This Day, February 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

 February 19

197: Emperor Septimius Severus defeated the usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, Severus was trying to use syncretism to maintain imperial unity and authority.  Since Jews, as well as Christian, resisted this concept, the Emperor outlawed conversion to either of these religions. 

356: Following in the footsteps of his father Constantine the Great Constantius II closed all pagan temples. During his reign, he would also issue a series of edicts designed to limit the economic and social activities of Jews. All of this was part of the drive to make Christianity the state religion which would then serve as a unifying force for the empire that was past its zenith.

607: Boniface III is named Pope.  His papacy only lasted for nine months but during that time he “ensured that the title of ‘Universal Bishop’ belonged exclusively to the Bishop of Rome” thus ensuring the primacy of the Pope as head of the Catholic Church. The impact of this decision would indirectly affect the Jews for centuries to come as they were forced to deal with Church sponsored persecution and/or to seek Papal protection from a variety of murderous enemies.

842: The Medieval Iconoclastic Controversy ended, when a Council in Constantinople formally reinstated the veneration of images (icons) in the churches. This debate over icons is often considered the last event which led to the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. This split continues to this day between the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.  As those studying in Cedar Rapids now know, many of the things done to the Jews by Christians were by-products of these various squabbles between various Christian sects.

1090: In Speyer, Germany, Emperor Henry IV renewed to Rabbi Judah ben Kalonymus, the poet David ben Meshullam, and Rabbi Moses ben Yekuthiel the pledges granted six years earlier by Bishop Ruediger. In addition, the emperor guaranteed the Jews freedom of trade in his empire as well as his protection. Within six years Speyer became one of the first communities on the Rhine to be attacked. After the attacks Rabbi Moses took it upon himself to care for and protect the orphans created by this violence.

http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/256-henry-iv

 

1229: During the Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signed “a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the Pope Gregory IX.” The Sixth Crusade is remembered as one that did not result in the massive slaughter of Jews in Europe or Palestine. Gregory is remembered as the Pope who created the dreaded institution known as the Inquisition. During his reign, Frederick “decided to combine the manufacturing of silk and the dying trades and to give them over to a number of Jewish families. For many years both of these industries were “almost the exclusive activities of Jews in Sicily, Naples, and other parts of Italy” which were part of the Holy Roman Empire.

1279: John Peckham who in 1281 as Archbishop of Canterbury “order all but one of the remaining Jewish prayer houses in London to be closed down, was consecrated today by Pope Nicholas III.

Martin 22

1461: Birthdate of Cardinal Domenico Grimani who was a close enough friend of Rabbi Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno that he recommended him to those who were looking for a Hebrew teacher.

1539: The Jews of Tyrnau Hungary (then Trnava Czechoslovakia) who had “first been punished for alleged ritual murder” were expelled today.  In case you had not noticed, there seems to be an expulsion somewhere on almost every day of the year. 

1543: Paull III issued “Illius, quo pro dominici,” the Papal Bull that enable the Vatican to establish the House of Catechumens (Casa dei Catecumeni). The purpose of the house, supported by Jewish taxation was solely to convert Jews. Those sent there were subjected to 40 days of intense “instruction”. If after that time he still refused baptism he was allowed to return to his home – few did. Until it was abolished in 1810 around 2440 Jews were converted in Rome alone. Other houses were set up in various Italian cities. On this same day three Portuguese Marranos from Ferrara were burned in Rome's Campo dei Fiori.

1560: The third volume of the Zohar was printed for the first time in Mantua, Italy

1583(27th of Shevat): In Italy, Joseph Saralbo was burned at the stake at the command of Pope Gregory XIII. Saralbo was accused of returning to Judaism and of trying to convince other Marranos in Ferrara to join him. According to reports he proudly proclaimed that he had helped 800 Marranos return to Judaism.  He asked the Jews of Rome not to mourn for him stating “I am on my way to meet immortality.”

 1594: King Sigismund III ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is crowned King of Sweden. Under King Sigismund’s rule, conditions for Polish and Lithuanian Jews continued to deteriorate.  Such could not be said of his Swedish realm since there was no Jewish community in Sweden at this time.

1612: Today in Hamburg, the senate concluded the Designatio Articulorum, darauf sich E. E. Rath mit der portugiesischen Nation verglichen und dieselben in Schutz und Schirm genommen with the Sephardim as a recognized and protected corporation of persons, but it would not be until 1710, that the Ashkenazim would secure legal protection.

1674:  England and the Netherlands sign the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, which renamed it New York.  If the war had turned out otherwise, comedians would have been talking about New Amsterdam Jews instead of New York Jews. Think of Seinfeld in Dutch.

1707(17th of Adar l, 5467): Jonah Abravanel, “a learned and highly respected” member of the Amsterdam Jewish community passed away. [Jonah Abravanel was a fairly a common name and this individual should not be confused with the16th century poet who was the son of the physician Joseph Abravanel, and a nephew of Manasseh ben Israel]

1732: In New Rochelle, NY, Dutch born Jechiel Hays and his wife gave birth to his sixth son David who was a grocery store owner, a veteran of the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolutionary War whose older brother Jacob was “a founder of the first Jewish cemetery in Chatham Square in Manhattan.

1732: In Cambridge, UK, Johanna Bentley and Dr. Denison Cumberland gave birth to dramatist Richard Cumberland, author of “The Jew of Magadore” and “The Jew,” “the first playing the English theatre to portray a Jewish moneylender as the hero of a stage production.” In 2012, the play was published as “Sheva, the Benevolent.”

1740(22nd of Shevat): Rabbi Jacob ben Benjamin Papiers of Frankfort author of Shev Ya’akov passed away.

1758: Birthdate of Austrian educator Peter Beer.

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

1764: Savannah, GA native Isaac De Lyon and Rinah Tobias, who were married in Charleston, SC gave birth to Judith De Lyon, the wife of Moses Cohen and mother of Rinah and Bilah Cohen who later married Joseph Abrahams with whom she had one child – Rachel Abrahams.

1772: Birthdate of Moses Myers, the husband of Hannah Polock whom he married in Washington, D.C. in November of 1801.

1777: One day after he had passed away “Moses Myers ben JudahZL” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.

1784: One day after he had passed away, “Zvi ben Judah Chait” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.

1787(1st of Adar, 5547): Rosh Chodesh Adar observed as James Madison takes part in the debated in the Congress of Confederation which eventually led to the creation of the U.S. Constitution.

https://www.amazon.com/Papers-James-Madison-Congress-Confederation/dp/B009QQDU4C

1791(15th of Adar I, 5551): Parashat Ki Tisa; Shushan Purim Katan observed on the day that Thomas Jefferson wrote to President George Washington concerning the admission of the state of Vermont to Union which was historic because it was the first state added to the original thirteen.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-07-02-0224

 

1799(14th of Adar I, 5559): Purim Katan observed for the last time in the 18th century and on the same day that President John Adams wrote to his predecessor George Washington about the appointment of an American ambassador to France and the foreign policy considerations surrounding the selection.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-03-02-0288

 

1803: Ohio was admitted to as the 17th U.S. State

1803: “An Act of Mediation, issued by Napoleon Bonaparte, establishes the Swiss Confederation to replace the Helvetic Republic.”

1804: In Charleston, SC, Reinah Abrahams Cohen Mordecai and David Cohen Mordecai gave birth to Moses Cohen Mordecai, the grandson of Mordecai Moses Mordecai and Zipporah deLyon and the husband of Isabel Rebecca Lyons with whom he had eight children who was the owner of the Mordecai Steamship Line and a member of the South Carolina Senate.

1804: In the U.K., Moses Cantor, the son of Hannah Lazarus and Jacob Samuel Cantor who was buried in the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery at the age of 25, was “christened” today

1810(15th of Adar I, 5570): Shushan Purim Katan

1810(15th of Adar I, 5570): David Friedrichsfeld, the native of Berlin who went to Amsterdam in 1781 to fight for the emancipation of the Jews and whose written works included a biography of fellow Hebraist Naphtali Hirz Wessely, passed away today.

1815: Yitzchak Alter and Feigele Lipschitz gave birth to Abraham Mordka Alter.

1816: Twenty-one-year-old Rachel Lopez, the Charleston SC born daughter of David Lopez married Jacob Cohen today.

1819: Under the influence of Rabbi Moses Münz, Rabbi Aron Chorin “recalled” Ḳin'at ha-Emet (Zeal for Truth), a paper written on April 7, 1818, and published in the collection Nogah ha-Ẓedeḳ (Light of Righteousness),” in which “he declared himself in favor of reforms, such as German prayers, the use of the organ, and other liturgical modifications. The principal prayers, the Shema', and the eighteen benedictions, however, should be said in Hebrew, he declared, as this language keeps alive the belief in the restoration of Israel. He also pleaded for opening the temple for daily service.” A year later he would publish Dabar be-'Itto (A Word in Its Time), in which he reaffirmed the views expressed in Ḳin'at ha-Emet, and pleaded strongly for the right of Reform.

1822: In the U.K., Helena Moses and Moses Levy gave birth to Lionel Lawson.

1823: In Rotterdam, Sara Lit and Harry De Groot gave birth to Salomon De Groot.

1825: Birthdate of Abraham Pereira Mendes, the native of Kingston, Jamaica who was trained in London by Rabbi David Meldola and Rabbi D.A. de Sola and who led several Sephardic congregations in the United Kingdom and the United States.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A03E1D71731E033A25756C0A9629C94629ED7CF

1827(22nd of Shevat, 5587): Twenty-six-year-old Rachel Jonas, the husband Cincinnati resident Joseph Jonas passed away today.

1834: Jacob David Davis married Dinah Alexander at the Great Synagogue today.

1835: Birthdate of Austrian Rabbi Moritz Güdemann who passed away in 1918.

1836: One day afer he had passed away. “Faulkland Jones, the son of Alexander and Janes Jones” was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.” 

