This Day, January 3, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
January 3
106
1322:
The reign of King Phillip V, also called Phillip the Long or Phillip the Tall
during which “300,000 men, headed by a deposed priest and a renegade monk began
their desultory march to the Holy Land: which included ravaging the Jews of
Navarre, slaying 6,000 Jews in Estella and laying siege to Verdun where the
Jews took their own lives rather than the victims of this so-called “Shepherd’s
Crusade” came to an end today.
1521:
Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum
Pontificem. Leo is portrayed as the epitome of Church corruption – the great
seller of indulgences. But Leo also
provided protection for the Jews living in the Papal States. On one occasion he defied King Louis of
France by not burning Jewish texts and he actually encouraged a Christian
printer to publish a complete, uncensored copy of the Talmud. Luther is portrayed as the great reformer and
father of the Reformation. Jews certainly
benefited from the Protestant Reformation since was in the Protestant
Netherlands and protestant England that the Jews found refuge and had a chance
to grow and develop. However, Luther’s
version of the Protestant Reformation included a large dose of anti-Semitism
that would help fuel the fires of what became the Holocaust. History is not
always black or white, but can be a whole lot of gray.
1571:
Joachim II Hector, the Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, who
allowed the Jews to return to the Margavite after having been banished because
of false accusations of host desecration, passed away.
1598:
In a letter from the Sultan to the Ottoman leaders in Jerusalem, he expressed
his approval of the fact that the local Muslims locked the doors of the
Nachmanides (Ramban) Synagogue, since, "the noisy ceremonies of the Jews
in accordance with their false rites hinder our pious devotion and divine
worship." Because of this the door was locked and sealed. The Sultan
approved of the closing of the building, and he then ordered the synagogue to
be annexed to the Muslims.
1632(19th
of Tevet, 5392): Abraham Hayyim Schor Ben Naphtali Hirsch the Galician rabbi
and Talmudist passed a way today “at Belz, a small town near Lemberg.”
1676:
Frederick William of Brandenburg issued a decree safeguarding the privileges of
the Jews of Berlin.
1690(22nd
of Tevet, 5450): Famed Lithuanian Rabbi Hillel ben Naphtali Zevi passed away.
Born in 1615, he served as a Rabbi in several towns throughout Lithuania. He was an important communal leader since he
was a delegate to the Council of Four Lands.
He was the author of Bet Hillel which was a major commentary on
the code of Jewish law known as the Shulchon Oruch.
1765(10th
of Tevet, 5525): Asara B’Tevet
1769:
Birthdate of Jacob Herzfeld, a native of Dessau, Germany who studied medicine
at Liepzig before becoming an actor and theatrical manager. He passed away in 1826.
1777:
Erev Shabbat, George Washington and his small, shivering band defeated the
British at the Battle of Princeton, a victory that was vital to keep the
Revolutionary cause which was supported by most American Jews, alive.
1796:
Seventy-six-year-old “Naphtali Hirtz be Feivel” was buried today at the
“Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”
1780:
Birthdate of Bavarian native Fanny Reiling, the wife of Michael Baerl
Lilienthal with whom she had eight children.
1784:
In Newport, RI, Rachel Mears and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Richa Isaacks.
1797:
“The Treaty of Tripoli, the first treaty between the United States and Tripoli (now
Libya) to secure commercial shipping rights and protect American ships” which
included Article 11 stating that "the Government of the United States of
America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" was
signed for a second time today at Algiers after having been originally signed
in Tripoli in November of 1796.
1802(29th
of Tevet, 5562): Grace Cohen Delmont, the daughter of Rachel and David Cohen
Delmonte and the wife of Simon Abedndanone with whom she had two children
passed away today in St. Thomas, V.I.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1958_10_02_00_falk.pdf
1811(7th
of Tevet, 5571): Esther Lopez, the daughter of Aaron Lopez and the wife of
Mordecai Gomez passed away today in New York city.
1811:
In New Orleans, Pierre Brugman who was from Curaçao and of Dutch–Jewish
Sephardic ancestry and Puerto Rican Isabel Duliebre gave birth to businessman
and leader in the movement for Puerto Rico’s independence Mathias Brugman
1816(2nd
of Tevet, 5576): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1821(29th
of Tevet, 5581): While serving in his 50th year as the “Chief Cantor
of the Jewish Congregation of Berlin, Aaron Beer passed away today.
1822:
Rachel and Moses Joseph Cashmore gave birth to Esther Cashmore who had three
children --James, Adolph and Rosalie – with her second husband Samuel Adolph
Jonas
1823:
In Charleston, SC, this evening, Rabbi Peixotto officiated at the wedding of
N.H. Hart and Sara Moses, the daughter of the late Joseph Moses.
1824(3rd
of Shevat, 5584): Parashat Vaera
1824(3rd
of Shevat, 5584): Fifty-seven-year-old Montreal merchant Samuel David, the son
of Lazarus David and the husband of Sarah Hart who reached the rank of Lt.
Colonel while serving during the War of 1812 passed away today.
1825:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first engineering college in the U.S. is
opened in Troy, New York. Today its 4,000 undergrad student body includes
approximately 500 Jewish students.
1826:
In Berlin, “a public school with four classes” was today under the direction of
Leopold Zunz.
1827:
Judah Joseph Moryoseph married Luna de Raphael Meldola today.
1830:
Jacob Barrow Montefiore and Justina Lydia Montefiore gave birth to Eliezer /
Leslie Jacob Montefiore.
1832:
In London, Ellen Alice Jacobs and Gabriel Simmons gave birth to Fanny Simmons.
1832:
Schiee Jaffé and his first wife Ernestine gave birth to Moritz Jaffe.
1834:
Birthdate of Leon Judah Galipoliti.
1835(2nd
of Tevet, 5595): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah
1844:
Rabbi Rosenfelt officiated at the wedding of Mr. Abrahams and Miss Elizabeth F.
Joseph of Charleston.
1844:
In London, Rebecca Crawcour and Aaron Hart gave birth to Phoebe Hart.
1846:
In London, Hannah Isaacs and David Piza gave birth to Judah Piza.
1847:
Rosine Reele Erlanger, the German born daughter of Jakob Mayer Moos and
Jeanette Scheinle Moos and her husband Simon Erlanger gave birth Isidore
Erlanger, the husband of Rachel Erlanger with whom he had three children –
Simone Reine and Max.
1848:
In Châlons-en-Champagne, France, Mayes and Henriette Neumark gave birth to
Alfred Neymark, the husband of Jeanne Neymark and “editor of the Revue Contemporaine and founder of Le Rentier an economic and financial
paper.”
1853:
“The Affairs in Europe” column published today reported that Parisians are
amused at the “Protestant rigors in Germany against the Jews” in reaction to
“the event of December 2, 1851…” The
“event of December 2, 1851” is a reference to the overthrow of the Second
French Republic by Louis Napoleon who had himself crowned Emperor on December
2, 1852.
1854:
Sir George Grey, who hired Samuel Joseph, an Anglo-Jew from London as his
interpreter” today completed his service as the third Governor of New Zealand
1855(13th
of Tevet, 5615): Forty-two-year-old Henry Edward Goldsmid passed away today in
Cairo. Born in London in 1812, he spent
most of his career serving in India in various positions with the East India
Company.
1858:
Judah Touro’s fourth Yahrzeit was observed this afternoon at the Green Street
Synagogue in NYC.
1858: As she grew weaker, Rachel Felix completed a final
letter to her father around 11 in the morning. At 8 o'clock a dozen Jews
arrived from Nice to be with Rachel Felix in her last hours. Sometime
after 10 pm, two women and one man approached Rachel's bed and and began
chanting prayers for the dying Jewess.
1858
(17th of Tevet, 5618): Elisabeth Rachel Felix, known simply as “Rachel,” the
French actress and singer passed away at the age of 36. “Élisabeth Rachel Félix was the second of the six children of
Alsatian Jewish peddlers, Jacob (Jacques) and Esther Hayyah (Thérèse) Félix,
and a French citizen under the Civic Emancipation, Rachel always remained
profoundly in phase with the Jews’ entry into and participation in modernity.
Although singular, her career was characteristic of the collective experience
of the second generation of Jews born after the Emancipation and who
participated fully in French social, economic, political and cultural life.
Furthermore, for many French people,
Rachel personified the great allegorical figures of Tragedy, History and the
Republic. Her example illustrates the extent to which an often
passionate but at any rate profound and intimate adhesion to French culture was
an essential component in the construction of emancipated French Judaism. In Rachel we find all the cultural and political
paradoxes and contradictions of her time. She was a symbol of legitimist
and republican virtue in equal measure. Her
performance as La Marseillaise had the public in raptures in 1848. But
if she exercised such fascination it was also because she personified the
social ascension of the lower classes, and was proud of it. Never hiding her
humble origins and always asserting the importance of her family ties, she
worked furiously at educating and cultivating herself and modeling her image.
But despite her aspiration to affluence and respectability, she could never
avoid details of her private life fuelling the whiff of scandal that clung to
her name. Although never developing a critical awareness of the condition of
women in the society of her time, she was loath to espouse the model of the
bourgeois, cultivated woman defined by the notables of her time – married, a
mother, either discreet or ceasing to appear on stage – and constantly asserted
her desire to remain independent in order to devote herself fully to her art.
The Rachel phenomenon in many ways transcends that
of the successful actress.
Many biographies of her were written,
and she became one of the most famous women of her century. Other
artists, men and women, may also have left their mark on their time, but Rachel forged a new model of the actress and
woman.” As one reads this entry, one gets a sense of how “French” French Jews
felt themselves which provides understanding to the depth of shock and dismay
felt at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
1862: David Abraha Kohn, the German born of Deichele
and Abraham Josef Kohn and his wife Therese A. Kohn gave birth to Julia
Bernheimer, the wife of Irving Simon Bernheimer.
1862: In Paddington, English businessman Jonah
Nathan and Miriam Jacob Nathan gave birth to Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Matthew
Nathan, the brother of Major F.L. Nathan and Sir Nathaniel Nathan.
1863(12th of Tevet, 5623): Parsashat
Vayechi
1863: Cesar
Kaskel arrived in Washington and went to meet with Cincinnati congressman John
Addison Gurley to get his help in arranging a meeting with President Lincoln.
