This Day, December 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

This Day, December 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

December 8

65 BCE: Birthday of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the Roman poet known as Horace who created “credat Juadaeus Appella” which gave rise to the character of “Jew Appela.”

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1629-apella

1292: John Peckham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose insistence that the closure of “chief synagogues of the Jews of London” was not enough, causing the few remaining Jewish houses of worships to be suppressed in 1282, passed away today.

1522: David Reubeni left Khaibar today “and went to Nubia in northern Sudan, where he claimed to be a descendant of Muhammad. When he spoke to audiences of Jews, he told of large Jewish kingdoms in the east, possibly referring to the Jewish community at Cochin. The Portuguese had just conquered Goa.”

1596(Kislev, 5357): In Mexico, Luis de Carvajal el Mozo, his mother, and three sisters were burned at the stake together with five other Crypto-Jews who were all accused of Judaizing.

https://jewishheritagealliance.com/the-life-times-of-luis-de-carvajal-the-younger/

1609: “Biblioteca Ambrosiana” opens its reading room, the second public library of Europe.  Located in Milan, this library has been cited as a valuable repository for documents about the Jews of Italy including the Ashkenazic Ambrosian Bible which contains a graphic depiction of Ezekiel’s heavenly chariot.

1612(14th of Kislev, 5373): Printer Isaac Prostitz (Isaac ben R. Aaron passed away today.

1655: The Whitehall Conference which had been called by Cromwell to consider allowing the Jews to return to England continued the deliberations which had begun on December 4.

1694(30th of Kislev, 5455): Meir Schiff, the son of Isaac Schiff who is eulogized on his tombstone as a man of great generosity, famed thought the Jewish world” passed away today.

1732: Birthdate of New York native Aaron Franks and the son of Jacob Franks who passed away when he was five years old.

1740(12th of Kislev, 5783): Sixty-three-year-old Moses Mikals, the Rhineland born son of Michael (Jechiel) of Herzfeld, Germany and Rebecca Falk de Paul and the husband of Catharine Michaels with whom he had five children –Blume, Joahabed, Rachel, Rebecca and Michael – passed away today in Curacao.

1765(25th of Kislev, 5526): First Day of Chanukah observed as the United Kingdom prepares to enforce The Stamp Act, one of the “roads that led to the American Revolution.”

1768(28th of Kislev, 5529): Fourth Day of Channukah

1771(1st of Tevet, 5532): 7th Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1779(29th of Kislev, 5540) Fifth Day of Chanukah observed as the Continental Army remains in winter quarters at Morristown, NJ.

https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-01-04-02-0002-0007

1780: George Washington issued General Orders from his headquarters at New Windsor, NY in which he said he was “pleased to accept and approve” the report of Enquiry which said “that every part of Major David S. Frank’s conduct was not only unexceptional but reflects the highest Honor on him as an officer, distinguishes him as a Zealous friend to the Independence of America and justly entitles him to the Attention and confidence of his Countrymen” and thus exonerated him of any role in the treason of General Benedict Arnold.

1783(13th of Kislev, 5544): Isaac Touro, the native of Amsterdam who served as “hazzan” for Jesuath Israel, the Sephardic synagogue in Newport, RI. Unlike most American Jews, Touro was a loyalist.  After the war he moved to Kingston where he passed away. For some his biggest claim to fame is that he was the father of Judah Touro.

1784(25th of Kislev, 5545): Chanukah

1785: In Savanah, GA. Abraham Doughlass, who arrived there on November 1, and his wife gave birth to Jacob Doughlass

1790(1st of Tevet, 5551): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet observed on the same day the President delivered his second annual message to Congress.

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1790-second-annual-message-congress

1795(26th of Kislev, 5556): Second Day of Chanukah observed as George Washinton delivered his Seventh Annual Message to Congress.

1798(30th of Kislev, 5559: Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed as John Adams delivered his Second Annual Message to Congress

1805: Rachel Cohen and Isaac Lyons who were married in Philadelphia, PA gave birth to Henry Lyons the husband of Elizabeth Wolff.

1809(1st of Tevet, 5570): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1810: Deborah Cohen, the daughter of Jacob Raphael Cohen married Israel Moss today.

1812: In Germany, Jeanette Hirsch and Isaac Weil gave birth to Joseph Weil, the husband of Hannah Greenbaum and the father of Isaac, Julius, Theresa and Libbie Weil.”

1813: Birthdate of August Belmont, the German born financier who “immigrated to New York City in 1837 after becoming the American representative of the Rothschild family's banking house in Frankfurt.”  Belmont carved a niche in American finance and became a leading member of the Democrat Party. Prominent socially, he gave his name to the famed New York racetrack, Belmont Park as well as the third leg of the Triple Crown, “The Belmont Stakes.”

1814(25th of Kislev, 5575): Channukah

1816: Birthdate of Austro-Hungarian writer and political leader Adolf Fischhof.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6153-fischhof-adolf

1816: Birthdate of Bohemia native and University of Vienna trained physician Bernard Wofler who was appointed director of the Jewish hospital in Vienna and who in 1872 “a society for the gratuitous care of consumptives, without distinction of creed.”

1817(29th of Kislev, 5578): Fifth Day of Channukah

1817: John C. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State would appoint philo-Semite Warder Cresson (and future convert to Judaism) to serve as U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, began serving as Secretary of War today.

1818: In Grodno, Rabbi Binyamin Diskin and his wife gave birth to Moshe Yehoshua Yehuda Leib Diskin also known as the Maharil Diskin, a leading rabbi, Talmudist, and Biblical commentator who  served as a rabbi in Łomża, Mezritch, Kovno, Shklov, Brisk, and, finally, Jerusalem, after moving to Eretz Yisrael in 1878.

1822(24th of Kislev, 5583): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1822(24th of Kislev, 5583): Fifty-five-year-old German author, published and bookseller Saul Ascher, passed away in Berlin.

1828(2nd of Tevet, 5589) Eighth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1828: Moses Schoenfeld, the son of Esther and Alexander Schonfeld and his wife Amalie Male Marcus Schoenfeld gave birth toe Salomon Schoefeld.

1829: Birthdate of “Abenheim, Germany” native Marcus M. Spiegel, the brother of “Joseph Spiegel, founder of the Spiegel Catalog, who reached the rank of Colonel of the 120th Ohio Volunteer infantry whom he commanded during the Battle of Vicksburg where he was wounded and in the Red River Campaign where he was mortally wounded in 1864.

1832: In Bavaria, Solomon Houseman, “a merchant and manufacturer of silk and cotton goods” gave birth to Julius Houseman, the first Jew to settle permanently in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he enjoyed a successful business career for thirty years while pursuing a political career that included being elected Mayor and a Congressman from the 5th District of Michigan.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/JHouseman.html

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000820

1838: In Bavaria, Caroline and Max May gave birth to Cincinnati resident Benjamin May, the husband of Emily May and the father of Max Benjamin May.

1839: Birthdate of Danzig native and University of Berlin trained medical doctor “Julius Bernstein, the son of Arron Bernstein who gained fame as a German physiologist and medical writer” (According to some sources he was born on December 18)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7427583_Julius_Bernstein_1839-1917_Pioneer_neurobiologist_and_biophysicist

1841(25th of Kislev, 5602): Chanukah

1844(27th of Kislev, 5605): Third Day of Channukah

1845: Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell, who supported full political rights for the Jews of the United Kingdom suggested a program to ameliorate the suffering caused by the Irish Potato Famine.

1847(1st of Tevet, 5608): Sixth day of Channukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1847: In Posen, Israel Baruch Moses and his wife gave birth Isaac B. Moses who served as the rabbi for congregations in Qunicy, IL, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, IL before being called to lead Congregation Ahawath Chese dShaar Hasomayim in New York City.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/moses-isaac-s

1850: Seventy-year-old anti-Semite Georg Svedrup, the Norwegian political leader who “felt that it would be incompatible with Judaism to deal honestly with Christians, writing that ‘no person of the Jewish faith may come within Norway's borders, far less reside there’” passed away

1851: An article published today entitled “Religious Freedom” reported that the U.S. Department of State has replied to a letter from Rabbi Lilienthal who is the spiritual leader for three congregations in New York concerning a proposed treaty with the Swiss Confederacy.  The State Department assured Dr. Lilienthal that the United States would ratify any treaty with the Swiss Confederacy that discriminated against citizens of the United States who were Jewish.

1851: In New York City, Rabbi Raphall delivered a lecture tonight on the history of Hungary and the Hungarian people.  The talk would cover that nation’s whole history and would not be a recap of its recent efforts to gain its independence.

1852(27th of Kislev, 5613): Third Day of Channukah

1854: Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of Immaculate Conception which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin. This is the same Pope Pius IX who was responsible for the 1858 abduction of a six-year-old Jewish child in what became known as the infamous Edgardo Mortara Affair.

1855(28th of Kislev, 5616): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah as pro-slavery and free-soilers clashed in what became known as “Bloody Kansas.”

1856: Count Pawel Strzelecki sent a message from Istanbul to London that the Ottoman government “was not willing to provide the land for the construction of” a railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem which would delay construction for years to come.

1859(12th of Kislev, 5620): Eighty-year-old Markus Bär Friedenthal a German banker who devoted his “free time” to Jewish studies passed away today at Breslau.

1859: Two days after he had passed away, Barnett Levy, the son of “Joseph Levy” and “Hannah Isaacs” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1860(24th of Kislev, 5621): Parashat Vayeshev; Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1860: Birthdate of Edmund H. Hinshaw, the Congressman from Nebraska who in 1906 attended a mass meeting at Belasco’s Theatre in Washington, D.C which a protest against the atrocities being committed against the Jews of Russia. (Editor’s note – no explanation for his attendance; certainly not courting the “Jewish vote” in his home district.)

1861(5th of Tevet, 5622): Jacob Pinhas, the son of miniaturist and “court painter to the Elector of Hesse –Cassel, Salomon Pinhas, who became a journalist and publisher and who was instrumental in the drafting of the law which gave full citizenship to such Jews as were willing to abandon petty trading” passed away today in Cassel.

1862: Today Philadelphian, Milton Sultzbach began serving as a Quartermaster with the 167th Regiment.

1863(27th of Kislev, 5624): The third Day of Chanukah is observed on the same that “President Abraham Lincoln offers his conciliatory plan for reunification of the United States with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.”

1865: In Versailles, “Amédée Hadamard, of Jewish descent, and Claire Marie Jeanne Picard, Hadamard” gave birth to Jacques-Salmon Hadamard developer of the Prime Number Theorem who was Jewish enough to have flee Vichy France.

1866(30th of Kislev, 5672): Shabbat shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth day of Chanukah

1866: Birthdate of Ida Espen Guggenheimer who  supported Zionism, civil rights, and feminism throughout her life, from hosting talks on birth control to supporting political prisoners.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/guggenheimer-ida-espen

1868(24th of Kislev, 5629): Kindle the first Channukah candle

1868(24th of Kislev, 5629): Adolf Rubin, the Hungarian born “son of Jakob Joakim Rubin and Theresia Rubin, the husband of Verona/ Fani Rubin-Friedenthal and Regina Rubin and father of Adolfina Fuhrman” passed away today.

