This Day, February 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
February 2
450: Birthdate
of Justin I during whose reign as Byzantine Emperor the Beth Alpha synagogue
was built “at the foot of the northern slopes of the Mt. Gilboa near Beit
She’an.
506: Alaric II, eighth king of the Visigoths
promulgated The Breviary of Alaric (Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana
Visigothorum) a collection of Roman law that included the sixteen books of the
Codex Theodosianus complete with all of its anti-Semitic laws.
962: Pope John
XII crowns Otto I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Gershom ben Judah, who
will gain fame as Rabbeinu Gershom Me'Or Hagolah ("Our teacher Gershom the
light of the exile") had been born two years earlier in Metz. Mainz,
the city he would move to as an adult, was already the center of Talmudic
learning in this part of the Holy Roman Empire with Yehuda ben Meir serving as
its leading scholar at this time.
1208:
Birthdate of James I of Aragon. King James I
of Aragon was the monarch who forced Nachmanides, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, to
participate in a public debate, with the Jewish convert to Christianity, Pablo
Christiani. Unlike what usually happened, Nachmanides chose to respond
aggressively. His brilliant defense of Judaism and refutations of
Christianity's claims served as the basis of many such future disputations
through the generations. Because his victory was an insult to the king's
religion, Nachmanides was forced to flee Spain. There were those who wanted the
sage killed, but James let him escape; a silent acknowledgement of the strength
of the Rabbi’s arguments.
1484: The
first printed edition of tractate Bezah of the Babylonian Talmud was published
in Soncino Italy
1499: The Jews
were scheduled to be expelled from Nuremberg but the expulsion was delayed
until “Laetare Sunday, 1499.”
1536: Spaniard
Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina. As in so much of the
rest of Latin America, the first Jews to settle in Argentina were
conversos. When Argentina gained its independence in 1810, the
Inquisition was abolished and this marked the beginning of the development of
the modern Argentinean Jewish Community. The first Jewish wedding in
Buenos Aires took place in 1860. Today Buenos Aires has a Jewish
population of about 200,000 souls. The city supports a variety of Jewish
institutions including a campus of the Convservative JTS and one of the last
remaining daily Yiddish newspapers. Unfortunately, Buenos Aires was also
the site of one of the worst terrorist attacks outside of Eretz Israel.
1592:
Consecration of Clement VIII, during whose Papacy Jews were forced to attend
“conversionist sermons,” prohibited from “dealing in new articles of clothing”
and forced to allow copies of the Talmud to be burned in 1601,
1644:
Birthdate of Isaac Chayyim Cantarini, also known as Isaacus Viva, the native of
Padua who was a physician by training but who ‘also taught in the Yeshiva,
officiated as a cantor” and served as “judge” in cases requiring a deep
knowledge of Halacha.
1648(17th of
Shevat, 5408): Rabbi Chaim ben Benjamin Bechner of Cracow, author of Or Hadash
passed away.
1649:
Birthdate of Domincan month Vincenzo Marco Orsini who as Benedict XIII issued
bull describing the “necessary conditions for imposing baptism on a Jew” and forbidding Jews to sell “new goods.”
1653:
Incorporation of the city of New Amsterdam under Dutch rule. The first Jews
would arrive in 1654. In other words, there really is a valid reason for
thinking New York and New York Jew in the same breath. (New Amsterdam
became New York when the English took the colony and named the city in honor of
the Duke of York.)
1697: In Great Britain, a site is acquired for the first
Ashkenazi cemetery.
1697:
“Moses Levy bought a plot of garden land from an English army officer” which
‘was next to the Sephardi Cemetery.
1699:
Richea Asher and German native Moses Raphael Levy, who were married in Lond in
1695 gave birth to Asher Levy we was living in Philadelphia at the time of his
death in 1742.
1701(24th
of Shevat, 5461): Fifty-one-year-old “German Orientalist” who “published a
translation of the Targum on Chronicles” and translated a book on “the travels
of Benjamin of Tudela” passed away today.
1709:
In London, Elias Lindo and Rachel Lopes Ferreira were married at Bevis Marks
Synagogue – a moment which was celebrated by the creation of a silver Chanukah
menorah by John Ruslen known as the Lindo Lamp, the “earliest known English
menorah.”
http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32217#.Uuxc62eA2po
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindo_lamp
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/kate-gave-birth-in-a-jewish-funded-hospital-wing/2013/07/23/
1740:
In Zülz, Silesia, Seligmann Pappenheim, the town’s associate rabbi and his wife
gave birth to Solomon Pappenheim whose works include a “book on Hebrew
synonyms.”
1763: Löb Wertheimer (son of Samson Wertheimer and Frumet Brülle)
and husband of Sarchen Halberstadt passed away today.
1769:
Seventy-five year old Pope Clement XIII who in 1759 took a stance against the
blood libel when he “proclaimed that the Holy See had examined the grounds on
which rested the belief in the use of human blood for the feast of Passover and
the murder of Christians by Jews, and that the Jews must not be condemned as
criminals in respect of this charge, but that in the case of such occurrences
legal forms of proof must be used” passed away today.
1788: In New York City, Samuel Lazarus and his wife
gave birth to Eleazar S. Lazarus a “city assessor in New York” who according to
one source was the “editor of the first Hebrew prayer book published in North
America, an accomplishment usually credited to Isaac Pinto.
1789:
In Kingston, Jamaica, Shankey Hart and Abraham Jacobs gave birth to Frances
Jacobs.
1790:
The United States Supreme Court meets for the first time. It would be one
hundred and twenty six years before a Jewish jurist would be named to the High
Court.
1797:
In the United Kingdom, George Isaacs and Kitty Levin experienced the tragedy of
having a stillborn child.
1799(27th
of Shevat, 5550): Parashat Mishpatim is read for the last time in the 18th
century.
1809 Don Judah
Ben-Oliel, the Moroccan and Austrian consul at Gibraltar and the President of
the Jewish community who was the son of Judith and Solomon Ben-Oliel and his
wife Esther Ben-Oliel gave birth to Joshua Benoliel
1814: Gershom
Mendes Seixas of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York gave a sermon
saying that because the United States has declared war, it is the duty of
Jewish Americans to "act as true and faithful citizens, to support and
preserve the honor, the dignity, and the independence of the United States of
America!" Gershom asked the people to pray to God for protection and a
strengthening of faith and to get rid of the evil that is around
them. He discusses the horrible conditions that many people have
been faced with and the numerous deaths that have occurred.
1815:
Friedrich von Gentz,“the secretary of the Congress” of Vienna who “was in
constant communication with Dr. Buchholz “on the rights of the Jews during the
Congress, mentioned today dining at the home of Leopold Herz, a Jew who was one
of the Royal Bankers along with such notables as the Duke of Wellington and
Prince Metternich.
1816:
Birthdate of Jacob Herz (Heart) the native of Bayreuth who was a successful
physician in Erlangen but found his career stymied because he would not
convert.
1819: In
London, Hanna and Abraham Harris gave birth to Elizabeth Harris.
1820: Walter
Jacob Levi married Rebecca Hart today in the Great Synagogue.
1825(14th
of Shevat, 5585): Seventy-four-year-old Isac Hartvig Rée the husband of Sara
Wulff Wulff von Essen and the father of Thamar Ree passed away in Altona,
Germany.
1827:
Birthdate of Jewish scholar Solomon Buber the Lemberg native who was the son of
Isaiah Abraham Buber and the grandfather of Martin Buber.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3781-buber-solomon
1831:
Gregory XVI began his papacy today during which he granted an audience to
Raphael Meir ben Judah Panigel who “was the Sephardi chief rabbi of Jerusalem”
until his death in 1893.
1833:
Esther B. Seixas and Naphtali Phillips, the President of both Mikveh Israel in
Philadelphia and Shearith Israel in New York and “the owner of New York City’s
National Advocate, gave birth to Zipporah Phillips, the wife of Lewis Benjamin.
1835:
In Gnesen, Posen, Joseph Chayyim Caro and his wife gave birth to historian
Jacob Caro.
1835:
London natives Julia Solomons and Barnett Nathan gave birth to Dinah Nathan who
first married Nathaneil Hart with whom she had four children and then married
Charles Harald Hansen while living in New Zealand.
1837(27th
of Shevat, 5597): Hungarian rabbi Moses ben Menahem Kunizter, a descendant of
Rabbi Lowe, passed away today.
1839:
Birthdate of Bohemia native and Prague trained chemist Anton Schwarz who in
1868 emigrated to United States where he became editor and owner of The
American Brewer which he turned into a scientific journal and who was the
father of Max Schwartz he followed in his father’s footsteps.
https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/historic-beer-birthday-anton-schwarz/
1840:
“A report was spread” in Damascus that Father Thomas and his servant “were last
seen in the Jewish quarter of the city” which “was sufficient to excite the
wrath of” those “who had long nourished a bitter animosity against the Jews”
and resulted in the arrest of Jewish barber. After having received “500
blows” and the promise of a pardon “if he would disclose the names of his
co-religionists who had” murdered the pair, the barber “denounced seven persons
who had required human blood for the Passover festival.” (Modern versions
date these events as having begun on February 5. This is based on an account
published in 1883
1848: The
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed ending the Mexican American War.
There are limited records of colorful Jewish characters who showed up at
different places where the war was fought (Remember, it covered a swath of
territory including California, New Mexico, Arizona and the Republic of
Mexico). They include: Jacob Frankfort a tailor living at Taos, New
Mexico; Nathan Appel, a trooper with Phil Kearny’s Dragoons, Solomon and Thomas
Farnham who were with the American Army at the Battle of Chapultepec (and later
made their fortune in California) and Jacob Frankfort, a tailor living in Los
Angeles who went to work for the U.S. Army when the troops arrived.
1849: In
Oriskany, NY, Elizabeth and Keiron Gaynor gave birth to William Jay Gaynor who
as Mayor of New York served as an “honorary pall bearer at the funeral of
Strassburg born Brooklyn businessman Moses May, the wholesale meat dealer who
was also President of the Broadway Trust Company and the President of the
Bushwick Savings Bank while being an active member of the Jewish community who
a charter member of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society in Brooklyn.
1852:
“Shocking Murder Near Philadelphia” published today described the discovery of
the mutilated body of Jacob Lehman, a German Jew, who had been robbed before he
was killed and dumped into the Delaware River.
1852:
Birthdate of a “Spanish physician and liberal politician” Angel Pulido
Fernandez who “vowed to rebuild the links between and the Sephardi Jews,
descendant of those expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th
century” and who “coined the expression españoles sin patria (Spaniards without
a homeland) to refer to Sephardi.”
1852:
Forty-nine-year-old Francis Mary Paul Libermann (born Jacob Libermann) “a
19th-century Jewish convert to Catholicism who was a member of the Spiritan
order and who is best known for founding the Congregation of the Immaculate
Heart of Mary which later merged with the Congregation of the Holy Ghost”
passed away today in Paris.
1853: At
Hatten, Alsace, Frederick Klein and There Moock gave birth to Max Klein who
began serving as the rabbi for Congregation of Bikur Cholim in Donaldsonville,
LA in 1903 and who was the brother of Cantor Zacharie Klein.
1854: A
second dinner was held in Philadelphia designed to raise funds for Jewish
charities.
1855: Today’s
issue of The Israelite reported that
in New York, “great exertions are being made here for establishing a large
institute to instruct children in Hebrw and Jewish Catechism without
interfering with the common schools.”