1864: Four days after she had passed away, Jamaica
born Rosetta Micholls, the wife of Edward Emanuel Micholls with whom she had
had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1864: In Philadelphia, Hannah Kaufman and Moses
Hoffman gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained attorney and JTS
ordained rabbi Charles Iasiah Hoffman, the husband of Fanny Binswanger who was
a member of B’nai B’rith and the editor and publisher of the Jewish
Exponent.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7803-hoffman-charles-isaiah
1865: Today, Herman Bendell, the Albany, NY born on
of Elias Bendell and the former Hannah Stern, who had served as volunteer in
the Union Army in 1861 before going back to graduate from Albany Medical
College, was made a surgeon the Volunteer Infantry which led to his being
brevetted as a Lt. Col.
1866: Sir Saul Samuel completed his first term as
Treasurer of New South Wales.
1868: According to today’s issue of “The Jewish
Sentinel,” an eight page weekly published in Philadelphia, Maimonides College
has been operating in Philadelphia since November 4, 1867 “under a charter of
the Hebrew Education Society” led by Rabbi Isaac Lesser who is the school’s
Provost or President.
1868: Philadelphian Myer Asch, who had reached the
rank of Colonel while serving with the Union Army during the Civil War was
elected Senior Vice Commander of the George G. Meade Post, Number 1, Grand Army
of the Republic.
1869: In Springfield, IL, clothing store merchant
Samuel Rosenwald, the German born son of Vogel and Bendix Rosenwald and his
wife Augusta Rosenwald gave birth Selma Eisendrath, the wife of Sigmund Levi
Eisendrath with whom she had two daughters, Florence and Helen.
1871(10th of Tevet, 5631): Asara B’Tevet
1871: Jakob Löwith was elected unanimously to the
community board in Pilsen.
1873: Eide and Ephraim Leib Moshewitz gave birth to
Jacob Moshewitz.
1873: In Philadelphia, Celia Racuher Goldfinger and
Charles Ignatz Goldfinger gave birth to Sallie Goldfinger who became Sallie
Kahan when she married Max B. Kahane in 1889.
1876(6th of Tevet, 5636): Sixty-five-year-old Sir
Anthony de Rothschild, 1st Baronet, the second son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild,
passed away today. He took on much of the responsibility for the family’s
banking business, was the first President of the United Synagogue and was known
as an art collector and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He died without a
male heir, so his title transferred to his nephew Nathan Mayer Rothschild.
1877: Today Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson
Bloomingdale, the Rome, NY born son of Benjamin Bloomingdale and Hanna Weil
married Adele Bernheimer as he continued a career that included serving
President of the Retail Dry Good Association, Republican presidential elector
and director of the “Jewish Protectory.”
1879: It was reported today that a commission
appointed at the recent convention of American Hebrew Congregations to consider
plans to establish one central college to train Rabbis in the United States is
meeting in Philadelphia. The commission includes Rabbis Gottheil and Einhorn
from New York and L.M. Demibtz of Louisville, KY. Currently there are at least three such
colleges located in New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, Ohio.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Abarbanell-Lina
1880: Birthdate of Emir
Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the
Central Asian musician Ari Babakhanov served as “court vocalist”.
1882: In Milwaukee, WI, Isaac David Adler, a
prosperous wholesale manufacturer of men's clothing, and Therese Hyman Adler
gave birth to their only son David Adler, the noted American architect
1882: In Shanghia, Isaac “Ned” Ezra, the merchant
whose name was given to Ezra Road and his wife gave birth to the first of the
nine children, Edward Isaac Ezra.
1883: Birthdate of British political leader Clement
Attlee, a member of the Labor Party who served as Prime Minister from 1945 to
1951. He replaced Winston Churchill as
Prime Minister shortly after VE Day when the Laborites defeated the
Conservatives in the first Parliamentary elections since the start of World War
II. Talk about ingratitude. In what seemed like unnecessary cruelty, the
Atlee Government continued to bar Jews from immigrating to Palestine. The government pursued an active war of
suppression against the Zionists and made it clear that the Laborites had no
intention in honoring the promise of the Balfour Declaration. Faced with
financial bankruptcy and war weariness, Atlee began to dismember the British
Empire which meant surrendering the Palestine Mandate as well as the colony of
India.
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/C0258855
1887:
In San Francisco, Marcus Schiller and others formally established the Beth
Israel congregation with forty male members.
1888:
Opening of the 111th New York State Legislature in which Jacob
Cantor served as a member of the York State Senate.
1889:
Rabbi Moses Simon Sivitz, the leader of Gates of Wisdom Congregation in
Pittsburgh and Maita Banke Sivitz gave birth to Benjamin Sivitz.
1890:
Two days after he had passed away, 37-year-old David Lehman, the German born
“walking stick maker” who was the husband of Annie Lehmann and the father of
Marcus, Sophia and Nathan Lehman, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road
Jewish Cemetery.”
1890:
“Trouble Over A School” published today described the opposition of Jewish
citizens on the Lower East Side to the establishment of a school by Reverend
Morgan of St. Mark’s which some of them “regard as movement to undermined the
Jewish faith.”
1891: Birthdate of poet and author Osip
E Mandelstam. A native of Warsaw,
Mandelstam grew up in the comfortable middle class Jewish home that was
described as not being very religious.
The ups and downs of his career and posthumous honor mirrored the fate
of many other intellectuals living in the Soviet Union. He died in the Gulag in 1938.
1891: Among the charities that the
Brooklyn Board of Estimate said would be receiving public funds were the
Eastern District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($155.86); Western District
of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($88.96) and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum
($319.06).
1892: It was reported today that among
the forty Europeans being held as prisoners by the Mahdists are eight Jews.
1892(3rd of Tevet, 5652):
Sixty-six-year-old Julius Gerson Brooks, the husband of Fanny Brooks and the
father of George, Eveline, Edgar and Milton Brooks passed away today in San
Remo, Italy after which he was buried at the B’nai Israel Cemetery in Salt Lake
City, UT.
https://jwa.org/westernpioneers/brooks-fanny
1893: In Alliance, NJ, Anna Saprho and
George Sergius Seldes gave birth to Gilbert Vivian Seldes the writer and
American “social critic.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10948007009489469?journalCode=hcbq19
1893: It was reported today that Henry
Mazinsky, the young boy who had contracted typhus, had been at The Ladies’
Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory for four months “under the constant care
of the attendants” and how he contracted the disease remains a mystery.
1893:
It was reported today that The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s
Protectory is currently caring for 150 boys.
1894: In New York City, Joseph and
Henriette (Schwab) Altenberg gave birth to Columbia University trained Chemical
Engineer, who began serving as Treasurer and General Manager of the Gaskill
Chemical Corporation in 1923 and who married May J. Shapiro in 1918.
1894: A meeting was held this evening at
the Jewish Theological Seminary “for the purpose of founding a society” that
will improve the observance of Shabbat.
1894(25th of Tevet, 5654):
Adolph L. Sanger, a native of Baton Rouge, LA who graduated from Columbia Law
School in 1864 following which he forged a successful career as an attorney,
politician and leader of the Jewish community passed away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C12FC345D15738DDDAD0894D9405B8485F0D3
1894: The Footlight Club provided the
entertainment for a fundraiser held at the Berkley Lyceum for the benefit of
the Louis Downtown Sabbath and Daily School.
1895: Birthdate of British born
Protestant archaeologist James Leslie Starkey who was “the chief excavator of
the first archaeological expedition at Lachish.
1895: It was reported today that Aaron
Leiman was at work at cloak factory when a fire broke out in his apartment
killing his wife and two children.
1895: It was reported today that the
tenement house at 25 Pitt Street that burned yesterday “was inhabited entirely
by the families of” Jewish “cloakmakers and tailors” most of whom are suffering
financially due to the cloakmakers’ strike.
1895: Colonel David S. Brown who will be
leaving on trip that will take him to Egypt and Palestine was the guest of
honor at a dinner at the Colonial Club.
1895: Herzl personally witnessed Colonel
Dreyfus being “drummed out of the army in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire
as huge crowds outside shouted, ‘” ‘Death to the Jews!’”
1896: In New York gave birth to Felix
Moritz Warburg and Frieda Fanny Warburg, the daughter of Jacob and Therese
Schiff gave birth to Carola Warburg who became Carola Rothschild when she
married Walter Rothschild.
1897: Dr. Maurice Harris of Temple
Israel in Harlem delivered the sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El.
1897: Twenty-nine-year-old Joseph
Maurice Weber, one of the of the vaudeville comedy act of Weber and Fields and
the New
York born son of Abraham and Gertrude (Enoch) Weber married Lillian Friedman
today.
1897: Adolph Sutro completed his service
as the 24th Mayor of San Francisco.
1897: “Maspero On The East Again”
provides a detailed review of The Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria and
Assyria by Gaston Maspero in which “he records the exodus, the conquest of
Canaan, the founding…of David’s kingdom, the building of the reservoirs
ascribed to Solomon, and of Solomon’s temple.”
1898: It was reported today that Julius
D. Eisenstein has been chosen as president of “The American Congregation, the
Pride of Jerusalem” – a new organization to provide aid for the indigent Jews
living in Jerusalem.
1898: Gratz College is scheduled to open
its doors today in Philadelphia. A
teachers’ and general college, it is the third Jewish institution of
higher-learning in the United States. Faculty members include Rabbi Henry M
Speaker (Jewish literature), Arthur A. Dembitz (Jewish history) and Isaac Husik
(Hebrew). The course of study lasts three years and “under certain conditions”
students who cannot afford the tuition “will be admitted free of charge.”
1898: In Baltimore, founding of Gemilath
Chassodim (Hebrew Free Loan Association) which lent “money in small sums to
needy people on promissory notes with one or two endorsers without interest to
be paid in weekly installments of 50 cents.”
1899: In New York City, Mary and John
Yehuda Margaretten gave birth New Law School trained attorney and supporter of
the New Jersey Federation of YM and YWHAs Morris Margaretten the husband of
Pauline Margaretten
1899: Columbia Law School graduate and investment banker Louis F. Rothschild,
the New York born son of Frank and Amanda (Blum) Rothschild, married Cora
Guggenheim today after which they had three children – Louis, Muriel and
Gwendolyn.
1900: Birthdate of Viennese native and
WW I veteran Ernst Neubach the songwriter and screenwriter who spent the war in
Switzerland and who wrote “In Heaven There Is No Beer” “a rendition of the song
“the Hawkeye Victory Polka” “is played by the University of Iowa Hawkeye
Marching Band after Iowa Hawkeyes football victories and has been a tradition
since the 1960s.”
1901: In Lithuania, Gittel and Solomon
Kruger gave birth to future Baltimore resident Harry S. Kruger, the husband of
Rebecca Kruger.
1901: Birthdate of George W.F.
