-ray and radiological work” passed away today at his home in Brooklyn.
1947(26th
of Nisan, 5707): The British executed
four members of the Irgun – Dov Gruner, Mordechai Alkahi, Hehiel Dresner and
Eliezer Kashani – in Acre Prison.1948: During the Israeli War for Independence a
platoon of Palmach soldiers made its way into the city of Safed where the
Jewish quarter was under siege from a large Arab force. The appearance of this small but tough group
of Israeli fighters stiffened the spirit of the besieged population. With the sanction of the local rabbis, the
largely Orthodox population worked to improve the defenses of the Jewish
quarter even though the work would interfere with preparations for Pesach. The Palmach arrived just in the nick of time,
since the departing British forces turned over the keys to their police
fortress and other fortified positions to the Arab military forces. Ultimately,
the Jews of Safed would prevail and the Arab military units would be driven
out.
1947(26th of Nissan, 5707): Eighty-three-year-old Rabbi
Simon Finkelstien, “the dean of the Brooklyn Rabbinate passed away today.
https://www.cincinnatijudaicafund.com/index.php/Detail/objects/4331
1948: Jamal Husseini, “the former Secretary to the Executive Committee
of the Palestine Arab Congress” told the Security Council today, “The
representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the
attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told
the whole world that we were going to fight.”
1948: In Manhattan, Sam Aaron “a founder and chairman of
Sherry-Lehman, the New York wine merchant” and “the former Florence Goldberg, a
geriatric therapist” gave birth to Jane Frances Aaron the “filmmaker and
illustrator” best known to many for the animated shorts she made for “Sesame
Street.”
1948: The
Harel Brigade, a unit of the Palmach began a relief operation designed to
provide relief for besieged Jerusalem.
1949(17th
of Nisan, 5709): Third Day of Pesach and Pesach Shabbat Chol HaMoed
1949: “In
tribute to high-ranking Israeli diplomats – Foreign Minister Moshe Sharrett,
Ambassador Eliahu Elath and U.N. representative Aubrey S. Eban – more than five
thousand persons gathered tonight “at three ballrooms of the Astor and
Commodore Hotels a the seventeenth annual Histadrut third Seder, sponsored by
the National Committee for Labor Israel.”
1949: “A
general rededication to the principle of the brotherhood of man as a means of
promoting world peace was urged upon religious leaders by rabbis in sermons” in
New York today, during the confluence of the Jewish Passover and the Christian
Easter.”
1949: At
Temple B’nai Jeshurun in New York, Rabbi David H. Panitz “spoke against the
dangerous policy in Western Germany of permitting former Nazis to regain
positions of leadership.”
1950(29th
of Nisan, 5710): A four story building in Jaffa collapsed killing twelve and
injuring thirty. Most of the dead were
newly arrived immigrants. The cause of
the collapse is still under investigation, but it is thought to have been the
result of the removal of one of the building’s pillars to make room for
carpentry equipment being installed in a shop on the ground floor.
1951: The
Beh Sabagahs arrived at the airport at Baghdad where they were greeted by mobs
yelling “Rot in Hell” and then were abused by guards before they could board a
plane for Israel.
1951: Cantor
David Werdyger and his wife gave birth to .Mordechai Werdyger, “an American
Hasidic Jewish singer and songwriter popular in the Orthodox Jewish community known
by his stage name Mordechai Ben David.
1951: “The
Great Caruso” the biopic produced by Joe Pasternak was released in the United
States today.
1952(21st
of Nisan, 5712): Seventh Day of Pesach
1952:
Birthdate of Esther Roth-Shachamorov , the native of Tel Aviv and
record-setting track and field star who married gymnast and coach Peter Roth
with she had two children – a daughter Einat and a son Yaron who became a
national fencing champion.
1953(1st of Iyar, 5713): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1953: U.S. premiere of “Titanic” a cinematic treatment of the
ocean disaster with music by Sol Kaplan.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that army engineers had
completed a new road, bringing Wadi Ramon within 212 km. of Tel Aviv. The last
stage comprised a steep descent of 250 meters along 4.5 km. of the literally
vertical wall of the Makhtesh - a great engineering achievement. The road was
now planned to reach Eilat. Syria reportedly prepared a list of all Jewish
property to be placed in the hands of a custodian, should Israel carry out its
decision to sell the property of Arab refugees.
1953: Birthdate of J. Neil Schulman author, screenwriter, journalist, radio
personality, and filmmaker who is the son of famed violinist Julius Schulman.
1953: The New York Times reports that “Jack Benny plans to
increase his television appearances next fall to once every three weeks and
will film six of the half-hour programs this summer. The six or seven remaining
shows for the 1953-54 season will be done "live."
1954: In the Bronx, Evelyn (née Rozin) Barkin and Sol Barkin gave
birth to actress Emmy and Tony award winning actress Ellen Rona Barkin, the
sister of George Barkin who has been the editor-in-chief of National Lampoon and High Times. The Bronx born actress
appeared in such films as the big Easy and the Sea of Love and gained
additional fame as the fourth wife of “Cosmetic’s King” Ron Perlemen.
