This Day, January 2, In Jewish History, by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
January 2
438: Empress Eudocia, the wife of Byzantine Emperor Theodius II, who
spent the last years of her life in the Holy Land allowed the Jews to return to
Jerusalem and pray at the site of the Temple at the same time her husband was
“announcing legislation to exclude Jews from all political and military
functions” in his Empire. Aelia Eudocia, a pagan Greek aristocrat who converted
to Christianity in 421 when she married the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II,
was declared ‘Augusta’ by her husband on this date in 423, a title that
elevated her power in the royal court. In 438, Eudocia Augusta journeyed to
Jerusalem, where she would ultimately live the final years of her life after
being banished by Theodosius five years later. On this first visit, while he
was back home announcing legislation to exclude Jews from all political and
military functions in lands under Byzantine rule, she arranged for Jews to be
able to pray at the site of the Jerusalem Temple for the first time since its
destruction by Rome in 70 CE. Her action, however, encouraged the migration of
several thousand Jews to Jerusalem in hope of seeing the city resurrected as a
Jewish homeland. They were subjected to stoning and stabbing by Christian
monks, who killed several of the Jews. The eighteen monks who were brought to
trial were acquitted when witnesses testified that the killing stones had
fallen from heaven. “At her palace in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem,” according to
De Imperatoribus Romanis, “[Eudocia] continued to receive petitions and sought
to alleviate the persecution of the Jews, in spite of the unpopularity of such
a stance. With her wealth she endowed the city of Jerusalem with a new set of
walls and erected numerous other buildings throughout the Near East.”
“Byzantine history offers few so strange or picturesque stories as that of the
little pagan Athenian who, after having been mistress of the civilized world,
ended her days as an ardent mystic, almost a nun, by the tomb of Christ.
Eudocia wrote much poetry. As empress she composed a poem in honour of her
husband’s victory over the Persians; later at Jerusalem she wrote religious
verse…”
1012: Jewish mourners were attacked at a funeral in Egypt.
1235: In Germany “a Christian body was found between” Lauda and
Tauberbischofsheim which resulted in three days of attacks by mobs in both
cities during which “eight leaders from both towns were put on trial, tortured,
convicted and executed. (As reported by “The History of the Jewish People”)
1266Conquest of Murcia (1265–66): James the Conqueror laid siege to
Murcia.
1412: Paul of Burgos, the Jewish convert to Catholicism drafted an edict
as the Spanish chancellor which was promulgated in the name of the regent, the
widowed queen mother Catherine of Lancaster, at Valladolid today, was the
conversion of the Jews through twenty-four articles which “was designed to
separate the Jews entirely from the Christians, to paralyze their commerce, to
humiliate them, and to expose them to contempt, requiring them either to live
within the close quarters of their ghetto or to accept baptism.:
1481: An edict was handed down in Spain calling for
all persons to aid in apprehending and accusing suspects who are guilty of
heresy. This was said to be issued because persons of nobility in Andalusia
were not true to the teachings of the Church.
1481: The officers of the Inquisition issued an edict to the governor of
Cadiz and other officials to seize the possessions of the Marranos and to turn
these conversos over to them or suffer excommunication, confiscation of their
goods and deprivation of public office.
1481: After having established “their court in the Dominican convent of
St. Paul of Seville “issued their first edict by which they ordered the rest of
several “New Christians as they were styled, who were strongly suspected of
heresy and the sequestration of their property, denouncing the pain of
excommunication against those who favored or abetted them.”
1492: The Reconquista was completed as the emirate of Granada, the last
Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrendered to the forces under the command of
Ferdinand and Isabella. The
fall of Granada added even more Jews to Catholic Spain. Under the terms of
surrender, the Jewish inhabitants were promised protection by the King and
Queen. Within a few months these most Catholic Monarchs would break their word
when Ferdinand ordered “the razing of the Jewish quarter. Nine months from the fall of Granada, the
Sephardim will be banned from their ancestral homeland.
1554:
A mandate promulgated today ordered
that the Jews should leave the territory of Lower Austria at the end of six
months.
1661(2nd of Shevat): Rabbi Menahem Mendel ben Abraham Krochmal, author of
Zemah Zedek passed away
1642: Birthdate of Mehmed IV during whose reign as Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, Safed, the home to numerous Jewish mystics and sages “was destroyed by
Arabs” and the Jews of Yemen were banished to Mawza Desert. At the same time he appointed Moses Beben as ambassador to
Sweden and when Moses passed away, the Sultan appointed his son Yehuda to serve
in his place. At the time, Sweden was a
major European power. Mehmed is also the
Sultan who dealt with Sabbait Zivi, giving him the choice of conversion or death.
1711: In New York City, Abraham Haim de Lucena and
his wife gave birth to Samuel de Lucena, the New York and Philadelphia merchant
who during the Revolution searched for sulfur that could be used by the
Continentals to make gunpowder.
1712: Clement XI issued “Salvatoris nostri vices,” a Papal Bull that
transferred the work of catechumens to Pii Operai (Holy Works). [Pii Operai was
an offshoot of The College of Neophytes, a Roman Catholic College founded for
training Jewish converts]
1743: In London Judith and Rabbi Joseph Raphael Alexander gave birth to
Abraham Alexander R. the
husband of Ann Sarah Hugenin Irby, his second wife who was a convert and with
whom he had two sons Moses and Abraham, Jr.
and who was the Chazan of Congregation of Beth Elohim in Charleston as
well as a Lieutenant in the Revolutionary Army.
1744: Birthdate of Jacob I. Cohen, the native of Bavaria who came to the
United States in 1773 and “by 1781 had formed a partnership with his fellow
militia man Isaiah Isaacs, one of Richmond’s earliest known Jewish residents
whose land business led them to hire Daniel Boone as a surveyor.
1745: Maria Theresa threatened Moravian Jewry with expulsion but
rescinded her order, permitting them to remain for another ten years. (As
reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)
1758: A letter was written to David Franks by a business associate today
asking that he insure the goods on board the Charming Rachel which is setting
sale from Liverpool and valued at four hundred pounds.
1765: Aaron Gomes Da Costa, the Portuguese born son of Abram and Abigail
Gomes da Costa and his wife Miriam De Solomon Gomes Da Costa gave birth to
Isaac Gomes Da Costa, the husband of Esther Gomes Da Costa.
1768: In New York, Eva Esther Gomez and Uriah Hendricks gave birth to
Hannah Hendricks the wife of Jamaica native Jacob De Leon with whom she had
eight children.
1770:
The Crown Prince of Brunswick "expressed his admiration" for the
"great tact and high degree of humanitarianism" that Moses
Mendelssohn had shown in responding to the writings of Charles Bonnett that had
been sent to him by Johann Lavater.
1776(10th
of Tevet, 5536): Asara B’Tevet
1776:
As Jews on both sides of the Atlantic fasted “The Continental Congress
published the “Tory Act” resolution today which described how colonies should
handle those Americans who remained loyal to the British and King George.”
1779(14th
of Tevet, 5539): Parashat Vayechi
1779:
Today, during the American Revolution, following the British capture of
Savannah, GA, Mordecai Sheftall was told he and his son would be imprisoned aboard
about Raven sloop of war for his “refusal to supply the King’s ships.”
1782:
The Tolerance Edict (Toleranzpatent) guaranteeing existing rights and
obligation of the Jewish population, was enacted by Joseph II of Austria, the
son of Maria Theresa. Joseph II was influenced by Wilhelm von Dohn, a friend of
Mendelssohn's and beginning with this edict, followed a generally enlightened
attitude toward the Jews. The Edict (with the final edict less liberal than the
original), received mixed reviews by Jewish leaders including Ezekiel Landau
and Moss Mendelssohn. They realized that the real intention of the edict was
not the emancipation of the Jews but their assimilation. As
further proof the new freedoms being granted to the Jews of Austria, Emperor
Joseph II "permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables and their sons
to wear swords" and "insisted that Christians should behave in a
friendly matter towards Jews."
1788: Georgia becomes the fourth state to
ratify the U.S. Constitution. A year
later, Georgia became the third state to remove religious discrimination from
the political process. According to one
reliable source, Jews had “held public office in Georgia even before the
revision of the oath which included the words ‘upon the faith of a
Christian.’” Jews had been a part of
Georgia from the earliest colonial settlement with the first families arriving
in July of 1733. Two years before the
ratification vote, the Jewish community of Savannah had stabilized enough to
re-organize Congregation Mikve Israel, elect officers and rent a house from Ann
Morgan to be used as a synagogue.
1788:
In Lancaster, PA, Rachel Simon and Solomon Etting gave birth to Joseph Etting.
1789:
In Charleston, SC, Rachel Andrews and Solomon Woolf gave birth to Cecilia
Woolf, the wife of Hattian native Hyam Moise and the mother of Theodore and
Edwin Moise.
1798:
In Frankfurt am Main, Gusta Nedustadt and Gumpertz Seligmann Edmden gave girth
to Sophie Sarah Caroline Emden, the wife of Adolph Amschel Moses Oppenheim and
the mother of Jacques, Eugenie, Cornelie and Clementine Oppenheim.
1799:
Richea Myers and Joseph Marx gave birth to Judith Marx, the wife of Myer
Meyers.
1801:
In Bachau, Germany, Eleanore Maendle and Lazarus Heilbronner gave birth to
David Heilbronner.
1801:
Birthdate of Jonas Ennery a native of Nancy who was affiliated with the Jewish
school at Strasbourg for twenty-six years.
1804(18th
of Tevet, 5564): Judah Alexander, the London-born son of Joseph Raphael
Alexander passed away today in Charleston, SC.
1807(22nd
of Tevet, 5567): Isaac Eliezer, a Newport merchant who was the husband of Richa
Isaacs and, for a while, a partner of Samuel Moses passed away today in
Charleston, SC.
1810:
In Charleston, SC, Hyam and Cecilia Francis [Woolf] Moïse, gave birth to
Charleston Medical College graduate Edwin Warren Moise, the physician turned
Louisiana lawyer who married Louise Hubert after the death of his first wife,
Priscilla Lopez, the daughter of David Lopes,
1816(1st
of Tevet, 5576): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah
1816:
Birthdate of Shmuel Salant, the native of Bialystok, who “served as the
Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem for almost 70 years.”
1818:
In the United Kingdom, the Institution Of Civil Engineers (ICE) which Joseph
d’Aguilar Samuda joined in 1862 was founded today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/samuda-joseph-d-x0027-aguilar
1819:
Birthdate of Pas, German native Friederike Jaffe, the wife of Daniel Joseph
Jaffe and the mother of Martin, John, Alfred and Otto Jaffe.
1820:
Lewis Durlacher married Susannah Levy at the Western Synagogue today.
1821:
Emanuel Levie Goldsmith, the Dutch born son of Levie Emanuel Goudsmit and
Magdalena Hartog Goudsmit and his wife Alijda Joseph Joel Goldsmith gave birth
to Elizabeth Cohen, the wife of Moses Cohen.
1822:
In Munchweiler, Palatine, Simon Felsenthal and his wife gave birth to Bernhard
Felsenthal, American Rabbi who was a leader in the Reform Movement and served
as the leader of Zion Congregation in Chicago from 1864 to 1887.
https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/15707(As
reported by Adler & Stolz)
1822:
the Jewish Censorship Committee under the Chairmanship of Ludwik Chiarni, “the
author an anti-Talmud diatribe” began meeting with a staff consisting of Adam
Chmielewski, Abraham Stern and Jacob Tugenhold, among others.