Hallgarten, the German born American historian who was the grandson of Charles
Hallgarten and great grandson of Lazarus Hallgarten.
1902: Today, Erev Shabbat, Miss Alice
Roosevelt, the oldest daughter of philo-Semitic U.S. President Theodore
Roosevelt, was "formally presented to Washington society" at a ball
at the White House,
1903(4th of Tevet, 5663):
Parashat Vayigash
1903: First version of “Deinem Blick
mich zu bequemen" ("To Grow Accustomed to Thy Gaze"), for Voice
and Piano by Arnold Schönberg
1904: Thirty-one-year-old Albany Medical
College trained neurologist and Carlisle, NY native Charles Bernstein married
Lillia Stebbins today.
1904: “A largely attended meeting under
the auspices of the Jewish League of America was held in the Synagogue B'nai
Abraham” in Philadelphia “today, at which it was decided to hold a National
Convention in this city of all the societies of Jews interested in the
condition of their coreligionists in Russia.:
1905: At the Academy of Music in New
York, William Brady presented a revival of “Bartley Campbell’s melodrama
‘Siberia’” which is set in Kishinev and centers a tale of “the ill-treatment of
the Jews by the Russian officers and their blind allies, the mob.”
1906: “An Advisory board of teachers, of
which Gustave Straubenmuller was Chairman decided at meeting held” today “at
the City College to add the money” collected by schoolteachers in December “for
the relief of the sufferers from the Jewish massacres in Russia” to the
National Relief Fund.
1906 (6th of Tevet, 5666): Dr. Otto A.
Moses passed away at the age of 72. Born
in 1846, the South Carolina native “had a worldwide reputation as a geologist
and chemist.” He was also the founder of the Hebrew Technical Institute, a New
York “institution for the education of poor boys” and was an active supporter
of other Jewish charities including the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore
Home.
1906: Birthdate of San Francisco native
and University of California, Berkley alum Frederick L. Ehrman, the Chairman of
the Board of Lehman Brothers and philanthropist who was the husband of “the
former Edith Koshland” with whom he raised “a daughter, Edith.”
1906: “Ignoramus” wrote from Buffalo, NY
questioning the information in The Jewish Spectre by George H. Warner which
states on page 288 “that Jews are neither soldiers or college men” and on page
290 that “the newspaper reports of the last few years full of accounts of
Jewish crimes” but does not mention which newspapers.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Spectre-George-H-Warner/dp/1289890250
1907: Israel Zangwill reported that in
November of 1906, 133,764 Jews entered New York City and remained there
1908: If the demands for a reduction in
tenement rents by two dollars is not met, a rent strike will begin tomorrow in
Chicago which means, among other things that the Jewish tenants will refuse to
pay rent and will “submit to eviction by the landlords.”
1908: “New Drain Now On United
Charities” published today described the dire financial conditions of the
United Hebrew Charities which according to its manager Dr. Lee K. Frankel
needed at least $25,000 to meet the monthly needs of its clients before the
current economic downturn and actually only has $20,000 on hand to meet the
needs of the needy.
1909(10th of Tevet, 5669): Asara B'Tevet
1909: Professor R.J. J. Gottheil
presided over a meeting of “the Judeans” at the Hostel Astor during which
George Hellman lectured on Treaty of Berlin and “prominent part played in it by
Benjamin Disraeli” who he said “was more of a Jews than an Englishman and more
a Disraeli than a Jews” and Reverend John Peters who “discussed the note of
remonstrance Secretary of State Hay addressed to Roumania on its persecution of
the Jews.
1910: “Would Thin Crowded Areas”
published today described the belief of Abraham Abraham, of Abraham and Strauss
“that too much money is being expended by the city for small parks at the
expense of traction facilities” and that more money should be spent on
“providing cheap transportation to the city’s outlying districts.”
1911: Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan
for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the Central Asian musician Ari
Babakhanov served as “court vocalist” began his reign today.
1911: Birthdate of Warsaw artist Josef
Herman who fled Poland in the 1930’s because of the virulent anti-Semitism in
Poland and finally settling in the United Kingdom after the German invasion of
Belgium and France.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/22/guardianobituaries
1912: Birthdate of New York native and
NYU trained attorney Irving Robert Feinberg, who became known as I. Robert
Feinberg, “a leading labor lawyer and arbitration” who served as counsel of the
Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the UJA and the Hebrew Home for the Aged”
while raising two children – Richard and Jean – with his wife Lucille.
1913: The corresponded of the Daily News
in St. Petersburg reported today that “a commercial panic with many failures
has been precipitated by the ukase expelling the remaining Jews from the city
of Kiev.”
1914(5th of Tevet, 5674):
Parashat Vayigash
1914: In New York, Morris Meltsner and
Rose Klarman gave birth to Martin Meltsner
1915: The Memphis Commercial Appeal
“printed a long review of the Leo Frank case from a Georgia newspaper man who
argued that the evidence in the case warranted the verdict” rendered.
1915: British synagogues joined other
houses of worship in holding special services on behalf of the empire as
requested by the King.
1915: Birthdate of Marian Pollock, the
wife of Louis Pollock.
1915: In St. Louis at the 18th
annual convention of the Knights of Zion, Louis D. Brandeis declared
“Responsibility for preserving Jewish customs and ideals now rests almost
wholly with the American Jews.”
1915: Birthdate of Jack Levine the Boston born American Social Realist painter
and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption,
and biblical narratives.
1916: It was reported today, that due to
the effects of the World War, in Palestine, “30,000 workmen were in great
distress.”
1916: Joseph Leonard wrote today from
New York that “the English community rejoices” at the “devotion and heroism”
its members are showing on the battlefield which apparently comes at surprise
to those who do not know the history of the “virile and romantic race” but Jews
always identify themselves with their adopted countries and respond with
“patriotic devotion.”
1916: “The Hebrew Sheltering and
Immigrant Aid Society of America” in New York “received a telegram today from
its representative, Jacob R. Fain saying that a branch had just been organized
in Seattle, Washington, where it will undertake to care for Jewish refugees
from the war zones of Europe as well as other Jewish immigrants.”
1916: “If We Joined the Entente”
published today lists Isaac Don Levine’s reasons for the United States entering
the war on the side of England and France including the fact that the United
States would be able to protect the rights of oppressed nationalities including
the Jews.
1916: It was reported today that
President Woodrow Wilson has sent a telegram to a group meeting in Baltimore,
MD to raise money for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe expressing his
“profound sympathy with the object of the meeting and sincere hope that there
will be a great outpouring for the relief of these distressed people.”
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: It was reported today that Rabbi
Samuel Schulman of Temple Beth-El has said that “there must be less talk of
Judaism and more silent, honest, consistent living of Judaism.”
1916: It was reported today that in
Russia “all concessions made to the Jews by Prince Cherbatoff, the former
Minister of the Interior, have been cancelled
1916: Birthdate of Newark, NJ, native
and world class cellist Bernard Greenhouse.
1917: In New York City wealthy heiress
Gladys Guggenheim and Roger Williams Straus, Sr whose family-owned Macy’s gave
birth to Roger Williams Straus, Jr.
1918(19th of Tevet, 5678):
Mrs. Emily M. Marcuse, an attorney passed away today in Oakland, CA.
1918: “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Chairman of
the Provision Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs announced”
tonight “that more than one-fourth of the first million dollars of the
Palestine restoration fund to be devoted to the immediate needs for re-establishing
a Jewish state in Palestine after the war had been raised” in just three days,
even while the commission headed by Eugene Meyer, Jr. was still in its
formative state.
1918: A meeting was held today “at the
Fifth Avenue home of Adolph Lewisohn” where the “directors and trustees of
local Jewish institutions” met to discuss plans for the drive to raise four
million dollars by the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic
Societies” which is scheduled to begin on January 14.
1919: Birthdate of South African
journalist turned political activist Colin Legum.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/colin-legum-36609.html
1919:
Simon Petlyura, "hetman" of Russia and the Ruthenian Republic, a
Ukrainian nationalist and commander of the Zaporog Cossacks and Haidamaks,
began his attack against the Jews. He accused them of being supporters of the
communist regime. In Berdichev, Uma, Zhitomir and other cities about seventy
thousand were killed and an equal number wounded. Altogether 372 cities and
towns were attacked in 998 major and 349 minor pogroms. This took placed during
the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. The civil war was loosely described as fight
between the Reds (the communists) and the Whites (all of the various groups
opposed to the communists). The Jews
were caught in the middle and suffered at the hands of both sides.
1919:
The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King
of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
settling disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for
Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine
and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. Weizmann first met
Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from the South against the
Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an impromptu "Zionist
Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern Transjordan for the meeting.
The intended purpose was to forge an agreement between Faisal and the Zionist
movement to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively.
Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would
support dense Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would
assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to
establish. Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon
afterwards at the Paris peace conference. In their first meeting in June 1918
Weizmann had assured Faisal that "the Jews did not propose to set up a
government of their own but wished to work under British protection, to
colonize and develop Palestine without encroaching on any legitimate
interests". The day after they signed the written agreement, which bears
their names, Weizmann arrived in Paris to head the Zionist delegation to the
Peace Conference. It was a triumphal moment for Weizmann; it was an accord that
climaxed years of negotiations and ceaseless shuttles between the Middle East
and the capitals of Western Europe and that promised to usher in an era of
peace and cooperation between the two principal ethnic groups of Palestine:
Arabs and Jews. The maipoints of the agreement were:
- The agreement
committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by
the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage
immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the
rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free
practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under
Muslim control.
- The Zionist
movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the
future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a
growing economy.
- The boundaries
between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission
after the Paris Peace Conference.
- The parties
committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling
for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
- Disputes were to
be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Weizmann
signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed
on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.
Two
weeks prior to signing the agreement, Faisal stated:
The
two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one
another, and I hope that as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace
Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and
nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of
its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them
fair play and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their
intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas.
Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists
and the local peasants, but the mutual understanding of the aims of Arabs and
Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness, which,
indeed, had already practically disappeared before the war by the work of the
Arab Secret Revolutionary Committee, which in Syria and elsewhere laid the
foundation of the Arab military successes of the past two years.The areas
discussed were detailed in a letter to Felix Frankfurter, President of the
Zionist Organization of America, on March 3, 1919, when Faisal wrote :
The
Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the
Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the
proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace
Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."The boundaries of
Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North
at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and
following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el
Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of
the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following
the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity
West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the
Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway; in the East a line
close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba; in
the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government; in the
West the Mediterranean Sea. The details of the delimitations, or any necessary
adjustments of detail, shall be settled by a Special Commission on which there
shall be Jewish representation. Faisal conditioned
his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime promises to the Arabs, who
had hoped for independence in a vast part of the Ottoman Empire. He appended to
the typed document a hand-written statement:
"Provided
the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum
dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of
Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest
modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not
be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed
void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way
whatsoever." The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months. The
outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab state that
Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had struck their own
secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the Middle East between their own
spheres of influence, and soon Faisal began to express doubts about cooperation
with the Zionist movement. After Faisal was expelled from Syria and given the
Kingdom of Iraq, he contended that the conditions he appended were not
fulfilled and the treaty therefore moot. St. John Philby, a British
representative in Palestine, later stated that Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of
Mecca and King of Hejaz, on whose behalf Faisal was acting, had refused to
recognize the agreement as soon as it was brought to his notice. However,
Sharif Hussein formally endorsed the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of
Sèvres of 10 August, 1920, along with the other Allied Powers, as King of
Hedjaz. The United Nations Special Committee On Palestine did not regard the agreement
as ever being valid while Weizmann continued to maintain that the
treaty was still binding. In 1947 Weizmann explained:"A postscript was
also included in this treaty. This postscript relates to a reservation by King
Feisal that he would carry out all the promises in this treaty if and when he
would obtain his demands, namely, independence for the Arab countries. I submit
that these requirements of King Feisal have at present been realized. The Arab
countries are all independent, and therefore the condition on which depended
the fulfillment of this treaty, has come into effect. Therefore, this treaty,
to all intents and purposes, should today be a valid document". According
to C.D. Smith the Syrian National Congress had forced Faisal to back away from
his tentative support of Zionist goals
1920:
Viola Flannery married Elie Nadelman, the Polish born American-Jewish sculptor,
in New York City.
1921:
In Brooklyn, insurance salesman Paul Gold and Rose (Sachs) Gold gave birth to
William “Bill” Gold the creator of untold number of movie posters the most
famous of which may have been for the classic “Casablanca.” (As reported by
Robert D. McFadden)
1921:
Simon Bamberger, the German born Jew completed his term as Governor of Utah – a
position which he was the first non-Mormon to hold.
1922:
Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Isaac Schulman the husband
of the former Rebecca Rosenthal and the father of Nathan, Harry, Benjamin and
Sam Schulman
1922:
It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Kornfeld of Columbus OH “the recently
appointed Minister to Persia” who will be “sailing to his new post” tomorrow
was honored at banquet hosted by the Association of Reformed Rabbis and the New
York Board of Jewish Ministers at the West End Synagogue.
1923:
The New York State convened today in which Philip M. Kleinfeld served as a
member from the 4th District.
1924:
While his brother George was playing billiards at the Ambassador Billiard
Parlor, Ira Gershwin was reading an article entitled “What is America Music?”
which including the claim he was “at work on a jazz concerto and Irving Berlin
was a writing a syncopated tone poem.”
1924:
Birthdate of Israeli Admiral Mordechai Limon, the man who would mastermind and
execute the Cherbourg Project in 1969.
1925:
Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist, who enjoyed support among Italian Jews,
announced that he was assuming dictatorial powers. According to Alexander Stille, by 1938 one
third of adult Italian Jews belonged to Fascist Party. “This amounted to 10,000
Jews out of Italy's small Jewish population of 47,000.” But according to Claretta Petacci,
Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938, the Italian dictator “was a fierce
anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's
and vowed to ‘destroy them all.’”
1925:
Today Cornell University graduate and President of the Chicago Board of Trade
Richard Frederick Uhlmann, married Rosamond Goldman with whom he had three
children – Audrey, Janis and Frederick
1925:
In London, Aileen Freda Leatherman and Michael Balcon gave birth to English
actress Jill Balcon.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/20/jill-balcon-obituary
1926(17th
of Tevet, 5686): Forty-year-old Leopold “Leo” Sulzberger, “the son of Cyrus
Leopold Sulzberger and Rachel Peixotto Sulzberger”, the husband of Beatrice
Sulzberger and the father of awarding foreign correspondent C.L. Sulzberger,
passed away today in New York Coty.
1927:
At Cooper Union, the United Palestine Appeal held its kickoff event designed to
raise $100,000. During the meeting it
was announced that $15,000 had already been raised with $2,500 having been
donated by Morris Eisenman.
1927:
During a meeting of the United Palestine Appeal held at Cooper Union in New
York City, tribute was paid to the memory of Asher Ginsberg who was better
known by his pen name, Achad Ha’am.
Ginsberg who was living in Tel Aviv when he passed away, was described
as “one of the most creative forces in world Zionism.”
1928:
“Rumania Assailed By King” published today described Utah’s Senator William
King speech at the Sixth Annual Region Conference of the United Palestine
Appeal where he said “that the treatment accorded by the government of Rmania
to the Jewish inhabitants was in direct defiance of the Minority Rights Treaty”
and that he was planning on introducing a resolution in the Senate expressing
the “disfavor” with which these “activities” are viewed. (Editor’s note – Why King took the lead on
this is a mystery to me. There certainly
was not much of “Jewish vote” to court in Utah.”
1929: At the tender age of 27 William
S. Paley became President of CBS.
1930(3rd of Tevet, 5690): The first Chanukah to be
observed during The Great Depression comes to an end today on the 8th
day of the festival.
1931(14th of Tevet, 5691): Parashat Vayechi
1931: Despite repeated denials that Norman Bentwich, Attorney
General of Palestine, who is the leading Jew employed in the Palestine
administration, would not return to Palestine and assurances that he is coming
back next week, it was learned from the most reliable source today that Mr.
Bentwich definitely will not return to Palestine to resume his post.”
1932: Laborite Ian Mikardo married Mary Rosette today.
1933: In Germany, an attempt to assassinate journalist Ezriel
Carlebach failed when “the gunshot cut through his hat” but missed his head.
1934: It was reported today that the seventeen graduates of the
Hebrew University included a father and son duo – 43-year-old Ephraim Duvshani
and 23-year-old Levi Duvshani.
1934(16th of Tevet, 5694): Today, at the Riverside
Memorial Chapel, Central Synagogue Rabbi Jonah B. Wise officiated at the
funeral of sixty-eight-year-old New York native Henry Harris, the “manager of
the loan and jewelry firm of I. Harlem on 8th Avenue” and the
husband of the Addie Harris which was followed by burial at the Machpelah
Cemetery in Queens.
1935(28rh of Tevet, 5695): Seventy-two-year-old advocate for
woman’s suffrage Mrs. Jane Braz Fischel, the wife of “real estate dealer and
philanthropist Harry Ficshel” with whom she had four daughters and who was active in a
number of Jewish organizations including the Daughters of Jacob, the Federaton
of Jewish Women’s Organizations and H.I.A.S. suffered a fatal heart attack
today.
1936: The Manchester
Guardian published an article disproving Hitler’s claims that the Jews had
a “stranglehold or monopoly” on German cultural and professional life. The percentages were based on official German
statistics.
1937: James Waterman Wise, the son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is
scheduled to speak at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall on “Some of my Best
Friends Are Jews.”
1937: Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon
today at Temple B’nai Jeshurun.
1937: Rabbi Lichtenstein is scheduled to talk about “The Miracle
of Healing” this morning at the Jewish Science Society.”
1937: The New York Times
reports that Mrs. Yetka Levy-Stein the wife of a Berlin Rabbi arrived here last
week on the Cunard White Star liner Berengaria to make a three-month tour of
the United States on behalf of the Youth Aliyah movement, which is concerned
with the settlement of German-Jewish children in the cooperative colonies of
Palestine.
1937:
California Congresswomen Florence Prag Kahn
completed her fifth and final term in office.
1938:
The Palestine Post reported that it
was no coincidence that most of the arms found on Arab terrorists were of
German manufacture. They were smuggled in from Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan.
British troops, assisted by police, fought a bloody battle with a band of arms
smugglers near the Sahla village in Galilee.
1938:
The Palestine Post reported that
settlers at Kibbutz Neveh Ya'acov, north of Jerusalem, repelled another heavy
Arab attack.
1938:
The Palestine Post reported that a
forest was planted at the Ma'aleh Hahamisha hill in memory of the five pioneers
who were murdered there while preparing land for this new settlement.
1938:
New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore A. Cotillo signed a writ of reasonable
doubt today which allowed the release of convicted felons Samuel
"Sammy" Weiss and David Goldberg.
The two had been convicted by Thomas E. Dewey for filing false tax
returns. Weiss was a notorious racketeer and mobster.
1938:
The National Zeitung, the paper controlled by Goering today “ridiculed the idea
of any return of Germany to democracy – a though which ‘even emigrant Jews and
Marxists already have shelved.’”
1939(12th
of Tevet, 5699): Eighty-eight-year-old Isidor Lewi, the Albany, NY, born son of
Joseph and Bertha Lewi and the husband of Emita Peninnah Wolff May Lewi passed
away today after which he was buried in Brooklyn, NY.
1939:
The announcement from London, received today in Berlin that Montagu Norman, the
Governor of the Bank of England, was making a “private” visit to see Dr.
Hjalmar Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank where “he is expected to
insist that the Reich cease persecuting the Jews and make some effort to help
evacuate them in an orderly fashion” instead of just using them as “ransom to
increase foreign trade for Germany” has “raised large hopes in Jewish circles.”
1939:
Illinois Congressman Adolph J. Sabath began serving as Chairman of the House
Rules Committee for the first time.
1939:
“Invitations were issued today for a meeting of the Inter-governmental Refugee
Committee” which will include all thirty-two nations that had taken part in the
Evian Conference, the sham meeting that pretended to address the refugee
question which really meant what to do about the Jews of Germany in the wake of
the Nazi rise to power.
1939:
In Tel Aviv, actor Yaakov Einstein and his wife gave birth to Israeli
entertainer Arik Einstein.
1940:
Germany’s Ministry of Agriculture denied German Jews food ration cards.
1941:
Samuel Arthur Weiss, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, began serving his first term
in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1941:
During World War II, German bombers dropped some of their payload on Greenville
Hall Synagogue. The building was damaged but not destroyed in the raid.
1941:
William H. King, the Senator from Utah who in 1927 “declared…that he favored
the United States severing diplomatic relations with any country which failed
because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals” and “expressed the
belief that eventually Palestine would be able to support a population of a
million Jews” completed his services as President pro tempore of the United
States Senate.
