This Day, May 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
May 16
0942(21st
of Iyar, 4702): Saadia Gaon passed away. Born in 882, Saadia Gaon was the head
of the Talmudic Academy of Sura (Babylonia). He was a recognized authority on
the Talmud, and a profound student of philosophy and philology. Saadia was
forced to deal with the challenge of assimilation of the upper-class Jews of
Babylonia who were attracted to the Greek philosophers whose works had been
translated into Arabic.
Saadia wrote a philosophic work, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, in
magnificent flowing Arabic. In it, he defended the rational underpinnings of
Judaism and showed logically that every rational Jew could believe in the Torah
as well as Aristotle and Plato. He wrote the first Hebrew grammar book which
explained how the holy language worked. He provided a Hebrew dictionary plus a
compendium of rhyming words for Hebrew poets. He was the first to write an
Arabic translation of the Bible. He included commentaries, explanations, and
grammatical notes as well. His translation continues to be the authoritative Bible
for Jews in Arab lands. He also led a successful fight against the Kararites, a
sect which rejected Rabbinic commentary as law.
1165: Maimonides and his family arrived at Acre,
Palestine. Having
been forced to leave Spain because he would not convert to Islam, Maimonides
and his family settled in Fez, Morocco. His work with Jews who had been forced
to convert to Islam attracted attention of the local authorities and the family
moved on to Palestine. Due to the poverty of the land and the uncertain
conditions there, Maimonides finally settled in Egypt where he served both as a
physician and leader of the Jewish Community.
1474: Minister Pacheco of
Spain used an attack he organized against "new Christians" as a
diversion in order to enable him to capture the citadel of Segovia (and maybe
the King). Although the plot was discovered in time, the Marranos were attacked
by the organized mob, and men, women and children were murdered.
1477: Abraham dei Tintori produced the first
printed edition of the book of Job with a commentary by Levi ben Gerson was
published today in Ferrara, Italy
1487: Joseph Solomon Sonciino produced the
first printed edition of Seder Tahanunim at Soncino, Italy
1507: Ginevra Sforza, whose father Alessandro
Sforza ,the patron of “Jewish Italian dancer and
dancing master Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro” who converted to Roman Catholicism,
passed away today.
1527: Florentines drove out the Medici for a
second time and re-established a republic The recreation of the Republic led to
the expulsion of the Jews. This event took place in the Jewish year 5300 (a
year with Jewish mystical connotations), fueling messianic hopes helping to
layer the ground for the rise of Solomon Molcho.
1573: Today Polish nobles elected Henry, as the
first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the
Lithuanian nobles boycotted this election, and it was the Lithuanian ducal
council who confirmed his election. Poland elected Henry, rather than Habsburg
candidates, partly in order to be more agreeable to the Ottoman Empire (a
traditional ally of France through the Franco-Ottoman alliance), with which a
Polish-Ottoman alliance was also in effect.. He owed his election to Solomon
Ashkenazi, a “Rabbi” who was an advisor to the Sultan. He was in effect the Sultan’s foreign
minister. In an unusually blunt
statement, Ashkenazi wrote Henry “I have rendered you majesty most important
service in securing your election; I have effected all that was done here.” The
last statement refers to his behind the scenes work at the Sultans Palace. See Volume 4
p 605 0f Graetz
1611: Birthdate of Pope Innocent XI. During his
papacy, “Innocent showed a degree of sensitivity in his dealings with the Jews
within the Italian States. He compelled the city of Venice to release the
Jewish prisoners taken by Francesco Morisini in 1685. He also discouraged
compulsory baptisms which accordingly became less frequent under his
pontificate; but he could not abolish the old practice altogether. More
controversially in 1682 he issued an edict by which all the money-lending
activities carried out by the Roman Jews were to cease. However ultimately
convinced that such a measure would cause much misery in destroying
livelihoods, the enforcement of the edict was twice delayed.”
1617(11th of Iyar, 5377): Judah Löb
Sarava, the Rabbi at Venice who is quoted in the ritual work "Mashbit
Milḥamot," in connection with a question in regard to the ritual bath” and
“translated into Hebrew Saadia's commentary on
Canticles” passed away today.
1648: During the great Cossack uprising which
brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of Jews, Bohdan
Khmelnytsky's forces overwhelmed and defeated Commonwealth forces under the
command of Stefan Potocki at the Battle of Zhovti Vody.
1654: In England, the Council of State ruled in favor of the Jews and Antonio Rodrigues Robles got back the property which had been seized in March.
1667: Sixty-eight year old Samuel Bochart, “a
French Protestant biblical scholar” whose “two-volume Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan exerted a profound
influence on seventeenth-century Biblical exegesis” passed away today.
1669: Birthdate of “Dutch Christian Hebraist
Campegius Vitringa author of a Commentary on Isaiah and De Synagoga Vetere Libri Tres.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14719-vitringa-campegius-the-elder
1746(26th of Iyar, 5506): Moshe
Chaim Luzzatto passed away. Born in 1707, this Italian rabbi known by the
Hebrew acronym RaMChal was noted philosopher and student of kabbalah.
1754: Fire ravaged the Ghetto in Prague.
1756(16th of Iyar, 5516):
Fifty-nine-year-old Abigail Franks, the daughter of Moses Levy, and the wife of
Jacob Franks with whom she had two children, passed away today.
1761: In Trevellas, Cornwall, England “Edward
Opie, a master carpenter and his wife Mary (née
Tonkin) gave birth John Opie the youngest of their five children who painted
“The Old Jew,” a “portrait of a Jewish man” that he completed “in the months
before” he moved to London in 1780.
1764(14th of Iyar,
5524): Pesach Sheni observed as the smallpox epidemic continues in
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1765(25th of Iyar,
5525): One of two dates marking the death of New York resident Bilhal Abigail Levy, the London born daughter
of Moses Levy and the husband of Jacob Franks,
1774(6th of Sivan,
5534): Shavuot is observed for the last time in Thirteen Colonies loyal to King
George since by the following year the American Revolution would have begun and
with armed militia beginning their siege of Boston.
1775(16th of Iyar, 5535):
Veitel-Heine Ephraim who served as “Jeweller to the Prussian Court and Mint
Mast under the Prussian Kings Frederick William I and Frederick the Great for
whom he played a critical role in financing the Seven Years War passed away
today.
1783(14th of Iyar, 5543): Pesach
Sheni
1785(7th of Sivan, 5545): Second Day
of Shavuot
1785(7th of Sivan, 5545): Rabbi Chaim Abraham
ben Moses Israel of Ancona, author of “Bet Avraham” passed away.
1786(18th of Iyar, 5546): Lag B’Omer
is observed on the same day that John Adams, the American ambassador to Great
Britain and future President of the United States wrote to Thomas Jefferson,
the American ambassador to France and future President of the United States
asking him to provide a letter of introduction to an American citizen traveling
from London to Paris as well as providing him information about domestic
politics in the very disunited United States of America.
1789: Birthdate of Michael Creizenach, the
native of Mainz who edited the Hebrew periodical “Zion” with I.M. Jost and who
was the father of Theodor Creizenach who followed in his literary footsteps
1790: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Warsaw.
1791: One day after he had passed away, Barnet
Levy, the husband of Esther Elias and the father of Betsy and Levi Levy was
bured today at the Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.
1794: Sarah Abrahams, who had changed her name
to Abrahams when she converted, married Moses Nathan today in Philadelphia.
1799: Birthdate of Alexander McCaul the Dublin
born Christian missionary who spent a decade in Poland trying to convert the
Jews but who was no anti-Semite since he opposed the accusations of the “blood
libel.” He returned to England where “he
became professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King’s College.”
1801: Birthdate of William H. Seward who served
as Secretary of State under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson (1861-1869). Shortly after he assumed office, Seward met
with Henry I. Hart, President of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites
and assured him that he would continue the push to end the discrimination
practiced by the Swiss against American Jews. In 1863, Seward instructed
American diplomats to do all that they could to stop the attacks on the Jews of
Morocco.
1804(6th of Sivan, 5564): Shavuot
celebrated as Lewis and Clark passed the coal beds of Charbonier Bluff after
which they arrived at St. Charles, MO.
1807(8th of Iyar): Joseph Abraham Stelicki, Ger
Zedek of Nikolai passed the son a butcher who had been raised Catholic but who
converted to Judaism in 1785 passed away today.
1809: Birthdate of Polish native Löbel
Schottländer, the husband of Henriette Gorssman Schottlanderand the father of
Julius and Bruno Schottla der
1812(5th of Sivan, 5572): Parashat
Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot
1815: “The Jewish community of the Aachen,
Germany offered an homage in its synagogue to the Prussian king, Friedrich
Wilhelm the third.”
1816: Seventeen-year-old Rachel N. Cardozo, the
Pennsylvania born daughter of Sarah Hart and Isaac Nunez Cardozo married her
first husband, Simon Cauffman
1816: Birthdate of Adam Gimbel, the native of
Bavaria who came to the United States in 1834 and parlayed a trading post he
opened in Vincennes into the chain of Gimbel’s Department Stores which would
become the fabled rival of Macy’s.
1820(3rd of Sivan, 5580): Nathan Salomon the Rabbi
at Hombourg who was one of those attending The Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon that
took place at the Town Hall of Paris in February 1807 and whose parents were
Reitz and Marx Salomon passed away today.
1821(14th of Iyar, 5581): Pesach
Sheni
1821: Economist and MP David Ricardo, the son
of Sephardic Jews Abigail Delvalle and Abraham Israel Ricardo “who converted to
the Unitarian faith when he eloped” voted today in favor of an inquiry into the
Peterloo Massacre.
1823(6th of Sivan, 5583): Shavuot
1823: Birthdate of Heymann Steinthal the
brother-in-law of Mortiz Lazarus who taught at The Hochschule für die
Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies.
1824(18th of Iyar, 5584): Lag B’Omer
is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of James Monroe.
1826: Birthdate of Danish banker and Member of
Parliament David Baruch Adler.
1828: In Frankfurt, Baron Carl Mayer von
Rothschild of Naples and Adelheid Hertz gave birth to Wilhelm Carl von
Rothschild, who would become head of the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild
banking empire.
1828: Birthdate of Marcus Kalisch, the native
of Pomerania who was “one of the pioneers of the critical study of the Old
Testament in England, a secretary to the Chief Rabbi and a tutor in the Rothschild family” which
gave him “the leisure to produce his commentaries and other works.”
1829: Abraham Alexander Wolff “assumed office
as chief rabbi of Denmark” today.
1835: In Dolnośląskie, Poland, Lobel and
Henriette Grossmann Schottlander gave birth to Julius Schottlander, the husband
of Galewski Schottlander and the father of Paul Schottlander.
1835: Birthdate of Hesse-Nassau native and
University of Paris trained German professor Sigmund Mannheimer who in 1865
came to the United States where he “became a professor and librarian at Hebrew
Union College while raising two sons who became rabbis and one daughter, Jennie
Mannheimer also known as Jennie Manners, the college professor and dramatist
who was one of the first two women to earn a degree from Hebrew Union College,
with his wife Louise Herschman Mannheimer, the Prague born author, teacher and
social reformer.