1855: In
Eisenstadt, Austria, Rabbi Dr. Azriel Hildesheimer and Henriette Jettchen
Hildesheimer gave birth to Rabbi Hirsch Hildesheimer the husband of Rosa
Therese Hieldesheimer
1857: In
Charleston, Catherine and Hertz Wolf Oppenheim gave birth to Catherine Grass,
the wife of Joachim Grass.
1858: In Pest,
Hungary Wilhelm Diamant married Johanna Theres Diamant.
1860:
"Oliver Twist," a dramatization of Dickens' novel by the same name,
was performed at the Winter Garden in New York City. J.W. Wallack played
the part of Fagin the Jew
1861(22nd
of Shevat, 5621): Parashat Yitro
1861: In
Philadelphia, PA, Meyer Guggenheim and Barbara Myers gave birth to Solomon R
Guggenheim the husband of Irene Rothschild and a second-generation member of
the Guggenheim family that made its fortune mining and metallurgy, Guggenheim
is best remembered for endowing the Guggenheim Foundation which funds and runs
the Guggenheim Museum. Guggenheim’s brother Benjamin died on the Titanic, and
it was his daughter Peggy who joined her uncle as a patron of the arts.
1862:
Birthdate of Rabbi Joshua A. Joffe, The Jewish Theological Seminary's second
Talmud instructor. He joined the Seminary as Preceptor of Mishna and Gomera in
1893, and retired in 1917. As one of only two full time paid instructors at the
Seminary when he arrived (the other was Bible instructor Bernard Drachman)
Joffe taught all of the Seminary's early graduates. He was also in charge of
the library, and he took part in the students' Literary Society, lecturing in
Hebrew to the group that met every other Saturday evening. In addition to his
work at the Seminary, Joffe taught students in his home (one of these private
students was Stephen Wise), and from 1893 to around 1908 he taught Hebrew and
Jewish ethics at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam Avenue between West
136th and 138th Streets. Joffe was born in Nesvizh, Minsk, Russia on February
2, 1862. He studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva and received smicha
(Orthodox rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Isaac J. Reines in 1881. He then went
to Berlin and attended the liberal Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des
Judentums from which he received a second rabbinic ordination in 1888.
Joffe's education also included a period, 1886-1890, at the University of
Berlin where he studied philosophy, history, and Semitics. He served as rabbi
to congregations in Vishnove, Russia, in 1880, and Moabit, a suburb of Berlin,
1889-1892. In 1892 Joffe left Germany and came to the United States. After
twenty-four years at the Seminary, Joshua Joffe retired in 1917 after a period
of ill health. He then returned to Europe with his wife and daughter and died
in Freiburg, Germany on December 23, 1935. His family returned to the United States
after his death.
1866(17th
of Shevat, 5626): Fifty-six-year-old Rosanna Osterman, the wife of “silversmith
and merchant Joseph Osterman” who moved to Galveston in 1838, died today “in
the explosion of the steamship W. R. Carter on the Mississippi River near
Vicksburg, and was buried in the Portuguese Cemetery in New Orleans” after
which she “left an estate valued at over $204,000, much of which she bequeathed
to charitable organizations.
1869: The will
of the late James Disraeli “was proved” today by Benjamin Israeli.
1870:
Birthdate of Dr. William Salant, the 1899 graduate of Columbia’s College of
Physicians and Surgeons, the pharmacologist who taught at Cornell University.
https://library-archives.cumc.columbia.edu/obit/william-salant
1871: Baron
Jozsef Eotvos, Hungarian statesman and who supported the emancipation of the
Jews passed away today while serving as Minister of Religion and Education of
Hungary.
1871: Gustavus
Cardozo, Chief of the Ordinance Bureau in New York City has issued orders to
all householders to immediately clear the snow and ice from the sidewalks in
front of their houses and from their rooftops.
1873: In Olmütz,
bandmaster and composer Mortiz Fall and his wife gave birth to Leo Fall who
gained fame for composing a series of operettas.
1873: It was
reported today that a benefit performance has raised $5,200 for the Home for
Aged and Infirmed Hebrews.
1874(15th
of Shevat, 5634): Tu B’Shevat
1874: In
Philadelphia, PA, Herman Reizenstein and Louise Woernitz gave birth to Milton
Reizenstein the recipient of Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and husband of Rose
Hollander who served as the Assistant Superintendent of the Educational
Alliance and whose writings included the Economic History of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad.
1875:
Birthdate of violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler. There are several
different views as to whether or not Kreisler was Jewish. As the
following note shows, even his family did not agree on the answer to the
question. “Amy Biancolli's recent biography Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow,
Love's Joy (Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon, 1998) contains an
extensive discussion of Kreisler's Jewish background, which he never
acknowledged and which his wife adamantly denied (see Chapter 8: "Kreisler
the Catholic, Kreisler the Jew"). Biancolli cites a 1992
interview by David Sackson of Franz Rupp, Fritz Kreisler's piano
accompanist in the 1930s. Rupp states that he once asked Kreisler's
brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler, about their Jewish background, to which
Hugo responded simply, "I'm a Jew, but my brother, I don't
know." According to Biancolli, Kreisler's father, Salomon Severin
Kreisler (also called Samuel Severin Kreisler), a physician and amateur
violinist from Krakow, was almost certainly Jewish. Fritz's mother, Anna,
was a Roman Catholic, and probably an "Aryan." According to
Louis Lochner's 1950 biography Fritz Kreisler, Kreisler was reared as a
Roman Catholic. However, according to unpublished parts of the manuscript
uncovered by Biancolli in the Library of Congress, he was baptized only at the
age of twelve. The bottom line seems to be that Kreisler was at least
half-Jewish and his reticence on the subject primarily an attempt to placate
his highly anti-Semitic wife Harriet. ("Fritz hasn't a drop of
Jewish blood in his veins!" she is said to have vehemently responded to an
inquiry from Leopold Godowsky. Godowsky retorted: "He must be very
anemic.")”
1875:
Six-year-old Alice Kate Dreyfus, the daughter of Arthur Dreyfus and Harriet
Broomfield was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1875: In
Paris, Sophie Neymarck and Elie Camille Espir gave birth to Daniel Lucien
Espir.
1875: In
Newark, NJ, Julia and Marcus Myers gave birth to Cornell trained architect
Nathan Myers, the husband of Estelle Gerber and Minnie Rose Rich who designed
the B’nai Abraham Synagogue and Social Center in Newark.
https://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2015/02/happy-birthday-nathan-myers-b-feb-2.html
1876: In
Stuttgart, Germany Herman and Adele (Rothschild) Oppenheim, gave birth to
University of Tubingen graduate and Scarsdale, NY resident Emil W. Oppenheim,
the President of Oppenheim and Company and a member of the Federation of Jewish
Philanthropic Societies of NYC.
1876: The
National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball which
we know simply as the National League, the first and oldest of baseball’s two
Major Leagues is formed. Lip Pike may have been the first Jewish major
leaguer. He had begun playing before the creation of the National
League. Reportedly, his first stint was with the Philadelphia Athletics.
In 1876 he played with the National League team in St. Louis, thus making him
the first Jewish baseball player to play in baseball’s senior circuit.
1877: The
counting of the electoral vote in the contested Tilden-Hays presidential
election is scheduled today which will lead to a victory by Rutherford Hayes
who named Benjamin Peixotto Consul-General to Romania and who “ordered the
employment of a Jewish woman who had been denied a position in the Department
of the Interior because of her refusal to work on Saturday.”
1878: It
was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has taken issue with those
who feel they must respond every time somebody expresses negativity regarding
Hebrews as individuals are as a group. Those making these statements are
“petty assailants” from whom the Hebrews need no defense.
1878: In
Prestwich, Berlin born and educated Ivan Levinstein who moved to England in
1864 gave birth to Herbert Levinstein, the Owens College and Zurich Polytechnic
educated chemist, the holder of 25 patents and “first British manufacturer of
synthetic indigo.”
1879:
Birthdate of Johana Handgriffova who was transported from Prague in October of
1942 to Ujazdow where he was murdered.
1879: In
Prague, Dr. Otto Pribram and Fanny Pribram gave birth Ernst August Pribram the
Austrian Army Veteran, the serologist and bacteriologist who settled in Chicago
where he also taught at Loyola.
1882:
Birthdate of Irish author James Joyce. Joyce was not Jewish, but Bloom the
protagonist in his most famous novel, Ulysses was Jewish.
1882: In
Hungary, Herman and Leni Winkler gave birth to Viennese trained Rabbi Mayer
Winkler who in 1921 came to the United States where he served the congregation
in Homestead, PA before settling in Los Angeles where he served as Regional
Director of the United Synagogue of America, organized a “free synagogue” and
became “one of the first rabbis in the United States to speak regularly over
the radio as the founder of the radio program ‘Synagogue on the Air’ which he
conducted for seven years.”
1883(25th
of Shevat, 5643): Seventy-two-year-old Rabbi Yisroel Salanter passed away. He was the father of
the Mussar movement in Orthodox Judaism and a famed Rosh yeshiva and Talmudist.
The epithet Salanter was added to his name due to the influence on his
thinking by Rabbi Yosef Zundel of Salant.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/salanter.html
1883:
Birthdate of S. Z. Sakall. Born Eugene Gero Szakall in Budapest Hungary,
he used the first two initials of his last name to create his professional
persona. The chubby cheeked actor was also known as “Cuddles.” One
of his most famous roles was as the round-faced waiter in Casablanca who tells
Rick that he could “kiss him” after he lets a desperate young couple win enough
at the casino to avoid the clutches of the lecherous Claude Raines.
http://www.moviefanfare.com/s-z-sakall/
1886: In
Manning, SC, Rose Levi and Aaron Weinberg gave birth to University of South
Carolina graduate and Johns Hopkins Medical trained physician Milton
Weinberger, the husband of Ethel Harper who practiced medicine in Sumter, SC.
1886: In New
York, Samuel Untermyer, the “New York attorney who is best remembered for his
opposition to Adolf Hitler and for creating Untermyer Park and Gardens,
"America's Greatest Forgotten Garden" in Yonkers, New York and his
wife Minnie Carol gave birth to Columbia trained lawyer and New York State
judge Irwin Untermeyer, the husband of Louise A. Feuchtwanger and the father of
Joan, Frank and Samuel II Untermeyer who served on the board of trustees of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art to which he bequeathed his 2,000 piece collection of
art.
https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/AD1/centennial/Bios/iuntermyer2.shtml
1888:
Birthdate of London born classical pianist Irene Scharrer.
http://www.naxos.com/person/Irene_Scharrer/13517.htm
1889: In
London, “Michael Henry Nathan, a fine art publisher and magistrate” and his
wife gave WW I veteran and Labor Party labor Henry Nathan, and husband of
Eleanor Nathan who was elevated to the peerage as Baron Nathan of Churt in the
County of Surry.
1890: At
Neuilly, France, verbal attacks were made against the Jews in general and the
House of Rothschild in particular which was denounced for its “German origins”
and its alleged role in the collapse of the l'Union Générale.
1890:
“Religious Census” published today described the denominational makeup of
Hartford, CN, a city of 48, 179 which includes 1,158 Jews.
1890:
Birthdate Auburn, NY resident Harry Phillip Markson, who was active in the
United Palestine Appeal.
