November 20

331 BCE (21st of Kislev, 3431): According to the Talmud, Simeon the Just
destroyed the Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim.  The Samaritans had undermined the efforts
during the post-exilic period and this move was as much about establi…

November
15

1215: Pope Innocent III opened the convocation of the
Fourth Lateran Council, considered the most important council of the Middle
Ages. By its conclusion it issued seventy reformatory decrees. Among other
things, it encouraged creating sch…

November
9

694: Opening meeting of the Seventeenth Council of Toledo
during which the Visigoth Catholic monarch, King Egica publicly charged
the Jews with planning to “exterminate and [destroy] their
homeland.”  This charge was the excuse fo…

November 4

1053: Today, “according
to a document preserved in the archives of the Cathedral of Leon, the Infanta
D. Fronilda, daughter of D. Pelayo, who restored Christian supremacy after the
invasion of the Saracens, purchased, from the Jew Joseph b….

November 3

166 BCE (15th of
Cheshvan, 3595): Mattathias ben Yochanan passed away.

361: Roman Emperor
Constantius II died. Constantius II enhanced the anti-Jewish policies begun by
his father. Under his rule, converting to Judaism became a combination…

OCTOBER 31

445 BCE: In Jerusalem Ezra, the Scribe reads the Scroll
of the Law, the Torah, to the Jews of Judea as described in Nehemiah 9:1. 

475: Twenty-five years
after the redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud, Orestes refused to “wear
the Purpl…

OCTOBER 29

539
BCE:  On the secular calendar, Babylon fell to
Cyrus the Great of Persia.  This is a
significant date because it marked the start of the return of the exiles to
Eretz Israel where the Second Temple would be built.

969:
Byzant…