1823:
Esther Isaac Abraham and 31-year-old Samuel Gabriel Israel were married today
at Bevis Marks.
1827:
Today, on their 4th wedding anniversary Esther Isaac Abraham and
Samuel Gabriel Israel Brandon gave birth of Josiah Samuel Brandon.
1829(27th
of Tevet): Rabbi Samuel Austerer of Brody, author of Ketav Yosher passed away
1830:
Abraham Geiger preached his first sermon.
1834:
In Bavaria, Seligmann Pinchas Luchs and Judith Marx Luch gave birth to Anselm
Ascher Luchs, the husband of Klara Luch and the father of Sigmund, Moritz, Raffael
and Isidor Luchs.
1836: Birthdate of Mendele Mocher Sforim (מענדעלע
מוכר ספֿרים) "Mendele the bookseller," is the pseudonym of Sholem Yakov Abramovich, Jewish author
and one of the founders of modern Yiddish and Modern Hebrew literature. He was
born to a poor family in Kopyl near Minsk and lost his father, Chaim Moyshe
Broyde, shortly after he was bar mitzvahed. He studied in yeshiva in Slucak and
Vilna until he was 17; during this time he was a day-boarder under the system
of Teg-Essen, barely scraping by, and often hungry. He next travelled
extensively around Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania at the mercy of an abusive
beggar named Avreml Khromoy (Avreml would later become the source for the title
character of Fishke der Krumer, Fishke the Lame). In 1854 he
settled in Kamenets-Podolskiy, where he got to know writer and poet Avrom Ber
Gotlober, who helped him to learn secular culture, philosophy, literature,
history, Russian and other languages. His first article, "Letter on
Education", appeared in first Hebrew newspaper, Hamagid, in
1857. At Berdichev in the Ukraine, where he lived in 1858-1869, he began to
publish fiction both in Hebrew and Yiddish. Having offended the local powers
with his satire, he left Berdichev to train as a rabbi at the relatively
theologically liberal, government-sponsored rabbinical school in Zhitomir,
where he lived in 1869-1881, and became head of traditional school (Talmud
Torah) in Odessa in 1881. He lived in Odessa until his death in 1917. He
initially wrote in Hebrew, coining many words in that language, but ultimately
switched to Yiddish in order to expand his audience. Like Sholom Aleichem, he
used a pseudonym because of the perception at the time that as a ghetto
vernacular, Yiddish was not suited to serious literary work — an idea he did
much to dispel. His writing strongly bore the mark of the Haskalah. He is
considered by many to be the "grandfather of Yiddish literature"; his
style in both Hebrew and Yiddish has strongly influenced several generations of
later writers. While the tradition of journalism in Yiddish had a bit more of a
history than in Hebrew, Kol Mevasser, which he supported from the outset
and where he published his first Yiddish story "Dos Kleine Menshele"
("The Little Man") in 1863, is generally seen as the first stable and
important Yiddish newspaper. Sol Liptzin writes that in his early Yiddish
narratives, Mendele "wanted to be useful to his people rather than gain
literary laurels". [Liptzin, 1972, 42] "The Little Man" and the
unstaged 1869 drama Die Takse ("The Tax") both condemned the
corruption by which religious taxes (in the latter case, specifically the tax
on kosher meat) were diverted to benefit community leaders rather than the
poor. This satiric tendency continued in Die Klatshe (The Dobbin,
1873) about a prince, a stand-in for the Jewish people, who is bewitched and
becomes a much put-upon beast of burden, but maintains his moral superiority
throughout his sufferings. His later work became more humane and less satiric,
starting with Fishke (written 1868-1888) and continuing with the
unfinished Masoes Beniamin Hashlishi (The Wanderings of Benjamin
1837:
Birthdate of German native Emilie Henrietta, the wife of Julius Levis with whom
she had five children, the first two of whom were born in France and the last
three were born in England.
1841:
The “PS Clonmel,” whose passengers included Michael Cashmore, “the first Jewish
settler of Melbourne” and the recently married husband of Elizabeth Solomon,
was wrecked today with no loss of life but with the loss of most of its cargo.
1844(10th
of Tevet, 5604): Asara B’Tevet
1844:
As the Jews of New York fast, the 67th session of the New York State
Legislature began today in a Presidential election year that would see Henry
Clay lose to James K. Polk
1850:
Birthdate of Minsk native and author Henry Iliowizi, the teacher in Alliance
Israélite Universelle’s “school at Tetuan, Morocco from 1877 to 1880” who came
to the United States where he “was minister of a
congregation at Harrisonburg, Virginia; from 1880 to 1888, rabbi of the
Congregation Sha'aré Tob in Minneapolis; and from 1888 to 1900, of the
Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Philadelphia.”
1852: Today, “the Green Street Hebrew School (officially the
B’nai Jeshurun Education Institute) opened with 8 teachers and 88 pupils with”
“Dutch Hebrew scholar Simon Eliazer Cohen Noot”
serving as both one of the teachers and as headmaster – a role he must
be successful at since “attendance quickly climbed to 142” and two years later,
“the school erected itw own building on a vacant lot adjacent to the B’nai
Jeshurun Synagogue on Green Street.”
1852:
In Paris gave Kalmus Calmann Levy and Pauline Levy birth to Bertha Calman-Levy
who became Bertha Propper when she married Siegfried Propper.
1853:
Sulzburg, Leopold Dukas, the son of Sara and Baruch Dukas and his wife
Magdalena Madel Dukas gave birth to Isaak David Dukas the husband of Mina
Dukas.
1854(2nd
of Tevet, 5614): 8th Day Chanukah
1856:
Aaron Senior Coronel married Rebecca Coelho in Amsterdam today.
1856:
“What the Jews Think of New Year’s” published today reported that “in the
opinion of our Jewish fellow-citizens New Year’s Day and its accompanying
custom of giving presents is a blessed institution. “According to the author,
being able to give gifts to their children on New Year’s, makes it possible for
Jewish parents to avoid gift giving at Christmas while still being able to
bring joy to their youngsters. Oddly
enough, the more recently arrived German Jews still cling to the habit they
developed in Europe of gift giving on Christmas. “The Jewish families of long standing in” New
York “universally” prefer the New Year’s gift giving celebration. The article concludes by reminding readers
that ‘our New Year’s, of course, does not correspond with the commencement of
the Hebrew year. That falls in the month
of Tishrei, which comprises a part of our September and October, and is
celebrated, besides religious ceremonies, by magnificent entertainments and a
general wish of ‘Happy New Year.’”
1857:
“Mammon Worship,” “which condemned materialism,” “Our Divine Law,” “which
commended true religion as the ‘boon and boast of Israel throughout throughout
the dispersion,’” and “The Want of Union, “ “which advocated a super board to
safeguard Judaism in democratic America,” were among the first three editorials
that appeared in The Jewish Messenger
which was published for the first time today by Samuel Isaacs.
1857:
Birthdate of Lake County, Ohio native Frederick Burr Opper the cartoonist for
“Frank Leslie’s Weekly and “Puck” and husband of Nellie Barrett who created
“Happy Hooligan,” “Alphonse and Gaston” and “And Her Name Was Withheld.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Burr_Opper#/media/File:Happy_Hooligan_1921-10-23.jpg
1858:
Towards midnight, Rachel Felix, who was dying awoke from her sleep and said she
wanted to write a letter to her father.
Since she did not have the strength to do so, she began dictating the
letter "which contained her last wishes."
1858:
In Kingston, Jamaica, Rabbi Alexander B. Davis and his wife gave birth to
Ernest Lawton Davis, who was Chairman of the Sydney (Australia) Stock Exchange
from 1899 through 1901, Director of the Sydney Jewish Sabbath School, Director
of the Sydney Jewish Education Board and the husband of Alice Moss, the
youngest daughter of Moses Moss.
1858:
Pauline Hirschfeld, the daughter of Simon and Rachel Ausch and the wife of Dr.
Jacob Jacques Heinrich Hirschfeld gave birth to Victor Léon
1858:
In Baltimore, MD. Sophia and Joseph Sachs gave birth to “the youngest of their
five children, Bernard Sachs, the Harvard trained neurologist who is the
“Sachs” in “Tay-Sachs
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/bernard-sachs-1858-1944
1859:
Two days after he had passed away, 21 year old Edward Ely was buried today at
the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.
1861:
Wilhelm I became King of Prussia. His
repeated clashes “with the liberal Chamber of Deputies” forced legal scholar
Ferdinand Lassalle “to make public addresses dealing with the nature of the
constitution and its relationship to the social forces within society.”
1862:
Corporal Leon Berkowicz began his service with company H of the 59th
regiment of the Second Cavalry in the Union Army.
1862:
Rabbi Arnold Fischel wrote a letter from Washington, DC to Henry Hart in New
York updating him on the progress he was making in having the law changed so
that Rabbis could serve as Chaplains in the Union Army. Fischel also asked Hart to send him the
smallest sized prayer book and Tehillim for the use of the Jewish soldiers
serving in the Union Army. He asked for
an immediate shipment of 50, the smaller the better since they have to fit into
the packs carried by the soldiers.
Fischel said that Joseph Seligman had assured him that the members of
Temple Emanu-El would contribute a large sum of money for such a project was
would the Jews at the Stanton Street Synagogue.
Finally, Fischel asked Hart to apologize on his behalf to Rabbi S.M.
Isaacs for having not written but he, Fischel had been dealing with a bout of
Cholera.
http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/af010262.html
1863:
The Battle of Stones River in which Colonel Frederick Knefler commanded the 79th
Indiana Infantry came to an end with the Rebels being forced to withdraw.
1863(11th
of Tevet, 5623): The Battle of Stones River, in which Major Adolph G.
Rosengarten was serving with a cavalry unit from Philadelphia, PA lost his life
passed away today.
1863(11th
of Tevet, 5623): Shlomo Zalman, the son of Shalom Charif Ullmann, who had been
born in 1792, passed away today.
1869:
In Charlotte, NC, Bernhard and Johanna Koopman gave birth top Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts trained painter and etcher August Koopman, the husband of
Louis Lovett Osgood whose painting was honored with a medal at the 1904 St.
Louis Exposition.
https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/koopman-augustus
1871:
Birthdate of Nebraska City, Nebraska native and University of Pennsylvania
trained lawyer Henry N. Wessel who combined a career as a judge with his philanthropic
work including serving as “the treasurer of the Jewish Hospital.”
1873:
Three days after he had passed away, Godfrey Lazarus, the son of Mordecai
Lazarus, and the Julia Lazarus with whom he had had six children was buried
today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1873:
It was reported today that an Imperial ukase or proclamation of the Czar has
been issued today concerning the rules and regulations surrounding the
recruiting program for the navy and army. Among other things, in that part of
Poland ruled by Russia, Jews who have converted to Christianity will no longer
be exempted from military service. These
converts, like others who have lost their exemption, can purchase one by paying
800 silver rubles to the government. [Considering the treatment of Jews in the
Russian Army, conversion may have seemed like the lesser of two evils,
especially for those who were too poor to be able to leave the country.]
1874(13th
of Tevet, 5634): David Stern, husband of Fanny and brother-in-law of Levi
Strauss, passes away.
