This Day, July 13, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

July 13

100 BCE: Birthdate of Julius Caesar.  When Caesar and Pompey fought for control of the Empire, the Jews supported Caesar because of the evil Pompey had done to the Jewish people including desecrating the Temple and shipping thousands of Judeans to Roman slave markets.  Caesar returned Jaffa to Judean control and allowed the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. The Jews of Rome were allowed to organize as a community and Jews living on the Italian peninsula were able to improve their economic condition.

982: Kalonymos da Lucca, “the second Jew mentioned in the annals of Germanic history” “saved the life of Emperor Otto II” “who rewarded him with a house and citizenship in the city of Main where he could live safely as a Jew under the protection of the archbishop.” (As described by Leo Sievers)

1024: Henry II, the Holy Roman Emperor whose expulsion of the Jews from Mayence was lamented in dirges composed by the poet Simon ben Isaac and of which Gershom ben Yehuda said, “Thou hast made those who despise They Law to have dominion over Thy people…” passed away today.

1105(29th of Tammuz, 4865: On the secular calendar Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac also known as Rashi passed away. Rashi is a Hebrew acrostic for Rabbi Shlmoh ben Isaac. Born in 1040 he was the leading rabbinic commentator in his day on the TaNaCh and Talmud. His work is so basic to Jewish study, that it is said when we study Torah we must study Rashi. Rashi lived at the time of the Crusades. He passed away five years before the birth of that other great medieval sage, Maimonides. (See the attachment for a fuller treatment of his life.) While there is much to be learned from the teachings of Rashi, there are also lessons that we can learn from his life. While he studied with the greatest teachers in Germany, he lived in a French town with a comparatively small Jewish population. For those living in small towns this should serve as a reminder that living in small town is no reason not to study. Rashi was a Rabbi. He was also a successful businessman. He was a wine merchant who was able to care for his family and support students and yeshivas. In other words, just because most of us have to work for a living, we can still find time for study. Rashi had three daughters and no sons. Unlike the example of the mythical Tevye, Rashi’s daughters were all educated scholars. According to the stories told about them, all five wore tefillin. In other words, for Rashi, women were not to be "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen." His example means we should be providing a full Jewish education for all of our community, regardless of sex. (See Maggie Anton’s books about Rashi’s daughters for more about this)(www.rashisdaughters.com)

1148: Anti-Jewish riots take place in Cordova, Spain.

1204: Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert Walter, the son of Sir Hervey Walter and Matilda de Valognes, who had gone on the Third Crusade with Richard the Lionheart where they failed to liberate Jerusalem and who “also oversaw the establishment of a new system that supervised, recorded and regulated moneylending by England's Jews” as part of the efforts to meet Richard’s seemingly insatiable demand for funds to prosecute his foreign adventures, passed away today.

1391: The richest Jew in Valencia, “the great Don Samuel Abravalla,” was baptized to in the palace of En Gasto.  He is now known as Alfonso Ferrandes de Villanueva.

 http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=630&letter=A#ixzz1BA9z84oK

1564: In Brest Litvosk (Lithuania), Abraham, the son of a wealthy and envied Jewish tax collector was accused of killing the family's Christian servant for ritual purposes. He was tortured and executed. King Sigmund Augustus forbade the charge of ritual murder.

1608: Birthdate of Ferdinand III the Holy Roman Emperor who awarded the Jewish community their own banner in recognition for their services in the defense of Prague during the Thirty Years War.

1756: Birthdate of artist and caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson a non-Jew who born in Old Jewry, a street that takes its name from the fact that it was part of a Jewish quarter that had first existed at least as far back as the 13th century.

1786(17th of Tammuz, 5546): Tzom Tammuz observed on the birthdate of General Winfield Scott whose subordinates included Captain Alfred Mordecai.

1787: According to the “Kaisers Patent” bearing today’s date issued by Austrian Emperor Josef II, Jews “were forced to send their children to Christian schools and take German names.”

1787:  The Continental Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It is important to note that there were no religious qualifications to settling in the area, owning land or taking part in political activities.  This openness encouraged Jews to settle the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains.  It also forced some of the east coast states to remove their remaining religious qualifications for participating in state government

1788(4th of Shevat, 5548): Leah Ancona, the daughter of Moses Ancona and Hannah Montefiore passed away today in London.

1793(4th of Av, 5553): Parashat Devarim, Shabbat Chazon

1793(4th of Av, 5553): Rebecca Hart Myers, the daughter of Joseph Hart Myers and Leah Jacobs passed away today in the UK.

1796: When French forces renew their bombardment of Frankfurt this evening, fire breaks out in the city including the area known as the Judengasse.

1798: Birthdate of Warder Cresson, the Quaker born Philadelphian who changed his name to Michoel Boaz Yisroel ben Avraham when he converted to Judaism. After surviving a sanity hearing, Cresson became an ardent supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine moving to Jerusalem where he married a Sephardic women, raised a family and eventually passed away.

https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/viewFile/42734/42455

1800: In Bavaria, Samuel Joseph Arjeh Landauer and Rebecca Breindl Landauer gave birth to Seligman Ben Schemmel Landauer, the husband of Zirle Landauer.

1809: In Philadelphia, Zalegman Phillips, the Philadelphia born so of Jonas Philips and Rebecca Mendez Machado and his wife Arabella Phillips gave birth to future South Carolina resident, Catherine Moses, the wife of Montgomery Moses and the “mother of Meyer B. Moses, Zalegman Phillips Moses, Franklin J. Moses; Arabella Phillips Moses; Henry Claremont Moses; Rebecca Phillips Moses; Altamont Moses; Catherine Esther Werber and Rachel Moses.

1813: Birthdate of Lazar Isidore who served as chief rabbi of France from 1867 until his death in 1888.

1816: Birthdate of German novelist Gustav Freytag who was married to a Jew but who authored Debit And Credit the popular anti-Semitic six volume novel that featured he Jewish Ehrenthal family who are money-lenders and speculators and their criminal employee Veitel Itzig and promoted negative stereotypes of Jews.

1815: Future President John Q. Adams wrote in a letter: 'The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, I should still believe fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.'

1823: Birthdate of French poet Eugène Manuel, the son of Parisian Jewish doctor.

1823: Birthdate of Bavarian native Louis Sloss, the husband of “Philadelphia-native Sarah Greenbaum” with whom he had five children – Bella, Leon, Louis, Jr, Joseph and Marcus – who in 1845 came to the United States where he eventually co-founded the Alaska Commercial Company while also serving on the Board of Regents on the University of California and President of Congregation B’nai Israel in Sacramento, CA.

http://www.americanjerusalem.com/characters/lewis-gerstle-1824-1902-and-louis-sloss-1823-1902/24

1824(17th of Tammuz, 5584): Tzom Tammuz observed that the Marquis de Lafayette set sail from France for the United States where he would be the guest of President Monroe.

1841: Birthdate of Austrian architect Otto Wagner. Budapest's Rumbach Synagogue, built in the 1870s, was his first major work. There seems to be some dispute as to whether or not Wagner himself was Jewish.  We post his name because of the synagogue construction since we have not been able to verify whether or not he was Jewish.

1848: Arnold Blum, Jr., the “son of Abraham Levi Blum and Jeanette (Schienle) Blum” and his wife “Rosina (Rosa) Blum” gave birth to Justine Blum who became Justine Spiegel when she married Morris Spiegel.

1852: In New York, the Board of Alderman approved placing gas lamps in front of the synagogue on Greene Street.

1854(17th of Tammuz, 5614): Tzom Tammuz observed on the same day that “the U.S. warship Cyane bombarded San Juan del Norte (Greytown) in Nicaragua, partly in revenge for an alleged insult against diplomat Solon Borland of Arkansas, who had arrived in Managua in September 1853 and immediately started causing trouble.”

1855(27th of Tammuz, 5615): One-year-old Fanny Weil, the daughter of Jacob and Therese Weil passed away today in Untermerzbach, Bavaria.

1859: Sir Moses Montefiore was informed that in an interview Mr. Odo Russell, a British diplomat, had with Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, a senior Vatican official closely associated with the Pope, the latter said that the issue of Edgardo Mortara was “a closed question.”  In other words, Vatican was standing fast on the seizure of the Jewish child and had no intention of returning him. 

1861(6th of Av, 5621): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon

1861: In Nevada, Israel ben Joseph Benjamin, a German-Jewish traveler who was a passenger on one of the first scheduled daily overland stagecoaches passed through Jacobs Well “a foundling way station for changing horses or mules on the Daily Overland Mail stage.”

1863: During the Draft Riots which began today in New York City, mobs came down the street where the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was located but passed the building without attacking.

1863: In London, Rabbi Samuel Marcus Gollancz, the cantor of the Hambro Synagogue, London, and his wife, Johanna Koppell gave birth “to the sixth of their seven children, English literature professor Sir Israel Gollancz who married Alide Goldschmidt in 1910.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Gollancz#/media/File:Sir_Israel_Gollancz_by_Elliott_%26_Fry.jpg

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1930/Obituary/Israel_Gollancz

1865: "Russia: Extensive Fires" published today describe a fire has destroyed 108 houses in Gerdok most of which belonged to Jews. Two children died in the fire.  A fire in the Jewish quarter at Grodno destroyed eighty-two houses. The Synagogue in Borisoff was among the buildings that fell victim to the flames when fire swept the town.

1866(1st of Av, 5626): Rosh Chodesh Av

1866(1st of Av, 5626): Maria Louisa Jacobs passed away today after which she buried at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery in London.

1869: Birthdate of Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon, the Russian scholar and author who was not able to get a teaching position because he was Jewish.

https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:p16313coll59

1869: In Natchez, Mississippi, Isaac Lowenburg, the German born son of Fanny and Samuel Lowenburg and his wife Ophelia Lowenberg gave birth to Helen Samuels, the wife of Emanuel Samules.

1871: The Corporation Act of 1661 which “belonged to the general category of test acts, designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to members of the Church of England” which had the effect of barring Roman Catholics and Jews from public office was repealed today.

1871: In Ulm, Germany, Rudolf Hirsch, the German born son of Leopold Hirsch and Therese Tölzele Hirsch (Wormser) and his wife Pauline Hirsch gave birth to Julie Lina Moos, the husband of Richard Moos who died at Theresienstadt.

1872: In Newark, NJ, Bella Bloch and Gustav Kussy gave birth to New York Law School trained attorney and member of the Jewish Community Council of Essex County (NJ0  Nathan Kussy, the husband of Tennie Levi with whom he had two daughter and the author of “a number playlets that were performed in Army camps” during World War I and of at least three books Grinmar, The Abyss and The Victor who served on the Newark Board of Education on was the assistant city attorney for Newark from 1917 to 1921.

1872: According to reports published today, The Jewish Messenger endorsed the proposal of the New York Times that poor and orphaned children in New York should be able to enjoy at least one excursion during the month of July.  In urging its readers to contribute to this cause the Messenger reminded that among the beneficiaries would be at least four hundred Jewish children.

