This Day, July 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

July 15

763 BCE: Forty-one years before their conquest of Israel, the Assyrians observe and record a solar eclipse which is the basis for much of the dating of activities in the Fertile Crescent, including Eretz Israel, prior to the seventh century BCE (As reported by Austin Cline)

1099: Godfrey de Bouillon entered Jerusalem, drove all the Jews into the synagogue, and set them afire while he marched around the synagogue singing, "Christ, we adore thee". This marked the end of Jerusalem as a Jewish center for centuries, although Jews did return in limited numbers after the Moslem reconquest in 1187. It is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews were massacred or captured and sold as slaves in Italy.

                                                OR (You pick the version)

1099: The crusaders final assault on Jerusalem was successful and the city was sacked. This was in keeping with the general rule that, if a fortified place did not surrender, it might be sacked, and its inhabitants killed or enslaved. Although there was considerable bloodshed in Jerusalem, , recent research has demonstrated that crusade leaders intervened to protect some of the inhabitants, including Muslims and Jews. Among those who took this step was Godfrey of Bouillon. Some Muslims and Jews were slaughtered, but some were escorted to Muslim territory.

1174: Baldwin IV was crowned King of Jerusalem.  Graetz claims that the Leperous King was the one who banned the Jews from Jerusalem.  That honor should go to his father who took the throne in 1162 and the ban began in 1165 and last until 1175. Since Baldwin was only 13 at the time of his coronation credit for lifting the ban probably should go to the Raymond III of Tripoli, the regent who negotiated a treaty with Saladin.

1205: Pope Innocent III laid down the principle that Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude and subjugation because they had crucified Jesus. This classic charge of deicide was officially removed in 1963.

1291: King Rudolf I, who had negated the freedom of Jews of Germany by declaring them servi camerae ("serfs of the treasury") in 1286, passed away today.

1389: Murad I is killed following the Ottoman defeat of the Christians at the Battle of Kosovo also known as the Battle of Blackbird’s Field. Murad had allowed Jews fleeing Hungary to settle in Thrace and Anatolia so his death was a net loss for them. (While it is not a matter of Jewish History, memories of this battle would resurface at the end of the 20th century when Moslems and Christians squared off in the Balkan Wars following the dissolution of Yugoslavia)

1555: Paul IV issued Cum Nims Absurdum, the papal that “ordered the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Rome.

1567: Not for the first time, nor for the last time, the Jews were expelled from the entire Republic of Genoa today.

1572 (5332) Isaac Luria passed away.  There is no way this simple guide can do justice to the life of this giant of Judaism.  For those who are interested, here are two places to begin: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm

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

1606:  Birthdate of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Rembrandt lived in a Jewish quarter in Amsterdam. He often depicted Jewish people on his canvases. One of his most famous paintings is styled “Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law.” There are several special events planned to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s and many of them highlight his special relationship with the Dutch Jewish community.  For more on this subject, you might want to read the recently published Rembrandt’s Jews by Steven Nadler.

1629: A clerical commission meeting today to look into the guilt of Yom-Tov Heller “asked him how he dared to eulogize the Talmud after it had been burned by papal order” – a charge which he could not answer to the commission’s satisfaction which to his being condemned to death.

1631: Birthdate of Richard Cumberland, the Bishop of Peterborough who was the  author of “An essay towards the recovery of the Jewish measures & weights, comprehending their monies, by help of ancient standards, compared with ours of England useful also to state many of those of the Greeks and Romans, and the eastern nations.”

1694: The Jesuits, who were opposed to the printing efforts of Shabbethai ben Joseph Bass, “sent a letter to the magistrate of Breslau to have the sale of Hebrew books interdicted on the ground that such works contained "blasphemous and irreligious words"

1738(27th of Tammuz, 5498): Baruch Laibov and Alexander Voznitzin were burnt alive in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the consent of Empress Anna Johanova. Voznitzin, a naval captain, was guilty of the crime of converting to Judaism. Laibov was guilty of helping him. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=346&letter=B

1756(17th of Tammuz, 5516): Tzom Tammuz observed as Prussia prepared to enter into an alliance with Great Britain during the Seven Years War.

1766(9th of Av, 5526): Tish’a B’Av

1766: In Philadelphia, Jonas and  Rebecca Mendes Machado Phillips gave birth to Philadelphia Phillips Pesoa, the wife of Isaac Pesoa.

1769: In Newport, RI, Hillel Judah and his wife gave birth to merchant Emanuel Judah “who married Grace Seixas” in 1815.

1783: Jacob Louzada who at the start of the American Revolution in 1776 was forced to leave the “family owned land at Bound Brook, NJ” arrived in New York today.

1790: Members of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of the Jewish Congregation of Charleston wrote a letter to congratulate the President of the United States George Washington on the occasion of the establishment of a federal government.

1794(17th of Tammuz, 5554): Tzom Tammuz observed during the uprising in Vilnius, the home to a large Jewish population including the Vilna Gaon.

1799: The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign. The discovery of the Stone helped to fuel interest in archaeology, including what would become the field of modern Biblical archaeology.

1799: Birthdate of Samuel Bleichröder the Jewish banker who worked with the Rothschilds and who was the father of Gerson von Bleichröder and Julius Bleichröder who followed in their father’s footsteps.

1801: In what might seem like a weakening of the position of French Jews, Napoleon signs a Concordat that recognizes Catholocism as the religion of “the great majority of Frenchmen.”

1808: A day after she had passed away, Elizabeth Town, the daughter of Benjamin Town was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1813(17th of Tammuz, 5573): Tzom Tammuz observed on the same day that Abigail Adams, attaches a letter from her husband, former President John Adams to former President Thomas Jefferson expressing her regards for the man who, in his old age, has become a friend again with her husband.

1815(9th of Av, 5575):  Tisha B’Av

1815(9th of Av, 5575): The Chozen of Lublin (The Seer of Lublin) passed away.  Born Yaakov Yitzchak in 1745, he was a leading Polish Chasidc Rebbe.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders for the final TIME aboard HMS Bellerophon. Having learned their lesson from Napoleon’s escape from captivity following his first surrender, the conquering European powers exile him to St. Helena where he will live out his days.  This final surrender seems to mark the return of the Ancien Regime to Europe in general and France in particular.  The forces of reaction will try and undo the gains in liberty made by the Jews of Europe.

1817: Birthdate of German orientalist Max Grunbaum who “mainly dealt with mythology, Yiddish and Jewish-Spanish Literature.”

1818: In Savannah, GA, Levy Hart married Abigail Minis Sheftall, the youngest daughter of the last Levy Sheftall.

1818: Abraham and Clara Moses were married today at the Great Synagogue.

1818: Mosely (Moshe) Woolf and Hannah Woolf gave birth to Cecilia Woolf who became Cecilia Marks when she married David Marks.

1820: Birthdate of Dresden native and German actor and director  Anton Ascher, trained by Ludwig Tieck who “made his début in 1838 at Hainichen and who “was the director of the Carl Theatre in Vienna” from 1866 to 1872 after which he appeared on Broadway in “Please Help Emily,” “Just Married,” “Jane Our Stranger” and “The Spider.”

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1893-ascher-anton

1832(17th of Tammuz, 5592) Tzom Tammus

1832: Solomon Etting, a Jewish citizen of Baltimore, MD, wrote a letter to Henry Clay, the U.S. Senator from Kentucky, saying that he other co-religionists “feel both surprised and hurt by the manner in which you introduced the expression ‘the Jew’ in debated in the Senate of the United States, evidently applying it as a reproachful designation of a man whom you considered obnoxious in character and conduct.” Since Ettinger did not know the man in question and since he assumes that Clay has no “antipathy” for the Jewish people, he asked that Clay write to him why he had used this particular expression in this particular manner.

1834: The child-Queen Isabella's mother, Christina, issued an official and final edict abolishing the Inquisition in Spain. The words read, "It is declared that the Tribunal of the Inquisition is definitely suppressed. The Inquisitions had been in place for nearly three and one half centuries.

1836: In Michelfeld, thirty-seven year old Marx Oppenheimer and his second wife Sarah gave birth to Karoline Levy.

1838: Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage. This was not the first or last time that Emerson would express views on religion that were out of step with prevailing Christian views. In describing the Last Supper, Emerson states “Jesus is a Jew sitting with  countrymen celebrating their national feast.”  Jesus’ Jewishness would not become an accepted tenant of many Christian beliefs until the second half of the twentieth century.