1869: In Rennes, France, Emile Worms and his wife gave birth to Rene Worms the academic who was a member of the “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France” and who “was a devoted adherent of Judaism.”

1869: In New York, Rabbi Moses Mielziner and Rosette Mielziner gave birth to portrait artist Leo Mielziner, the husband of Ella M. Friend who served as “first vice-president of the American Art Association” in Paris while making busts of such notables as “Dr. I.M. Wise and Israel Zangwill.”

1871(25th of Kislev, 5632): First Day of Chanukah; light the second candle in the evening.

1871(25th of Kislev, 5632): Seventy-three-year-old Jacob Ettlinger, the Orthodox Rabbi “referred to as the Aruch la-Ner” and who “headed the protest of the one hundred and seventy-three rabbis against the Brunswick Conference of 1844” passed away today.

1871: On Friday evening, a Shabbat Chanukah party was held at Concordia Hall on Avenue A in New York City.

1873: In Lithuania, Libby Hurwitz and Moses W. Bearman gave birth University of Minnesota graduate Abraham Nathaniel Bearman, the Preside of the Jewish Welfare Board in Minnesota and a member of Beth-El Synagogue in Minneapolis.

1874: As of today, the Western Palestine survey led by Captain Richard Warren Stewart, had surveyed 3,500 square miles.

1874: Birthdate of Breyell native Johanna Hirsch Levy who went from Westerbork to being murdered at Auschwitz on October 22, 1942.

1875: Several thousand people came to the Hebrew Fair at Gilmore’s Garden today.  The fair is a fundraiser for Mount Sinai Hospital and so far has been quite successful in reaching its goal.

1876: Funeral services were held today for William Meyer, Aaron Dietz and his brother Abram Dietz at Temple Israel on Greene Avenue in Brooklyn. The three were among the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire that claimed almost three hundred lives.  Following the service, the young men were buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1876: A deck hand named Dixon murdered a Jewish peddler named Bachman on board the Fair Play, a steamboat that was entering the mouth of the Old River as it traveled between Faisonia and Vicksburg, MS.  The packs belonging to the 45-year-old Bachman had been rifled two nights earlier and Bachman had accused Dixon of the theft.

1877(2nd of Tevet, 5638): Eighth and final day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.

1878: It was reported today that New York City is home to 375 houses of worship, 25 of which are Jewish.

1879: Birthdate of Hungarian native “Samuel Solomon Eisner” who came to the United States where he trained as a dentist at NYU and served on the “national committee of the American Jewish Dentists.”

1880: According to “Nervous and Mental Pathology,” Dr. Edward Sptizka’s pamphlet that studies “the comparative pathology of insanity as illustrated by the different races in the New York City Asylum for the Insane” only 10.29% of the Jews suffer from paralytic insanity as compared to 13.29% for Anglo-Saxons. Jews, who “values intellectual culture…enjoys a comparative immunity from paralysis.”

1880: In Wilmington, NC, Esther Jastrow and Rabbi Samuel Mendelsoh gave birth gave University of Pennsylvania trained Professor of History and Classical Languages and a Captain in the Army during WW I whose unit was responsible for breaking German secret codes.

1881: It was reported today that discussion at Constantinople concerning plans for Jews to settle in Syria has brought forth a counter-proposal from the Spanish Ambassador.  He offered a plan that would allow Jews to settle on “Crown lands in Castille” and a promise that “any Jew who goes to Spain will be treated with the utmost liberality.”  (Considering the history of the Jews of Spain, this is peculiar entry to say the least)

1882(27th of Kislev, 5643): Third Day of Chanukah

1882: The Hebrew Leader a theologically conservative New York weekly newspaper edited by Jonas Bondy published its last edition today. The paper which first appeared in May, 1850, was unique in offering a department dedicated to Masonic News.

1884: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil officiated at the marriage of Belle Glazier, the daughter of Mr. S.W. Glazier to Jacob S. Bernheimer at the bride’s home on East 67th Street in Manhattan.

1884: Adolph Cohn wrote a letter from Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts, challenging the contention of the New York Times that Ludvoic Halevy is the first Jew elected to the French Academy.  “Although of Jewish descent of his father’s side” (Leon Halevy and Uncle Fromental Halevy composer of La Juive) he is no more Jewish than his half –brother Lucien-Anatole Prévost-Paradol who was also the son of Leon Halevy.

1885: Birthdate of Joseph Sprinzak who served as Chairman of the Knesset for the first ten years of its existence (1949-1959)

1885: Birthdate of Minsk native Brooklyn Law School trained “lawyer and arbitrator Isaac Seigmeister” who in 1892 came to the United Sates where he studied engineering at Cooper Union, married Bertha Seigmeister with whom he had one daughter and for 23 years “arbitrated millinery disputes between the Joint Board  of Millinery Workers Union and the Eastern Women’s Headdress Association.

1886: Birthdate of Philadelphian Reba Fleisher Block.

1886: The American Federation of Labor was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio.  The driving force behind the AFL was Samuel Gompers who would serve as the group’s long time President.

1887: Perl Cajesky and another woman to whom her husband is allegedly married are being held as witnesses at Ward’s Island in an alleged Jewish love triangle. 

1888: In Cincinnati, OH, Rachel Friedman and Abraham Isaacs gave birth  to WW I veteran Schachne Issacs, the husband of Rances Dollinger  who did post-graduate work in psychology at Johns Hopkins where he later served on the faculty while also “working with the NY State Training School for Boys. (He is not to be confused with the Lithuanian born rabbi of the same name.)

1888: It was reported today that Ernistine Nolfen wants to be paid five thousand dollars by Noach Soenfield because, after paying for her passage from Poland and proposing marriage, he has changed his mind and does not want her for a wife.

1889: “In Russia’s Holiest City” published today, recounted the traditional myth of how the ancient ruler of Kiev chose Orthodox Christianity. He heard representatives from all four major faith groups before making his decision.  Judaism was rejected because their representatives “were forced to confess” that “that they had been…from their country and were outcasts and wanders on the face of the earth” because of their sins.

1890: “Literary Notes” published today described plans to commemorate “the thousandth anniversary of Saadia” in 1892 by publishing a collection of his works under the direction of Professor Joseph Derenbourg of the French Academy which will include a biography of Sasdia by Dr. Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi of St. Petersburg, Russia.

1890: The Directors of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of Brooklyn purchased property at Ralph and Howard Avenues for $32,000 which will be the future home of a facility that will replace the current building on Stuyvesant Avenue which is too small to meet the society’s needs.

1890: It was reported today that the American Committee planning the millennial anniversary of the birth of Saadia Gaon include Cyrus Adler of Johns Hopkins, Richard J.H. Gottheil of Columbia, Morris Jastrow, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania and Jacob Schiff who will serve as treasurer.

1891: Birthdate of Berlin native and refugee from Hitler’s Germany Albert Salomon who became a Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/12/19/90243199.pdf

1891: In Russian Devorach and Abraham Baer Litsky gave birth to Rose Litsky who became Rose Pacal when she married Joseph Pascal

1892: In the province of Kovno, Perez and Ida Tarshish gave birth to Jacob Tarshis, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the rabbi at “congregations in Columbus, OH, Allentown, PA and Miami, FL” while also gaining from his weekly broadcasts that earned him the title of “The Lamplighter” and who was the husband of Golda Tarshish with whom he had one son and two daughters.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/24/99832338.pdf

1892: The trial of Hermann Ahlwardt who is charged with slandering the Jews weapons manufacturer Ludwig Loewe was adjourned for the day when the anti-Semite’s doctor provided a certificate saying he was suffering from an attack of catarrh and could not appear in court.

1892: The delegates at the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations who have met with President Harrison were reported today to have decided to hold their next meeting in New Orleans, LA.

1892: In Kovno, Perez and Ida Tarshish gave birth Rabbi Jacob Tarshish, the husband Golda F. Friedman Tarshish who was a radio personality known as “The Lamplighter.”

1893(29th of Kislev, 5654): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1893: In Anniston, Alabama, Congregation Temple Beth El dedicated its sanctuary which is ‘the oldest building in the state continuously and currently being used for Jewish worship.’

1895: In New York, Temple Emanu-El was filled this morning “by those who went to hear an address on “The Debt Humanity Owes to Heinrich Heine,” by Assistant Rabbi Joseph Silverman.

1895: “The Great Hebrew Fair” published today described plans for the upcoming city-wide fund raiser under the leadership of Isidor Straus, President and Vice Presidents James Hoffman and Joseph B. Bloomingdale.

1895: It was reported today that “the upcoming “ball of the Young Ladies and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home promises to eclipse all former events of the kind given by this organization”

1895: In New York, “an advertisement published today read ‘Wanted – Enlightened men who deprecate the attempt to raise race prejudice by Hermann Ahlwardt, to welcome the fanatic with ancient eggs.”

1895: “The anti-Semitic group in the Reichstag has laid upon the table of the chamber a proposal to forbid the free immigration of Jews and for the adoption of regulations under which their expulsion may be accomplished.”

1896: “The Girl from Paris,” an English musical comedy starring Ada Reeve, the daughter of Harriet Seaman and Charles Reeves, an actor whose given named had been Samuel Isaacs, in the role of The Gay Perisienne, opened today at the Herald Square Theatre in New York.

1896: After having left his home in Jersey City on June 8 Morris J. Cohen arrived in San Francisco today after which he went to Kansas where he enlisted in the Twentieth Kansas Regiment and as Sergeant Cohen served in Philippines where he was killed in combat in 1899.

1896: Johns Hopkins graduate and Cornell and University of Maryland trained attorney Eli Frank, the Baltimore, MD, born son Isabella Cohen and Moses Frank who became a judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore while serving as president of the Y.M.H.A. and the Association of Federated Jewish Charities married Rena Ambach today,

1897: Three days after he had passed away, “Zadoc Isaacs” the husband of Julia Garcia, with whom he had had nine children, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898(24th of Kislev, 5659): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah Light

1898: Albert H. Vitenheimer who had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant in May was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Infantry

1899: Forty-six-year-old Vaiben Louis Solomon completed his service as the 2st Premier of South Australia,

1900: Herzl met with Arminius Vámbéry in Budapest where discussed the Turkish loan.

1900: Birthdate of Columbus, Ohio native Mose Hirsch Solomon, the New York Giants outfield who was nicknamed the “Rabbi of Swat.”

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=baseball&ID=60

1900: “Poor and Rich Jews” published today provides a review The Sons of the Covenant: A tale of the London Jewry, which is a work of fiction by Samuel Gordon with illustration by Mark Zangwill published by JPS that presents the lives of two Jewish mothers – Mrs. Lipcott, a poor widow living in the London Slums and her neighbor, the well-to-do Mrs. Duveen.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1900/12/08/106886764.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1900: Birthdate of Pittsburgh native J. Marshall Taxay, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Bath, OH from 1945 to 1953 and  at Temple B’nai Israel in Pinellas Count from 1960 until his retirement in 1969.