1873(18th of Tammuz, 5633) Tzom Tammuz observed because the 17th of Tammuz fell on Shabbat.

1873: “Cleanliness Versus Godliness” published today took issue with the contention of the historian Eusebus that the Apostle James never took a bath.  “The assertion is most improbable, for not only were all the apostles strict Jews, but St. James, the Bishop or Jerusalem, could least of all have afforded to despise so sacred a Jewish habit as cleanliness”  since James “was held in the highest esteem by the  Judaizing party in the Church.

1874: Jewish leaders from all over the United States are gathering in Cleveland, Ohio for tomorrow’s meeting of the Council of the American Union of Hebrew Congregations.

1875: Representatives from a group of Jewish congregations from across the United States held their second annual meeting in Buffalo, NY. Joseph Cohn of Pittsburg, PA was elected President; Henry Brock of Buffalo was elected Vice President; Lippman Levy of Cincinnati was elected Secretary; S. J. Lowenstein of Evansville, Indiana was elected Assistant Secretary. 

1876: Judge Abraham Jesse Dittenhoefter described the meeting in which New York Governor Samuel J.  Tilden was told that he had been nominated by the Democratic Party as their candidate for President. He then read a sample of letters from those supporting this candidate of reform. (Tilden is the “Tilden” of the famous Hayes-Tilden electoral stalemate)

1877: The New York Times featured a review of Poet and Merchant by Bethold Auerbach, “a Jewish romance” in which all but a couple of the characters are Jews.

1878: At the conclusion of the Congress of Berlin, the European powers sign the Treaty of Berlin designed to officially the end of the Russo-Turkish War.  One of the issues settled by the treaty was the question of independence for Romania.  The Romanians promised that they would improve the treatment of the Jews living in Romania.  Rather than trust the Romanian leaders, the authors of the treaty bowed to pressure from influential European Jews and insisted “that Romania must guarantee Jewish political emancipation before her sovereignty could be recognized.”  The requirement was incorporated into the Treaty of Berlin under Article 62.

1878: Isaac Asher Isaacs, the son of Asher and Esther Isaacs, and his wife Hannah (Annie) Isaacs gave birth to David Isaacs.

1879: A delegation of Rabbis from congregations across the United States, including both Reform and Orthodox came to house of Rabbi David Einhorn and presented him with a resolution enumerating his various accomplishments as his decade’s long career.  The 72 year old native of Bavaria is retiring as the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth-El with a pension of $3.500.

1879: An article published today based on information from The Saturday Review, a London weekly magazine, examined the life of the late Lionel Rothschild.  Rothschild was held in high esteem for his philanthropies that included an unexpectedly large donation for the relief of those who suffered during the Irish Famine in the 1840’s.  Rothschild was praised for being more than “nominally a Jew” and for taking a leading role in the affairs of the Jewish community.  Rothschild was “too rich too powerful and too socially important to be tempted to seek to rise by a calculated conversion.”  On a personal level, one of Rothschild’s crowning moments came when he won the Epsom Derby in 1879 thanks to the efforts of “Sir Bevys.”   Much of the prejudice that Jews have experienced in England has dissipated due, in part, to the example of the Rothschilds which includes the unique Jewish trait of “setting as much store on the attainment of high education and the development of business faculties in the women as in the men.”

1881: It was reported today that a resolution was introduced at the 8th annual council of the Union of American Hebrew congregations calling upon the Union to the steps that would lead to the abolition of the Religious Department of the Census Bureau.  Those in favor of the proposal felt that the “Church and State were separated by a wide gulf” and that the government did not have any right to ask Americans about their religious beliefs.  Those who were opposed to the proposal felt that the Hebrew Union did not have the right to interfere with the operations of the government.  The latter view prevailed, and the motion was withdrawn.

1882: President Lotte of Cincinnati presided over a meeting of the Executive Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations at Saratoga, NY.  The Board represents 15 congregations.

1882(26th of Tammuz, 5642): Thirty-nine year old Sigmund Ferdinand Strauss, the brother of MP Arthur Isidor Strauss and Heinrich Alphons Strauss passed away today in Paris.

1883: It was reported today that the expenses of the Hebrew Union College have exceeded income by $18,200. The shortfall was covered by money taken from the Sinking Fund.  In order to avoid further financial problems the Union will collect a head tax of one dollar for each congregant belonging to the congregations across the country.

1883: In Poland, Rebekah and Abraham Simcha (Simon) Flashtiq gave birth to Joseph Flashtiq, the husband of Ida Flashtiq and father of Reginald Flashtiq

1884: Birthdate of Gustav Rosenthal who in was transported from Prague to Terezinwhere he was murdered in 1942.

1885: Marcus Berheimer delivered a welcoming address to the delegates from the United Hebrew Relief Associations from the principle cities in the United States who had gathered in St. Louis to form a union of the Hebrew Charities into a national organization.

1887: At 14th annual meeting of the leaders of the Hebrew Congregations of America, leaders of the Reform Movement expressed their disgust with the treatment of Jewish-American citizens doing business with, or visiting, Russia.  The group wants changes made to the Russo-American Treaty that will guarantee American Jews will be treated with same respect as is shown to American Catholics and Protestants.

1888: Birthdate of Isaac Nachman Steinberg, the Russian born lawyer and political leader who served with Lenin but then was forced to flee to the West in the 1920’s when the political winds of the Bolsheviks blew in another direction.

1889: “Harlem Club and Senator Cantor” published today described attempts to minimize the action of club members.  They claimed that the Jewish political leader had not been blackballed; merely postponed.  While it was thought that a majority of the members would vote in favor of membership, the “blackball system” would keep that from happening.

1890: Rabbi Sabato Morais of Philadelphia, PA is giving a lecture this morning entitled “Some Hebrew Grammarians” at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

1891:” Russians Facing Famine” published today described the effects of the worst food shortage since the earliest days of the Romanov dynasty including the suffering of the Jews especially those living at Rovnopol where they “are practically dying of hunger.” During a tour of the area, the governor saw the Jews “destitute of bread and corn” and “several families living together in one hut for the sake of warmth generated by propinquity.”

1892: The assailant who attacked Gustave Berkowitz, an old Jewish peddler, escaped from custody today.

1893: Among the people who were killed in today’s train wreck at Newburgh, NY was
“an unknown woman, apparently thirty-four years old, of Hebrew cast of countenance” (In other words she looked like a Jew).  Among the injured were five members of the family of Leopold Michael, a retired diamond merchant on his way to spend the summer in the Catskills.

1893: Birthdate of Volochisk native David Vardi the Yiddish and Hebrew actor and director who enjoyed a successful career in Europe and the United States.

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/V/vardi-david.htm

1893: The decision by the family of Captain Dreyfus not to accept a jewel sword which a group of American Jews plan to purchase in his honor and the decision by Emile Zola not to accept an engraved gold pen from the same group was made public today. The plan to buy these items had split the Jewish community with the editors of the Forwards being most vocal in their opposition.

1893: “Soon To Have A New Temple” published today provides a detailed description of Shaaray Tefilla’s home located on 82nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues

1894: Birthdate of Isaak Babel Russian short-story writer and dramatist, known by many as the author of "Red Calvary." Babel’s artistic career ended when he was arrested by the Soviet secret police in one of those periodic purges brought on by Stalin’s paranoia. Babel was shot after a secret trial proved he was a traitor.

1894: In Baltimore, MD, “Sam and Merla (Freidenwald) Thalheimer” gave birth to Alvin Thalheimer, the holder of an A.B from Harvard and PhD from Johns Hopkins who became “a vice president of the American Trading and Production Corporation and chairman of the Maryland Welfare Board” while raising a son, Herbert, with his wife Fanny Blausten Thalheimer.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/07/10/96706051.pdf

1894: Albert Mortiz was promoted from Assistant Engineer to Past (First) Assistant Engineer today in the United States Navy.

1894: A day after she had passed away, 74-year-old Rachel Sampson, the widow of Simon Sampson was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.

1894: Even though Eugene Debs said it was his decision, the Knights of Labor blamed Samuel Gompers for calling off the planned strike intended to show support for the Pullman workers. 

1895: In the United Kingdom, the General Election that would see Harry Marks emerge victorious in his campaign to represent St. George, Tower Hamlets, began.

1895: On Shabbat, Dr. Samuel Sale of St. Louis, MO will deliver the sermon at the annual Central Conference American Rabbis meeting in Rochester, NY.

1895: “A Jewish Confession of Faith” published today listed the ten point formula “for the reception of proselytes being considered by the Reform movement.

1895: It was reported today that a new translation of Conventional Lies of Our Civilization by Max Nordeau is being published in London that will replace the one that appeared in Chicago ten years ago.

1896: “Bugs, Worms and Beetles” published today described the history and impact of these critters including the fact that the “Jews of Morocco regard male grasshoppers as unclean” and that they only eat the females “which have peculiar markings on their bodies” which are said to be Hebrew letters that “make it lawful to devour the animals bearing them.” (No shrimp or lobster; but we can eat female grasshoppers in Morocco – such a deal)

1896: Birthdate of Israeli painter Mordecai Ardon.  Born in Poland when it was part of the Russian Empire, Ardon later moved to Germany where he was a student at the "Bauhaus" School from 1920 to 1925.  This was the period in German history known as the Weimar Republic.  Ardon moved to Jerusalem in 1933.  He had his first American exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1948. There are numerous websites where you can view his works.  He passed away in 1992. One of his most famous is the "Ardon Windows" in the Jewish National and University Library

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/european/Mordechai-Ardon.html

1896: Herzl meets with representatives of Hovevei Zion Britain.

1897: Louis Leblois, lawyer for Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, informed Senator Auguste Scheurer-Kestner in detail about the Dreyfus Affair – the first step in a journey that would lead to his involvement in the ultimate re-habilitation of the French Jewish officer.

1898: When the 3rd Nebraska Volunteer Infantry was mustered in today at Omaha, those taking the oath included Sergeant Herbert L. Stern, Corporal George Steinbach, and Privates Henry H. Lyons, Sam Orlofsky and Bert Polsky, all from Lincoln as well as Omaha Musician Harry C. Lyon.

1898: Birthdate of Bialystok native and future Floridian Joseph Berger, the husband of Sadie Cohn Berger whom he married  in 1924 and whom he had three children – Sylvia, Adolf and Bernice – and who was a member of Temple Beth El in Broward County

1898: When the 6th Missouri Volunteer Infantry was mustered in today at Jefferson Barracks, those taking the oath included Bernhardt K. Stunberg, Hospital Steward; Captain John H. Goldman, Company A; Private Harry H. Rosenberger, Company C; Musician Oscar Bennewitz and Private Levi Harris, Company D; Private Louis Bleistein, Company G;

1899: The Knights of Zion, a Jewish fraternal organization, was incorporated today at Albany, NY.