1843: Birthdate of Indiana native William W. Morrow who as a Congressman from California who would champion the cause of Adolph Kutner, the Russian born American businessman who was afraid to return to his native land because of the Czar’s policies regarding Jews.

1844: In Slovakia, Jacob Salzberger and his wife gave birth to Dr. Moritz Salzberger, the Rabbi at Erfurt from 1886 to 1923, the husband of Anna Salzberger and father of Gertrude, Rabbiner and Max Salzberger.

1850: Birthdate of Amalia Loeb who was buried in the Jewish Cemetery a Morgan City, LA.

1852: Birthdate of Polish native Adolph Mendlowicz, the husband of Stefanie Menelowitz  with whom he had two children.

1853: In Bangor, Main, Julius Spitz and Julia Wolf gave birth to Nancy Spirtz, the director of the Leopold Morse Home, the Hebrew Women’s Sewing Society and honorary director of the Federation of Jewish Charities who is the wife of Godfrey J. Spitz

1854(19th of Tammuz, 5614): Parashat Pinchas

1854: The Israelite, the first Jewish newspaper published in Cincinnati, Ohio, was established today. This English language newspaper was founded by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the “founding father” of Reform Judaism in America whose other “firsts” included the creation of the Hebrew Union College.

1854: The New York Times published a letter from E.R. McGregor, the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle in which he takes issue with the Times report that a U.S. citizen named Jones has been guilty of selling pieces of ancient columns and other such items to unsuspecting tourists in Jerusalem  According to McGregor Jones is a “Christian and a gentlemen” who was sent to Palestine by the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews (A.S.M.C. Jew) to examine the feasibility of establishing “agricultural colonies and schools for the benefit of the Jews and others residing in the country.” James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem, is the source of the negative stories about Mr. Jones.  According to McGregor, Finn is responsible for large losses connected with land near Bethlehem that was supposed to be purchased with American funds for the purpose of creating an agricultural colony. (Editor’s note – Other sources describe Finn  as “a  devout Christian, who belonged to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, but who did not engage in missionary work during his years” as British Consul in Jerusalem. According to these sources, Finn bought a piece of land outside of the Old City that he turned into an agricultural training facility for Jews. Finally, he bought land, at a place called Artas near Bethlehem where employed otherwise impoverished Jews as laborers.  Further research is obviously necessary.)

1855: In Bratislava, Ignatz Isaak Loth and Caroline Honig gave birth to future New Yorker Moritz Loth, the husband of Jennie Davidson and the father of Herbert and Stanly Loth.

1856: Birthdate of Charles Frohman, the native of Sandusky Ohio, one of the three Frohman brothers, who became a noted Broadway impresario who co-founded the Theatrical Syndicate.

1857: In Shati, Russia, Rachel Gordon and Hirsch Monossowitsch gave birth “author and educator” Moness Monossowitsch, the husband of Vutel Meshulamy and founder of private school in Libau that taught both Hebrews and “general subjects who became a member of HIAS, the Association of Hebrew Writers of America and Histadruth Ivrith of America.

1859: “In Parshilee, Suvalky, Poland” which was part of the Russian Empire, “Abraham Jacob and Rebecca (Levine) Marks gave birth to Rueben Marks, the grandson of Irwin Levine, and successful lumber business man who settled in Des Moines, IA in 1885 where he founded what became the Marks Hat Company, “established a clothing factory in Chicago, and raised three children – Moses, Anna and Harry- with his wife Belle Jacobs, the daughter of Joshua and Miriam Jacobson while serving as President of Tiffereth, Israel,  President of the local lodge of B’nai B’rith and director of the Cleveland Orphan Asylum

1860: In Cologne, Albert Oppenheim, a member of the Jewish banking family who had converted to Catholicism and his wife Pauline Engels gave birth to Max von Oppenheim.

http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/163/the-passion-of-max-von-oppenheim--archaeology-and-intrigue-in-the-middle-east-from-wilhelm-ii-to-hitler

1861(8th of Av, 5621) Erev Tish’s B’Av observed two days before the federal government began issuing greenbacks during Civil War.

1862(17th of Tammuz, 5622): Tzom Tammuz

1862: In Poland, Abraham Jacob and Rebecca (Levine) Marks gave birth to Reuben Marks who trained to be a rabbi under his uncle, Rabbi Abraham Levine, before coming to the United States in 1884 where he organized the first Hebrew School in Des Moines, IA and chaired the Des Moines District of the ZOA  while being married to Rachel M. Barnett.

1862: Birthdate of Frank Putnam Flint, the U.S. Senator from California who supported efforts to get the Governor of Georgia to commute the death sentence of Leo Frank.

1863: Today, the 23rd Maine Infantry whose members included Moses Gould Beal, his oldest so Jarvis and his brother William was mustered out of service in Portland .

1863: In Manitowoc, WI, Francesca Fannie Teweles and Jacob L. Brandies gave birth to Arthur D. Brandeis, the husband of Detroit native Zerlina Freedman with whom he had three children – Ruth, Leola and John and one of the operator of J.L. Brandeis and Sons Department Store in Omaha, Nebraska.

1866: Ion Ghica, “a valuable all for the Yiddish theatre in Bucharest” who “on several occasions he expressed his favorable view of the quality of acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater” began serving as Prime Minister of Romania today.

1869: In Minsk, Jacob and Ida (Farber) Paskowitz gave birth to Max Paskowitz, the husband of Sarah Shafer who in 1896 came to Wharton, TX where he went into business and organized the synagogue before moving on to Galveston where “he established a mercantile business and reorganized the he Zionist District…”

1869: In New York City, Adolph Tuska and Elise Robitscher gave birth to “consulting engineer” Gustave R. Tuska, a graduate of CCNY and Columbia and husband of Isabel Pappenheimer who filled severed as chief engineer for the Panama R.R. Co, the Atlantic Construction Co. and the American Power Co. as well as Director of the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1870: In Cleveland, Ohio, Rabbi Max Lienthal of Cincinnati Ohio, presented the following resolutions to a meeting of rabbis from across the nation who adopted them unanimously.

Whereas, In consideration of the religious commotion now agitating the public mind in both hemispheres, in accordance with the principles of Judaism it is unanimously declared:

1.     Because with unshaken faith and firmness we believe in one indivisible and eternal God; we also believe in the common Fatherhood of God and the common brotherhood of men.

2.     We glory in the sublime doctrine of our religion, which teaches that the righteous of all nations, without distinction of creed, will enjoy eternal life and everlasting happiness.

3.     The divine command, the most sublime passage of the Bible “Thou shalt love thy fellow man as thyself,” extends to the entire human family without distinction of either race or creed.

4.     Civil and religious liberty, and hence the separation of Church and State, are the inalienable rights of man, we consider them to be the brightest gems in the Constitutions of the United States.

5.     We love and revere this country as our home and fatherland for us and our children, and therefore consider it our paramount duty to sustain and support the Government, to favor by all means the system of free education leaving religious instruction to the care of the different denominations.

6.     We expect the universal elevation and fraternization of the human family to be achieved by the natural means of science, morality, freedom, justice and truth.

According to the attendees, “ these resolution…clearly express…the religious and political creed of Judaism.”

1871: In Poswell,  Kovna, “Reb Jechiel Michael Goell, a famous Lamdan and Maskel and his wife Hinda” gave birth to Jacob Goell the carpenter who in 1890 came to the United States where he successfully constructed apartments in Brownsville, married Mary Samowitz and served as “president of Adas Israel in Brownville and vice president of the Stone Avenue Talmud Torah.”

1872: In Frankfurt-en-Main Sara Koeniswerther and Leo Hertz gave to Alfred Hertz, the second conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, who replaced Henry Hadley, in 1915, when the orchestra was just four years old and who remained with the symphony until his farewell performance April 15, 1930” and who was the husband of Lilly Dorn.

http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/hertz.html

1873(20th of Tammuz, 5633): Three-month-old Judah Aloof, the London born son of Abraham and Mesoda Aloof passed aay today.