1900(16th of Kislev, 5661): Eighty-seven-year-old singer, composer and pianist Henry Russell who was a great-nephew of the British Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel and whose sons were “conductor Sir Landon Ronald Russell and impresario Henry Russell, passed away today.

http://www.pdmusic.org/russell.html

1901(27th of Kislev, 5662): Third Day of Chanukah

1901: Birthdate of Doris Caroline Abrahams who gained fame as Caryl Brahms “an English critic, novelist, and journalist” who specialized in the theatre and ballet and who also wrote film, radio and television scripts.”

1901: In New York City, Goldie and John J. Jonas gave birth to Dr. Joseph Quincy Jonas, the husband of Irene Jonas.

1901: Having come to New York City from Lockport, NY, David Goodman, the future president of Bergdorf-Goodman, opened his first store today, “a small one-story structure” on lower 5th Avenue.

1902: It was reported today that at their triennial convention in Baltimore, The Council of Jewish Women had adopted a resolution expressing appreciation to Secretary of State Hay expressing appreciation ‘for his efforts in behalf of humanity, as shown by his recent letter to the powers of Europe regarding the Rumanian Jews.”

1903(19th of Kislev, 5664): Seventy-eight-year-old Rabbi Herman Rubin, the husband of Jeanette (Long) Rubin and the father of Joseph Herman Rubin, the watchmaker and traveling salesman who by 1918 had become a director of Peoples Trust Company of Philadelphia and president of Members Building and Loan Association while serving as director of Keneseth Israel and being married to Clara Kaufman passed away today in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

1903: In Poland, Jacob Silverman, the son of Shlomo Silverblatt and his wife Rachel Silverman gave birth to Baltimore resident Harry Issadore Silverman, the husband of Mae Silverman Eplan.

1903: An announcement was “made by the Directors of the Jewish Hospital” in Brooklyn that an anonymous gift of $25,000 thousand has been made to the hospital through Abraham Abraham “which is dependent on the raising of a like amount with a year from other sources.”

1904(30th of Kislev, 5665): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1904: Tonight, in address styled “Zionism and England’s Offer, “Israel Zangwill urged the Jews of” the United States “to exert themselves in behalf of colonizing and developing a land which they could call their own” which in this case did not mean Palestine but a 5,000 square mile part of East Africa that the English wanted colonized by Europeans, even if meant Jews.

1905: In London, this morning The Times published “a long letter signed by Lord Rothschild, Sir Samuel Montague, David L. Alexander, Leonard L. Cohen, Benjamin L. Cohen and Stuart M. Samuel in which a strong argument is present both against Zionism and also the scheme of the Jewish Territorial Organization.”

1905: It was reported today according to sources in Bucharest, that “almost all of the factories and Jewish homes in Rostoff have been destroyed.”

1905: The National Committee raising funds for the relief of the Jews being massacred in Russia is scheduled to meet today in the offices of Jacob H. Schiff where they will make plans for the next national fund raising appeal which will be made easier because the Western Union Telegraph Company is sending the telegrams containing the appeals at no charge.

1905(10th of Kislev, 5666): Zadoc Kahn, the Alsatian born Chief Rabbi of France passed away. A noted scholar, he was active in Jewish communal affairs including leading the Alliance Israélite Universelle and serving as President of the Société des Études Juives, an organization that he had helped to found.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10603.html

1906(21st of Kislev, 5667): Parashat Vayeshev

1906: Today, The Hochi Schimbun welcomed “the coming appointment of Oscar S. Straus as Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor” because the newspaper “believes that his political influence and acknowledge fairness will aid the cause of Japan,”

1907(3rd of Tevet, 5668): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1907: Three days after she had passed away, Sarah Solomon, the daughter of “Nathan Marcus Adler” and “Henrietta Worms” and the wife of “Henry Solomon” with whom she had had ten children, was buried today at the “Willesden Cemetery.”

1907: Birthdate of Paul Ross, the husband of Ann Ross, the New York born daughter of Pauline and Max Margulies

1908: Violinist Mischa Ellman made his concert debut today at Carnegie Hall.

1908: President Roosevelt, who as Police Commissioner had shown his support for the Jews in conflict with a visiting German anti-Semite and who had Jewish soldiers serving with him in the Rough Riders, delivered his final State of the Union Address to Congress.

1909(25th of Kislev, 5670): First Day of Chanukah; Kindle the second light in the evening.

1909: Thirty-three-year-old Albany Law School graduate Charles Manny Stern, the son of Rosa Mann and Lewis Stern married Esther H. Barnet today after which he continued to pursue his legal career while servcing a director o the Jewish Community Center in Alband and as a national director of H.I.A.S.

1909: As Russian society slowly sunk in the chaos that would lead to more anti-Jewish outbreaks and eventually to the Russian Revolution. To the “director of Russia’s secret police” was killed by a bomb planted by a Bolshevik infiltrator.

1910: “Salome” an opera based on Jewish author Hedwig Lachman’s German translation of the French play “Salomé” by Oscar Wilde was performed for the first time in London.

1911: In New York, Kate (Neilecht) and Benjamin (Benzion) Jacob, a compositor for a foreign-language newspaper, gave birth to Leo Jacob who gained fame as actor Lee J. Cobb whose many screen triumphs included roles in “On The Waterfront,” “Three Faces of Eve” and “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”  He passed away in 1976.

1911: Lionel Abrahams, C.B. of the India Office was “appointed as a member of the Committee on West African Currency by the Secretary of State for Colonies.

1911: The Emperor appointed Hungarian scholar József Bánóczi to serve as “Ordinary Professor of Hungarian Literature and History at the University of Budapest.

1911: Jews in Palestine organized the Red Magen David society with the purpose of sending doctors and nurses to Tripoli. Earlier in the week the Anglo-Palestine Company in Jaffa donated 1,000 Francs for a fund for injured Turkish soldiers in Tripoli.

1912(28th of Kislev, 5673): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1912: Tenor Ralph Errolle is scheduled to be the feature soloist at tonight’s 8th Sinai Orchestral Concert at Temple Sinai in Chicago.

1912: The Chicago Home for Jewish Orphans is scheduled to host a Chanukah celebration this afternoon.

1912: “Over 1,000 people gathered at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to hear Boston writer Mary Antin” author of the recently published The Promised Land, “a memoir of her emigration from Russia to Boston's South End” “make a plea for more aid to support Jewish immigrant girls arriving alone in the United States.” 

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/08/1912/this-week-in-history-immigrant-mary-antin-packs-house-at-waldorf-astoria

1912: Founding the Congregation Staff of Aaron Synagogue in Yonkers, NY.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at the Isaiah Temple in Chicago for sixty-two-year-old Simon Hartman, the husband of the former Emma Able and the father of Emanuel S., Edward A. and Louis H. Hartmen and Mrs. Edward Mayer.

1912: In San Francisco, founding of a Chevra Kadisha

1913: Birthdate of poet Delmore Schwartz. The prolific poet won the Bollingen Prize in 1960 and was the inspiration of the title figure in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift.

1913: In France, Louis-Lucien Klotz completed his service as Minister of the Interior.

1913: Eernesto Nathan, the London born son “Sara Levi, an Italian from Pesaro, and Mayer Moses Nathan” who “obtained Italian citizenship in 1888,” the first Jewish Mayor of Rome completed serving his term as mayor of the “Eternal City.”

1914: Irving Berlin's musical "Watch your Step" premiered in New York.

1914: In Bayonne, NJ, Benjamin and Mollie Pinkowitz gave birth to George Pinkowitz, the husband of “Cecelia Glick Pinowitz.”

1915: Today, “the American Jewish Relief Committee, of which Louis Marshall is chairman…launched a campaign to raise another $1,000,000 for relief of Jewish war sufferers in Europe not only during the” World War “ but also in the lean days after peace” comes.

1915: In an attempt to follow Jacob Schiff’s recommendation that Jewish immigrants coming to the United States after the World War should be settled outside of big cities, “it was decided to arrange a conference between representatives of the federation and organizations such as the B’nai B’rith and the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America” which will arrange a program designed to develop education in agriculture and general citizenship.

1915: This evening, in Brooklyn, meetings were held at Congregation Beth Jacob and at the Willoughby Avenue Synagogue to make plans for a “Tag Day” to raise money for the Jewish Volunteer Relief Fund “which is aiding war victims in Europe.”

1915: In New York Gertrude and Paul E. Lehman gave birth to American screenwriter Ernest Lehman whose credits include the scripts for “The King and I,” “North by Northwest,” “The Sound of Music,” and “Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf?”  He passed away in 2005. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/movies/06LEHMAN.html

1916: In Brooklyn Essie (née Goldstein) and animator/producer Max Fleischer gave birth to director Richard Fleisher whose films include the Oscar winning documentary “Design for Death” as well as the “Boston Strangler” and “Tora! Tora!”

1916(13th of Kislev, 5677): George Schaffter passed away today in Manchester, England

1917(23rd of Kislev, 5678): Parshat Vayeshev

1917: Despite the fact that today is Shabbat, “the captains and the workers” raising funds for Jewish War Relief and to aid the soldiers and sailors in the military is scheduled to meet this afternoon including Team 22 led by Mortimer L. Schiff which has raised the most money and Team 4 headed by William Goldman which is in second place.

1917: British troops began to bombard Turkish positions west of Jerusalem marking the start of the final assault to seize the City of David from the Ottomans.

1917: The American Jewish Relief Committee (for sufferers from the war) was listed today as one of the organizations that had submitted “satisfactory audited financial statements” to the Bureau of Advice and Information of the Charity Organization Society.

1917: In the evening, the Ottoman Seventh Army retreated leaving Jerusalem open to the advancing British and Imperial forces.

1917: Contributions to the $5,000,000 fund for the Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy reached a total of $2,400,000 today. The largest individual contributions received today were $15,000 from Mr. and Mrs. S.R.. Travis, $10,000 from the Altman Foundation and $5,000 from Michael Friedsam, President of B. Altman & Co.

1918: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that Rabbi R. L. Levental, a national leader among Orthodox Jews, Rabbi Riff of the Sons of Israel Synagogue in Camden, NJ, Philadelphia attorney Max Hertzberg and William Leaf were among the speakers who addressed mass meeting that marking the opening of fund drive for the Federation of Jewish Charities in Camden.

1918: Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, announced that organization's decision to hold its New York City campaign designed to raise $5,000,000 to aid Jewish war sufferers during the week starting on December 8 and ending on December 15.

1919: Yitak Jacov Liss who had been 16 years old when he enlisted completed his service as a member of the British Jewish Legion 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers. (The diary he kept provided an eyewitness account of the service of the Jewish soldiers serving in Palestine during World War I)

http://jhvonline.com/diary-of-a-young-soldier-a-jewish-legionnaire-in-world-war-i-palestine-p8405-96.htm

http://www.jewsingreen.com/2010/02/diary-of-a-young-soldier-a-jewish-legionnaire-in-world-war-i-palestine/

1919: Birthdate of Mieczysław Weinberg, a native of Warsaw who lost most of his family in the Holocaust and who became a major Soviet composer after he moved there in 1939.