1899: Moses Alexander completed his service as the 19th Mayor of Boise, Idaho.

1900: In New York City Jozue Perla and Fannie Herzruecken Perla gave birth to Dr. David Perla the Columbia Medical School graduate who served as “associate pathologist and immunologist at Montefiore Hospital” from 1927 until his death in 1940 and was a “leading investigator and writer on the mechanism of immunity to infection in the human body.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9C06E0DE123EE432A25756C1A9609C946193D6CF

1901: In Okopy, Poland, Esther Ben Dor gave birth to “Immanuel Ben-Dor, an archeologist and professor of Biblical Archaeology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/06/26/78353840.pd

1901: Birthdate of Myrtle Ehrlich, the Brooklyn native who became the successful American businesswoman, Tillie Ehrlich Lewis, “the tomato queen.”

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,857087-1,00.html

1902: Birthdate of Labour Party leader Maurice Orbach, “a self-proclaimed Labour Zionist” who was the father of psychotherapist Susie Orbach and Laurence Orbach, the former chairman and CEO of The Quatro Group.

1903: Moses Alexander began servings as the 21st Mayor of Boise, Idaho

1903: " The Jewish Teacher and the Religious School " “was the subject discussed to-day by the Jewish Chautauqua Society's Seventh Summer Assembly “meeting in Atlantic City.

1904(1st of Av, 5664): Rosh Chodesh Av

1904(1st of Av, 5664): Forty-seven-year-old English soprano and actress Giulia Warwick (born Julia Ehrenberg) passed away today.

http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/whowaswho/W/WarwickGiulia.htm

1905: “Their Only Hope” published today in The American Israelite described conditions in Russia following the defeat by Japan including plans of the government to hold on to power by sacrificing “the Jews of Russia to the bitter hatred of their enemies” –  “the hierarchy of the Russian Church and members of the business community who see the Jews as competitors --  and concludes with a plea to “great Jewish financers” to use their power “to save five million men, women and children – their coreligionist – from impending destruction.

1905: Sir Reginald Francis Douce Palgrave, the Clerk of the House of Commons passed away.  His father was Sir Francis Palgrave, born Francis Ephraim Cohen, who converted and changed his name so that he could marry Elizabeth Turner.

1905: The Ninth Summer Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society continued for a sixth day in Atlantic City, NJ.

1906: Today, “after making an examination of the left eye of Mrs. Samuel Greenbaum, the wife of the New York state supreme court, which had been struck yesterday by a golf ball, “Dr. Charles H. May of New York declared today that “his “examination revealed the fact that the eyeball is comparatively free of blood clots and apparently intact” which means her “sight can be restored.”

1907(2nd Av, 5667): Parashat Matot-Masei

1907: Birthdate of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author George Anthony Weller who interviewed a German P.O.W. who when asked if Germans were aware of the Lublin Massacres said. “All the ordinary German knows is that that the secret police come and get the Jews” and “where they go they do not know, and nobody dares ask.”

https://books.google.com/books?id=38CiN8oS7YYC&pg=PA523&lpg=PA523&dq=George+Weller+and+the+jewish+family&source=bl&ots=1jixWwrrmE&sig=ACfU3U0-aE6k6c_67oeOu8SyGYgL3A0CBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5yezPsMbqAhULZc0KHeN7D6UQ6AEwAnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=George%20Weller%20and%20the%20jewish%20family&f=false

1908: Samuel Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor met with William Jennings Bryan the Democratic nominee president today during which the labor leader pledged the support of the working people represented by his organization which must have been doubly pleasing to Bryan because he had been accused of some of harboring anti-Semitic views after his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896.

1909(24th of Tammuz, 5669): Jacob Bettelheim, the Viennese born dramatist and author passed away in Berlin.

1910: Fire destroyed 21 buildings in the Jewish quarter of Salonica, damage near 600,000 Francs.

1910: Birthdate of Swiss philosopher and Einstein Medal winner Jeanne Hersch.

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/08/local/me-38976

1911(17th of Tammuz, 5671): Tzom Tammuz

1911(17th of Tammuz, 5671): New Yorker Gustav Mehringer who made “bequests of $2,584.52 each to Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Montefiore Home, the United Hebrew Charities and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum” and a bequest of $2,000 to Temple Emanu-El passed away today.

1911: Birthdate of Brooklyn native WW II Army veteran Hyam Plutzik, the graduate of Trinity College and holder of a master’s degree from Yale and Professor of English at Rutgers whose “awards for Poetry included Yale’s Albert S. Cook Prize in Poetry, an award from the National Institutes of Arts and Letters and a Lillian Fairchild Award” and who was the husband of the former Tanya Roth with whom he had four children – Roberta, Deborah, Alan and Jonathan.

http://www.hyamplutzikpoetry.com/

1912(28th of Tammuz, 5672): Parashat Matot-Masei

1912: “Pushcart Markets A United Demand” described how New York City officials and leaders of Catholic and Hebrew charities have express their “approval of the proposal to concentrate all pushcart peddlers into pushcart marts on vacant city property” with Commissioner of Education Joseph Barondess, a leader of the Jewish community that “the pushcarts have become more than ever an economic necessity in view of the general high prices nowadays” and the establishment of these marts provides the “sole remedy of many of the intolerable evils that have been developed by present system.

1913(17th of Tammuz, 5671): Tzom Tammuz

1913: As the wars continue in the Balkans, the Turks capture the Greek city of Didymoteikhon which is ruled by the Bulgarians.  Unfortunately for the Jews, who had suffered property losses when the Bulgarians took the city in 1912, the economy continued to deteriorate under Ottoman rule.

1914: As the Europe stood on the precipice of what would become WW I, “the Austrian investigation into the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria reported to Vienna there was little evidence to support the Serbian government in general was accessory to the plot” which, if made public would mean there was no reason for the Austrians to punish Serbia by invading that Slavic nation.

1914(19th of Tammuz, 5674): In Chicago, funeral services are scheduled to be held for Josephine Netter Israel, the mother of two daughters and one son, Harry N. Israel.

1914: Thirty-nine-year-old Yale graduate Ira Nelson Morris, the Chicago born son of Nelson Morris and the former Sarah Vogel and husband of Constance Lily Rothschild was appointed U.S. Minister to Sweden today.

1914(19th of Tammuz, 5674): Julian Schloss, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lee L. Schloss passed away today in Chicago.

1915: Abram I. Elkus, the President of the Jewish Chautauqua Society was reported today to have said that he was “discouraged” because “the American Jewish Relief Committee and all constituted agencies” are being overwhelmed by the demands to help Jews in the war zone and “with all the efforts that have been made, all the Jews” in the United States “have not given $1,000,000 where millions are needed.”

1915: Rabbi Jacob Massel, the Belarus born son of Gittel and Jehuda Massel, and Mildred Massel gave birth to Menachem “Michael” Zvi Massel

1916: At Paramount Corporation's annual board meeting, William Wadsworth Hodkinson found himself ousted from the presidency and replaced by Hiram Abrams, who won the seat by a single vote after which he announced to the board, "On behalf of Adolph Zukor, who has purchased my shares in Paramount, I call this meeting to order."

1917: Peter von Ustinov, who was serving with Army Air Service of the German Army and who was the brother of Jaffa native Jona Von Ustinov who worked with MI5 in WW II, was killed in action today.

1917: “Announcement was made at today’s meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee of the Funds for Jews War Sufferers held at the office of the Chairman, Felix M. Warburg, that following negotiations with the State Department carried on since the entrance of the United States into the war, arrangements have just been completed for sending Jewish Relief Funds into all those countries occupied by foreign armies.”

1918(4th of Av, 5678): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon

1918(4th of Av, 5678): Twenty-two-year-old Private Robert P. Friedman the son of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Friedman and a graduate of CCNY while serving with Company A of the 102nd Engineers lived for “only two hours after a shell severed his spinal cord.”

1918: It was reported today that in Finland, the Senate justified the decision to expel all the Jews from the country “on the ground that Jewish financiers placed funds at the disposal of the Red Guards” – a charge denied by the Jews who said “they were forced by the Red Guards to give them large sums of money.”

1919: Birthdate of Eliot Asinof whose journalistic re-creation of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Eight Men Out became a classic of both baseball literature and narrative nonfiction. Eliot Tager Asinof was born in Manhattan and grew up in Manhattan and Cedarhurst, N.Y. His grandfather Morris, a Russian immigrant, was a tailor who eventually opened a men’s store in Manhattan. Eliot’s father, Max, worked there, and when young Eliot went to work there as well, it was a tenet that he had to sew a suit before he would be allowed to sell one. The dexterity he developed served him well. Mr. Asinof was an accomplished amateur pianist and sculptor. He was also a carpenter who in 1985, with his son, built the Ancramdale house he lived in for the rest of his life. He shot his age on a golf course for the first time at 79. After graduating from Swarthmore, Mr. Asinof played baseball briefly in the minor leagues — he was a first baseman in the Philadelphia Phillies organization — before he joined the Army. When he returned, his son said, the Phillies invited him to return, but he pulled a muscle during his first practice, and that was it for his sports career. He turned to writing. He also had a gift for finding the company of other gifted people. A compact man with a gravelly voice and a New York accent, he was gregarious and shrewdly charming. A writer whose shrewdness and insight trumped his style, which was plainspoken and realistic, Mr. Asinof was productive and versatile. He wrote more than a dozen books, including a novel, Final Judgment that is set on a college campus and concerns a protest to keep President Bush from delivering a commencement address, and is to be published in September by Bunim & Bannigan. Weeks before his death, his son said, Mr. Asinof completed a memoir of his World War II service in the Army Corps on Adak Island in the Aleutians. Seven Days to Sunday his 1968 account of a week in the life of the New York Giants football team as it prepared for a game, was an early if not groundbreaking enterprise of journalistic embedding in the world of sports. His first novel, Man on Spikes published in 1955 and based on a longtime friend who spent years in the minor leagues, was a prescient condemnation of baseball’s feudal control over the players. That system was not dissolved until 1975 with the abolition of the so-called reserve clause in standard contracts, which allowed teams to retain in virtual perpetuity the services of players in their employ. Mr. Asinof also wrote for television and the movies, although his published credits were limited, probably because he was among the many writers who were blacklisted in the 1950s. In his case, he once wrote after he got hold of his F.B.I. file, the blacklisting came about because “I had at one time signed a petition outside of Yankee Stadium to encourage the New York Yankees to hire black ballplayers.” But he is best known for “Eight Men Out,” published in 1963, and for the 1988 movie of the same title. The book is an exhaustively reported and slightly fictionalized account of how eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox allowed their anger at the parsimonious team owner, Charles Comiskey, to corrupt their integrity, leading them to welcome the overtures of gamblers, who persuaded them to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. A seminal event in the history of the game, it led to the appointment of the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Mr. Asinof spent nearly three years researching the book, including interviewing the two members of the team, Joe Jackson and Happy Feltsch, who were still alive. In the end, “Eight Men Out” was a book that made plain the connection between sport and money and between sport and the underworld. “Here is the underbelly of baseball vividly dissected,” said Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner. In the Camelot of the Kennedy 1960s, the book also made plain, if only by inference, the unsavory potential in American culture, a theme that ran throughout Mr. Asinof’s work. Twenty-five years later, “Eight Men Out” was made into a popular film directed by John Sayles, with a script by Mr. Sayles and Mr. Asinof.” He passed away at the age of 88 in June, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/sports/baseball/11asinof.html?_r=0

http://www.thenation.com/article/remembering-eliot-asinof#axzz2YsEw5WIp

1919: London Jewish Hospital opened for out-patients.