1837: Seventy-three-year-old Dutch born Asser Prins, the husband of Amelia Prins with whom he had five children was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1838(24th of Shebat, 5598): Matilda de Mitz the wife of Levy Salomons and daughter-in-law of Solomon Salmons and the mother of three sons and three daughters passed away today.

1839: Birthdate of Esther Levy, the wife of Abraham Hoffnung and the mother of Caroline Hoffnung.

1843: A committee of representatives, including eight from the Great Synagogue, met under the chairmanship of Isaac Cohen in the Vestry room in Duke's Place

1843: In Madrid, Salvatore Patti and Salvatore Patti gave birth to Adelina Patti, the 19th century opera star who was discovered by Jewish impresario Max Maretzek.

1846(23rd of Shevat, 5606): Penzance native James Jacob Hart, “her Majesty’s consul the Kingdom of Saxony” passed away today in London.

1848: Thirty-year old Emanuel Nunes Carvalho and Caroline A. Carvalho gave birth to Isaac Woolf Nunes Carvalho

1850: In Hamburg, Emma Simon and Louis Bernheim gave birth to German historian Ernst Bernheim who would lose his position when he fell afoul of the Nazi racial laws.

1854: In Charleston, SC, W.J. Jacobi, Esq., married Hester E. Hertz, “the eldest daughter of the late Jacob Hertz.”

1856: During the current session of the New York Legislature,today Mr. Brooks gave notice that he planned to introduce a bill "to increase the number of trustees of the Jews Hospital" in New York City.

1857: Moses Polydore Millaud, the French banker who owned La Presse “hosted a banquet for the Goncourt brothers, but later that year he was faced with financial difficulties and sold the newspaper to Felix Solar.”

1858: Birthdate of mechanical engineer Ernest D. Lowy, the native of London who married Henrietta Solomon, the daughter of Joseph Solomon in 1886 and whose activities in the Jewish community included serving as a Warden of the West London Synagogue and a member of the Jewish Board of Guardians.

1861: As part of his reforms, Czar Alexander II abolished serfdom. Although the Jews were not directly affected by the emancipation of the serfs, they benefited from other reforms initiated by Alexander II including putting an end to the drafting of Jews into the Russian Army and the opening of some educational institutions and occupations to the Jews of Russia.  This gave rise to the masklim movement in Russia.  Unfortunately, all of this came to an end when the Czar was assassinated in 1881 which led to Pogroms and reactionary regimes.

1863: “The Doom of Memphis” published today described the desperate economic conditions in Memphis including the fact that many of the city’s prominent businessman have joined the retreating Rebel Army and their homes have been occupied by “military Generals or Hebrews, who have turned them into Sutlers' establishments.

1863: After graduating from Albany Medical College Herman Bendell rejoined the Union Army today “as a surgeon with the 86th New York Volunteer Infantry.”

1867: In New York City, Robert Weeks Nathan and Anne Augusta Florance gave birth Annie Nathan who married Dr. Alfred Meyer and gained fame as Annie Nathan Meyer, a founder of Bernard College and American author whose works included Women’s Work in America and Helen Brent, M.D.

1868: In New Orleans, Rachel Wolff and Benjamin Rosenberg, pioneer in the shoe industry and founder of B. Rosenberg and Sons,  gave birth to Ephraim Rosenberg, the husband of Jessie Hillborn and the founder of the real estate firm of Rosenberg and Rowan as well as president of both the Knight Land and Oil Development Company and the River and Rail Terminal Company who was active in the affairs of Touro Synagogue, Touro Infirmary, the Jewish Orphan’s Home and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1869: Birthdate of Pollnoi, Germany, native Ludwig Beer who was buried in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery.

1870: In Brooklyn, Congregation Beth Elohim which had been conducted services in “the traditional manner” adopted a moderate reform ritual in its worship.

1871: In Philadelphia, PA, Barbara Myers and Meyer Guggenheim gave birth Rose Guggenheim, who was first married to Albert Loeb with whom she had three children and then to Samuel M. Goldsmith followed by Charles E. Quicke.

1871: “Abraham’s Sacrifice” which was published today included a description of Rembrandt’s relationship with the local Jewish population including the fact that after the death of his wife, the Dutch painter “retired to an old house on the Rue des Juifs in Amsterdam.”

1871: In Portsmouth, England, Kate Emanuel and Philip Magnus gave birth to Lucy Amy Magnus.

1874: In Helena, AR, Simon and Vera (Cohen) Seelig gave birth to Harvard graduate and Columbia trained physician Gabriel Seelig, the husband of Clover Hartz who served as Professor of Clinical Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and director of surgery of the Jewish Hospital in St. Louis while rising to the rank of Colonel of Medical Corps of the United States Army during World War I.

1875(14th of Adar I, 5635): Purim Katan

1875: In Portland, OR approval of ordinance 1602 which extended the limit on permission for interments at the “Hebrew Cemetery” which was an exemption from Ordinance 934 which prohibited interments within the city limits.

1876: Australian native Martha May Cohen and Louis Samuel Cohen gave birth Rex David Cohen

1877: Birthdate Moritz Kahn who in 1942 was transported from Darmstadt to Terezin where he was murdered.

1879: Birthdate of Philadelphia native, Walter Abraham Kohn, the University of Pennsylvania trained electrical engineer who was an “officer of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.”

1881: Seventeen-year-old Marion Calisch, the Hebrew teacher at Professor Felix Adler’s Kindergarten at 45th and Broadway disappeared today.

1882: President Isaac Marx addressed the opening session of annual convention of the Grand Lodge of the order Kesher Shel Barzel, District Number 1. During his speech, Marx expressed remorse at the recent death of President Garfield and concern for the plight of the Jews of Russia.  Marks praised the work of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society in aiding the Russian Jews. He suggested that the Order should emulate the action of the Free Sons of Israel and make a generous contribution to HIAS.

1882: It was reported today that in the upcoming session of Parliament, the Opposition plans to pepper Prime Minister Gladstone with “taunts and jibes” over his denunciation of the Bulgarian atrocities while remaining silent about the Russian persecution of the Jews.  The difference they claim has nothing to do with the Jews and everything to do with the fact the Turks are weak and the Russians are strong.

1882: In London, the Lord Mayor’s relief fund to aid the Jews of Russia has reached £50,000.

1882: Reverend Jacob Freshman addressed a large gathering this afternoon at Cooper Union on the subject of “Hebrew and Christian Unity.”  Freshman, the son of a rabbi, had converted to Christianity.  The meeting was part of a movement “looking toward the converting and Christianizing of the Jews.”

1882: In St. Petersburg, Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian Minster of the Interior told a Rabbi that the government would neither encourage nor oppose the emigration of the Jews.[This statement does not conform with reality.  The Russian government was committed to the one-third, one-third, one-third policy: One third of the Jews would convert; one-third would emigrate; one-third would die.]

1883: Birthdate of Kiev native Abraham Lassen who in 1899 came to the United Sates where he earned a master’s degree from Northwestern and a Doctorate from JTS who was a founder of Congregation B’nai Zion in Chicago which he served as rabbi for twenty-one years while raising his son Ben with his wife Anna.

1885: In Budapest, Emil Oppenheim, the Pest, Hungary, born son of Hermina and J. Samuel Oppenheim and his wife Anna Oppenheim gave birth to Margit Oppenheim, the sister of Maria Oppenheim.

1886(14th of Adar I, 5646): Purim Katan

1886: In Polonoya, Ukraine, Rhoda and Nathan Isaac Sharfman gave birth to Harvard trained lawyer Isaiah Leo Sharfman, the husband of Minnie Shikes whose varied career included serving as a professor of law and Science at the Imperial Pei-Yang University in Tientsin, China and professor economics at the University of Michigan where he was active in the Menorah movement

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sharfman-isaiah-leo

1887: Rabbi Alexander Kohut of Ahawath Chesed is scheduled to host a reception for members of his congregation at his home in Beekman Place

1887: In Poland, “Gedalie and Sarah (Block) Wohl gave birth Dr. Michael Gershon Wohl, the husband  of Rose B. Gillerson and the professor of pathology and hygiene at Temple Med School in Philadelphia who moved on to Creighton Medical College In Omaha, NE where he was on the faculty while serving at Methodist and Nicholas Senn Hospitals in Omaha.

1888: In Amsterdam, and Adriana Rosa Gustaaf Wertheim Enthoven gave birth to pianist Rosalie Marie Wertheim who gave “secret conferences in cellars” during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

1889: Three days she had passed away, 62 year old Julia Angel, the daughter of Philip and Blumer Isaacs, the wife of Edward Angel with whom she had had six children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1891: In Rochester, NY, Benjamin and Sarah Kail Lazarus gave birth to Joseph Hyman Lazarus, the brother of Max and Isaac Lazarus.

1892: Birthdate of Elinor Fatman Morgenthau, the wife of Secretary Treasury Henry Morgenthau and a friend and Hyde Park neighbor of Eleanor Roosevelt.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/morgenthau-elinor

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12237013

1894: “Huxley on the Bible” published today provides a detailed review of Science and Hebrew Traditions, a collection by Thomas H. Huxley. (Huxley was a 19th century scientist who was an enthusiastic advocate of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution)

1894: Birthdate of Kovno native Velvi-Dovid who in 1912 came to the United States where e gained fame as labor organizer and author Williams Abrams.

https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/7000/Abrams,%20William%20(February%2019,%201894%E2%80%931969)

 

1894: The United Hebrew Charities was one of the recipients of money given to New York charities by the Distribution Committee of the Citizens’ Relief Committee when it met today in the office of J. Pierpont Morgan.