1919: Birthdate of Sidney H. Radner an amateur magician who became the unlikely steward of a trove of Harry Houdini artifacts, which he built into one of the world’s largest Houdini collections.

1920(27th of Kislev, 5681): Third Day of Chanukah

1920: It was reported today that “The Minister of the Interior of the Georgian Government has informed the Jewish community that Jews from Russia may through the territory of the republic on their way to Palestine” but these “emigrants must not make an extended stay” in Georgia.

1921: Nahum Sokolow the head of a Zionist delegation continued his visit to the United States following festivities that included a luncheon at the Hotel Brevoort “arranged by the publishers of The Jewish Morning Journal, The Day, The Jewish Daily News and The Zeit.”

1921: “The Dibbuk,” “which has been running at the Jewish Art Theatre” is scheduled to open today at the Apollo.

1922: In Brooklyn, “Ethel (Kornblum) Yaged” and property manager Isidore Yaged, who bought his son his first clarinet, gave birth to “Jazz Man” Solomon William Yaged. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/obituaries/sol-yaged-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1922: In Berlin, Lucie Brasch and Ernst L. Freud gave birth to Lucian Freud, the German-born British realist painter who was the grandson of Sigmund Freud. (As reported by William Grimes)

1922: Birthdate of historian and self-styled left-wing activist Howard Zinn who wrote A People’s History of United States.

1923(30th of Kislev, 5684): Shabbat shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1923: As Germany slipped further into the economic and social chaos that made the Weimar Republic ineffective and brought the Nazis to power, to “The Reichstag passed another enabling act, giving Chancellor Wilhelm Marx the power to implement emergency economic and welfare measures.”

1924: It was reported today that “In the three years since its inception, the Palestine Foundation Fund, of which Samuel Untermyer is the President, has spent more than $6,900,000 on the rebuilding of the Holy Land…”

1925: Birthdate of the multi-talented entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.

http://www.biography.com/people/sammy-davis-jr-9268223#personal-life-and-death

1925: Today marked the start of the culmination of the Hadassah drive to raise $15,000 “to provide luncheons for the school children in Palestine.

1926: In Berlin, “Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and staunch anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his post when the Nazis came to power in 1933” and his wife gave birth to Joachim Fest the German authorbest known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance to Nazism.”

1926(3rd of Tevet, 5687): Ninety-year-old Hannah Conquy Abecassis, the daughter of Fortunato (Messod) Abecassis and Júlia Conquy Abecassis, the wife of Abraham Abecassis and the mother of Júlia Abecassis passed away today inLisbon.

1926(3rd of Tevet, 5687): Fifty-four year old Julius Ephraim Mastbaum, the son of “Fannie (née Ephraim) and Levi Mastbaum”, whose Stanley Company of American “became the largest movie theatre chain in the world in 1926” and who was the husband of “Etta Wedell Mastbaum, the daughter of Rachel P. Lit who founded the original store that became Lit Brothers” and the brother-in-law of two sons of “Adam Gimbel, the founder of Gimbels department store” passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1926/12/09/archive/jules-e-mastbaum-phila-jewish-leader-and-philanthropist-dies-at-54

1927: In Manhattan, the former Sylvia Jaeger and Philip Rechtschaffen, a tailor from Kalusz gave birth to “Allan Rechtschaffen, an indefatigable sleep researcher at the University of Chicago who tested the effects of sleep deprivation, studied dreaming, narcolepsy, napping and insomnia and standardized the measurement of sleep stages.” (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/science/allan-rechtschaffen-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1927: “The Transformation of Dr. Bessel” silent film directed and produced by Richard Oswald and featuring Otto Wallburg was released in Germany today.

1928(25th of Kislev, 5689): Chanukah and Parashat Vayeshev

1928: Today marked the start of the culmination of the Hadassah drive to raise $15,000 “to provide luncheons for the school children in Palestine.

1929: “Suppression of Judaism and persecution of Zionists in Russia by the Soviet Union were vigorously denounced by speakers today at a conference of the American Jewish Congress in the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

1930: The Cleveland Rosenblums, a professional basketball team organized and owned by “Cleveland department store owner Max Rosenblum dropped out of the American Basketball League today.

1930: Birthdate of Shepsel Ber Nudelman, the Bronx native who gained fame as Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/us/sherwin-b-nuland-author-who-challenged-concept-of-dignified-death-dies-at-83.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

1931(28th of Kislev, 5692): Fourth day of Chanukah

1931: Birthdate of Robert Arum, the native of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and graduate of Harvard Law who founded the professional boxing promotion company known as Top Rank.

1932: Political activist and social reformer Belle Moskowitz broke several bones when she fell down the steps in front of her home in New York today.  This accident would lead to a fatal embolism which would bring about her premature death in January of 1933 at the age of 55.

1933: “High and Low” a French drama filmed by cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan was released today.

1933: “Girl Without a Room” a comedy featuring Mischa Auer as “Walsky” was released today in the United States.

1933(20th of Kislev, 5694): Eighty-one-year-old Louis Lehmann Berr, the French born son Mathilde and Alphonse Henrion Berr, and husband of Henriette Alice Berr with whom he had two sons – Maurice and Raymond – passed away today in Paris.

1933: In “John Barrymore in a Pictorial Conception of Elmer Rice's Play 'Counsellor-at-Law'” published today Mordaunt Hall provides a description of the successful efforts to move this drama from Broadway to Hollywood.

1934: “Babbitt” a cinematic version of the novel of the same name produced by Samuel Bishcoff was released in the United States today.

1935: Borough President Samuel Levy, Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the JNF, Dr. Bernard Revel, president of Yeshiva College, S.L. (Roxy) Rothafel, Louis J. Horowitz, Samuel C. Lamport and Harry Hershfield were among the more than 1,500 people who attended a dinner tonight in honor of Maurice Levin the president of the Hearn Department Store.

1935: “Anti-Jewish rioting in the heart of Bucharest” which was reportedly observed by the Chief of Police and “several high officials who took no effect measures to restore order,” “broke up balloting by the Rumanian Bar Association” five hundred of whose Jewish members were kept from casting their votes.

1936: “The German press, led by Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s own Voelkischer Beoabachter, has started a violent campaign technically directed ‘against world Jewry and against bolshevism,’ but obviously designed to exert pressure on the judges at Chur, Switzerland” who are getting to preside at the “trial of David Frankfurter who is charged with killing Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff at Davos last February.

1936: “Hundreds of Nazis” including “many members of the German Legation at Berne” “and anti-Nazis thronged” into Chur, Switzerland tonight “on the eve of the trial for murder of David Frankfurter, the “27-year-old Jewish medical student” charged with killing Wilhelm Gustloff whose status as a Nazi icon was cemented when Adolf Hitler delivered the funeral oration at his formal.

1936: Today, “Eliahu Epstein continued his testimony before the British inquiry commission regarding illicit Arab immigration stressing that this caused an economic grievance because unskilled Arab immigrants worked for 35 to 50 cents” but “spent only 15 cents daily and accused the government and government contractors of “encouraging this influx” because they employed these illegal immigrants.

1936(24th of Kislev, 5697): Thirty-eight-year-old David Freedman – “The King of the Gagwriters” passed away today.

http://www.david-freedman.info/

1936: As tensions grew over regulations designed to force Jewish businesses to stay open on Saturday and close on Sunday in Tripoli, “two Jews were flogged in the market place in the presence of a large crowd” while “a third who had been condemned to a similar punishment” was sent to prison for three months since his doctor said his physical condition left him “unequal to a flogging.”

1937: Falastin, an Arabic newspaper which had gained fame as the leading sports journal in Ottoman Palestine, is scheduled to print a report tomorrow describing “a compromised that has been reached between Jewish leaders, led by Chaim Weizmann, and Arab leaders led by Nuri Pasha as-Said, the former premiere of Iraq that will put an end to the current wave of violence.

1938: A campaign to raise funds for the immediate relief for Jews who have suffered from the anti-Semitic measures in Germany was launched today by the Christian Committee for the Relief of Jewish Refugees chaired by New York State Attorney General John J. Bennett, Jr.

1939: “Man from Montreal,” with music by Vienna born Jewish composer by Hans J. Salter was released today in the United States.

1939: Six Jews and 25 non-Jewish Poles, accused of committing acts of sabotage, are shot in Occupied Warsaw.

1940: “A dinner was given for Dr. Bernard Drachman at the Hotel Commodore” in celebration of his golden jubilee as rabbi of Zichron Ephraim Synagogue” on what was also the fiftieth anniversary of the synagogue.

1940: Jewish immigrants who had entered Eretz Israel illegally aboard the Atlantic were told that those aboard the Patria would stay in the country, but they would be deported.

1941: The Nazis brought 700 Jews to Chelmo for final experiment of the new method of killing. In groups of 80, the Jews were driven around the woods in a special van, gassed to death by the fumes of the exhaust. A thousand Jews a day for the next four days go through the same test.  While this was seen as in improvement over the other forms of murder used by the Nazis, it was not efficient enough.  These mobile vans would give way to the gas chambers. 

1941: Four thousand Jews of Novogrudok, Belorussia, are killed.

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): As the Riga Ghetto was being liquidated 81-year-old Jewish historian Simon Dubnow was murdered in Riga because he was too old and sick to travel to Rumbula where he would have been massacred with other Jews. There is no way this blog can do justice to this Jewish Intellectual Giant.  The tragedy is that a mind like this lost its life in the mud of Nazi murder spree. Even as he faced death he expressed his faith in the value of history when he told the Jews of Riga, "Yidn, shreibt un fershreibt"("Jews, write and record"). 

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/dubnow.html

http://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1413626

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/simon-dubnow-a-revaluation/

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Themes/About_Jewish_History/Emergence_of_Jewish_History_I/Emergence_of_Jewish_History_II/Simon_Dubnow.shtml

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dubnow_Simon

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Dubnow.html

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): Second day of the Rumbula Massacre during which 25,000 Jews were murdered

http://www.rumbula.org/remembering_rumbula.shtml\

1941: The Imperial Japanese Army took control of the rest of Shanghai, including the British and American controlled sections of the city which meant that “monetary aid and all communications from American Jews to the Jews of Shanghai ceased due to the Anglo-American Trading with the Enemy Act and that Baghdadi Jews living in Shanghai, many of whom were British subjects, were interned as enemy nationals.”

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): Rabbi Moses Parzen passed away today in New York City.

1941: FDR called for a declaration of war against Japan on the same day Germany was entering into the most horrific stage of the Final Solution.

1941: The Screen Writers Guild responded to yesterday’s attack on Pearl Harbor by forming the Hollywood Writers Mobilization Against the War, a body to organize writers for the war effort chaired by Robert Rossen.

1941: Williams College undergraduate Bruce Sundlun who would become the second Jewish Governor of Rhode Island volunteer to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program.