1874:
In Cracow, Bernard and Pauline Bandler gave birth to Rose Bandler who became
Rose Victorious when she married Abraham Victor Victorius with whom she had two
children – Jeannette and Paul.
1878:
“The Merchant of Venice In 1652” which was published today and which was based
on information that first appeared in the London
Athenaeum speculated on the possibility that the republication of
Shakespeare’s play featuring the infamous Shylock was released as part of the
campaign against readmitting Jews to England which championed by Cromwell but
opposed by a large segment of the population including the merchants in London,
the clergy and such notables as William Prynne.
1878:
Birthdate of Warsaw born Yiddish playwright Mark Arnshteyn (Arnstein)
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2014/09/mark-arnshteyn-arnstein.html
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/A/arnstein-mark.htm
1879:
Birthdate of St. Louis native and CCNY trained civil engineer Arthur Herbert
Diamant the long time vice president of the Rosoff Subway Construction Company
who “was in charge of building the first section of Sixth Avenue subway line…”
1879:
It was reported today that The Hebrew Book Union has issued a prospectus for a
new “Lexcicon to the Talmud, Targum and Midrash” compiled by Dr. F. De Sola
Mendes. It will be issued in four parts
and will be the first such work published with an English translation.
1881:
In Budapest, Rabbi Joseph Zeisler, the son of “Eduard and Josefine Zeisler” and
Irma Zeisler gave birth to Jeno Abraham Zeisler
1881:
In Russia, Max and Leah (Reavin) Gussow gave birth CCNY and Ecole Nationale des
Beaux Arts trained artis Bernar Gussow, the Art Instructor at the Fawcett
School of Industrial Arts and husband of Suzanne K. Cook.
https://www.askart.com/artist/Bernard_Gussow/25617/Bernard_Gussow.aspx
1883:
In Koenigsberg, Germany, Jenny Epstein and Jacob Reit gave birth to CCNY
graduate and N.Y. Law School trained attorney, the husband of Rae Klausner and
partner starting in 1905 in the firm of Reit and Kaminsky who was president of Temple
B’nai Israel and Sheerith Judah and president of the Jewish Council of
Washington Heights.
1884:
Sir Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson, 1st Viscount Burnham “married Olive de
Bathe, daughter of General Sir Gerald Henry Perceval de Bathe, 4th Bt. and
Charlotte Clare.”
1884:
Birthdate of Ben-Zion Dinaburg, who studied to be a rabbi before moving to
Palestine in 1921 where he gained fame as Ben-Zion Dinur where he served as
head of the Jewish Teachers’ Training College and as an MK in the first
Knesset.
1885:
Arnold Meyer Epstein, the infant son of Ephraim and Sallie Epstein who had died
in in Ozark, AR was buried today in Little Rock, AR.
1886:
Alice le Strange, the wife of English philo-semite Laurence Oliphant passed
away today after having contracted a fever while traveling along the shores of
the Sea of Galilee. Oliphant, who had
also contracted the fever, was too sick to attend her funeral. Oliphant was in Palestine to pursue his dream
of helping large numbers of Jews to settle in their ancient homeland.
1886:
Birthdate of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern one of “the most innovative and ironic of the
modernist Yiddish poets.
1887:
The Jewish Theological Seminary Association, the educational and spiritual
center of Conservative Judaism opened under the leadership of Saba Morais.
Morais, a Rabbi of Congregation Mikve Israel in Philadelphia, sought to train
Rabbis who would help preserve Jewish traditions which he felt were being
eroded by the “reformers” and their Pittsburgh platform. In 1902 Solomon
Schechter reorganized the Seminary and changed the name to JTS or the
Jewish Theological Seminary. it was at this point that it became the central
foundation for the Conservative Movement, a role that it plays to this day.
1889:
Alice Victorine Kann married Abraham Lionel Hart today.
1890(10th
of Tevet, 5650): Asara B'Tevet
1890:
It was reported today that the Beth Israel Hospital Association, which was
recently formed to build a hospital on the Lower East Side for the burgeoning
immigrant population has 180 members who have raised $1,200 in pledges and $500
in cash contributions.
1892(2nd
of Tevet, 5652): Parashat Miketz and 8th day of Chanukah
1892(2nd
of Tevet, 5652): Jacob Goldsmith, a trustee of Temple Emanu-El and director of
the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, passed away today. Born in Germany in 1821, he moved
to the United States at the age of 15.
He successfully operated dry goods stores in Shreveport, Portland and
San Francisco. Finally, he sold his
interest in a petroleum refining company to Standard Oil and moved to New York
where owned a stationary business.
1892:
Birthdate of Warsaw native “Eliash Almi Sheps” known as Eli A. Almi, who began
writing Yiddish poetry at the age of 9 and reporting for the Yiddish daily Der
Moment at 18 before coming to the United States in 1913 to write for the
Yiddish daily Tageblat and writing several of volumes in both Yiddish and
English including The Life and Philosophy of Buddha and The Strange
Death of Baruch Spinoza
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/09/25/94306159.pdf
1893:
It was reported today that Professor Cyrus Adler of Johns Hopkins University
acquired a rare manuscript while in Constantinople that related to Columbus and
the New World.
1893:
It was reported today that Henry S. Morais is preparing a publication that will
cover the history of “the Jews of Philadelphia from the earliest settlements
until the present.”
1893:
As the outbreak of typhus that began on December 1st continues to
work its way through the city, Henry Mazinsky, an eleven-year-old Jewish boy,
who had been under the care of the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery fell victim to
typhus today.
1894:
Three days after she had passed away, 16 year old Rosie Olga Bauer, the
daughter of Gottleib Bauer and Yelda Caecile was buried today at the “Balls
Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1894:
Birthdate of Robert Gruntal Nathan an American novelist and poet whose works
included The Bishop’s Wife which became a hit movie starring Cary Grant,
David Niven and Loretta Young.
1895:
Birthdate of Count Folke Bernadotte a member of a prominent Swedish family and
well-known diplomat whose negotiations with Himmler during World War II saved
the lives of thousands of Jews. As a
U.N. representative, Bernadotte negotiated the first truce between the Arabs
and the Israelis in 1948. During the
truce, Bernadotte visited Israel where he proposed a peace plan that would have
been detrimental to Jewish interests. In
one of the most dastardly deeds in Jewish History, members of the Stern Gang
assassinated Bernadotte. Most Jews were
so revolted by the act that the members of the gang were hunted down by
authorities and the Stern Gang was forced to disband. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Stern
Gang gained respectability after the war.
Yitzchak Shamir, a prominent Sternist, would later serve as Prime
Minister of Israel.
1895:
Sir Matthew Nathan “was created a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St.
George for his services” “as secretary of the Colonial Defense Committee.
1895:
Three days after he had passed away, 54-year-old David Nussbaum was buried
today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1895(6th
of Tevet, 5655): A mother and her two children were burned to death at fire in
the tenement house on Pitt Street. The
dead were, Lena Leiman (24), Sadie Leiman (2) and Henry Leiman (2 months)
1896:
It was reported that Hirsh Leavitt, a Russian Jew hired by William Rubin as a
night watchman for his building on 19th Bleecker Street had suffered
a broken leg which would heal and not require amputation. Leavitt, who speaks no English, had been
injured when police mistook him for a burglar.
1896:
Birthdate of Bialystok native David Abelevich Kaufman who gained fame as
“Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director” Dziga Vertov whose “Man
with a Movie Camera” was voted “the 8th best film ever made”
according to a poll taken in 2012.
1897:
Jacob A. Riss delivered an address at a dinner hosted by the Reform Club in
which he described the tenement system as “an invention of Satan” which had the
power to overwhelm the scruples of its tenants including Jews as well as Roman
Catholics.
1897:
It was reported today that “Morris Goodhart, President of the Hebrew Mutual
Benefit Society and…the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society is dangerously ill”
as a result of “an abcess in the peritoneal cavity.”
1897:
“Good-Will to Men” which was published today and which relies on information
that first appeared in The Jewish
Messenger, notes that “the trend of thought today among our Christian
brethren of any culture and enlightenment is against bigotry and hatred for the
greater glory of God.”
1898:
It was reported today that “an explosion of accumulated gas wrecked the entire
first floor of” Israel Cohen’s bathhouse at 23 Hester Street.
1898:
It was reported today that the two existing “Jewish colleges” – Hebrew Union
College in Cincinnati and Jewish Theological Seminary in New York – are about
to be joined by a third school located in Philadelphia that will be funded, in
part by a legacy created by the late Hyman Gratz which yields $5,000 per year.
1898:
Two days after he had passed away James Sim Lyon, the husband of Julia Lyon
with whom he had had eight children was buried today at the “Bancroft Road
(Maiden Lane) Jewish Cemetery.”
1899:
The Noah Benevolent Widows and Orphans’ Association is scheduled to “celebrate
its golden jubilee” this “afternoon and evening with a banquet and reception at
the Terrace Garden.”
1899:
Mrs. Bertha Morgenstern told a reporter that she had celebrated her 106th
birthday yesterday drinking “a pint of beer” and eating “three hearty meals”
which is how she spends each and every one of her days at the Hebrew Sheltering
Home.
1900:
Cloak manufacturer Abraham Drusin, “who had sued his brothers Abraham and
Harris in the Supreme Court of New York over the dissolution of their firm
Drusin Brothers located on Canal Street’ said “I still have more fait in the
rabbi’s decision than in the courts and if my brothers will only swear in the
Orthodox fashion before the rabbi that they have not wronged I’ll be
satisfied.”
1901:
In New York Florence (née Lowenstein) Marshall and Louis Marshall gave birth to
their third child, Robert "Bob" Marshall “an American forester,
writer and wilderness activist.”
1902:
Rabbi Pereira Mendes continued in his role as acting head of the Jewish
Theological; a role which would end later in the year when Solomon Schecuter
became of the “reorganized instituition.
1903:
Publication of the first edition of The American Hebrew & Jewish
Messenger.
1903:
British minister Joseph Chamberlain “found” a wonderful piece of land in East
Africa for Jewish settlement.
1904:
The Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society which had offices in Denver was
organized today but would not be incorporated until June.
1904:
Birthdate of Vilnius born American actor Irving Cohen
1904:
The hearings presided over by Judge Davidoff that began on November 19, during
which the five hundred civil claims regarding the riots in Kishineff are being
heard are scheduled to come to an end today.
1904:
Manya Shochat the “Russian Jewish politician and the "mother" of the
collective settlement in Palestine, the forerunner of the kibbutz movement”
joined her brother Nachum Wilbuszewicz the founder of the Shemen soap factory
“on a research expedition to some of the wilder places of Palestine.
1905: Japanese General
Nogi received from Russian General Stoessel at
1905:
Birthdate of Russian mathematician Lev Schnirelmann.
1906:
“Alliance Work Thriving” published today described the work of the Educational
Alliance whose real function was the “Americanizing” of recently arrived Jewish
immigrants and which had received donations of $25,000 from Jacob H. Schiff and
Louis Stern’; $20,000 from Benjamin Altman; $10,000 from William Saloman and
Isidor Straus and $25,000 from Andrew Carnegie.
1906:
The 9th Duke of Marlborough, a cousin of Winston Churchill,
expressed his dissatisfaction with a review of Churchill’s newly published
biography about his father Randolph by threatening “to administer a good and
sound trouncing to that dirty little Hebrew,” Harry Levy-Lawson, the Jewish
manager of the paper in which the review appeared. The two cousins had very
different views of Jews and the Jewish people.