1956(5th
of Iyar, 5716): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1956(5th of Iyar, 5716): Fifty-eight-year-old British
philanthropist, Zionist, and businessman, Sigmund Aviezer Gestetner, the London
born son of “Jewish inventor David Gestetner” the husband of Hetty Gestetner
with whom he had three children – Sophie, David and Jonathan -- who was
Managing Director of Gestetner and president of the Jewish
National Fund of Great Britain passed away today in Nice “of lung cancer,
stemming from his injury when he was gassed World War I where he lied about his
age to get into the military.
1957(15th
of Nisan, 5717): First Day of Pesach
1957:
Terrorists infiltrated from Jordan and killed two guards at Kibbutz Mesilot.
1959:
Vic Morrow appeared in the premiere of NBC's 1920s crime drama “The Lawless
Years” in the episode "The Nick Joseph Story".
1960(19th
of Nisan, 5720): Shabbat Shel Pesach
1960:
Birthdate of Long Island native award-winning author Daniel Mendelsohn the
graduate of U. Va. and holder of a Ph.D. from Princeton whose works include The
Lost: A Search for the Six Million.
http://www.danielmendelsohn.com/
1962:
In New York City, Judith and Donald Blinken gave birth to Columbia graduate and
Harvard trained attorney, Anthony “Tony” John Blinken, the 71st
United States Secretary of State who was raised in part his step-father
attorney and Holocaust Survivor Samuel Pisar.
1963(22nd
of Nisan, 5723): Eighth Day of Pesach
1963:
It was reported today that producer Herman Levin as two new projects in the
works: “Sleeping Prince” which is due to premier on November 28 and “Cat Mouse”
which is due to premier in March of 1964 with books and lyrics written by Irae
Levin.
1964(4th
of Iyar, 5724): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1964:
Publication date of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden “a
semi-autobiographical novel by Joanne Greenberg, written under the pen name of
Hannah Green.”
1964:
In New York City “writer Buz Kohan and novelist Rhea Kohan gave birth to
producer and writer David Sanford Kohan and his “twin brother Jono.
1965(14th
of Nisan, 5725): Ta'anit Bechorot
1965(14th
of Nisan, 5725): Seventy-eight-year-old Mendel Osherowitch, a former editor
“The Jewish Daily Forward” and a leading Yiddish author passed away today in
Manhattan
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50F16FE345415738DDDAE0994DC405B858AF1D3
1966:
Jan Peerce “was one of the participants in the Metropolitan's farewell gala
marking the last performance in the old opera house.”
1968(18th
of Nisan, 5728): Fourth day of Pesach
1968(18th
of Nisan, 5728): Eighty-two-year-old author Edna Ferber passed away. Born in
Michigan in 1885, Ferber's parents were Jewish immigrants from
Hungary. Ferber was proud of her Jewish heritage. In her
autobiography she described anti-Semitic episodes of her youth. She also
recounted the story of a meeting with three of her friends and a New York
society matron. When the society lady, boasted about having thrown
away a book because it was written by a Jew, Ferber and her friends (all Jewish
as well) walked out on her. Ferber won a Pulitzer for So Big.
She is also known for other epics including Showboat and Giant,
both of which became successful movies.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ferber.html
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ferber-edna
1969: “The official Red Army newspaper,
Red Star, hit at two favorite targets today when it charged that Israel had
used” “7,000 German mercenaries and 800 West German military vehicles” “in the fight
against the Arab states” and “accused the West German Government of urging
Israel to oppose any peaceful settlement in the Middle East, including threats
to use the atomic bomb.”
1970(10th of Nisan, 5730): Seventy-eight-year-old
Vienna born American architect Richard Joseph Neutra passed away today.
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/richard-joseph-neutra
1972: “The Culpepper Cattle Co.” the
first film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer as released today in the United
States.
1973(14th of Nisan, 5733):
Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach
1975(5th of Iyar, 5735): Yom
HaAtma’ut
1975(5th of Iyar, 5735): Seventy-four-year-old
Berlin born expert on Greek and Arabic Philosophy who found a refuge from Nazi
German in Great Britain where he served as lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford from
1942 to 1962 passed away today.
1978: NBC broadcast “The Gathering
Darkness” the first episode of the miniseries “Holocaust” tonight.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that US president
Carter's Administration, which had just sold 50 F-5E jet fighters to Egypt, was
prepared to approve the sale of 3,000 US-made armored carriers to Egypt. In
Washington, Alfred Atherton, the US Middle Eastern envoy, said that it was up
to Israel to make the stalled peace negotiations with Egypt possible.
1978: The Jerusalem Post
reported that the number of those making Aliya in March 1978, increased by 35
percent in comparison with that of March, 1977. The majority of the 1,988 new
immigrants who arrived in March came from the Soviet Union.
1979: Zaventem Airport in Belgium was the scene of
a failed attack by Palestinian terrorists.