1941: Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal enlisted in the United States.  His request for combat training led to him becoming a much decorated B-17 pilot who flew more than twice the required missions over German.

1941: Today, Freiberg, Germany native Frederick Mayer, the son of a German Army veteran and recipient of the Iron Cross, who came to the United States at the age of 16 enlisted in the Army where he eventually he would be dropped behind enemy lines as part of operation Greenup in 1945.

1941: The Chelmno extermination camp began operating today.

1942(29th of Kislev, 5703) Fifth Day of Chanukah

1942(29th of Kislev, 5703): Albert Kahn, the Prussian born son of German Rabbi who became America’s leading industrial architect passed away today.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-0420?rgn=main;view=text

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/auto-factory-architect-albert-kahn-dies?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1208-12082016&om_rid=ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96&om_mid=119395340&kx_EmailCampaignID=8555&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1208-12082016&kx_EmailRecipientID=ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96%20&os_ehash=44@experian:ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96

1942(29th of Kislev, 5703): Sixty-five-year-old Anna Mehrbach, the wife of Albert I. Mehrbach and the mother of Elliot and Albert M. Mehrbach passed away today.

1942: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, met with other Jewish leaders and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to discuss the recently revealed plight of European Jews. “In the Abandonment of the Jews author David S. Wyman points out that this gathering the Oval Office was ‘the only one concerning the Holocaust that FDR ever granted to a group of Jewish leaders’ Estimates of two million Jewish dead were given to him.  Roosevelt responded by saying that official U.S. sources …’have given us proof that confirms the horrors discussed by you.’” Based on this meeting, FDR knew but did nothing except allow his previous made comments about ‘doing all in our power to be of service to your people in this tragic moment.’”

1942: The German SS organized the last deportation of Ternopil Jews to death camp in Belzec, when 1,400 Jews were sent there. The chief of the Gestapo, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Müller, bore overall responsibility for the mass murder of the Jews of Ternopil and Berezhany which were located in the western Ukraine.

1943: “Speaking before the Council of Christians and Jews” in London today, “the Most Reverend William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury declared that it was of ‘utmost importance’ that the sufferings of the Jews ‘be kept in full view’ of all people so that the spirit of indignation and compassion in them will not  die out.”

1944: “Guest in the House” a film noir which Lewis Milestone began directing but could not finished due to appendicitis was released in the United States.

1945: In Berkley, CA, Julius Heldman, the 1936 National Tennis Junior Champion and “Gladys Heldman the founder, editor, and publisher of World Tennis magazine and the founder of the women's pro tour in 1970” gave birth to Stanford grad and UCLA trained attorney Julie Heldman, the American tennis player “who won 22 women’s singles titles as well as “three gold medals at the 1969 Maccabiah Games and was the author of “a memoir, Driven, A Daughter’s Odyssey.”

1945(4th of Tevet, 5706): Parashat Miketz

1945(4th of Tevet, 5706): Random, Poland born Yiddish writer David Goldblatt who lived in South Africa before coming to the United States in 1916 where he was an editor of “The General Illustrated Encyclopedia passed awa today.

1945: Birthdate of Russian volleyball player Valdimir Patkin, who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summer Olympics and 1976 Summer Olympics” before becoming “the Secretary General of the Russian Volleyball Federation.”

1946: In Los Angeles, California, Aniela Młynarska who was Roman Catholic and Polish-born Jewish concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein gave birth to actor and composer of John Rubinstein.

1946: Dan Keinan photographed “a typical ship carrying illegal immigrants to Mandatory Palestine.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.540099

http://www.dankeinan.com/

1947(25th of Kislev, 5708): First Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the second light.

1947: Birthdate of Chava Alberstein an Israeli singer, lyricist, composer, musical arranger and an actress who is one of the most important Israeli singers, with a career spanning more than forty years.  In 2007, she released her latest work “Shvil HeChalav” or “Milky Way.”

1947: As the Arabs tighten the noose around the Jewish community in Jerusalem, trucks arrived carrying 60,000 eggs. 

1947(25th of Kislev, 5708): Tragedy struck when Yehoshua GLoberman, a senior Haganah official was gunned down when his car was stopped at Latrun.  This is the same Latrun that was the fortress held by the Jordanian Arab Legion cutting off the city of David from Tel Aviv.

1947: Egypt and Lebanon asked to be heard during the UN debates.

1947: The UN rejects the request by the Jewish Agency to address the Security Council since the organization did not want to set a precedent that allowed an entity other than a country to participate in UN debates.

1948: During the War for Independence, Uri Avnery, age 25, who would describe his view of the war sixty years later in 1948: A Soldier's Tale, the Bloody Road to Jerusalem is wounded while serving as a private soldier

1948: Jordan annexes “Arabic Palestine.”  The Kingdom of Trans-Jordan (Across the Jordan) will drop the “Trans” prefix in recognition of its holdings on both sides of the Jordan River.  Obviously, there was no thought to creating a state of Palestine on the part of the Arabs since the only thing that changed this illegal land holding was the war in 1967.

1948: Britain demands that the Security Council’s Negev subcommittee implement sanctions against Israel because Israel continues to surround an Egyptian force in the Negev.  The British did not seem to be bothered by the fact that the Egyptian force was part of an act of aggression taken to contravene a resolution of the United Nations.

1948: At Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Ya'akov Morris, an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet and Sadie Morris, a journalist gave birth to historian Benny Morris.

http://www.meforum.org/2769/benny-morris-1948-islamic-holy-war

1948: Isaac Don Levine “provided testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee today” during which, according to Karl Mundt, the Republican from South Dakota, Levine named Laurence Duggan as being communist spy.

1948: At kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet Ya’akov Morris and journalist Sadie Morris, Jewish immigrants from Great Britain gave birth to historian Benny Morris.

1948: King Abdullah denounces Arab League-sponsored Palestine Army regime in Gaza.

1948: Egypt announces dissolution of Moslem Brotherhood, a fanatical national religious organization. [I guess they didn’t do such a good job since the Brotherhood came out on top in the elections of 2011.]

1949: Birthdate of Raymond “Ray” Shulman, “a British musician and the youngest of three brothers that were in the innovative British progressive rock band, Gentle Giant.”

1949: In Philadelphia, “Irving Meyers, an executive at a voting machines manufacturer, and Patricia Meyers (née Lemisch), an interior designer who also worked as a volunteer with the Head Start Program and the Home for the Blind” gave birth to Nancy Jane Meyers “an American film director, producer and screenwriter” who “is the writer, producer and director of several big-screen successes, including The Parent Trap (1998), Something's Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006), and It's Complicated (2009). Her second solo venture, What Women Want (2000), was at one point the most successful film ever directed by a woman, taking in $183 million in the United States.

1949: Burma recognizes the state of Israel.

1949: “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” a Jule Styne musical with a book by Joseph Fields opened on Broadway today at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

1949: Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) married Helayne McNorton

1949: In a ground-breaking precedent, the United Nations established UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees with a budget of $54,900,000.  Thus, the UN played a key role in creating Palestine Refugee Problem.  No comparable UN organization was established when Jews were forced to flee from a variety of Moslem and/or Arab nations.

1949: U.S. premiere of “On the Town” a cinematic adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein Broadway musical of the same named with a screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, co-directed by Stanley Donen, co-produced by Arthur Freed co-starring Jules Munshin as “Ossie” and featuring Hans Conried as” Francois, the head waiter.”

1950: In Nevada, Gus Greenbaum “lobbied the Clark County Commission to create the unincoported township of Paradise” today

1951(9th of Kislev, 5712): Parashat Veyetzei

1951(9th of Kislev, 5712): Fifty-eight-year-old Springfield, MA native Edward Adaskin the president of the Adaskin Furniture Company which he had founded with his brother Herman in 1911 and who was a member of board of fellows of Brandeis University and a past president of Temple Beth-El passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/10/96226027.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1952: Yitzchak ben Zvi was elected the second President of Israel succeeding Chaim Weitzman, who had died in office.

1953: Maryla Husyt, who “grew up in Warsaw, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps” and “Zacharias Finkelstein, active in Hashomer Hatzair, and a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp” gave birth to Dr. Norman Finkelstein, the holder of a Ph.D from Princeton and college professor whose unconventional views as can be seen  by his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering in which he “argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon".

1954(13th of Kislev, 5715): Sixty-year-old Claude Chaun, the “French surrealist photographer, sculptor and writer whose real name was Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwarb  and who avoided being executed by the Germans for her role in the resistance in WW II passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/obituaries/claude-cahun-overlooked.html

1955: Mister Kelly’s was owned and operated by brothers Oscar and George Marienthal, was destroyed today “when a fire started in a grease chute and spread through a ventilator into the club.”

 1955: “The Ladykillers” produced by Michael Balcon, filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller and starring Peter Sellers who was, on his mother’s side, a descendant of prizefighter Daniel Mendoza, was released in the United Kingdom today.

1956(4th of Tevet, 5717): Parashat Vayigash

1956(4th of Tevet, 5717): Sixty-seven-year-old Jacob Cohn, the New York born son Russian native Bella Cohn and Joseph Cohn “a Jewish tailor from Germany,” the husband of Jeanette Lesser with  whom he had three sons – Ralph, Robert and Joseph – and the brother of  Harry Cohn with whom he co-founded Columbia Pictures Corporation passed away today.

https://archive.org/details/variety205-1956-12/page/n94/mode/1up?view=theater

https://www.nytimes.com/1956/12/10/archives/jack-cohn-dead-film-pioneer-67-cofounder-of-columbia-with-brother.html

1956: The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, which were boycotted by Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon “in response to the Suez Crisis” that had been precipitated by the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal, came to a close today.

1958: Russian born American violinist Mischa Elman appeared in Carnegie Hall to play a recital marking his golden jubilee of performing at the renowned concert venue.

1958: “Everybody’s Broker” published today described the powerful role played by 67-year-old Sidney J. Weinberg the partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co who is modern day version of Bernard Baruch.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,864550,00.html

1959: NBC broadcast “My Three Angels” the tenth episode in the Startime series for which Music Corporation of America under the leadership of Lew Wasserman got performers who did not usually do television to perform on the small screen.

1960: U.S. premiere of “The Sundowners” directed by Fred Zinnemann, with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin.

1960: A special television version of “Peter Pan” with music by Jule Styne, Mark Chartap and Trude Rittman and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Carolyn Leigh was broadcast today.

1962(11th of Kislev, 5723): Parashat Vayetzei

1962: Birthdate of Martin Adam “Marty” Friedman, “the lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Megadeath.”

1962(11th of Kislev, 5723): Fifty-six-year-old “Romanian-born French producer” Émile Natan,” the brother of Bernard Natan, the head of Pathé-Natan” passed away today in Paris.

1963: “The Girl Who Came to Dinner” a musical with a book by Harry Kurnitz and “directed and choreographed by Joe Layton” opened on Broadway today at The Broadway Theatre.