1942(14th
of Tevet, 5702): Parashat Vayehci
1942(14th
of Tevet, 5702): Sixty-two-year-old Pinchas Ruttenberg, a long-time leader in
the Zionist movement died today in Jerusalem.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pinchas-rutenberg
1943: Today, Heinrich “Himmler received one of many
‘therapeutic massages’ from his doctor, took part in meetings, called his wife
and daughter and then ordered…the killing of several Polish families.”
1943:
Polish President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz requested that Pope Pius XII publicly
denounce German atrocities against the Jews. Pius remained silent concerning
both the German slaughter of the Polish Jews as well as the German attacks
against Polish Catholics.
1944(7th
of Tevet, 5704): Eighty-year-old Prussian born mining engineer turned Zionist
leader Leopold Kessler passed away in New York where he had been visited by his
grandchildren Gabriel and Annette Kessler, the children of his oldest son Jack
Kessler.
http://access.cjh.org/subjects.php?t=Qm90c3dhbmE6IERlc2NyaXB0aW9uIGFuZCB0cmF2ZWw=#1
1945:
Benjamin Rabin assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district
1946: During an interview given today,
Reuben B. Resnick, the director in Italy of the Joint Distribution Committee
said that “native Italian Jews and thousands of other displace Jewish person
who fled to Italy from the anti-Semitism in Poland face sickness and disease as
well as a feeling of futility unless the doors of Palestine are opened to
immigration.”
1947: Jimmy Ernst, the Cologne, Germany
born son of “painter
Max Ernst and Luise Straus, a well-known art historian, journalist and a victim
of the Nazis at Auschwitz” today married “Edith Dallas Bauman Brody, a talent
court for Warner Brothers.”
http://jimmyernst.net/pages/chronicle.html
1947: Today, “Arnold Unger, with the
Dachau album safely tucked away in his luggage, boarded the S.S. Ernie Pyle in
Bremen, Germany, and sailed with more than 2,000 displaced persons to New
York.”
http://www.poles.org/Dachau.html
1947: The USCGC Northland the last
cruising cutter built for the Coast Guard equipped with a sailing rig was sold
for scrap today after which she was renamed the Jewish State and used to
transport Jewish refugees and renamed Eilat in 1948 so that she could be the
flagship of the newly created Israeli navy.
1947: Jacob Javits begins serving in the
U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 21st congressional
district.
1948: The Palmach received orders
concerning the attack on Salama.
1949(2nd of Tevet, 5709):
Eighth Day of Chanukah
1949: Fifty-one-year-old Lewis Browne,
the London born, American trained Reform Rabbi turned author whose first book
was Stranger Than Fiction: A Short History of the Jews from Earliest Times
to the Present Day passed away today in Santa Monica, CA.
https://www.questia.com/library/724730/stranger-than-fiction-a-short-history-of-the-jews
http://lewisbrowne.org/documents/quotes.html
1949: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff began
serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 1st
district.
1949: Illinois U.S Congressman began
serving as Chair of the House Rules Committee for a second time.
1949: Lyndon Johnson completed his 12
years of service representing Texas’ 10th Congressional District.
1949: Lyndon Johnson began serving as
U.S. Senator from Texas.
1949:
Leo Isaacson, a member of the American Labor Party, finished his term as a
member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 24th
congressional district
1949:
As part of Operation Horev, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptians at Rafah in
an attempt to encircle the Arab force.
1950(14th
of Tevet, 5710): Fifty-six-year-old Russian born “Orientalist, Zionist and
Hebraic and biblical scholar” Samuel Isaac Feigin, the author of the essays
“Secrets of the Past” passed away today in Chicago.
1951:
Sydney A. Fine assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's
23rd district.
1951: Rabbi Naftali Landau, “the son of
a Hungarian rabbi and a graduate of Kehilath Jacob Seminary in Antwerp who
served Shomre Hadas Congregation in Chicago and Agudas Achim North Shore
Congregation today married nineteen-year-old Minnie Finkelstein
1952(5th of Tevet, 5712): Kiev native Samuel Umansky who in
1912 came to the United States where he eventually settled in Meriden, CT while
raising three daughters with his wife Elizabeth Umanksy while serving for “15
years on the National Administrative Council of the ZOA” and attending 20
National Zionist conventions” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/01/05/84294899.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1952: A revival of “Pal Joey”, the
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical opened today for the first of 540
performances.
1953(16th of Tevet, 5713):
Parashat Vayechi
1953: Isidore Dollinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from New York's 23rd district
1953: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed
his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s
1st district.
1954: In Manhattan, small business owner
Samuel and Ruth (Rosenkrantz) Solomon gave birth to experimental film director
and University of Colorado Professor Phillip Stewart Solomon. (As reported by
Neil Genzlinger)
1955(9th of Tevet, 5715):
Seventy-nine-year-old Carl Morris Loeb, the Frankfurt, Germany born son of
Minna and Adolf Loeb and the husband of Adeline Moses whom he married in 1896
and with whom he had four children – John, Margaret, Carl and Hanry – passed
away today in New York City.
1955: Richard L. Neuberger began serving
as a United States Senator from Oregon.
1955: Guy Gillette, outspoken supporter
of the Zionist cause before the creation of Israel, completed his service as a
U.S. Senator from Iowa.
1956(19th of Tevet, 5716):
Seventy-five-year-old New York native and WW I volunteer nurse Mrs. Mamie
Fertig Rosalsky, the widow of Judge Otto A. Rosalsky and mother of Sydney
Sutton passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/01/05/306120782.html?pageNumber=33
1956:
More than 600 leaders of Hadassah from all over the United States met at New
York’s Plaza Hotel to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of Youth Aliyah,
the worldwide child rescue and rehabilitation organization.
1957:
NYU Law School Professor and U.S. Navy veteran Ludwig Teller began serving in
the U.S. House of Representatives.
1957:
Jacob K. Javits began serving as a United States from New York.
1959(23rd
of Tevet, 5719): Parashat Shemot
1959:
Seymour Halpern assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district. Unlike
most New York Jewish politicians, Halpern was a Republican.
1959:
Alaska became the 49th state to join the Union. For more about Alaska, the final Jewish
Frontier you may go to http://www.joyfulnoise.net/JoyAlaska5.html, featuring “Alaskan
Jewry – An Historical Overview.”
1959:
Ernest Gruening began serving as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1961:
Forty-nine-year-old Ludwig Teller, a former member of the New York State
Legislature, completed his second and final term in office as a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ludwig-teller
1962:
After opening in the United Kingdom, “The Young Ones” with music by Stanley
Black and choreographed by Harold Ross was released in the United States today.
1963: Tel Aviv
University opened. Although its antecedents go back to the early 1950's the
university became an independent entity on this date. Today it is the largest
University in the country with over 100 departments and over 75 research
facilities.
1963: Abraham “Abe”
Ribicoff began serving as United States from Connecticut.
1964(18th of
Tevet, 5724): Forty-four-year-old Rabbi Walter Plaut, the brother of Rabbi W.
Gunther Plaut, the spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel and “Freedom Rider”
passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/04/rabbi-walter-plaut-44-dead.html
1965: James H. Scheuer
assumed office as member of the House of Representatives from New York’s 21st
District.
1965(29th of Tevet,
5725): Semyon Ariyevich Kosberg, the Jewish-Soviet engineer born in 1903 who
developed an expertise in aircraft and rocket engines who won the Lenin Prize
in 1960 and was named a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1961 passed away today.
1965(29th of
Tevet, 5725): Eighty four year old comedian and actor Julius Tannen whose fifty
year career ran from vaudeville to Hollywood and whose two sons William Tannen
and Charles Tannen followed in his footsteps passed away today.
1965: Lester L. Wolff
began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s
3rd District.
1965: Richard Ottinger assumed office as member
of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 25th district
1966(11th of Tevet, 5726): Fifty-four year old Byalistok born
Yiddish poet Pesach Binetzki who made Aliyah in 1949 passed away today.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/01/peysekh-binetski-pesach-binetzki.html
1967(21st
of Tevet, 5727): Jack Ruby, the man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee
Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jack-ruby-dies-before-second-trial
1967:
Joshua Eilberg began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district.
1968(2nd
of Tevet, 5728): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1968(2nd
of Tevet, 5728): Seventy-five-year-old J. Max Weiss, the HUC trained Rabbi who
led Temple Adas Emuno and the Washington Heights Free Synagogue while also
teaching at the Academy for Higher Jewish Learning and who was the husband of
Estelle M. Sternberger Weis, the mother of their daughter Minnetta passed away
today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/01/04/79931025.html?pageNumber=34
1968:
It was reported today that “the second patient to undergo a hearts transplant
operation” in South Africa was 58-year-old Dr. Philip Blaiberg, a Jewish
dentist one of whose patients while he was serving in the South African Medical
Corps during WW II was Louis Washkansky, the Jew who was the first heart
transplant patient and whose daughter Jill is working as a volunteer on a
kibbutz on Israel.
1969:
Ernest Gruening, one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution completed his service as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1969:
Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New
York’s 17th District.
1969:
Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1970(25th
of Tevet, 5730): Parashat Shemot
1970(25th of Tevet, 5730):
Fifty-seven-year-old Lester Francis Avnet, the oldest child of Celia Avnet and
Russian born American businessman Charles Avnet and husband of the former Joan
Grossman with whom head two daughters and a son, who helped to make “Avnet, Inc.
into one of the country’s major electronic corporations” while serving as “a
trustee of Brandeis University and of the Ameri can Federation of Arts, an
overseer of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a governor of the Hebrew
Union College ‐Jewish Institute of
Religion and a former general chairman for the Metropolitan New York area of
the United Jewish Appeal” passed away today.
1970:
Jerry Herman’s musical “Mame” closed on Broadway after 1,508 performances.
1971:
A funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the “Temple Israel
meeting house” for eighty-year-old Lithuanian native and MIT graduate Joseph H.
Cohen who was the “founder of the Atlantic Gelatin division of General Foods
Corporation, the husband of the former Rose Stone with whom he had two sons and
a daughter and an active member of the Jewish community was could be seen by
his service as President of Temple Israel and a director of Beth Israel
Hospital in Boston.
1973:
Ed Koch completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York’s 17th District.
1973:
Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New
York’s 18th District.
1973:
Abner J. Mikva completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1973:
Lester L. Wolf completed his services as Member of the U.S. of House of
Representatives from New York’s 3rd District and began serving as a
Member of the House from New York’s 6th District.
1973:
Having lost in the Democratic primary, Emanuel Celler, one of the deans of the
House of Representatives whose decade long career was a valiant fight for civil
liberties and human dignity and against oppression from the Left and the Right
completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1973:
Elizabeth Holtzman began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1973:
James Scheuer completed his service in Congress from New York’s 21st
District.