1890: “Gods
Who Are Kinsmen” published today provided a detailed review of Lectures on
the Religion of the Semites by Cambridge professor W. Robertson Smith
1891(24th
of Shevat, 5651): Philadelphian Ellen M. Phillips who was a benefactress of
various Jewish charities including the Jewish Theological Seminary, passed away
today.
1891:
Birthdate of Warsaw native Dr. Ludwig Anigstein, the “renowned expert on
tropical diseases” who during the 1920’s “was entrusted by the British Government with the task of tropical fever
research in the Malayan Archipelago.”
1891:
Twenty-five-year-old Chicago businessman Samuel Phillipson, the Polish born son
of Phillip and Sarah Rachel Phillipson married Rachel Burton of Elgin, Illinois
today.
1891: “Art Notes”
published today described exhibition at the Hotel Cluny in Paris of “a
collection of objects” used by Jewish during the 13th, 14th
and 15th centuries. The collection had been donated to the
Cluny Museum by Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild and was made up of items that
had originally belong to Isaac Strauss, who served as conductor during the
reign of Napoleon III (more for 2014)
1892:
Twenty-eight-year-old Morris Ullamn, the New Haven, CT born son of Morris and
Mina Ullman, the Quartermaster General of the
Connecticut National Guard, “a member of the firm of Strouse, Adler and
Company, and Treasurer of the American Jewish Committee married Flora Veronica
Adler today
1892: In NYC,
Samuel and Ethel (Wallerstein) Fuchs gave birth toe Cornell University educated
Sanitary Engineer Abraham Wallerstein Fuchs, the husband of Hannah Gitlin.
1893: “The
Century for February” published today described the articles in this month’s
edition of the magazine including “A Voice From Russia” in which Pierre
Botkine, the secretary to the Russian Legation in Washington, DC provides his
government’s version of its treatment of the Jews.
1893:
Birthdate of Cornelius Lanczos the Hungarian mathematician and physicist who
served as an assistant to Albert Einstein and while working for the U.S.
National Bureau of Standards developed “the Lanczos algorithm for finding
eigenvalues of large symmetric matrices and the Lanczos approximation for the
gamma function.”
1894(26th
of Shevat, 5654): Seventy-eight-year-old Maro Mortara, the native of Viadana
who graduated from the rabbinical college of Padua in 1836 before starting to
serve as the Rabbi to Mantua in 1842 passed away today leaving behind his son
Lodvocio Mortara who was the father of statistician Giorgio Mortara.
1895(8th
of Shevat, 5655): Sixty-four-year-old Adelaide Cohen Montefiore, “the daughter
of Louis Cohen and Rebecca Floretta Keyser, the wife of Sir Joseph
Sebag-Montefiore and the daughter-in-law of Solomon Sebag and Sarah Montefiore
passed away today after she was buried at the “Sephardi New Cemetery” in
London.
1895(8th
of Shevat, 5655): Sixty-eight-year-old French painter Benjamin Eugène Fichel
passed away today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fichel#/media/File:Eugene_fichel_painting_1.jpg
1896: The
Young Ladies and Gentlemen’s Circle of the Auxiliary Society of the Hebrew
Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum was formed today in New York City.
1896:
Alexander Lewis Simmons, the son of Joseph and Annie Simmons, was buried today
at the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”
1897(30th
of Shevat, 5657): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1897(30th
of Shevat, 5657): Author Abraham Kaplan passed away.
1897: In New
York City, 38-year-old Maurice Simon Hays and 28 eight year old Carrie Michael
gave birth to Columbia trained attorney and WW I veteran Mortimer Hays, the son
of Sara Reich.
1897: The
Young People’s Association of the West Synagogue is scheduled to meet today at
the home of Dr. H.P. Mendes.
1898: During
today’s court session where the libel suit that Joseph Reinach has brought
against Henri Rochefort, the audience began shouting “Down with the Jews!”
1898:
Birthdate of Morocco native “Isaac Shalom Edrehi,” the Sephardic rabbi and
“Arab linguist” who moved to the United States in 1920.
1899(22nd
of Shevat, 5659): Sixty-three-year-old Samuel David Klauber, the husband of
Charlotte Klauber
1899: Based on
information that first appeared in La Presse it was reported today that
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was so angry when he learned that Captain Lebrun-Renault
had claimed that he had confessed at the time of his trial that he refused to
answer any more of the questions put to him by the Court Cassation unless he is
returned to France.
1899:
Birthdate of Benny Rubin the Boston born actor, comic and writer whose career
would span over 70 years and include work on the stage, film and television.
1899: Captain
Albert W. Lilienthal completed his service with the 7th U.S.
Volunteer Infantry, six months before he would re-enlist with the 40th
U.S Volunteer Infantry.
1899: It was
reported today that “the latest victim of the anti-Dreyfus party is the Grand
Rabbi, Zadok Kahn, who is being denounced as ‘the ringleader of the infamous
Jewish conspiracy against France…’”
1900(3rd
of Adar I, 5660): Bavarian born tobacco merchant Isaac Rosenwald who in his 17th
year came to Georgia where he went into business with brother Edward with whom
he moved their firm E. Rosenwald and Brother to New York in 1863 after which he
married Miss Rachel Jacobson in 1869, joined the Harmonie Club and served as
President of the Southern Bank, passed away today in Manhattan.
1901:
Birthdate of famed violinist, Yasha Heifetz. Born in Russia, Heifetz was
a child prodigy. He soloed for the first time at the age of four.
Considering the fact that he died in 1987, this means that Heifitz was a
performer for eighty-two years. He became "a violin virtuoso of
worldwide acclaim." He won several Grammies in the 1960s for his
recordings of chamber music. Heifetz is one of a long list of Jewish
violin virtuosos including Yehudi Menuhin and Conductor Eugene
Ormandy. There are those who think of the violin as “the Jewish
instrument.” Why, the comedian asked, do so many Jews play the
violin? Because, the violinist answered, it is a lot easier to carry than
the bass fiddle when you are being chased out of a country.
1901(13th
of Shevat, 5661): Parashat Beshalach
1901: The 35th
Annual Convention of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel is
scheduled to open in New York,
1902: One day
she had passed away, 45-year-old Sophia Kuit, the wife of Meir Kuit, was buried
today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1902:
Birthdate of Israeli political leader and government official Eliyahu Sasson
1903(5th
of Shevat, 5663): Seventy-two-year-old Hungarian born and California Gold Rush
participant Morris Tuska who in 1857 “established himself in the wholesale
upholstery business” in New York where “he was instrumental in the founding of
the United Charity Organization” and the Hebrew Technical Institute while being
an active member for 45 years of Temple Emanu-El and raising one daughter and
two sons with his wife passed away today.
1904: JTS
ordained rabbi and trained musician Israel Goldfarb, the Galicia born son of
Mollie and Nathaniel David Goldfarb who began his
career as Rabbi and Cantor of congregation B’nai Jeshurun on Staten Island and
while serving various congregations served as the instructor of Hazannuth at
JTS and the organizer of the Cantors Association of America married Frieda
Kessler today.
1904: The
Times of London correspondent in Moscow reported that the “the position of the
Jews” in that city “has been particularly difficult in the past year” in part
because the “Governor of the city” has followed polices that have meant that “a
number of families whose grandfathers obtained the hereditary freedom city in
the1850’s “have suddenly been expelled” with the police taking the Jews to the
railroad station where those with money are compelled to buy their own tickets.
1905:
Birthdate of Alissa Rosenbaum who gained famed as author and philosopher Ayn
Rand. Born in St. Petersburg, Rand was the daughter of a pharmacist – a
professional and member of the middle class which was quite an accomplishment
in the anti-Semitic world of Czarist Russia. The family lost everything
in the Bolshevik Revolution. She managed to finish her education in the
early days of Lenin’s Soviet Union and the immigrated to the United
States. It was during the immigration process that she took the first
name of Ayn (rhymes with Pine) and the last name of Rand as in Remington Rand,
name of her favorite typewriter. After a checkered career, Ms. Rand
published her two famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
These novels and the film made from one of them espoused her philosophy of
“Objectivism.” Rand “glorified the self-made man who aggressively
demonstrated his superiority over the masses through his business
acumen.” Her personal life was at odds with her philosophy when you
consider the fact that her husband was a financial failure and much of her
financial base came from her unconventional relationship with Nathan
Blumenthal. The name “John Galt”, the hero of the Fountainhead became a
code word among her followers in the 1950’s. She was the philosopher to a
movement that found its voice in the Goldwater wing of the Republican
Party. Alan Greenspan, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,
is a great fan of her philosophy. Although Rand died in 1982, her books
continue to sell well and her philosophy which, according to some, glorifies
selfishness as a virtue and condemns altruism as a vice enjoys periodic periods
of revival and popularity.
1906: In
Volkovysk, Yerucham Warhaftig and Rivka
Fainstein gave birth to Rabbi Zorach Warhaftig who made Aliyah in 1947 and
served in Israel’s first nine Knessets. Most important of all he
worked with he worked with Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Vice-Counsel in Kaunas
to save the entire Mir Yeshiva.
1906: It was reported
today that of the sixteen people executed in the Citadel at Warsaw in the last
fortnight, 15 of them were Jews.
1906:
Birthdate of Brooklyn native Harold Rosenberg, the leading “art historian and
critic.”
https://www.theartstory.org/critic-rosenberg-harold.htm
1906: Letters
from Gomel appearing in St. Petersburg newspapers all agree that the
“anti-Jewish outrages in that town were perpetrated with the open connivance of
the authorities” with the Cossacks and dragoon leading the way with acts of
arson and plunder.
1907(18th
of Shevat, 5667): Parashat Yitro
1907: Miss
Frances Gill and fifty children of both sexes attended the first of a series of
“Socialism Sunday Schools which was established today to teach Socialism to
Jewish children.
1907: Bertha
Wallach, the German born daughter of Jakob and Ida Edelchen Baruch and her
husband Joseph Wallach gave birth to Herbert Wallach in Hesse, Germany
1908(30th
of Shevat, 5668): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1908: In
Freedom, PA, “Abel and Rebecca (Gordon) Finn gave birth to Ohio St. alum Sidney
Bernard Finn, the award-winning Harvard trained dentist who was the husband of
Irma Harriet Rubens with whom he had two children – Catherine and Andrew.
https://prabook.com/web/sidney_bernard.finn/1064969
1908: In Toronto, Canada, Eisig and Adela (Newman)
Nussbaum gave birth Perry E. Nussbaum, the husband of Arene Talpis and the
father of Leslie Irene Rubenstein who is best known for his role in the civil
rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1950’s when that was a real
act of courage.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0430/ms0430.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nussbaum-perry
1909: Adolf
Stoecker, a prominent Lutheran theologian and court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm
II who was a leading anti-Semite passed away today.
1909(11th
of Shevat, 5669): Seventy-year-old Prague native Leopold Karpeles who was “awarded
the Medal of Honor as a Sergeant in Company E, 57th Massachusetts Infantry” for
rallying the troops under fire during the Wilderness Campaign in 1864 passed
away today in Washington, D.C. after which he was buried in the cemetery of
Washington Hebrew Congregation, the oldest Jewish congregation in the nation’s
capital.
1909(11th
of Shevat, 5669): Eighty-five-year-old Julius von Gomperzes the Austrian
industrialist who was President of the Bron Trade and Commerce Chamber and a
leader of the Brno Jewish community passed away today.
