April 30

313: Licinius
defeated Maximinus at the Battle of Tzirallum, thus making him the Emperor of
the Eastern Roman Empire.  The Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was his
brother-in-law, Constantine. The two in laws would clash repeatedly un…

April 27

399 BCE: Socrates drank hemlock as he
carried out the death penalty that had been imposed on him by the government.
For centuries to come some Jews would study Socrates and other Greeks, in many
cases trying to find a harmony between Judaism …

April 21

753
BCE: According to tradition, on this date Romulus and Remus founded Rome.  Considering the impact that Rome would have
on the Jewish people this date is worth noting. 

586:
Ricard I became King the Visigoth King of His…

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…