1980:
The Presidium of the Brussels World Conference on Soviet Jewry opened its
meeting today in Paris.
1980:
Phyllis Trible whom Athalya Brenner called one of the "prominent
matriarchs of contemporary feminist bible criticism" became a full
Professor at Union Theological Seminary.
http://library.columbia.edu/locations/burke/archives/awts/exhibit/trible.html
1981(12th
of Nisan, 5741): Fast of the First Born
1982:
“Leningrad refusenik
student Mikhail Tsyvin was again arrested after chaining himself to the
railings outside St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, demanding permission to
emigrate to Israel.”
1984(14th
of Nisan, 5774): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach
1984:
Birthdate of White Plains, NY native Noah Fleiss, the actor who “is a distant
relative” of the infamous Heidi Fleiss.
1986(7th
of Nisan, 5746): One day after celebrating his 75th birthday,
University of Wisconsin alum Charles “Buckets” Goldenberg who played for 13
years with the Green Bay Packers passed away today.
http://www.packers.com/history/hall-of-famers/goldenberg-charles-buckets.html
1986:
Yitzhak Moda'I
switched from serving as Minister of Finance to Minister of Justice.
1987(17th
of Nisan, 5747): Third Day of Pesach
1988:
Fifty-two-year-old terrorist mastermind “Abu Jihad” was killed in Tunis today
during an Israeli commando raid.
1989:
“In recognition of Rabbi Schneerson’s” works “Congress, by House Joint
Resolution 173 designated” today as “Education Day, U.S.A.”
1990(21st
of Nisan, 5750): Seventh Day of Pesach
1990:
TNT broadcast “The Rose and the Jackal” directed by Jack Gold.
1993(25th
of Nisan, 5753): Hamas stages what is believed to be its first suicide car
bombing at Mehola Junction, killing two and wounding ten.
1995(16th
of Nisan, 5755): Second Day of Pesach
1995(16th
of Nisan, 5755): Eighty-four-year-old Lucille Shulman, the widow of Louis
Shulman passed away today after which she was buried at the Agudas Achim
Cemetery in Iowa City.
1995:
“The Sarajevo Haggadah,” one of the world's most beautiful illustrated Jewish
manuscripts, emerged today from the chaos of the Bosnian war at a Passover
ceremony that offered a moment of reconciliation in a shattered city. The fate
of the richly illustrated 14th-century Haggadah, or Passover ceremonial book,
had been unknown since the war began in 1992. Rumors circulated that the
medieval book, perhaps the best known Hebrew illustrated manuscript in
existence, had been destroyed, lost or sold. But the Bosnian Government, acting
at the request of Sarajevo's vestigial Jewish community, laid the rumors to
rest today by bringing the Haggadah from the vaults of the national bank to an
unusual Passover ceremony. In a city encircled and bereft of freedom, about 70
people gathered for a feast celebrating the freedom of the Jews through
deliverance from Egypt. Addressing himself to Sarajevo's Jews, of whom 525
remain from a prewar total of 1,300, President Alija Izetbegovic said: "I
ask you not to leave Bosnia, I ask you to stay here. This is also your country.
"Our wish is that this country should be a tolerant community of religions
and nations, as it has been for centuries," he added. President
Izetbegovic, the leader of Bosnia's governing Muslim nationalist Party of
Democratic Action, did not remain in the synagogue for the Seder itself. But
his presence at the start of a ceremony also attended by religious leaders of
the city's Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim sects was clearly intended to buttress
emotional support for a multi-ethnic Bosnia at a time when three years of war
appeared to have done irreparable damage to that ideal. "Spend your
holiday in peace, and enjoy," President Izetbegovic said, "as much as
is possible in these circumstances." In the synagogue, where Jews,
Muslims, Serbs and Croats mingled amid quiet conversation and mutual respect,
peace appeared possible for a moment. It was as if the frail Haggadah, with its
painstakingly beautiful and vivid illustrations of subjects including the
creation of the world and Moses blessing the Israelites, had imparted a lesson
of patience and tolerance. But outside, the city lived another day of ordinary
violence. A French soldier in the United Nations peacekeeping force was killed
while trying to set up an anti-sniper barrier outside the Holiday Inn, where
many journalists and diplomats stay. He was the second French soldier killed in
two days. NATO jets swooped overhead, to no visible effect, and there were
regular bursts of machine-gun fire. It had been thought that the Haggadah, created
in northern Spain between 1350 and 1400, might have been another victim of this
violence. Kept but very rarely shown at the Sarajevo National Museum before the
war broke out, the book had disappeared from view completely. Before today, the
book was last seen in 1989, on a single afternoon as part of an exhibition
called "The Jews of Yugoslavia." Before that, it had only been seen
once since World War II, when it was displayed for a few hours in 1966, on the
400th anniversary of the arrival in Sarajevo of the Spanish Jews. The Haggadah
(meaning "the telling" in Hebrew) is an account of the Egyptian
bondage of the Jews, a thanksgiving to God for deliverance and a prayer for
ultimate redemption. The Sarajevo manuscript, consisting of 142 pages of vellum,
some illustrated, some blank, belonged to a Jewish family that was probably
expelled from Spain in 1492. From there, the exact steps are unknown, but in
1609 it was sold in Italy. After that, it did not resurface until 1894, when a
Sarajevo family of Sephardic Jews named Kohen sold the book to the National
Museum, then under the administration of Austro-Hungarian officials. The book
was then taken to Vienna. Later it was returned to the Sarajevo Museum, where a
German officer tried to take it in 1941. But the museum's director contrived to
hide it from the Nazis, and the book was returned to the museum at the end of
the war. Marked with wine stains and children's scrawls, the book bears the
evidence of its peregrinations. It is at once a religious manuscript of unusual
beauty and a well-used family prayer book. The Haggadah's value was appraised
at $700 million in 1991, when Spain asked for it to be sent there for an 1992
exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of its expulsions of Jews. The book
was not lent. Today, Ivan Ceresnjes, the head of the Jewish community of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, said that President Izetbegovic had mentioned the possibility
of sending the Haggadah somewhere for restoration, perhaps the United States.