1874(1st of Av, 5634): Rosh Chodesh Av

1874: In Lithuania Michael Sheftal and Feigel Mayor Kaplan gave birth to Columbia graduate and JTS ordained rabbi Bernard Michael Kaplan, who began his career at the McGill Avenue Synagogue in Montreal after which he served several congregations including the Bush Street Temple in San Francisco,  B’nai Jershurun and Temple Israel in Waterbury, CT while authorig “the Strange Melody and others plays which were performed in the David Belasco Theatre in San Francisco." https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/11/23/105166460.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0\

1877: “Protection for Jews in Palestine” published today included the text of a letter from the Acting Secretary of State to Meyer S. Isaacs, President of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites.  The letter was in response to a request from Mr. Isaacs seeking American protection for Russian Jews living in and around Jerusalem from abuse by the Ottoman authorities.  Mr. Seward explained that normally, the U.S. government only provides protection for its own citizens living abroad.  He conceded that the United States has a reputation for helping oppressed people in foreign countries; but that help can only be provided if all of the parties involved go through proper diplomatic channels. 

1877: Sixty-one-year-old Isaac Phillips, the husband of Julia Hyman with whom he had two children –Esther and Rebecca – and who was “one of the founders of the Jewish Female Mourning Society” was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.

1877: The Jewish Messenger reported that Secretary of State Seward had sent a letter to Meyer S. Isaacs, President of the Board of Delegates of Israelites in response to his letter of June 4 asking that the United States help provide protection for Jews from Russia living in and around Jerusalem. Speaking in that unique language of diplomats, Seward told Isaacs that the U.S. usually only extends such protection to its own citizens living abroad.  But he assured him that the United States was sympathetic to “all the oppressed peoples in foreign countries” and would act accordingly within the spirit of “international courtesy and diplomatic usage…The desired protection will be extended if these conditions are complied with.”  [This was one of the first times that American Jews had asked the United States government to intervene on behalf of their co-religionists living in Eretz-Israel.  Seward’s understated reply was more potent than it might appear.  He was a real power in the Republican having served as a U.S. Senator and having been a serious candidate for the Presidency in 1860.  Also, he had actually visited Palestine in the years prior to the Civil War so he had a firsthand knowledge of the area and the Ottomans who ruled it .

1877: Union of Hebrew Congregations completed its meeting in Philadelphia, PA. Several speeches were delivered in favor of having all the Jews in the United States represented by one national organization. The delegates agreed to hold their next meeting in July of 1878 at Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1877: “The English Jews in Politics,” published today reprinted the views of Goldwin Smith that originally appeared in the Fort-nightly Review. According to Smith, the Jews supported the Liberal Party until they gained full rights (including the change in oath that made it possible for them to sit in Parliament) and then they “gravitated toward the party of wealth” – the Conservative Party.  Smith went on to describe Judaism as “surviving relic of the primeval world” that was a “tribal religion” inferior to Christianity that belonged to “the ages before humanity.” As such, Jews “cannot be expected to have much sympathy with progress” and since they are now wealthy, they are obviously supporter of the “plutocratic party.” [Editor’s note – What the publishers of the article do not say is that Smith was a member of the Liberal Party and strong opponent of Benjamin Disraeli, the leader of the Conservative Party.  He later became a professor at Cornell University before finally settling in Canada. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, Goldwin Smith was “a major exponent of anti-Semitism in the 19th century…. A pathological anti-Semite, Smith disseminated his hatred in dozens of books, articles and letters. Jews, he charged, were "parasites," "dangerous" to their host country and "enemies of civilization." His bilious anti-Jewish tirades helped set the tone of a still unmoulded Canadian society and had a profound impact on such young Canadians as W.L. Mackenzie King, Henri Bourassa and scores of others. Indeed in 1905 in the most vituperative anti-Jewish speech in the history of the House of Commons, borrowing heavily from Smith, Bourassa urged Canada to keep its gates shut to Jewish immigrants.”  This should explain much of the content of Smith’s article.)

1878: Birthdate of Polish native and NYU trained attorney Henry Lasker, the former President of the Board of Alderman in Springfield, MA where he served as the first president of the local B’nai B’rith Lodged and was a founder and President of the Spring Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/12/12/issue.html

1879: At Mercez, Rabbi Isaac Margolis and Hinda Zirilstein gave birth University of Cincinnati grad and HUC ordained rabbi Elias Margolis who served as the rabbi of Congregation Re’im Ahuvim in Stockton, CA before assuming the pulpit at Temple Emanuel at Pueblo, CO in 1903.

1880: In Meretz, Vilna, Lithuania, “Rabbi Isaac Margolis and Mrs. Hinde Bernstein Margolis gave birth to Dr. Elias Margolis, who in 1885 came to the United States where he received degrees from the University of Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College and Columbia, led several congregations while leading the Rabbinical Assembly of JTS and the Synagogue Council of America and raised five children with his wife Esther Molly Jacobson Margolis.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/11/27/91627984.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=25

1880: The second annual convention of the National Rabbinical Association came to a close today in Detroit, Michigan.  About half of the 56 member rabbis were in attendance.  A large number of non-Jews attended the sessions at which papers on several topics related to Judaism were presented.

1880: An unidentified man was buried in a pauper’s grave today in Hoboken, NJ.  The undertaker had initially identified the man as being Jewish and the town’s Jewish community had donated funds to provide him with a Jewish burial.  It is not clear what caused the confusion, but the undertaker is refusing to return the funds to the Jews.

1880: “Notes of Literary News” published today described the upcoming publication of Jewish Life in the East a collection of papers written by Sydney M. Samuel on the condition of Jews living in Palestine and other parts of the Levant including an examination of their  physical and moral condition and their manners and customs. At Jerusalem, in 1879-80, Sydney M. Samuel found 416 heads of families pursuing 29 handicrafts, among whom were tinkers, goldsmiths, watchmakers, smiths, turners, and masons ("Jewish Life in the East," p. 78)

1880: Among the charities designated to receive funds from Excise Fund in New York was the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society in the amount of $1,686.

1880: In Merkine, Hinde Bernstein and Isaac Margolis gave birth to Elias Margolis.

1881(18th of Tammuz, 5641): Sixty-six year old Austrian banker Friedrich Freiherr Schey von Koromla, the father of Charlotte Przibram and the maternal grandfather of biologist Hans Leo Przibram passed away today.

1881: Two days after he had passed away, George Novra, a native of Prussia and the husband of Rebecca Abrahams with whom he had four children – Henry, Maria, Benjamin and Lewis – was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1881: Four of the five newly elected officers of the Executive Board of the Hebrew Union come from Cincinnati, Ohio, the home of Hebrew Union College. The only exception was A.L. Sanger of New York who was elected to serve as Vice President.

1881: It was reported today that the just concluded meeting of the Council of the Hebrew Union had rejected Rabbi Wise’s proposal to provide stipends for worthy students who lacked the funds to attend Hebrew Union College.  Wise was concerned that “poverty” would keep those with “talent” from serving as Rabbis. The attendees refused to even vote on a proposal requiring that a rabbi must get the consent of his congregation before talking to another congregation about a new position.  The Council felt that they had no business interfering in the relationships that rabbis had with their congregations.

1882: In an attempt to eliminate a source of strikebreakers, it was suggested that the striking freight handlers meet with the Polish Jews and offer to provide them with enough money so that they can buy a stock of small goods and go on the road as peddlers.  The idea was based on reports that the Polish Jews only planned to work on the docks until they had earned enough money to go into business for themselves.

1882: “Russian Refugees Returning Home” published today described the plight of Russian Jewish immigrants who have arrived in Philadelphia in the last few months.  Only a third of the 600 recent arrivals have found jobs and 51 of the families will be shipping out from New York today as they return to their homeland.

1883:”The secretary of the Manchester Congregation of British Jews” Isaac Asher Isaacs, the “son of Asher and Esther Isaacs” and Hannah “Annie” Isaacs gave birth to Albert Phineas Isaacs today.

1883: Birthdate of Polish born American dentist Dr. Anna Pavit Boudin, the founder and first president of the Women’s ORT and wife labor lawyer Louis B. Boudin with whom she had two children – Eleanor and Vera.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/10/26/89129345.html?pageNumber=29

1883: In responding to charges by Charles D. Kellogg that “65 per cent of the public charity was mis- directed” Superintendent Hirsch of the New York United Hebrew Charities offered his ‘most emphatic dissent” saying that “very few underserving persons are successful with us” “and what is better comparatively few make the attempt.”