1910:
Birthdate of Syracuse, NY, native Alexander "Mine Boy" Levinsky whose
nine year career in the NFL included playing on two Stanley Cup championship
teams.
http://mapleleafslegends.blogspot.com/2010/06/alex-levinsky.html
1911:
Birthdate of Hilde Metzger, the daughter of Louis and Clara Metzger, who moved
to Amsterdam in 1933 when her parents “moved to Palestine escape the Nazis” and
who became Hilde Metzter Prins when she married Benjamin L. Prins in New York
in 1940.
1912: Chief
Rabbi Franco of Jerusalem protests to the Turkish Minister of Justice and
Public Worship over the removal of seats at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The
Governor ignores his protest.
1913: Rae D.
Landy, the Cleveland trained nurse arrived in Palestine today after having been
recruited by Henrietta Szold “to begin a visiting nurse program in Palestine.”
1913(25th
of Shevat, 5673): Fifty-seven-year-old Judge Henry M. Steinert of New York City
passed away today.
1913(25th
of Shevat, 5673): Seventy-five-year-old Nathan Goodman passed away today in
Newburgh, NY.
1913: At a
time when some in the Reform Movement were trying to make Sunday the day for
Shabbat services, Dr. Emil G. Hirsch delivered the sermon this morning at
services at Sinai Temple on Chicago’s South Side.
1913: Rabbi
Joseph Stoltz is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Memory of the Righteous” at
Chicago’s Isaiah Temple which will coincide “with the annual memorial services
of the B’nai B’rith Lodges of Chicago.
1913: Dr.
Stephen S. Wise delivered a sermon ln “What is Wrong with the Jew?” at the Free
Synagogue today.
1913: The New
Jersey Conference of Charities and Corrections of which Newark, NJ Rabbi
Solomon Foster served as a member of the Executive Committee began meeting in
Plainfield, NJ today.
1914: Less
than a year after having the British Featherweight Championship, Ted “Kid:
Lewis (born Gershon Mendeloff) won the European Featherweight Championship “at
London’s Premierland” today.
1915:
Birthdate Aubrey Solomon Eban (he would later Hebracize his name after the
creation of the state of Israel to Abba Eban), in South Africa, raised in
England and educated at Cambridge, Eban was a major figure in the creation of
the Jewish state. At Cambridge he “read” Classics and Oriental
language. This educational background meant he knew Arabic and had an appreciation
of Arab culture, knowledge that would be useful during World War II when he
served as an intelligence officer with the British Army. It was while
serving with the British Army in Egypt that he met his future wife. She
came from a prominent Sephardic family. There are those who contend
Eban’s political fortunes would later suffer because of his marriage to a
Sephardic Jew. Eban served at the United Nations during the Partition
Debate and worked to gain early American recognition for the Jewish
state. After the War for Independence Eban was both Ambassador to the
U.N. and Israeli Ambassador to the United States. In these dual roles,
Eban played a critical role in gaining popular and diplomatic support for the
embattled state of Israel. This sophisticated, Cambridge educated
intellectual speaking English in the same oratorical tones as Winston Churchill
was a one-man public relations machine, the value of which we can hardly
comprehend today. After his time in Washington, Eban returned to the rough
and tumble world of Israeli politics. He held a number of responsible
positions, including Foreign Minister, but the top job of Prime Minister always
eluded. Eban produced several works on Jewish History and Civilization
including Heritage which was the basis for PBS series narrated by
Eban. Yes, what you have read is biased. I heard and saw Eban
several times as a youngster growing up in Washington. In a
post-Holocaust world, with the survival of Israel a daily question-mark, and
genteel anti-Semitism still an accepted part of the American landscape, the
voice and presence of Abba Eban was a source of pride and comfort to a whole
generation of Jews. Regardless of what his critics might say, in his
case, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.
1915: During
WW I, Jamal Pasha, the military governor of Palestine, began battling the
British under General Maxwell with the intent of taking the Suez Canal.
1915: It was
reported today that “nearly all of the Jewish refugees in Alexandria come from
Jerusalem and other large towns” including over 1,000 young men “who refused to
become Ottomans” and have declared “their eagerness to join the British Army.
1915: It was
reported today that the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist
Affairs chaired by Louis D. Brandeis “will deposit $10,000 with the American
Consul at Alexandria” for the aid of Jewish refugees.
1915: It was
reported today that “the distress among the 5,000 Jews and 12,000 Christians
left in Jerusalem is acute” and that “the American relief supplies” are
“insufficient to maintain life.”
1916: The
American Jewish Relief Committee announced that it had raised $2,050,082 thus
surpassing the goal of raising two million dollars set for Jewish Relief Day.
1916: Albert
Lucas, representing the American Jewish Relief Committee, called on Secretary
of State Lansing and Secretary of the Navy Daniels and arranged that a naval
collier “laden with medicine” would sail for a Mediterranean port next week
where the cargo will then be delivered to those living in Palestine.
1916: “A
report to the committed from Philadelphia” today” said that the local committee
there had $330,000 pledged and that the committees of businessmen would keep at
work until at least $500,000 had been pledged.”
1917: The
State Department received a cable from Ambassador Elkus that a group of
refugees from Jerusalem, Aleppo and various parts of Lebanon, all of whom are
women and children, are on their way to Beirut with plans to board the USS Des
Moines and Caesar while at the same he has discovered another 1,000 Americans
in the region who “are anxious to return to the United States. (Editor’s note:
Yes, this is the same region that is facing a refugee crisis 100 years later)
1917: Premiere
of “The Marriage of Luise Rohrbach” a German silent moved filmed by
cinematographer Karl Freund.
1917:
Birthdate of Jule Rivlin, the native of Pennsylvania who played basketball at
Marshall where he coached from 1955 to 1963,
1918: Margaret
Seligman married Sam A. Lewisohn, son of Adolph Lewisohn, benefactor of City
College and other major New York cultural institutions.
1918: Governor
Whitman, Colonel Harry Cutler, Chairman of the Welfare Board for Jewish
Soldiers and Sailors’ Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of the Institutional
Synagogue, Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Maurice H.
Harris of Temple Israel were among the speakers at tonight’s celebration
marking the 75t anniversary of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith.
1918: As it
prepares to embark for the Front, The British Legion, a Jewish military unit
serving in His Majesty’s forces, was ordered to London to march through the
East End before proceeding to Southampton.
1919:
Birthdate of Tullia Zevi, Italian journalist, writer and who was the daughter
of an anti-fascist Jewish lawyer.
1919: Belarus
native Rabbi Harry Hirsch Davidowitz married Ida Chaya Bloom in Philadelphia,
fifteen years before he moved to Tel Aviv where he lived until his death in
1973.
1920:
Birthdate of Norwich, CT native and Rutgers University trained microbiologist
Albert Israel Schatz, the husband of “the former Vivian Rosenfeld who is also a
microbiologist.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/obituaries/albert-schatz-microbiologist-dies-at-84.html
1920:
France occupies Memel. Memel was one of those cities that had changed hands
many times throughout the centuries. In the 20th century it
was passed back and forth between Germany and re-born Lithuania. “The French
Governor, who ruled the region on behalf of the Entente, cancelled all
restrictions which had been imposed upon the Jews, and thus all the Jewish
inhabitants of Memel and the region received citizenship. The Governor
nominated a committee of four members, two of them Jews, Moritz Altschul and
Leon Rostovsky, as well as one German and a French officer as chairman, to deal
with requests for citizenship, as a result of which the number of Jews in Memel
increased quickly. The port, the developing commerce, the convenient conditions
for developing industry, the possibility to learn a trade and the easing of
permission to leave for the west and to Eretz-Israel, motivated many Jews to
settle in Memel. The Lithuanian Government, having annexed Memel and the region
to Lithuania in 1923, was pleased with the increase of the Jewish population,
because the Jews together with the Lithuanians reduced the influence of the
German majority.”
1921: Dr.
Jacob Gould Schurman, the former President of Cornell University gave an
address today in which he “warned the American people that they must protect
themselves from the peril of denationalization by hordes of foreigners”
including Jews of whom he said 24% of the world’s total now lived in the United
States.
1922: In
Jerusalem, Priscilla Lee, daughter of Dr. Henry J. and Josie Wolfe married
Joshua Lipavsky.
1922: In Tel
Aviv “writer Nathan Agmon and Chaya Gutman gave birth to Shmuel Agmon, the mathematician
“known for his work in analysis and partial differential equations.”
http://www.emetprize.org/english/Product.aspx?Product=22&Year=2007
1923: Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish Republic declared, “Our country
has some elements who gave the proof of their fidelity to the motherland. Among
them I have to quote the Jewish element; up to now the Jews have lived in
happiness and from now they will rejoice and will be happy.”
1923: “Nora” a
silent film co-starring Fritz Kortner was released today in Germany.
1924(27th
Shevat, 5684): Parashat Mishpatim
1924: The Rev.
Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, charged the Ku Klux Klan with
treason to the United States and called every member of it a traitor to the
ideals of America at the National Democratic Club, 233 Madison Avenue,” today.
1925: “An
educational movement for the purposed of encouraging all Jews in American to
become citizens was inaugurated” tonight “by the Independent Order of B’rith
Abraham” under the leadership of Grand Master Adolph Stern.
1925: “The
Metropolitan Opera Company has been asked, through Artur Bodanzky,” the Vienna
born son of Jewish merchants “who conducts Mozart’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ if it
would be possible to arrange for the appearance of the entire Metropolitan cast
in that opera at next Summer’s Mozart festival in Salzburg, Austria.”
1926: Arshag
Mahdesian, an expert on Armenia wrote today challenging William E. “Pussyfoot”
Johnson’s description of Turkey in which described “the Jews” as “aliens who
live on the bounty of the Turks
1926: In
Breslau, Rudolf Stern, “a physician, medical researcher and a veteran of the
First World War” and “Käthe Brieger Stern,a noted theorist, practitioner, and
reformer in the field of education for young children” gave birth to Fritz
Richard Stern an “American historian of German history, Jewish history and
historiography” whose family had been forced to leave Germany even though “his
family had converted to Christianity in the 19th century.
1927: “Rio
Rita” a musical orchestrated and conducted by Max Steiner “premiered on
Broadway” today “at the new Ziegfeld Theatre.”
1927: The
Ziegfeld Theater opened at 6th Ave and 54th Street in New York City. After Flo
Ziegfeld’s death, Jewish showman Billie Rose would buy the theatre and turn in
into his headquarters. In 1927, the Ziegfeld was the site of the premiere
performance of “Showboat”, the musical which owed its lyrics, tunes and
literary inspiration to American Jews.
1927:
Birthdate of jazz great, Stan Getz, premier tenor “sax man.” The son of Jewish
immigrants from Russia, Getz was born in Philadelphia but raised in New
York. His father bought Getz his first saxophone at the age of thirteen.
Getz gained fame among mainstream music fans when he won a Grammy for his
recording of "The Girl from Ipanema" in 1963.
1927:
Birthdate of Herbert Kaplow, the Manhattan born son of Jewish immigrants who
became a leading reporter for NBC and ABC television news.
1928: In
Amsterdam Rachel Roet and Isaac Gans gave birth to Louis Grans who was murdered
at Sobibor.
1928: In Tel
Aviv, Sir Alfred Mond, the Jewish chemist who became a Member of Parliament,
says that despite the current level of unemployment, there is no economic
crisis in Palestine, since the rate of unemployment is “constantly
decreasing.” After noting growth in the agricultural sector, Mond
predicted that the construction of the Haifa harbor would have a positive
impact on the country’s economy. Others living in Palestine do not share
Mond’s optimism, claiming that without an infusion of capital to develop the
country’s industrial capacity, the employment situation will worsen.