"It's 700 years old, but who will take care of it for the next 700
years?" he asked. But President Izetbegovic made no reference in his
remarks, and it appeared unlikely that a book so identified with this city
could be sent elsewhere at this time. Mr. Ceresnjes said he believed that Bosnia's
mixed society was not yet totally destroyed, but that "the longer the war
goes on, the more difficult it is because people are losing confidence in each
other." He added that the Government was being pushed toward a more
radical identification with Islam. At the start of the war, the Jewish
community, helped by Muslim, Croatian and Serbian volunteers, established an
aid organization called Benevolencia -- named after a society set up by
Sarajevo Jews in 1892 to help the poor. The organization has provided medicine,
a first-aid clinic, food and postal services. "Our work, it shows us our
standpoint," said Mr. Ceresnjes. "We are a small community, but we
have set out to show that it is still possible to live like before."
1996(27th
of Nisan, 5756): Yom HaShoah
1997:
In “Retracing Jewish Steps, Through Haroseth” Joan Nathan traces the origins of
this staple of the Seder plate.
1999:
A symposium entitled The History of
American Jewish Political Conservatism held at American University in
Washington, D.C. comes to a close.
1999: “No Vacancy,” an independent comedy film
written and directed by Marius Balchunas, “a Russian film director, producer,
and screenwriter of Lithuanian and Jewish descent” was released in te United
States.
2000: Fifty-year-old Raik Haj Yahia, an Israeli Arab
who had served in the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party passed away today.
2000: The New
York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including “Lingua Ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and
Chomsky With the Human Brain” by William H. Calvin and Derek Bickerton, “The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the
Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning” by Stanley Aronowitz and the recently released paperback edition of “The
First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America” by Ira Berlin in which “the
historian examines the many forms and meanings of slavery between the arrival
of the first blacks in Virginia in 1619 and the rise of King Cotton.”
2000(11th of Nisan, 5760): Seventy-seven-year-old
international law scholar Abram Chayes passed away today.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/04.20/chayes.html
2001:
In response to mounting violence, Israel launched “air, sea and ground attacks
on the Gaza Strip” today.
2002(4th
of Iyar, 5762): Yom
Hazikaron.
2002:
The Sherman
Brothers' classic motion picture, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was adapted into a
London West End Musical in 2002 and premiered at the London Palladium today
featuring many new songs and a reworked score by both Sherman Brothers
2003(14th
of Nisan, 5763): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach
2003(14th
of Nisan, 5763): Eight-five-year-old builder Samuel J. LeFrak, the Brooklyn
born son of “Harry Lefrak and the former Susan Schwartz” and the chairman of
LeFrak Organization who had followed in the family footsteps while raising four
children – Denis, Richard, Francine and Jaqueline – with his wife, the former
Ethel Stone, passed away today. (As reported by Alan Oser)
2003:
U.S premiere of “A Mighty Wind” a comedy based on “the 2003 tribute concert to
folk music producer Harold Leventhal” featuring Harry Shearer and Eugene Levy
who also co-authored the script.
2003:
In “Once Sweet and
Heavy, Now Dry and Desirable,” published today Amanda Hesser describes the change in
the nature of Kosher for Passover wine and the growth of it is a commercial
operation.
http://www.hagshama.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=884
2004:
“An Agent for Good” published today described the life and career of “Edward
Lewis Wallant” an author whose premature death did not keep people from
comparing him to “postwar Jewish American writers - Saul Bellow, Bernard
Malamud, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth.”