1884(22nd of Tammuz, 5644): French painter Alphonse Hirsch passed away.  Born in Paris in 1843, he studied with Meissonier and Bonnat. Among his most famous portrait was one painted in 1877 - “Isidor, the chief Rabbi of France.”

1884: The last remnant of the Judengasse in Frankfort, Germany, is scheduled to be demolished today.

1884: “At the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Henry Emanuel married Sophie Frank the daughter of Leo Frank of Hanover, Germany who had arrived in Sydney some twelve months previously as governess to Sigmond Hoffnung’s children.”

1884: Twenty people from four families arrived in New York today aboard the SS India.  Their passage had been paid for by the Hebrew Relief Committee of Breslau.

1884: Birthdate of Professor Leonardo Olschki, the son of a Verona, Italy “book dealer and publisher” who taught at universities in Germany and Italy before coming to the United States 1939 and becoming an American citizen in 1945 while teaching at Johns Hopkins and the University of California at Berkeley while being married to Kate Mosse Olschki.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/12/12/118526395.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1885: In what appears to be a botched murder/suicide brought on by a domestic dispute, Augustus Erwin, a German Jew, shot his wife and Margaret and then turned the gun on himself. 

1885: It was reported today that the newly formed Union of Hebrew Charities will require favorable responses from 12 of the Jewish charitable organizations before it will officially begin its work.

1885: Birthdate of Ukraine native Max Hirsh, the husband of Olga Hirsh

1886: Birthdate of Milwaukee native Irma Cain, the graduate of Vassar who become Irma Cain Firestone when she married Northwestern University Law School graduate Milton Firestone and was the mother of “Ruth Firestone Brin” her “third child and only daughter.”

1886: It was reported today the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will be sponsoring three free excursions this summer for the enjoyment of the poor Jewish children and their mothers.

1886: Today’s outing to the Catskills sponsored by the Five Points Mission was an ecumenical affair since it included children of Italian, German, Irish and Jewish immigrants.  Actually, the mixture merely mirrored the multiplicity of immigrant groups that were living in the squalor of the Lower East Side’s worst neighborhood.

1886: Birthdate of Gillespie, Illinois native and Parisian trained artists Walter F. Isaacs, who became the Director of the University of Washington School of Art in Seattle.

http://tacoma.emuseum.com/emuseum/people/45/walter-f-isaacs

1886: In Bloomington, Illinois, Miss Ida Clark who converted to Judaism last week so that she could marry an English Jew named Holland tonight suffered a great embarrassment and disappointment today.  She received word that he had changed his mind and had called off the engagement without any explanation.

1886: “Dog Catchers Defeated” published today described how James Flanagan, Joseph Kelly and James Murphy unsuccessfully tried to capture a spitz owned by Nathan Weissbaum.  Their ineptitude was exacerbated by the interference of “several hundred Polish Jews” bent on mischief who unhitched the dogcatcher’s horse from its cart leaving the trio afoot on Hester Street.

1887: “Harry the Jew,” a well-known New York crook sent to the county jail Asbury Park, NJ to await charges of having robbed several bathhouses.  Harry’s last name is various listed as Harris, Fell and Luster.

1887: Birthdate of “artist William Meyerowitz, a native of Ekaterinoslav (later Dnepropetrovsk), Russia and student of the National Academy of Design in New York and husband of Theresa Berstein who in 1943 had a reached a point of such prominence that in one year he had exhibitions at numerous institutions including the “Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the New-York Historical Society.”

https://theresabernstein.newmedialab.cuny.edu/?page_id=4235

https://rogallery.com/Meyerowitz_William/meyerowitz-biography.html

1887: Birthdate of Pittsfield, MA native and University of Maryland trained surgeon Maurice Solomon Eisner, who was a member of the Jewish Publication Society.

1887(23rd of Tammuz, 5647): One hundred nine-year-old Hirsh Harris, known as “Rabbi Hirsch,” passed away today in Brooklyn.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=990DE5DA1430E633A2575AC2A9619C94669FD7CF

1888: Birthdate of  Ber Coffet, the Russian born American sculptor who passed away while living in New Jersey.

https://www.fold3.com/record/8417449-ber-coffet

1888: Birthdate of New York native and Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Abraham L. Doris, “ a Deputy State Controller from 1927 to 1943 and a Deputy City Controller from 1946 to 1953 who was the husband of Esther Doris with whom he had two children, Irma and Marcia.

ABRAHAM L. DORIS, HELD FISCAL POSTS - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

1889: In San Francisco Lillian Garlinda Kindelberger and Marcel Rambau gave birth to actress Marjorie Burnet Rambeau who according to Bernard Sobel was the responsible for the creating the Ruben Sandwich which she “inaugurated when” she  visited the Reuben's Delicatessen one night when the cupboards were particularly bare.”

1889: In Victoria, TX, the Jewish Children’s Aid Society was founded five years before Congregation B’nai Israel was founded “under the supervision of Rabbi Cohen of Galveston.”

1890: Birthdate of Latvian Chasid Morris Indritz who came “Chicago at the age of 24 where “he became an important member of the city’s Yiddish literary scene, writing for the Jewish Daily Courier, a Yiddish newspaper paper that catered to Orthodox Jews.”

https://www.spertus.edu/typewriter-used-morris-indritz

1891: There was “a large party” of Russian Jews aboard the SS Pickhuben that arrived today at Montreal.

1891: The Democrats nominated Gustavus H. Wald as their candidate for Justice of the State Supreme Court in Ohio.  The Hamilton County Jew had been a Republican until 1884 James Blaine was nominated to run for President.

1891(9th of Tammuz, 5651): Jerome Blumenthal, the fifteen-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Blumenthal drowned today.

1891: Birthdate of Riga native Harry Edison, who along with his brothers Sam, Mark, Irving and Simon who founded Edison Brothers Stores that began as a chain of shoe stores.

1891: For reasons that nobody can explain, it was reported today that few Jews attended the Bastille Day celebration at Lion Park in New York during which the French organizers had planned on marking the 100th anniversary of the emancipation of French Jews.  (This might reflect that there were few French Jews in New York or that a large number of the Jews living in New York were from Germany and like most Germans, had little or not affection for the French who were their continental enemies.)

1891: “Jews Barred From Romania” published today described conditions on the border between Romania and Russia where Romanian troops have been deployed to prevent any Jews from crossing over from the land of the Czars.  In addition to which, policies have been enacted to keep Russian Jews from landing at Romanian ports.

1892: “Russian Synagogue Schools Abolished” published today described a series of measures approved by the Imperia Council that “abolish synagogue schools in the form in which they now exist and to replace them by Government schools where the elements of the Jewish religion, Hebrew and the holy Scriptures shall be taught by men under the constant control of a special board of Orthodox Greek inspectors.” The changes appear to be due “to a desire to improve the Jewish schools” but “really aims at their complete suppression.

1892: “A Jew Enters the Greek Church” published today described the baptism of Nakhim Aphroim Zeldin a 19 year old Jew being held “in the prison of Sergivey Possad.”  As soon as the ceremony was completed the Russian authorities released him from prison.

1892: Birthdate of Walter Benjamin German literary critic and writer who died in 1940 on the border between France and Spain as he tried to escape from the Nazis.  According to some he committed suicide, although this is disputed by others.  Regardless this brilliant man who combined the ideas of Brecht and Scholem died too soon, another victim of the Holocaust.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-mysterious-death-of-walter-benjamin/article/1487

http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-arcades-contemporary-art-and-walter-benjamin

1892: Birthdate of Quincy, MA native Joseph Gossman, “treasurer of Grossman's, a building materials company’’ and the husband of Esther Starr whom he  married after the death of his first wife, Esther Loman who was a benefactor of Beth Israel Hospital, Quincy City “Hospital, Jewish Memorial Hospital, New England Sinai Hospital, Brandeis University, and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies” and who was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as well as “the first Jewish member of the Governor's Council.”

1893: The SS Umbria arrived in Queenstown town with one less passenger than had been on board when the ship left New York because Asher Weinstein, a New York realtor who “was connected with several Hebrew charitable organizations”, had fallen overboard in what is assumed to have been a tragic accident and not a suicide.