1895: Birthdate of Kaunus, Lithuania native, Haganah and Jewish Legion veteran and University of London trained jurist Yitzhak Olshan, who made Aliyah in 1912, headed in the commission investigating the Lavon Affair and served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1954 to 1965.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1896: Birthdate of Konigsberg, East Prussia native musical child prodigy Werner R. Heymann, the younger brother of poet Walther Heymann who continued his composing work during the Hitler by writing for Hollywood films which earned him four Oscar nominations in the 1940’s.

1896: Birthdate of Lodz native Benjamin Raczkowski Harris, the chemical engineer and WW I veteran who while attending the University of Chicago was elected to Sigma XI “on the nomination of the Department of Science for evidence of ability in research work in science.”

1897: Birthdate of silent screen star Alma Rubens, the San Francisco native whose mother was Irish Catholic and whose father was Jewish.

1897(17th of Adar I, 5657): In New York, Simon Goldenberg, the husband of Mary Goldenberg and member of Temple Beth El who left an estate of $200,000 in real property and $100,000 in personal property passed away today.

1897: Mrs. Rolla Hewitt who has said that “she had a mission” which was to “convert every Jew” at Woodbine disappeared from her home at Sea Isle City, NJ.

1898: “It is said that the taking of testimony” in the trial of Emile Zola “will be concluded tonight.”  There are only five or six more witnesses to be heard.

1898(27th of Shevat, 5658): Five-year-old Tina Fein passed away at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1898: Birthdate of “ophthalmologist and medical historian” Dr. Samuel L. Saltzman, the Keene, N.H. native and graduate of “Yale Sheffield Scientific School and then New York Medical College”  who served the Israeli Army as volunteer during the War for Independence and was the husband of Rose Salzman with whom he had two children – Suzanne and Jonathan.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/11/18/archives/dr-samuel-saltzman-eye-surgeon-historian.html

1898: “Grant Allen’s Book on God” published today provides a review of The Evolution of the Idea of God: An Inquiry Into the Origins of Religion by Grant Allen in which the author say, “The only people who ever invented or evolved a pure monotheism at first hand were the Jews.  It is the peculiar glory of Israel to have evolved God.  The mistake Jews make, is to believe that Abraham…was always a monotheist…and that monotheism was smitten out at a single blow by the genius of…Moses at the moment of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt.”

1899: It was reported today that in the past year the Gemilath Chasodim Committee lent $68,110 to 3,917 needy families comprised 19,000 individuals.  The American Hebrew described the committees practicing of providing small loans as “The Help that Helps.”

1899: The resignation of Morris I. Schamberg, D.D.S., MD who had enlisted in Company D of the 1st Pennsylvania on June 14, 1898 and who rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant and Acting Surgeon for his work at the Military Hospital at Ponce and the U.S. Military Hospital at San Juan, was accepted today.

1899: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil delivered a sermon entitled “Was Christ a Christian?” today at Temple Emanu-El.

1900: “The 37th Convention of District No. 4 of the Independent Order of B’Nai B’rith continued for a second day in San Francisco.

1900: The former Jane Silver, the wife of Henry Woolf with whom she had had seven children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1900: Birthdate of Morris Glassman, the native of Russia, who despite having never gone to college played two years for the Columbus Panhandles alternating between defensive lineman and offensive end.

1901(30th of Shevat, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Adar

1901: “A musicale” is scheduled to “be given by a section of the Women’s Philharmonic Society” which is part of “the efforts of the Educational Alliance…to inculcate a love of music of the higher order among the residents of the lower east side” many of whom are Jewish immigrants.

1902: Oscar S. Straus, Second Vice Chairman of Executive Committee of the National Civic Federation known as the Arbitration Committee of Thirty-Six hosted a dinner this evening following the committee’s first meeting following which Mr. Straus said he “was delighted with the results of the conference.”

1903: Birthdate of Louis Slobodkin, the sculptor and award-winning illustrator of children’s books who was the father of “pioneering ecologist” Lawrence Slobodkin.

1904:” Russia’s Exclusion of Jews” published today described how Congressman Goldfogle had been denied a visa to visit Russia by the Consul General at the Russian Embassy in Paris last summer because he was Jewish and only relented when he found out the Goldfogle was a Congressman.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/02/19/117938103.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1905: “Reign of Terror in Warsaw” published today provided a report on conditions in that Polish city from a manufacturer who had just come back to New York which described the Russian soldiers as acting like “wild beasts” and said that “a dangerous feature of the situation is the fanatical national spirt” exhibited by the Poles which have led to attacks on Germans, Jews and any hoses “that do not contain crucifixes.

1906: In Russia, the government “authorized” a meeting of the Jewish Congress to be held on March 5.

1906: “Another Anti-Jewish Riot” published today described an anti-Jewish riot which had begun on February 18 “in Vietka, a town of 6,000 inhabitants near Gomel” which has left a large part of the town “in flames.”

1907(4th of Shevat, 5667): Parashat Bo

1907(4th of Shevat, 5667): Sixty-one-year-old Democratic political leader Reuben Trier, “an ex-Assemblyman from Essex County and a member of the first Board of Works of Newark” who was a prominent member of “Jewish societies” and the father of “three daughters” passed away today.

1908: Despite his compliance with the demand by Henry W. Blumberg that Emanuel W. Krulewitch, a contractor and builder, “employ Jewish workmen on half the job” at St. Nicholas and Convent Avenues, the Carpenters’ and Joiners’ Union continue to interfere with his constrcution operation requiring police protection.

1909: “Paul M. Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb and Company has been elected a member of the Board of Trustees of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/02/19/101816476.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0]

1909: Auguste Leon Luzatto Pasha, the director-general of the Banque d’Egypte, passed away.  Following his death, his heirs sold his home to the Curciel family – the Jewish family that owned Egypt’s largest department store chain.

1909: Birthdate of Enrico Donati the Italian economics student who became a leading surrealist painter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/arts/26donati.html

https://www.artsy.net/artist/enrico-donati

1910(10th of Adar I, 5670): Parashat Tetzaveh

1910: It was reported today that “Jacob H. Schiff, who has been honored by the Japanese Government for his engineering of the Russian war loans” spoke at the dinner given by the Japan Society Society of New York “in honor of Ambassador Yasuya Uchida and his wife the Baroness.”

1911: One day after she had passed away Ryna Mary Genn was buried at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Island.

1912(1st of Adar I, 5672): Rosh Chodesh Adar

1912(1st of Adar I, 5672): In Joplin, MO, 69-year-old Albert Cahn who earned the rank of Captain while serving the Civil War passed away today.

1912: Birthdate Brooklyn native of Saul Kaplan who gained fame as composer Saul Chaplin the husband of Betty Levin whom he married after his divorce from Ethel Schwartz and collaborated with Sammy Kahn before going on to win four Oscars his work on the scores and orchestrations for An American in Paris (1951, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and West Side Story (1961).

1913: In Chicago, E.M. Newman is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of new “traveltalks” starting with Holland.

1914: Today, the “Black Hundreds continued their campaign again the Jews of Kiev in spite of the fact that the allegation of ritual murder against the Jewish tailor Pashkoff of Fastoff were disapproved” when “the Christian boy Taranthevitch who had been reported” was found alive.

1915: During World War I, The Battle of Gallipoli began as Allied forces attack the Turks. The Battle of Gallipoli took place on the Turkish Peninsula at the Dardanelles.  The idea was to break the stalemate on the Western Front and at the same time open the Dardanelles to Allied ships carrying supplies to the Russians.  If the attacks had been executed as planned, World War I might have ended in 1915 or 1916 which would have meant a lot less bloodshed, no Russian Revolution and no Versailles Treaty.  The Battle of Gallipoli saw the appearance of the Zion Mule Corps – the first all Jewish fighting unit to operate in World War I.  The Zion Mule Corps paved the way for the Jewish Legion in the British Army. The Zion Mule Corps was one of the progenitors of the modern I.D.F.

1915: Birthdate of New York City native Fred Freiberger the “television writer and producer” who spent two years in POW camp during WWII after having been shot down while serving with the Eighth Air Force.

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/07/local/me-freiberger7

 

1915: It was reported today that there were more than 60, 000 pupils attending the schools operated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Palestine, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt and other parts of Asia Minor at an annual cost of $400,000.

1915: Among those listed today as contributors to the American Jewish Relief Committee for Sufferers from the War are the Jewish Federation of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, the Ladies’ Auxiliary Society of Harrisonburg, VA, Beth Israel Congregation of Clarksdale, MS and Temple Emanuel of San Francisco, CA.

1915: It was reported today that “Talaat Bey, Minister of Marine, Finance and Interior in the Turkish Cabinet and the leader of the Young Turks Party was a graduate of a school operated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle.

1916: William Phillips, the Third Assistant (US) Secretary of State wrote to Simon Wolf that in compliance with the wishes of President Wilson, the American government had requested permission from the British to ship Passover flour to those in territory occupied by the Germans and the Austrians, but the British had rejected the request saying that the Austrians and Germans had adequate supplies to meet the need.  (This was not anti-Semitism.  One of the few things the Allies had going for them at this point in WW I was the blockade of the Central Powers and they resisted any attempt to ship any kind of goods to the enemy.)

1916: A meeting held this afternoon at the Republican Club in New York, proponents of a constitutional amendment banning “the sale of intoxicating liquors” faced off against opponents of such a measure including Charles M. Bryan of Memphis who cited the Jews as an illustration of a “race which had indulged in the moderate use of liquors without its virility” saying “The Jewish people have been drinking liquor moderately since Pharaoh had them working on the pyramids” and “when you consider what the Jews have done I ask you if that is your idea of degeneration?”

1917: According to reports first published in Geneva, “the representatives of American Jewish societies who came to Germany to arrange an opening of communication between Polish Jews and relatives in America and for the sending of relief funds conferred with General von Ludendorff” who is called “the real boss” of Germany before the plans were finally approved.

1917: An interview was conducted today at Rotterdam with “a Pole who has just arrived from Warsaw” in which he said, “There is also a very strong propaganda in full swing against the Jews, and measure of an outrageously unlawful kind have been put in force against them” by their new German masters.