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview13
2005:
“Tears as day of
deliverance from Belsen recalled” published today described the liberation of
Begen-Belsen in the words of the survivors.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/tears-as-day-of-deliverance-from-belsen-recalled-1-708065
2006:
The New York Times featured a review
of Sweet and Low: A Family Story, by Rich Cohen. Yes, it is a Jewish family
that is responsible for bring Sweet N Low, that staple of the diet world, to
the American dieting consumer. Eat, eat
my child gives way to diet, diet my child. The Times also reviewed the recently
released paperback edition of “The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a
Strange and Dangerous Life” by Tom Reiss. “Part cultural biography, part literary mystery, Reiss's book chronicles
the life of Lev Nussimbaum (1905-42), a Jew who transformed himself into a
Muslim prince and became a bestselling author in Nazi Germany. Under the pen
name Kurban Said, Nussimbaum wrote "Ali and Nino," a romance novel
set in Azerbaijan at the time of the Russian Revolution. His enormously popular
books and articles as "Essad Bey" opened a window on the Islamic
world. Disentangling fact from fiction in Nussimbaum's life, Reiss also unlocks
fascinating details on everything from the rise of fascism to the origins of
the Shiite-Sunni split.”
2007: An exhibition entitled “Daring to Resist:
Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust” opens at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New
York
2007: Time
Magazine featured an article by Walter Isaacson entitled “Einstein &
Faith.” The article was based on Walter Isaacson”s latest literary effort, Einstein: His Life and Universe.
2007(28th of Nisan, 5767): Ninety-three-year-old
college basketball star and attorney Abe Weissbrodt passed away today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050101925.html
2007(28th of Nisan, 5767): In one of
history’s many ironies, a Holocaust Survivor was murdered on the day after Yom
HaShoah. Liviu Librescu aged 76; a Romanian born Israeli teaching at Virginia Tech was
killed in a massacre, in which a gunman killed 33 people at the university
before committing suicide. This was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern
U.S. history. Students of the Israeli lecturer who said he saved the lives of
several students by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman
before he was fatally shot. "He himself was killed but thanks to him his
students stayed alive," an Israeli student who survived the massacre told
Army Radio. Librescu, had known tragedy since childhood. When Romania joined
forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, the young Librescu was interned in a
labor camp, and then sent along with his family and thousands of other Jews to
a central ghetto in the city of Focsani, his son said. Hundreds of thousands of
Romanian Jews were killed by the collaborationist regime during the war.
2007: Israeli photographer Oded Balilty working for the Associated Press
won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for the award-winning picture of the
Amona outpost evacuation.
2008(11th of Nisan, 5768): Three IDF soldiers were killed, and two
others were wounded Wednesday after coming under heavy fire from Palestinian
gunmen while patrolling the border with the Gaza Strip. The
soldiers who were killed were identified as Sgt. Matan Ovdati, 19, from Patish,
Sgt. Menhash Albaniat, 20, a tracker from Kuseife in the Negev and Sgt. David
Papian, 21, from Tel Aviv.
2008: In Florida, Rabbi Andrew Baker presents
a program entitled “Confronting the Resurgence of
Anti-Semitism in Europe.” As the American
Jewish Committee's Director of International Jewish Affairs, Rabbi Baker is a
leading expert on anti-Semitism in Europe and other challenges including
Holocaust restitution. As director of European affairs for 8 years he was
instrumental in developing programs to promote tolerance in the emerging
democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and was awarded the Officer's Cross
of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is a founding
member of a national commission in Romania chaired by Elie Wiesel that examines
the history of the Holocaust.
2008: As part of the Israel at 60 Celebration, the 92nd
Street Y presents Professor Uri Cohen’s review of the development of Israeli
culture from 1948 to the Present through an
examination of Israeli Film, Music and Literature.
2008: Hedy Epstein,
whose parents died in concentration camps during the Holocaust speaks at Cornell
College in Mt. Vernon and Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2008: In New York, The
Center for Jewish History presents “The History of Jewish Involvement
in Building New York” with the following breakout sessions:
- New York 1908: The Apartment House Comes
to Gotham...
and Look Who Moves In presented by Barry Lewis, Architectural Historian - Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?
Jewish Migration and Ethnicity in New York City presented by Joseph
Salvo, Demographer
- The Banker, the Realtor, and the
Delicatessen Owner: The Jewish Businessmen of the Lower East Side presented
by Annie Polland, Lower East Side Historian
- The Evolution of the Jewish Real Estate
Family moderated by Judith H. Dobrzynski, former New York Times Editor
and Reporter and Simon Ziff, Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group
2008:
The New York Times reviewed The
Much Too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller a Jewish native of Cleveland,
Ohio who spent most of two decades as diplomat involved in America’s attempts
to bring peace to the Middle East.
2009(22nd
of Nisan, 5769):
Eight Day
of Pesach.
2009: Jan Karski was honored by the Polish Government
and New York City today. In recognition of Karski’s wartime courage and
lifelong commitment to the memory and history of Polish Jews, Poland memorialized
Karski with the unveiling of a new street sign in front of the De Lamar
Mansion, the Consulate’s residence at 233 Madison Avenue at East 37th Street,
which was officially designated Jan Karski Corner during the ceremony. As a
courier for the Polish Underground during World War II, Karski was the first
person to bring news of the Holocaust directly to President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and English Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
2010:
A memorial service is scheduled to be held today honoring Steffi
Sidney-Splaver.