1893: Four hundred of the 800 passengers, most of whom are Russian Jews, who arrived in New York yesterday aboard the SS Red will be “debarred as paupers” and will be sent back to Europe.  Authorities feel the immigrants were victims of a scheme concocted by the ship’s owners to dump unsuspecting foreigners on American soil with the assumption that the U.S. government would pay for their expenses to stay or be returned.  That is why the government is demanding that the ship’s owners post a ten-thousand-dollar bond to cover the costs. 

1893: An unknown number of “rascals…cut the backs and sets cushions of an early a hundred seats and broke several chairs” at the Thalia Theatre as part of protest trigged by “a boycott declared against Isidor Lindemann…by the United Hebrew Trades.”

1893: “The German Reichstag announced that for first time a Jew has been elected to the Town Council of Rostock.”

1894: Three days after she had passed away, fifty year old Hanna Jacobs, the wife of Lewis Jacobs with she had had five children – Rachel, Normal, Solomon, Joseph and Fanny – was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.

1894: Having completed its investigation of the management of charitable institutions in eastern New York, the Committee on Charities of the Constitutional Convention chaired by Edward Lauterbach will turn its attention to the charitable institutions in the western part of the state. (Attorney Lauterbach is Republican leader, defense attorney and longtime supporter of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1894: A portion of the Board of Trade’s annual report showed that aliens living in Whitechapel, most of whom are Russian Jews make up 18 per cent of the population but “contribute less than 1 per cent to its pauperism.” The Russian Jews do not compete in lines of work performed by the English and “the average earnings of Jewish girls” working “in tailoring establishments are higher than those of English girls.”

1895(23rd of Tammuz, 5655): Simon Sternberger, who suffered from Bright’s Disease passed away today in Long Branch, NJ.  Sternberger came to the United States 50 years ago, settling first in Philadelphia before coming to New York where he “amassed a large fortune” and served as a Director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1895: “The Summer session of the Hebrew Technical Institute opened” today.

1896: In Patterson, NJ, founding of the Patterson Hebrew Free School Association whose members incude Nathan Barnert, Marcus Cohen, Joseph Krulansky, D.H. Bilder and I.H. Levine.

1896: While serving as the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Omaha, Nebraska. Rabbi Leo Morris Franklin married Hattie Oberfelder at her parent’s home in Chicago Illinois.  Their first daughter, Ruth, was born in Omaha.

1897: Moses Alexander, who become the first practicing Jew to be elected as a governor began serving his first term as Mayor of Boise, Idaho.

1898(25th of Tammuz, 5658): Fifty-year-old Charles Lewis, “a well-known wool merchant” and founder of Charles Lewis & Brothers whose activities in the New York Jewish community included serving as Treasurer of the West End Synagogue, passed away this morning.

1898: Philip H. Stern began serving as a 1st Lt. with the U.S. Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish American War.

1899(8th of Av, 5659): Parashat Devarim; Erev Tish’a B’Av

1899: Le Roy Eltinge, the author of Psychology of War which contained such anti-Semitic passages as “He doesn’t know what patriotism means”, “the soldiers lot is hard physical work” which “the Jew despises and “he does not have any of the qualities of a good soldier” – remarks which forced the War Department to order him to go over the book and remove all such objectionable portions – was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant in the 6th  United States Cavalry

1899: At tonight’s meeting to discuss the future of the Presbyterian Church in New York City, Revered Alexander J Kerr said that some of the churches on the Upper East Side have given up their mission because “a large Jewish population has settled in that district.” (Editor’s note – This is one denomination that would flee than fight i.e. spend time trying to convert the Jewish population)

1900(18th of Tammuz, 5660) Tzom Tammuz observed

1900: The Vienna corresponded of the New York Times reported on “the extraordinary emigration of Romanian Jews through Austria and Hungary” which is of such “proportions…as to cause the imperial authorities in Vienna to demand that that the Romanian Government place restrictions upon the exodus.”

1901(28th of Tammuz, 5661): Forty-seven year old German mathematician Ferdinand Caspary passed away today in Berlin.

1901: Birthdate of Russian born American educator and archaeologist Pierre Pinchas Delougaz whose primary work was in Iraq and Israel.

1902: “Wealthy Chicago contractor Harry Korshak” and Rebecca Beatrice Lash, the father of Sidney Roy Korshak whom the FBI said was “the most powerful in the world” were married today.

1902(10th of Tammuz, 5662): Seventy-one-year-old Adelaide Samuel (Malkah bat Eliezer) a native of Lancashire and the daughter of Louis SamDuel (Eliezer ben Menachem) passed away today.

1903: “The building of an institution on the same lines as the Young lien's Hebrew Association in Manhattan by the Jews in Williamsburg was assured tonight at a meeting held in Capital Hall, 16-18 Manhattan Avenue” which was attended by several hundred Jews of the Sixteenth Ward.”

1903: John D. Hertz, Szklabinya born son of Kattie Schlessinger and Jacob Hertz, the Chicago sports reporter who founded the Yellow Cab Company married Frances Kesner today.

1904: In Allenhurst, Rose Harris and Lew Fields a Jewish immigrant and half of the team of Weber and Fields gave birth to Dorothy Fields “who wrote lyrics to over 400 songs over a half a century including "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I'm in the Mood for Love," and "Don't Blame Me," all in 1928. “In a field in which the names of Jewish men from George and Ira Gershwin to Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim are ubiquitous, Fields made her mark with some of the American musical theater's most memorable songs.” (According to some sources, her birthdate was 1905)

https://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/15/1904/dorothy-fields

http://www.dorothyfields.org/songs.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/dorothy-fields/

https://www.rnh.com/bio/38/Fields-Dorothy

1904: Vyacheslav Von Plehve, Russian Minister of Interior was assassinated. Von Plehve was responsible for the Kishinev massacres in which forty-seven Jews were killed, ninety-two severely wounded or crippled, and five hundred slightly wounded. His assassin was a member of the socialist revolutionary movement, which had suffered as well by his policies. Czar Nicholas was frightened into making a few concessions. Unfortunately, he did not make enough to meet public demand.

1905: American portrait painter Paul Moschowitz, the Hungarian born son of Maurice and Rose Moschowitz, the winner of the Silver Medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition whose works included “Portrait of Young Woman in Opera Box with Classical Background” married Madeline Rabb today.1906:Twenty-four-year-old  Dr. Edwin P. Solomon, the Cincinnati, OH born son of Emanuel and Mary (Schneider) Solomon and University of Cincinnati trained surgeon who settled in Birmingham, AL. married Cecile Schwarzenberg today.

1906: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Fordham University trained pharmacist Solomon S. Goldwyn who practiced law for 30 years after graduating from Brooklyn Law School and who served as “president of the Great Neck Synagogue, North Shore Hebrew Academy, National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education and the Colony of Hope in Israel” which three children – Martin, Sharon and Judith – with his wife, “the former Bella Skolnick”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/08/29/90221025.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1907: “A dispatch from Odessa” the site of several attacks on the Jewish population said, “that seven people were killed and many injured by an explosion in a secret bomb factory in that city.”

1907: “Big Reactionary and Anti-Jewish Demonstration in St. Petersburg” published today described a mass meeting held after the Ikon of the Resurrection which had been brought from Palestine and presented to the Czar during Prince Volkonsky called upon all who were listening to him “to register a vow that not a single Jew be allowed to enter the portals of the third Duma…”

1908: Birthdate of Max M. Fisher who would gain fame as a Detroit oil and real estate magnate known for his philanthropy and for the advice he gave Republican presidents on the Middle East and Jewish issues.

1908: A convention of the American Zionists meeting in Atlantic City is scheduled to come to a close today.

1908: Birthdate of Chicago native Louis James “Lou” Gordon, the standout lineman with the University of Illinois from 1927 to 1929 who went on to play with NFL teams – Chicago Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers, Green Packers and the Chicago Bears – from 1930 through 1938.

1909: In Montreal, “Louis Shlakman, a tailor and shirtwaist factory foreman, and the former Lena Hendler, both Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe” gave birth to economist Vera Shlakman who lost her job during the Red Scare of the 1950’s. (Editor’s note – It wasn’t just Ten Hollywood writers who lost their careers thanks to a bunch or Right Wing pseudo-patriorts.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/obituaries/vera-shlakman-professor-fired-during-red-scare-dies-at-108.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=region&region=region&WT.nav=region&_r=0

1909: In Massachusetts, Benjamin and Fanny Posner gave birth to Stanley Irving Posner, the Harvard trained attorney holding degrees from Amherst and the University of Chicago who was the husband of Lillian Kahn and the father of James, Elizabeth and Lawrence Posner..