1973:
Seymour Halpern finishes his career as a member of the House of Representatives
representing New York’s 6th congressional district.
1975:
Stephen J. Solarz began serving in the United States House of Representatives
as the Congressman from New York’s 13th District, a post he would
hold until 1993.
1975:
James Scheuer began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives as the
Congressman from New York’s 11th District.
1975:
Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from the 10th Congressional District of Illinois.
1975:
“State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein of Manhattan, one of the early leaders in the
reform Democratic movement, was chosen today as the leader of the Senate
Democrats.”
1975:
President Gerald Ford signed the Trade Reform Act which contained the
Jackson-Vanik-Mills Amendment. The
Amendment required any nation that wanted “most favored nation status” had to
grant its citizens the right immigrate to the country of their choice. The Amendment was intended as a way of
forcing the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave the USSR and was part of the
campaign to “Free Russian Jews.”
1976(1st
of Shevat, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1976(1st
of Shevat, 5763): Eighty-five year old recording artist Irving Kaufman who
began his career in 1914 passed away today.
http://www.gracyk.com/kaufman.shtml
1977:
Ted Weiss assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's
20th district
1977: Stan Lee and his partner “launched
the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip today.
http://www.stanleefoundation.org/
1977(13th of Tevet, 5737): Avraham Ofer, Minister of Housing
the cabinet of Yitzchak Rabin, passed away
1978:
The Jerusalem Post reported that the
US was seeking to establish a bloc of moderate Arab and Muslim states, like
Turkey, that would accept Israel's self-rule proposal for the West Bank and
Gaza as a transitional phase, leading eventually to these areas' fuller
independence, preferably in close linkage to Jordan. Gush Emunim members
settled at Karnei Shomron, on the Kalkilya-Nablus road. The Gush rejected Prime
Minister Menachem Begin's assurances that his new peace plan would not affect
the safety of the existing Jewish settlements in administered areas.
1978:
“In a special government meeting called by Ariel Sharon, the government decides
to authorize the establishment of three new settlements in Judea and Samaria
and to further develop the exiting settlements in the northern Sinai by
increasing the number of settlers and expanding the agricultural lands.”
1978:
Birthdate of San Antonio, TX, native Brian Natkin the all-star tigh-end at UTEP
who went on to play professionally for the Tennessee Titans and the St. Louis
Rams.
1979:
Joshua Eilberg completed his services a member of the U.S. House
Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 4th district.
1980(13th
of Tevet, 5740): Tulane University trained surgeon Isidore Cohn, the West Baton
Rouge born son of Sophie and Henry Cohn, the husband of Elsie Waldhorn and
father of Babetta, Elise and Isidore, Jr. passed away today.
https://lib.lsu.edu/sites/default/files/sc/findaid/3425.pdf
1981(27th of
Tevet, 5741): Parashat Vaera
1981: Abraham “Abe”
Ribicoff completed his service as United States from Connecticut.
1981(27th
of Tevet, 5741): Sixty-six-year-old University of Michigan and Columbia
University trained anthropologist and social psychologist Marvin Opler, the
Buffalo, NY born son of Arthur A. Opler and Fanny Coleman-Hass and the brother
of anthropologist Morris Edward Opler passed away.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marvin-kaufman-opler
1981:
Chuck Schumer began servicing in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1981:
Jacob Javits completed his career as a member of the U.S. Senator from New
York.
1981:
Elizabeth Holtzman completed her service as a Member of the U.S.
Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1981:
Lester L. Wolfe finished his career as a member of the House of Representatives
representing New York’s 6th congressional district
1983(18th
of Tevet, 5743): Forty-six-year-old Susan Stein Shiva, the daughter of Dr.
Jules Stein and Doris Stein, the husband of Gil Shiva and the mother of
Alexandra and Andrew Shiva passed away after losing her battle with breast
cancer, the same malady that claimed her mother’s life two years earlier.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/05/obituaries/susan-stein-shiva.html
1983:
James Scheuer completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House from New
York’s 11th Congressional District and began serving as a Member of
the U.S. House from New York’s 8th Congressional District.
1983:
Jerry Nadler completed his service as a member of the New York State Assembly
from the 69th district and began serving as the member from the 67th
District.
1984:
A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring female impersonator Danny
La Rue as Dolly opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
1985(10th
of Tevet, 5745): Asara B’Tevet
1985: The government of Israel confirmed the resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian
Jews. In a world where revisionists
condemn the Zionist dream or at least pronounce it dead, this rescue operation
served as poignant, pressing reminder of one of the reasons the Jewish state
must continue to exist.
1985: Richard Ottinger completed his ten-year career as a member
of the U.S. of House Representatives from New York.
1987(2nd of Tevet): Shabbat Shel Chanukah – 8th
day of Chanukah
1987(2nd of Tevet): Fifty-five-year-old David Maysles
who along with his brother Albert formed a noted American documentary
filmmaking team, passed away today.
1987: The original production of “Smile,” a Marvin Hamlisch
musical closed today after 48 performances.
1988:
As part of the war against terrorists, Israel ordered 9 Palestinian
"instigators" deported from West Beirut.
1988: The Reagan Administration, through an announcement by its
State Department, withheld comment today on the Israeli air strikes into
southern Lebanon. A State Department official said Administration officials
monitoring weekend developments in the Middle East would assess the information
about the air strike.
1988(13th of Tevet, 5748): Rose Ausländer a
Jewish German- and English language poet passed away.
1989: Steven Schiff assumed office as a member of the U.S. House
of Representatives from the New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.
1989: Herb Kohl began serve as a United States Senator from
Wisconsin.
1989: Eliot L. Engel assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 17th district.
1989: Nita Lowey assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 18th district.
1989: Joe Lieberman completed his
service as the 21st Attorney General of Connecticut.
1989: Joe Lieberman began serving as the
U.S. Senator from Connecticut.
1990: Ezer Weizmann is scheduled to leave today for Moscow, a visit that is a
further sign of warming relations between the Soviet Union and Israel. Shimon
Peres is planning a Soviet trip at the end of January or beginning of February.
1991: Israel
reopened its consulate in the USSR after 23 years. The Soviets had broken off relations with
Israel after the Six Day War. The
Soviets alternately used its Jewish population as pawns or prisoners depending
upon the vagaries of the Cold War. The
cry of “Free Soviet Jewry” now seems like something out of the distant
past.
1991: Pan American
World Airways announced today that it was suspending flights to Tel Aviv and to
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, because of surging insurance rates, a result of the
crisis in the Middle East.
1992: Yasar Arafat
demanded that the United States vote for a U.N. resolution that would “strongly
deplore” Israel’s decision to deport a dozen Palestinians described as
“inciters to violence.” The Israeli
action followed the murder of four Israeli settlers by P.L.O. hit men over the
past ten weeks.
1992: In the State
Department office of Assistant Secretary Edward Djerejian, at the instigation
of Director of Policy Planning Dennis Ross and with the concurrence of Richard
Haass, a national security aide, the decision was made to unload on Israel as never
before. PLO hit men had murdered four
Israeli settlers in the past 10 weeks, provoking Israel to expel a dozen
Palestinian inciters to violence. No
Yasser Arafat was sending word that Arabs would boycott the peace talks unless
the U.S. voted in the U.N. to strongly deplore the deportations.
1993(10th of Tevet,
5753): Asara B'Tevet
1993: Nita Lowey
completed her term representing New York’s 20th Congressional
District and began representing New York’s 18th Congressional
District.
1993: Oregon political
leader Vera Katz, the successful escapee from Hitler’s Europe and Brooklyn
College grad who after marrying Mel Katz and giving birth to her son,
journalist Jesse Katz began a creer that led to her starting to serve as the 49th
Mayor of Portland, OR.
1993: Stephen J.
Solarz’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: James Haas
Scheuer’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: Jerry Nadler
stopped serving as a House Member from New York’s 17th Congressional
District and began serving as a House Member from New York’s 8th
Congressional District.
1993: Tammy Baldiwn
began serving as a “Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from the 78th
District.
1993: "Catskills
on Broadway" closes at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City after 452
performances
1993(10th of Tevet,
5753): An agent of the Shin Bet security service was stabbed and bludgeoned to
death today, apparently by an Arab assailant, in a rare attack on a member of
Israel's secretive internal intelligence agency. The body of Haim Nahmani, 25,
was found in the stairwell of an apartment building in a Jewish neighborhood in
West Jerusalem. A police statement said Mr. Nahmani had been "on active
duty" when an assailant known to the security forces stabbed him
repeatedly and battered him with a hammer. No further details were released.
1993: Bob Filner
completed his service on the San Diego City Council and began serving as a
Member of the U.S. House from California’s 50th District.
1993: At a building
site in Holon, near Tel Aviv, attackers slashed the throat of a Jewish man,
seriously wounding him. The police said they were searching for an Arab laborer
from the West Bank who had fled the scene.
1993: The Associated
Press reported that a pipe bomb exploded in the baggage hold of an Israeli bus
outside Tel Aviv today. The police said no one had been injured on the bus,
which was taking at least 40 people to Jerusalem from Haifa
1993: Junk
bond king Michael Milkin was released from jail after 22 months.
1993: Herb Klein began
serving as a member of the U.S. House Representatives from New Jersey’s 8th
District.
1993: Jane Harman began
serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 36th
district.
1993: The New York Times describes the Israeli
Folk Dancing classes taught by Uri Aqua at the Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. of Mid-Westchester
in Scarsdale and at Congregation Kneses in Port Chester, NY. Mr. Aqua, a Sabra,
or native Israeli, came to this country in 1983, is a cantor at Beth Israel
Synagogue in New Rochelle. But now he says he has a mission: to teach Israeli
folk dancing, which he studied in Jerusalem.
1994: Sophie Masloff
completed her service as the 56th Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA.
1995: Herb Klein
completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New
Jersey’s 8th District.
1995: Howard Metzenbaum
completed his second round of service as U.S. Senator from Ohio.
1997: Steve Rothman is
sworn in to serve his first term in the House of Representatives representing
New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District.
1998(5th of Tevet,
5758): Howard Gilman, the chairman of the Gilman Paper Company, who was a
philanthropist and a collector of photographs and other art, died today on an
estate near Jacksonville, Fla. Among the
beneficiaries of his largess were Tel Aviv University, the Tel Aviv Museum of
Art, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
1999: Anthony Weiner
began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 9th
congressional district.