1920: Birthdate of Anna Schuman who gained fame as dance pioneer Anna Halprin, the wife of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jun/23/1997/anna-halprin

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/arts/dance/anna-halprin-dies-at-100-choreographer-committed-to-experimenting.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

https://www.annahalprin.org/

1921: In Vienna, Elisabeth Stransky and Gustav Goldner  gave birth to Ernst Sigmund Goldner, who gained fame as Ernest Gold, composer of the score from the hit film “Exodus” for which he won an Oscar.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006104/

http://archives.lib.byu.edu/repositories/14/resources/11292

1921: In Ross, CA, Frank Moore Cross, Sr. and his wife gave birth to Frank Moore Cross, Jr. “an influential Harvard biblical scholar who specialized in the ancient cultures and languages that helped shape the Hebrew Bible and who played a central role in interpreting the Dead Sea Scrolls.” (As reported by William Yardley)

1921(7th of Tammuz, 5681): Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference, later known as the Lippmann plate passed away.

1922: In the Netherlands, William Charles Aalsmeer and Margaretha Schwarz gave birth to Hans Arthur Aalsmeer.

1923(29th of Tammuz, 5683): Birmingham, Alabama native David L. Baumgarten, the former Vice President of Durell Brothers Shoe Company who was elected to the House of Representatives from the second Congressional District of Ohio in 1917, a President of the United States and China Company passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1923/07/14/105922011.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=11

1923: At Inwood Country Club, which was “a so-called Jewish club” Bobby Jones led a field of golfers as the teed off at the opening of the 1923 U.S. Open.

1923: In Brazil, Isaac Israel Benchimol and Nina "Lili" Siqueira gave birth to Samuel Isaac Benchimol, the economist whom the Brazilian government honored by establishing the Benchimol Prize and who was the father of Jaime Samuel Benchimol,

1924: Birthdate of Gyorgy Deutsch the native of Hungary and Holocaust survivor who gained fame as “George Lang, a restaurateur and cookbook writer who in the 1970s transformed Café des Artistes into one of New York’s most romantic, beloved dining spots and in the 1990s helped restore the historic Budapest restaurant Gundel to its former glory.” (As reported by William Grimes)

1925:  Flo Ziegfeld and his Ziegfeld Follies begin the creation of what would become an American Icon.  Comedian W.C. Fields went home to attend his mother's funeral.  In a last minute desperate move, a comparatively unknown cowboy from Oklahoma named Will Rogers began his comedic career. 

1926: Birthdate of composer Meyer Kupferman.

1926: In Strasbourg, France “writer Bernard Klieger” and his wife gave birth Auschwitz survivor and journalist Noah Klieger. (Wikipedia shows the date as July 31 but all other sources show July 13)

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5425424,00.html

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256173

1927: In Nice, France, André Jacob, an architect, and the former Yvonne Steinmetz gave birth Simone Jacob, the youngest of their four children, who survived the Shoah gained fame as French lawyer and political leader Simon Veil.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/world/europe/simone-veil-dead.html

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/world_news/holocaust-survivor-simone-veil-iconic-european-feminist-politician-dies-at/article_3cf1352b-22cd-5f18-b8fe-c97dc0912180.html

1928: In Cricklewood, Hertfordshire, Rachel and Hersch Lauterpacht gave birth to Sir Elihu Lauterpacht CBE QC LLD a British academic and lawyer, specializing in International Law.

1929(5th of Tammuz, 5689): Parashat Korach

1929: While reporting on his visit to the Near East, Reverend Ray C. Knox the chaplain of Columbia University said that “Jews and Moslems are seeking a wholesome spirt of unity in Palestine” and that Dr. Judah Magnes, president of the Hebrew University had told him “of the many ways in which the Jews are exemplifying in the Zionist movement the Americans principle of tolerance and good-will.

1930: Robert Sarnoff, head of RCA (Radio Corporation of America) tells the in New York Times "TV would be a theater in every home."  Okay, so it is not Micah or Jeremiah, but it is a Jew providing prophecy in one sense of the term.

1930: Birthdate of Naomi Shemer one of Israel's most important and prolific song writers. During her lifetime, she was hailed as the "First Lady of Israeli Song."  Born Naomi Sapir, Shemer did her own songwriting and composing, as well as setting famous poems to music, such as those of the Israeli poet, Rachel, and adapting well-known songs into Hebrew, such as the Beatles songs "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be" ("Lu Yehi"). Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer's grave on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret)]. The stones were left by visitors, in keeping with an ancient Jewish custom Naomi Shemer was born and raised in Kevutzat Kinneret, a kibbutz that her parents had helped to found, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. In the 1950s she served in the Israeli Defense Force's Nahal entertainment troupe and studied music at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. She married Mordechai Horowitz and had two children, Lali and Ariel. In 1983, Shemer received the Israel Prize for her contribution to Israeli culture. Several of Shemer's songs have the quality of anthems, striking deep national and emotional chords in the hearts of Israelis. Her most famous song is "Yerushalayim shel zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold"). She wrote it in 1967, before the Six Day War, and added another stanza after Israel captured East Jerusalem and regained access to the Western Wall. In 1968, Uri Avnery, then a member of the Israeli parliament, proposed that "Jerusalem of Gold" become the Israeli anthem. The proposal was rejected, but the nomination itself says something about the power of Shemer's songs.  Shemer continued to write and perform until her death. She died of cancer in 2004 at the age of seventy-three.

1931: Fifty-three-year-old University of Georgia trained attorney and Congressman Charles Gordon Edwards who 1911 introduced a resolution that “would direct the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy to ‘institute an immediate investigation to ascertain how far and what discriminations are operating against Jews’ in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Naval Academy, Military Academy and all branches of the services” passed away today.

1932: It was reported today that  “according to the view of Chancellor” von Papen, “Jewish citizens need not fear the curtailment of their civic rights no matter what the Nazis say.”

1933(19th of Tammuz, 5693): Sixty-year-old William Dick Sporborg, “the son of the late Joseph and Clara Dick Sporborg,” the husband of the former Constance Amberg of Cincinnati, and graduate of Harvard where “he was a member of the baseball team” who graduated from the Columbia University Law School and served as Treasurer of the Port Arthur Jews Center passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/07/14/105399355.html?pageNumber=17

1933: In Germany, Nazism was declared the sole German party.

1934(1st of Av, 5694): Rosh Chodesh Av

1934(1st of Av, 5694): Cornell trained physician Morris Hirsch Kahn who practiced at Mount Sinai Hospital where he worked with Dr. Max Kahn with whom he co-authored Functional Diagnosis originally published in 1920.passed away today.

https://www.amazon.ae/s?k=functional-diagnosis-1920-by-max-kahn-morris-hirsch-kahn-jacob-rosenbloom-hardcover&ref=SQAE-WEB-SR301

1935: On her 34th birthday, Tillie Lewis opened the first Flotill cannery in Stockton, California. By 1951, Flotill Products, later known as Tillie Lewis Foods, Inc., was earning $30 million per year, making it one of the five largest canning companies in the country. In the same year, Lewis was named "businesswoman of the year" by the Associated Press. In 1952, the company introduced a line of diet foods using low-calorie sweeteners and known as Tasti-Diet. Tillie Lewis Foods was eventually bought by the Ogden Corporation, which made Lewis one of its directors. Lewis died in 1977, but the Italian Pomodoro tomatoes she introduced to the U.S. are still a staple of American agriculture. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1935(12th of Tammuz, 5695): Parashat Cukat-Balak

1935(12th of Tammuz, 5695): Sixty-one-year-old Edgard K. Frank, the son of Samuel Frank of Pittsburgh and U.S. Navy veteran of the Spanish-American War who was “head of cotton converting business” passed away today in New York City.

1936: As the Arab attacks in Palestine continued, the Emir Abudllah said today in Trans-Jordan that he did not “know how much long he could hold them” – referring to his Bedouins who want to cross the Jordan and joint in the fight.

1936: Birthdate of Ontario native Sandor Stern, who began writing “stage plays while attending the University of Toronto,” the author of the screenplay for “Fast Break, winner of the 1979 NAACP Image Award for best screenplay and  who along with his wife Kandy Stern “co-wrote and co-produced the NBC movie Deception.”

1936: In an interview given tonight, “John D.M. Hamilton chairman of the Republican National Committee laid at the door of the Democrats responsibility for spreading rumors that he was anti-Semitic and that Jews who had been prominent in other national Republican campaigns were to be kept out of important positions in the” Presidential campaign of Governor Alf Landon.

1936: After meeting with Republican Presidential candidate Alf M. Landon at Topeka, George N. Peek, the former head of the Export-Import Bank offered his views on numerous topics to newspaper reporters including the observation the “Jewish influence” on the policies of the Roosevelt administration had helped to cost the country two successive sales of more than 800,000 bales of cotton to Germany. “The administration has not been particularly sympathetic to Hitler and Hitler hasn’t been particularly sympathetic to the Jews” was the way he described the situation.

1936: Following the death of Reverend S. Parkes Cadmen yesterday, Rabbi Israel H. Levinthal, the former President of the Rabbinical Association of America said, “The Jews of America feel heavily the sorrow of his passing because they had in him an understanding friend and an unselfish champion” whose “heart beat with love and sympathy for all mankind regardless of race, color or creed.”

1936: The Palestine Post reported that two Jews were seriously injured by Arabs in Jerusalem. Figures prepared by this newspaper indicated that 41 Jews had been killed and over 150 seriously injured since the outbreak of the Arab disturbances on April 19. British forces lost five men. The estimated damage to Jewish property was over 100,000 pounds. The Tel Aviv Port jetty had been lengthened to 200 meters.

1936: According to some sources, today marks the start of the Spanish Civil War (I have found at least two other dates)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/photos-fete-jewish-fight-against-fascism/

http://www.mahj.org/en/3_expositions/expo-The-Mexican-Suitcase-Capa-Taro-Chim.php?niv=2&ssniv=1

1937(5th of Av, 5697): Edgard Cattaui, the son of Moise Cattaui and Ida Ross and the husband of Lia Cattaui passed away today in Cairo.

