December 5

63
BCE: Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations which exposed Cataline’s
conspiracy to overthrow the government of Rome. There is no record of how
Cataline felt about Jews, but Cicero said that Judaism was a barbarous
superstition who…

December 1

500: (Kislev 4428): This is
the traditional date of the closing of the Talmudic era and the beginning of the Saboraic era. Saboraim is
“the title applied to the principals and scholars of the Babylonian academies
in the period immediately f…

November
12

1290: Al-Ashraf Khalil began his
reign as Sultan of Egypt and Syria during which he drove the Crusaders from
their last stronghold from Acre marking an end to the multi-century Christian
assault on the Holy Land which had brought so much d…

November 7

305 B.C.E.: Ptolemy, a Macedonian general who
had fought by the side of Alexander the Great, became King of Egypt.  Alexander’s empire broke into three parts
after his death.  Jerusalem and Judea
came under the sway of the Ptolemy…

November 2

655: The Ninth Council of Toledo which
was held under the auspices of King Recceuith and would adopt a resolution
“that all conversos, not only converted Jews also others who had come during
the Migration Period, had to pass Christian festi…

OCTOBER 18

67 CE:
Roman soldiers captured Gamla, a fortress in Israel’s Golan region, and killed
all its inhabitants. The ancient historian Josephus Flavius, a leader of the
Jewish revolt against Rome, fortified Gamla as a main stronghold in 66 CE. Th…