1963: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this afternoon for Senator and Governor Herbert Lehman at Temple Emanu-El in New York

https://www.jta.org/1963/12/06/archive/herbert-h-lehman-dies-in-new-york-mourned-by-jewry-funeral-sunday

1963: Rabbi Richard Sternberger officiated at the wedding of Gail Emelie Kanner and Thomas L. Lazarus at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

1964(3rd of Tevet, 5725): Seventy-six-year-old Simon Marks, 1st Baron Marks of Broughton, the Leeds born son of Michael Marks who in 1907 inherited a number of "penny bazaars" from his father, which had been established with Thomas Spencer and with “the help of Israel Sieff, built Marks & Spencer into an icon of British business. Passed away today in London.

1965: Abe Burrows' "Cactus Flower" premiered in New York. (Would there be theatre in America without the Jews?)

1966(25th of Kislev, 5727): Chanukah

1966: Birthdate of Georgian born Israeli director and screenwriter Dover Koshasili.

1967: “For Our Charitable Organization Urgent Appeal” published today called on “all Rabbis and immigrants who suffered in the concentration camps and didn’t get compensation” should contact an organization in Williamsburg led by Rabbi Aron Ringer.

1967: In Queens, NY, Peter Madoff, the brother of Bernie Madoff, and his wife gave birth to attorney Shana Diane Madoff who became Shana Madoff Skoller Swanson when she married Eric Swanson whom she had met while he was investigating her uncle and who had played no part in what may be the biggest Ponzi scheme ever pulled off in the United States.

1968(16th of Kislev, 5729): Parashat Vayishlach

1968(16th of Kislev, 5729): Sixty-year-old Ft. Worth Texas native Philip Jacob “Phil’ Handler the TCU guard who went on to a professional career with the Chicago Cardinals and the Chicago Bears passed away today.

https://www.profootballarchives.com/coach/hand00800coach.html

1969(28th of Kislev, 5730): Fourth Day of Channukah

1969: NBC broadcast the 13th episode of “My World and Welcome to It” a droll sitcom created by Melville Shavelson.

1969: Three days after having been cited for contempt of court and sent to the Mateo Jail, Dr. Joseph Lifschutz who had “refused a court or testify about one of his patients” in a landmark case involving the issue of “Dr. – Patient Confidentiality” was “released pending resolution of the case.”

1972(3rd of Tevet, 5733): 8th Day of Chanukah

1972: Mahmoud Hamshari, the PLO representative in France, believed to be the leader of Black September in France was mortally wounded today in Paris.

1973: After 296 performances, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Seesaw” a musical with lyrics by Dorothy Field and music by Cy Coleman

1974(24th of Kislev, 5735): Kindle the first Chanukah light in the evening

1974(24th of Kislev, 5735): Eighty-eight-year-old Joseph Pearl, the Polish born holder of Ph.D. from NYU who was the “chairman of the classical languages department at Brooklyn College” passed away today, just eight days before his next birthday.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/10/archives/prof-joseph-pearl-headed-classics-unit-at-brooklyn.html?searchResultPosition=1

1974: Anti-Zionist trials begin in Moscow today.

1976: “Deputy Minister of Culture Popov warned organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture” of “the unacceptability of the” event.

1976: U.S. premiere of “A Star is Born” starring Barbra Streisand who also co-produced the film.

1976(16th of Kislev, 5737): Ninety-five-year-old Rabbi Julian Morgenstern passed away today in Macon, GA.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0030/ms0030.html

1976: “Silver Streak,” a comedy directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Gene Wilder was released today in the United States.

1977(28th of Kislev, 5738): Fourth Day of Channukah

1977: Sir Zelman Cowen was sworn in as Governor-General of Australia.

1977: Rosalyn Yalow became the first American-born and American-trained woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science when she accepted the Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in the development of radioimmunoassay, a technique that allows scientists to measure minute amounts of hormones and other substances in human blood.(As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/08/1977/rosalyn-s-yalow

1978(8th of Kislev, 5739): Eighty-year-old Golda Meir, passed away. A Russian immigrant to the United States, this former Milwaukee school teacher would make aliyah in the 1920’s. She would become one of the most influential leaders of the Zionist movement whose career included raising the funds that made it possible for Israel to purchase arms at the time of its creation, clandestine negotiations with the King of Jordan designed to avert war in 1948 to serving as Israel’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister.  One of her most memorable quotes came when Sadat made his visit to Jerusalem.  In this one statement she showed a depth of understanding rare in world leaders.  “Long after we have forgiven you for killing our children, we will still be trying to forgive you for turning our children into killers.”  As a socialist and an idealist she believed in and sought peace.  As a pragmatist, she understood the necessity of self-defense even if it meant war. 

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0503.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/meir.html

1978:Force 10 from Navarone,” the movie version of the novel by the same name with a story created by Carl Foreman was released today in the United States.

1979(18th of Kislev, 5740): Parashat Vayishlach

1979(18th of Kislev, 5740): Sixty-nine-year-old “Joseph Wohl, founder and president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s Universal Brotherhood Movement” passed away today.

1979: Aaron Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Parisian born Jew who converted to Catholicism in 1940 at the age of 13 “received episcopal consecration …from Cardinal François Marty”

1980(1st of Tevet, 5741): Sixth Day of Channukah and Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1980: While on assignment for Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz took the last photos of John Lennon who was shot and killed five hours after she finished.

1980: Today “during a Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, Howard Cosell shocked the television audience by interrupting his regular commentary duties to deliver a news bulletin of the murder of John Lennon in the midst of a live broadcast

1981: Birthdate of Dov Yosef Tiefenbach, the native of Toronto whose first big acting break came in 1994 “playing the role of 'Josh Avery' in the television series RoboCop”

1982(22nd of Kislev, 5743): Sixty-three year old General Haim Laskov, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, passed away.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Laskov.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/09/obituaries/gen-haim-laskov-of-israel-former-chief-of-staff-1958-61.html

1982: “The Verdict” the movie version of the play by the same name directed by Sidney Lumet who also wrote the screenplay and starring Paul Newman was released in the United States today.

1982: “Sophie’s Choice,” an adaption of the novel with the same name Directed , Produced and written by Alan J. Pakula, starring Kevin Kline whose father Robert was Jewish and featuring an Academy Award nominated score by Marvin Hamlisch was released today in the United States.

1983(2nd of Tevet, 5744): 8th Day of Chanukah

1983(2nd of Tevet, 5744):  Ninety-seven-year-old Helen Kramer , the daughter of Henry and Rachel Kornfield Kramer and the wife of Isaac Kaden passed away today after which she was buried in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery.

1984: “Biloxi Blues, a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon premiered at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.”

1984(14th of Kislev, 5745): Eighty-four-year Luther Adler, a stage and screen actor who starred in ''Fiddler on the Roof'' on Broadway, died today at his home in Kutztown, Pa., after a long illness (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/09/obituaries/luther-adler-actor-is-dead-star-of-fiddler-on-broadway.html

1985(25th of Kislev, 5746): Chanukah

1985: The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 by David S. Wyman and The Periodic Table by Primo Levi; translated by Raymond Rosenthal are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1986: The second and final segment of “Anastasia” produced and directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, written by James Goldman and with music by Laurence Rosenthal was broadcast today.

1987: Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories began an intifada, or uprising.

1987: Sir Joshua Abraham Hassan completed his second term as Chief Minister of Gibraltar.

1988: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a comedic adventure film featuring music by Michael Kamen was released today in the West Germany.

1988: “Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States.

1989(10th of Kislev, 5750): Sixty-nine-year-old St. John’s University trained lawyer, WW II navy veteran and former Speaker of the New York State Assembly Stanley Steingut, the Crown Heights born son of Kae Kaufmann Steingut and Irwin Steingutt who had also served as Speaker of the New York State Assembly and husband of Madeline “Madi” Fellerman with whom he had three children – investment banker Robert, attorney Theodore and architect Ilene passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/09/obituaries/

1990(21st of Kislev, 5751): Director and playwright Martin Ritt passed away.

1991: “The Unraveling of Robert Maxwell’s Posthumous Empie” published today reported that “a month after his body was found at sea, Robert Maxwell's media empire is in ruins.”

1991: “Nick & Nora” a musical written by Arthur Laurents with music by Charles Strouse based on character from The Thin Man opened on Broadway.

1992(13th of Kislev, 5753):  Journalist William Shawn passed away. Born William Chon in 1907, the Chicago native was the editor of the New Yorker Magazine from 1952 to 1987.

1993: Upon being named today as budget director by New York’s incoming Mayor, Abraham Lackman said “he hoped to bring some new approaches to budget balancing…so the city can avoid tax increases.”

1994(5th of Tevet, 5755):  Israel Aaron Maisels, popularly known as “Isie” Maisels, passed away at the age of 89. He was fondly remembered as a leading member of the bar and a respected leader of the Jewish Community in South Africa.

1994: Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Yasser Arafat to express the Clinton Administration’s displeasure with the failure of the Palestinian Authority to provide the level of security that will make possible the transfer of territory to PA control.

1996(27th of Kislev, 5757): Third Day of Chanukah

1996(27th of Kislev, 5757): Ninety-four-year-old Jon Langeloth Loeb, Sr. the sone of Adeline Moses and Carol Loeb who were wed at St. Louis in 1896 and the husband of Frances Lehman whom he married in 1926 and with whom he had five children – Judith, John, Arthur, Ann and Deborah – passed away today.

1996: “Ragtime” a musical based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel of the same name “had its world premiere in Toronto, where it opened at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts (later renamed the Toronto Centre for the Arts) today, the brainchild of Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky and his Livent Inc., the Toronto-production company he headed

1996:  Michael and Susan Dell attend the groundbreaking for the Dell Jewish Community Campus.

1996: In “Symbol on a Hill” Serge Schmemann reviews a series of recent books about Jerusalem including “City of Stone:The Hidden History of Jerusalem” by Meron Benvenisti, “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” by Karen Armstrong, “ City of the Great King: Jerusalem From David to the Present” edited by Nitza Rosovsky, “Jerusalem In 3000 Years” by Nachum Tim Gidal and “Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century” by Martin Gilbert

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/books/a-symbol-on-a-hill.html?scp=5&sq=Jerusalem%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century%20by%20Martin%20Gilbert&st=cse&emc=eta1

1997(9th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-nine-year-old Sarah Abrams passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.

1997(9th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-seven-year-old Leon Poliakov, a historian of anti-Semitism who testified at major war crimes trials, died today in France.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-12-11/news/9712110257_1_nazi-war-crimes-leon-poliakov-trials-of-nazi-leaders

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-leon-poliakov-1288107.html

1997: A Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s “Sunshine Boys” starring Jack Klugman as Willie Clark and Tony Randall as Al Lewis opened at the Lyceum Theatre.

2000(11th of Kislev, 5761): Seventy-six-year-old documentary filmmaker Lionel Rogosin, the son of textile mogul and philanthropist Israel Rogosin and the grandson of Samuel Eliezer Rogosin who had come to the United States to raise funds for a Yeshiva in Eastern Europe passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/movies/lionel-rogosin-76-documentary-filmmaker.html

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/dec/15/guardianobituaries.filmnews

https://www.lionelrogosin.org/AboutLR.html

2000: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” a film nominated for 10 Oscars with a script co-authored by James Schamus was released today in the United States.