1907:
It was reported today that the “delegates from the Hebrew bakers’ union” have
met and made arrangements “for their annual strike in Manhattan and Brooklyn”
during which they well be asked for “an increase in wages $13 to $15 a week and
the ten-hour workday.”
1907:
During a strike at a local bakery in Chicago, “four men said to be members of
the Bakers Union were arrested on the charge of putting acid on hundreds of
loaves of bread distributed among the Jewish residents” living on the Windy
City’s west side.
1908:
“After being closed since a few days before Christmas, except for a few hours
on New Year's morning,” due to a shortage of funds, “the United Hebrew
Charities again threw wide open its doors yesterday morning to the needy, which
nowadays usually means the hungry.
1909(9th
of Tevet, 5669): Russian born British artist and illustrator Henry Ospovat
passed away today.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-ospovat-1728
http://www.fulltable.com/vts/aoi/o/ospovat/menu.htm
1909(9th
of Tevet, 5669): Louis A. Heinsheimer passed away today due to complications
from a recent operation for appendicitis. Born in 1859 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he
worked for sixteen years at the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb &
Company before being made a partner in 1894 Heinsheimer was the nephew of one
of the firm's founders, Solomon Loeb. He never married and was survived by his
mother, brother and two sisters. A
renowned philanthropist, Heinsheimer served as the Treasurer for the United
Hebrew Charities. Shortly before his death he completed building a summer home
called Breezy Point at Far Rockaway, New York. The estate would be used by the
Maimonides Institute for Exceptional Children until it burned down in 1987.
1909:
In England, Eva Louis Gold and Philp Uri Solomon Corre gave birth to Bernard
Corre who did not live to see his fourth birthday.
1910:
A prominent director issued a statement tonight at the Metropolitan Opera which
said “any statement that negotiations are under way between Arthur Hammerstein,
representing the Manhattan Opera Company and the Metropolitan Opera Company”
which would lead to a merger between the two organizations “is without
foundation.”
1910:
In Richmond, “the regular business meeting
of Hebrew Progressive Library” is scheduled to “be held in the rooms of the of
association” today at 4 p.m.
1910:
“Fifth Avenue and the lower east side, both represented chiefly by women and
girls,” most of whom were Jewish “joined tonight in filling Carnegie Hall to
protest against what was called the "continued encroachment of the police
and the Police Magistrates" upon the rights of the striking shirtwaist
makers and their sympathizers
1911(2nd
of Tevet, 5671): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1911:
Birthdate of Albany, NY native and Yale undergraduate Ferdinand, Jr., the
Harvard trained doctor and executive director of the Nathan Littauer Hospital.
1912:
Newly-elected Sheriff Julius Harburger announced “that he would appoint a
number of women deputies.” Only was it
later discovered that such appointments were against the law.
1912(12th
of Tevet, 5672): Sixty-eight-year-old Leopold Einstein, the German born son of
Jacob Leopold Einstein and Luise Neuburger Einstein and father of Jacob and
Elliot Einstein passed away today in Cleveland.
1913(23rd
of Tevet of 5673): Fifty-six-year-old Buffalo, NY attorney Moses Shire passed
away today.
1913:
The Intercollegiate Menorah Association which had offices in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, was organized today.
1913(NS):
“The first issue of Di
Tsayt the St, Petersburg Yiddish weekly, was published today.
1913:
Birthdate of English actress Anna Lee was the seventh wife of poet Robert
Gruntal Nathan (He was Jewish. She was
not)
1914:
Two days after she had passed away, funeral services were scheduled to held
this morning for Dorothy Stern, the wife of Charles Stern.
1914:
It was reported today that “Go to church Sunday” which is to be held on
February 1, “has been indorsed in Chicago by Catholics, Jews and every
denomination of Protestants.”
1915(16th
of Tevet, 5675): Parashat Vayechi
1915(16th of Tevet, 5675): Karl Goldmark Austria-Hungarian
composer passes away at the age of 84.
http://www.pandora.com/station/3d0c250b9dbbbbf070ad86d305da296d2508e8c95414f7d2
1915:
It was reported today that of the $1,000,000 that has been collected by the
Jewish National Fund, three fourths of it has been “invested in farm land in
Palestine.”
1915:
Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, a part owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company ‘was
indicted in Chicago for a failure to file a personal property tax schedule”
following a dispute with the Tax Board of Review over the valuing of his assets
– a dispute that would be resolved “in March of 1915 when Rosenwald’s attorneys
convinced the Court that the section of law which provided for prosecution of
such cases had been repealed.”
1915:
James Creelman, the New York American’s Berlin correspondent who had covered
the Dreyfus trial and “toured Russia investigating the persecution of the Jews”
set sail today for the Nazi capitol.
1916:
In Westminster, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild and Marie Louise Eugénie de
Rothschild née Beer gave birth to their second child and first son Edmund
Leopold de Rothschild
1916: Dr. J.L. Magnes is scheduled to continue his
speaking tour by appearing at a mass meeting in Baltimore where he will
describe the need to provide aid for the three and half million Jews suffering
in Russia.
1916: Tonight, in Baltimore, a mass of seven
thousand Jews gathered at the Hippodrome and Palace Theatre where one hundred
thousand dollars in cash was donated to the American Jewish Relief Committee
with an additional five million dollar in pledges made to the organization
raising funds for the suffering Jews in Russia.
1916: Three days after she had passed away, 86 year
old Kate Isaacs, the wife of Michael Baber Isaacs and the mother of Sara Isaacs
was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1916: In Chicago, at the 19th annual
convention of the Knights of Zion, President Nathan D. Kaplan reported that “in
the last year 1,500,000 pounds of foodstuffs were shipped to Palestine for the
relief of destitute Jews.”
1916: The Overseas News Agency reported that
according to sources in Stockholm “orders have been given to all Jewish
refugees at Petrograd to depart immediately.”
1916: In Chicago, this morning’s business session of
the Knights of Zion Convention is scheduled to be followed by a kosher banquet
for 600 delegates and guests.
1916: In Baltimore, MD, it was estimated that
between $50,000 and $75,000 were raised tonight for the relief of Jews stricken
by the war at meetings attended by about 5,000 people.
1916: It was reported today that Congressman Meyer
London initiated his party’s effort in behalf of the Jews of Europe when he
recently introduced a join resolution asking for a congress of neutral nations”
that would remove the political and civic disabilities of the Jewish people
wherever such disabilities exist.
1916: In Camden, NJ, : Rabbi Max Klein of
Philadelphia's Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, Rabbi Bernard Levinthal,
Philadelphia's renown Orthodox Jewish leader, Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen, Rabbi
Samuel S. Grossman and Rabbi Abraham Nowak of New York City were scheduled to
appear at a mass meeting at the North Broadway Theater at Broadway and Kaighn
1916: “Rabbi Joseph Silverman, preaching at Temple
Emanu-El said” today “that the 100,000 Jews fighting in the European armies
were a living refutation of the slander that Jews lacking in patriotism.”
1916:
Birthdate of Zypora Tannenbaum
who gained fame as Zypora Spaisman.
Born in Lublin, she was a Polish-American actress and Yiddish theatre
empresaria. She emigrated to the United States in 1954 where she helped keep
the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre
in NYC alive for 42 years (along with Morris Adler), before helping to found
the Yiddish Public Theater
following a dispute with the Folksbiene's new management.
1917:
Twenty-three-year-old Rabbi Henry Raphael Gold, the Lomza born son of “Rabbi
Jacob Meyer Gold and Freida Deborah Kravchinsky Gold and grandson of “Rabbi
Joshua Memchem Goldwasser” who in 1908 came to the United States where he
studied at JTS, earned an Bachelors from Columbia and a Masters from Harvard
and served several congregations including Beth Israel in New Orleans married
Sylvia Mazur today in Brooklyn.
1917:
Abraham and Eva Sabesewitz gave birth to Minnesota resident Maurice J. Sabes.
1917:
In Montreal, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies which was founded in 1916,
today “launched its first fundraising campaign under the slogan ‘Unity is
Strength.’”
1918:
A telegraph received in Chicago tonight from Jacob Billikopf of New York said
that as of January 1, the Jewish War Relief had received $8,500,000 and that
“since Julius Rosenwald’s matching offer” was based on the “cash on hand by
that date” his contribution should be $850,000 although, if there is additional
cash in the possession of offices in other cities, his contribution would rise
accordingly.
1919(1st
of Shevat, 5679): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1919(1st
of Shevat, 5679): Samuel Gitlin who was in “domestic service” at Camp Fremont
passed away today.
1919:
In “what French Foreign Minister Pichon referred to as ‘more recent contracts’”
as of today France is to have “control of all of Syria and Lebanon and part of Armenia,”
England is to have control of all of Mesopotamia, “Arabia is to be an
independent kingdom” and Palestine is to have international administration.”
(Editor’s Note - This is at variance with Sykes-Pichot agreements and that
disposition of Palestine was of minor importance in the redistribution of the
lands of the Ottoman Empire.)
1920:
Birthdate of Isaac Asimov. Born to
middle class Jewish parents, Asimov’s family moved to the United States in
1923. Asimov became one of the 20th
century’s greatest science fiction writers.
He also wrote guides to the Bible and Shakespeare.
1920:
Rabbis in Jerusalem arranged to have special prayers recited at the Western
Wall for the Jews in Damascus who are threatened with violence.
1920:
“In a speech in Sunderland…Churchill described Bolshevism as a ‘Jewish
movement.’”
1921:
Jacob A. Dolgenas who began serving as the Rabbi at Congregation Gates of
Prayer in Brooklyn yesterday is scheduled to be formally installed this
afternoon.
1921:
“R.U.R,” a science fiction play directed by Philip Moeller premiered today,
1921:
“The first dance and open meeting of the Bronx Jewish High School Youth” is
scheduled to “be held this afternoon at the Community Building Auditorium.
1922(2nd
of Tevet, 5682): 8th Day of
Chanukah
1923:
Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the Cincinnati, OH born son of Hannah Basha
Finkelstein and Simon Finkelstein, and his wife Carmel Finkelstein gave birth
to Hadassah N. Davis.
1924:
“Message From the Holy Land” published today described a letter from two
American clergy who are co-chairman of the American Committee on Preservation
of the Sacred Places in the Holy Land” which would make the reader think that
“holiness” of Palestine was a Christian matter.”
1925:
It was reported today that “The Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, re-elected the Rev. Dr. Max Drob of the Washington Heights
Congregation to the board” and “also elected the Rev. Dr. Jacob Kohn, rabbi of
Congregation Ansche Chesed, as a member of the board to represent the
Rabbinical Assembly of the seminary.”
1926(16th
of Tevet, 5686): Parashat Vayechi
1926:
“According to Dr. David Yellin, President of the Vaad Leumi and Vice Mayor of
Jerusalem, the National Council of Palestine is opposed to the acceptance of
the resignation of Dr. Stephen S. Wise as Chairman of the United Palestine
Appeal.
1927:
According to published reports, two plans are being developed for the
electrification of Palestine. One plan
“contemplates pumping the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean over a low ridge
of mountains between the Palestinian coast and the Jordan Valley, and then
through turbines into Lake Tiberius and the Dead Sea.” The other, a more modest
plan, calls for using the flow of the Jordan to create mechanical power which
could then generate an affordable supply of electricity.