1838: In Bavaria, Jacob Rice and Augusta
Mannstein gave birth to Ignatius Rice, the husband of Cornelia Diana Stern,
President of the Home for Aged Infirm, Trustee of the National Hospital for
Consumptives at Denver, Colorado who resided at 122 East 79th Street
in New York,
1838: Augusta and Lewis Feuchtwanger gave birth
to Rebecca Feuchtwanger
1839: George Moss married Lucy Lippshutz at the
Great Synagogue today.
1842(7th of Sivan, 5602): Second Day
of Shavuot
1845: Birthdate of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, also
known as Eli Metchnikoff. Born in the Ukraine, he was a Russian microbiologist
best remembered for his pioneering research into the immune system. Mechnikov
received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, for his work on phagocytosis. He
passed away in Paris in 1916.
1846: One day after she had passed away, Sarah
(Moses) Hart, the wife of Michael Hart was buried today at the Brady Street
Jewish Cemetery.
1850: Today, Anshe Chesed Synagogue, also knows
the Norfolk Street Congregation “ was formally opened and consecrated with New
York City's mayor and a number of members of the New York City Common Council
and Christian clergy among the invited guests.”
1851(14th of Iyar, 5611): Pesach
Sheni observed for the first time during the Presidency of Millard Fillmore.
1852(27th of Iyar, 5612): Henry
Hyams, the London born son of Solomon M. Hyams and Rebecca Hyams and the husband
of Judith Hyams passed away today in North Carolina.
1853: The New York Times provided more
information about outbreaks of violence that had occurred in Jerusalem during
Holy Week (Palm Sunday thru Easter). A group of English missionaries were
forced to leave the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because “they behaved in an
unseemly manner when the Procession of the Host passed on Good Friday.” One of the missionaries delivered a sermon
outside of a synagogue while the Jews were attending services in which he used
“invectives” in talking about the Talmud.
One of the Jews reportedly threw a dead cat at the missionary and a
fight broke between the rest of the missionaries and the Jews who sought to
defend their religious beliefs.
1853: The New York Times reported that
the recent defeat of the Jewish Disabilities bill in the House of Lords had
bitterly disappointed supporters of the measure since they had anticipated that
the Lords would follow their usual path and approve legislation that had been
approved by the House of Commons. The action of the Lords, according to the
Times, shows the great gulf between the aristocracy and the rest of the
citizenry. Despite the prominence of
such families as the Rothschilds, “the Jew in England is no better off than he
was in the days of King John.”
1853: The New York Times reported that
thousands of Prussians including Alexander Von Humboldt have petitioned the
Second Chamber (one of the two houses of their bi-cameral legislature)
demanding that Jews be allowed to hold government jobs and allowing for full
freedom of religious opinion. The
petitions were in response to vote by the First Chamber to exclude Jews from
public employment.
1854(18th of Iyyar, 5614): Lag B’Omer
https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz32724.html
1854: According to an article published today
the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews reported that
there are 17 synagogues in New York City that show a membership totaling
25,000. The last census shows that there are 46,000 Jews in the entire United
States. The society believes that the
census figure is a case of underreporting because it only records people as
being Jewish if they self-report. “It is a well-known fact that one-half or
more of the Jews in this country call themselves Frenchman, German, Poles,
Hungarians and Englishman and never make themselves known as Jews in
governmental connections.”
1856: In Slutsk, Belorussia, Chaim Masliansky
and his wife gave birth to Zvi Hirsch Masliansky “the popular Yiddish orator
who was the most eloquent and influential Maggid on the American scene at his
time.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/07/tsvi-hirsh-maslyanski-zvi-hirsch.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/masliansky-zvi-hirsch
1857: In Marshall, TX, Meyer and Rosalie
Doppelmayer gave birth to James Doppelmayer the husband of Bella Davis
Doppelmayer and the father of Marguerite, Walter and Rose Marie Doppelmayer who
worked in the family dry goods store with his brother Moses passed away today
in Marshall where his father Meyer and his Uncle Daniel and his Uncle Isaac
Woolf had arrived in the 1850’s which later led to his cousin Joe Weisman
settling there.
1859: In Highville, PA, Rudolph H. Kauffman,
the Creswell, PA born son of Anna and Isaac Kaufman and his wife Anna Kauffman
gave birth to Alfred G. Kauffman
1859: In London, “the first meeting of the
Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor was held at the Great
Synagogue Chambers
1861(7th of Sivan, 5621): Second Day
of Shavuot celebrated on the same day that Kentucky, the home state of Dembitz
and Brandies families enacted a resolution of neutrality which would be
rendered meaningless when Union forces thwarted attempt by the Confederates to
occupy the home state of both Lincoln and Davis in September.
1863(27th of Iyar, 5623): Jonas
Ennery passed away. Born in 1801 at Nancy he became head of the Jewish school
at Strasbourg. He served as a Deputy in the French Parliament and compiled a Dictionnaire
Général de Géographie Universelle, He was the brother of Marchand Ennery,
the chief rabbi of Paris.
1864: In Vienna, Menachem Mendel Birnbaum, a
merchant, from Ropshitz, Galicia, and
Miriam Birnbaum (née Seelenfreund), who was born in northern Hungary (in
a region sometimes called the Carpathian Rus), of a family with illustrious
rabbinic lineage gave birth to Nathan Birnbaum the Austrian journalist, Jewish
philosopher and founder of a Jewish nationalist organization
"Kadimah." Kadimah was formed
ten years before Theodor Herzl became the leading spokesman of the Zionist
movement. Birnbaum is credited for coining the term "Zionism". He
died in 1937.
1864: In New York, the "Open Board of
Stock-Brokers" adopted its constitution.
Among the signatories was Mendez Nathan, the son of Seixas Nathan.
1864: Birthdate of Julia H. Kohlman who was
buried next to her husband Sigmund Kohlman in Mobile, Alabama when she passed.
1866: In Philadelphia, PA, Werner David Amram
and Esther Hammerschlag gave birth to University of Pennsylvania graduate David
Werner Amram, the husband of Beulah Brylawski and law school professor who
wrote The Jewish Law of Divorce According to Bible and Talmud and Leading
Cases in the Bible and was active in numerous Jewish organization the
“Hebrew Education Society, Jewish Maternity Association and Congregation Mickve
Israel.”
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/davi/David%20Werner%20Amram.pdf
1867(14th of Iyar, 5657): Pesach
Sheni
1868: President Andrew Johnson was acquitted in
his impeachment trial in the United States Senate. According to one source,
Johnson made several virulent anti-Semitic statements during his political
career prior to becoming President. Considering the fact that the “Tarheel
Tailor” was illiterate until adulthood, his anti-Semitic statements may be more
a case of ignorance than anything else.
1869(6th of Sivan, 5629): Shavuot is
celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant.
1875: The Board of Trustees of B’nai Jeshurun
met today in New York City and approved a proposal to allow members of the
opposite sex to sit together in the same pews during services. This put an end to the separate seating that
had been the rule at the synagogue since its founding. The decision would be contested by Israel J.
Solomon a member of the congregation who brought a suit in the Court of Common
Pleas to over-turn the decision. His suit would fail.
1876: Ida Kuhn married Eduard Cohen and became
Ida Cohen
1877: As the constitutional crisis in France
came to a head, 363 parliamentary deputies passed a vote of no confidence in
the new government championed by Royalist President Patrice MacMahon. The
leaders of the opposition would be defended by Raphael Basch a liberal French
Jewish political leader and journalist.
Basch was the father of Victor-Guillaume Basch who would be murdered by
the Vichy French in 1944.
1879: In Pittsburgh, PA Jacob and Kate Affelder
gave birth to William L Affelder, the brother of Louis, Oscar, Harry and Minnie
Affelder, the Penn State University
trained mining engineer who was Vice President of the Hillman Coal and Coke
Company in Pittsburgh.
1880(6th of Sivan, 5640): Shavuot
1880: Birthdate of Julius Tannen the New York
born comedian and monologist whose career included vaudeville, Broadway and
Hollywood where he his most famous performance was in “Singing In the Rain.”
1881: Birthdate of Amy Loveman, a founding
editor of the Saturday Review.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/loveman-amy
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/amy-loveman
1881: “A comic melodrama entitled “Sam’l of
Posen, or The Commercial Drummer” premiered at Haverly’s Fourteenth Street
Theatre in New York.
1885: In London, Abigail Davis and Eleazar
Solomon Pool gave birth David de Sola Pool, whose family roots go back to the
Sephardim of Medieval Spain, who came to New York City in 1907 to begin a 63-year
career as the leader of Congregation Sheaerith Israel, also known as the
Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and whose productive career cannot be
summarized in simple blog entry.
https://www.jewishideas.org/article/rabbi-dr-david-de-sola-pool-sephardic-visionary-and-activist
1888(6th of Sivan, 5648): Shavuot
celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Grover Cleveland.
1889:
Birthdate of Chicago native and future resident of Indianapolis Franny Rose
Traugott Lurvey, the wife of David Lurvey, the president of Hatfield Electric
Company with whom she had five children,
four of whom were Leonard, Rosalie William and Frances, and who was an active member of the
Indianapolis Council of Jewish Women.
https://www.showhouseindy.org/History-of-the-2021-Show-House
1890: It was reported today that former
President Grover Cleveland, Oscar Straus and Joseph Blumenthal will be among
those who have purchased boxes for the upcoming Strawberry Festival, a fund
raiser sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1890: Birthdate of Polish native and former
Swiss textile businessman Alexander S. Haberman who in 1941 came to the United
States where he became a successful “a real‐estate investor,
developer and builder of apartment houses and single family houses” and
president of the Beth Israel center and the Blezer Rabbinical Seminary in
Jerusalem while raising two sons “Simon V. and Rabbi Jacob Haberman with his
wife Esther Lebowitz Haberman.
1891: It was reported today that among the
bequests made by the late Nathan Littauer were$1,500 to Mt. Sinai Hospital for
the permanent endowment of a bed in memory of his daughter Louise; $1,000 each
to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society and the Home for Aged and
Infirm Hebrews; $500 to the Board of Relief of the United Hebrew Charities.
1892: Justice George C. Barrett officiated at
the wedding of Albert Kohn and Sophie Kupfer. The nuptials which were one of
the most fashionable events in the Jewish community, took place at the home of
Henry Kupfer on east 78th Street.
1892: In Kovno, “Chaim Nathan and Base
(Gibberman) Burak gave birth to Lithuanian trained rabbi Aaron D. Burack who in
1914 came to the United States where he married Esther Inselbuch and led
congregations “Etz Chaim Velozin” and “Ohel Moshe Cohevrah Thilim” before
becoming an “instructor in Talmud at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological
Seminary.”
1893(1st of Sivan, 5653): Rosh
Chodesh Sivan
1893: In Great Britain, the Board of Guardians
is scheduled to meet today where Sir Julian Goldsmith will talk about the
expulsions of the Jews from Poland – a matter that heretofore has been denied
or kept secret.
1893: George Kennan, the explorer and newspaper
man who has become a critic of the Czar and advocate for Russian democracy
stated his belief that Polish and Russian Jews will be coming to the United
States as a result of the edicts of expulsion issued by the Russian government.