2010:
The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary held hearings on the
nomination of Richard Mark Gergel for a federal judgeship.
2010:
Altered States of Reality: an Exhibition of Analog and Digital Photography an
exhibition featuring six Israeli artists, Offer Goldfarb, Goodash, Gabriel
Leitner, Uri Mahlev, Eli Matityahu and Shifra, is scheduled to open at Agora
Gallery in New York City.
2011(12
Nisan, 5771): Shabbat Ha-Gadol.
2011(12
Nisan, 5771): Television and film script writer Sol Saks passed away at the age
of 100. Among other accomplishments was
his role in the creation of the hit television sit-com, “Bewitched” for which
he wrote the first script. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2011(12
Nisan, 5771): Milton
D. Glick, 73, the 15th president of the University of Nevada, Reno and
nationally respected figure in higher education, whose academic career spanned
more than 50 years, passed away today in Reno.
2011:
Yahrzeit for the Jews of York, England: On Shabbat Ha-Gadol (Nisan, 4950) in
1190 the Jews of York were attacked by a mob including crusaders heading for
the Holy Land. They gave the Jews the
choice of converting or death. Most of
the Jews chose death, which meant murder-suicide pacts. A few Jews did surrender to the mob, but they
were murdered any way.
2011:
“A Late Marriage,” an Israeli film set in the Georgian community of Tel Aviv,
is scheduled to be shown at Columbia Jewish Congregation’s (CJC) 2011 -
Nineteenth Season of Movies in Columbia, MD.
2011:
Gil and Orli Shaham are scheduled to give a recital at the 92nd St Y
that will include Achron’s Hebrew Dance, Op. 35, No. 1 and Hebrew Melody, Op.
33 as well as Bloch’s Ba’al Shem for
Violin and Piano.
2011:
Air Force fighter
jets struck two targets in Gaza early today in response to a double-Grad rocket
attack on Ashdod that shattered a six-day cease-fire.
2012:
Holocaust survivors John and Michael Schwabacher are among those who are
planning on attending the memorial program scheduled to begin today in
Wurzburg, Germany – the city from which they fled after having survived the
Holocaust.
2012:
“Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story” is scheduled to be shown at the
Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2012:
Rabbi Alfredo F. Borodowski is scheduled to begin teaching “The Maimonides
Letters: Leadership at a Time of Crisis” at the Skirball Center for Adult
Jewish Learning.
2013(6th
of Iyar, 5773): Yom Haatzmaut (Israel Independence Day)
2013: “Koch” and
“Yossi” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2013: In London, the
Wiener Library is scheduled to host a genealogy workshop, at no charge, that
“is designed for descendant of refuges and Holocaust survivors, especially
members of the second generation.”
2013: The Center for
Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical are scheduled to present an
evening with Ann Kirschner author Lady at the O.K. Corral, a biography
of Josephine Sara Marcus Earp, the wife of the famous western lawman who had
him buried in a Jewish cemetery.
2013: The Center for
Jewish History and Israel Film Center are scheduled to present “Through His
Eyes,” a ” documentary history of Israeli cinema through the eyes of a still
photographer, Yoni Hamenahem, who for the past 40 years has photographed the
sets of many of Israel's classic films.”
2013: Mathew Nash’s
film – “16 Photographs at Ohrdruf” –which tells of the first concentration
liberated by the U.S. Army in 1945 is scheduled to be shown at the Boston
International Film Festival
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/grandfathers-hidden-photos-inspire-holocaust-film-060811442.html
2013: Eighty-nine year old Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone is scheduled
to speak at Kirkwood Community college this morning and at Mount Mercy
University this evening. Her appearance is sponsored by the Joan and
David Thaler Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
2013(6th of Iyar, 5773): Ninety-eight year old Jake Alhadeff,
the native of Atlanta, GA who moved to Maitland, FL in 2003 passed away today.
2013: Eighty-nine-year-old Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone is scheduled
to speak at Kirkwood Community college this morning and at Mount Mercy
University this evening. Her appearance is sponsored by the Joan and
David Thaler Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
2014(16th of Nisan, 5774): Second Day of Pesach – First day of
the Omer
2014: Macon Openshaw, 21, of Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty today in U.S.
District Court for the District of Utah to firing three rounds from a handgun
at the Congregation Kol Ami synagogue in Salt Lake City (As reported by JTA)
2014: The Magical Festival is scheduled to open this morning in Tel Aviv’s
Hayarkon Park.
2015(27th of Nisan, 5775): Yom HaShoah
2015(27th of Nisan, 5775): Ninety-three-year-old mental health
pioneer Mira Rothenberg whose father died in the Holocaust passed away today.
2015: As part of the Skirball Center’s Yom HaShoan observance Menachem Z.
Rosensaft the editor of God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes, New
York Times reporter Joseph Berger, senior editor of Tablet Magazine Stephanie
Butnick, Amichai Lau-Lavie, founder of Storahtelling, David Miliband, former
Foreign Secretary of the UK, and senior fellow at New York University, Thane
Rosenbaum, are scheduled to discuss how memories of the past affect their
lives.