1927
(28th of Tevet, 5687): “Asher Ginsberg, whose pen name was Achad Ha’am passed
away 5 o’clock this morning at Tel Aviv.” Born in 1856 near Kiev, Ginsberg
lived in England from 1906 until 1921 when he made Aliyah. While living in
England, managed a tea shop owned by one his literary admirers and worked with
Chaim Weizmann to create the document known as the Balfour Declaration. In 1889, Ginsberg caused a stir with “the
publication in the Russian Jewish periodical Ha-Meliz of his frist article
dealing with the Zionist movement and the future of the Jews.” Over time he would develop the concept of
Cultural Zionism which espouses a belief “in the development of Palestine as
intellectual and moral homeland for the Jewish people throughout the word, as
well as a place of physical refuge.” His
most famous literary work was a three-volume work called Al Parshat Derachim
or The Parting of the Ways.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ahad_haam.html
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Ahad_Ha-Am
1928:
In Moscow, two doctors gave birth to Oskar Yakovlevich Rabin, the dissident
Soviet painter. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)
1928:
The municipality of Tel Aviv is scheduled to start paying the principle on a
75,000 pound bond issue that was offered in December of 1922.
1929:
“Figures on immigration and emigration during the month November which have
just been made public” showed that 247 immigrants including 185 Jews” entered
Palestine while 385 people including 167 Jew” left Palestine.
1930(2nd
of Tevet, 5690): Seventh Day of Chanukah
1930:
Honorary pallbearers Jascha Heifetz and Josef Hofmann are scheduled to “play
violin and piano duets” at this morning’s funeral service for “pianist and
music teacher Alexander Lambert” attended by Daniel Frohman, Sergei
Rachmaninoff and Efrem Zimbalist.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1930/01/02/96015426.pdf
1931:
Birthdate of Holocaust survivor Heinrich Zanger, the native Gelesenkirchen who
found refuge in Brooklyn, NY.
1931:
“Dr. Herbert Levinstein, of Manchester, the distinguished chemist, has been
awarded the medal of the Society of Chemical Industry, a distinction which
holds high place among scientific honours, and is one of the most coveted
scientific honours of the world.” (JTA)
1931:
At the Mansfield the curtain came down on the final performance of the original
Broadway production of “The House of Connelly” starring Stella Adler, Morris
Carnovsky, J. Edward Bromberg and Clifford Odets which was staged by Lee
Strasberg and “was the inaugural production of the Group Theatre.
1932(23rd of Tevet, 5692): Parashat Shemot
1932:
In reply to a letter of this date from H.E. Wilder, editor of the Israelite Press written to Dr. Hiram
Vineberg of New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, the latter wrote “I am the Dr. Hiram
Vineberg who practiced in Portage la Prairie area in 1881, 1882 and 1883.
Although I was the only Jew in town, I soon acquired the leading practice.
There were four other physicians in the town. I was appointed Board of Health
Officer. I was on intimate terms with the ministers (4 or 5) especially the
Reverend Mr. Fortin, Minister of the Episcopal Church. I did not encounter any
prejudice whatever, and there was no doubt as to my religion from the very
first. (When Dr. Hiram N. Vineberg of Cornwall, Ontario, came to practice
medicine at Portage la Prairie in 1878 there was only 33 Jews in the province
of Manitoba, 21 of whom lived in Winnipeg.)
1932:
Maurice J. Karpf was elected President of the American Association of Schools
of Social Work.
1933:
NBC’s Blue Network the 6th episode of “Flywheel, Shyster and
Flywheel” starring Groucho and Chico Marx.
1933(4th
of Tevet, 5693): Belle Moskowitz the political advisor to New York Governor Al
Smith who managed his 1928 presidential campaign died unexpectedly as a result
of complications from a fall on the steps in front of her house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Moskowitz
1933:
The death of Mrs. Henry (Belle) Moskowitz came as a great shock to those
gathered in Albany for today’s inauguration ceremony. Both Governor Herbert Lehman and former
Governor (1928 Presidential candidate) Al Smith were taken aback by the loss of
their friend and political ally.
1933:
In Brooklyn, Lillian Adler and Joseph Goldberg gave birth to Harvard trained
attorney Jay Goldberg, the husband of Regina Hochberg, who “defended celebrity
clients including Donald J. Trump, Sean Combs, Willie Nelson, the Rolling
Stones and a bevy of mobsters…” (As reported by Sam Roberts)
1933:
Birthdate of author Leonard Michaels whose works included Sylvia and The
Men’s Club.
1934: Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope presided at the
third annual commencement exercises of the Hebrew University where the
seventeen students who received degrees included the father and son “team” of
Ephraim and Levi Duvshani who majored in Hebrew Literature and Philosophy.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/01/03/118003705.html?pageNumber=13
1934(15th
of Tevet, 5694): Sixty-year-old the former New York City paper and twin
merchant and husband of Sophia Sakier, Samuel Sakier “ a pioneer Jewish farmer
in Palestine where he took part in the student movement of the Biluim forty
years ago” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/01/04/95465097.html?pageNumber=19
1934:
New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was among the many prominent civic, academic
and religious leaders who attended today’s funeral for Dr. George Alexander
Kohut which was held at the deceased’s Park Avenue Home. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
of the Free Synagogue and a life-long friend of the Dr. Kohut conducted the
service and delivered the eulogy. Internment followed the service at the Linden
Hill Cemetery.
1934:
Birthdate of Wael Zwaiter a member of Black September who was alleged to have
played a role in the Munich Massacre.
1935:
“First Message in Hebrew Sent over Telegraph” published today described how
Israel Amicam overcame the official objection to his plan for using Hebrew to
transmit telegrams because officials said “that it was not feasible to send
messages in Hebrew characters over wires and that a heavy expenditure for
special machinery would necessary.”
1936:
On his 75th birthday, Philadelphian Samuel Bloom announced that he
was contributing 3000 pounds for the establishment of a home for “vagrant
children” in Tel Aviv.
1937(19th
of Tevet, 5697): Parsasaht Shemot
1937(19th
of Tevet, 5697): Forty-nine year old Lemberg native and University of Vienna
trained physician Dorian Feigenbam, the psychoanalyst and pupil of Freud, who
in 1924 came to the United States where he became an “instructor in neurology”
at Columbia and co-founded the Psychoanalytic Quarterly while raising
two children – Daniel and Lou Esther – with his wife Yaffa Feigenbaum passed
away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/01/03/506511422.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1937.11925305
1937:
At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer was scheduled to deliver a sermon
on “Making Bricks Without Straw.”
1937:
Rabbi Nathan Stern is scheduled to deliver the sermon today at West End
Synagouge.
1937:
At Rodeph Sholom Synagogue Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a
sermon “I am who I am: Who is the God of Israel?”
1938:
It was reported today that Poland has increased the number of guards along its
border with Romania in response to an expected mass of Jews from that country
into Poland.
1938:
Today, in “an address at the Free Synagogue” meeting at Carnegie Hall, Ludwig
Lewisohn declared that “if the Jewish people are to be saved it will not be by
blind, mass adherence to any political or religious doctrine but by the great
majority of Jewish individuals finding themselves and cooperating as free
souls.”
1938:
The Palestine Post reported from
London that the British Zionist Federation launched a movement, led by Lady
Reading, Lord Melchett and Rabbi Perlzweig, for the inclusion of the Jewish
National Home in Palestine within the British Empire. They stressed the common
ideals and interests in Palestine of both Great Britain and the Jewish people.
The High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, paid an official visit to Tel Aviv
and assured Mayor Israel Rokach that the government would approve a £175,000
loan for the building of a new town hall and other essential developments.
1939:
Time magazine names Adolf Hitler “Man of the Year, 1938.” (This was not a vote of approval; merely
acknowledgement of his importance.)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html
1939:
Roman Dmowski, an anti-Semitic Polish politician who co-found the National
Democracy movement which sought to counter what it considers unfair
“Polish-Jewish economic competition with Catholic Poles” passed away. (Polish
anti-Semitism was homegrown which helped to account for why there was no refuge
for the Jews of Poland when the Nazis invaded.)
1939:
“About 350 persons attended a funeral service this afternoon for Harold Jacobi,
president of the Schenley Distillers Corporation and chairman of the Greater
New York.”
1939: Solomon Levitan served his final day in
office as state treasurer of Wisconsin
.1940:
In Poland, Jews were forbidden to post obituaries by the General Gouvernment
1941:
“In the Netherlands, Jews are prohibited from visiting cinemas.”
1941:
“The executive committee of the British Zionist Federation today stated that
the death of Tel Aviv’s Deputy Mayor Dov Hos was “a terrible tragedy for the
Jewish people.” (JTA)1941(3rd of Tevet, 5701): Forty-two-year-old pianist
Mischa Levitzki died suddenly of a heart attack in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/01/03/85238153.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1942: Truckloads of deportees were driven around
Chelmo, gassed and then buried. The first of 5,000 Gypsies were brought to
Chelmo and gassed.
1943(25th of Tevet, 5703): Parashat
Shemot
1943: It was reported today that “Sir Harold
MacMichael, High Commissioner for Palestine, warned Jews and Arabs in his New
Year's message that the Atlantic Charter was a charter of freedom but that it
did not mean license.”
1943: It was reported today that The Rev. Dr. Samuel
H. Goldenson, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at Sixty-fifth Street, has
a statement in which he declared that he was opposed to the doctrine that by
making Palestine a Jewish sovereign State the Jewish problem would be largely,
if not wholly, solved” because “the
permanent solution of the Jewish problem must be sought in conjunction with all
of the other global efforts to rectify the wrongs afflicting all peoples…”
1944: Eighty-six-year-old Dr. Bernard “Barney” Sachs
celebrated his 86th birthday today.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/archneurpsyc/article-abstract/649902
1945: Seventy-one year old Dr. Solly Baron, the
Berlin born rabbi who had fled Nazi Germany with his wife arrived in the United
States today from Halifax, Canada thus completing
a an ocean trip aboard the S.S. Cavina which originated in Liverpool, England.
1945:
Abba Eban ended his tour of duty at the Ministry of State.
1945:
Irving L. Levey is scheduled to assume his duties officially as a Justice of
the Supreme Court in Manhattan today.
1945:
Abba Eban is betrothed to his future wife Suzy.
1946:
Holocaust survivors Ann Gilbert (Chana Zylberstajn) Fred Gilbert (Felek
Gebotszrajber) were married in Scwabisch Hall, Germany.
1946: At a press conference, British General
Frederick Morgan, the director general of the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Europe, disclosed that "thousands
of Polish Jews were coming into the U.S. Zone of Occupation assisted by an
unknown secret Jewish organization." He further stated that Jewish
Holocaust survivors were being forced by that organization to immigrate to
Palestine. He clarified this accusation, intimating that most of the survivors
preferred to emigrate elsewhere. The organization was Bricha. But the claim by the British general must be
measured against the fact the British government was still committed to the
White Paper which barred Jewish immigrants from entering Palestine.