1893: “Myer S. Isaacs, Chairman of the Trustees
of the Baron Hirsh Fund for the aid of Russian Jews” in the United States said
today that he and his associates “had not considered the question of an influx
of Polish Jews” because they did not except any abnormal increase in
immigration from that region. (Editor’s note – Based on contemporary reports
there was a great deal of disagreement about Russian edicts of expulsion and
the potential major influx of Jews from Poland and Russia)
1894:
Birthdate of NYU trained lawyer Charles Marks, the supporter of the YMHWHA and
the controversial State Supreme Court Justice who presided over the Malcom X
murder trial and who was the husband of “the former Beatrice Engelhart Rubin”
and the father of three children – Howard, Lester and Lucille – from his first
marriage to the former Paula Unger,
1894: It was reported today that while Herman
Rosenblatt stood in the smoldering ruins of his crockery store, a local ruffian
pointed at the Jew and shouted “There is the man who set the fire” causing a
mob yelling “Lynch him” to chase after Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt outran the mob and found sanctuary
in the 47th Street Police Station.
1896:
In a cable from London, Harold Frederic provided a scoop for the New York
Times when he broke the news about Baron Hirsch’s grandchild, who is the
daughter of the Baron’s son Lucienne and a French governess. As confirmed by a
copy of the Baron’s will, the child will inherit a large portion of the Hirsch
millions.
1896:
In Birmingham, England Laura (née Greenberg) and Louis Balcon gave birth to
English movie producer Sir Michael Elias Balcon.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/447085/index.html
1897:
Three days after he had passed away, 60 year old Aron Salomon, the husband of Jeanette
Salomon, was buried in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemtery.”
1898:
The Daughters of Jacob are hosting a Strawberry Festival at Terrace Garden for
the benefit of a Home for Aged Hebrews of the down-town east side. They have
already sold 3,000 tickets at fifty cents each and have received presents of
large quantities of goods that will be sold at the festival.
1898:
Joseph J. Corn, the Vice President Temple Culture Society spoke yesterday about
the purpose of the society. He said “that in these days of cheap philosophy and
what has come to be known as ethical culture there is a need for Jewish
culture. In an effort to combat the
notion that religious education ended with confirmation, the society is holding
weekly meetings devoted to the study of Jewish history and Jewish philosophy. Among other things, the programs should help
Jews answer the question “Why are you Jews in this Christian world and yet not
of it?”
1898:
During the Spanish American War the 4th Missouri Volunteer Infantry
whose members included Captain Max Mannheim (St. Joseph), Sergeants Lewis F.
Stein (Carrollton) and Herman Weil (St. Joseph) and Privates Fred E. Wise,
Lloyd F. Houseman and Abraham J. Friedman and Artificer Arthur Newsbaum was
mustered into federal service today.
1899:
Second Lieutenant George M. Appel of the 2nd U.S. Volunteer
Engineers was mustered out of service today.
1899(7th
of Sivan): Eighty-six-year Jacob Ezekiel, the husband of Catherine Myers
Castro, author of The Jews of Richmond and Persecutions of the Jews
in 1840 and the secretary of the board of governors of the Hebrew Union
College from 1876 to 1896 passed away today.
1900:
“In the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice today, Judges
Ridley and Darling gave judgment in favor of the Crown in the case of the
Government versus the Jewish Colonization Association on a claim for succession
duty amounting to one million,
two-hundred fifty pounds upon property valued at more than eight million pounds
settled by the late Baron Hirsch in 1892 upon the Colonization Association.”
1901:
Today’s shipment of $2,200,000 in gold to Europe included a shipment of one
million dollars in gold to Paris by Goldman, Sachs and Co.
1901(27th
of Iyar, 5661): Eighty-eight-year-old Jacob Levy Seixas, the New York born son
of Judith and Moses Benjamin Seixas and the husband of Hortensia Seixas passed
away today.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43057460.pdf
1902:
Sixteen-year-old Louis Lefkowitz, the founder of “Louis Lefkowitz and Brothers,
manufacturers of leather belts” and other similar items and the husband of
Sadie Leah Weiss came to the United States today from his native Hungary.
1903:
At a meeting held under the auspices of the English Zionist Federal a
resolution was adopted “declaring that the establishment of a home in Palestine
was the only practical solution of the Jewish question.” Israel Zangwill had given an impassioned
speech in support of the motion during which he invoked the bloody images of
the atrocities committed against the Jews of Romania and Kishineff.
1904: Herzl's diary breaks off with a report to
Jacob Schiff. Schiff was a successful banker and financer. He was one of the
leaders of the Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century. He actively
intervened on behalf of the Jews suffering in Tsarist Russia. Although he had
reservations about Zionism, he was increasingly drawn to Herzl’s concept of a
Jewish homeland in Palestine as a practical way of lessening the suffering of
Russia’s Jews.
1905: “The Yiddish Shylock of Jacob P Adler”
published today provided a review of the Jewish actor in that role in the drama
that opened last night at the American Theatre.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1905/05/16/issue.htm
1905: In Russia, the Committee of Ministers is
reported to indorse the “Jewish reforms” proposed Sergei Witte which cover
“military conscription, participation in local government and removal of
residential disabilities.”
1906: “Pennsylvania Plans Its $50,000,000 Loan”
published today described the role of Kuhn Loeb & Co. in the quick
placement of this issue notes which was vital to the growth of one of America’s
leading railroads.
1907: A day after pleading guilty to charges of
bribery Abe Ruef “testified before a grand jury incriminating the Mayor of San
Francisco which led to his conviction and removal from office.
1908(15th of Iyar, 5668): Parashat
Behar
1908(15th of Iyar, 5668): Abraham
Hart Cardoza, the son of Sarah N. Peixotto and the brother of Rahel and
Algernon Cardozo passed away today after which he was buried in the Mount Neboh
Cemetery in Glendale, NY.
1908: It was reported today that the publishing
house Messrs. L.C. Page & Co is preparing to issue Race or Mongrel,
American or Pan-European which warns “against unrestricted immigration” and
cites “the Jews as an example of a race preserved in strength by abstention
from foreign marriage.”
1909(25th of Iyar, 5669): Forty-two-year-old “prestidigitator “ Leon Hermann, the Paris
born son of Caroline Hirshmann and Benjamin Herrmann and the husband of Marie
Vedie who has performed his magic acts before “almost all of the crowned heads
of Europe” while giving numerous benefit shows for several Jewish organizations
including the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the National Jewish Hospital for
Consumptives at Denver passed away today.
http://geniimagazine.com/wiki/index.php/Leon_Herrmann
1909:
Birthdate of Yehiel Feiner whom the world would come to know as Yehiel De-Nur
or Dinur, a survivor of Auschwitz who used his experience as the basis for
several books including “The House of Dolls.”
1910:
It was reported today that the commission that was appointed to examine the
“question of the expulsion of Jews residing illegally in Kiev and elsewhere
outside of the Pale has finished its works and the 170 families of the 1,500
examined will be allowed to remain and not forced to move elsewhere in Russia.
1911(18th of Iyar, 5671): Lag B’Omer
1911: Masliach Effendi of the Turkish
government ridiculed the idea that Jews could become a menace to Turkey. He
suggests appointment of committee to examine the whole question of Zionism.
1911: “President Taft address a large audience
tonight in the Eight Street Jewish in the interest of the movement for erection
of a monument in Washington to Haym Salomon, the Jew who financed the
Revolution…”
1912:
Birthdate of Rita Kanarek. In her senior year at N.Y.U. she married Alex
Hillman founder and President of Hillman Periodicals. Mrs. Hillman became
president of the Alex Hillman Family Foundation where she pursued her passions
as an art collector and philanthropist. Among the beneficiaries of her largesse
was the Phillips Beth Israel School of Nursing in Manhattan. She passed away at
the age of 95 in November, 2007.
1912: Birthdate of author, historian and
broadcaster, Studs Terkel. “My family was Jewish but not religious. My mother
went through the rituals; my father didn't. He was a freethinker.” He passed
away at the age of 93.
1913(9th of Iyar 5673): Ninety-one-year-old
banker William Scholle passed away today in New York.
1913: Rabbi Tobias Schaafarber is scheduled to
deliver the Friday night sermon at the Chicago Hebrew Institute.
1913: Three years after the death of his first
wife, Max Rabinoff married Helene Gaubert today
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/rbml/Rabinoff/
1914 20th of Iyar): Isaac Halevy
(Rabinowitz) author of “Dorot ha-Rishonim” passed away.
1914: “The preliminary paper of Dr. Harry Plotz
of Mount Sinai Hospital in which he tells for the time of his isolation of the
germ of typhus fever and Brill’s disease, appeared in the of The Journal of the
American Medical Association published” today.
1915: In Chicago, on Leo M. Frank Day, famous
attorney Clarence Darrow will address “a big mass meeting” scheduled to be held
today “at which it is expected 100,000 signatures will be obtained on petitions
appealing to Governor J.M. Slation and the Prison Board of Georgia to commute
Frank’s death sentence.
1915: “Prominent speakers will tell of the
trial of Leo Frank and the many injustices to which it is alleged he was
subjected because of the high racial feeling in the South” at a mass meeting
scheduled to be held in Minneapolis, MN in an attempt “to ask the Governor of
Georgia to commute Leo M. Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment.”
1915: Today “the Kosher Butchers’ Union opened
co-operative butcher shops at 149 Orchard Street, 214 East 102nd
Street and 501 Wilkins Avenue in the Bronx” the proceeds from which will be
used to finance the plan strike by the Union.
1915: Felix Warburg was presented a silver
trowel today when the cornerstone was laid for the new building of the
Yorkville Jewish Institute and Talmud Torah at 123 East 85th Street
where the attendees heard speeches by several notable including Professor
Mordecai M. Kaplan of JTS and Borough President Marcus M. Marks
1915: Professor Max L. Margolis and Horace
Stern are scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of the Jewish Publication
Society of America which is being held at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, PA.
1916: Birthdate of Ephraim Katzir, former
President of Israel. Born Katchalski in Kiev, Katzir came to Palestine in 1925.
A biophysicist, Katzir taught at Hebrew University and served as department
hair at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. One result of his research was the
creation of a synthetic fiber for internal surgery that can be dissolved by
body enzymes. He served as Israel's fourth President (a largely ceremonial
position) from 1973 to 1978.
1916: As the French and British negotiated the
post-war disposition of Ottoman Empire, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward
Grey sent a letter to Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador to the Court of St.
James ratifying Cambon’s version of the partition plan that would eventually be
known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-sykes-picot-agreement-1916
1916: The will of Shalom Aleichem was published
in the New York Times and read into the Congressional Record of the United
States.
1917: The Chess Club is scheduled to play an
exhibition game at the Sinai Social Center before which Edward Lasker, the
leading Chess champion will deliver an introductory speck on “Chess, an Aid in
the Struggle of Life.
1917: The Annual meeting of the Jewish Training
School of Chicago is scheduled to be held this evening at the Standard Club.
1917: Today, President Wilson told Judge Aaron
J. Levy of New York that “at present” the government is “unable to do anything
further to relieve the situation of the Jews in Palestine” which has been
pictured “as very serious.”
1917: Dr. A. B. Yudelson and Nathan D. Kaplan
are scheduled to speak about the issues facing the American Jewish Congress at
this evening’s meeting The South Side Jewish Men’s Club at the Jewish
Educational Center.
1918(5th of Sivan, 5678): Erev
Shavuot
1918: Two Jewish French journalists – Landau
and Goldsky—expressed their desire to address the court today after having been
sentenced to prison on charges of treason yesterday.