1937: “Marry the Girl,” a “romantic comedy with a screenplay co-authored by Sig Herzig was released today in the United States.

1937: In what has to have been one of the most erroneous predictions of the pre-WWII period, Dr. Carol Joachim Friedrich of Harvard predicted “in an address at the Summer Institute for Social Progress at Wellesley today” that “sooner or later the German people will overthrow the Nazi regime” adding the he would be “surprised if the Hitler dictatorship lasts twenty years, that is to 1953.”

1938: Declaring that the maintenance of a proper Supreme Court was of paramount concern to the country, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg urged in a speech here tonight that an extra session of the Senate be called before the Supreme Court convened in October to confirm or reject President Roosevelt's nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

1938: The immediate transfer to Palestine of "tens of thousands of Jewish children now trapped in Germany, Austria and Poland" was urged by Hadassah, the women's Zionist organization of America, in a message sent today to the London executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine for transmission to the Intergovernmental Refugees Committee, meeting in Evian, France.  The message was signed my Mrs. Moses P. Epstein, president of the organization and sent on behalf of Hadassah’s 70,000 members.

1939: Producer and screen writer Milton Sperling married Betty Warner, the daughter of movie mogul Harry Warner and the younger sister of Doris Warner.

1939(26th of Tammuz, 5699): Seventy-four-year-old Baltimore, MD native and Baltimore University School of Law trained attorney Benjamin H. Hartogensis, the 1886 graduate of Johns Hopkins University whose classmates included Woodrow Wilson, who was an associate editor of The Jewish Exponent and president of the Baltimore branch of the Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Hebrew Education Society passed away today.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hartogensis-benjamin-henry

1939: U.S. premiere of “The Man in the Iron Mask” co-starring Joseph Schildkraut as Fouquet

1940: Hitler told OKW to start preparing for an invasion of England by the army based on the “assumption that the navy could provide safe transport – an assumption based on the Luftwaffe being able to control the skies.

1940: “My Love Came Back” directed by Curtis Bernhardt and directed by Hal B. Wallis was released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States.

1941(18th of Tammuz, 5701): Tzom Tammuz because the 17th fell on Shabbat.

1941: In “Of Sam H. Harris” published today, George M. Cohan recalled the life of times of his Jewish partner Sam Harris of whom he wrote “Aside from being an outstanding figure in the theatre world, Sam Harris was one of the wittiest men I’ve ever known.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/07/13/105158651.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

 

1941: Birthdate of Ehud Manor “an Israeli songwriter, translator, and radio and TV personality.”

1942: French police arrested author Irene Nemirovsky, as “a foreign Jew.”  She was shipped to Auschwitz where she died five weeks later at the age of 39.  She gained famed in the 21st century with posthumous publication of two newly discovered manuscripts, Suite Francaise and Fire in the Blood.

1942: Five thousand Jews of Rovno (Polish Ukraine) were executed by the Nazis.

1942: In Sevastopol, approximately 1,200 Jews who had been held at the Dinamo Stadium were “shot to death outside the city” by the Nazis and “another group was murdered by gas vans near the city prison.

1942: The Einsatzkommando returned to daily actions of murder. Seven thousand Jews were rounded up in Rowne ghetto. Over the next two days, the SS would slaughter 5,000 of them.

1943: Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber, members of the White Rose resistance movement, are beheaded with a guillotine by the Nazi government. (Everybody remembers the killers and those who remained silent.  This is a chance to those made the final sacrifice when the world was plunged into darkness) (As reported by Austin Cline)

1943: Father Marie Benoît traveled to Rome today to seek the help of Pope Pius XII in transferring Jews to northern Italy. A meeting was arranged between Father Benoît and the pope. When Father Benoit explained that the police in Vichy France were acting against the Jews, Pius XII was surprised, saying, "Who could ever expect this from noble France?" He promised to diligently deal with the situation. However, the North African plan was eventually foiled when the Germans occupied northern Italy and the Italian-occupied zone of France

1943: Thirty-five-year-old Gerda Baier was deported from Prague to Theresienstadt. Eventually she would be shipped to Auschwitz where the Nazi murdered her.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/13.asp

1943: In New York City, “Aaron and Fruma Zlotowitz, immigrants from Lithuania” gave birth to their youngest child “Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz who took a small wedding-invitation print shop and turned it into ArtScroll Mesorah, the leading publisher of prayer books and volumes of Torah and Talmud in the expanding Orthodox Jewish world, books notable for their easily readable typography, instructions and translations. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/nyregion/rabbi-meir-zlotowitz-dead-publisher-of-religious-books.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

1944: The Red Army liberated Vilna, Lithuania.  Eight thousand Nazis and their allies had been killed during the five-day fight.  The legions of the Red Army included the Jewish partisans led by Abba Kovner and his two closest associates, Vita Kempner and Ruzka Korczak. On this day, the Jewish partisans first met Ilya Ehrenburg, “a Jew from Russia, a writer and poet whose dispatches from the front had been a tremendous inspiration” for these and other partisans fighting in the woods and marshes of Eastern Europe.  Ehrenburg took pictures of the Jewish brigade and was the first to tell their story to a wide, non-Jewish audience.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/14.asp

1945: In Berlin at the Rykestrasse Synagogue Soviet City Commander Nikolai Berzarin attended the first Shabbat eve service which was organized by Erich Nehlhans a Shoah survivor who was the new president of Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin

1945:Birthdate of Ilan Shlagi, an Israeli political leader who served in the Knesset and held several cabinet positions including Minister of the Environment and Minister of Science & Technology.

1945(3rd of Av, 5705): Sixty-six-year-old Russian born American actress Alla Nazimova passed away today in Los Angeles.

https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-alla-nazimova/

http://www.allanazimova.com/

1946(14th of Tammuz, 5706): Eighty-two-year-old Alfred Stieglitz  the first-born son of German Jewish immigrant parents who became one of Americas most famous and prominent photographers and who was also instrumental in promoting modernist art to the American mainstream public, passed away.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm

1947: Emil Andsrom and two his UNSCOP colleagues held a secret meeting with the leaders of the Haganah in the Jerusalem suburb of Talipot.  They wanted to know if the Haganah had the means and the will to protect the Jewish areas against Arab attack in the event of the establishment of a Jewish state.  The six Haganah representatives, including Yigael Yadin, made a strong case in the affirmative.  Their arguments were based, in part on their zeal, in part on their determination and, in part, their ability to artfully dodge the questions being asked.

1948:  During the War of Independence Abba Eban spoke before the U.N. Security Council.  He questioned why the Arabs had rejected the U.N. request to extend the cease fire between the Arabs and the Israelis for another ten days.  Using the majestic tones of a Cambridge graduate he asked, “What are the ambitions which rest upon so flimsy a moral foundation that they cannot endure tend days and nights of peace?”

1948:  During the War of Independence, Israeli forces continued their efforts to widen the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  To that end, they captured the village of Tsora – the birthplace of the Biblical figure Samson – from the Egyptians. This gave the Israelis control over another section of the railway running between the coast and the City of David.

1948(6th of Tammuz, 5708): Sixty-two-year-old U.C. Berkeley trained architect Samuel Lightner Hyman, the Hawaii born son of Morris and Augusta “Gussie” Lightner Hyman who “is especially known for designing the Jewish Community Center, Hebrew Home for the Aged, and Sinai Memorial Chapel Mortuary, all in San Francisco and the mausoleum called Portals of Eternity at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma” passed away today.

https://www.askart.com/artist/Samuel_Lightner_Hyman/11004519/Samuel_Lightner_Hyman.aspx

1948: During the War of Independence, an Irgun unit began a night attack on Malah that lasted into the early hours of July 14.  “Seventeen Irgunists were killed including Nathan Cahsman, from London, who had arrived in Israel on the ill-fated Atalena. 

1949: The first “talkie” version of “The Great Gatsby” produced by Richard Maibum who also co-authored the script and featuring Shelly Winters and Howard Da Silva as Myrtle Wilson and George Wilson was released today in the United States.

1950: At Boston’s Suffolk Downs, a three-year-old named Tel Aviv runs in the Fourth Race, a six furlong claiming event.

1950: In discussing the guiding principles of Israel’s foreign policy, Moshe Sharett said “that in the ideological struggle between the democratic and communist social orders Israel had definitely chosen democracy…Israel is most eager to promote friendly relations with all nations, regardless of their internal regimes.  Yet it was impossible to ignore the fact that it only in democratic countries that Jewish communities enjoyed freedom of organization, expression and independent activity.”

1951(9th of Tammuz, 5711):  Seventy-six-year-old Arnold Schoenberg passed away. Born in Vienna in 1874, Schoenberg enjoyed a brilliant musical career. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was dismissed from his post as a director of a school for musical composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. His response was a formal, public return to the Jewish faith, which he had left early in life. America offered a haven and became his home. He wrote numerous works using Jewish themes including the Holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel.

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/arnold-schoenberg-345.php

1951: Birthdate of Edith Bernstein who morphed into Didi Conn, an actress who has appeared in film on the stage, and in television who was the wife of David Shire.

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that 128,000 immigrants entered Israel during the first half of 1951 (one every two minutes). Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presided over the meeting of the government-Jewish Agency's Coordination Board responsible for the newcomers' housing, employment and the state of sanitation in transit camps. "The attainment of freedom and security often takes precedence over personal convenience," David Ben-Gurion told a large audience in Beersheba.

1953(1st of Av, 5713): Rosh Chodesh Av

1953(1st of Av, 5713): Eighty-six-year-old “businessman, banker, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist involved in the electrification of California” Mortimer Fleishhacker, the San Franciso born son of Delia Stern and Aaron Fleishhacker, the husband of Florence Bella Gerstle whom he married in 1904 and with whom he had two children passed today after which he “buried in Home of Peace Cemetery and Emanu-El Mausoleum, San Mateo, California.”

https://www.fleishhackerfoundation.org/about/history

1954(12th of Tammuz, 5714): Sixty-three-year-old Pittsburgh born, Harvard grad Irving Pichel whose career as an actor and director included performing in the 1930’s film version of An American Tragedy and serving as the narrator for the Western classic “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irving-Pichel

1954(12th of Tammuz, 5714): Mexican painter Frida Kahlo who claimed that her father Carol Wilhelm Kahlo was Jewish, a claim which has been challenged by at least one biographer passed away today.

http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/biography.html

1955: The Beaux Arts Trio featuring pianist Menahem Pressler debuted at the Berkshire Music Festival.

1955: After having opened in New York on the first of the month, The House of Bamboo, directed by Samuel Fuller who co-wrote the screenplay with Harry Kleiner and produced by Buddy Adler opened in Los Angeles today.

1955: Birthdate of Ehud Havazelet an award-winning American novelist and short story writer who was born in Jerusalem. His father, Meir Havazalet, a rabbi and professor at Yeshiva University immigrated to the United States in 1957. He graduated from Columbia University in 1977 and received an M.F.A at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1984. He became a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, from 1985 to 1989, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He taught creative writing at Oregon State University from 1989 to 1999. Since 1999, he has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon.