1946: Ruth Seid, writing under the ethnically
neutral and gender-ambiguous pen name Jo Sinclair, won the $10,000 Harper Prize
for new writers. “Seid had supported her writing through the generosity of a
local patron. She shared her $10 a week stipend with her parents, Russian
immigrants living in Cleveland. Like most of Seid's later fiction, Wasteland
puts questions of Jewish and gender identity at its core. The novel, whose main
character is a Jewish photojournalist who passes as a gentile in order to gain
social and professional acceptance, explores Seid's own mixed feelings about
her Jewish identity and is partially based on her own family. The book's
sympathetic portrayal of the photographer's apparently lesbian sister further
explores central questions of identity and belonging that reflected Seid's own
experience. When she won the Harper prize, Seid was already hard at work on a
second novel. In this and her later works, she consistently focused on the
theme of oppression in its many forms: anti-Semitism, racism, Jewish
self-hatred, poverty, homophobia, and marginalization. Her most well-known
novel, The Changelings, depicts a Jewish neighborhood in the process of
becoming an African-American neighborhood. It takes the long history of Jewish
oppression as a touchstone for exploring the prejudice faced by African
Americans. Published in 1955, The Changelings won the 1956 Jewish Book
Council of America annual fiction award and was also nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize. Seid later published several more novels and a memoir, The Seasons:
Death and Transfiguration (1992). Growing scholarly and popular interest in
women's and ethnic literature in the 1980s and 1990s has revived interest in
Seid's work. Ruth Seid died in 1995.”
https://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/02/1946/ruth-seid
1946: The Women’s League for Palestine holds an open
meeting and tea to plan a campaign for raising funds for enlarging and maintain
the league’s other homes in Jerusalem and Haifa.
1946: Eleanor Florence Rathbone, a member of the
British House of Commons and advocate for the rights of women passed away. In the House of Commons, the courageous
Eleanor Rathbone attacked the British government for the defeatist attitudes
expressed at the Bermuda Conference and noted that the Allies are responsible
for the deaths of any Jews if they refuse to help.
1947(10th of Tevet, 5707): Asara B'Tevet
1947: Jewish underground staged bombings and machine
gun attacks in five cities. Casualties were low. Pamphlets seized warned that
the Irgun had again declared war against the British.
1947: “Admiral Nakhimov” a Russian made biopic
starring Aleksei Dikiy was released today in the Soviet Union.
1948: Birthdate of Tony Robert Judt who went from being an ardent Zionist to one who was so
critical of the Jewish state that he might classified as an anti-Zionist.
1948: In New York City, nightclub owner Bill Miller
and his wife gave birth to Pulitzer Prize winning writer and FOX commentator
Judith Miller.
1949(1st of Tevet, 5709): Rosh Chodesh
Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah
1949: In the aftermath of the War of Independence,
the last Israeli troops left the Sinai Peninsula completing a withdrawal that
had been worked out between Ben Gurion and Britain.
1949: In an example of what difference a year makes,
two Israeli Spitfires attacked an Egyptian train traveling in violation of the
withdrawal agreement.
1949: An Egyptian plan flew over Jerusalem injuring
seven people when it dropped its bombs.
1949: A Revision on the Discourse on Method
by Alfred E. Cohn appeared on the list of “Sundry Books That Might, or Should,
Appear in the Months That Lie Ahead.”
1949: As
part of Bill Paley’s “great raid” the Jack Benny Program returned to CBS radio
where it will remain until its last broadcast in 1955.
1952(4th of Tevet, 5712): Sixty-eighty-year-old
sculptor Jo Davidson who “had recently returned to France from Israel where he
completed plaster casts for busts of Chaim Wiezmann, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe
Sharett “to record the birth of that nation, passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jo-davidson
1951: The North American tour of the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra sponsored by the American Fund for Israeli Institutions
began with a concert in Washington, D.C. conducted by Dr. Serge Koussevitzky,
1952(4th of Tevet, 5712):
Sixty-eight-year-old Jo Davidson, the Lower East Side born son of Russian
Jewish immigrants who went to become one of the most famous sculptors of his
time passed away today in Tours, France.
https://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/jo-davidson
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jo-davidson
1953: The
Jerusalem Post reported that on the first day on which price control was
lifted from poultry, prices rose from IL 2 to IL 6 a kilo. The Norwegian s.s.
Rimfort passed through the Suez Canal and arrived with a cargo of 150 tons of
meat from Ethiopia, assuring the distribution of the monthly meat ration. The
Ministry of Commerce started planning further substantial meat purchases from
Brazil and Argentina.
1953: In Atlantic City, Wilma “Billie” Stein and
Laurence Tisch, the co-chairman of Loews Corporation gave birth to Cornell and
University of Pennsylvania businessman James S. Tisch the husband of Merryl
Hiat who became CEO of Loews in 199.
1953: Birthdate of Egyptian born American author
Andre Aciman who wrote the autobiographical Out of Egypt.
1954: Herman Wouk’s "Caine Mutiny"
premiered in New York City.
1954:
After 344 performances on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre, the curtain came
down “My Three Angels,” “a comedy play by Samuel and Bella Spewack” with
“scenic designs by Boris Aronson.
1955: Arab militant gunmen attacked and killed 2
hikers in the Judean Desert.
1955:
First broadcast of “The Bob Cummings Show” for which Stanley Frazen served as
Supervising Editor.
1956:
Sydney Fine resigned from his position as member of the House of
Representatives for New York’s 22nd congressional district so that
he could join the New York Supreme Court.
1957(29th
of Tevet, 5717): Six-eight-year-old Isaac Nachman Steinberg passed away.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/steinberg-isaac-nachman-11757
1959:
Final broadcast of “Nora Drake,” the long-running soap opera written by Milton
Lewis.
1960(2nd of Tevet, 5720): Parashat Miketz
and 8th Day of Chanukah
1960: Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts
announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy was
quite popular with a significant segment of Jewish voters. Unlike others, Jews had no problem supporting
a Catholic running for President. As
President, Kennedy appointed Jews to his Cabinet and to the Supreme Court. He also supported the state of Israel when
the survival of the Jewish state was still at risk.
1961(14th of Tevet, 5721): Eighty-one-year-old
Constance Amberg Sporborg, the widow of attorney of William Dick Sporborg, who
served was a leader of “the New York City and State Federations of Women’s
Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women’s Clubs and the National Council of
Jewish Women” passed away today.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sporborg-constance-amberg
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9F04E5DF1739EE32A25750C0A9679C946091D6CF
1961: Birthdate of Representative Rob Wexler, who
represented Florida’s 19th congressional district starting in 1997.
1962: Look magazine features photographs of JFK and
his family which were the work of photojournalist Stanley Tretick
http://2neat.com/magazine/wp-content/uploads/LOOK-Magazine-1962-01-02.jpg
1963(6th of Tevet, 5723):
Seventy-six-year-old Minnie K. Kooler Lapidus, the wife of Lithuania native and
Omaha businessman Harry Lapidus, the president of the Omaha Fixture Supply
Company and leader of the Jewish community who “was a member of the American
Jewish National Council of Americanization and a member of the executive
committee of the United Palestine Appeal and the mother of Estelle and Earl Lapidus passed away today after which
she was buried at the Fisher Farm Cemetery in Bellevue, Nebraska.
1964: Israeli footballer Mordechai “Motaleh”
Spiegler “made his international debut for Israel today against Hong Kong.
1965: Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ version of “This
Diamond Ring” a song written by Al Kooper and Irwin Levin charted first, #101
on today’s Billboard "Bubbling Under" chart
1966(10th
of Tevet, 5726): Asara B’Tevet
1966:
First native Jewish child was born in Spain since the expulsion in 1492
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/01/04/79267886.html?pageNumber=27
1966:
“The Trefa Banquet” published today described the famous dinner given in
Cincinnati in 1883 which proved to be a decisive moment in the separation of
the Reform movement from traditional Judaism.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-trefa-banquet/
1967:
Yisrael Yeshayahu replaced Eliyahu Sasson as Communications Minister.
1967:
Eliyahu Sasson replaced Bechor Shalom Sheetrit as Minister of Public Security.
1967:
An exhibition of the works of Gertrude Schaefler began today at the Bodley
Gallery in New York City.
1967(20th
of Tevet, 5727): Seventy-five-year Ira Louis Quiat, the Colorado born son of
“Phillip and Anna (Shames) Quiat and Denver University trained attorney who was
the husband of Esther Greenblatt Quiat and the father of Marshall and Gerald
Quiat passed away today after which he was buried at the Congregation Emanuel
Cemetery in Denver, CO.
1968(1st
of Tevet, 5728): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah
1968:
In Tel Aviv, “Dr. Nahum Goldman, the president of the World Zionist
Organization disclosed at a press conference today that the Jewish Agency
executive has agreed that Zionist leader in the Diaspora will be able to retain
his position unless he immigrates to Israel.”
1968:
Today, South African Jewish dentist Philip Blaiberg became “the third person to
receive a heart transplant.
1968:
“Funeral services were held today New York for Dr. Joseph Kissman, attorney,
journalist, president of the Jewish Labor Bund of Rumania from 1930 to 1937,
and a former member of the presidium of the Jewish National Committee of
Austria. He died here Sunday, at the age of 78. Born in the old Austro-Hungarian
Empire. he received a doctorate in law at the University of Vienna in 1913.”
1969:
Opening of “The Fig Leaves Are Falling” with script and lyrics by Allan Sherman
1970:
“State Supreme Court Justice Charles Marks, who in 32 years on the bench dealt
vigorously with the courtroom conduct of defense and prosecution lawyers and
unruly spectators,” retired today.
1970:
In Operation Double Bass 10, The Golani Brigade took part in a retaliatory raid
on Kfar Kila in response to the kidnapping of an elderly guard from Metula by
Fatah two days earlier.
1970: During the War of Attrition, Hagi Zamir,
together with two other soldiers - including Aharon Danziger - were hurt while
entering the island of Shaduan with Zamir’s wounds resulting in the amputation
of his left leg. Zamir, a native of Kibbutz Zikim, overcame his loss by turning
to volleyball where he took part in seven Paralympic Games.
1971: A
team of Israeli scholars announced the discovery in Jerusalem of a
2,000-year-old skeleton of a crucified male. Found in a cave-tomb, it was the
first direct physical evidence of the well-documented Roman method of execution.
1971(5th of
Tevet, 5731): A family of new immigrants from England – David and Pretty Arroyo
and their two babies, Mark and Abigail - visit Gaza. They park their car in a
main street and a minute later a terrorist throws a hand grenade through the
open rear window. The babies are killed on the spot and their mom is severely
wounded. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Bar Lev assign Ariel
Sharon, Head of the Southern Command, to eliminate the terror in the Gaza
Strip.
1972: Opening of “Fun City,” the first Broadway play by--and starring--Joan Rivers.
1974:
Diplomatic sources in Moscow said the USSR allowed a record 34,750 Jews to
emigrate in 1973 as opposed to 31,500 in 1972” but these “emigrants were mainly
from Southern Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic States and Georgia” with few
Jews from Moscow or Leningrad receiving exit permits.
1975(19th
of Tevet, 5735): Seventy-eight-year-old Rochester NY born producer Jules Levey,
the husband of Mae Ann Wolf suffered an apparent fatal heart attack today.
1976(29th
of Tevet,5736): Seventy-nine year old economist and political scientist
Sterling D. Spero, the Brooklyn born son of Joseph and Sarah Lewis Spero and the holder of a doctorate from Columbia best
known for “co-authoring a famous study of African-American labor history
entitled The Black Worker, the Negro & the Labor Movement” passed away
today.