1918: Rabbi H.S. Margolies, Rabbi Philip Klein,
Rabbi S.E. Jaffe and Rabbi M.L. Preil were among those who signed a letter
issued today by the Rabbinical Association “urging the Jews of America to
subscribe generously to the Red Cross fund.”
1919: Sir Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson “was
created 1st Viscount Burnham of Hall Barn in the County of Buckingham.”
1919: The first Estonian Congress of Jewish
congregations which had been convened on May 11 to discuss the new
circumstances Jewish life was confronting came to a close today. This is where
the ideas of cultural autonomy and a Jewish Gymnasium (secondary school) in
Tallinn were born. Jewish societies and associations began to grow in numbers.
The largest of these new societies was the H. N. Bjalik Literature and Drama
Society in Tallinn founded in 1918. Societies and clubs were established in
Viljandi, Narva, and elsewhere. In 1920, the Maccabi Sports Society was founded
and became well-known for its endeavors to encourage sports among Jews. Jews
also took an active part in sporting events in Estonia and abroad. Sara
Teitelbaum was a 17-time champion in Estonian athletics and established no less
than 28 records. In the 1930s there were about 100 Jews studying at the
University of Tartu. In 1934, a chair was established in the School of
Philosophy for the study of Judaica. There were five Jewish student societies
in Tartu Academic Society, the Women’s Student Society Hazfiro, the Corporation
Limuvia, the Society Hasmonea and the Endowment for Jewish Students. All of
these had their own libraries and played important roles in Jewish culture and
social life. Political organizations such as Hasomer Hazair and Beitar were
also established. Many Jewish youth traveled to Palestine to establish the
Jewish State. The renowned kibbutzim of Kfar Blum and Ein Gev were set up in
part by Jews from Estonia.
1919:
University of Pennsylvania trained Civil Engineer and Chairman of the
Engineering Department of the Pennsylvania Railroad System who during WW I
“fought overseas with Company B, 103rd Engineers, 28th
Division of the AEF” was honorably discharged today.
1920: The funeral for sixty-year-old Yiddish
actor and theatre manager David Kessler was scheduled to be held this morning
“under the auspices of the Jewish Actors’ Club.”
1921: “Cheated Love,” a silent film starring
Carmel Myers, “the daughter of Isidore Myers, a Russian-Jewish rabbi who was
born in Russia but raised in Australia, and Anna Jacobson Myers, an
Austrian-Jew” was released today in the United States.
1921: “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the
World's Zion Organization, in addressing the convention of the Independent
Order of B'rith Abraham, on the Steel Pier, this afternoon, made a plea that
50,000 Jews go to Palestine from America within the next year.”
1922(18th of Iyar, 5682): Lag BaOmer
1923: Birthdate of economist Merton Miller,
winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economics.
1923: Birthdate of Manuel D. Plotkin, the
native of Chita, Russia who was appointed Director of the Census Bureau by
President Carter in 1977.
1923 In New Canaan, CT, Jewish immigrants
Morris Yudain and Berta Jaffe gave birth to their seventh child, Sidney
Lawrence Yudain the journalist who created “Roll Call.”
1923:
The first aerial display in Palestine took place at
Ramleh today, a squadron of 14 aeroplanes of the British Royal Air Force participating.
The exhibition program included flying, air races, a baloon hunt, mimic air
fighting and a bombing demonstration. The aerial derby was over the circuit of
Ramleh, Raselain, Jaffa, Ramle... Lieut. Martyn, flying a Vickers Vimy biplane,
won the air race covering a distance of twenty-seven miles.
1924: “Having been convicted of conspiracy to carry stolen
securities into the District of Columbia, Nicky Arnstein” the husband of Fanny
Brice “entered Leavenworth prison, where he remained for three years.”
1924: The Jewish Daily News published “The Old World Ghettos” by art critic and artist Marie Trommer, the
Ukraine born daughter of Bertha Edlin and Bernard Trommer, a graduate of the
Woman’s Art School at the Cooper Institute.
1924: In Manhattan, Herman and Sara Aaronson Mankiewicz gave
birth to Frank Fabian Mankiewicz “a writer and Democratic political strategist
who was Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s press secretary, directed Senator George S.
McGovern’s losing 1972 presidential campaign and for six years was the
president of National Public Radio.”
1924: Birthdate of Joseph Zalman Margolis, the
native of Newark, NJ, who “has held the Laura H. Carnell Chair of Philosophy at
Temple University” since 1991.
1925(22nd of Iyar, 5685): Parashat
Behar-Bechukotai
1925: “Felix Warburg, Chairman of the Joint
Distribution Committee announced today that the organization was planning
another nation-wide campaign to certain of its relief activities” including
agricultural colonization by in Russia
and the care of Jewish orphans in the Soviet Union.
1925: “Liberty, democracy and social justice
are the three great ideals which actuated the founders of the American
Republic, declared Dr. Nathan Krass, speaking today at Temple Emanu-El on
President Coolidge’s eulogy of American Jews.”
1926: In Brooklyn, businessman Harold A LIfton
and Ciel (Roth) Lifton gave birth to Dr. Robert Jay LIfton the psychiatrist
whose works include Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism; Death
in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima; and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing
and the Psychology of Genocide
1926: Dr. James Simon is scheduled to preside
over today’s celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the
establishment of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, a “German Jewish
organization founded in 1901 to improve social and political conditions of Jews
in Eastern Europe and Orient.”
1927(14th of Iyar, 5687): Pesach
Sheni
1927(14th of Iyar, 5687): Sixty-four
year old American actor and vaudevillian Sam Bernard, the Birmingham, England,
born son of Benjamin and Charlotta Bernard and the husband of Florence Deutsch
who began his career at the age of 13 in “the Grand Duke’s Theatre” passed away
today while on board the liner Columbus which
was the first leg on a trip to Carlsbad, Germany where he planned on getting
relief from his rheumatism.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=J28tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-4sFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5728%2C2804723
1927: It was announced today that “gifts of
$47,800 to the Yong Men’s Hebrew Association’s $1,500,000 building fund brought
the total today up to $881,850…”
1927: It was reported today that four thousand
six hundred and twenty-eight persons are now living in 41 settlements in
Palestine created by the Keren Hayesod, according to the latest figures given
out by the Department of Agricultural Colonization of the Palestine Zionist
Executive. Sixty-five per cent of this population are workers, and the
remainder children. (JTA)
1928: Three Jews, who are reported to be Communists, were
scheduled to be deported from Palestine.
One of the deportees “was found guilty in Jerusalem of belonging to an
illegal organization” while the other two were being deported after having
served short jail terms for participating in “May Day riots in Tel Aviv.”
1929: In
Baltimore, MD, Arnold Rice Rich and Helen Gravely Jones Rich gave birth to
Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work —
distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic
ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of
poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century. Her father was
Jewish. Her mother was not. (As reported
by Margalit Fox)
1929: The 1st Academy Awards ceremony,
presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honoring
the best films of 1927 and 1928 and took place today at a private dinner held
at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, California. The awards,
popularly known as Oscars, were created by Jewish movie mogul Louis B. Mayer,
founder of Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation.
1929: Polish born Rabbi Selig Starr who 1921
came to the United States “with his widowed mother Guta Tova where he earned
degrees from the University of Chicago and married Pearl Cohen “obtained his
U.S. citizenship today after which “he was elected Rabbi of Am Olam.
1930(18th of Iyar, 5690): Lag BaOmer
1930: “A letter from August Heckscher,
supporting the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's New York campaign
for $1,000,000 to relieve suffering Jews in Eastern Europe, was made public today
by Albert Ottinger, former Attorney, General, local campaign chairman.”
1931(29th of Iyar, 5691): Parashat
Bamidbar
1931: Birthdate of Manhattan native Alfred
William Alberts, a pioneering researcher in the field cholesterol as it related
to cardio-vascular problems. (As reported by Gina Kolata)
1932: The Nazis are demanding the removal of Bernhard Weiss from his post as the Vice-President of the
Berlin Police Force. Their objections
are two-fold: Weiss is Jewish and he ordered the arrest of four Nazis for their
role in attacking a former Nazi named Schotz who had left the party.
1932(10th of Iyar,
5692): Eighty-year-old Edward Lawrence Levy the London born winner of the first
World Weightlifting Competition in 1891 and “member of the International
Weightlifting Jury at the first modern Olympics at Athens in 1896 passed away
today while working as an agent of the Midland District of the National Trade
Defence Association.
1933: “In a radio symposium on
"Literary Freedom and Nationalism" tonight, four prominent New York
members of the American Centre of the P.E.N. Clubs, an International
organization of authors, deplored the nationalistic spirit that recently led to
the banning of some German authors and the burning of their books and the books
of other writers.”
1933: David Lloyd George created
a stir today with a fiery speech blaming the former Allies entirely for the
present condition, of Germany” including the rise of Hitlerism.
1934: Three days after she had
passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today for sixty-year-old
Henrietta Jaskow, “a member of the board of directors of the Foster Mothers
Association of America” and supporter of Mt. Sinai Hospital.
1934: “Benes Calms Fears of Jews
On Nationalism” published today described a meeting that Czech Foreign Minister
Eduard Benes had with a delegation of Jews from the City of Uzhorod in which he
assured them that the government “would not attempt to force Czechoslovakian
nationalism on the Jews” living in that area.
1934: In Brooklyn, NY, Rubin
Dallek (a business-machine dealer) and Esther (Fisher) Dallek. Gave birth to
Robert A. Dallek, the Columbia University Ph.D. historian who won the Bancroft
Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy,
1932–1945
1935: Harry (Aaron ) Bomberg, the Belarus born
son of Leib Bromberg and Rose Bromberg husband
of Rose (Rochel) Bromberg and Marsha “Minnie” Bromberg and father of Sylvia
Kranz; Baby Bromberg; Jeanette Barr; Louis Bromberg and Ruth "Ruthie"
Rose was naturalized as a U.S. citizen today.
1935: “A convention of delegates from national
Jewish youth organizations will meet tonight in room 327 of the Chanin
Building, 122 East Forty-Second Street, to consider the syllabi which will be
presented to the seminars to be held on June 9 at the Metropolitan Conference
of Jewish Youth Organizations. The meeting, under the auspices of the youth
division of the American Jewish Congress, will consider such problems as
anti-Semitism, boycott of the 1936 Olympics, Zionism, Jewish youth and economic
discrimination and Jewish education.” (JTA)
1936: Tonight “the Icor, the association for
Jewish colonization in Soviet Russia, celebrated the second jubilee of the
Jewish autonomy in Biro-Bidjan, U.S.S.R. where a Jewish Soviet Republic is
being built, with a concert at Town Hall.”
1936(24th of Iyar, 5696): A bomb thrown by
Arabs kills three Jews at the Edison cinema in Jerusalem. The Haganah demands
permission to retaliate, but Ben Gurion refuses. The Edison Cinema was not just
a movie theatre. It was a “citadel of secular European culture in Jerusalem. It
opened in 1932 with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” sung in
Hebrew. The Edison was the third largest cinema in the city and popular sport
for British soldiers and officials.
1936: “Steel helmeted police maintained comparative
quiet in the Holy Land today following” demonstrations that had broken out
yesterday when the Arab campaign of civil disobedience officially began.
1936: At Shabbat morning services Rabbi Louis I.
Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon at Rodeph Sholom on “Do Christians
Understand Jews? – A comment on the Christian Century Articles”
1936: At Shabbat morning services Rabbi Nathan A.
Perilman is scheduled to deliver a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El on
“The Pitfalls of Self-righteousness
1937(6th of Sivan, 5697): Shavuot
1937: Birthdate of Dr. Anthony Saidy, the physician
and Internal Master of Chess who was a mentor to Bobby Fisher.
1937: The Polish government launched two
investigations into the attacks on Jews that took place last week in Brzesc,
which was known as Brest-Litovsk, the site of the peace negotiations between
the Germans and the Russians that resulted with the latter surrendering to the
former.
1937: Dr. Bernhard Kahn and David J. Schweitzer, European
director and vice-president, respectively, of the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee issued a report today that described “the role of the cooperative credit system established by the American
Jewish Joint Reconstruction Foundation in aiding some 500,000 Jews in eleven
European countries by facilitating issuance of $28,000,000 in credits in nine
months
1937: In Romania, “The first motion to exclude Jews
from professional associations came today when the Confederation of the
Associations of Professional Intellectuals (Confederația Asociațiilor de
Profesioniști Intelectuali din România) voted to exclude all Jewish members
from its affiliated bodies, calling for the state to withdraw their licenses
and reassess their citizenship.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported on the
continued fighting between the police and British army units in the Acre
District. At least 23 terrorists were killed there, and numerous arrests were
made. Jewish settlements repulsed numerous terrorist attacks but complained
that they were supplied with insufficient arms and too small a number of
supernumerary constables for a successful defense. The Iraq Petroleum Co.
pipeline was again set on fire.
1938: Today “the British government set out the
objectives of the Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence” which had been
founded by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, Baroness Swanborough who
served as chairman of the WVS.
1938: After two and half
weeks of touring the country, Britain’s Palestine Partition Commission began
its first official session. Because of
the continued Arab violence, the meeting was held “in camera under heavy guard.’ While Arab leaders continued to boycott the
commission, Jewish leaders Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, Moshe Shertok and
Dr. Bernard Joseph met with the British to discuss possible implementation of
partition proposals.
1939: “British troops
patrolled strategic points throughout the Holy Land tonight as part of
extensive precautions to avert threatened disorders over the British
Government's Palestine plan, to be published tomorrow”
1940: This afternoon
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. met with President Roosevelt at the
White House today.
1940: It was reported
today that the 27th annual Palestine Flower Day is scheduled to be
held on May 19, 1940.
1940(8th of Iyar, 5700): Forty-two-year-old
Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker died tonight while fleeing from the Nazis
in a freak accident when he feel through an open hatch aboard the SS Bodegraven
in the English Channel and broke his neck.
1940: In New Canaan, CT,
“Asher Margolies, a Macy’s executive, and the former Ethel Polacheck, a
painter” gave birth to John Samuel Margolies, Americas “foremost photographer
of vernacular architecture.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1941: “Nearly 5,000
foreign Jews of Paris, many of them crying hysterically, arrived at a
concentration camp at Orleans today as the government extended its new social
measures by withdrawing licenses of hundreds of foreign doctors and druggists.”
1941: Today shortly after Robet Serebrenik , the
Vienna born on of Peisach Serebrenik and Theresia Reiß, the husband of Julia
Herzog and the Chief Rabbi of Luxembourg was attacked, the
Nazis began to demolish the Great Synagogue of Luxembourg, piece by piece, in
what would turn out to be a two year task.
1942(29th of
Iyar, 5702): Parashat Bamidbar
1942(29th of
Iyar, 5702: Sixty-seven-year-old theatre producer Morris Gest, the husband of
Reina Gest and the son-in-law of David Belasco passed away today.
https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00740
1942: “Sobibór became
fully operational and began mass gassing operations.
1943: The famous Tolmatsky Synagogue of Warsaw
was dynamited by order of General Jurgen Stroop. It marked the last German
"major operation" in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
1943: SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen
Stroop reports the final liquidation of the Jewish ghetto at Warsaw, although
some Jews remain in hiding. The Germans reportedly lost 300 troops. Amazingly the Jewish
resistance had proved fierce, by comparison than that of the French Army in
1940. The number of Jewish dead does not matter, since they would have perished
in the showers and ovens any way. Death was not the question; the manner of death
was the matter of choice. There were a few survivors of the Ghetto, one of them
being the mother of Marsha Fensin, the former
Cantor of Temple Judah.
1943(11th of Iyar 11): Yiddish
author Chaim Zhitlowsky passed away
1943: Today, in
what is now neighborhood of Tel Aviv, “the Sarona assembly hall was bombed by
the Irgun, injuring six people.”
1944(23rd of Iyar, 5704): Four year
old Eldad Davidovics who had been transported from Brno to Terezin today was
transported from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered.
1944: The first of more than 180,000
Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.
1944: Seventy-year-old Berlin native Olga
Lehmann who had been deported to Terezin in 1942 was shipped to Auschwitz
today.
1945: Today, the Palestine police accused a
“group of lawless Jewish political extremists “which has been inactive since
last Fall” and which believes their activities “can hasten the emigration to
Palestine of surviving European Jews “was responsible for the “sabotage of
telephone communications in the last few days.”
1946: It was reported today that Crown
Publishers will Old Country by Sholem Aleichem on June 17.
1946: On the same day that it was reported that
the “Arabs are in no mood to compromise on the pont of 100,000 Jews being
permitted to enter Palestine, “twenty armed Jews, including several young
girls, reportedly participated in several robberies today” in Palestine.
1947: Three days after he had passed away,
funeral services are scheduled to be held for NYU trained lawyer Louis
Fabricant, the “attorney-in-chief of the legal aid society and leader in B’nai
B’rith who raised three children –Herbert, Helen and Sarel – with his wife.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/05/15/88781033.pdf
1947: Birthdate of New York City native and
Boston University graduate Andrew Lack who went from acting in commercials and
“off-Broadway productions” to a behind the camera career that culminated with
his being named “chairman of the NBCUniversal Worldwide News Group.”
1948: In New York City, the American Zionist
Emergency Council sponsored a celebration of the creation of the Jewish state
at Madison Square Garden that was so well attended 75,000 people had to be
turned away.
1948: Based on a telegram from David Ben Gurion
and Moshe Sharett, Abba Eban and not Mordechai Elisah, is to be Israel’s chief
spokesman at the the United Nations.
1948: Israel issued its first postage stamps.
1948: At the Landsberg DP Camp, survivors of
the Holocaust held a celebratory parade in honor the creation of the state of
Israel
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/16.asp
1948: Tonight, “after driving away the enemy”
“company of the third battalion of the Yiftach Brigade occupied the Tegart fort
called Metzudat Koach by the Israelis which overlooked the Hula Valley.
1948: Chaim Weizmann was chosen Chairman of the
Provisional State Council of Israel which effectively made him the first
president of the State of Israel.
1948: The Egyptian army suffered its first
defeat at Nirim, in the Negev.
1948: The Egyptians entered Gaza. They would
not “leave’ until 1967.
1948: At approximately one o’clock in the
morning Syrian artillery began shelling Kibbutz Ein Gev. At dawn, Syrian aircraft attacked the Kinarot
valley villages. Later in the day
“Syrian aircraft made bombing runs on Masada, Sha'ar HaGolan, Degania Bet and
Afikim.” This was the opening round in the Syrian attempt to sweep the Jews
from the Galilee. To any one observing events of that day, it would appear that
the victory would go to the Syrians with their tanks, artillery and combat
aircraft.
1948: “JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM
LANDS; Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of Their Foes”
published today described the precarious position of the 900,000 Jews living
“Arab and Moslem countries stretching from Morocco to India.” “There is a tendency” in some Moslem states
“such as Syria and Lebanon” “to regard all Jews as Zionist agents and fifth
columnists. There are indications that
that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions” which
the United Nations has done nothing to prevent.
These fears are based in part on Arab League announcements that at some
unspecified date, “all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be
considered ‘members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine.’ Their bank
accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to ‘Zionist ambitions
in Palestine.’ Jews believed to active
Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.” In Syria, “virtually all” Jewish civil
servants have already been fired and in Iraq Jews are not allowed to leave the
country without posting a $20,000 bond to guarantee their return. However bad conditions are now, it is
predicted that in the event of an all-out war in Palestine, “the repercussions
will be grave for Jews all the way from Casablanca to Karachi.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50A15FB3F59157A93C4A8178ED85F4C8485F9
1949:
Milton Berle appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
1950: Out
of a large collection of 120 styles of knit fashions brought to this country
from Israel, for merchandising, forty were shown this afternoon at the Plaza
Hotel to buyers. The presentation, under the auspices of Service for Palestine,
Inc., 2 Park Avenue, was its first show to promote Israel-made products in the
American market.
1950: “The Jackie
Robinson” a biopic about the integration of baseball for which Ross Hunter
served as the dialogue coach was released in the United States today.
1952: “New Faces of 1952”
a revue that included music by Sheldon Harnick and Arthur Siegel as well as “Of
Fathers and Sons” a parody of Clifford Odets “Golden Boy” written by Mel Brooks
opened on Broadway today at the Royale Theatre.
1952: It was reported
today that “Senator Herbert H. Lehman will be awarded the 1952 Gold Medal of
Merit of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States” for his “distinguished
service to the nation, to Jewry and to his fellow veterans.”
1953(2nd of
Sivan, 5713): Parashat Bamidbar
1953(2nd of
Sivan, 5713): Ninety-year-old Bavarian born, Iowa raised “philanthropist,
Zionist” WW I anti-War activist, Mary Fels,the wife of Joseph Fels passed away
today
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/fels-mary
https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/8173
1954: In Elizabeth, NJ,
Joseph Kushner, “a construction worker, builder and real estate investor” and
Rae Kushner, both of whom were Holocaust survivors, gave birth to “real estate
developer Charles Kushner”, the founder of Kushner Companies, brother of Murray Kushner and Esther Schulder and father
of Jared Kushner.
1955: Birthdate of actress Debra Winger, the
star of “Officer
and a Gentleman.”
1955: Birthdate of Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of
Seagram and Warner Music
1956(6th of Sivan, 5716): Shavuot
1956: U.S. premiere of “While the City Sleeps”
a film based on The Bloody Spur, a novel by Charles Einstein and
directed by Fritz Lang.
1957: It was reported today that Colonel Robert
Henriques, the author of 100 Hours to Suez which described and analyzed
Israel’s victory in the recent Sinai Campaign is scheduled to the principal
speaker at the Israel bond dinner on May 19. (JTA)
1959(8th of Iyar, 5719): Seventy-year-old Hall
of Fame Bowler Mort Lindsey passed away today.
http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/MortimerLindsey.htm
1960: Theodore Maiman operates the first
optical laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
1960: “An abridged version of the Mel Brooks
musical “Shinbone Alley” “was broadcast under the original title archy &
mehitabel[ as part of the syndicated TV anthology series Play of the Week
presented by David Susskind.”
1961: Birthdate of Jean Hanff Korelitz the
author of Admission which “was adapted for the 2013 film of the same
name”
https://www.jeanhanffkorelitz.com/
1962(12th of Iyar, 5722):
Fifty-five-year-old Chicago born John Marshall Law School trained divorce
attorney Sol R. Friedman, a former state chess champion and the husband of
Catherine Friedman with whom he raised six children – Richard, James, Thomas,
Gregory, Paula and Suzanne passed away today in Michael Reese Hospital while
waiting to undergo heart surgery.