2015: Holocaust survivor Bob Behr is scheduled to speak at the US Holocaust
Memorial Museum as part of the First Person program.
2015: “Bialik” King of the Jews” is scheduled to be shown at the
Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2015: “Saviors on the Screen,” “a special Films Series dedicated to the
rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust presented by the International Raoul
Wallenberg Foundation and the JCC Manhattan is scheduled to take place today.
2015: On Yom HaShoah, Nancy Baron-Baer, the Regional Director of the ADL is
scheduled to “conduct a discussion about Anti-Semitism in today's world and how
to combat it” at the National Museum of American Jewish History.
2015:
According to Army Radio, an “ultra-Orthodox soldier was threatened and called a
Nazi by Haredi men today in Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.
2016(8th
of Nisan, 5776): Shabbat HaGadol;
2016:
“Junun” and “Rosenwald” are scheduled to be shown for the last time at the
Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2016:
Israeli composer Ophir Ilzetzki is scheduled to have his American premiere at
the 2016 MATA Festival.
2017:
The Jerusalem Bird Observatory is scheduled to conduct a trip on the Knesset
trail – “a free tour about birds, Jerusalem history and nature.”
2017:
In upholding “the government’s closure of the Taba border crossing into Egypt
over the Passover festival,” Israel’s High Court “found that there was a
genuine threat and risk to Israeli tourists” and that therefore, “the
government was correct in closing the border.
2017:
Today the navy sent a specialized search ship and an elite team of divers to
the Sea of Galilee to help in the search for three people -- Itamar Ohana, 19,
from the northern city of Kiryat Shmona; Nahman Itah, 21, from the West Bank
settlement of Beitar Illit; and Liron Karadi, 17, from the coastal Israeli city
of Netanya -- who went missing last week after they were swept by winds away
from the coast and into deeper water.”
2017:
The New York Times featured reviews
by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The
First Love Story: Adam, Eve and Us by Bruce Feiler and What to do About
the Solomons by Bethany Ball.
2018(1st
of Iyar, 5778): Rosh Chodesh Iyar;
2018:
The YIVO Institute is scheduled to present “a discussion led by Edna Nahsohn
about her recent book Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to the
Merchant of Venice.
2018:
The ADL’S 30th annual Sam Miller Catholic Jewish Colloquium with Rev. Dennis
McManus and Rabbi Stephen Weiss is scheduled to take place in the Center for
Pastoral Leadership.
2018:
Holocaust survivor Michael Bornstein who was only four years old when liberated
and his daughter Debbie Bornstein Holinstat are scheduled to speak at the
Community Yom HaShoah Service in Cedar Rapids, IA which is being sponsored by
The Thaler Holocaust Education Programming Committee chaired Dr. Robert Silber.
2018:
In Cleveland, Ohio, the Ritz-Carlton is scheduled to open its new Kosher
kitchen with a staff trained by “Israeli kosher chefs Kobi Ohanyon and Adir
Cohen.
2018:
“Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Washington Post said today” “that
journalist needed both a soul and spine” as he received word that his paper had
on the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
2019:
In New York, “At the Crossroads of Sephardic, Mizrahi and Russian-Speaking
Worlds” a “a three part learning and cultural series on the greater Sephardic
communities in the former Soviet Union” is scheduled to begin today. 2020
2019:
While attending “a lavish event” at the International Convention Center in
Jerusalem where he was celebrating his election victory, Prime Minister
Netanyahu “vowed to be a leader for those who did not vote for him, attacked
the media and boasted of receiving congratulatory messages from Arab leaders,
all while being serenaded by Israeli pop stars.”
2019:
Early today “President Reuven Rivlin said that a majority of parliament members
had advised him to have Netanyahu form a government after the April 9 vote,
effectively ensuring his nomination.’
2019:
Today, “the White House hosted more than 80 Jewish non-profit leaders, business
leaders and rabbis that included representatives of Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel, and America
Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
Hadassah, the National Council of Young Israel, the American Jewish Committee,
the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs,
the Zionist Organization of America, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, the
Coalition for Jewish Values, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Orthodox
Jewish Chamber of Commerce and the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations but not representatives “the Reform, Conservative and
Reconstructionist movements, the ADL, J Street, HIAS, the Israel Policy Forum
and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.”
2019:
Erica Jong, the author of Fear of Flying is scheduled to “read
selections from her new book of poetry, The World Began With Yes at the
Osher Marin JCC.
2019:
The AJHA, American Sephardi Federation and the Center for Jewish History are
scheduled to present “Iranian Jews Between Iran, Zion and America,” a “talk
with Leah Mirakhor (Yale University), Lior Sternfeld (Penn State University)
and moderator Atina Grossman (Cooper Union) that celebrates the new
groundbreaking work of two social historians on Iranian Jewish life and
community in the 20th century between immigrations and diasporas in Iran,
Israel, and the U.S.” which will include a “tribute to the work of HIAS in helping
Jews immigrate and resettle in the U.S. in the years post the 1979 revolution
in Iran.”