1917: According to reports from the Russkaya Volya now published by the London Mail, “the Minister of the Interior proposes to past into law by means of Paragraph 87 of the Constitution without parliamentary sanction a measure for the partial relief of Jewish disabilities” which “is intended to remove all restriction preventing Jews from entering freely into trade and commerce, contracting for building of railways and found new limited companies.”

1917: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Enelow is scheduled to deliver a talk on “The Jewish Element in the Teachings of Jesus” followed by the “Daily Noon Service.”

1918: In London, “celebration of the inauguration of the Palestine Workers’ Fund and the fiftieth anniversary of the birthday of David Jochelman, a proponent of the Territorialist point of view.

1918: Birthdate of Benjamin Miedzyrzecki, the Warsaw native who would survive the Warsaw Ghetto and after coming to the United States would change his name to Benjamin Meed. Meed would parlay eight dollars into a successful import-export business and become a leading advocate for Jewish Holocaust survivors before passing away at the age of 88 in 2006

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hassenfeld-merrill-lloyd

1918: Twenty-nine-year-old Jacob Judah Ackerman, the Polish born son of Rose and Abraham Gershon Menacker, who was a leader in bringing Hebrew Education to Portland, ME and New Bedford, MA while being active in the Zionist movement and authoring literature for children married Channa Emma Ginsberg today.

1918: In Providence, R.I, toy manufacturer Harry Hassenfeld who with his brothers formed what became Hasbro Industries, the creator of the G.I.Joe action figure and homemaker Marion Frank Hassenfeld gave birth to University of Pennsylvania grad and husband of Sylvia Kay Merrill Lloyd Hassenfield who followed in his father to lead the toy manufacturing giant.

1911: In St. Louis, MO, Adeline Mordecai Graber, the St. Louis born daughter of Emily Touro Nathan and Lewis Winthrop Nathan and her husband, dentist Joseph Jay Graber gave birth to her second son Lewis Joseph Graber.

1919: “Get Home For Passover” published today reported that “instructions have been sent to all commanding officers in the United States informing them that furloughs are to be granted from noon April 14 to midnight April 16 in other that Jewish men may attended Passover services at their homes or in nearby towns.”

1920(30th of Shevat, 5680): Rosh Chodesh Adar

1920: Jews in London celebrated “the inauguration of the Palestine Worker’s Fund.

1921(11th of Adar I, 5681): Parashat Tetzaveh

1921: Rabbi Max Drob is scheduled to deliver the Anniversary Sermon during Shabbat services when the Washington Heights Congregation celebrates its tenth anniversary.

1921: “Citizenship Week” which The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America created at the behest of Congressman Isaac Siegel came to an end today.

1921: In Minneapolis, MN, Abraham Levy and Rose Shapiro, “Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia” gave birth to birth to Leonard Bernard “Butch” Levy the who played college and pro-football, wrestled professionally and was active in the Jewish community

https://web.archive.org/web/20160801234459/http:/discover.lib.umn.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=umfa;cc=umfa;rgn=main;view=text;didno=umja0022

http://web.archive.org/web/20150726165642/http://m.startribune.com/obituaries/11600316.html

1922: Birthdate of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a Roman Catholic who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw, battled both the Nazis and Communists, survived Auschwitz and was given honorary Israeli citizenship for his work to save Jews during World War II.” (As reported by Rick Lyman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/wladyslaw-bartoszewski-polish-auschwitz-survivor-who-fought-for-jews-dies-at-93.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1922:  Ed Wynn became the first talent to sign as a radio entertainer.  Born in 1886, Wynn started out as a haberdasher.  He starred in the Ziegfield Follies in 1915 and 1916.  He translated his success in vaudeville to radio and later to both movies and television.  In this way, he was part of a long line of Jewish comedians who made the same trek including George Burns, Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor.  Wynn was the father of character actor Kennan Wynn.  He passed away in 1966.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/actors/the-voices-behind-disneys-best-characters-through-history/ed-wynn-is-a-familiar-face-best-known-for-playing-laughing-uncle/

1923: Birthdate of Long Island City native Marshall Baer, the lyricist best known for his work on “Once Upon A Mattress.”

http://www.playbill.com/article/marshall-barer-75-once-upon-a-mattress-lyricist-dies-of-cancer-com-77139

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/28/arts/marshall-barer-75-lyricist-for-mattress-and-mighty-mouse.html?mcubz=0

1924(14th of Adar I, 5684): Purim Katan

1924: Bessie Cushing and Dr. Benjamin Sachs gave birth to Tikvah Sachs Portnoi, the husband of Henry Portnoi and the mother of Rebecca Mae Portnoi Cohen all of whom were buried at the Beth El Cemetery in West Roxbury

1924: Birthdate of Ukrainian native and noted chess player David Bronstein.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/shattered-illusions-genna-sosonkos-the-rise-and-fall-of-david-bronstein

1925: In Germany, premiere of “Peter the Pirate,” a silent movie filmed by cinematographer Rudolph Mate and produced by Erich Pommer who although not Jewish fled Germany rather than live under the Nazis.

1926: According to reports received at the headquarters of Viennese Hakoach, “the champion soccer team of Europe composed entirely of Jews” matches between this team and the American soccer teams will play this April and May.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/02/20/104201116.html?pageNumber=10

1926: Authorities are continuing to search for the robbers who attempted to break into Oheka Cottage, the home of Otto Kahn in Palm Beach, FL.

1927: Isadore “Izzy” Zarakov, a member of Zeta Beta Tau who lettered at Harvard in football, hockey and baseball “scored two goals” in a Harvard victory over arch-rival Yale in hockey. (As reported by Bob Wechsler)

1927(17th of Adar I, 5687): Georg (Morris Cohen) Brandes passed away at the age of 85.  Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1842, Brandes gained fame as a critic and literary historian.  Among those whose careers he affected were Henrik Ibsen and Friedrich Nietzsche.  Brandes was an outspoken  critic of Herzl, but he switched to a pro-Zionist position with the issuing of the Balfour Declaration

1928 In St. Mortiz, the II Olympic Winter games during which speedskater Irving Jaffee “finished fourth in the 5000 meter skate” which was the best showing by American in the event to date, came to an end today.

1928: The Ogden Standard-Examiner reported to that “Rabbi Hyman Sharfman has arrived in Ogden, Utah from West Virginia where he will “take charge of the “Brith Shalom (Covenant of Peace) Synagogue.

http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/congregationbrithsholem/rabbisofcbs/rabbihymansharfman

1928(Shevat 28 5688): Fifty-two-year-old Rabbi Nison Yablonsky, the Stavisky, Poland born son of Ezriel and Annie Dvorah Yablonsky and husband of Celia Klebansky who came to the United States in 1922 where he became “Professor of Talmud and Codes at the Hebrew Theological Seminary of Chicago” passed away today.

https://kevarim.com/rabbi-nisson-yablonsky/

 

1929: Colonel Frederick H. Kisch, chairman of the Zionist executive told those attending a luncheon hosted by real estate division of = the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies that “30,000 of the 150,000 Jews now living in Palestine depended on agriculture for a livelihood” and that there was positive signs for the establishment of a textile industry in Palestine.

1930: Stein Brothers, furriers, owned by Harry and Saul Stein filed for bankruptcy today in the Southern District of New York.

1930: In Queens, Walter Martin Frankenheimer, a “stockbroker of German Jewish descent” and his wife Helen Mary Sheedy, an Irish Catholic gave birth to director John Frankenheimer who “was raised in his mother’s religion.”  (Editor’s note – good thing he was born in the U.S.  In Germany, the Nazis would have put him in a box car.)

1931: Birthdate of Dr. Meir Rosenne, the native of Jassy, Romania who immigrated to Palestine in 1944 and becameone of Israel’s most distinguished jurists and scholars of international law.

1932: A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hold hearings today where those who opposed the nomination of Judge Cardoza to the Supreme Court, including O.R. Miller of Albany,

could testify.

1932: “An immediate favorable report on the nomination of Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was approved unanimously today by a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.”

1934: Birthdate of Michael Applebaum, the Newark born student of violinist of Efrem Zimbalist who reportedly had him change his name to Michael Tree, the name under which he founded the Guarneri String Quartet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/obituaries/michael-tree-a-founder-of-the-guarneri-quartet-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1934: The Menorah Writers and Artists Committee, “an organization of the women members of the Menorah Association” is scheduled to host a performance of “By Your Leave” at the Morosco Theatre” the proceeds of the ticket sales, under the supervision of Mrs. Jacob Eiseman “will go toward the cultural and education work of the association and the publication of the Menorah Journal” which is a “quarterly publication of the society.”

1935: Publication of “Brown Shirts in Zion” by Robert Gessner in The New Masses

http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewMasses-1935feb19-00011

1935: Clifford Odets' "Awake and Sing," premieres in New York City at the Belasco Theatre. The play explores the experiences of one Jewish family during the Great Depression. The original production starred Luther and Stella Adler. The play tells the story of the impoverished Berger family and their conflicts as the parents scheme to manipulate their children's relationships to their own ends, while their children strive for their own dreams.

1936: “When Knights Were Bold,” a musical comedy produced by Max Schach was released in the United Kingdom today.

1936: “Major General Sir Neill Malcom…the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Come From Germany…said tonight that he hoped to work ‘in perfect cooperation’ with Sir Herbert Samuel and his associates in their new drive to help the Jews in Germany.”

1936: A manifesto adopted “at Toronto by leading representatives of all Christian denominations in Canada” denounced “the Nazi Government’s treatment of Jews, ‘non-Aryan’ Christians and ‘various Gentiles’” and “urging Canada to provide a haven for a ‘reasonable number’ of ‘selected’ refugees from Germany if the flow of exiles from that country does not cease.”