1956(5th of Av, 5716): Seventy-six-year-old Johns Hopkins trained physician and lecturer Charles Robert Austin, the Baltimore born son of Isabella Bernei and Robert Ausrian and the husband of Janet Austrian with whom he had two children, Florence and Robert, passed away today.

https://medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/collection/charles-robert-austrian-collection/

https://portraitcollection.jhmi.edu/portraits/austrian-charles-robert

1957(14th of  Tammuz, 5717): Parashat Pinchas

1957: The President of the New York County Lawyers Association announced a list of its standing committees for 1957-58 which included I. Howard Lehman as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

1960: “The Lost World” a cinematic treatment of the novel of the same name directed by Irwin Allen who co-produced and co-wrote the script was released today in the United States.

1960: Forty-five-year-old Joy Davidman the “child prodigy” and American author who converted to Christianity and whose marriage to C.S Lewis was a joining of two intellects passed away today.

http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/node/31

1962: Former Connecticut Governor Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed his service as the United Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) today.

1962: “Photographer and photojournalist” George Barris took what proved to be the last picture of Marilyn Monroe today while they were “collaborating on a book titled Marilyn: Her Life In Her Own Words.”

http://www.georgebarrisphotos.com/

1963: Birthdate of Shari Springer Berman, the Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University who has teamed with her Italian husband Robert Pulcini to create several acclaimed projects including the Oscar nominated “American Splendor” and “the Enemy-winning ‘Cinema Verite.’”

1963(21st of Tammuz, 5723): Parashat Pinchas

1963(21st of Tammuz, 5723): Eight-four-year-old Riga born Albert Abramowitz, the artist who came the United States in 1916 after studying at the Russian Imperial Academy in Odessa passed away today. (JTA)

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/abramowitz_albert.html

1963: Israel adopted a law prohibiting the raising of pigs in Jewish settlements.

1965: Birthdate of New York native, Canadian resident and University of California, Berkley trained journalist Vince L. Beiser whose The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization is a must read.

https://vincebeiser.com/

1966: “How to Steal a Million” directed by William Wyler who also served as co-producer, with a script by Harry Kurnitz and co-starring Eli Wallach was released today by 20th Century Fox today in the United States.

1968: “Psychoanalyst Herman Roiphe and noted feminist Anne (née Roth) Roiphe” gave birth to Princeton University Ph.D. author Katie Roiphe, the one-time husband of attorney Harry Chernoff, the mother of Violet and creator of the non-fiction The Moring After: Fear, Sex and Feminism.

1969: This morning, “south of the Sea of Galilee, Arabs fired four Soviet-made rockets across the Jordan River at Beit Yosef.

1969(29th of Tammuz, 5729): Fifty-eight-year-old Grace, Mississippi native David Danzig, the holder of degrees from CCNY and University Pennsylvania and “associate professor of Social Work at the Columbia University School of Social Work” who married “the former Maxine Friedman” with whom he had two children passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/07/14/78355718.html?pageNumber=35

1969(29th of Tammuz, 5729): Eighty-eight-year-old Robert Isaac, the German born son of banker Leo Isaac who came to the United States in 1915 and who worked with Eugene Meyer before going on to the “investment firm of Halle and Stieglitz and husband of the “former Lucile Martin” passed away today in Little Lake, NY.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/07/16/78356174.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=45

1969: Today, the International Red Cross informed the Israelis that twenty-year-old Corporal Batuch Shabashi, who had been captured last week by Egyptian commandos during their cross-Suez Canal raid “had died of his wounds.

1969: “Me, Natalie” produced by Stanley Shapiro who also wrote the script co-starring Martin Balsam as Uncle Harold, Bob Balaban as Morris and Milt Kaman as the Plastic Surgeon was released today by National General Pictures in the United States.

1969: The New York Times featured a review of The Story of Masada by Yigael Yadin; retold for young readers by Gerald Gottlieb.

1971: Max Moses Heller who “with the help of Mary Mill a young Christian from Greenville, SC obtained a visa that made it possible for him to leave his native Austria after the Anschluss” became the “29th Mayor Greenville” today  after which he “desegregated all municipal departments and commissions.”

1971: “The Panic in Needle Park” directed by Jerry Schatzberg was release today by 20th Century Fox in the United States.

1972:  Carroll Rosenbloom, owner of the Baltimore Colts, traded teams with the owner of the Los Angeles Rams. Rosenbloom was now the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, which became the St. Louis Rams.

1972: The Democratic Convention came to end having chosen a candidate and adopted certain platform planks that would lead some Jews to do what they had not thought of doing – voting for Richard Nixon in the fall election.

1973: Birthdate of Jelena Đurovic (also transliterated as Djurović; Serbian Cyrillic: Јелена a Montenegrin journalist, writer and political activist of a Jewish-Montenegrin origin, based between Podgorica, Montenegro and Belgrade, Serbia who was a founder and Vice President of the Jewish Community of Montenegro and  was the closest associate of the president of the Jewish Community of Montenegro, late Jasha Alfandari.

1975(5th of Av, 5735): Fifty-six-year-old Queens native Judith Graham Pool, the daughter of Nellie (Baron) Graham, a schoolteacher, and Leon Graham, a stockbroker” and the physiologist whose scientific discoveries revolutionized the treatment of hemophilia” passed away today.

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/judith-graham-pool

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/15/archives/dr-judith-g-pool-hemophilia-expert.html

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pool-judith-graham

1976: In a letter dated today, the Supreme Commander's Staff of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces praised the Israeli commandos for the mission and extended condolences for "the loss and martyrdom" of Netanyahu

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the Knesset, at the special festive session marking the US bicentennial, that a strong and confident America was needed to assure freedom, democracy and peace. The Knesset sent a special, congratulatory message to the US Congress.

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that in London, the British minister of state announced that there was little doubt that Mrs. Dora Bloch was dead and that the Ugandan government must bring those responsible to justice. Britain regarded all Ugandan explanations as "totally unacceptable."

1978: Alexander Ginzburg, Soviet poet and political dissident was sentenced by a Soviet court to 8 years in prison. Although he was a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian, he adopted his mother's Jewish family name as a young man to protest Stalin's anti-Semitic campaigns.

1979:  A 45-hour siege began at the Egyptian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Four Palestinian guerrillas killed two security men and seized 20 hostages. Now that Egypt was at peace with Israel, she was fair game for attack by Palestinian terrorists.

1979: “The Wanderers” a gang movie set in the Bronx directed by Philip Kaufman who wrote the script along with Rose Kaufman and featuring Alan Rosenburg was released in the United States today.

1980(29th of Tammuz, 5740): Sixty-eighty-year-old New York native and WW II PT boat commander Dr. Abbot Kaplan, “the first president of the State University of New York at Purchase, NY and a leading educator in the performing arts” who was the “American Joint Distribution Committee’s director for France and the husband of the former Beatrice Dreshler, passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/07/15/112163060.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&pageNumber=71

1981: It was reported today that Prime Minister Begin compared the rescue mission at Entebbe with the bombing of Iran’s Osirak nuclear reactor saying that the former rescued hundreds of Jews while the latter resulted in “the rescue of an infinite number of Jews.”

1982(22nd of Tammuz, 5742): Fifty-one-year-old Hillary Lois “Sis” Bass Harte, the daughter of Ruth Cohen and Samuel bass passed away today after which she was buried in the Waldheim Jewish Cemetery in Forest Park, IL.

1982(22nd of Tammuz, 5742): Seventy-four-year-old Michael Blankfort the screen writer and author whose “novels dealt with the clash of traditional Jewish values with the current cultural and social milieu” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/16/obituaries/michael-blankfort-74-novelist-screenwriter.html

1983(3rd of Av, 5743): Two days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Shaara Tefilia for “Fifty year old Brooklyn born Harvard undergrad and Yale trained “Dr. Richard K. Gershon, professor of pathology, immunology and biology at the Yale University School of Medicine and a leader in the exploration of the immune system” who was the husband of “the former Robyn Mione” and the father of one daughter, Alexandra..

1985(24th of Tammuz, 5745): Parashat Pinchas

1985(24th of Tammuz, 5745): Seventy-two-year-old Newark, NJ born and NYU grad, Rabbi Edward E. Klein, the husband of Ruth Klein the father of Rabbi Stephen Klein and Barbara Hillman who was “the longtime spiritual leader of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and community activist” passed away today. (As reported by Robin Toner)

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/15/nyregion/rabbi-edward-klein-activist.html

1986(6th of Tammuz, 5746): Eighty-seven-year-old photographer and pioneer in the field of documentary films Ralph Steiner passed away today.

http://www.valley.net/~townsend/Steiner/Point.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Steiner#/media/File:Steiner_%26_lorentz.jpg

1987: “The Brave Little Toaster” an animated musical with a score by David Newman and featuring the voice of Jon Lovitz was released in Los Angeles today.

1989: Thirteenth Maccabiah comes to an end.

1989: At six o’clock in the evening al public transport in Jerusalem stopped for one minute in memory of a terrorist attack that had taken place on July 6 that targeted bus 405 that ran between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

1992: David Levy steps down as Israel’s Foreign Minister.

1992: Yithak Rabin replaced Moshe Arens as Minister of Defense.

1992: Ovadia Eli completed his term as Deputy Minister of Defense.

1992: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer “was appointed Minister of Housing and Construction in Yitzhak Rabin's government.

1992: Rafael Pinhasi finished his term as Israel’s Communication Minister. Born in Kabul in 1940, Pinhasi made Aliyah in 1950. A member of Shas, he has held a variety of positions in local and national governmental positions.

1992: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was appointed Minister of Housing and Construction in Yitzhak Rabin's government.

1992: Moshe Shahal replaced Roni Milo as Minister of Public Security

1992: Moshe Shahal begins serving as Israel’s Communication Minister. Born in 1934 in Iraq, he made Aliyah in 1950.  After graduating with a law degree from Tel Aviv University, he began a political career that included a variety of governmental positions and membership in the Alignment and Labor Parties.

1992: Yitzhak Shamir completed his second term as Prime Minister of Israel.

1993: “Jews decry 'slap in face' from academy Big alumni event scheduled for Yom Kippur holy day” published today” described the reaction to the Naval Academy celebrating Homecoming on the Day of Atonement.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-07-13/news/1993194040_1_yom-kippur-jewish-holidays-jewish-alumni

1996(26th of Tammuz, 5756): Parashat Matot-Masei

1996(26th of Tammuz, 5756): Ninety-one-year-old Pandro Samuel Berman, Pittsburgh born son of Harry and Julie Berman, the winner of the 1976 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and producer of six Oscar nominated films passed away today.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-pandro-s-berman-1329133.html

https://www.geni.com/people/Pandro-Berman/6000000009487972908

1997: In “Israel Games Draw Westchester Athletes,”  published today Chuck Slater provided a graphic portrait of Lorin Ambinder, Nina Zeitlin, Matthew Deutsch and Scott Grayson, the four young athletes from Westchester County who are in Israel to represent the United States in the 15th Maccabiah Games, opening tomorrow.