2001(23rd of Kislev, 5762): Parashat Vayeshev

2001: In the fight against Arab terrorism, Israeli “helicopter gunships attacked Palestinian security buildings in Rafah, Gaza.

2001: “Black Hawk Down” a cinematic version of the book by the same name produced by Jerry Bruckheimer with music by Hans Zimmer was first shown in the United States today.

2002: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 2002 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including White Christmas': Irving Berlin's Dream by Barry Gwen.

2002: Final performance of Jewish playwright Clifford Odets’ masterpiece Awake and Sing at the Timleline Theatre in Chicago, Ill. The play is as robust, emotional and gritty as the Great Depression itself..

2003: A special two-day lighting tribute began marking the 110th anniversary of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) with illumination of the Empire State Building with the organization's colors of blue and green. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

2004(25th of Kislev, 5765): First Day of Chanukah; kindle the second light in the evening.

2004(25th of Kislev, 5765): David Brudnoy, Boston radio talk show host, passed away. Born in Minnesota, Brudony was living proof that one could be a popular radio personality, discussing controversial subjects while maintaining a basic level of civility.

2004: U.S. premiere of “Blade: Trinity” directed and written by David S. Goyer based on a character created by Marv Wolfman.

2005: Delegates to an international conference have accepted a new Red Cross emblem, paving the way for Israel to join the humanitarian movement after nearly six decades of exclusion, officials said today.

2005: Avi Saig a member of the IDF who died when his APC rolled over during a training exercise was laid to rest in Holon’s Military Cemetery.

2005(7th of Kislev, 5766): Sixty-nine-year-old Kalman Ruttenstein,”the fashion director for Bloomingdale’s” passed away today. (As reported by Eric Wilson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/fashion/09ruttenstein.html?_r=0

2005: Rick Moranis’ ‘The Agoraphobic Cowboy was announced as a nominee for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album.’

2005: Israeli mathematician Robert Auman shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Thomas Schelling.  Auman was recognized for his research into game theory.

2005: “Leonard Woolf’s Quiet Complexity” published today provides a review Victoria Glenddinning’s biography of the man some know only as the Jewish husband of Virginia Woolf.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/arts/08iht-IDSIDE9.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2006: “The Holiday,” a “romantic comedy written, produced and directed by Nancy Meyers” and starring Jack Black and Eli Wallach and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today In the United States and the United Kingdom

2006: On her 39th birthdate, Shana Madoff became engaged to Eric Swanson whom she might while he was investigating her Uncle Bernie’s financial activities.

2006: “Blood Diamond,” “co-produced and directed by Edward Zwick was released today in the United States.

2006: Macmillan Reference USA and Israel’s Keter Publishing unveil the new edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica with 22 volumes containing more than 21,000 entries about Jewish life.

2007(28th of Kislev, 5768): Amy Elizabeth Rosenblatt Solomon, the wife of Dr. Harrison Solomon, mother of Jessica, Sammy and James, and daughter of Ginny and Roger Rosenblatt passed away.

2007: In Jerusalem, a screening of “Children of the Sun” a documentary about the first generation of sabras born on kibbutzim to the parents of parents who immigrated to Eretz Israel with the hope of creating a new society.

2007: In the Chicago Tribune a Jewish literary double-header:  E.L. Doctorow reviews a memoir by Studs Terkel entitled Touch and Go.

2008: Amy Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize" — the first journalist to be so honored. The Right Livelihood Award Foundation cited her work in "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

2008: Prof. Aliza Lavie of Bar-Ilan University discusses her compilation of traditional prayers for women, A Jewish Woman's Prayer Book at the Ivry Lounge in the Schottenstein Cultural Center in New York City.

2008: At the 92nd Street Y Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Hillel president Wayne Firestone discuss the complications facing Jewish life on campus today, from anti-Israel activity and Holocaust denial to outright anti-Semitism in a presentation moderated by Thane Rosenbaum, professor of law at Columbia University.

2008: Today “Web series release” of “Children’s Hospital co-developed by David Wain and co-starring Henry Winkler.

2008: “Rabbi Professor Daniel Hershkovitz, a mathematician from the Technion, was chosen to head” the newly formed Jewish Home Party.

2008: Time magazine includes reviews of “Defiance, “a film based on Defiance: The Bielski Partisans which chronicles the exploits of the largest of all Jewish partisans fighting against the Nazis and Milk, “a biopic” that chronicles the exploits of Harvey Milk as he “organized gay society…into a politcally effective community as well as a laudatory obtiurary of Irving Brecher which like so many articles about the famed comedy writer, fails to mention the fact that he is Jewish and was part of a whole generation of Jewish comedy writers who fueled the funnybones of America during the 20th century.

2009: A public memorial service is held in honor of Abe Pollin at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “In Search of the Bene Israel” which documents “the filmmaker travels to India to reconnect with her grandmother's Bene Israel community” and “From Swastika to Jim Crow,” a film that includes “the lost stories of the ‘refugee scholars,’ Jewish academics who fled Nazism to the United States and found employment at historically Black colleges.”

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Israeli Cinema, Part 2.”

2009(21st of Kislev, 5770): Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, a groundbreaking and wide-ranging scholar of Jewish history whose meditation on the tension between collective memory of a people and the more prosaic factual record of the past influenced a generation of thinkers, passed away today at the age of 77. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/nyregion/11yerushalmi.html?_r=0

2009: Mr. Matthew Gould MBE has been appointed Her Majesty's Ambassador to the State of Israel in succession to Mr Tom Phillips CMG.  He is the first Jewish person to hold this post

2010: “Celebrating the First Lights of Women Rabbis” by Elizabeth Imber published today.

http://jwa.org/blog/celebrating-the-first-lights-of-women-rabbis

2010: Yael Perlov is scheduled to present a program entitled David Perlov: Pioneer of Israeli Cinema at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival. The scheduled presentation will include the U.S. premier of “In Jerusalem” and “Diary: Chapter 1 (1973-1977)”

2010: Keshet Eilon students and teachers are scheduled to perform works by Schumann on WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase at 9 pm in New York City.

2010(1st of Tevet, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2010: Funeral services were held today for Rose Becker, of blessed memory, in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2010: Four to five mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into the Eshkol regional council tonight night hitting an area resident.

2011: The Booklover’s Luncheon, a part of Jewish Cultural Arts Month, is scheduled to be held at the Upton JCC in New Orleans, LA.

2011: The second weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to begin today.

2011: “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death” is scheduled to be shown at the 22nd Jewish Film Festival in Washington, D.C.

2011: An Israeli air strike in central Gaza killed a Palestinian militant planning a terrorist attack on the Egypt border, the IDF Spokesperson said today.

2011(12th of Kislev, 5772): Ninety-two-year Sir Zelmann Cowen who was the 19th Governor-General of Australia passed away.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/02/sir-zelman-cowen

2011: David Stern asserted his power as Commissioner of the NBA by vetoing a three-team trade that he thought would have undermined the integrity of the game.

2012: An outdoor menorah lighting ceremony is scheduled to take place the Virginia Gateway Town Center in Gainsville, VA.

2012: Parshat Vayeshev – this is the same Torah portion that was read on December 13, 1941, the first Saturday after Pearl Harbor.  You have to wonder how the Rabbis of the day tied the story of Joseph to the events of the day.  Maybe they related the darkness of Joseph’s pit to the darkness that America was facing at the start of WW II.

2012: A second Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” opened today at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre

2012(24th of Kislev, 5773): In the evening, Kindle the first light of Chanukah.

2012: The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to open with performances by Copal, Cannibal Animal Machine and The Sway Machinery at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn

2012: Tonight, President Obama “congratulated Jews around the world on the first night Chanukah.” (As reported by the Times of Israel)

2012: In Westport, CT, the Jews are scheduled to find two uses for potatoes at “Vodkas and Latkes.”

2012: Yesterday, the United Nations on Friday approved an Israel-initiated resolution in which the international body affirmed for the first time that entrepreneurship was a critical development tool.

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=295155

2012: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, making his first ever visit to the Gaza Strip, vowed today never to recognize Israel and said his Islamist group would never abandon its claim to all Israeli territory.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff, The Most of Nora Ephron by Nora Ephron and Wonders of Wonders: A Cultural History of “Fiddler on the Roof” by Alisa Solomon

2013: Out-of-town tryouts for “If/Then” starring Idina Menzel came to an end at the National Theatre in Washington, DC.

2013: The Yiddish film “American Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the Westside Neighborhood School.

2013: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host a service rededicating its 200 year old Holocaust Torah that had belong to a congregation in Sedlacany, Czechoslovakia that was destroyed by the Nazis.

2013: “Voices of the Vigil,” an exhibition that “tells the story of the Washington Jewish Community’s “role in the struggle for Soviet Jewry” is scheduled to open at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education is scheduled to host a screening of “Mrs. Miniver” followed by a discussion of this Oscar winning account of English bravery during the Battle of Britain that buttressed the cause of those believing America should enter the war to fight the Nazis.

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the attack on Greek Orthodx Priest Garbriel Nadaf’s son at today’s cabinet meeting, saying that Israel will not tolerate threats of physical attacks against Christians, Muslims and Druse who “want to link their fate even more to the State of Israel and want to serve in the IDF (As reported by Ariel Ben Solomon and Herb Keinon)

2013 A right-wing political group accused former Knesset speaker and Jewish Agency head Avrum Burg of treason today in a letter to law enforcement officials for statements Burg made last week that appeared to confirm that Israel possessed nuclear and chemical weapons. (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2013: The American Zionist Movement, the World Zionist Organization and Consulate General of Israel in New York City is scheduled to host a conference on Anti-Zionism and Ant-Semitism

http://www.azm.org/the-devil-that-never-dies-antisemitism-program/

2013: “The London Review of Books published an online article by Seymour Hersh alleging that President Obama had "omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts" in his assertion during his televised speech of 10 September that Bashar Al-Assad regime had been responsible for the use of sarin in the Ghouta chemical attack of 21 August 2013 against a rebel-held district of Damascus. In particular, Hersh wrote of anonymous intelligence sources telling him that the Syrian army was not the only agency with access to sarin, referring to the Al-Nusra Front Jihadist group, and that during the period before the Ghouta attack secret implanted sensors at the country's known bases had not detected suspicious movements suggesting a forthcoming chemical attack in the period.”

2014: Willa Schneberg is scheduled “to read from her recent collection Rending the Garment at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

2014(16th of Kislev, 5775): Ninety-five-year-old Sylvia Padzensky passed away today at Cottage Grove Place in Cedar Rapids.

http://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2014/Dec/Sylvia-Padensky/

2014: The second and final episode of “The Red Tent” is scheduled to be broadcast on Lifetime.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-red-tent-hits-the-small-screen-in-new-steamy-setting/

2014: “The Rothschild egg which “Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild presented this egg to Germaine Halphen upon her engagement to Béatrice's younger brother, Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild” was given to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg during the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the museum.