1929(22nd
of Shevat, 5689): Parashat Yitro
1929(22nd
of Shevat, 5689): Albert Steinrück who played Rabbi Lowe in the early German
film classic Golem passed away at the age of 56. Considering what
was about to happen to the Jews of Europe, there is a certain sense of irony in
this choice of material for a film.
1930: “Modern
Home for the Blind To Be Built in Palestine” published today described “a
meeting of the Palestine Lighthouse, a New York organization devoted to aid the
blind of Palestine” at which plans for the erection of a completely modern
Institute for the Blind” which “will be built on the outskirts of Jerusalem”
were completed.
1930: The
funeral for Lady Reading, the wife of Lord Reading is scheduled to take place
to “at Goldersgreen Jewish Cemetery.
1931(15th
of Shevat, 5691): Tu B’Shevat
1931:
Birthdate of Newark, NJ native Judith Viorst the author best known for her
children’s books and the wife of fellow Rutgers alum and author Milton Viorst
who was on Nixon’s enemies list and whose late-blooming interest in Zionism and
the Middle East can be seen in 2016 work Zionism: The Birth and
Transformation of an Ideal
1931: The
first Siyyum of the Talmud celebrated by Daf Yomi students.
1931: An
announcement was made today at a meeting of “Jewish athletic clubs and youth
organizations” held at the 92nd Street Y.M.H.A., that the “first
world-wide Jewish Olympic games will be held in Tel Aviv next summer and that
these groups had come together to “organize the first American chapter of the
World Maccabee Union.”
1932:
Fifty-one-year-old Leo Oppenheimer, a senior member of the law firm of
Oppenheimer, Haiblum and Kupfer of New York who has “been identified with
several societies in Jewish philanthropic work” passed away today at his winter
home in St. Petersburg, FL.
1933: Hitler
met the high command of Germany's officer corps for the first time.
Hitler needed the support of the Army. The Prussian officer corps looked
upon Hitler as an untrustworthy upstart. They also feared that he would
replace the army with the SA, his private army of brown shirted thugs.
Hitler would later make a deal with the high command. He would get rid of
the SA and they would support him. This gave rise to the Night of Long
Knives when Hitler literally killed off the SA and the German military machine
embraced Hitler. Neither World War II nor the Final Solution could have
taken place without this alliance of Hitler and the High Command.
1933: In
response to Hindenburg’s appointing Hitler to the post of Chancellor, the
Familienblatt a Jewish weekly newspaper, “declared, that it can hardly
stand the idea, that an outspoken anti-Semite is appointed head of government.”
1933:
“Morgenrot” a WW I German submarine movie starring Camilla Spira, the daughter
of actor Fritz Spria who died in the Ruma concentration camp in 1943, was
released today in Germany three days after Hitler came to power
1934(17th
of Shevat, 5694): Eighty-four-year-old Columbia University Professor Julius
Sachs, a member by birth and marriage of the Goldman-Sachs clan and the founder
of Sachs Collegiate Institute passed away today.
1934: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today for sixty-six-year-old Kiev native Mary
Epstein, one of the earliest stars of the Yiddish theatre who performed with
such greats and Jacob Adler and Boris Thomashefsky who was attacked in 1913 by
“hired gangsters” during a dispute between union and non-union actors who
passed away two days ago.
1934: In a
letter published today Zionist leader Louis Lipsky criticizes an article
published in the Good Gray Lady on January 21 which endorsed the proposal to
create Arab and Jewish cantons as the solution to the problems in
Palestine. The Arab canton would include Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa while
the Jewish canton would be limited to Tel Aviv and a narrow strip of land that
would include the malarial swamps around Lake Hula. Furthermore, Lipsky
contends that the details of the plan which had been published in the Palestine
Arab newspaper, Falstin, violate the spirit and letter of the Balfour
Declaration to a point where it whittles it down to meaninglessness.
1934:
Journalist and Zionist Jacob de Haas is scheduled “to speak at a forum of the
Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst” this evening in Brooklyn.
1934: U.S.
premiere of “Hips, Hips, Hooray!,” a comedy directed by Mark Sandrich (Mark Rex
Goldstein) with a script by Bert Kalmar, Edward Kaufman and Harry Ruby.”
1935: “Red Hot
Tires” a crime drama written by Dore Schary was released in the United States
today by Warner Brothers.
1935: Sam
Winograd, the CCNY grad would become the school’s Athletic Director, led his
basketball team to victory over Temple.
1936: Elfriede
Spiro, a Jewish woman whose family had come from Ostrowo in East Prussia, but
had fled to Breslau when East Prussia became part of Poland after World War I
and then fled to Italy after the rise of Hitler and Italian physicist and Noble
laureate Emilio Gino Segre “were married at the Great Synagogue of Rome” –
creating a marriage that lasted until October of 1970 when Elfriede passed away
and that produced three children (Claudio, Amelia Gertrude Allegra and Fausta
Irene)
1936: In
Washington, D.C., Simon Marks, Sir Herbert Samuel and Lord Bearsted are
scheduled to address a conference being held to deal with the challenge of
settling persecuted European Jews in Palestine.
1936: Today,
the National Conference for Palestine unanimously approved “a complete boycott
of all Nazi goods and services” and a pled to support a campaign designed to
raise three and half million dollars for building “the national home in
Palestine” and providing aid to German Jews seeking to settle there.
1936: A review
of Adventures in Palestine by Marion Rubenstein which provides “a
detailed picture of the new life which is being built in the Jewish communities
in modern Palestine” as seen through the eyes of three little girls who are
refugees from Germany was published today.
1936: Rabbi
Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Conquest of
Troubles” at the Jewish Science Society.
1936: Rabbi
Morton M. Berman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Need Jews Be Communists?”
at the Free Synagogue meeting in Carnegie Hall.
1936: In
Philadelphia, “celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding
of the Uptown Ladies’ Home for the Aged.”
1936: In
Cincinnati, Alfred M. Cohen, president of B’nai B’rith presented his annual
report to the executive committee in which he “declared that Palestine offers
the one substantial hope for the salvation of German Jewry.”
1937:
Birthdate of wrestler Boris Gurevich, the native of Kiev who a gold medal in
Mexico City at the 1968 Summer Olympics.
1937(21st
of Shevat, 5697): Russian native Ida Einstein Abelson, the wife of Abraham
Abelson and the mother of Myer, Hyman and Isadore Abelson passed away today
after which she was buried at Agudath Achim Cemetery in Altoona, PA.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that British troops, assisted by aircraft and
police, started a major anti-terrorist campaign in the hills around Jenin. Two
British soldiers and some 45 Arab brigands were killed. There were also various
shooting incidents in Jerusalem.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that at the Revisionist Conference, held in Prague,
Vladimir Jabotinsky opposed partition and urged Britain to recognize the whole
of Palestine as a Jewish country. "There is plenty of room," he
argued, "for both Jews and Arabs to live together."
1938: In
Warsaw, General Wilczynski, the head of the Physical Education Bureau said that
the “Aryan paragraph recently introduced in the by-laws of several sporting
organizations excluding Jewish clubs from membership in national organizations”
was “unsportsmanlike” and declared it illegal saying that a numerous clause
limiting membership based on population percentage should be used instead.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that The Association of Romanian Architects and
Engineers expelled all Jewish members.
1938: The
Premier of Rumania, Octavian Goga, issued a written statement today in which
“he asserted that anti-Semitism would continue even if he were removed from”
office because anti-Semitism which has been part of the National Christian
Party for the last fifty years is an “enduring feature of Rumanian policy.”
1939: In
Prague, “two far reaching decrees – one aimed at depriving most Jews of their
Czecho-Slovak citizenship and the other at forcing all immigrants to leave the
country within six months – are scheduled to be proclaimed today by the
government” which will have a devastating effect on the 10,000 Jews who have become naturalized
citizens since 1918.
1939: Ten year
old Zvi Dershowitz, the future rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, “along
with his parents Aaron and Ruth and sister Lili” emigrated to New York from
Brno.
1940(23rd
of Shevat, 5700): Forty-one-year-old Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov, the Soviet
journalist and NKVD agent who made the mistake of criticizing Stalin’s purges
was shot today at the same time that “his third wife Maria Osten was also
sentenced and shot.”
1940: U.S.
premiere of “I Take This Woman” starring Hedy Lamar, produced by Louis B. Mayer
with a script by Ben Hecht and music by Artur Guttmann.
1940(23rd
of Shevat, 5700): Seventy-year-old composer and conductor Arnold Volpe, the
husband of Marie Michelson passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/02/03/92864040.pdf
1941: Three
hundred members of the National council of Young Israel met at the Hotel
Commodore today “to celebrate jointly” the birthdays of George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln as well as Tu B’Shevat where they heard Rabbi Joseph Lookstein
warn that Hitler will not be content with keeping his word to “rid Europe of
all Jews” but really mean to destroy all who opposed him regardless of
reiglion.
1942:
Churchill ordered Lord Moyne to release the 793 illegal immigrants on board the
Darien and allow them to settle in Palestine.
1942: “Rabbi
Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland, the national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal
reported today” that 15,000 Palestine Jews “are serving voluntarily with
British forces in many theatres of the war and “that these volunteers were
fighting with ‘special gallantry’ in North Africa.”
1942: Final
broadcast of Orson Welles Theatre which was also known as “Lady Esther Presents
Orson Welles” because of the sponsorship by the Jewish owned cosmetics firm.
1942:
Birthdate of Barry Diller former head of Paramount Studios and founder of Fox
Television Network.
1943(26th
of Shevat, 5703): Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for seventy-two-year-old
Emil Crockin, the husband Sadie Jacobs Crockin whom he married in 1908 after
which he will be buried at the Hebrew Friendship Cemetery in Baltimore, MD.
1943:
Four days before Max Mannheimer's 23rd birthday, he, his mother, father,
brothers Ernst (Arnošt) and Edgar, his 15-year-old sister, Katharina (called
Käthe), and his 22-year-old wife, Eva (née Bock) were arrested and deported to
Auschwitz” where “his parents, sister and wife were taken in the first
selection” and where his brothers Erich and Ernst were murdered shortly
thereafter.
1943: Two days
after he had passed away, funeral services were scheduled to be held for fifty-nine-year-old
Elizabethgrad native and Brooklyn trained lawyer Leon Dashew, the husband
Esther Dashew and father of Ruth, Stanley and Betty Dashew.
1943: Final
surrender of German forces at Stalingrad. This marked the turning point
in the war on thw Eastern Front. Now the Soviets would go on the
offensive. One of the by-products of the Soviet advances over the next
two years would the liberation of several concentration camps including
Auschwitz. The defeat at Stalingrad had a negative impact on Hitler’s
relationship with the General Staff. Ideological steadfastness would now
become more important than military skill.
1943: Two days
after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to held at the Jewish
Memorial Chapel in Brooklyn for Selma Manheimer Rosenwasser, the daughter of
Robert and Getta Manheimer and the wife of Maurice Rosenwasser.
1944:
Thirty-four days its keel was laid down, the SS Morris Sigman was launched
today. The ship was named after Morris Sigman who served as president of
the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union from 1923 to 1928.
1944(8th
of Shevat, 5704): Ernst Alexander died today in Berlin.
1944:
Edward Chodorov's "Decision" premieres in New York City
1944: Allied
planes drop bombs on a German shipping port and accidentally kill Jews on the
Island of Rhodes in the Jewish quarter.