1997: The Sunday New York Times book section features a review of The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History by Isaiah Berlin and Man Without A Face the autobiography of East Germany’s spymaster Markus Wolf, the German Jew, who while head of Stasi, provided training camps for the PLO in East Germany where they could master the use of guns, explosives and guerilla tactics. Yes, Isaiah Berlin and Markus Wolf are both Jews which raises the question, “what is a typical Jew?”

1998: Silvan Shalom succeeded Michael Etian as Minister of Science and Technology.

1998(19th of Tammuz, 5778): One day after the observance of Tzom Tammuz, 79-year-old Ben Zion Abba Shaul, the Jerusalem born son of Eliyahu and Benaya Abba Shaul and husband of Hadassah, the daughter of Rabbi Yosef Shaharbani, who for the last 15 years of his life was “the rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem” passed away today after which “an estimated 200,000 people attended his funeral.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080704052058/http://www.torahcenter.com/bios/bension.htm

1998: Today, on C-Span, Robert Caro discussed his work on the third volume of his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson which would be published as Master of the Senate in 2002.

1999: Detroit Catcher Bradley David "Brad" Ausmus is one of the reserve players on this American League All Star team which played the National League tonight.

2000: Jan Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish underground who infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German concentration camp and then carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly disbelieving “West,” died in Washington.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/karski.asp

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

http://www.jankarski.net/en

2000: Ezer Weizman completed his term as the 7th President of Israel.

2001(22nd of Tammuz, 5761)”: Forty-nine-year-old Yehezkel (Hezi) Mualem, father of four from Kiryat Arba, was shot and killed between Kiryat Arba and Hebron.

2001(22nd of Tammuz, 5761): Seventy-nine-year-old Jerome Margareten, the New York born son of Mary and Frederick Margareten and the grandson of Ignatz Margareten and Regina (Horowitz) Margareten, known as “the Matzah Queen” and the “matriarch of the kosher food business.”

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/margareten-regina

2001: U.S. premiere of “Legally Blonde” an American comedy co-starring Selma Blair and Victor Garber.

2002: A production of “Pacific Overtures,” “a musical written by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman” set in Japan when the Americans were arriving in 1853 was performed for the final time at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

2003: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Absolutely American: Culture War at West Point by David Lipsky and the recently released paperback edition of King of the Jews by Leslie Epstein, a Holocaust novel that focuses on the morally ambiguous politics of survival of a Judenrat, forced to collaborate with the Nazis in a Polish ghetto.

2004: Jacobo Kaufmann, Israeli acclaimed theatre and opera  director, directs and designs the scenery of the Biblical opera "Nabucco" by Giuseppe Verdi at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, opening at the world famous Terme di Caracalla. He is the first Israeli ever to be hired to direct an opera in Italy. 

2004: Yosef Paritzky completed his term as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure.

2005:  The government of Israel sealed the borders with the West Bank and Gaza following a Tuesday night suicide bombing at Netanya.  Netanya is the site of the Maccabiah Games.  No athletes were victims of the attack and all had vowed to stay for the rest of the competition.

2005: Stephen Schwartz’s musical “Wicked” opened at Chicago’s Ford Center-Oriental Theatre.

2006: In a debate broadcast today on the BBC's This Week, Maureen Lipman argued that "human life is not cheap to the Israelis, and human life on the other side is quite cheap actually, because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up."

2006(17th of Tammuz, 5766): Fast of the 17th of Tammuz.  The solemnity of the day is heightened by reports that Hezbollah terrorists have kidnapped two members of the IDF on the border of Lebanon.  In addition to which, eight members of IDF have fallen during the terrorist attack and/or as part of the military action aimed at rescuing them.

2006: In “The Risks of Israel’s Two-Front War” published today Scott Macleod examines the risk of a return to the conditions of 20 years ago.

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1213591,00.html

2006: The following were among a total of 43 Israeli civilians (including four who died of heart attacks during rocket barrages) and 116 IDF soldiers were killed in the Israel-Hizbullah war: Monica Lehrer Zeidman, 40, of Nahariya; Nitzo Rubin, 33, of Safed.

2006(17th of Tammuz, 5766): Eighty-seven-year-old Oscar winning actor Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt) passed away. (As reported by Mervyn Rothstein)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2D91E30F937A25754C0A9609C8B63

2007: In Jerusalem, "Performances in Nature" presents Yarok Ad (Evergreen) performing Irish music at Ein Chemed

2008: After having premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival in June, “For My Father,” an Israeli film directed by Droro Zahavi was released in Israel today.

2008: Abbas and Olmert were expected to discuss the status of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on the sidelines of a conference hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to boost cooperation between the European Union, Middle Eastern and North African countries.

2008: The 94th Hadassah Annual Convention opens in Los Angeles.

2008: The Washington Post features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Prague in Danger:  The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War by Peter Demetz who was a boy living in Prague as a “first degree half-Jew” (his mother was Jewish) during the war, Lady Liberty by Doreen Rapport, a noted author of children’s books including The Secret Seder and In the Promised Land: Lives of Jewish Americans and The Owner of the House: New and Collected Poems 1940-2001 by Louis Simpson who mixes the warmth of memories of his Jewish ancestry with the grim realities that brought it to an end; "In my grandmother's house there was always chicken soup/And talk of the old country -- mud and boards,/Poverty,/The snow falling down the necks of lovers. But the Germans killed them./I know it's in bad taste to say it,/But it's true. The Germans killed them all."

2008: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World by David Maraniss, Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Glachen, and As Good As Anybody:  Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom by Richard Michelson.

2008: Ofira Henig, makes her directorial debut at the Weill Auditorium in Kfar Shmaryahu when the curtain rises on “Yerma” written by Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia.

2009: “Prosecutors charged John Demjanjuk who was guard at Sobibor with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder.

2009: The 18th Maccabiah Games, which draw Jewish athletes from around the world as well as Israeli citizens, both Jewish and Arab, opens today in Israel

2009: Kolech, a modern Orthodox women's organization, will hold its sixth international conference entitled "The Woman and Her Judaism."

2009: As part of the Noontime Lecture Series: “Balance of Power in the Persian Gulf” The National Museum of American Jewish Military History presents “Iraq vs. the United States, Gulf War I”  in which Dr. Jeffrey Greenhut will show how the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait was a direct outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, and then how the United States, under the leadership of President George H. W. Bush, formed a vast international coalition that was able to liberate Kuwait in one of the most effective military campaigns since World War II. Dr. Jeffrey Greenhut is the former Program Director of the US Army Center of Military History.

2009: It was announced today that Britain's chief rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, has been made a life peer

2010: Mothers Circle, an education and support group for non-Jewish women raising Jewish children, is scheduled to meet at the Historic 6th & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010: “A Jewish Girl In Shanghai” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2010: The Libyan organizers of an aid ship trying to breach Israel's blockade the Gaza Strip said today that an Israeli military vessel had confronted the ship and ordered it to change course for the Egyptian port of el-Aris..

2010: U.S. President Barack Obama today nominated Deputy Secretary of State Jacob (Jack) Lew, a religious Jew, as his new director of a budget that suffers from a budget deficit approaching $1.3 trillion.

2010: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Jewish organizations TIDAT to assist in securing the release of a Jewish-American government contractor who has been held in Cuba for seven months without charge. Alan P. Gross, a USAID government contractor, was arrested on suspicion of espionage by Cuban authorities while he was on the Caribbean island helping to set up a communications center for the local Jewish community.

2010: Tzachi “Hanegbi was convicted of perjury, and subsequently was fined 10,000 NIS, and moral turpitude was added to the offense.”

2010: Canadian businessman Paul Godfrey became President and CEO of Postmedia Network.

2011: It was announced today that an investment group that included David S. Blitzer, Art Wrubel, Adam Aron, Martin J. Geller and managing partner Joshua Harris planned to purchase the Philadelphia 76ers.

2011: In Las Vegas, Nevada, Hadassah is scheduled to hold the second and final day of its 2011 National Business Meeting.

2011: Nirvana, dance show from Korea, which is based on ancient ritual Buddhist dances is scheduled to be performed at the Karmiel Amphitheater.

2011: In Vienna, the 13th European Maccabiah Games are scheduled to come to an end.

2011: An arrest for tax evasion in the Mea Sha’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem degenerated into violence this morning, when hundreds of ultra Orthodox protesters threw rocks, steel bars, and Molotov cocktails at the municipality officials and police. Police were accompanying the officials on their raid of the poultry slaughterhouse belonging to Yoelish Krois, the unofficial 'operations officer' of the Eda Haredit, the small anti-Zionist extreme haredi group.

2011: The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement saying that Benjamin Netanyahu is categorically opposed to a bill allowing the Knesset to have the authority to vet – and if need be veto - Supreme Court candidates.

2012: The Vertigo Dance Company, which was founded in Jerusalem in 1992,is scheduled to make its debut performance at the Durham (NC) Performing Arts Center

2012: CNN is scheduled to broadcast the first of its “Green Pioneers” program. “CNN has named Yosef Abramowitz, president and cofounder of the firm responsible for Israel’s first solar field, as one of six global “Green Pioneers.”

2012” ConAgra has until today to officially respond to the complaint filed by 11 plaintiffs who are seeking unspecified damages and restitution for ConAgra’s “deceptively and misleading mislabeling Hebrew National products as strictly 100% kosher, when they are not,”  (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

2012: Dr Daniel Wildmann is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Desired Bodies': Leni Riefenstahl, the Berlin Olympics 1936 and Aryan Masculinity at the Wiener Library in London.

2012: A brushfire broke out tonight in Park Snir between Kibbutz Maayan Baruch and Kibbutz HaGoshrim in the North. Large forces of fire fighters and police were called to the scene and managed to extinguish the fire after several hours.

2012: In two separate incidents along Israel's southern borders today, IDF forces fired upon Palestinians trying to infiltrate into the country, killing two and wounding one.

2012: IDF troops killed a Palestinian terrorist who opened fire on their patrol, near the Erez crossing, on the Gaza border this afternoon. According to Army Radio, the soldiers returned fire at the terrorist after they spotted him approaching the border and opening fire on them. No casualties were reported on the Israeli side. (As reported by Ron Friedman)

2012(23rd of Tammuz, 5772): Sixty-five-year-old Shlomo Bentin an Israeli neuropsychologist and recipient of the 2012 Israel Prize in psychology was killed in a traffic accident while riding a bicycle near the University of California, Berkeley. (As reported by Asher Zeiger)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-prize-winner-shlomo-bentin-killed-while-bicycling-in-california/

2013: Tatiana Rubina, the Russian pianist, is scheduled to perform today at the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

2013: “Valentine Road” and “A Man Vanishes” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the 30th Jerusalem Film Festival

2013: The works of Jerusalem native Tamar Ettun are among those to be shown at LMCC’s Open Studios in New York City.