1999: After six years,
Jane Harman completed her service in the U.S. House of Representatives
1999: Israel detains, and later expels, 14 members
of Concerned Christians. Concerned Christians is described as apocalyptic
Christian cult that believed the Al-Aqsa Mosque has to be destroyed to
facilitate the Second Coming.
1999: Chuck Schumer
began serving as a Senator from New York.
1999: The New York Times features a review of Life
of the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality
by Jewish critic Neal Gabler.
1999: Tammy Baldwin
began serving as a “Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from
Wisconsin’s 2nd District.
2000: Israeli and
Syrian leaders meet today as they resume American-brokered negotiations
ambitiously aimed at reaching a peace accord by this summer.
2001: Frank Lautenberg
completed a career in the U.S. from New Jersey that had begun in 1982.
2001(8th of Tevet,
5761: Sports broadcaster and youthful track & field star, Marty Glickman
passed away at the age of 83.
2001: Jane Harman
returned to Congress as a Representative from California’s 36th
district.
2001: Representative
Shelley Berkley begins her second term as the 107th Congress holds
its first sessions. Berkley is the first
Jewish woman to represent Nevada in the U.S. House of Representatives.
2001: Eric Cantor began
serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s 7th
District.
2001: Nita Lowey began
serving as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
2002: Operation’s
Noah’s Ark began this morning when Israeli naval commandos boarded a
Palestinian freighter during the second intifada loaded with tons of arms
including Katyusha rockets, and anti-tank weapons without firing a shot.
2002: “The world press
eulogized Julia Phillips, the first woman to win an Academy Award as a
producer, following her death on January 1, 2002”
http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/03/2002/julia-phillips
2003(29th of Tevet,
5763): College and professional football coaching great Sid Gillman passed
away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/obituaries/04GILL.html
2003: Fundtech Ltd
which has its headquarters in Ramat Gan, Israel , whose software helps banks
transfer money electronically, said today that it would cut jobs as it combined
units that handle development, professional services and customer services.
2003: Jerry Abramson
began serving as the first May of Louisville Metro, a governmental created by
the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County, KY.
2003: Nita Lowey
completed her term as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee
2003: Bob Filner began
serving as a Member of the U.S. House from California’s 51st
Congressional District.
2003: Norma Coleman
began serving as United States from Minnesota.
2003: Frank Lautenberg
as is sworn in as U.S. Senator from New Jersey.
2004: Four Palestinians
were killed by the Israeli Army here today in Nablus which has been a center of
militant activity since the current cycle of violence started in September
2000.
2005 (22nd of Tevet,
5765): Eighty-seven-year-old Will Eisner
passed away. Born in 1917, Eisner first
knew fame from The Spirit, a weekly comic strip appearing in newspapers
from 1940-1945, where he nurtured a young Jules Feiffer. After being drafted in
1945, he created the Joe Dope series of instructional comics for soldiers. He
is generally credited with the creation of the graphic novel when he published A
Contract with God in 1978. He also wrote Comics & Sequential Art
in 1985, a groundbreaking academic overview of those subjects. (As reported by
Sarah Boxer)
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2005/01/13/will-eisner
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/will-eisner-a-pioneer-of-comic-books-dies-at-87.html
2005: Vera Katz
completed twelve years of service as the Mayor of Portland, Oregon.
2005: Chuck Schumer
began serving as the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.
2006: Jack Abramoff
pleaded guilty to three criminal felony counts related to the defrauding of
American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials, in a Washington,
D.C., federal court.
2007: Chuck Schumer
began serving as Vice Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
2008: “Psalm Song:
Healing through the Art of Carol Hamoy” opens at the Jewish Museum of
Florida.
2008: The Rabbinical
Court of Appeals is scheduled to convene for a meeting that will decide whether
or not Rabbi Yona Metzgeer resigns as Israel’s Ashkenazi Rabbi in the wake of a
recommendation by Justice Minister Daniel Friedman that the chief rabbi be
impeached for alleged breach of trust and fraud.
2008: A Katyusha is
fired from Gaza at the city of Ashkelon, ten miles away. For the first time this major Israeli city
has been attacked by Palestinians using a rocket.
2009: In Cedar Rapids,
The traditional Saturday Morning Minyan at Temple Judah enters its eighth year
with 19 people in attendance (an amazing turn-out for such a small
congregation)!
2009: As the stain of
the Madoff financial scandal spreads the New
York Times reported that the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Madoff’s
trading firm has made an urgent request to the court for unusually broad
authority to subpoena witnesses and documents because of the “vast scale” of
this self-described record Ponzi scheme.
2009: Israeli ground
troops entered Gaza tonight, following a week of aerial strikes aimed at ending
rocket fire on Israel's southern communities.
2009: Three New York
office holders - Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, U.S.
Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the
Middle East and South Asia and Mayor Bloomberg - boarded a plane bound for
Israel late Saturday night for a trip designed to show support and concern for
the citizens of Israel who are under missile attack from Gaza.
2009: An Israeli film,
“Waltz with Bashir,” was named the best picture of 2008 by The National Society
of Film Critics at its annual meeting in New York.
2009: The Des Moines
Register reports on the work of Colorado playwright Don Fried to create a
stage drama based on events at Postville, Iowa.
2009: Jared Polis assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
2009: Norman Coleman
completed his term as U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
2009: John Adler
completed his service as a member of the New Jersey Senate from the 6th
district
2009: John Adler began
serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 3rd
district.
2009: Eric Cantor began
serving as the Minority Whip in the House of Representatives.
2009: A photographic
record was created of the synagogue at Kfar Baram which had inspired architect
Arnold W. Brunner’s plans for the Frank Memorial synagogue named in honor of
philanthropist Henry S. Frank and located on the grounds of what is now the Albert
Einstein Synagogue in Philadelphia, PA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S._Frank_Memorial_Synagogue#/media/File:Frank_Synogue_Philly.JPG
2010: An exhibition
styled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by the Yeshiva
University Museum comes to a close. Born in 1912, Braginsky was a self-taught
craftsman who carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including
tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mizrach plates, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks,
spice containers, many of which are on display as part of this exhibit. Braginsky passed away in 1999.
2010: The Washington
Post included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest
to Jewish readers including “Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, And
the Ongoing Assault on Humanity by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and the recently
released paperback edition of Sashenka by Simon Montefiore.
2010: The New York
Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including A Literary Bible: An Original
Translation by David Rosenberg.
2011: Steve Grossman
began serving as the 57th Treasurer and Receiver-General of
Massachusetts.
2011: MesorahDC which
provides young, single professionals with exciting opportunities in Jewish
enrichment is scheduled to present Cafe Nite at the Historic Sixth & I
Synagogue in Washington, DC.
2011: A romantic play
entitled “Apples from the Desert” is scheduled to be performed tonight at the
Jerusalem Theatre at 20 Rehov Marcus.
2011: University of
Minnesota graduate and future U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Richard Nides,
the Duluth, MN born son of Shirley Gavronsky and Arnold Richard Nides began
serving as 2nd United States Deputy Secretary of State for
Management and Resources.
2011(27th of
Tevet, 5771): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
2011:
Dozens of English-speaking Bar-Ilan University students demonstrated in front
of the university administration building today, demanding rights promised to
them as new olim.
2011: Despite
last-minute efforts by President Shimon Peres, Russian President Dimitri
Medvedev canceled his planned visit to Israel in February, Beit Hanassi
announced this afternoon.
2011(27th of
Tevet, 5771): Israeli actor Yosef Shiloach passed away today at the age of 69
after a long battle with cancer. Shiloach was known for Israeli comedy film
classics such as Alex Holeh Ahava, Sapiches, and Hagiga B'Snuker. A year ago,
Shiloach was awarded a life-time achievement award in at Jerusalem Film
Festival. Shiloach was born in Kurdistan in 1941 and moved to Israel at the age
of 9. He was one of the first graduates of the Beit Zvi acting school, and in
1964 he appeared in his first film - Mishpachat Simchon. Shiloach went on to
star in dozens of films and television shows, mostly portraying comic
characters, among them caricatures of a Mizrahi man with a heavy accent. He
also participated in a number of American films, including Rambo III and The
Mummy Lives. He was considered a left-wing activist and has called for
Arab-Jewish coexistence as well as equal rights for Mizrahi Israelis.
2011(27th of
Tevet, 5771): Dorothy Silk, a professional leader of volunteers and a volunteer
until her last years, died today in East Lansing, Mich., at 90. In 2008, at age
88, Silk was named one of "Eight Over Eighty," an annual event
sponsored by Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit recognizing people over
80 whose efforts showed dedication to "tikkun olam," or "repair
of the world."
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lsj/obituary.aspx?n=dorothy-m-silk&pid=147608432#fbLoggedOut
2011: The Jewish
community of St. Martin opened its first synagogue since the 18th century.
2011: Dr. Stephen Katz,
a veterinarian and a Republican began serving as a member of the New York State
Assembly from the 94th District,
2011: Jerry Abramson
completed his term as the Mayor of Louisville Metro, KY.
2011: John Adler
completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New
Jersey’s 3rd district.
2011: Thanks to a
change in political fortunes, Eric Cantor went from being Minority Whip to
Majority Whip.
2012: Grace Hannah is
scheduled to appear at the Blaze Bar at 23 Rechov Hillel.
2012: Geraldo “Rivera began hosting a weekday radio talk show on 77 WABC
in New York.
2012: Yair Lehman and
Inbal Lori are scheduled to perform “The Slaughter Cow,” a comedic show about
all topics from politics to the Torah, at Bet Avi Chai.
2012: On the night of
the Iowa Caucuses, Stephen G. Bloom did not appear on The Colbert Report as he
said he would possibly because of the negative response to his article
“Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life” which apparently was a continuation
of his negative view of the state that provided him with an academic home.
2012:
European rabbis told MKs today that laws prohibiting kosher slaughter will lead
to banning circumcision.
2012:
Josh Shapiro completed his service as a member of the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives from the 153rd district and began serving as a
member of the Montgomery Country Board of Commissioners.
2012:
Israel and Palestinian negotiators meeting in Amman today for the first direct
talks in 16 months agreed to continuing talking, with another round of talks
scheduled in Jordan next week.
2013:
“A Hole in the Moon and Three Shorts” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem
Jewish Film Festival.
2013:
Jerry Nadler completed his service a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from New York’s 8th district.
2013:
Jerry Nadler assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from the New York’s 10th district.2013: Beth Jacob Congregation is
scheduled to host a debate between the L.A. Mayoral candidates.
2013:
Nita Lowry began serving as the Representative from New York’s 17th
Congressional District.