1945: An
unknown number of inmates attempted to escape from Mauthausen concentration
camp. Located in Austria, Mauthausen was opened in 1938. It was
liberated in May, 1945. As to the risks and consequences of escaping
consider the following account from a camp survivor, ““When someone tried to
escape from Mauthausen during the winter, people were forced to march to the
camp center where they were forced to stand outside all night in their ragged
clothing. Other times when the person who tried to escape was caught, during
the winter they would pour water over him and force him to stay out in the
freezing cold weather.” When I asked my grandfather if his father ever tried to
escape, he replied, “No, he didn’t escape - nor did he try. There was
practically no way to escape from those camps, and if they did escape, then the
Sudeten people would chase them through the fields. Most of the time they would
catch them.”
1945(19th
of Shevat, 5705): Erev Shabat, nineteen-year-old Salomon Rottenberg died at the
Melk Concentration Camp in Austria.
1946: The Jewish Chronicle published the
citation appointing Captain Newman a Member of the Order of the British Empire”
for “his courage and devotion to duty during two clandestine missions in
Occupied France.”
1947: Rabbi
Max Maccoby of the Free Synagogue of Mt. Vernon, NY and Rabbi Edward E. Klein
of the Free Synagogue officiated at the funeral of 62-year old attorney David
Louis Podell who was eulogized by presidential adviser Samuel I. Rosenman for
his years of service that included serving as “a Special Attorney General in
charge of anti-trust cases.”
1948: In a
strange twist of fate in Warsaw, the Polish government which sought to expel
all of its Jews in the 1930’s because they were not part of the new economy
“has introduced new passport regulations designed to halt the steady emigration
of Polish Jews” who number about 90,000 as compared to their pre-war total of
three and a half million.
1948: In New
York City, Charles H. Rosenberg, a
surgeon specializing in otolaryngology and his wife, Florence (née Rich), a
dietitian gave birth to Ina Rosenbeg, the wife of Jeffrey Garten who gained
fame as Ina Rosenberg Garten “an American author and the host of the “Barefoot
Contessa.”
1949: The
Israeli Government in Tel Aviv announced that West Jerusalem was no longer
‘occupied territory’ but an integral part of Israel under civil administration.
1949:
Immigration fever reached its height with approximately one thousand new
immigrants a day reaching the shores of Israel.
1949:
Birthdate of Brent Spiner, the actor who plays Commander Data on “Star Trek.”
1949:
"The British military administration in Libya allowed Libyan Jews to
travel to Israel. This brought an end to travel restrictions that had
been in force since the start of the Israel War of Independence.
According to Haim Abravanel "on the first day of legal emigration: 'It was
snowing for the first time in Tripoli and under the white flakes blown by the
wind thousands of poor Jewish wretches ran towards the street where the polices
were...to get their passports at last" and sold all of their possessions
including "furniture, businesses assets and work tools." In the
next few days, 8,000 passports were issued to Jews who had no idea how they
would reach Israel.
1950(15th of
Shevat, 5710): Tu B'Shevat
1951: “The
Steel Helmet” a Korean War movie directed and produced by Samuel Fuller was
released today in the United States.
1953: Richard “was
the music director on Action in the Afternoon, an American western television
series that aired live on CBS” for the first time today.
1953: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Jordan, following a border clash during which
an Israeli patrol expelled marauders, accused Israel of "aggression” and
invoked the Jordanian-British Treaty of 1948 for protection.
1953: The
Jerusalem Post reported that the Soviet media embarked on a concentrated
“spy and saboteurs hunt," and a "merciless struggle" against the
Ukrainian "Jewish bourgeois nationalism and Zionism." (One thing
that was left our during the memorial ceremonies commemorating the
liberation of Auschwitz last week was any mention of the virulent
ant-Semitism that gripped the Soviet Union almost immediately after the
war. If Stalin had not died, the fate of Russian Jewry would have been
much different,)
1954: President
Eisenhower reports detonation of 1st H-bomb. The debate over whether or
not to build the H-bomb featured two famous Jewish physicists; each leading a
different faction. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb opposed
the building of the H-bomb. Edward Teller, who was Oppenheimer’s junior
and not nearly as illustrious a scientist led those in favor of building the
bomb. Teller’s side won and the rest is history.
1955: Pinchas
Lavon offered to resign today as Israeli Minister of Defense after bitter
disagreements with David Ben Gurion, chief of staff Moshe Dayan, and Director
General of his office, Shimon Peres. What became known as the Lavon affair
concerned a controversial Israeli operation within Egypt. The question of who
had prior knowledge was to plague the Israeli political establishment and Ben
Gurion in particular for years to come. The Lavon Affair and its investigation
commission eventually led to the fall of the government and brought about Ben
Gurion's resignation in 1963.
1957(1st
of Adar I, 5717): Parashat Terumah; Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1957(1st
of Adar I, 5717): Seventy-seven-year-old Ann Bressel the daughter of Rabbu
Elias Hikowitz and Riva Rebecca Hilkowitz, the wife of Abraham Nachman Bressler
and the mother of Riva and Elya Bressler passed away today.
1957: The UN adopted a resolution calling for
Israeli troops to leave Egypt. This was the beginning of the end of the
1956 Sinai Campaign. This resolution marked one of the few times in the
Cold War when the U.S. and the Soviet Union found common ground. The
Eisenhower Administration resurrected the career of Nasser, the Egyptian
dictator by forcing the Israelis to back down. The Americans would do the
same to the British and the French in what would be an example of the law of unintended
consequences. The Americans told their two European Allies that the
American nuclear umbrella would not cover them if they did not give into the
Russians. The French gave in, but swore they would never find themselves
in this situation again. This was the driving force behind the French
development of their own nuclear weapons and eventual departure from
NATO. As we have said many times before, Jewish history takes place on
the stage of world history.
1959(24th
of Shevat, 5719): Eighty-year-old Bialystok born Yiddish playwright Ossip
Dymow, the graduate of the Imperial Academy of Forestry in St. Petersburg whose
real name was Joseph Perlman who had one daughter, Mrs. Isabel Sakier with his
wife Anna passed away today.
https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dymov_Osip
1959: Today,
as the segregationist sought to enforce “massive resistance” to school integration
“four Negro children entered Stratford High School” in Arlington, VA without incident
thanks to the efforts of David L. Krupsaw, the Chairman o the Arlington County
Board.
https://projectdaps.org/exhibits/show/daps_exhibit/item/178
1959: “The
Pride and The Passion” a big screen epic sent during the Napoleonic wars in
Spain directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, co-starring Theodore Bikel as
“General Jouvet” and with an opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass was
released today in Finland.
1960:
Birthdate of Robert Smigel, a comedy writer, performer, and puppeteer best
known as the voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a character he created for Late
Night with Conan O'Brien and writer for SNL for twenty years.
1960: David
Susskind produced “Juno and the Paycock” broadcast as “The Play of the Week”
co-starring Walter Matthau in the role of “Joxer Daly.”
1961: Today “a
German translation of the charges against him was handed to Adolf Eichmann” who
is “accused of ordering millions of Jews slain under the Nazis during WW II” on
the same day that he conferred with Robert Servatius, his defense attorney from
Cologne.
1961: “Leaders
of Vienna’s Jewish community accused Austrian authorities today of failing to
prosecute former Nazis for mass executions of Jews and other war crimes.”
1962: “Swifty
the Great” published today provides a profile of Swifty Lazar, the super-agent
who beats out MCA, William Morris and General Artists for clients on a regular
business.
1963 (8th
of Shevat, 5723): Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel passed away.
1965: In
Chicago, “Robinn Schulman, a nurse whose family owned the company that
manufactured Shane Toothpaste (now known as AloeSense), and Joseph Steiner, a
figurative painter and art instructor, David Steiner, a Zionist and filmmaker
who died in a bus crash in Uganda after which he was posthumously ordained as a
Rabbi.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-filmmaker-david-steiner-killed-in-uganda-bus-crash/
1966:
“Israel’s new Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, immediately accepted an invitation
that was extended today “by Canada’s Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson to
confer with the Dominion leader at Ottawa.”
1966: “A
spokesman for the John Birch Society today denied the Society fostered
anti-Semitism as charged by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League…” claiming
that “many our members are Jewish.” (JTA)
1966: “Wait
Until Dark” for which Karl Bernstein served as “Central Press Representative”
opened on Broadway today at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
1967: “Court
Martial,” the 20th episode of the first season of Star Trek
co-starring William Shatner as “Captain Kirk” and Leonard Nimoy as “Mr. Spock”
and written by Don M. Mankiewicz was broadcast for the first time today.
1968: Today,
the ill-fated INS Dakar was scheduled to enter her home port; a rendezvous she
did not keep.
1969: In Tel
Aviv, parents of “Yemenite-Jewish descent” gave birth to Sharon Cohen, the pop
singer known as Dana International who was the winner of the Eurovision Song
Contest 1998 in Birmingham with the song "Diva".
1970: The
funeral of Frederick Cohen, son of Isidore and Leah Cohen is scheduled to take
place this afternoon at The Riverside.
1970: The
funeral of Abraham Cahan, husband of Flora Cahan and father of Sanford Cahan
and Marjorie Rosenbloom is scheduled to take place this morning at The
Riverside.
1972(17th
of Shevat, 5732): Fifty-eight-year-old WW II Army Air Corps veteran and
department store executive Herbert Marcus, Jr. one of the sons of the
co-founder of Dallas’ legendary Neiman-Marcus passed away today.
1972: The
funeral for eighty-eight-year-old Czechoslovakia native and NYU trained
attorney Samuel Berger, the World War II veteran and Republican political
activist who was a noted art collector and the uncle of painter Adolph
Gottlieb, passed away yesterday is scheduled to be held this morning at Temple
Emanu-El in Manhattan.
1972: After
having premiered in New York City and after having been released in the United
Kingdom in January, “A Clockwork Orange,” directed and produced by Stanley
Kubrick who also wrote the screenplay and featuring Miriam Karlin was released
today in the United States.
1974: As
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sought to bring a truce to the Middle East,
Syrian guns shelled Israeli military position and civilian positions near the
Golan Heights.
1974:
Barbra Streisand's 1st #1 hit, "The Way We Were."
1975:
Two people were injured in a terrorist bus bombing in Jerusalem.
1976(1st
of Adar I, 5736): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1976(1st
of Adar I, 5736): Eighty-year-old London born pianist and composer Maurice
Jacobson, OBE< the chairman of the music publishing firm of J. Curwen and
Sons, the husband of Constance Suzannnah Wassserzug with whom he had two
children – Michael and Julian -- passed away today after which he was buried at
Golders Green Jewish Cemetery in London.
https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Jacobson-Maurice.htm
1977:
After their F-4E Phantom II was hit by an Israeli artillery shell David
Noy and Ilan Erster were recovered after having ejected from
their aircraft.
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Europe was on an alert as Arab terrorists
boasted of having poisoned Jaffa oranges.
1978: “The
Boys in Company C” an early Vietnam era war film co-starring Michael Lembeck
was released in the United States today.
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli seamen extended their two-week strike
to ships with vital cargoes.
1978: The
first staging of International Stud part of a collection of three plays by
Harvey Fierstein opened today at La MaMa, E.T.C., an Off-Off-Broadway theater,
where it ran for two weeks
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that the indirect behind-the-scenes
Israeli-Egyptian negotiations and the face-to-face military negotiations came
to a halt with both sides remaining far apart in their search for a political.