2013: This evening, Temple Judah’s very own Jared Roach is scheduled to throw out the opening pitch this as the Cedar Rapids Kernels square off against the Bowling Green Hot Rods

2013: “Social justice protesters blocked the northbound lanes of the Ayalon Freeway from the La Guardia exit to the Shalom exit in Tel Aviv tonight.”

2014(15th of Tammuz, 5774): Ninety-year-old South African author and Nobel Prize Winner Nadine Gordimer passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at-90.html

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/14/nadine-gordimer-dies-90-johannesburg-nobel-prize

2014(15th of Tammuz, 5774): Eighty-four year old former child prodigy, music director and conductor Lorin Maazel passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/arts/music/lorin-maazel-brilliant-intense-and-enigmatic-conductor-dies-at-84.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2014: Shir Chadash, the Conservative congregation in Metairie, LA, a New Orleans suburb is scheduled to begin is “Nearly New Sale.”  (Editor’s Note – This Congregation gave me my first teaching job when I was a student a Tulane so I take a personal note of pleasure in seeing how it has grown and prospered.)

2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center a screening of “A Song for You,” a film about the escape of George and Gisela Karp and their infant daughter from the Nazis that took them across the Pyrenees and the impact of their experiences on the next generation.

2014: Jewish Federation leaders are scheduled to arrive in Israel where they will visit “a number of areas targeted by rockets, including the “Yaelim” absorption center in Beersheba, Kibbutz Or Ha’Ner, a resilient center in Sderot with Talia Levanon, the director of the Israel Trauma Coalition followed by visits to the towns of Ashkelon, Sderot and the Gaza border region.”

2014: Hamas gains popularity as it fires another 130 rockets into Israel today one of which reached Ariel, over fifty miles away.

2014: A rocket fired from Gaza cut the power lines that left 70,000 Palestinians without electricity tonight – a situation that Israeli repairmen will rectify immediately due the ongoing violence that that could get them killed.

2014: Anti-Israel protesters trapped hundreds of Jews in Paris synagogue.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/clashes-in-paris-as-thousands-march-against-israel-offensive/

2015: Collaborative Artists LTD, in association with English National Theatre of Israel, are scheduled to present the Israeli premiere of “You won't succeed on Broadway, if you don't have any Jews” celebrating 80 years of Broadway's greatest Jewish success stories.

2015: Thirty-three-year-old Yoga instructor pleaded not guilty to 18 misdemeanor counts at a hearing in Scottsdale City Court stemming from her behavior at post Bar Mitzvah party.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/yoga-teacher-denies-indecent-exposure-at-bar-mitzvah/

2015: “My Friend Raffi” and “42nd Street” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2015: Thirty “Holocaust survivors whose bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah fell during World War II” finally celebrated the even today at the Kotel. (As reported by Jonathan Beck)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/30-holocaust-survivors-mark-barbat-mitzvahs-in-jerusalem/

2016(7th of Tammuz, 5776): Seventy year old “Argentine-born Brazilian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor” Héctor Eduardo Babenco passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/brazilian-film-director-hector-babenco-dies-at-70/

2016: Border Police officers opened fire on a Palestinian vehicle that tried to run them over near A-Ram just north of Jerusalem, in an incident occurring in the early hours of this morning

2016: Dr. Suzanne Schneider of the Brooklyn Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present the second session of “Primo Levi: Memory, Meaning and the Holocaust.”

2016: The Mateh Asher and Partnership2GETHER Delegation are scheduled to make their first visit in celebration of the West Des Moines – Mateh Asher Sister Cities Partnership.

2016: “Ben-Gurion Epilogue” and “Zero Days” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2016: In Paris, pro-Palestinian attacked two synagogues -- the Synagogue de la Roquette and The Synagogue de la rue des Tournelles – today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/israel-gaza-conflict-synagogues-attacked-as-pro-palestinian-protest-in-paris-turns-violent-9604254.html

2017: “The ancient streets of Jaffa” are scheduled to “come alive with open galleries, local artist exhibition and speed dating events” as part of the Maccabiah social event “Street Party TLV.”

2017: In Winston-Salem, NC, the Aperture Cinema is scheduled to host the final screening of “Letters from Baghdad,” a documentary that tells “the true story of Gertrude Bell and Iraq.”

2017: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a lecture by author Clare Lise on “Jewish History in Montgomery County” which will feature several leaders including •        Albert Small and the Silver Spring Shopping Center; Isadore Gudelsky and Montgomery Arms; Sam Eig and the Jewish Community Center; Morton Luchs and Luxmanor and Abraham Kay and Indian Spring Club Estates

2017: “Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “corrupt” today and said he should resign over a possible conflict of interest related to the purchase of German submarines. (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2017: Today “a federal appeals court overturned the conviction on corruption charges of former New York state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, saying the jury was improperly instructed on the legal aspects of the case.” (As reported by JTA)

2017(19th of Tammuz, 5777): Thirty-eight-year-old William Sachs Goldman, “an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco” and “the grandson of San Francisco philanthropist Richard and Rhoda Goldman and Levi Strauss heir” died today in a plane crash.

2018: The Bennett Career Institute in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald” written, produced and directed by Aviva Kempner.

2018: A “Tel Aviv pillow fight is scheduled to take place at Namal Tel Aviv, North Port, Light Club at Hangar 23” this afternoon.

2018: The weeklong Museum Teacher Fellowship Program is scheduled to end today at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

2018(1st of Av, 5778): According to tradition, on this date on the Hebrew Calendar, anniversary of the “death of Elazar, son of Aaron, the second high priest.”

2018(1st of Av, 5778):  Rosh Chodesh Av

2019: In Catskill, NY, the Lumberyard Center for Film and Performing Arts is scheduled to “kick off its Summer  with Israeli-born Ephrat Asherie Dance's work-in-progress showing of UnderScored (working title), a dance theater piece created and performed by members of the company with special guest artists from New York City's underground scene.”

2019: In Oakland, CA, the Transmission Gallery is scheduled to host “Beauty and Terror,” during which “Robin Bernstein discusses her exhibit reflecting upon the Holocaust.”

2019: In Cotati, CA, Congregation Ner Shalom is scheduled to host “An Evening with the Riccardis,” a fund raiser featuring Sandy and Richard Riccardi, “the cabaret duo known for their politically satirical songs

2019: In New Orleans, as the city braces for what could be unprecedented flooding, Gates of Prayer, the congregation hosting Summer Time Services for all three of the city’s Reform congregations has “decided to cancel and Torah study for his weekend” “out of a concern for everyone’s safety.

2019(10th of Tammuz, 5779): Parashat Chukat;

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience and E'eleh BeTamar are scheduled to present “The Yemenite Torah” with Rabbi Dr. Bentzion Barami

2020: Open Circle Jewish Learning presents online “Jewish Myth-Buster” where attendees will learn the truth about burying Jews with tattoos in a Jewish cemetery and “other such myths.”

2020: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to host “A Conversation About Racism and Racial Identity” with Dr. Spencer Crew, Acting Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture and JFNA’s Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein.

2020: UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host the last screening of “Autonomies.”

2020: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host virtually “Somebody Feed Phil: A Love Affair with Israeli Food.”

2020: The YIVO institute is scheduled to host live on Zoom “Abraham Cahan’s Early Experiments in Yiddish Journalism.”

https://programs.cjh.org/event/rafol-naaritsokh-2020-07-13

2021: The Tel Aviv Arts Council is scheduled to present “Birth of the Present: Israeli Art Between 1948 and 1967” an evening event during which “leading art history lecturers in-English, taking a journey through the culture, society and creativity of Israel.”

2021: Amy Schwartz is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Strangers in a Strange Land: Jews and Refugess, Past and Present.

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a virtual program on the “Possibilities and Challenges for Refuge in Latin American During the Holocaust.”

2021: Base Boston is scheduled to present the first session of “My Jewish Year: An Exploration of the Jewish Calendar which will examine “Tisha B’Av.”

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present “Daniel Silva in conversation with Katty  Kay about his new book, The Cellist.

2021: The 7th Global Forum for Combating Ant-Semitism is scheduled to open today in Jerusalem.

2022: LSJS is scheduled to present “When Halacha is Forgotten,” the third session of Why Rabbis Argue: The genesis and genius of the Oral Law.

2022: “My Name is Sara”  which tells the true-life story of 13-year-old Sara Góralnik whose family was killed by Nazis in September of 1942. is scheduled to premiere at the Quad Cinema

2022: JHMOMC is scheduled to present a screening of The Land Was Theirs: Jewish Farmers in the Garden State which is based on the 1992 book by the late Gertrude Wishnick Dubrovsky, which aired as a PBS documentary in 1993.

2022: President Biden is scheduled to begin a trip to the Middle East including visits to Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia.

2023: “Yid-Sock,” the festival of new Yiddish Music” is scheduled to open today.

2023: “Rite of Passage” by Izzy Salant is scheduled to premier at the Windhover Center for the Performing Arts.”

2023: YIVO is scheduled to present a lecture by Chaya Nove who holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Graduate Center at City University of New York on “Between Tradition and Trend: Popular Culture and Langue Use Among American Hasidim.”

2023: The ADL and the National Constitution Center are scheduled to host the 24th annual Supreme Court Review which is designed to provide a deeper understanding of the High Court’s most recent rulings.

2023: Temple Judea is scheduled to host the morning minyan with Rabbi Feivel and Cantor Abbie followed by Modern Mussar with Michael Ross.

2024:Even a Single Flower, a solo exhibition by painter Amir Shefet, presents a selection from Shefet’s extensive body of work created over the past five years, during which the artist focused exclusively on painting flowers, using diverse painterly languages  is scheduled to close today at the Gordon Gallery.

2024: The Eden Tamir Center is scheduled to host an evening of chamber music featuring Saida Bar Lev, violin; Simca Heled, cello; and Michael Zartsekel, piano performing “From Russia in Love” – the works of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky.

2024: “Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, the Islamic Community of North American Bosniaks, and the Congress of Bosniaks of North America are scheduled to present a first-of-its-kind commemoration on U.S. soil in honor of the 29th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, where war crimes and crimes against humanity all around Bosnia and Herzegovina culminated in the systematic murder of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.”

2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a lecture by Professor David Peimer on “Portrayals of Golda Meir in Film.”

2024: Director Ofir Raul Grazier is scheduled to attend the screening of “America” this evening at the Lumiere Cinema in Los Angeles.

2024(7th of Tammuz, 5784): Parashat Chukat

for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2024: As July 13th begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that has included Hamas supporters calling for Zionist passengers on a New York subway to raise their hands, sweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day 281 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.)