1978:
The Jerusalem Post reported that
during the current Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, Mustafa Amin, a
well-known Egyptian journalist, described Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a
"Shylock," determined to get his pound of flesh from his people.
Residents of the Yamit area were "more disappointed than ever" by the
government decision to allow Egyptian sovereignty over the entire Rafiah
Approaches.
1978(22nd
of Tevet, 5738): Seventy-nine-year-old Max Asocli, the Ferrara, Italy
born son of Enrico Ascoli, a coal and lumber merchant, and Adriana Finzi gained
fame as a dean of the New School for Social Research and publisher‐editor
of the magazine The Reporter passed away today. (As reported by John L. Hess) https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/02/archives/max-ascoli-publisher-of-the-reporter-dies-at-79-magazine-resolutely.html
1979(3rd
of Tevet, 5739): Seventy-seven Lithuanian born Rabbi Chaim Leib Halevi
Shmuelevitz passed away today in Jerusalem.
http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kovno/kovno_pages/kovno_stories_shmulevitz.html
1981:
As of today, Helen Reddy and Jeff Wald “had separated with Wald moving into a
Beverly Hills rehad facility to treat an eight-year addiction to cocaine.” Reddy had “converted Judaism before marrying
Wald.”
1981:
“Nadezhda Mandelstam, widow of Osip Mandelstam, the poet who died in a
Stalinist purge, was buried today on the outskirts of Moscow” (As reported by
Anthony Austin)
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/03/world/russians-bury-nadezhda-mandelstam.html
1985:
Funeral services are scheduled to be held in Chicago today for food importer
Max H. Ries, the founder of Reese Finer Foods.
1987(1st
of Tevet, 5747): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
1987:
During the Intifada, Israel stopped another Junieh-bound ferry, the Sunny Boat,
and turned it back to Larnaca after the Cypriot captain refused an Israeli
demand that he hand over Palestinian passengers suspected of being terrorists.
1988(12th
of Tevet, 5748) Parashat Vayehci
1988(12th
of Tevet, 5748): Eighty-nine year old “solicitor and Australian Jewish
Community leader,” Alec Masel, the Russian born son of the former Leah Cohen
and Esor Masel, and the husband of Marie Schwartz with whom he had two sons,
passed away today.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/masel-alec-14942
1989:
In an article entitled “Israel, Hardly the Monaco of the Middle East,” Abba
Eban explained why Israel must negotiate with the Arabs and why her “friends”
must not be alarmed at this turn of events.
Since Eban may be considered as “the dean of Israeli foreign policy and
one of those who got it more right than most, the article is worth reading in
its entirety.
1990:
The Likud and Labor parties averted a breakup of their governing coalition
today with a compromise under which Ezer Weizmann, the independent-minded Labor
Party Science Minister, would keep his post but be suspended from the
Government's decision-making core.
1990:
In an article entitled “From Letter Writer to Starting Forward,” Jack Cavanugh
described the unique approach followed by Nadav Henefield as he transitioned
from being one of the best basketball players in Israel to a scholarship and
starting role with the University of Connecticut.
1992:
Tonight, Israel announced that it would expel 12 Palestinians who were involved
with known terrorists following the murder of a Jewish settler.
1992:
Jerusalem struggled with its worst snowstorm in four decades. Across the
Israeli capital, tree branches, and even entire trees, snapped with rifle-shot
cracks under
1993: The New York Times published the following letter to the
editor from David L. Gold; President of the Association of the Study of Jewish
Languages disputing early claims that that the word “turkey” had a Hebrew root.
“Harold
M. Kamsler's attempt to trace English "turkey" to Hebrew
"tuki" (letter, Dec. 13) makes etymology seem as easy as finding
like-sounding words in other languages.
To
set the record straight: The English word is a shortening of
"Turkey-cock" and "Turkey-hen," which were originally the
names of the guinea fowl (so called because the guinea fowl was sometimes
imported into Europe through Turkey). Because people misidentified the turkey
with the guinea fowl or mistakenly considered it to be a species of that bird,
these English names came to designate the turkey. Furthermore, the word
"Turkey-cock" is not attested until 1541, that is, almost a
half-century after Columbus's voyages. "Turkey-hen and "turkey"
are not attested until even later. Rabbi Kamsler's explanation, not original
with him, is an old yarn spun in uninformed Jewish circles. Along with
countless other pseudoscientific claims about supposed Hebrew influence on
English and other languages, the myth of the Hebrew origin of
"turkey" was quietly exploded in volume 2 of Jewish Linguistic
Studies (1990).”
1994:
“A Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada” comes to a
close today at the Jewish Museum in NYC
1994:
Final day for showing "A Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life
in Canada" at the Jewish Museum in New York City.
1994:
“Jane’s House” a made for television dramatic film with a teleplay by Eric
Roth, music by David Shire and produced by Aaron Spelling was broadcast for the
first time tonight on CBS.
1994:
At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, the curtain came down on a revival production
of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” which had been directed by Elmer Rice in its
initial Broadway production
1994:
The last in a series of three family tours sponsored by American Jewish
Congress are scheduled to come to an end.
1996(10th
of Tevet, 5756): Asara B’Tevet
1997:
The governor of Colorado appointed Michael Bender to serve as an associate
Justice of the Colorado State Supreme Court He was the son of basketball legend
and former U.S. Attorney Lou Bender,
1997(23rd
of Tevet, 5757): Eighty-six-year-old Moshe Vilenski, the native of Warsaw who
is considered a pioneer of Israeli music and who wrote the music for
“Kalaniyot” passed away today.
1997(23rd
of Tevet, 5757): Forty-five-year-old Randy California (Randy Craig Wolfe) “a
guitarist, singer and songwriter and one of the original members of the rock
group Spirit” passed away today in Hawaii.
http://randycaliforniaandspirit.com/biography/
1998: In an article entitled “Are yeshiva
students dumb?” author Jonathan Rosenblum quoted the following story
in explaining why yeshivot are important to the survival of the Jewish people.
“At the cornerstone-laying of Ponevezh Yeshiva, nearly 50 years
ago, many were surprised by the presence of Mapai stalwart Pinhas Lavon. Asked
what an avowed secularist was doing there, Lavon replied in all seriousness,
'The leaders of the Jewish people have always come from the yeshivas. If we
have no yeshivas, where will the leaders come from?"
1998(4th
of Tevet, 5758): Ninety-two-year-old writer and lyricist Max Coplet passed away
today
http://cn.worldheritage.org/articles/Max_Colpet
1999:
“Seeking donations from an audience sympathetic to his view that too many
Federal policies favor blacks, Jews and other minorities over whites, David
Duke arrived in the Washington area today to drum up support for his latest
political endeavor.” (Editor’s note – two decades later this marginalized
mentality is mainstream in many political arenas.)
2000:
The New York Times featured reviews
of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs,
1969 by Elie Wiesel, Arthur Kosetler: The Homeless Mind by David
Cesarani and The Multiple Identities of the Middle East by Bernard
Lewis.
2001:
Yasir Arafat was scheduled to meet with President Clinton this afternoon
following Arafat’s emergency flight to Washington from Gaza coming in the wake
of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day.
2002:
“In an indication that it sees a new determination on the part of Yasir Arafat
to rein in militant Palestinian factions, the United States said today that it
would send its envoy back to the Middle East to try to end 15 months of
Israeli-Palestinian violence.”
2003:
Today Israeli soldiers found the charred body of a 73-year-old Israeli man near
a West Bank village hours after his family had reported him missing. The grisly
discovery came after the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to
Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, issued a statement declaring it had killed an
Israeli in the Jordan Valley near Tubas.
2004:
It was reported today that Osama el-Baz, “an Egyptian government envoy” met
with Yasir Arafat “and urged him to work with rival Palestinian factions to end
attacks against Israel.”
2005:
The New York Times featured reviews
of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Catastrophe: Risk and Response by Richard A.
Posner and the recently published paperback editions of Nobody’s Perfect:
Billy Wilder: A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the
1950s and 1960s by Gerald
Nachman, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Levy;
translated by James X. Mitchell and A
Mighty Heart The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl by Mariane
Pearl with Sarah Crichton.
2005:
In “Shalom, y’all a smile from South’s Jews” published today the Chicago Tribune reported on “an archive
opening soon in South Carolina that salutes 300 years of immigrants’ history.”
The archive located on the campus of the College of Charleston will shed light
on Jewish Southern history and its role in society. The focus will be the Jews of Charleston
which was once the leading port of entry for Jews coming to the United States.
2006:
In “Satire That Spares Nothing, Not Even God and Country” published today Dina
Kraft described Israel's hit spoof news show, "A Wonderful Country"
which drew inspiration in part from "Saturday Night Live" and
"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
2007:
“All the Best from Denis Norden,” “a special show that was recorded as a
‘farewell tour’ to all his shows was shown” today.
2007:
Police Inspector - General Karadi has decided to appoint a special national
police task force to combat the attacks and threats against Israeli mayors.
2007(17
Shevat 5767): Ninety-five-year-old Teddy
Kolleck, Jerusalem’s most famous mayor, passed away.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/teddy-kollek
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03kollek.html
http://www.jerusalemfoundation.org/teddy-kollek-digital-archives.aspx
2008:
In Buenos Aires, Argentina the
11th Annual Maccabiah Games came to an end.
2008:
The Film Forum in Manhattan started a sixteen-day showing of 23 of the films of
producer-director Otto Preminger. The
Viennese born refugee from Hitler’s Europe; Preminger’s accomplishments
transcended those of a movie mogul. The
crusading liberal challenged racism by directing “Porgy and Bess” and “Carmen
Jones.” He challenged McCarthyism and
the Red Baiting Right Wing by hiring Dalton Trumbo one of the jailed Hollywood
10 as the writer screenwriter for the film “Exodus.”
2008:
The New York Times features a review
of Richard Cook’s Alfred Kazin a biography of the literary critic who
was “a proud Jew” and “a champion of writers like Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow
and Philip Roth.”
2008:
Representative Tom Lantos a California Democrat and chairman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee announced that he will not seek re-election because
he has cancer of the esophagus. Born in
Budapest, Hungary in 1944, Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in
the U.S. Congress.
2009:
As the impact of Bernard L. Madoff’s con game spreads, the management of the
Bank Medici, the small Austrian merchant bank that emerged as one of its
largest victims resigned making room for a government appointed accountant to
temporarily take over day-to-day management of the bank’s operations. The bank, based in Vienna, had invested $2.1
billion in client funds with Madoff.
2009:
As Jews around the world prepared for Shabbat, the following names would be
added to the Yahrzeit Lists read at more than one synagogue or temple:
2010: Jews
around the world complete the reading of Bereshit (Genesis) – one
down, four to go.
2010: Jerusalem native Dan Aran leads the Dan Aran Trio, as it performs
at The Bar Next Door in New York.
2010: In Cedar Rapids, the traditional Saturday Morning Minyan at Temple
Judah entered its ninth year. Despite sub-zero temperatures and the New Year’s
weekend, our small congregation produced a number in excess of the basic prayer
quorum. Per the request of our youngest attendee, Gabriella Thalblum Deb Levin
saw to it that we had Pizza as part of the Kiddush following services.
2010:
A hacker attacked Jewish Web sites in
Boulder, Colo., posting anti-Semitic messages.