1909: The Associated Jewish Charities of Vicksburg, Mississippi donated $5.00 to the National Conference of Jewish Charities.

1909: Birthdate of Jean Hamburger “a French physician, surgeon and essayist” who “is particularly known for his contribution to nephrology, and for having performed the first renal transplantation in France in 1952.”  He passed away in 1992.

1910: “The Department of Commerce and Labor announced today that Russian Jewish immigrants coming to this country in response to promises made by agents of American Jewish aid societies would be barred under the contract labor laws.”

1910: Birthdate of  Ostrów Lubelski, Poland native and author, Shmuel Abarbanel who “was active in the Freeland League and the left Labor Zionist” who spent WW II in the Soviet Union before making Aliyah in 1949.

https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/5462/Abarbanel,%20Shmuel%20(July%2015,%201910%E2%80%93March%2011,%201972)

1911(19th of Tammuz, 5671): Parashat Pinchas

1911(19th of Tammuz, 5671): Eighty-year-old Rabbi and author Eliezer Simcha Rabinowtsch passed away in Kalvaria, Poland.

1912: Pitcher Ed Mensor made his major league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1912: In Poland, Esther Greenberg and Julius Singer gave birth to University of Texas alum and University of Chicago Ph.D. Milton Borah Singer who was a renowned anthropologist specializing in the study of India.

https://whowaswho-indology.info/10420/singer-milton-borah/

1913: Birthdate of Avrom Sutzkever. Born in Russia, this Holocaust survivor is variously described as “an acclaimed Yiddish poet,” “one of the great poets of the 20th century” and "the greatest poet of the Holocaust." According to David G. Roskies, Sutzkever was the greatest poet of the Holocaust, who was also a leader of the Vilna ghetto and a partisan fighter. It would have been enough, he tells us, had Sutzkever been only ''a symbol of hope and creative power for the powerless Jews of the ghetto,'' but he was much more. As ''the foremost among Jewish poets'' Sutzkever ''made the memory of the dead the nexus of his artistic expression.'' In his major prose poem, ''Green Aquarium,'' Sutzkever accomplishes the transcendence of the dead by proposing the victory of poetry over death, art over destruction, neo-classical form over chaos, and the beauty of what remains in the universe after barbarism has done its terrible work He passed away in Tel Aviv.  There is no way to do justice to his work, which you can read in English at http://books.google.com/books?id=sj_2zrw2_bMC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%E2%80%9CThere+is+no+God,+no+World+Creator%E2%80%9D+by+Sutzkever&source=bl&ots=JG4u2QKDQN&sig=6vpMQYzJq5SY7Bp9mOOOPsKllJE&hl=en&ei=sdocTqWtMuG60AGMzZDVBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

(Editor’s Note – Special thanks to Murray Wolf, playwright, poet and translator of Yiddish authors who first brought Sutzkever to my attention.)

1914: Two days after he passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning for Julian Schloss, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lee L. Schloss after which he will be interred at the Rosehill cemetery.

1914: In Chicago, funeral services are scheduled to be held today for “Mrs. Fannie E. Amixter,” the widow of Isaac Amixter.

1915(4th of Av, 5675): Sixty-eight-year-old Martin Engel, native of the Bowery who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a kosher butcher before becoming a Tammany leader who based his power on the immigrant “Jews from Russia, Rumania, Bohemia and Hungary” passed away today at his home at 29 East Third Street.

1915: Based on a dispatch that first appeared in Neueste Nachrichten, “a Munich Journal” it was reported today that before the fall of Lemberg, “Grand Duke Nicholas issued an order of the day to the Jewish soldiers in his army, stating that he had decided to give them a special opportunity of showing courage and patriotism.” Since, he said, “one of the aims of the struggle with Turkey was” the re-conquest of “Palestine for the Jews so they could live there united and independent” he called upon the Jewish soldiers the Jewish soldiers in the Galician army who “were then transferred to the Army of the Caucasus” to “reconquer Palestine for yourselves and a new day of glory will dawn for Jewry.”

1915: Birthdate of London native and English solicitor Sir David Napley, the husband of Leah Rose Saturley whom he married after serving in WW II.

1915: In St. Louis, MO, Benjamin Landesman, an immigrant Jewish artist from Berlin, and his wife Beatrice, who dealt in antiques, gave birth to Irving Ned Landesman, who gained fame as Jay Landesman, a writer and editor whose journal Neurotica analyzed the anxieties of postwar America and whose Broadway musical, “The Nervous Set,” has been called the first (and only) Beat musical…(As reported by William Grimes)

1916(14th of Tammuz, 5676) Parashat Pinchas

1916(14th of Tammuz, 5676): Seventy-one-year-old Nobel Prize winning immunologist Elie Metchnikoff whose mother was “Emilia Lvovna (Nevakhovich), the daughter of the Jewish writer Leo Nevakhovich” passed away today in Paris.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elie-metchnikoff

1916: Today, Jack Melnick, a rifleman in the 12th Regiment who was “listed as wound and missing on September 9, 1916” wrote a postcard today while fighting in the Battle of the Somme which had begun on July 1.

https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/jmm-object/jack-melnicks-postcard/

1916: It was reported today that Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Judge Hugo Pam of Chicago and former Judge Leon Sanders are scheduled to peat at the upcoming conference of Jewish organizations to be held at New York’s Astor Hotel.

1916: Dr. Talcott Williams, Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia, who was born in Turkey and who is in close touch with affairs in Oriental countries” today gave a summary of the Moslem situation as it affects and is affected by the European” including the observation that “if the Allies win the final victory in the European war it is an open secret that Great Britain…would secure English domination in the East” and that Central Powers win the “Caliphate on the Bosporus” i.e. Turkey, will remain in place.  (Editor’s note: This should serve as a reminder that events in the Middle East were being decided by the European powers and not by the Zionists or the Arabs.)

1916: Today was the deadline those “societies” that wish to join the proposed federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies to “give their consent to the plans” for the federation and to “name their representatives on both the Organization Committee and Board of Delegates.”

1917: Among the contributions made to The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering the War of which Harry Fischel is the treasurer acknowledged today were $580 from Congregation Orach Chodesh and $705 from The Jewish Daily News.

1917: Among the contributions made to The American Jewish Relief Committee for the Suffers from the War of which Louis Marshall is the Chairman acknowledged today were $5,000 from Congregation Beth Emeth of Albany New York and $25,000 from Julius Rosenwald.

1917: It was reported today that “Chaim Berman, a merchant and teacher from Grodno, Poland, has come to America in hope of finding his wife and children from whom he became separate when the Germans” invaded Poland.

1918: During World War I, start of the Second Battle of the Marne. The Second Battle of the Marne marked the climactic German offensive on the Western Front during World War I.  With the Russians already out of the war, victory here would have meant that the Kaiser and his forces would have won “The Great War.”  The mind boggles at what that might have meant i.e. no Hitler, no Holocaust?  Who knows?  The fact remains that the Allies would halt the Germans.  The great offensive would collapse and the Germans would surrender in November of 1918. 

1918: The Second Annual Zionist Summer Course sponsored by the Intercollegiate Zionist Association are scheduled to being today in New York.

1918: During World War I, 500 German and Turkish prisoners of war were marched through the streets of Jerusalem.

1919: Birthdate of Irving Ned Landesman, the St. Louis native, who gained fame as “Jay Landesman, a writer and editor whose journal Neurotica analyzed the anxieties of postwar America and whose Broadway musical, “The Nervous Set,” has been called the first (and only) Beat musical.”

1919: In the United States, The War Department General Orders No. 90 of this date described the heroism shown by Private Jean Mathis, Company F, 5th Regiment, United States Marine Corps during the fighting at Bellau Woods saying “For extraordinary heroism in action in the Boise de Belleau, France” on June 11, 1918 when “after all the other members of his group had been killed or wounded by fire from an enemy machine gun, Pvt. Mathis charged the position alone, killing three of the crew and capturing the gun.”

1920: Today, “Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff sailed for London aboard the Cunard line “Imperator” so that he can attend “the first international conference of Boy Scout executives.