2014: “Arabic media reported today that two alleged Israeli airstrikes the day before had targeted advanced Russian-made air-defense missiles bound for Hezbollah.”

2014: “Irritability and Sever Temper Outbursts” Helping Parents Help Their Children” was the topic of today’s Dr. Samuel Kahn Memorial Lecture presented by the Westchester Jewish Community Services organization and NewYork-Presbyterian, Westchester Division.

2014: A new HBO documentary, “Regarding Susan Sontag” airing tonight charts the way Sontag’s approach to the issues of her day allowed her to become a new kind of American public intellectual.

2014: The 19th Knesset’s final day began today with a meeting of the Finance Committee where the agenda “consisted of the long-planned funneling of some NIS 3.6 billion ($902 million) to the Defense Ministry. “

2015: “Shmattes” an exhibition that “surveys the numerous ways in which hip, secular, young American Jews wear their Jewishness on their sleeves, literally” and that features a display of  “contemporary, funny, edgy Jewish-themed t-shirts” is scheduled to open at the Center for Jewish History.

2015: In what was later described as “just a joke,” Rick Kriseman, “The Jewish mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida made it known today that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was unwelcome in his city, following Trump’s suggestion the same day that the United States prevent all Muslims from entering the country.” (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

2015: “Young (Mostly), Hip (Mostly), Adrift in 2 Worlds” published today provides a review of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 by Shelly Oria.

2015: Chef Michael Solomonov, the chef/owner of the popular Zahav restaurant in Philadelphia is scheduled to teach the “Master Chef Class” at the Skirball Center.

2015: “A Carved Stone Block Upends Assumptions About Ancient Judaism” published today described the impact that the discovery of “The Magdala Stone” has had on views of life during the final decades of the Second Temple

2016: The YIVO Institute for Jewish research is scheduled to present “Yiddish Open MIC” hosted by Shane Baker for an evening filled with the sounds of a language that at one time had been written off as dead as the proverbial dodo bird.

2016: The New York premiere of “Personal Affairs” is scheduled to be shown on the last night of the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

2016: Singer Yael Naim, the daughter of Sephardic Jews from Tunisia born in Paris and raised in Israel is scheduled to perform at the Highline Ballroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhE7QMXRE1g

2016: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present a tutorial in which senior reference librarian Moriah Amit provides the lay person with guidance on how to use a searchable online map of New York’s historical synagogues synagoguemap.cjh.org recently established by the Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute.

2017(20th of Kislev, 5778): Observance of the second day of the Rosh HaShanah of Chassidus.

2017: “Dozens of letters from Jews to Oskar Schindler’s wife Emilie thank her for her role in their liberation are scheduled to actioned in south-west England” today.

2017: Today’s session of the URJ Biennial in Boston is scheduled to include a Shabbat Dinner followed by Kabbalat Shabat and Song Session.

2017: Sixty-seven-year-old United States Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski was accused of “sexual misconduct” today.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Rabbi Leo Trepp whose works included The Complete Book of Jewish Observance continues today.

2018: In London, the “Conference of Aegyptiaca, the Journal of the History of the Reception of Ancient Egypt” hosted by the Warburg Institute is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: At the Lumberyard in Catskill, NY, “The Day” is scheduled to be performed by Wendy Whelan and “world renowned Israeli-American cellist Maya Beiser.”

2018: “The Mlotek family and The National Yiddish Theatre - Folksbiene honored the memory of Chana Mlotek z"l as people from all walks of life from the YIVO Institute to multiple personalities of the Entertainment Industry shared their stories in celebrating the life & accomplishments of the beloved author, archivist, lifelong activist for the preservation Yiddish music and culture.

2018(30th of Kislev, 5779): Triple Header Shabbat; Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

2019: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present Yale Professor David Sorkin speaking on “Emancipation, Then and Now” which examines “the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel.”

2019: In San Jose, CA, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host “Latkes and Laughs” during which “comedians Jeff Applebaum, Rachael Berman and Scott Blakeman serve up the jokes to go with freshly made potato pancakes.”

2019: In Atlanta, GA, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host Murray Lynn as he describes being a 14 year old “when he, his mother and three brothers, who were later murdered were shipped in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

2019: In San Francisco, Congregation Beth Shalom is scheduled to host Ephraim Margolin as he talks about “The Education of One Israeli—1936 to 1945.”

2019: The Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Awards for 2019 are scheduled to be present today at the USCJ-RA Convention in Boston.

2019: In Albany, CA, Local Jewish artist, author and poet Marcia Falk is scheduled to discuss and reads from her latest book, Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings.

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to Elizabeth Rosner as she talks about her latest book Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. 

2019:  As Israelis awaken this morning, they will be looking to the skies to see if last night’s rocket barrage from Gaza was an apparition or the start of a new wave of terror.

2020: In act of Tikun Olam, Temple Judea, whose leadership includes Rabbi Feivel Strauss and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss, is scheduled to participate in the “Help Feed the Hungry” where congregants make homemade sandwiches for St. George’s Kitchen which “distributes 300 sandwiches a day.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “A Virtual Tour of the Bukharian Jewish Heritage Museum “

2020: The Jewish Council for Public Affairs is scheduled to present its first virtual benefit from 7 to 8 p.m. during which U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and community advocate Harvey Reiter of Washington, D.C., will be honored with JCPA’s 2020 Tikkun Olam Award.

2020: “JewishColumbus” is scheduled to host “We Shine Together,” a free 20 minute virtual community celebration that will feature stories of impact, showing how JewishColumbus’ work affects many people within the community.

2020: Israelis are awakening to positive news on the Pandemic front –

the first shipment of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Israel on Thursday, while a larger shipment is also slated to arrive on Friday with some 4 million doses of the vaccine expected to arrive in Israel by the end of the month.(As reported by Adir Yanko and Itay Blumenthal)

2020: Chabad is scheduled the first session of “And Then There Were eleven,” a course in which participants “will dive beyond the text and learn about the truth behind Yosef and his brothers and discover that there is much more to this story of betrayal than meets the eye.”

2020: Congregation Or Atid is scheduled to present on line “Exploring Black and Jewish Experience: A Conversation About “Convergence”

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus speaking on “Fighting Media Bias against Israel.”

2020: In Manhattan, the Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Ma’abarot” followed by a Question and Answer session.

2021: Park Synagogue is scheduled to present via Zoom “Refugee Resettlement 101: Welcoming Newcomers to Cleveland”

2021: Defense Minister Benny Gantz is scheduled to travel to Washington today for meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin as part of Israel's attempts to sway the American position, which has thus far been in favor of an agreement with Tehran. (As reported by Itamar Eichner)

2021: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host Andrew Lawler, the author of Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City.

2021: In Cedar Rapids, via zoom and in person, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner.

2021: Forward is scheduled to host “The Chosen at 40: A conversation with Jeremy Kagan who wrote and directed the film based on Chaim Potok’s novel of the same name.

2021: The Annual Celebration of the Jewish for the 2021 Campaign including the installation of Brian Katz as Board Chair is scheduled to take place at the Audubon Tea Room.

2021: The Hadassah Brandeis is scheduled to present online Rabbi Haviva Ner-David talking about her inspiring novel, “Hope Valley,” the story of the unexpected friendship between a Jewish-Israeli woman and a Palestinian-Israeli woman living in the Galilee at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.

2021: Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies is scheduled to present Laura Limonic of CUNY as she discusses her book Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States and issues of indemnity…”

2021: Hebrew College is scheduled to present “Seeing Torah,” an Art Exhibit talk with Jamie Kotler.

2022: The Cleveland Jewish News 2022 18 Difference Makers awards ceremony and reception is scheduled to be held at Park Synagogue East this evening.

2022: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “In the Shadow of a Giant” with the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble performing piano quarters by Beethoven and Brahms.

2022: The American Sephardi Federation and the Moise Safra Center are scheduled to present:

Sephardi: Cooking the History with Hélène Jawhara-Piñer

2022: The Illinois Holocaust Museum in scheduled to author Sarah Rose as she discusses her latest work, D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II

2023(25th of Kislev, 5784): Chanukah

2023: In Coralville, IA Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a “Resilience and Light-themed Contemplative Service.”

2023: The Gateways Chanukah Retreat is scheduled to begin at the Hilton Hotel in Stamford, CT.

2023: As December 8 begins in Israel, the threat from Hamas continues as can be seen from yesterday’s rocket firing from “Gaza safe zones” which is also a continuation of the terrorist group’ strategy of hiding among the civilian population and the threat from the north continues as can be seen from Hezbollah shelling which has now claimed at least one more civilian life  and the Hamas held hostages begin day 63 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)

2024:The New York Times list of best children’s books for 2024 The Amazing Grapes by Jules Fieffer

2024: Religious School is scheduled to resume at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA

2024: The New York Jewish Book Festival is scheduled to take place today with Dr. Lauren Bairnsfather, CEO of the Anne Frank Center USA, and Adam Langer, executive editor of the Forward and creator of the "Playing Anne Frank" podcast, discussing how Anne's story has generated acclaim and censure and how her message can persist

2024: The Jewish Leadership Conference with the theme of “The Jewish Fight for America” is scheduled to take place today in New York City.

2024: In Oak Park, MI, JHSM, Yachad School, Temple Emanu-El and Congregation Beth Shalom are scheduled to present “Shine your Jewish Light” created by Marci Bykat.

2024: As part of an online lecture series Dr. Galia Bar-Or is scheduled to deliver a talk on “Art in the Kibbutz as the Art of the Solo.”

2024: The JCC of San Francisco is scheduled to host a Hanukkah Maker’s Market and Hanukkah Fitness Fun Workout.

2024: Today the 16th European Cantors Convention in Budapest, Hungary to which Cantor Abbie Strauss was invited to lead a workshop and sing(“chant”) is scheduled to come to an end today.

2024: In Chelmsford, MA, the Lappin Foundation is scheduled to present “Hanukkah Story Lantern Walk.”

2024: In Metairie, LA, Congregation Beth El is scheduled to celebrate its 120th anniversary which will be part of its “annual fundraising event with music, food, drinks, raffles, friends, family, and Israeli fun! Raise a glass of champagne and toast to another 120!”

2024: The Michal Yaccoby Artwork and Exhibit Sale is scheduled to take place at the Chabad Center in Little Rock, AR.

2024: “Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah” sponsored the JW3 is scheduled to open today in London.

2024: Bill Carson, a pillar of the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids, and the major domo in the Coe College Music Department reminds readers that Winter at Coe is scheduled to take place this afternoon.

2024: As December 8th begins in Israel, an  unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that has included Hamas supporters calling for Zionist passengers on a New York subway to raise their hands, demonstrations at a high school production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and the beating of a college student in Chicago sweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day 429 in captivity while Israelis brace for more rocket attacks by Hezbollah, Iran and terrorists based in Iraq  (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)