1964(5th of Sivan, 5724): Parashat
Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot
1964: After having been performed successfully
in the UK, “The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd” directed by
Anthony Newley and produced by David Merrick opened today at the Shubert
Theatre in New York City.
1965(16th of Iyar, 5725): Pesach
Sheni
1965: Eightieth birthday of Rabbi de Sola Pool
who had retired from the active leadership of Congregation Shearith Israel –
the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in 1957 after serving as Rabbi for fifty
years.
1965: In Canada, Dr. Victor Goldbloom was the
first guest to appear on “Cross Country Check-up,” a Sunday afternoon radio
show whose hosts have included Moses Znaimer.
1966: Two people were killed today during a
“landmine attack between Sea of Galilee and Almagor.”
1967: General Fawzi, the Egyptian chief of
staff, sent a message to the commander of the UN Emergency Force, General
Rikhye of the Indian Army requesting the withdrawal of the UNEF from Egypt. The
Egyptian Foreign Minister sent a cable to U Thant, UN Secretary General tell
him that the Egyptian government had decided to immediately terminate the
presence of UNEF in Egypt and the Gaza strip.
1968(18th of Iyar, 5728); Lag B'Omer
1968(18th of Iyar, 5728): Seventy-five-year-old
Ben Dalgin, the New York City born son of Mr. and Mrs. Max Dalgin who worked
his way from being a teenage “printer’s apprentice” to serving as “director of
art, photography and reproduction for the New
York Times” passed away today.
1969(28th of Iyar, 5729): Yom
Yerushalayim
1969: Barbra Streisand appeared at a Friars
Club Tribute
1969: In the Soviet Union, Boris Kochubievesky,
a “refusnik” is scheduled to “3 yards hard labor” at the end of sham trial
where he was accused of slandering the Soviet regime.
1971(21st of Iyar, 5731): Seventy-seven-year-old
“Austrian actor, cabaret performer, refugee from the Nazis and the husband of
Anny Han passed away today in his native Vienna.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/706103-Karl-Farkas
https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/karl-farkas-7044
1973: Birthdate of actress Tori Spelling.
1973(14th of Iyar, 5733):
Famed Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz passed away. His body was flown to
Jerusalem for burial.
1974: Birthdate of Adam
Richman who earned an undergrad degree from Emory and a Master’s from Yale
before pursuing a career as an actor and television personality.
1974: Despite a terrorist attack the previous
day on a school at Ma’alot, Prime Minister Golda Meir tells Secretary of State
Kissinger that talks with the Syrians will continue. After a one-day hiatus,
she says, “We had all better get back to peacemaking.
1974: “Dybbuk,” a ballet
based on the Ansky’s play created by Jerome Robbins using the music of Leonard
Bernstein debuted at the New York State Theatre, Lincoln Center.
1975(6th of
Sivan, 5735): Shavuot
1975: In “Before the Founders and Sons” published
today Richard F. Shepard provided a review of Amos Elon’s latest work Herzl,
a biography of “the man acknowledged as the founder of the Jewish state.”
1975: “Sheila Levine Is
Dead and Living in New York” the movie version of the novel by Gail Parent
starring Jeannie Berlin and featuring Sam Melton as “Mannie” was released in
the United States today.
1976(16th
of Iyar, 5736): Seventy-seven-year-old Shlomo H. Bardin, the son of Hairm
and Miryam Bardinstein and the husband of Roth Bardin, with whom he had two
sons – David and Hillel – and “who studied at the University of Berlin,
University College and Columbia University after which “he founded the Haifa
Technical High School and Haifa Nautical School passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/17/archives/dr-shlomo-bardin-77-dies-founded-brandeis-institute.html
1977: "Boulevard
Montmartre, in the Afternoon Rain," by Camille Pissarro the son of
Frederick Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew, was sold today, at Christie's in New York
for $275,000
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that in his 28th Annual State Comptroller's Report
Dr. Yitzhak Nebenzahl called for a "Ministry of Administration." He
said that while there are many links that tie people to its government, in
Israel the administration is the weakest link in this chain. "A
government," he explained, "is like an automobile. No matter how fine
the car is, it will not ride well unless all four wheels are intact." The
Report claimed a massive maladministration, and was specifically highly critical
of the Treasury.
1980(1st of Sivan, 5740): Rosh
Chodesh Sivan
1980(1st of Sivan, 5740):
Ninety-year-old Mabel Unterberg Nathan, the New York born daughter of Israel
and Bella Epstein Unterberg and the wife of Edgard Joshua Nathan passed away
after which she was buried at Beth Olom Cemetery in Ridgewood, NY.
1982: Final broadcast of the 7th
season of “One Day At A Time,” starring Bonnie Franklin.
1984(14th of Iyar, 5744): Pesach
Sheni
1984(14th of Iyar, 5744): Comedian Andy Kaufman
passed away. Born in 1949, Kaufman is best remembered for his many appearances
on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and for his portrayal of Latka on the television hit “Taxi.”
He was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer and was 35 at the time of his
death.
http://andykaufman.jvlnet.com/core.htm
1984(14th of Iyar, 5744): Irwin Shaw passed
away at the age of 71. Born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in 1913 in the Bronx, his
Jewish immigrants from Russia changed the family to Shaw and moved to Brooklyn.
After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1934, Shaw wrote scripts for radio
shows including Dick Tracey. After serving in the Army during World War II,
Shaw produced his "great American war novel" The Young Lions,
which became the basis for a successful film of the same name. Among other works by
this highly prolific writer was Rich Man, Poor Man which became a hit
t.v. mini-series.
1985: American painter, editor, and book
artist, Susan Bee and poet Charles Bernstein gave birth to their first child
Emma Bee Bernstein.
1986: David Pleat left Luton Town Football Club to become manager of Tottenham Hotspur
“one of the biggest football clubs in England” (Editor’s Note – Football in
England is what Americans call soccer)
1986(7th of Iyar, 5746): Sixty-five-year-old
Yehuda Hellman passed away today. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/18/obituaries/yehuda-hellman-dies-headed-jewish-groups.html?pagewanted=print
1987: For the third and final night Leonard
Bernstein conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the IPO’s 50th
anniversary celebration
1987: Birthdate of Can Bonomo, the Turkish born
Jewish singer who “represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 at
Baku.
1987: On Long Island, at the North Woodmere
Jewish Center, Rabbi Morris Pickholz officiated at the wedding of Lisa B.
Sherman and Robert M. Cohen
1988: CBS broadcast the final episode of
“Cagney and Lacey” produced by Barney Rosenzwieg and Joseph Stern and
co-starring Al Waxman as the title characters supervisor “Lt. Bert Samuels.
1990(21st of Iyar, 5750): Multi-talented entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
passed away at the age of 64. Born in Harlem in 1925, began his show business
career at the age of four. Davis was the son of a popular vaudeville
entertainer. He learned how to dance from the legendary BoJangles. He began dancing with the Will
Mastin Trio and moved on to a singing career that included opening for Frank
Sinatra. Davis was part of the Rat Pack and starred with them
in the
cult classic “Ocean’s Eleven.” During the 1950's Davis was in an automobile
accident in which he lost his eye. It was during this period of his life than
he converted to Judaism. He
will be remembered not just for his talent but for his support of the Civil
Rights Movement as well. (As reported by Peter Flin)
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1208.html
1991: The
Los Angeles Times featured a review of “Wartime Lies,” the first novel
written by Louis Begley. "Wartime Lies is the story of a ‘lucky’ little
boy. Lucky goes in quotation marks; the child went through terror and
degradation. On the other hand, no one in his small family of well-to-do Polish
Jews went to a concentration camp. Only two--his grandfather and
grandmother--were killed; he, his father and his aunt survived and were able to
prosper after the war, even before emigrating.”
1993: A third revival of “3 Men on a Horse”
featuring Jewish thespians Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, Jerry Stiller and Ellen
Green closed today in New York City
1994(6th of Sivan, 5754) First Day of Shavuot
1994(6th of Sivan, 5754): Shaul Ben-Tzvi, the
second commander of the Israeli Navy passed away today. Born Paul Hamah Schulman in Connecticut in
1922 he graduated from the U.S. Navy Academy and served with the U.S. Navy in
the Pacific during WW II. Following his
discharge he worked to bring Jews to Palestine during the mandate and then
helped to establish a naval arm for the infant Jewish State.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/obituaries/paul-shulman-72-headed-israeli-navy.html?pagewanted=1
1995: “Noises, Sounds
& Sweet Airs,” Michael Nymans 25th Album was released to by Argo
Records.
1996: NBC broadcasts the
final episode of season 7 of ‘Seinfeld.”
1996(27th of
Iyar, 5756): Fifty-six-year-old Admiral Jeremy M. Boorda, the Chief of Naval
Operations passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/18/us/admiral-in-suicide-note-apologized-to-my-sailors.html
1999: Angela Warnick
Buchdahl was invested as the first Asian American cantor. Two years later, she
became the first Asian American rabbi.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/16/1999/angela-warnick-buchdahl
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors
and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Return of Depression
Economics by
Paul Krugman and recently released paperback editions Aharon
Appelfeld’s “The
Iron Tacks,” the “Israseli novel…about a concentration
camp survivor who wanders through Austria buying sacred books and other
remnants of the Jewish culture that once flourshed there while searing for the Nazi officer
who murdered his parents” and “Bronstein’s Children” by Jurek Becker,
“a novel
about the psychic aftershocks of the Holocaust in which an 18 year old German Jew stumbles
on his
father and two other camp survivors as they torture a former Nazi Guard.”
2000: ''Yiddishkayt
Los Angeles” is scheduled to continue for a third day.
2000: “For the first time
in almost four years, Israelis and Palestinian forces exchanged gunfire in the
West Bank today as a wave of violent protest swept through the Palestinian
territories. Despite the fighting, Prime Minister Ehud Barak won his
Parliament's approval to cede three villages near Jerusalem to the Palestinian
Authority in an effort to advance the peace talks.” (As reported by Deborah
Sontag)
2001: Today “behind the
closed doors of a Tel Aviv courtroom, Israeli prosecutors began their trial of
Itzhak Yaakov, a 75-year-old retired general accused of divulging classified
information related to Israel's nuclear weapons program.” (As reported by William
Orme)
2001: A Palestinian bus
driver, 35-year-old Khalil Abu Elba, who plowed his bus into a crowd and killed
eight Israelis, including seven soldiers, in February was convicted of murder.”
(As reported by Deborah Sontag)
2002(5th of Sivan, 5762):
Erev Shavuot
2002: U.S premiere of Star
Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones with Natalie Portman as “Senator Padme
Amidala” and Frank Oz doing the voice of “Yoda.”
2002: The “severed head
and decomposed body” of Danny Pearl “were found cut into ten pieces, and
buried—along with the jacket of a tracksuit Pearl was wearing when photographed
by his kidnappers—in a shallow grave at Gadap, about 30 miles (48 km) north of
Karachi.”
2003(14th of
Iyar, 5763): Pesach Sheni
2003: “In a sign of the
turmoil inside the governing Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians' chief
negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has submitted his resignation after being cut out of
high-level talks between the adversaries that are planned for tomorrow night.”