2010(16th of Tevet, 5770): David
Gerber, an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning television producer who brought
forward-thinking series like “Police Story” and “Police Woman” to prime time in
the 1970s and produced more than 50 television films and mini-series during a
four-decade career, died today in Los Angeles at the age of 86. (As reported by
Anita Gates)
2011: A Judaica book sale -- the largest of its kind in the Greater
Washington area -- with an estimated 1,600 titles is scheduled to take place at
Congregation Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Md.
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish
authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Memory
Chalet by Tony Judt
2011: The funeral of Rabbi Yissachar Meir, who passed away on Shabbat,
was held today at Netiviot, Israel.
2011: In the week ending today the London, Broadway, and both North
American touring productions of “Wicked,} the Stephen Schwartz and Winnie
Holzman musical “simultaneously broke their respective records for the highest
weekly gross/”
2011:
Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh is one of two winners of
Israel’s Media Watch’s 2011 award for media criticism, the organization
announced today.
2011:
As of today, Deborah Shapiro and Michael Rieber who have been friends,
political allies, and fellow members of Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston
for several years enjoy another distinction. Together, they form the Republican
minority on the five-person Livingston Township Council.
2012:
In Jerusalem, local talent is scheduled to have a chance to shine at Open Mic
Night at Mike’s Place
2012:
Rabbi Chaim Sabato and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein are scheduled to appear at the
Jerusalem Great Synagogue in a program is in celebration of the recently
published book "Mevakshay Panecha" by Rabbis Sabato and
Lichtenstein. “Adjusting Sites” and
“Aleppo Tales” by Chaim Sabato are available in English and are a must read for
everybody.
2012:
The Knesset approved today in second and third readings the so-called Grunis
bill, which is expected to pave the way for Supreme Court Justice Asher Dan
Grunis, a conservative judge popular with right-wing politicians, to be named
the next court president.
2012:
The IDF General Staff forum has decided to adopt a special committee's
recommendation to excuse religious soldiers from informal events which include
women's singing, Ynet learned today.
2013:
“Aya” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.
2013:
“Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize will honor American, German and Austrian
scientists as well as an architect from Portugal this year, the Wolf Foundation
announced today.” (As reported by Michal Shumlovich)
2013:
Ruth Goodman, Yossi Almani and the Hilulim team from Israel featuring Gadi
Bitton, Yaron Ben Simchon, Yaron Carmel are scheduled to lead an evening of
Israeli Dancing at the 92nd Street Y
2013(20th
of Tevet, 5773): Ninety-two-year-old scholar and author Gerda Lerner passed
away today. (As reported by William Grimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/us/gerda-lerner-historian-dies-at-92.html
2013:
Clashes broke out for the second day running between Palestinians and settlers
outside the West Bank outpost of Esh Kodesh near the Shiloh settlement this
morning, Army Radio reported.
2013:
The IDF Prosecutor today filed an indictment against the alleged “mastermind”
of the Tel Aviv bus bombing which injured 24 passengers during Operation Pillar
of Defense with the West Bank Military Court of Yehuda.
2014:
“Sage of a Photo” and “Behind the Candelabra” are scheduled to be shown at the
Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.
2014(1st
of Shevat, 5774): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
2014:
Menachem “Max” Stark “a Jewish Chassidic American real estate developer in New
York City. Stark was abducted outside his office at 331 Rutledge Street in
Brooklyn” today.
2014:
“An internal Palestinian Authority document” “whose contents were reported
by…Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Radio this morning” predicted a “third intifada”
if the Kerry Peace talks fail.
2014:
A 16-year-old Gaza terrorist, who was trying to destroy the security fence, was
shot in the leg by the IDF today after he refused orders to desist. (As
reported by Ari Yashir)
2014:
The IDF expects Israeli born Seton Hall basketball player Tom Maayan to return
to fulfill his military obligation.
2014:
The gag order was removed on Shin Bet’s arrest of “14 terrorists some from the
Islamic Jihad organization, on suspicion that they were involved in the bombing
of a bus in Bat Yam two weeks ago.” (As reported by Gil Ronen)
2015:
In Washington, DC, the historic sixth and I synagogue is scheduled to host a
“Good Soul Shabbat” featuring Rabbi Scott, Kevin Snider of DeLeon,
percussionist Guy Irlander, and Michal Bilick
2015:
“Several settlers hurled rocks at personnel from Jerusalem’s US Consulate near
an illegal West Bank outpost.” (As reported by Itmar Sharon)
2015:
The IDF arrested Mohammed al-Ajlounin, an East Jerusalem resident “on suspicion
that he was behind dthe stabbing of two Border Police officers last week in
Jerusalem’s Old City.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)
2015(11th
of Tevet, 5775): Ruth Popkin, the former
Hadassah President and President of the Jewish National Fund passed away today
at the age of 101.
2015:
Marc Weisman, Iowa’s “Hebrew Hammer” played his final college football game.
2016:
This evening, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the fourth annual Cedar Rapids
Opera Theatre Recital featuring a performance of selections from “La Traviata.”
2016:
“A Brief History of Humankind” an exhibit based on Sapiens: A Brief History by
Yuval Noah Harari is scheduled to come to a close at the Israel Museum.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-museum-tells-story-of-sapiens-via-archaeology-and-art/
2016:
“The Kid” and “Rust and Bones” are scheduled to be shown at The Jerusalem
Cinematheque
2016(21st
of Tevet, 5776): Shabbat Shemot – Start of the New Year coincides with the
start of the second book of the Torah.
2016(21st
of Tevet, 5776): Seventy-nine-year-old television host Stanley Siegel passed
away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts.)
2017:
As they recover from ringing the New Year, friends and family Judith Miller are
scheduled to celebrate the birthday of the Pulitzer Prize winning FOX
commentator.
2017:
Ninety-year-old multi-talented John Peter Berge the son of a non-observant Jew
who had converted to Catholicism and the author of the novel G which won the
Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1972 passed away today. (As reported by Randy
Kennedy)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/arts/design/john-berger-provocative-art-critic-dies-at-90.html
2017:
“Israeli police investigators questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for
three hours at his official residence this evening on suspicion of receiving
illicit gifts and favors from business executives.”
2017:
Friends and family mourn the death of 19-year-old Israeli Lian Zahar Hassan who
was murdered by a terrorist as she celebrated the New Year in Istanbul.
2017:
“Angeliquca Tompkins, 19, and Matthew Terry, 20 and a female juvenile charged
with criminal mischief and criminal trespassing in connection with the
vandalism of the headstone of a Jewish couple buried in the cemetery of
Scottsburg, a small Indiana town” (JTA)
2017:
This evening in Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the fifth
annual Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre Recital featuring “principal singers from
Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliaceci.”
2018:
Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenhot, said that Iran’s
outlay for helping allies, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is
increasing from the millions already being spent for that purpose.
2018(15th
of Tevet, 5778): Eight-seven-year-old “ceramic artist Elizabeth Woodman” and
the wife of fellow artist George Woodman passed away today. (As reported by
Richard Sandomir)
2018:
U.VA, trained attorney Michael Signer, the son of Marjorie and Robert Signer,
completed his term as Mayor of Charlottesville, VA during which the infamous
2016 Nazi March occurred whose participants Donald Trump said included some
“good” people.
2018:
Night Spectacular Sound and Light Show is scheduled to illuminate the walls of
the Citadel in Jerusalem.
2018:
“The Israeli Parliament, after a late-night debate, voted early today to enact
stiff new obstacles to any potential land-for-peace deal involving Jerusalem,
while abandoning at the last minute a measure that would have eased the way to
rid the city of several overwhelmingly Palestinian neighborhoods.”
2018:
In Jerusalem, the First Station is scheduled to host a calorie burning Zumba
Party.
2018:
Today, “Neshama Carlebach, daughter of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, in her
first public comments since the start of the #MeToo movement said she is angry
with her father over allegations of sexual misconduct but that he was more than
just his faults.”
2018:
In New York, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host several tours “of the
exhibition Modigliani Unmasked.”
2019:
Syria and Iran were on the agenda when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met today in Brasilia against the backdrop
of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration (As reported by Itamar
Eichner)
2019:
In Rochester, NY, Mike Miller and Leah Sherman are scheduled provided musical
instruction in an evening sponsored by Temple Beth El, Temple B’rith Kodesh and
Temple Sinai.
2019(25th
of Tevet, 5779): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Moses Levi Ehrenreich, the
chief rabbi of Rome. (As reported by Aish)
2020:
The Pozez JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Book Buddies” at the
Chantilly, VA, Regional Library this moring.
2020:
The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City is Alan Edelman is scheduled
to facility a discussion of “Hot Topics: Jewish News, Ideas and Culture.”
2020:
In Albany, NY, at Congregation Ohav Shalom, Rabbi Rena Kieval is scheduled to
lead “Many Voices: Ta Shma – Come and Hear Class,” “an exploration of classic
Jewish texts which teach the values of pluralism.
2020:
It was reported today that Prime Minister Netanyahu has asked the Knesset for
immunity from prosecution in the criminal case involving charges of fraud and
breach of trust which will effectively mean that Bibi can avoid facing the “bar
of justice” until after the March elections.
2021:
In Cleveland, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host “Starbucks,
Breach and Torah” online.
2021:
Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present “Clergy Havdalah, Cocktails and
Mocktails,” which offers a “spiritual connection as we say goodbye to Shabbat
and welcome the new week..”
2021:
While “Israel is leading the world in per capita vaccinations,” as Israelis
observe Shabbat, they will be dealing with “HMO’s taking a two-week pause” in
inoculating new people following the Health Ministry’s admission “that vaccine
supplies aren’t enough to keep up with demand.”
2021(18th
of Tevet, 57801): Parashat Vayechi;
Starting the New Year by finishing the first book of the Torah.
2022:
Religious Service Minister recommended that Rabbi Moshe Willer should continue
in his position as head of the Conversion Authority as of today because he
follows the instruction Rabbi David Lau who is an opponent of governments
proposed reforms to the system for Jewish conversion.(As reported by Zvi
Joffree
2022:
Malik Faisal Akram who was on his way to take hostages at the synagogue in
Colleyville, TX was captured on video being dropped off at a homeless shelter
in Dallas.
2022:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane by Paul Auster, Justice
on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett,
and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court by Linda Greenhouse
and the recently released paperback edition of Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism by Benjamin Friedman.
2023: Ghost Army: The Combat Con Artists of
World War II an exhibition that tells the heroic tale of the top-secret U.S.
Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the “Ghost Army,” and their
covert operations across Europe that helped win the war, armed with nothing
heavier than .50 caliber machine guns” is scheduled to come to an end today at
the Illinois Holocaust Museum.
2023: In case of déjà vu all over again, for
the second time in its history Tulane is scheduled to play USC in a bowl game,
the first time being in 1932 when Tulane led by Louis “Lou” Boasberg who played
both tackled and end and later found the New Orleans Novelty Company.
2024: In New Orleans, the National Council of
Jewish Women is scheduled to hold its board meeting today.
2024: Jewish Gateways is scheduled to present “Here
All Along: The Torah: Questioning, Debating, and Interpreting,” during which
Rabbi Bridget Wynee will lead an exploration of Sarah Hurwitz’s novel, subtitled
“Meaning, Spirituality and Deeper Connection in Judaism.”
2024: Temple Judea is scheduled to host “Modern
Mussar with Michael Ross.”
2024: As January 2nd begins in Israel,
the Hamas held hostages begin day 88 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