1980: Sherry
Lansing was named president of 20th Century Fox Productions today making her
the first woman to head production at a major movie studio.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/02/1980/sherry-lansing-becomes-first-woman-head-major-movie-studio
1980 (15th
of Shevat, 5740): Tu B’Shvat
1980 (15th
of Shevat, 5740): William H Stein, US biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Chemistry in 1972 passed away at the age of 68.
1985: Neil
Simon’s “Biloxi Blues” closed out its world premiere run which had begun on
December at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.
1987(3rd
of Shevat, 5747): Seventy-eight-year-old American record executive Alfred Lion
passed away today.
https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=112
1987: A
memorial service is scheduled to be held in NYC for Grete Mosheim, a leading
Berlin and West German stage actress whose husbands included actor Oscar
Homollka and financier Howard Gould and who had fled Germany when Hitler came
to power.
1988: In
Randolph, VT, “actress Lindsay Crouse” who was Buddhist and playwright David
Mamet who was Jewish gave birth actress Zosia Russell Mamet, the actress who
identifies with her father’s Judaism.
1988: In
Itamar Yitro Asheri and his wife gave birth to Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri who was
murdered by terrorists belonging to the PRC in 2006.
1989(27th of
Sh'vat, 5749): Marie Syrkin, author, editor, poet, teacher, and outspoken
activist for Israel, died at the age of eighty-nine.
1991(18th
of Shevat, 5751): Parashat Yitro
1991(18th
of Shevat, 5751): Sixty-nine-year-old Howie Rader, who played basketball with
his twin brother Lenny at Long Island University before serving in WW II and
going on to a career in the pros passed a way today.
1991(18th
of Shevat, 5751: Glasgow native and University of Glasgow trained metallurgical
chemist Monty Finniston, the son of Robert Finniston whose “family were of
Russian Jewish origin” who “became chairman of British Steel Corporation in
1973 and who was “knighted in the same year” after which he was known as Sir
Harold Montague "Monty" Finniston passed away today.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.1992.0007
1991: New York
Mayor David Dinkins was scheduled to leave on his trip to Israel today.
The trip is designed to show support for Israel during the Persian Gulf War.
1992: A
theater performance benefiting the Tel Aviv Foundation, which helps Russian
artists settling in the Tel Aviv area, was held at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music this evening "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," an
adaptation of the Tom Stoppard play by Joseph Brodsky, the poet laureate of the
United States, was performed in Russian by a Soviet émigré troupe, the Gesher
Theater Company, with simultaneous translation into English. A reception
honoring Mayor Shlomo Lahat of Tel Aviv followed the performance.
1993(11th
of Shevat, 5753): Eighty-four-year-old Lithuanian born American violinist
Alexander Schneider who was a member of the Budapest String Quartet passed away
today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/04/arts/alexander-schneider-violon-virtuoso-dies-at-84.html
1994(21st
of Shevat, 5754): German born Dutch photographer Annemie Wolff whose husband,
architect Helmuth Wolff committed suicide as a part of a failed suicide pact
and who compiled a photographic of Dutch suffering under the Nazis passed away
today in the United States.
1994(21st
of Shevat, 5754): Ninety-two-year-old Bella Adler, the German daughter of Clara
and Emil Worms and the wife of Leo Adler passed away today.
1995(2nd
of Adar I, 5755): Eighty-six-year-old physicist and radiobiologist Tikvah Alper
who overcame prejudice against women and Jews and who opposed Apartheid in her
native South Africa passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-tikvah-alper-1610123.html
http://cshlwise.org/wise-wednesdays/2017/8/23/tikvah-alper
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Alper-Tikvah
1997: The
New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Behind
the Oval Office Winning the Presidency in the Nineties by Dick
Morris, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman by Jonah
Raskin and Arnon Grunberg’s Blue Mondays about “a jaded young Jewish man
gets kicked out of high school and spends his days in bars, getting fired from
jobs, rejecting his parents and his religion, and dropping most of his money on
whores before deciding to become one himself.”
1997(25th
of Shevat, 5757): Ninety-one-year-old Sanford Meisner the actor and acting
teacher who founded the Meisner/Carville School of Acting passed away today.
1998(6th
of Shevat, 5758): Eighty-six physicist Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber passed away
today. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldhaber-gertrude-scharff
2000: “Israel
announced today that it would recall its ambassador to Vienna if President
Thomas Klestil of Austria authorized a new coalition government that included
the rightist Freedom Party led by Jorg Haider.”
2001: Today, “days
before Israelis vote, Bill Clinton appeared on television and indirectly
endorsed the underdog, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, by praising his peacemaking.”
2002(27th
of Shevat, 5762): Parashat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim
2002: It was
reported today that Palestinian officials are claiming that Prime Minister
Sharon met secretly this week with “three Palestinian leaders acting as
emissaries for Yasir Arafat.”
2003: The
New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Welcome to Heavenly Heights
by Risa Miller and What I Saw Reports From Berlin, 1920-1933 by Joseph
Roth; translated with an introduction by Michael Hoffman
2004: Israel
killed a leader of Islamic Jihad and three other terrorists in a Gaza raid.
2004: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Ira Kaufman Chapel in
Southfield for “noted scholar of Jewish at and history” and refugee from Nazi
Germany 80-year-old Rabbi Joseph Guttman, the husband of Marilyn Gutmann with
whom he had two children, Sharon and David and professor of Art History at
Wayne State University who served as a chaplain and interpreter for the U.S
Army during WW II and whose published works included Sacred Images: Studies
in Jewish Art from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and Beauty in Holiness:
Studies in Jewish Ceremonial Art.
2005: Prime
Minister Sharon and President Abbas who were scheduled to meet this week in
Jerusalem agreed today to meet in Egypt instead where they will be joined
President Hosni Mubarak.
2006 (4
Shevat, 5766): Paratrooper Yosef Goodman, a member of the elite Maglan unit
died in a training accident. Goodman aged 20, originally from New York, lived
in Efrat with his parents and siblings. The price of a Jewish state is indeed
expensive.
2007: Israeli
author David Grossman was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
2007: The
Jewish Daily Forward published “The Joys of Cedar Rapids.” http://www.forward.com/articles/10009/
2008(26th
of Shevat, 5768): Eighty-two-year-old Joshua Lederberg who “was just 33 years
old when he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering
that bacteria can mate and exchange genes” passed away today.
2008: In Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, at Temple Judah kicks off the weekend with Super Bowl
Shabbat. The traditional minyan combines Tefillah and Tailgating by
observing Shabbat Mishpatim followed by a Kiddush featuring pizza and assorted
football munchies.
2009: At NYU,
the David Project Center for Jewish Leadership cosponsors “Tribalism in the
Middle East,” a lecture by Mordechai Kedar, professor of Arabic and Middle East
Studies at Bar-Ilan University and an expert on Arabic and Muslim Society.
2009 (8th
of Shevat, 5769): Eighty-nine year old Ralph Kaplowitz, who appeared as a
member of the Knicks in what is considered the National Basketball
Association’s first game in 1946, when Jewish players were often showered with
anti-Semitic catcalls, passed away at his home in Floral Park, Queens today. (As
reported by Vincent Mallozzi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/sports/basketball/15kaplowitz.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2009: Opening
session of the 9th annual Herzliya Conference
2010: Members
of the Little Rock Jewish Community are scheduled to meet at The Center of
Jewish Life under the auspices of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment and join their
co-religionists around the world in the second JLI course titled Portraits in
Leadership: Timeless Tales for Inspired Living.
2010: The
Jewish Community Center in Manhattan is scheduled to show “Una Storia Romana”
(An Italian Story), a documentary that centers on the round-up of Jews in Rome
in 1943 and Jewish attempts to raise the 50 kilos of gold that German demanded
as ransom.
2010: Maggie
Anton, author of the trilogy about Rashi’s Daughters is scheduled to speak at
The Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Ontario.
2010: A number
of Israel’s leading “Wikipedes” came to the Knesset today, where they reaped
the laurels of their efforts, but also leveled a certain amount of criticism
toward a lack of government cooperation with their efforts to compile a free
online Hebrew-language encyclopedia
2010: First
broadcast of PBS’s service documentary “Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness”
which examines how Melville J. Herskovits a Jew who grew up in El Paso, TX came
to be considered “the inventor of African American Studies.
2010:
Ninety-one-year-old Donald Wiseman, the “biblical scholar, archaeologist and
Professor of Assyriology at the University of London” passed away today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/religion-obituaries/7252002/Professor-Donald-Wiseman.html
2010: Security
forces searched Israel's coastline and closed beaches in the south today after
two barrels of explosives washed up on the shores of Ashkelon and Ashdod, north
of Gaza.
2011: The 92nd
St Y is scheduled to present “The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry: Pivotal
Figures from a Heroic Era” during which political advisor Richard Perle and Gal
Beckerman, author of When They Come For Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle
to Save Soviet Jewry, are scheduled to discuss the dramatic Cold War period
when American Jewry first became politicized as Jews and Jews behind Russia's
Iron Curtain took grave risks in order to win their freedom and emigrate to
Israel or the United States.
2011: Mike
Brown signed a three-year extension with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
2011: Esther Friedman, matriarch of a pro-active Zionist family
from Netanya and Jerusalem wh died last night at age 94 after several years of
serious illness, was buried today on the Mount of Olives.
2011: The
Knesset Constitution Committee approved a modified version of a bill today that
would allow some small communities to maintain admissions committees to screen
candidates for residency.
2012:
Professor James Kugel is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “In the Valley
of the Shadow: Some Thoughts on Serious Illness at Shearith Israel in New York
City.
2012: YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a lecture by Miryem-Khaye
Seigel entitled “The Broder Singers: Forerunners of the Yiddish Theater.”
2012: About
200,000 missiles are aimed at Israel at any given time, a top Israel Defense
Forces officer said today, adding that Iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons
was solely dependent on the will of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
2012: During
his visit to Gaza today, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon urged “the people
from Gaza to stop firing rockets into the Israeli side. Indiscriminate killing
of people, civilians, is not acceptable, for whatever reasons. Eight rockets
were fired into Israel on the eve of Ban’s visit, the IDF said.
2012(10th
of Shevat, 5772): Seventy-year-old Zalman King, “a filmmaker who mixed artistic
aspiration, a professed empathy for female sexuality and gauzy photography to
bring soft-core pornography to cable television” passed away today. (As
reported by Douglas Martin)
2013: Israel’s
No. 1 box-office hit, “The World Is Funny” is scheduled to be shown at the
opening of The 13th Annual Broward County Jewish Film Festival, at the
Posnack JCC, in Davie
2013: The
Israel String Quartet is scheduled to perform two string quartets by Beethoven
at the Eden-Tami Music Center.
2013: As the בולטימור רייבנס prepare
to square off against the סן פרנסיסקו 49, the traditional
minyan at Temple Judah is scheduled to host its annual Super Bowl Shabbat
service.
2013: The
Syrian state broadcasters showed the aftermath images of last week's alleged
Israeli air strike on the sprawling Jamraya site north-west of Damascus.