2019:
The Thaler Holocaust Memorial Foundation is scheduled to host an appearance by
Holocaust survivor Rachel Miller at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids,
IA and Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA.
2020(22nd
of Nisan, 5780) Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor;
2020(22nd
of Nisan, 5780): Yahrtzeit for the 3,000 nameless Jews who were massacred in
Prague in 5149.
2020:
Israelis are scheduled to hear possible plans, some of which have been proposed
by financial advisor Professor Avi Simhon which allow some local stores to open
on Sunday along with Special Ed classes.
2021:
Jazz-rock
vocalist Noa Levy and singer Achi Ben-Shalom are scheduled to lead a sing-along
concert highlighting Israel’s music history, with lyrics and Israeli images on
the screen.
2021:
The Riverway Project is scheduled to present an engaging, musical, upbeat
Qabbalat Shabbat service led by Rabbi Jen Gubitz — virtually” where attendees
can participate over zoom, offering names for healing and kaddish.
2021:
In a session examining UC Berkeley’s
Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled
to talk about an exhibit of more than 150 items that examined the links between
food, ritual, identity, activism, and Jewish life.
2021: The Jewish Women’s Archives 25th
anniversary survey is scheduled to come to a close today.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/jwa2021
2021: The East Bay Int’l
Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present Israeli filmmaker and
actress-singer sharing the behind the miniseries she created, “Muna,” about an
Israeli Arab photographer.
2021: In the first of its kind event, “the foreign ministers of Israel, the United Arab Emirates,
Greece and Cyprus are scheduled to meet in Paphos, Cyprus today.
2021: Jerusalem police are scheduled to
continue their investigation into reports that “Ultra-Orthodox youth allegedly burned
flags and floral wreaths left on fallen IDF soldiers’ graves during Memorial
Day.”
2022(15th
of Nisan, 5782): First Day of Pesach
2022(15th
of Nisan, 5782): In the evening 2nd Seder and count the Omer for the
first time.
2022:
A 47-year-old man was modernly wounded yesterday after being
stabbed in the northern city of Haifa in what appears to be a terror attack
reportedly is in an intensive care unit where he is receiving further treatment
at [Haifa's Rambam Hospital.]"
2022: Security forces are on heightened alert
following yesterday’s violence at the Temple Mount which apparently came in
response to
a call issued by “a collective of Gaza Strip terror groups” on April 13 calling
“on our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque
this coming Friday and calling on the
Palestinian resistance to stay vigilant and be prepared to defend the
mosque."
2023:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including The American Way: A True Story
of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie
Siegler and The Struggle For Decent
Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective by Michael Walzer.
2023:
The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to present A New
Awakening: a talk by Sol Romano on the History and Background of the Sephardic
Jews of Spain through family heritage.
2023:
The Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host an on-site program
“Yom HaShoah Commemoration - "Voices of Children".
2023:
The National Library of Israel is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Tom Navon
on "Socialist Youth Were Still Fighting": The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
and Modern Jewish Politics.”
2023:
The Breman Museum is scheduled to host the “58th Annual
Community-Wide Holocaust Commemoration.”
2023:
In honor of Yom HaShoah, Congreagation Agudas Achim in Coralville, IA is
scheduled to convene a panel discussion, “an event where children of survivors
speak.”
2023:
JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of J'ACCUSE! A CRY FROM THE KILLING PITS
OF LITHUANIA followed by a post-screening discussion with the director Michael
D Kretzmer.
2023:
In an example of what a difference a year makes, last April Israels were
learning how to live with an upgrade to “a positive outlook” from Moody’s while
as of today Israelis will have to learn to live with a downgrade from “positive
to stable” which has come in the wake of the government’s drive to “reform the
judiciary.”
2024:
The Marcus Cinema in Cedar Rapids, IA and the Marcus Sycamore Cinema in Iowa City
are among the venues scheduled to host the second and final screening of “Irena’s
Vow,” which tells “the incredible true story of Irena Gut, a Polish nurse who
heroically saved Jewish lives during WWII. When Irena finds out that the Jewish
ghetto is about to be liquidated, she decides to shelter Jewish workers in the
safest place she can think of — the basement of a Nazi major’s house.
2024:
The Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled host a Cinema Chat “Live at Mister’s
Kelly’s which “is a testament to the impact of renowned cultural icons and the
unexpected origins of legendary musicians, comedians and the rich cultural
history of the 1950s and 1960s.”
2024:
In New Orleans, Gates of Prayer and Touro Synagogue are scheduled to hold their
monthly board meetings.
2024:
YIVO is scheduled to present historian Jeffrey Herf who will lead a panel
exploring responses to Hamas’ October 7th massacres and to the state of
Israel’s subsequent military response.
2024:
The Jewish Women’s Archive is host to “Let’s Talk: Gen-Z Jewish Feminism.”
2024:
As April 16th begins in Israel, the Hamas held
hostages begin day 193 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.)