1936: Before sailing for England, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, the son of the late President issued a statement declaring “that class hatred” had “caused the persecution of the Jews in Germany.”

1936: It was reported today “that in the future, refugee work would be conducted by an organization working under the plan recently proposed by a British delegation headed by Sir Herbert Samuel, whereby 100,000 Jews would be expatriated from Germany over for years at an estimated cost of fifteen million dollars…”

1937: During the Arab Uprising, violence comes to Tiberias a city known, until now, for peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews. After a week of an Arab boycott in Tiberias, Erev Shabbat, the Jews retaliated by boycotting Arab fish mongers.  Arab youths began pelting Jews walking in the town with oranges and then escalated to throwing stones.  As the Jews retreated to the town’s Jewish quarter, the clashes became more intense as Revisionists who were passing through town in two buses stopped to come to the aid of their co-religionists.  Arabs in the hills above Tiberias began firing shots into the town and at least one Jew was stabbed in the back while another had his head split open with a stone.  By the time the British intervened, thirty Jews and thirty Arabs were “slightly injured and two Jews were seriously hurt.”

1937: After premiering in the United Kingdom, “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” directed by Lothar Mendes, produced by Alexander Korda, with music by Mischa Spoliansky and filmed by cinematographer Harold Rosson was released today in the United States.

1938(18th of Adar I, 5698): Parashat Ki Tisa

1938(18th of Adar I, 5698): Sixty-one-year-old Edmund Georg Hermann Landau a German Jewish mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and complex analysis passed away.  Born in 1877, he married Marianne Ehrlich, the daughter of Nobel Prize winner Paul Ehrlich.

1938: In Brooklyn, Frances and Sam L. Rich gave birth to Judith Rich who married Charles S Harris and gained fame as psychologist Judith Rich Harris. (As reported by Katharine Q. Seelye)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/obituaries/judith-rich-harris-dies.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1939(30th of Shevat, 5699): Rosh Chodesh Adar

1939(30th of Shevat, 5699): Seventy-one-year-old Adolph Buchler, the Hungarian born and educated professor at the Rabbinical College in Vienna and the “principal of the Jews College in London since 1906” passed away tonight.

1939: The sixth annual observance of Brotherhood Week which is sponsored by the National Conference of Jews and Christians and which has been endorsed by President Roosevelt began today.

1940: General Sikorski, the Premier of the Polish Government in exile, “declared today that Poland” which is home to over two million Jews “was determined to live again as an independent state.”

1941: The Nazis raided Koco Amsterdam and seized 425 young Jews who were sent to Beuchenwald.  Koco was described as an isolated Jewish section in Amsterdam.  This roundup was part of a week of violence aimed against the 70,000 Jews of this Dutch city.  On February 9, Dutch Nazis sparked the first anti-Jewish riots in Amsterdam.  Although there was considerable damage and destruction, the Jews along with many of the Dutch countrymen fought back.  After the arrests on the 20th, tens of thousands of Dutch men and women went on strike in protest.  The stunned Nazi occupiers struck back brutally and crushed the strike.  However, this would not be the last time that the embattled people of Holland worked to protect their Jewish fellow countrymen.

1942(1st of Adar, 5702): In the Dvinsk Ghetto (Latvia), Chaya Mayerova was murdered for trading a bit of cloth with a non- Jew for a two-kilogram bag of flour. The entire Jewish population was gathered to witness the execution. There were over 11,000 Jews living in Divinsk when the war broke out.  By 1970 there were fewer than 2,000.  Divinsk should be remembered for more than this tragic entry.  It was the home to one of the sages of the 19th and early 20th century Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen.  Reb Meir was not just a Talmudist whose learning was so great that Chaim Nachmann Bialik called him “a walking encyclopedia.”  He was also a man of courage.  During World War I, Reb Meir refused to leave Divinsk even though it was in a combat zone.  If there were only nine Jews left in the town, he said he must remain so there would be a minyan.  Reb Meir supported Zionism but in 1906 he turned down an offer to be the Rabbi in Jerusalem.  The people of Divinsk convinced them that Divinsk needed him more than Jerusalem so he stayed with his kinsman.  It is important to remember the texture of the civilization that the Holocaust sought to destroy.  What was lost was so much more than a cold listing of numbers will ever convey.

1942:  Judge Jonah Goldstein officiated at the wedding of Selma Hymes and Dr. Henry Taeni, formerly of Nice, France who was a member of the Paris Bourse and is now “associated with Abraham Co., members of the NYST.

1942: During WW II, the Japanese bombed the northern Australian city of Darwin making the threat of invasion of the island/continent very real

1943: Brotherhood Week which is sponsored by the National Conference of Jews and Christians and which has been endorsed by President Roosevelt with a statement that opened with the line “We are fighting for the right of men to live together as members of one family rather than as masters and slaves” began today.

1943: As Major General Henning von Tresckow contemplated when and where to assassinate Hitler, the German dictator “flew to his ‘field headquarters’ near Vinnitsa today.

1943: German tanks under Brigadier General Buelowius attacked the U.S. Army at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.  This little-known battle was the first contest between the German Army and the U.S. Army.  The Americans took a real beating, and it took them months to recover.  There are those who think that World War II was a string of victories for the Americans.  Such was not the case.  The precarious nature of the war as well a streak of anti-Semitism helps to explain why Roosevelt did not “do more to help the Jews.”  This is not a defense of FDR; merely an attempt to provide historic context for his behavior.

1943: In Queens, the former Jean Zuckman and Sun Chemical Corporation executive Eugene Robert Jacobson gave birth to Ellen Rose Jacobson who gained fame as “Ellen Levine, Good Housekeeping’s first female top editor, whose keen sense of what American women wanted from a magazine also led her to success as Hearst Magazines’ editorial director and Oprah Winfrey’s partner in creating an instant newsstand hit…” (As reported by Ed Shanahan)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/media/ellen-levine-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

1944: In Kensington, London, Rex Harrison and actress Lilli Palmer (Lilli Marie Peiser, the daughter Dr. Alfred Peiser, “a German-Jewish surgeon and Austrian Jewish actress Ross Lissman) gave birth playwright and novelist Carey Harrison.

1945(6th of Adar, 5705): Seventy-four-year-old New York born and NYU trained physician Dr. Henry P. Hirsch, the former head of the medical department of the New York Post Office who was the husband of the former Carrie Rice and father of Jerome and Frank Hirsch passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/02/20/84629375.html?pageNumber=19

 

1945: Edward "Eddie Jacobson" opened a menswear store in Kansas City, MO.

1945: Battle of Iwo Jima begins. There were approximately 1,500 Jewish Leathernecks among the 70,000 Marines who fought in this climactic battle of the war in the Pacific. On the 60th anniversary of the start of the battle Sam Bernstein, a 20-year-old (Jewish) Marine corporal at the time of the battle reminisced about the fight. “I thought it appropriate to spotlight some news and information about the Jews who fought and died in the five-week battle between 70,000 American Marines (1,500 of which were Jewish) and an unknown number of deeply entrenched Japanese defenders. “Bernstein chuckles when he remembers the Tootsie Rolls he put in his cartridge belt. I chose Tootsie Rolls because they wouldn't melt and they were just the size of a bullet. At the same time, I strapped on three or four bandoliers full of ammunition. Still, if the officers had known what I was doing, they probably would have shot me instead of the Japanese! He does not chuckle when he remembers the two men who were killed in his foxhole. Or the day he helped the Jewish chaplain bury some Marines.” The Jewish Chaplain was Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, assigned to the Fifth Marine Division who was the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed. Rabbi Gittelsohn was in the thick of the fray, ministering to Marines of all faiths in the combat zone.  His tireless efforts to comfort the wounded and encourage the fearful won him three service ribbons.  When the fighting was over, Rabbi Gittelsohn was asked to deliver the memorial sermon at a combined religious service dedicating the Marine Cemetery. Unfortunately, racial and religious prejudice led to problems with the ceremony. What happened next immortalized Rabbi Gittelsohn and his sermon forever. It was Division Chaplain Warren Cuthriell, a Protestant minister, who originally asked Rabbi Gittelsohn to deliver the memorial sermon.  Cuthriel wanted all the fallen Marines (black and white, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish) honored in a single, nondenominational ceremony.  However, according to Rabbi Gittelsohn's autobiography, the majority of Christian chaplains objected to having a rabbi preach over predominantly Christian graves The Catholic chaplains, in keeping with church doctrine opposed any form of joint religious service. To his credit, Cuthriell refused to alter his plans. Gittelsohn, on the other hand, wanted to save his friend Cuthriell further embarrassment and so decided it was best not to deliver his sermon.  Instead, three separate religious services were held.  At the Jewish service, to a congregation of 70 or so who attended, Rabbi Gittelsohn delivered the powerful eulogy he originally wrote for the combined service:

"Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors’ generations ago helped in her founding.  And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores.  Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor, together.  Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together.  Here no man  prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color.  Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed.

"Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred.  Theirs is the highest and purest democracy!  Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery.  To this then, as our solemn sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves:  To the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of White men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.
"We here solemnly swear this shall not be in vain.  Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere."

Among Gittelsohn's listeners were three Protestant chaplains so incensed by the prejudice voiced by their colleagues that they boycotted their own service to attend Gittelsohn's.  One of them borrowed the manuscript and, unknown to Gittelsohn, circulated several thousand copies to his regiment.  Some Marines enclosed the copies in letters to their families.  An avalanche of coverage resulted.  Time magazine published excerpts, which wire services spread even further.  The entire sermon was inserted into the Congressional Record, the Army released the eulogy for short-wave broadcast to American troops throughout the world and radio commentator Robert St. John read it on his program and on many succeeding Memorial Days. In 1995, in his last major public appearance before his death, Gittelsohn reread a portion of the eulogy at the 50th commemoration ceremony at the Iwo Jima statue in Washington, D.C.  In his autobiography, Gittelsohn reflected, I have often wondered whether anyone would ever have heard of my Iwo Jima sermon had it not been for the bigoted attempt to ban it.