2013: The
Los Angeles Times reported that the top contenders in the city’s mayoral
race “share strong ties to the Jewish community.” (As reported by Seema Mehta)
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jewish-20130202,0,4056368,print.story
2013: Turkey’s
foreign minister blasted Syrian President Bashar Assad for not responding to an
alleged Israeli strike on targets in Syria. (As reported by Yoel Goldman)
2014: The
New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including An Officer and a Spy, a
novel about the Dreyfus Affair by Robert Harris and Trieste, a novel
that focuses on the fate of Jews of this city that has belonged to so many
nations by Dasa Drndic as well as a “conversation” with Gary Shteyngart, author
of the recently published Little Failure.
2014: Among
the ads scheduled to be shown during the Super Bowl is a commercial for “Noah,”
director Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic treatment of the “the righteous man in
his generation.” (It will be interesting to see how his version squares with
what he learned growing up Jewish in Brooklyn)
2014: In the
UK, scheduled final showing of “Children of the Sun” a documentary about “the
children who were part of Israel’s first kibbutzim.”
2014: It was
announced on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” today “that Bill Kristol
would be a contributor for ABC News and to that program
2014: “Mike Flanagan,
a former British soldier who smuggled two Cromwell tanks to the Haganah in
1948, was buried in the Sha’ar HaAmakim cemetery alongside his wife and son
today. (As reported by Marissa Newman)
2014:
“threeASFOUR: MER KA BA” is scheduled to close today.
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/three-as-four
2014:
“Chagall: Love, War and Exile” is scheduled to close today
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chagall-love-war-exile
2014: Ynet
News reported today that “Rabbi Mordechai “Motti” Elon, an Israeli Modern
Orthodox leader, will not appeal his conviction on two charges of sexually
assaulting a minor.”
2014: With
Israeli politicians pouncing on US Secretary of State John Kerry for allegedly
encouraging a boycott against Israel, the State Department issued a statement
today urging that Kerry's words be portrayed "accurately."
2015: In Miami
Beach, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a lecture by Genie Milgrom, “How
to Find and Prove your Jewish Ancestry from Catholic Inquisition Sources.”
2015: In New
York, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Echoes of the Borscht
Belt” featuring contemporary photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld.
2015: During
an awards ceremony today where the IDF honored many of those who fought “in
last summer’s conflict in Gaza” a Distinguished Service Medal was awarded
posthumously to twenty-four-year-old Lt. Eitan Fund “who famously rushed into a
tunnel to try and stop the kidnapping of Hadar Goldin during an ambush near
Rafah on August 1, 2014.”
2015, “Seven
Stories Press published Art Shay's final book, My Florence, a picture book
chronicling his late wife Florence's life in 20th-century Chicago.”
2015: Pianist
Roman Rabinovich and Violinist Itamar Zorman are scheduled to perform with
Jupiter Chamber Players at the Good Shepherd Church in New York City.
2015: Anat
Gov’s play “Oh God” is scheduled to open at the JCC Manhattan.’
2015(13th
of Shevat, 5775): Ninety-two-year-old screenwriter Stewart Stern passed away
today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2016: “The
Metropolitan Klezmer” is scheduled to perform at the 92nd Street Y.
2016: FX
broadcast the first episode of “The People versus O.J. Simpson: American Crime
Story” based on The Run of His Life: The People versus O.J. Simpson by Jeffery
Toobin.
2016(23rd
of Shevat, 5776): Ninety-year-old breast feeding advocate Dana Raphael passed
away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2016: An
Off-Broadway revival of “Buried Child” co-starring Nat Wolff is scheduled to
begin today.
2016: The 92nd
Street Y is scheduled to host “Trials and Error: The NFL Concussion
Settlement.”
2017:
Journalist Paul Martin is scheduled to speak at today’s Learn and Lunch hosted
by the Oxford University Jewish Society.
2017: Coe College
is scheduled to host the first session of “The Conflicted Jewish World of Chaim
Potok” under the leadership of award-winning Physics Professor Steve Feller.
2017: Lebanon
is scheduled to begin an auction for energy rights in an area of the
Mediterranean Sea that is claimed by Israel.
2017: It was
reported today that “the White House issued an unexpected statement appealing
to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements
beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank” saying that
such expansion, “may not be helpful in
achieving” the goal of peace.”
2017: Richard
A. Shweder is the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human
Development at the University of Chicago, David Makovsky is the Ziegler
Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, Mark Yudof is Board Chair of
the Academic Engagement Network and Milan Chatterjee is one of two recipients
of the American Jewish Committee’s inaugural Campus Courage Awards, are
scheduled to take part in a panel discussion about BDS on College Campuses at
the Streicker Center
2017: Susan
Bachrach, Curator of the special exhibition The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to take part in a
discussion “Sports and Politics, Then and Now” at the California African
American Museum
2017: The
Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host the opening “Black Panther Got
Loose from the Bronx Zoo: An Exhibition by Ido Michaeli.”
http://www.ajhs.org/black-panther-got-loose-bronx-zoo-exhibition-ido-michaeli#overlay-context=user
2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to
host a Kabbalat Shabbat service followed by dinner at the beginning of Parents’
Shabbat.
2018: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host
its Tu B’Shevat Seder and Soup Seder.
2019: Limmud Helsinki is scheduled to begin today.
2019: Today’s observance of Ground Hog Day can include a
viewing of the corny cult classic “Ground Hog Day,” directed by and co-produced
by Harold Ramis who co-authored the screenplay with Danny Rubin.
2019: Limmud FSU St.
Petersburg is scheduled to continue for a second day.
2019(27th of
Shevat, 5779): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit of “Joseph Sanalbo who was
burned at the stake in Rome” today.
http://www.aish.com/dijh/Shevat_27.html
2019(27th of Shevat, 5779): Parashat Mishpatim;
2020: The New York
Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including Adults and Others Children by
Miriam Cohen, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler
Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, Slaying
Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save
America’s Schools by Diane Ravitch, What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and
She by Dennis Baron and The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viiertel and
Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood by Donna Rifkind.
2020: The Chaplains of the Oxford University Jewish Society
are scheduled to host a “pub meetup” at the Royal Oak as everybody helps to
“build our Jewish grad community.”
2020: In London, UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host a
screening of “The Painted Bird” which focus on a nameless Jewish boy, separated
from his parents, wandering “through war –ravaged Eastern Europe”.
2020: In New Orleans, at Tulane University is scheduled to
host the opening session Zionism Then A Now” a symposium organized by Dr. Brian
Horowtiz.
2020: The Center For Jewish History, AJHS, CCNY, the Alumni
Association of CCNY and CCNY are scheduled to present “The Jewish Harvard and a
World of Ideas” which is part one of three part series on City College of New
York.
2020: In Berkley, CA, Congregation Netivot Shalom is
scheduled to a “representative of IsraAid talking about its working in world
crisis and disaster spots.
2020: In New Jersey, The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth
County is scheduled to host a screening “Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg.”
2020: The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to
host “Talking to your Teens about Relationships,” “a discussion with clinical
experts Dr. Hadassah Fromson and R. Emily Simon.”
2020: In the United States, observance of Groundhog Day
which was theme and a name of weird comedy directed and co-produced by Harold
Ramis who also co-authored the screenplay.
2020: The Kansas City Chiefs, featuring outstanding
offensive lineman Mitchell Schwartz are scheduled to take on the San Francisco
49ers in the Super Bowl.
2021: “Rabbi Sharon Marcus is scheduled to lead Torah study
through a women’s lens this morning at a sisterhood event at Park Synagogue in
Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike.
2021: The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival and
other Jewish organizations are scheduled to present a cooking demonstration by
cookbook author and food blogger Danielle Renov and the 2016 documentary “In
Search of Israeli Cuisine.”
2021: In New Orleans, the National Council of Jewish Women
Board Meeting is scheduled to take place this evening.
2021: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled
to presents “Tell Your Sephardi-Mizrahi Story” With award-winning author Gila
Green
2021: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater
Boston is scheduled to present online “Equity in Education in the COVID-19
Era.”
2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host artist Tobi
Kahn and Rabba Wendy Amsellem as they “explore Rabbi Yehuda haNasi’s story in
both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds” which is part of “The Barbara C.
Freedman Artists’ Beit Midrash” lectures
2021: As part of the of Sonoma State University’s annual
public series, All the Horrors of War author Bernice Lerner is scheduled
to give a talk titled “The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen.”
2020: Today, “the U.S. Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas,
a Cuban-born son of a Holocaust survivor, as Homeland Security secretary.”
2022(1st Adar I, 5782): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
2022: Temple Emanu El’s Advocacy Committee is scheduled to host
“In Good Hands,” an event to learn about the forming of EDWINS Leadership &
Restaurant Institute with founder, CEO & president Brandon E. Chrowstowski.
2022: “Real to Reel Film Series with the Federation of
Florida’s Gulf Coast is scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald” followed
by a lecture of Aviva Kempner.
2022: In Little Rock, AR, The Center for Jewish Life, under
the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host the first session
of Meditation from Sinai: Mindful Awareness and Divine Spirituality to Help You
Think, Feel, and Live More Deeply.”
2022: As part of “New Works Wednesdays” The American
Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “Jews of Ottoman Izmir – A Modern
History” during with Dina Danon will deliver a lecture that tells the story of
a long-overlooked Ottoman Jewish community in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
2022: Based on previously published information as of
today, while “a wave of coronavirus infections fueled by the Omicron strain” may
have peaked in Israel, “another millions more could get infected before it
subsides…”
2023: An artistic first in Israel’s southern Negev desert is scheduled to take place in the Bedouin
city of Rahat which is scheduled to hold
a film festival presenting works by Middle East and Mediterranean filmmakers.
2023: The Quad City Cinema is scheduled to host the final
screening of “The Band’s Visit.”
2023: The JWA film club is scheduled to host a screening of
“Little White Lie” directed by Lacey Schwartz Delgado.
2023: Rabbi Uri Pilochowski, the Zionist Education
Initiative Senior Education for Nefsh B’Nefesh is scheduled to teach the first
session of “Zionism Today, “a series of interactive discussions that will
examine issues facing Zionists today and inspire participants to think and
share their thoughts on the course material.”
2023: In a family affair, Rabbi Feivel and Cantor Abbie are
scheduled to led the morning minyan at Temple Judea.
2023: The Belzberg Program in Israel Studies at the
University of Calgary and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis
University. With the collaboration of the American Sefardi Federation, Centro
Sefarad Israel, and the International Network for Jewish Thought are scheduled to
present “The Sephardi-Moorish Atlantic: The Two 1492s and the Multi-Chronotope
of Orientalism” as part of the “Sephardi Modernities Seminar Series.”
2023: In Israel, the winter weather, including
“thunderstorms, sleet, strong winds and cold temperatures” which began on
January 30 is scheduled to continue today. (As reported by Danny Roup, Israel
Moskovitz, Eitan Glickman, Raanan Ben-Zur, Gilad Carmeli)
2023: At Tulane, a conference led by Dr. Brian Horowitz on
“Zionism, Then and Now Zionist thought and practice in Eastern Europe before
and after the founding of the State of Israel” is scheduled to begin today.
2023: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present David
Brent as he unravels “the crucial details of ancient Jewish history and
tradition during the time of the Maccabean Kings, Roman conquest of Judea and
more!”
2024: In Palo Alto, CA, Congregation Kol Emeth is scheduled
to present “French Shabbat with dinner prepared by the French community.”
2024: In Concord, MA, Congregation Kerem Shalom is scheduled
to “is scheduled to honor the beginning of Jewish Disability Awareness and
Inclusion Month (JDAIM) at its Erev Shabbat service.”
2024: As February 2nd begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 119 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.)