2003:Dave Kehr provided a
review of Oscar award winning documentary filmmaker Aviva Slesin’s newest film
“Secret Lives” Hidden children and Their Rescuers During World War II.”
2004(25th of
Iyar, 5764): Eight-six-year-old singer and lyricist June Carroll passed away
today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/nyregion/23hurewitz.html?_r=0
2004: The
New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback
edition of “Part of Our Time: Some Ruin and Monuments of the
Thirties” in which Murray Kempton re-evaluate
“the
radical movements and personalities of the 1930’s focusing on such ‘ruins and monuments’ as Paul Robeson,
Whittaker Chambers, Algers Hiss and …Walter Reuther.”
2005: A revival production
of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s “The Apple Tree” by the Encores came to an
end today.
2005: “A History of
Violence” a movie version of the novel by the same name directed by David
Cronenberg premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
2005: Funeral services for
Elaine Terner Cooper, the mother of future Secretary of the Treasury Steven
Munchin are scheduled to take place at Park East Synagogue followed by
interment at “Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, NY.”
2006(18th of
Iyar, 5766): Lag B’Omer
2006: Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard
received the prestigious B'nai B'rith international Presidential Gold Medal for
his "outstanding" support of Israel and the Jewish people at a
ceremony in Washington.
2006: A French politician and his sister sued
France's state-run SNCF railway for transporting their father and three
relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration
camps. Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister
Helene accused the SNCF of organizing the transport of French Jews to the
Drancy transit camp near Paris and billing the wartime government for its
services.
2007: Thomas Cole, Rose Dobrof, Marc Kaminsky,
Penninah Schram, Mark Weiss, and Steve Zeitlin present “Stories as Equipment
for Living: Last Talks and Tales of Barbara Myerhoff” at
the Center for Jewish History in New York City. “Stories As Equipment For
Living” is a compilation of Barbara Myerhoff's unpublished talks on the meaning
of stories, the tales she collected and the searching field notes that document
her struggle to discover and maintain her personal and cultural identity - all
that survive of the work she had undertaken in Los Angeles' orthodox Fairfax
community. It is a true sequel to her groundbreaking best seller Number Our Days.”
2007: (28 Iyar, 5767) Yom Yerushalayim -
Jerusalem Reunification Day; Celebrating forty years of the return of Jerusalem
to its rightful place as, one, undivided city serving as the capital of the
Jewish state. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its
cunning. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not set
Jerusalem above my highest joy.”(Psalms 137:5-6)
2007(28th
of Iyar, 5767): Rabbi Mordecai Simon, chief administrator of the Chicago Board
of Rabbis for thirty two years and host of the Sunday morning television show
“What’s Nu?” passed away in Highland Park, Il, at the age of 81.
2007: Richard J. Pratt was awarded the Woodrow
Wilson Medal for Corporate Citizenship. This is given to is executives who,
“...by their examples and their business practices, have shown a deep concern
for the common good beyond the bottom line. They are at the forefront of the
idea that private firms should be good citizens in their own neighborhoods and
in the world at large”
2008: At the Channel Inn in Washington, D.C.,
as part of the monthly meeting/luncheon of the Association of the Oldest
Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, The Jewish Historical Society of
Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a
series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of
an American Community (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same
name) co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel and the B'nai B'rith Klutznick
National Jewish Museum.
2008(11th
of Iyar, 5768): Ninety-three-year Middle East scholar
J. C. Hurewitz, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/nyregion/23hurewitz.html?_r=0
2008: "Furo" is being performed for
the first time in Israel, in a special temporary pavilion designed by Giora
Porter on the Tel Aviv Port boardwalk.
2009: The New York Supreme
Court, Appellate Division struck down a
lawsuit that sought to prevent the state of New York from using eminent domain
to seize the property where Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project is being
built.
2009: Ronald Radosh and
his wife, Allis Radosh, discuss and sign their new book, “A Safe Haven: Harry
S. Truman and the Founding of Israel” at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.
2009: At
the Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum in Bethesda, Md. Rabbi Shefa Gold, a
leader in Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and a composer of six albums
of Jewish liturgical music, reads from and discusses her new book, “In the
Fever of Love: An Illumination of the Song of Songs” (with illustrations by
Phillip Ratner) followed by a Havdalah Service.
2009(22nd of
Iyar, 5769):
Mordechai Limon, the first commander of the Israel Navy, passed away today
at the age of 85. “During World War II, he volunteered for the British Merchant
Marine, where he learned the art of naval commanding, and after the war he
commanded ships that brought clandestine immigrants to the Land of Israel in
defiance of the British mandatory authorities. Limon is best remembered for his
role in the Cherbourg Affair, directing the operation that brought five
warships from France to Israel that French President Charles de Gaulle sought
to prevent Israel from receiving, even though they had been paid for. Limon was
subsequently expelled from France and retired from the Navy, becoming a private
businessman.”
2009: An Israeli
entrepreneur who has started what is believed to be the world's first
tuition-free on-line university said today “he hopes the effort will expand
education to less fortunate people around the world. Shai Reshef said
University of the People has about 150 students from 35 countries who have
enrolled since the school began two weeks ago (Jerusalem Post)
2009: “A heart in
Jerusalem, a head in Crumlin” published today described the life and times of
Leopold Bloom.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-heart-in-jerusalem-a-head-in-crumlin-1.765048
2009: “Editor
and writer who dedicated his life to promoting Irish literature” published
today describes the life Irish author David Marcus.
2010: HBO
broadcast the final episode of the mini-series “The Pacific” featuring theme
music by Hans Zimmer, over-seen by executive producer Steven Spielberg and
featuring Ashley Zukerman and Jon Bernthal.
2010: Linda
Levi, Director of Global Archives for The American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee is scheduled deliver a talk entitled “The JDC Archives: Resources for
Genealogists” in New York City.
2010: The New York
Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including Finding Chandra: A
True Washington Murder Mystery by Scott Higham and Sari
Horwitz and Innocent by Scott Turow.
2011: “2,000 Years of
Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey,” a two day symposium focusing on the
Jews of Morocco, sponsored by The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to
come to an end.
2011: Rabbi Matthew Kraus, Director of Undergraduate Studies in
the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Cincinnati is scheduled
to deliver a lecture entitled “The Nature of Jewish Life in America” in which
he explores “the impact of the move to the suburbs on Jewish spiritual
life--how Jews pray, how Jews practice, and how Jews relate to the Almighty”
2011: Rabbi Matthew Kraus, Director of Undergraduate
Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Cincinnati is
scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “History of the JQC (Jewish Queen
City)” which traces the history of Cincinnati’s Jewish community “from its
humble origins to the glory days of Plum Street Temple and the Manischewitz
Baking Company to the start of the Big Brothers organization at the turn of the
century and so much more!”
2011: Tonight, the Great White Way of Broadway will light up as
stars, including Dudu Fisher and Tovah Feldshuh, perform in “Broadway
Sensation,” a benefit celebrating Israel’s future. The event, which will raise
proceeds for the Jewish National Fund, the OR Movement and the America-Israel
Cultural Foundation, will be broadcast live in Times Square, and feature over
100 performers from popular shows including Wicked, The Scottsboro Boys and
Next to Normal.
2011: Rahm Emanuel took the oath of office today to
become Chicago’s 46th mayor and the first mayor of The Windy City.
2011: “Vidal Sassoon Interview” published today.
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8480525/Vidal-Sassoon-interview.html
2012: A screening of “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray”
is scheduled to be shown at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood,
Ohio.
2012: Professor Steven Bowman is scheduled to deliver a
lecture entitled Italian Hebrew Renaissance of the 10th-11th Centuries at Cedar
Village in Mason, Ohio
2012: Movie critic Carrie Rickey is scheduled to deliver
a lecture entitled Untold Stories:The Films of Aviva Kempner Yoo-Hoo Mrs.
Goldberg at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.
2012: Chilean singer-songwriter Yael Meyer is scheduled
to perform at the Washington DCJCC.
2012: During an interview today, Moshe Kantor, president
of the European Jewish Congress said that his organization is urging European
governments to quickly adopt measures to tackle anti-Semitism and the threat of
right-wing extremist.
2012: David Levin beams with joy as Elizabeth Levin
graduates from Columbia Medical School after which this accomplished young
woman will begin a vascular surgery residency at UCLA.
2012:
Pierre Moscovici began serving as Minister of Finance in France.
2013:
The Weiner Library is scheduled to host Ray Farr’s film “A Different World”
which “concentrates on the vibrant lives of Polish Jews before their arrival at
the Third Reich’s killing centers.”
2013:
As part of the Books That Shaped America Series, Professor Pamela Nadell, the
recipient of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Lee Max Friedman Award
will lead a discussion of Jacob Riis’ How the Other Lives which among
other thing presented an accurate picture of the Lower East Side, home to tens
of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.
2013:
The Poetry Festival at Metulla, Israel’s most northern town is scheduled to
come to an end today.
2013:
The annual Indigo Festival, a huge dance fest on the shores of the Sea of
Galilee is scheduled to begin today.
2013(7th
of Sivan, 5730): Second Day of Shavuot/ Yizkor
2013:
A demonstration staged by the radical Eda Haredit organization turned violent
tonight, with haredi protestors throwing rocks, glass bottles and other objects
at police, injuring at least eight officers, two of whom were taken to hospital
in moderate condition.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Thousands-of-haredim-protest-IDF-enlistment-legislation-313416
2013:
Michelangelo had it right. Most synagogues around the world have it wrong. The
two tablets of stone, divinely inscribed with the 10 Commandments and bestowed
upon Moses at Mount Sinai, did not have the rounded tops familiar from their
depictions in most houses of worship and popular art since the Middle Ages. And
the Chabad (Lubavitch) Hassidic movement is encouraging synagogues to correct
the misrepresentation. Rabbi Menachem Brod, Chabad’s spokesman in Israel, noted
today that the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, accurately
depicted the two tablets as perfect squares as early as the 1940s, in writings
for Chabad youth, and said many Chabad synagogues now feature the accurate
artistic representations of the tablets. He said the image of the tablets had
been skewed over the centuries in Christian tradition, and it was time for the
Jews to reclaim the true representation of the two stones.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/michelangelo-was-right-about-the-tablets/
2014:
A Shabbat Weekend Retreat in memory of Rabbi Betzalel Jacobson OMB 1st
Yarhrzeit is scheduled to begin in West Des Moines, Iowa.
2014:
In London, the Wiener Library is scheduled a talk by John Izbicki, author of Life
Between the Lines: A Memoir during which
he will talk about the horrors of Kristallnacht that he experienced at
age 8 and his family’s escape to the U.K. in 1939.
2014:
“Israel’s UN mission Friday launched a campaign to get official UN recognition
for Yom Kippur, the most sacred Jewish holiday, alleging “discrimination.” The
United Nations has decreed 10 official holidays, including Christmas and the
Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, but there is no corresponding Jewish holiday
recognized on the body’s official calendar, said Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron
Prosor in a letter to his colleagues
2014:
“Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv won a place tonight in the Euroleague Final after a
thrilling victory over CSKA Moscow.”