2013: Today “Israel’s
National Library unveiled the cache of recently purchased documents that run
the gamut of life experiences, including biblical commentaries, personal
letters and financial records.” (As reported by Aron Heller)
2013: Steve Rothman
completed his services as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from
New Jersey’s 9th district.
2013: Approximately
3,000 haredim were enlisted into the IDF and will begin active service by
August 2013, Maj.-Gen. Orna Barbivai told Israel Radio today.
2013: Israeli doctors
have developed a portable device which they say can detect strokes, the third
biggest killer in the western world. The prototype, worn on patients' heads,
monitors brain waves and identifies any discrepancies in their pattern.
2014: The Eden-Tamir
Music Center is scheduled to host “Excellence-The Future Generation” featuring
outstanding composers and performers from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and
Dance.
2014: “Copying
Beethoven” and “Vivre sa vie” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish
Film Festival
2014: “Defense Minister
Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3
interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the
Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency and said
that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society.”
2014(2nd of
Shevat, 5774): Ninety-two-year-old Oscar winning producer Saul Zaentz passed
away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
2014(2nd of
Shevat, 5774): Seventy-eight-year-old publisher Tom Rosenthal passed away
today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10590405/Tom-Rosenthal-obituary.html
2014: The body of
Menachem “Max” Stark “was found smoldering in a dumpster outside a Getty
station on Cutter Mill Road in Great Neck, New York” today.
http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/burned-body-in-dumpster-might-be-kidnapped-hasid-cops/
2014: A Wall Street
Journal report published today stated that U.S. officials believe members of
Hezbollah are smuggling” “components of the Yahkont advanced guided missiles”
which the terror group could use to attack Haifa and Ashdod into their bases in
Syria or Lebanon. (As reported by Yoav Zitun)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4472811,00.html
2014: “Defense Minister
Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3
interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the
Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency and said
that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society. “
2015: Republican Lee
Zeldin began serving as member of the U.S. House Representatives from New
York’s 1st Congressional District.
2015: “The Imitation Game” is scheduled to be shown in
Jerusalem today.
2015: Chuck Schumer completed his service as Chairman of
the Senate Rules Committee.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present
"The Glorious Sound of Two Pianos" --The Jerusalem Piano Duo: Shir
Semmel- Dror Semmel
2015: Under the leadership of Lena Gilbert, Temple Judah
is scheduled to host the third annual Cedar Rapids Opera Recital featuring six
principal singers from Don Giovanni
2015: Andre Pshenichnikov who was arrested in the Sinai
Peninsula in January 2013 after crossing into Egypt with no identification “was
released from prison and repatriated” in Israel today.
2015:
As a cold front hit Israel today “the first substantial snowfall descended on
Mt. Hermon and rain fell in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. (As reported by Justin
Jalil)
2016:
“Violins of Hope,” an exhibition “created
by the Maltz Museum, featured violins that survived the Holocaust and were
restored by Amnon Weinstein” came to an end today.
2016:
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in an interview with Army Radio today said that
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to provide security for the
citizens of Israel. (As reported by JP Staff)
2016:
A the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Abandoned at Srebrenica:
Photographs From the Aftermath” is scheduled to close today
2016:
An Israeli man in his 20’s was wounded tonight “in a shooting attack in the Har
Hevron region of Judea” just two hours after and “Arab terrorist” stabbed a man
waiting for a bus in southeast Jerusalem.
2016:
Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, of Jerusalem and “a minor, who cannot be named
because of his age” were today “indicted in the deadly firebombing of a
Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma.”
2016:
“YiddishSchool Florida” is scheduled to open today at Florida Atlantic
University in Boca Raton, FL.
2016:
The New York Times features reviews
of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Abba Eban: A Biography by Asaf Siniver and an interview
“Jewish Deportee on Persecution, Past and Present” in which 87 year old
Marceline Loridan-Ivens who had been deported to Birkenau at the age of 15
expresses her belief “that the lessons of World War II are not being forgotten
because ‘these lessons were never learned.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/books/a-french-deportee-life-at-auschwitz-and-history-repeating.html?ref=books
2016:
“In Israeli City of Haifa, a Liberal Arab Culture Blossoms” published today
2017:
Dr. Alyssa Quint the Vilna Collections Scholar-in-Residence at the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to teach the first session of
“Modern Yiddish Theatre.”
2017:
Josh Karlip is scheduled to teach the first session of “At the Edge of the
Abyss: Jewish Intellectual Responses to Nazism, 1933-1940.”
2017:
Steven Smith is scheduled to teach the first session of “What Kind of Jew Was
Spinoza?”
2017:
The Palm Beach Synagogue was scheduled to host a screening of “Claude Lanzmann:
Spectres of the Shoah” which “explores the arduous 12-year journey that led to
the creation of the French iconoclast’s “Shoah,” a nine-hour-plus examination
of the Holocaust.”
2017:
Republican David Frank Kustoff began serving as member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District.
2017:
Tammy Baldwin, the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin began serving as Secretary of
the Senate Democratic Conference.
2017:
As Congress convened, Chuck Schumer began serving as Senate Minority Leader.
2017:
“The 115th US Congress, which convened for the first time today, is 5.6 percent
Jewish, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Of the Democrats’
28 Jewish members, 20 are serving in the House, and eight in the Senate. Jews
thus make up a higher proportion of the upper chamber than the lower, holding
8% of the Senate versus 5% of the House. Out of the 293 Republicans who make up
the new Congress, two are Jewish.” (As reported by Eric Corellessa)
2017:
“Israeli spelunkers stumbled across a menorah and a cross etched into the
limestone walls of an ancient cistern, both of which are believed to date back
centuries, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement today.
2018: Following allegations of sexual harassment Showtime followed in the footsteps of NBC
and MSNBC, Showtime replaced Mark Halperin
2018:
In Memphis, at Temple Israel, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to examine the
life of Sigmund Freud as part of the series on “Great Jewish Renegades.”
2018(16th
of Tevet, 5778): Eighty-nine-year-old Fred Bass, the son Pelican Book shop
owner Benjamin Bass and Shirley Vogel, who made the Strand Bookstore into a New
York Institution passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)
2019:
Adam Schiff began serving as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
2019:
In Arlington, VA, at Congregation Etz Hayim, Rabbi Lia Bass is scheduled to
lead a learn-over- lunch study of the Book of Joshua.
2019:
Max Rose began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from
New York’s 11th district.
2019:
Harvard trained attorney Andrew “Andy” Saul Levin, the nephew of Senator Carol
Levin and the so Sander Levin and Vicki Schalfter began serving as a Member of
the U.S Representatives from Michigan’s 9th District, a position
that had been held by his father.
2019:
In Pittsburgh, PA, the home of the Steelers who “just donated $70,000 to help
the Jewish community” in the wake of the slaughter at the synagogue, Chabad of
the South Hills is scheduled to host a lecture on “Tip to Authentic Happiness”
as part of their Torah and Teach Study Group.
2020:
“The Song of Names,” the movie version of the novel by Norman Lebrecht with a
score by Howard Shore is scheduled to open today at the Clay Theatre in San
Francisco.
2020:
Ira Strizhevska is scheduled to be interred this morning at the Mount Carmel
Cemetery in New York.
2020:
It was reported today that Israel, Greece and Cyprus have agreed to build
pipelines that would that would transport gas from Israel’s Levantine Basin
offshore fields to Cyprus, Crete, the Greek mainland and ultimately to Italy.
2020:
As the United States sends in additional troops to protect American facilities
in Baghdad from what are reported to be Iranian backed proxy forces, other
nations in the region, including Israel, are wondering today if this represents
what could be a major military confrontation.
2020:
“The exhibition, titled “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.,” is scheduled
to come to an end today at the museum of Jewish Heritage.
2021: The New York Times features reviews of books
by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Strongman: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
and the recently released paperback edition of This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the
World (and Me) by Marisa Meltzer.
2021: Jewish LearningWorks is scheduled to present a
Jewish Genealogy Cline with “Experts from the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish
Genealogical Society answering questions online about researching your roots.
2021: Temple Sinai of Marblehead is schedule to present
online “Rabbinic Responses to Past Pandemics with Dr. Levi Cooper.”
2021: Max Rose completed his term in office as a Member of
the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 11th District.
2021: “Tamar Branitzky, “a textile designer who is mainly engaged in
the research of new surfaces and prints which are created by exposing various
materials such as silk, cotton, linen, paper and leather to various chemical
processes causing the material exposed to become something special and yet
remain a flexible fabric for various uses is scheduled to discuss online
“Israeli Tech: Style – Using Unique Materials.”
2022: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to present
online “The Barry Sisters and Yiddish Swing during which “broadcaster and music
writer Andy Muchin explores the career of Clara and Minnie Bagelman and the
music they helped popularize.”
2022: Congregation Beth Elohim is scheduled to
present online “Simcha Circles: New Beginnings in January.”
2022: Based on announcement made yesterday, as
of today people over the age of sixty and medical workers will be able to
receive a 4th dose of COVID vaccine.
2022: The holiday closing of The Breman,
including the Cuba Family Archive, the Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education
and the galleries is scheduled to come to an end today.
2022: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's
governing coalition is scheduled to face a challenge tonight when it will
attempt to pass the controversial electricity law which would “enable tens of
thousands of illegally built homes to be hooked up to the national electricity
grid, as well as to water and to telephone lines.” (As reported by Gil Hoffman)
2022(1st
of Shevat, 5782): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
2023: “The Americans and the Holocaust
traveling exhibition” is scheduled to open today at Metropolitan Library System
in Oklahoma City, OK, the Library of Hattiesburg Petal & Forrest County in
Hattiesburg, MS and the Petoskey District Library in Petoskey, MI.
2023: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth,
NJ is scheduled to open after a two day closure.
2023(10th
of Tevet, 5783): Yahrzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin) the loving wife of
Larry Rosenstein of blessed memory, the mother of Danny, David Asher and Joel
Rosenstein and the sister of David and Mitchell Levin all of whom miss her and
remember her with love and affection
2023(10th
of Tevet, 5783): The Fast of the 10th of Tevet; Asarah b’Tevet, is a
minor fast day that commemorates the date “when, according to the Tanach (II
Kings 25:1-4), the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem.”
2024:
In Cedar Rapids, the Hadassah Book Club under the leadership of Nancy Margulis
is scheduled to discuss The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirst Manning.
2024:
At Temple Judea, Rabbi Feivel is scheduled to lead the Intermediate Hebrew
classes.
2024: As January 3rd begins in Israel,
the Hamas held hostages begin day 89 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