1921: The former Estelle Simons and Pratt Institute and Adelphi College trained artist and World War I veteran Joseph Newsman, the New York born son of Nettie Herskowitz and Isaiah Newman gave birth to Sheya Gisella today

1921: Birthdate of Liselott Margaret Kupfer, the convert to Judaism who gained fame as “a German-American poet and Texas Southern University faculty member Lisa Kahn the wife of fellow poet and scholar Robert L. Kahn and mother of Peter and Beatrice Kahn

1922:  Birthdate of American physicist and Nobel Prize Winner, Leon Lederman

1922: Birthdate of Jacob Mincer, the native of Poland who survived WW II to become Joseph L. Buttenwiser Professor of Economics and Social Relations at Columbia University.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/06/09/mincer.html

1923: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today in New York for “former Congressman David Louis Baumgarten” after which he will be buried in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1923(2nd of Av, 5683): Sixty-eight-year-old Austrian philosopher who “is regarded as the discoverer of the literary talent of the deaf-blind writer Helen Keller” suffered a fatal heart attack today.

1924: Adolph S. Oko, the librarian of the Hebrew Union College has volunteered to head the expedition of scholars and social workers who will study the history of the ancient Jewish Chinese colony of Kai Feng, which is the capital of Honan Province.

1925: Fifty-two-year-old clothing merchant Benjamin Cohen who is determined to die in Jerusalem set sail for Palestine today without knowing that his wife had set sail for the same destination with the intent of getting to come home and “spend his last days with her and his seven children.”

1926: According to Sir Alfred Mond, the Economic Board for Palestine has invested private capital worth one and a half million English pounds in Palestine during the past year.

1927: In Vienna, The July Revolt in which Elias Canetti took part and which ignited his fascination with nature of crowds and their behavior, began today.

1927: In Brooklyn homemaker and part-time opera singer Gazella Goldfisher and Benjamin Turkel, a tailor, gave birth to Joseph Turkel who gained fame as “a gaunt-faced yeoman character actor who appeared in scores of movies but is best known for two of his final performances — as Lloyd the bartender in “The Shining” and Dr. Eldon Tyrell in “Blade Runner” (As reported by Clay Risen)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/04/movies/joe-turkel-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1928(27th of Tammuz, 5688): Sir Charles James Jessel, the son of famed English jurist Sir George Jessel, passed away. A successful barrister and magistrate in his own right, he was a member of the Anglo-Jewish aristocracy as can be seen by his marriage to Edith Goldsmid, the daughter of Sir Julian Goldsmid.  The fact that the North Borneo Company named its leading trading post Jesselton in his honor attests to his business acumen. He was also one of several Jews who had served as High Sheriff in Kent.

1929(7th of Tammuz, 5689): Hugo von Hofmannst passed away. Born in 1874, He was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist. His great-grandfather, to whom his family owed the noble title "von Hofmannsthal," was a Jewish merchant ennobled by the Austrian emperor.

1929: One day she had passed away, Nachama Liba Miller, a native of Russia who had settled in Belfast and who was  the wife of Israel Miller with whom she had five children – Harris, Fanny, Abraham, Pauline and Annie – was buried today in the Belfast Jewish Cemetery.

1930: In El Biar (Algiers) Haïm Aaron Prosper Charles (Aimé) Derrida and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar gave birth to Jackie Élie Derrida who gained fame as philosopher Jacques Derrida.

1930(19th of Tammuz, 5690): Hungarian born violinist Leopold Auer passed away.  Born in 1845, Auer taught many violinists who later became famous, including Efrem Zimbalist, Nathan Milstein, Mischa Elman, and Jascha Heifetz.  Sometime before his death Auer converted to Christianity.

http://leopoldauersociety.com/leopold-auer-bio-2/

1930(19th of Tammuz, 56900: Sixty-eight-year-old Rudolph Schildkraut the native of Istanbul who became a successful actor in Austria passed and who married Erma Weinstein the mother of his son actor Joseph Schildkraut, passed away today in Los Angeles.

http://www.jta.org/1930/07/16/archive/rudolph-schildkraut-noted-jewish-actor-dies-at-70

1931: Birthdate of Dr. Renata Laxova, the native of Brno, Czechoslovakia and “American pediatric geneticist who survived the Holocaust thanks to the Kindertransport and discovered “the Neu-Laxová syndrome, a rare congenital abnormality involving multiple organs, with autosomal recessive inheritance.”

http://www.worldcat.org/title/oral-history-program-interview-with-renata-lexova-2004/oclc/228111597&referer=brief_results

1931: Birthdate of American graphic designer Thomas Geismar who in 1957 joined with Serge Chermayeff, a Russian born Jew, to form Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv

http://www.cgstudionyc.com/

1932: “Strange Interlude,” the film version of the stage play by the same name starring Norma Shearer was released today in the United States.

1932: Birthdate of Helen M. Berg, the wife of forestry professor of Alan Berg and “the longest serving mayor of Corvallis, Oregon.:

https://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_fd4053cc-a967-11df-a42f-001cc4c002e0.html

1932: The New York Times reported that a list of 133 prominent Jews outside of the United States was published in today's issue of The American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune. The journal describes the list as "Our Foreign "Who's Who, being the first roster ever printed of outstanding Jews in lands other than the United States. Among those listed are Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs, Governor General of Australia…Oscar Straus, Viennese composer; Paul Hyams, Belgian Minister of Justice; Georg Cohn, counselor to the Foreign Ministry of Denmark…”

1933: In Philadelphia, Clare Laventhol and Jesse Laventhol, “a political reporter for the Philadelphia Record” gave birth to newspaper publisher David Abram Laventhol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/nyregion/david-laventhol-publisher-on-both-coasts-dies-at-81.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1934(3rd of Av, 5694): Seventy-year-old Charleston, SC native Louis Albert Sussdorf, “a retired member of the New York Stock Exchange” passed away today.

1934: Seventy-year-old composer and conductor Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk passed away today in Los Angeles.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/07/17/94552317.pdf

1934: “Greek Jews were up in arms today against a scurrilous attack on them made in the Greek Senate in Athens by the Venizelist leader Jassonides.” (JTA)

1934: Sixty-five Jewish homes were looted and 3,000Jews fled from Kirklisse to Istanbul an official government report of the recent Turkish anti-Semitic excesses admitted today.” (JTA)

1934: Funeral services were held this afternoon for Dr. Morris Hirsch Kahn, the Cornell Medical School trained cardiologist who had been the chief cardiologist at Beth Israel Hospital since 1920 followed by interment at Washington Cemetery.

1934(3rd of Av, 5694): In Germany, Simon Strauss and his son were shot dead by Kurt Baer. The court found that the murdered Jews actually "committed suicide". Baer found guilty only of breaching the peace.

1935(14th of Tammuz, 5695): Amelia J. Allen, the Philadelphia born daughter of Miriam and Lewis Marks Allen, “the superintendent of the Northern Hebrew Sunday School” and “Supervising Principal for the Daniel Webster Combined Secondary and Primary School” as well as “one of the founding members of the women’s branch of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association” passed away today.

https://library.temple.edu/scrc/amelia-j-allen-diary

1935: Nazi gangs attacked Berlin Jews as part of a round of Anti-Jewish riots.

1936: The Palestine Post reported that nine Arab terrorists were killed by British troops near Jenin and Safed. One British soldier was killed and several wounded when their lorry overturned during the engagement. There were repeated attempts by Arab terrorists to interfere with railway traffic. Arab merchants expressed considerable dissatisfaction and asked for a speedy end to their prolonged general strike.

1936: Birthdate of New York native and horror and science fiction film creator Lawrence George Cohen and brother of publicists Ronni Chasen

1936: It was reported today that according to the United Palestine Appeal, “14,707 Jewish immigrants reached Palestine from January 1, 1936 through April 30, 1936.”

1936: In Vienna, “grave anxieties are expressed among the Jews” as Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg prepares to appoint pro-Nazis members to the General Council of the Fatherland Front which was created by the recently adopted Fatherland Front Law.

1937:  A concentration camp was established at Buchenwald, Germany.