2014:
Today, local officials are scheduled to gather at the 113 year old B’Nai
Yisroel Synagogue in South Bend, Indiana and “dedicate a plaque denoting that
the building” which “has been renovated and incorporated in the city’s Found
Winds Field minor league baseball complex” as a historic landmark. (As reported by JTA)
2014:
“How Four Israeli Fighter Pilots Stopped A Massive Arab Invasion In 1948”
published today
http://www.businessinsider.com/four-israeli-aircraft-stopped-a-huge-arab-army-in-1948-2014-5
2015
Rocking throwing Palestinians attacked firefighters trying to reach two burning
synagogues in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev today which was
Shabbat.
2015:
Kentucky Derby winner “American Pharaoh” owned by Ahmed Zayat is scheduled to
run in the Preakness today in an attempt to win the second jewel of the Triple
Crown.
2015:
The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “The best of Chamber Music
Cello and Piano” featuring Kirill Mihanovsky on cello and Arnon Erez on piano
2015:
Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Bergen P.A.C. in Englewood, NJ.
2015:
The 17th Docaviv International Film Festival is scheduled to come to
an end today at Tel Aviv.
http://www.docaviv.co.il/org-en/
http://www.docaviv.co.il/2015-en/
2016:
“Today’s Generational Sea Change” is scheduled to be the opening session at the
JCCs of North America Biennial at Baltimore.
2016:
In Philadelphia, PA, PlayPenn is scheduled to present a reading of
“Schlueterstrasse 27” a play that “follows a woman's search to better
understand her family from the initial discovery of her grandfather's diary at
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum all the way to Berlin, Germany.”
2016:
“Taste of Israel: A Discussion About Israel through Food” an interactive
discussion and cooking demonstration focusing on Israel with a Middle Eastern
Food Historian from Tel Aviv is scheduled to be held at the Durgin Pavilion on
Lake Todd as part of fund raiser for Camp Courageous.
2016:
“A Tale of Love and Darkness,” a film adaptation of “an autobiographical novel
by Amos Oz” that marked the directorial debut of Natalie Portman had its “gala
festival screening” at Cannes today.
2016: “In Celebration of Jewish-American Heritage
Month, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and The Hebraic
Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, The Library of Congress are
scheduled present a lecture by Dr. Janette Silverman on “The Blumenthals of the
upper-Lower Peninsula of Michigan”
2016:
The Center for Jewish History and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are
scheduled to host “A Forgotten Genocide: The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-1919, and
their Impact on Memory and Politics.”
2017:
“The American official who sniped at his Israeli counterparts that the Western
Wall, the holiest place for Jews to pray, is not part of Israel and not
Israel’s responsibility was named today in a TV report as David Berns, the
political counselor at the US Consulate in Jerusalem.” (As reportedby Raphael
Ahren and Eric Cortellessa)
2017:
“The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said today that the US
embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, upholding a campaign
promise of US President Donald Trump, and that the Western Wall in the Old City
of Jerusalem is part of Israeli territory.”
2017:
The Eden Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host an evening of “Pre-War Warsaw
Tangos in Yiddish and Polish” featuring the singing of Olga Avigail.
2017:
Oxford University is scheduled to host an “Interfaith Formal” followed by “a
talk led by the chaplains of the Abrahamic faiths.”
2017:
A fourteen year old boy was arrested “at his home near the Beth Hamedrah
Hagadol synagogue in connection with a fire that seriously damaged the historic
synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and “injured two firefighters.”
2017:
BOOKlynites is scheduled to host Jewish Mindfulness leader and author Rabbi
Sheila Peltz Weinberg who will discuss her recently released book God Loves
the Stranger.
2017:
Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion is scheduled to host its
fourth annual benefit “Honoring Women’s Leadership of the West.”
2017:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host “New
Frontiers:
Technology
and the Preservation and Presentation of Memory” moderated by Michael Haley
Goldman, Director, Future Projects, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2017:
In Des Moines, IA, at a meeting of educators and clergy, Dr. Stephen Gaies, the
Director of the UNI Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to speak on
"Is there a benefit to teaching about the Holocaust and genocide
concurrently? If so, why and how?"
2018:
The Center for Jewish History and American Jewish Historical Society is
scheduled to present Professor Jonathan Sarna and Forward editor Jane Eisner discussing “Rupture and Renewal in
American Jewish History as part of The History Matters series.
2018:
The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a pub trip as a
replacement for the scheduled Whiskey and Wine tasting event.
2018:
Today, “it was announced that Aly Raisman and the other survivors of the USA
Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal would be awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage
Award.”
2019:
The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host Marc Leepson’s lecture on
“Saving Monticello: The Little—Known Story of the Levy Family’s Stewardship of
Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Essay on Architecture’” including the role played by “U.S.
Navy Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy and Representative Jefferson Monroe Levy,
the Sephardic saviors of Jefferson’s iconic house at Charlottesville,
Virginia,.”
2019:
In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a Russian guitar concert,
“Vikings in Odessa.”
2019:
In Boston, Simona Di Nepi,, the Curator of Judaica at the Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled to introduce
a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud.”
2019:
In New Orleans, the Jewish Family Service is scheduled to host its “annual
fundraiser” at The Cannery.
2019:
“Contemporary art purchased today by Robert Mnuchin,” the son of Secretary of
the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, “broke the record price for a work by a living
artist.”
2019:
In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screenings of “The Keeper” and
“The Samuel Project.”
2019:
“Jews Schmooze Podcast” featuring writer/director David Schneider, journalist
Rachel Shabi, barrister Adam Wagner and director of Yachad Hannah Weisfeld
discussing “Jews and Money” is scheduled to broadcast from London this evening.
2019:
In Tel Aviv, Erez Tal, Bar Refaeli, Assi Azar and Lucy Ayoub are scheduled to
host the second “semi-final” of the Eurovision Song Contest.
2020:
This afternoon, in Cedar Rapids, IA, the “Temple Judah family” is scheduled to
take part in a drive-by graduation celebration for Gabriella “Gavi” Thalbum who
has earned her BS in micro, cellular, and developmental biology. (Editor’s
note; Not totally objective about this item.
She was one of my pre-Confirmation students years ago and she sure did
liven up those Sunday mornings. When you picture her peers flocking to the
beaches and other venues, you have to give her high marks for maturity and
judgment)
2020:
Via Zoom, The Village for Families with Young Children at Temple Israel of
Boston is scheduled to host “TGIS at Home,” a special live service with Wayne
Potash and a member of the Temple Israel clergy for those between the ages of 6
days and 6 years who love to dance, sing, play and pray.
2020:
In San Rafael, CA, Congregation Rodef Sholom is scheduled to host via zoom “Daf
Yomi Talmud Study with Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown
2020:
“Via Zoom, “the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Havdalah
at 9:45.
2020:
MusicTalks is scheduled to host a virtual afternoon of cello music with Elad
Kabilio as he “shares the stories behind Bach's Cello Music and its connections
to American music by Corigliano, Crumb and Philip Glass.”
2020:
“Bosnia’s most senior Catholic clergyman” is scheduled to host a memorial
service today for Croatian civilians and soldiers of the Nazi-allied Ustasha
forces despite protests from the Israeli government and Jews in Bosnia whose
views were expressed by “The Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a
nonprofit representing local Jews, who called the planned Mass a “memorial
service for criminals responsible for the suffering of Sarajevans.” (As
reported by Cnaan Lipshiz)
2020:
Thanks to a ruling this week by The Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards
issued earlier this week Conservative congregations can livestream services on
Shabbat during the coronavirus pandemic
2020(22nd
of Iyar, 5780): Parsahat Behar and Bechukotai and Chapter 5 Pirke Avot;
2021:
Reboot, Jewish Emergent Network and LABA are scheduled to present “an all-night
Shavuot culture and arts festival, featuring 12 hours of musicians, comedians
and others, with film, dance, food and teaching across multiple channels in a
choose-your-own experiential format.”
2021:
The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including The Plot by Hanff Korelitz
2021:
In honor of Shavuot, The Breman Museum in Atlanta is scheduled to be closed
today.
2021:
In honor of Shavuot the “JCC East Bay in partnership with numerous Bay Area
synagogues, organizations, and teachers is scheduled to offer dozens of classes
on myriad topics over six hours.
2021(5th
of Sivan 5781): Erev Shavuot; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2021:
KlezCalifornia is scheduled to “present a workshop about “dobridens” (slow,
stately klezmer melodies that used to be played at weddings) and how to play
them, led by musician Mike Perlmutter.”
2021:
Based on previously published information, as of today during the second week
of May approximately 2,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from terrorists
in Gaza, including Hamas, and Lebanon.
2022:
Facing History and Ourselves is scheduled to present online “Combating Hate by
Teaching the Holocaust and History.”
2022:
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present Joyce Zonana
lecturing on “Arab Jewish Life and Literature.”
2022:
The Baltimore Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present screenings of
“Neighbors” and “Love and Mazel Tov.”
2022:
The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to present a screening of “Unsafe Spaces:
When Being Jewish Means You Don’t Belong.
2023:
Lockdown University is scheduled to host via Zoom a lecture by Jeremy Rosen is
“Is Judaism Sexist?”
2023:
The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Simon Sebag Montefiore discussing his
latest book The World: A Family History of Humanity.
2023:
As part of the Women and Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto series, the Jewish
Women’s Archive is scheduled to host a lecture by Zuzanna Hertzberg on
“Herstories of Resistance.”
2023:
Lockdown University is scheduled to host via Zoom Part 3 of Trudy Gold’s
lecture on Palestine, the British and the Jews.
2023:
The Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to present a short concert divided into three parts:
Sephardic-Ladino, Yiddish-klezmer and Mizrachi, all sung in their original
language, with stories and anecdotes behind the music performed by trio Noa
Levy, Achi Ben-Shalom and Asaf Ophir.
2023:
The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the penultimate session of Naomi
Miller’s “Beginner’s Yiddish: Shopping, Cooking, Inviting and Eating For the
Jewish Holidays.”
2023:
In Israel, judicial reform negotiations are scheduled to resume today.
2024
As part of JAHM participants in the “Dinner
Package” are scheduled to enjoy a three-course dinner “curated from Joan Nathan’s new book My Life in Recipes:
Food, Family and Memories prepared
by five-time James Beard award-winning Chef Michael Solomonov.”
2024:
The West End Synagogue is scheduled to co-host the world premier of Psalms at
the Phoenix Cinema in London preceded by a collection of five short films:
Growing Up Misrahi, Ein Keloheinu, The Balance Sheet, Omnam Kein and Shabbos
Goy.
2024:
The Marlene Mayerson JC is scheduled to host “an unforgettable evening where
the soulful melodies of Israeli music meet the exquisite flavors of Israeli
cuisine!’
https://mmjccm.org/programs/hopeful-table-music-culinary-experience-jimbo-jay-mushka
2024:
The exhibition Memory and Inheritance: Paintings and Ceremonial Objects by Tobi
Kahn is scheduled to open at the Museum at Eldridge Street,
2024:
Leon Saltiel, Director of Diplomacy, UNESCO, Coordinator on Countering
Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress, and member of the Greek delegation
to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), is scheduled to
explore “through historical accounts, personal narratives, and archival
footage, the challenges faced by the Greek Jewish population during the
Holocaust, and their enduring strength in the face of adversity still today.”
2024:
The opening session of “Run Write Read Repeat, a four-day running and writing
seminary is scheduled to begin today.
2024:
As May 16th begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism sweeps the
United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day
223 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.)