1946: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems met with Chancellor Leopold Figl today in Vienna.

1947: “Wingate Is Honored By Palestine Jews” published today described how saplings were planted on the JNF land at the foot of Mt. Gilboa marking the start of a memorial forest named for the late Maj.Gen. Orde Charles Wingate who was supportive of the Zionist cause when stationed in Palestine during the 1930’s

1948: “Arthur Creech Jones, British Colonial Secretary, told the Palestine Commission today that Britain would be prepared to "discuss" the possibility of allowing the United Nations to import arms into the Holy Land for the equipment of militia.”

1949: U.S. premiere “The Clay Pigeon,” a film noir “directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman.”

1950(2nd of Adar, 5710): Fifty-three-year-old Galicia native Yoysef-Menakehm Holender (Tsuker) passed away today in France.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/12/yoysef-menakhem-holender-tsuker.html

1951: Birthdate of Chicago native Jerry Salz, “the art critic for New York Magazine who won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism” in 2018

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles invited Israel to join his new Middle Eastern Defense Organization. (Note: If this is the organization that would be known as CENTO, neither the United States nor Israel would ultimately join the organization.)

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Pravda, the official Communist party newspaper, charged that Israel was joining NATO and allowing the US to build military bases on its territory. (This was pure propaganda designed that was part of the shift in Stalin’s foreign policy.)

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that The State Comptroller's Report for 1951-1952, prepared under the supervision of the Comptroller, Dr. Siegfried Moses, marked a definite improvement of the Israeli Civil Service.

1953(4th of Adar, 5713): Seventy-nine-year-old Abraham Adelberg passed away today after which he was buried at the Mount Hebron Cemetery, in Flushing, NY.

1954: Today, author Judith Krantz “wore a headdress of white lilacs and hyacinths” when she married producer and screenwriter Steve Krantz with whom she had to sons – Tony and Nicholas. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/obituaries/12krantz.html

 

1954: “New Faces,” a 1954 American film adaptation of the musical revue New Faces of 1952, directed by Harry Haorner, co-written by Melvin Brooks and co-starring Robert Clary (Robert Max Widerman) was released in the United States today.

1956: The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America dedicated a community center in New York, with impressive ceremonies. Speakers included Judge Jonah J. Goldstein and the late Judge Edgar J. Nathan, Jr. The Brotherhood Memorial Post presented the colors (flags).

1957: Recording today of “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella” with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics co-authored by Irving Kahal.

1959: The United Kingdom grants Cyprus its independence. Jewish settlement in Cyprus dates back to Biblical times.  In the first century, the Jews of Cyprus rebelled against the Romans.  In modern times, Cyprus was the site for the camps housing Jews who tried to run the British blockade and enter Eretz Israel before 1948.  For more about the Jews of Cyprus, you might want to read Place of Refuge: A  History of the Jews in Cyprus by Stavros Panteli.

1960: In Bloomington, the dedicatory weekend for new Moses Montefiore began today.

1963: Following his conviction for the 1962 murders of two New York City police detectives, Jerry “the Jew” Rosenberg began serving his sentence today. By the time he died in 2009, he would have set a record for length of incarceration in the state of New York.

1963(25th of Shevat, 5723): One day after his 87th birthday, Gustave Falk, the son of Ferdinand and Jeanette Falk, the husband of Marguerite Falk and the brother of Arnold, Myron and Gertrude Falk, passed away today after which he was buried in Hebrew Rest Cemetery #2 in New Orleans, LA.

1964: In Brooklyn, Richard Brown Lethem and Jewish political activist Judith Frank Lethem gave birth to best-selling author and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Jonathan Lethem.

1964: Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence," the song which, in a year and a half, will catapult him and Art Garfunkel to stardom as Simon and Garfunkel.

1965(17th of Adar I, 5725): Fifty-six-year-old corporation and banking attorney, Leonard H. Cohn the son of Mrs. Sadie Cohn passed away today in Newark, NJ.

1965: Seventy-four-year-old Captain Koreshige Inuzuka who was the head of the Japanese Imperial Navy's Advisory Bureau on Jewish Affairs from March 1939 until April 1942 and who established the Japan-Israel Association of which he was the President, in 1952, passed away today. (He was rather complex when it came to the Jews.  But in one of those great ironies of history, he was given a silver cigarette case by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States for his help in rescuing Jewish refugees from the Hitler’s Europe)

1966(29th of Shevat, 5726): Parasha  Mishpatim; Shabat Shekalim

1966(29th of Shevat, 5726):Seventy-seventy year old Yiddish poet and editorial staff member for the Jewish Forward Nachum Yud who was born in Russia in 1888 and to come the United States in 1916 passed away today

1967: An article published in the American Journal of Cardiology described an electronic device capable of recording arterial pulsations and the mechanical events of the heart without actually making contact with the chest wall.  This device was the product of combined efforts led by Dr. Aaron Valero who brought together the clinical medical staff at Rambam Hospital and the engineers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.  Dr. Valero organized and put together teams from the two institutions, which he headed up. This unique cooperation led to the first product of the soon to be established Biomedical Engineering Department of The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. It was an electronic device capable of recording arterial pulsations and the mechanical events of the heart without actually making contact with the chest wall.

1969(1st of Adar, 5729): Rosh Chodesh Adar is observed for the first time during the Presidency of Richard Nixon.

1970(13th of Adar I, 5730): Seventy-three-year-old Otto Heller, the Prague born British cinematographer passed away today.

1970(13th of Adar I, 5730): Fifty-four-year-old multi-talented actor Jules Munshin passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/20/archives/jules-munshin-comedy-actor-in-film-and-on-stage-dies-at-54-sailor.html?_r=0

1971: In Urbana, Illinois, astrophysicist Jacob Shaham and cytogeneticist Meira Diskin gave birth to violinist Gil Shaham who was the sister of pianist Orli Shaham.

1972(4th of Adar, 5732): Parashat Terummah

1972(4th of Adar, 5732): Fifty-one-year-old New York City native and professor of chemical engineering at CCNY, Dr. Stanley Katz, the husband of “the former Dr. Lillian Handman” with whom he raised two sons – Phillip and Andrew – and WW II Army veteran who “was known for original work in applying mathematical techniques such as probability methods to the solution of engineering problems” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/21/archives/dr-stleykatz-a1viathematician-professor-of-engineering-ati-city.html?searchResultPosition=2

1972: Birthdate of Calgary native and great-grandson of Russian Jewish homesteader Ezra Isaac Levant, University of Alberta trained attorney turned controversial right-wing journalist and commentator whose law degree would seem to have stood him in good stead when you consider all of the litigation he has faced over the years.

1973(17th of Adar I, 5733): Hungarian born violin virtuoso Joseph Szigeti passed away at his home in Switzerland.

1973: “S'13, Unit 707, and Sayeret Tzanhanim commandos jointly raided guerrilla bases in Nahr al-Bared and Beddawi today in Operation Bardas 54–55 during which about 40 guerillas were killed and 60 wounded, and a Turkish military trainer was taken prisoner.

1975(8th of Adar, 5735): Sixty-six year old Ukrainian native Natan Zabre, a WW II veteran of the Red Army and Yiddish author passed away today in Kiev.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/06/natan-zabare.html

1976(18th of Adar I, 5736): Seventy-four-year-old seamstress Ruth Rosenfeld Taffel, the widow of Frank Taffel passed away today.

1976: In Brussels, The Second World Conference of Jewish Communities on Jewry which was attended by over 1,000 delegates from over 32 countries including Prime Minister Golda Meir came to an end.

1977(14th of Adar I, 5559): Purim Katan

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that, two Arab terrorists assassinated Youseff el-Sibaei, the editor of the semi-official Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper at the Larnaca Hilton hotel, in Cyprus and took 11 Egyptian hostages to the local airport in an apparent reaction to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace initiative.

1978: One Arab died and another was injured by a terrorist bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter defended his offer of jet fighters to "staunch, friendly Arab allies." In his comment, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman said that the worst effect of the aircraft sale proposed by the Carter administration was the fact that it put Israel together with Egypt and Saudi Arabia in a "package deal."

1980: “A chamber orchestra version” of “Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards, an orchestral piece composed in 1979 by Steve Reich” was performed today at Carnegie Hall.

1980(2nd of Adar, 5740): Nathan Yellin-Mor the Lehi leader who became a pacifist passed away.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21240.html

1984: CBS began broadcasting  a television miniseries based on Sidney Shelton’s Master of the Game starring Dyan Cannon (Samille Dian Friesen)

1985: The first episode of EastEnders, a British soap opera featuring “Clare Moody” was broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One

1986: Robert Badinter completed his service as French Minister of Justice began serving as President of the Constitutional Council of France.

1986: Rabbis William Cohen and Haskell are scheduled to officiate at the funeral of sixty-three year old decorated WWII veteran and longtime resident of the Greater Hartford CT area Samuel Keyser who owned the Westland Market and was a member of Beth David Synagogue.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/18119743/samuel-keyser-obituary-hartford/

 

1988(1st of Adar, 5748): Rosh Chodesh Adar

1988: A memorial service is scheduled to be held tonight at 8 P.M. at Beth Am, The People's Temple in Manhattan to honor Rabbi Israel Raphael Margolies, of blessed memory who passed away earlier this week at the age of 72.  Rabbi Margolies had served at Temple Emanu-el in Engelwood, N.J. at Beth Am, The People's Temple in Manhattan. He “frequently called for equality for minority group members and for women. He was a supporter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and once marched alongside him in a civil rights parade in Englewood.”

1989(14th Adar I, 5749): Purim Katan

1989: After 99 performances the curtain came down on the off-Broadway production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” at Playwrights Horizons.

1989: “The Twisted Road to Auschwitz” published today provided a review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History by Arno J. Mayer.

1990: The Soviet Union, under heavy pressure from Arab countries, has rejected an appeal from the Bush Administration to allow direct flights for Soviet Jews from Moscow to Israel, Administration officials said today. American and Israeli officials said that in the absence of such flights, thousands of Soviet Jews were in effect trapped in the Soviet Union at a time of rising anti-Semitism.

1990(24th of Shevat, 5750): Fifty-nine-year-old Kenyon College graduate and producer Gabriel Katzka, the Brooklyn born son of attorney and Broadway show backer Emil Katzka passed away today.

1992: “The Lost Language of Cranes,” a made-for-television film based on the novel of the same name by David Leavitt was released today.

1992(15th of Adar I, 5752): Eighty-five-year-old Valdimir Pozner, the Parisian born son of Russian Jewish parents living in exile who was writer and anti-Fascist who spent WW II in California passed away today.

https://www.ft.com/content/67eab48e-25b8-11e5-bd83-71cb60e8f08c

1993(28th of Shevat, 5733): Eighty-three-year-old In Northwestern University undergrad David Lionel Bazel, the Superior, Wisconsin born son of “Lena (Krasnovsky) and Israel Bazelon, a general store proprietor” who began his legal career by reading law and eventually reaching the position of “Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit” passed away today

1994 (8th of Adar, 5754): Zipora Sasson, five months pregnant, was killed on the trans-Samaria highway in an ambush by shots fired at her car. The terrorists were members of HAMAS.

1994(8th of Adar, 5754: Fifty-seven educator and MK Yitzhak Yitzhaky passed away today.

1995(19th of Adar I, 5755): Israeli Rabbi Shlomo Averbach passed away at the age of 84.

1995: Poet Kenneth Koch wins the Bollingen Prize.

1995

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/26/us/at-overgrown-cemetery-some-jews-find-ancestors-others-themselves.html?searchResultPosition=1

At Overgrown Cemetery, Some Jews Find Ancestors, Others Themselves - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

1997(12th of Adar I, 5757): Leo Rosten passed away at the age of 88.  Born in 1908, Rosten was an amazingly prolific writer on a variety of topics.  While best known for his writings on Jewish topics - The Joys of Yiddish, Treasury of Jewish Quotations and Hooray Yiddish - he also wrote such works as Religions In America and Captain Newman, M.D.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/20/books/leo-rosten-a-writer-who-helped-yiddish-make-its-way-into-english-is-dead-at-88.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1999: Actor Dennis Franz receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999: Today in an obituary in Aufbau, Anson Rabinbach “characterized George L. Mosses German Jews Beyond Judaism as his most personal book.

1999: In New York, the Museum of Jewish Heritage features an exhibit entitled “A Living Memorial to the Holocaust” featuring artifacts, documents, photographs, videos and film clips are included in exhibitions on the Holocaust and on Jewish life before and after World War II.

2000(13th of Adar I, 5760): Parashat Tetzaveh

2000(13th of Adar I, 5760): Eighty-nine-year-old Warsaw born British artist Josef Herman who left Poland in the 1930’s because of anti-Semitism who captured ordinary people on canvas in an extra-ordinary manner passed away.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/22/guardianobituaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Herman

2001(26th of Shevat, 5761): Eighty-seven-year-old director and producer Stanley Kramer passed away. (As reported by Rick Lyman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/21/movies/stanley-kramer-filmmaker-with-social-bent-dies-at-87.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2002(7th of Adar, 5762): In what “was the most lethal attack on Israeli soldiers…in more than 16 months of fighting,” tonight Palestinian terrorists escaped after killed six Israeli soldiers.

2003: Iranian officials announced that they had released the five last remaining Jews imprisoned in the city of Shiraz. The men: Dani (Hamid) Tefillen; Asher Zadmehr; Naser Levy Hayim; Farhad Saleh and Ramin Farzam, where the last 5 out of 13 Jews on trial for spying for the "Zionist regime" and "world arrogance." Ten of the men were convicted and sentenced to prison. Since their sentencing in July 2001, five had already been quietly released.

2004: Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal was awarded an honorary knighthood in recognition of a "lifetime of service to humanity."

2005:  Fred Rodgers, who just celebrated his birthday on February 17, joined his sister Hilda for her 85th birthday.  Fred is a pillar of the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids.   He and his sister were two of those who were not lost in the European Holocaust, Baruch Ha'shem.

2006: The New York Times Book Section features a review of Barney Ross by Douglas Century. “

2007(1st of Adar, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Adar

2008: Veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr discusses his new book, Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium, at a luncheon event at the Woman's National Democratic Club in Washington, D.C.

2009: It was reported today that all ten members of Yisrael Chala's family had been flown from Yemen to Israel.  Two months earlier, two firebombs had been thrown into the courtyard of the family's home. 

2009: In New York City, the American Friends of Tel Aviv University and the Simon Wiesenthal Center co-host a lecture by Professor Dina Porat, head of the Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University entitled "Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism: Which is the chicken and which is the egg?"

2009: Israeli Andy Ram will be allowed to compete in a Dubai tennis tournament next week after the Arab country said today that it would permit the seventh-ranked doubles player to enter the country.

2009: In Manhattan, the exhibition of the Valmadonna Trust Library at Sotheby’s comes to an end.  “A Lifetime’s Collection of Texts in Hebrew, at Sotheby’s”  explains the significance of this collection and provides a useful description of the importance that the printed word plays for Jews and Judaism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/books/12hebr.html?pagewanted=all

2010: In Jerusalem, Beit Avi Chai presents "Kalabbat Shabbat" featuring Kobi Arieli.

2010: The opening of the opera "La Juive" (The Jewish Woman) at St. Petersburg's Mikhailovsky Theater was postponed from last night to tonight by a bomb threat that proved to be false, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency.

2010: Omri Caspi, the first Israeli to play in North America's National Basketball Association, will participate in a special Friday-evening service and Shabbat meal this evening with hundreds of members of the Los Angeles Jewish community, ahead of the Sacramento Kings' game against the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night.

2010: The Washington Post features a review of Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt.

2011: The Matchmaker a coming-of-age drama directed by Avi Nesher that “tells the story of a relationship between an Israeli teen and a Holocaust survivor who makes ends meet by brokering marriages” is scheduled to be shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

2011: A documentary entitled Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray is scheduled to be shown at the 21st Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival.

2011: President Shimon Peres called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today to discuss the failed United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlement building.

2011: The family of kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit marked the 1,700th day of his captivity today along with hundreds of supporters in front of the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem.

2011: Canadian born professional tennis player Sharon Fichman was the runner-up in the Copa Colsanitas Tournament in Bogotá, Columbia.2011(15th of Adar I, 5771): Sanford C. Sigoloff, a Los Angeles-based turnaround expert nicknamed “Mr. Chapter 11,” who also did what he could for employees when they were fired, passed away today at the age of 80. (As reported by Mary Williams Walsh)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/business/25sigoloff.html

2012(26th of Shevat, 5772): Ninety-year-old “Ruth Barcan Marcus, a philosopher esteemed for her advances in logic, a traditionally male-dominated subset of a traditionally male-dominated field” passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/us/ruth-barcan-marcus-philosopher-logician-dies-at-90.html

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” by Nathan Englander and ‘Liebestod: Opera Buffa With Leib Goldkorn’ by Leslie Epstein.

2012: LimmudLA is scheduled to come to an end at Costa Mesa.

2012: The IDF is planning to deploy an Iron Dome battery in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area for the first time as part of a drill simulating a missile attack, Ynet learned today. 

2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 38th Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem today.

2012: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning for Dr. Ethel Stark, “the conductor of the first women's symphony orchestra of Montreal and the first woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall in New York” followed by burial at the Spanish & Portuguese Congregation Cemetery.

2013: Kobi Kablek is scheduled to present “Failure and Memory: How the Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust is Depicted in Post-War German Film” at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC

2013: YIVO is scheduled to present “It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past” featuring author David Satter.

2013: In Iowa City, Iowa, the Bijou Theatre is scheduled to present “The Rabbi’s Cat,” a film that tells the tale of a talking cat owned by a rabbi.

2013: “Uproar Over Netanyahu’s Ice Cream Is Welcome in One Parlor” described how Prime Minister spent $2,700 on ice cream including his favorite, pistachio. (As reported by Isabel Kershner)

2014: “Putzel” is scheduled to be shown at the DPJCC's 14th Annual Jewish Film Festival

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews.”

2014: Palestinian Arab teenagers hurled rocks at an Israeli car just outside the Samaria community of Eli this afternoon. While the victims of the attack are shaken, no one was hurt. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

2014: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host Bob Budoff’s “Analysis of Current Developments in Israel and the Middle East.”

2014: In “The Last of the Monuments Men” published today, Emily Greenhouse recounts her meeting with Harry Ettinger the “last bar mitzvah boy I Karlsruhe German” who in his own word is “the only healthy living monument man left.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-last-of-the-monuments-men

 

2014: After much disagreement among the coalition, The Knesset's Special Committee for the Equal Sharing of the Burden Bill, headed by Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked, convened this evening to vote on the most dramatic article in the much-debated bill, which concerns the imprisonment of haredim who dodge military or civil service (criminal sanctions). (As reported by Moran Azulay)

2015: Marvin Pinkert, Executive Director, Jewish Museum of Maryland is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the “Civil War in Maryland Through a Jewish Lens” at the Lilian & Albert Small Jewish Museum in Washington, DC.

2015: Services are scheduled to be held at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home on Madison Avenue for “Singer-songwriter Lesley Gore, who topped the charts in 1963 at age 16 with her epic song of teenage angst, “It’s My Party,” and followed it up with the hits “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” and the feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me.” (As reported by JTA and Times of Israel)

2015(30th of Shevat, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Adar

2016: Twenty-one-year-old Tuvia Yanai Weissman who was stabbed to death yesterday in a supermarket was buried today on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.  “A soldier in the Nachal infantry brigade, he is survived by his wife and 4-month-old daughter.”

2016(10th of Adar I, 5776): Eighty-three-year-old Tel Aviv born actor Yossi Graber passed away today in Tzrifin, Iisrael.

2016: An exhibition “WOMEN: New Portraits Annie Leibovit” is scheduled to come to a close in Zurich.

2016(10th of Adar I, 5776): Ninety-three-year-old Samuel Willenberg, the last survivor of the uprising at Treblinka passed away today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12178158/Samuel-Willenberg-Holocaust-survivor-obituary.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35623492

2016: In Washington, DC, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host an evening of Jewish A Cappella with Six13.

http://www.templesinaidc.org/worship/music

2017: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of A Perfect Life by Eileen Pollack and The Year of Lear: Shakespeare In 1606 by James Shapiro as well as a list of “17 Great Books About American Presidents for President’s Day Weekend” that included Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, Wilson by A. Scott Berg, No Ordinary Time. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” by Robert A. Caro.

2017: Ninety-three-year-old Russian mathematician and one-time dissident Igor Shafarevich whose writings such as “Russophobia” stamped him as an assignment passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/world/europe/igor-shafarevich-dead-dissident-mathematician.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017: At the Jewish Museum, final showing the exhibition “Scots Jews: Photographs by Judah Passow.”

https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/scots-jews-photographs-by-judah-passow/

2017: “The one and only black tie, Oxford JSoc Ball” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Oxford Town Hall.

2017: “Zero Motivation” is scheduled to be shown on the final night of San Diego Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Zerach Greenfield is scheduled to lead a hands-on workshop on “The Making of Tefillin” this morning at Limmud NY

2017: In New York, the curtain is scheduled to come down on the final performance of “Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage.”

2017: In Atlanta, GA, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host an afternoon with Benjamin Hirsch who will describe Kristallnacht as seen through the eyes of a six year old and then recount the travels with four of his siblings on a Kindertransport to France that ultimately led to his arrival in Atlanta.

2017: Avner Avraham, Exhibition Curator and former Mossad agent; Orit Shaham Gover, Chief Curator of Beit Hatfutsot—The Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv; Ariel Efron, Media Creative Director, Gallagher and Associates; Ellen Rudolph, Executive Director, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Cleveland are scheduled to attend the opening of “Operation Finale” an exhibit at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center depicting the capture and trial of Adolf Eichman.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education is scheduled to celebrate President’s Day by admitting student’s and children at half price and “showing the hologram of Holocaust survivor and museum President Fritzie Fritzshall.

2018: The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players which was bounded by Jens Nygaard who directed the Washington Heights YW-YMHA concerts for 25 years, and which includes violinist Itamar Zorman is scheduled to perform “Mostly Italian-Swiss Gems” today.

2018: In the United States celebration of President’s Day which Jews could observe by remembering their unique connection with the nation’s chief executives starting with George Washington and the Jews of Newport but also including but not limited to, Franklin Pierce who “signed an Act of Incorporation establishing Washington Hebrew Congregation”, Abraham Lincoln who made it possible for Rabbis to serve as chaplains in the U.S. Army for the first time, U.S. Grant who contributed to the building fund for Adas Israel and attended the congregation’s dedication, Teddy Roosevelt who appointed the first Jew to serve in the Cabinet, to Woodrow Wilson who appointed the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court, to Herbert Hoover who appointed the second Jew to serve as an Associate Justice, to Donald Trump, the first President to have Jewish grandchildren (and this does not include FDT, HST and so many more)

2018: “Night of Heroes” is scheduled to take place in London. https://www.nightofheroes.co.uk/

2019: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Forgotten Soldier,” a documentary about Dutch businessman Sally Noach.

2019: In Stanford, CA, General Amos Yadlin, the Director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies is scheduled to discuss “Israel’s security challenges in 2019.”

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/israels-national-security-challenges-2019-tickets-52819822511

2019: Laney College is scheduled to host a screening of “Marshall” a film about NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall teaming up with Sam Friedman to defend a black chauffeur in Connecticut from charges “of sexual assault and attempted murder” by a white, “wealthy socialite” in case tried against a background of racism and anti-semitism.

2019: The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkley is scheduled to host a lecture on Ethnobotanical Insights into Biblical Life and Languag

2019: The Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Rabbi David Wolpe speaking about “Immigration” as part of the “Modern Matters: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Series.

2020: The JCCSF is scheduled to host a screening of “The City Without Jews,” a “1924 silent film, set in an Austrian city that enacts a law forcing Jews to leave” which is also a Violins of Hope event featuring an original live score by violinist Alicia Svigals and pianist Donald Sosin.”

2020: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the penultimate screening of “The Other Story.”

2020: The Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “My Name Is Sara” and “Gentlemen’s Agreement.”

2020: The 21st annual Sacramento Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.

2020: In Cincinnati, the 2020 Jewish and Israeli Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Working Woman.”

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Taking On White Nationalist Violence”  Roberta Kaplan (lead counsel on the Supreme Court case that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage) and Karen Dunn (a former federal prosecutor in Virginia), the legal action — filed against a broad range of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and affiliated hate groups — expose the individuals and organizations driving the wave of white supremacist hate and dismantles the infrastructure at the center of their movement

2020: The Center For Jewish History is scheduled to present a discussion The Promised Land by Mary Antin “led by Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History.

2020: Seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of the Battle of Iowa Jima where 1,500 Jews were among the thousands of Marines of whom it was said, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

2021: Temple Beth Israel of Waltham is scheduled to present online “Shabes In Upper Remety: TBI’s Hollender Memorial Tish” featuring “Hankus Netsky and members of the New England Conservatory’s Jewish Music Ensemble.”

2021: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast, live, an “Excellence – Young Artists in Concerts” with Zarifa Alkhazova, Anastasia Dziadevych, Noa Kapelyushnik  and Julia Gurvitch “playing pieces for violin and piano.

2021: In River Hills, WI, Dr. Gary P. Zola, the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun is scheduled to deliver Kabbalat Shabbat sermon on “Profiles in American Jewish Courage.”

2021: Kerem Shalom is scheduled to present “Shabbat Around the Table” with Cantor Rosalie Gerut, leading candle-lighting, singing, prayers, discussing the Torah parsha and remembering our loved ones with the Kaddish prayer.”

2021: In Pepper Pike, OH, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host a noontime “Historical Introduction to the Laws of Purim with Rabbi Noah Bickart” followed later in the evening by an “ATID Masquerade Shabbat Dinner.

2021: The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin screenings online of “200 Meters” which tells the story of a Palestinian father journeying to reach his hospitalized son and “Antisemitism,” a film that traces “centuries of insidious hatred, this substantive inquest reveals the evolution of anti-Semitism in France.”

2021: While much of the U.S. copes with unusual amounts snow, Israelis appear to be poised to enjoy the layer of white stuff which yesterday fell unexpectedly in Jerusalem and its environs.

2022: As part of it’s the Best of Chamber Music series, the Edin-Tamir  Center is scheduled to host “Schubertidade,” with violinist Sergey Ostrovsky, cellist Kirill Mihanovsky and pianist Julia Gurvitch.

2022: Congregation Beth Am is scheduled to host a screening of “Not Going Quietly,” the 2021 “that follows Ady Barkan, a powerhouse activist with Lou Gehrig’s disease, on a national campaign for health care reform.”

2022: Despite ominous warnings of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, based on previously published statements as of today, “most Israelis living in the country, thought to number around 10,000 to 15,000 people, including Israeli Ukrainians, and Ukrainian Jews for that matter, are in no hurry to leave, with few believing that a Russian invasion is imminent.” (YNET)

2022 (18th of Adar I, 5781): Parashat Ki Tissa (When you take)

2023: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to have a showing of the film, Farewell, Mr. Haffmann, a film set in 1941 Occupied Paris.

2023: The National Library of Israel is scheduled to present a lecture by Dr. Karin Sczech on “The Bakery of Erfurt's Jewish-Medieval Community: An Excavated Element of Jewish-Medieval Heritage.”

2023: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Pirate Enlightenment: Or the Real Liberatalia by David Graeber, the son of “self-taught working class Jewish intellectuals,” Ruth Rubinstein and Kenneth Graeber.

2023: The Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled to host “Activism on the Lower East Side Building and Walking Tour.”

2023: “The Mandel Jewish Community Center in Beachwood will host its 14th annual indoor triathlon today.

2023:  Today a Torah scroll donated by UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is scheduled be brought to Abu Dhabi’s Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, in a dedication ceremony at that country’s first-ever built “purpose built” Jewish house of worship.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/uae-opens-interfaith-center-that-houses-gulf-states-first-official-synagogue/

2024: In Metairie, LA, Chabad is scheduled to host a lecture by Colonel Yaron Buskila a (res) IDF officer who was very involved in the immediate response to the attacks on October 7and who “is traveling to share his experiences and his vision for the safety and security of Israel and its people.”

2024: In another lecture in the online lecture series "Darkness and Light in Literature" sponsored by Agnon House, participants are scheduled to read together with Dr. Eric Glassnerin the biblical story of the mistress on the hill, and through it we will discuss light and darkness, civil wars, tribalism and unity.

2024:  In the United States, Presidents Day the third Monday of February, celebrates all U.S. president, including such household names as John Tyler who intervened on behalf Commodore Uriah P. Levy, James Garfield who protested against a Russian pogrom and Benjamin Harrison “who appealed to the Czar to stop his mistreatment of the Jews.” (As reported by Denis Brian in The Elected and the Chosen)For more about Jews and American Presidents see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/presquote.html  and http://www.jewishpost.com/archives/news/united-states-presidents-and-the-jews-from-george-washington-to-george-bush-1.html

2024: As February 19th, begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 136 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.)