1937: Funeral services are scheduled to be held at 2 P.M. at Temple Emanu-El in New York for composer George Gershwin whose body arrived in New York form Hollywood this morning while a simultaneous service is scheduled to be held at 10 A.M. (Pacific Coast Time)at the B’nai B’rith which will be led by Dr. Edgar F. Mangin.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/07/15/94400988.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=19

1937: “While British reaction to the report of the Palestine commission and its recommendations for the partition of that country have been almost unanimously favorably” today in London “there is increasing apprehension…that the bitter hostility of the Arab extremists, led by Haj Amin Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, if allowed to proceed unchecked, will wreck the chances of a settlement.”

1938(16th of Tammuz, 5698): Sixty-year-old Joseph Adler, the native of Kletzk who in 1909 came to the United States where he served as a rabbi in New York City, passed away today.

1938: “The Shopworn Angel,” a WW I tear-jerker produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released today in the United States.

1938: At Evian, France, the international conference on refugees came to an end.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/02.asp

1938(16th of Tammuz, 5698: Sixty-one-year-old Josef Adler, the Lithuanian born son of Shlomo Adler who in 1909 immigrated to the United States where he served as rabbi at several congregations including Ahavat Zion and starting in 1931 became the popular “head of Mesivat Tepheret Jerusalem in New York” passed away today.

1938(16th of Tammuz, 5698): At an orange grove near Hadera, Arab attackers shot and killed a Jewish worker while a group of workers leaving a grove near Tulkarm were attacked with one being wounded seriously, but not mortally.

1938: Police found a bomb at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem two hours before it was set to detonate while a large store of arms and munitions was found near the Mosque of Omar.

1938: Birthdate of Petr Hanak who was deported from Prague to Ujazdown where he was murdered in 1942.

1939: After 291 performances, the curtain came down on the Broadway production of “Leave It to Me!” a musical with a book by Samuel and Bella Spewack.

1940: As they prepared to leave Lisbon for Rio, Margret and Hans Rey, the creator of Curious George, "had their vaccination papers signed and stamped.” 

1940: Five hundred Jews who had been taken from Szczebrzeszyn, Poland were sent to various work camps. From then on all Jews between the ages of sixteen and fifty had to report daily for selection.

1940: Today, the Lawrence family including future American alpine ski racer David Judah Lawrene who had received help from Portugues consul Arsitides de Sousa Mendes, checked out of the Grande Hotel and “boarded the Pan Am Yanke Clipper headed for New York City.”

1941: Birthdate of Lawrence G. "Larry" Cohen “an American film producer, director, and screenwriter” who “is best known for directing his own low-budget, satirical, and inventive horror films and thrillers that are laced with scathing social commentary about modern American society.”

1941: (20th Tammuz, 5701): Nazi forces and local Lithuanian sympathizers massacred the male population of Telz, including Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch and the faculty of the yeshiva.

1941: Among the people disembarking in Montevideo from the ship Cabo de Buena Esperanza (Cape of Good Hope) today was German-born photographer Jeanne Mandello, who had managed to escape from France.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/15/1941/this-week-in-history-exiled-german-photographer-jeanne-mandello-arrives-in

1941: Fourteen days after 65-year-old Bohemian and  Havana industrialist and art collector Heinrich Waldes, had passed away and almost two years after he had been imprisoned by the Gestapo at Dachau, was cremated today in New York

1942: A two-week killing spree came to an end in Sevastopol during which time over a thousand “refuges and Jewish POWs and another one thousand residents of the city were killed.

1942: The first 2,000 deportees left Holland from the Westerbork transit camp for Auschwitz. Most of them were German Jews who found safety there years earlier.

1942: “That Old Black Magic” a popular tune with music by Harold Arlen was recorded for the first time today.

1942(1st of Av, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Av

1942(1st of Av, 5702): One thousand Jews from Moczadz were taken to the woods and shot dead.

1942(1st of Av, 5702): One thousand Jews were murdered in Bereza Kartuska, Belerus in the Soviet Union.

1942: Etty Hillesum “received an appointment to the office on the Lijnbaansgracht” where she worked until she was transferred to Westerbrook.

1942: At the end of the workday, 48-year-old Alfred Le Guellec, “who held an important position in the service of foreign national for the Prefecture of Police is upset when he hears a rumor that a mass arrest of Jews is planned for tomorrow. As soon as he was safely away from the building he warned everybody he saw wearing a yellow star about the impending doom and told them to hide. This bravery would save the life of his friend Marcel Skurnik, his wife and their daughter Dora. (More tomorrow)

1943: Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves,   director of the Manhattan Project (the super-secret project to build the Atomic Bomb) verbally ordered that Robert J. Oppenheimer be given security clearance regardless of accusations about his loyalty.

1943: A week after Bruno Kittel, an Oberscharfuhrer in the German Security Police ordered Jacob Gens, “the de factor head of the Vilna Ghetto” to immediately surrender “Itzik Wittenberg, the Communist commander of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO), the United Partisans Organization, the ghetto’s underground resistance movement” today “Jacob Gens summoned the leaders of the FPO—Wittenberg, Abba Kovner, Abrasha Chwojnik, and Chenia Borowska—to a meeting at his office in the Judenrat building, Gens’s headquarters.”

1943: Henry Levin began his Hollywood career as dialogue director for “Appointment in Berlin,” a war move that premiered today which was produced by Samuel Bischoff and featured Felix Basch as Hoppner

1944(24th of Tammuz, 5704): Parashat Pinchas

1944: After 7,176 Jews had been shipped from Lodz to Chelmon, deportations were halted.  They would resume again in August.

1944: The Red Army approached Siauliai, Lithuania, so the Germans cleared the town of its remaining four thousand Jews. More and more Jews were finding freedom in the arms of the advancing Red Army.

1944: The Kovno Ghetto was cleared out of its remaining Jews.

1944: The Chicago Sun reported "1,000,000 Hungarian Jews Face Massacre, Hull Says."  Hull was Cordell Hull the Secretary of State whose wife’s father was a Jewish immigrant from Austria. She was raised as an Episcopalian.  The level of anti-Semitism in the United States was such that, according to biographer Irwin Gellman, Hull hid her Jewish connection to protect his political career. 

1944: Today “Anne McCormick, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times wrote in defense of Hungary as the last refuge of Jews in Europe, declaring that "as long as they exercised any authority in their own house, the Hungarians tried to protect the Jews.

1944: Birthdate of Kobi Oshrat “an Israeli composer and conductor who composed and conducted the winning entry at the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest Hallelujah sung by Gali Atari and Milk and Honey.”

1944: Australian Prime Minister John Curtin informed Isaac Steinberg that “the Australian government would not ‘depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia’ and could not ‘entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League’” i.e. the settlement of a large number of Jewish refugees in the Kimberly region of Western Australia.

1945: “The internationalization of Palestine as part of a long-range program to settle difficulties in the troubled Middle East was suggested today by the Foreign Policy Association” in a report that said “Any course the United States pursues toward Palestine must be developed in relation to our broader policy with respect to Britain and Russia” even if that means ignoring the conflicting claims of the Zionists and Arabs.

1946: “Jewish veterans, protesting against British action in Palestine, told President Truman today that they were prepared to recruit "a full division of Jewish volunteers for service in the Holy Land" if he felt it desirable to send United States forces to facilitate the entry of 100,000 European Jews into that country.”

1947: “Two hundred leaders of the Amusement Industry Division, including motion picture executives, producers and composers, contributed $200,000 today to the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York at an emergency luncheon at the Hotel Astor.”

1948: President Harry Truman was nominated for another term by the Democratic Party.  Truman’s candidacy was pronounced dead on arrival.  The Dixiecrats left the party over the issue of Civil Rights and backed Strom Thurmond for President.  Part of the left wing of the party left to support the candidacy of Henry Wallace, the man who had been Vice President during Roosevelt’s third term.  Truman’s victory over Dewey would be one of the greatest upsets in political history.  Truman garnered a large part of the Jewish vote which was congregated in key states with large electoral votes.  Jewish support was in no small part a reward for Truman’s decision to recognize the Jewish state which was fighting for survival as the man from Missouri fought for his political life.

1948: Still seeking a way to reach Tel Aviv, the Egyptians attacked Be’erot Yitzhak.  In a day long desperate fight, the outnumbered defenders drove off the Egyptians.  As the Egyptians retreated, seventeen of the Israeli fighter lay dead and all of the settlement’s buildings had been destroyed.  Tel Aviv was saved, but the cost was high.

1948: Continuing their drive for Nazareth, Israeli forces take Zippori after fierce fighting.

1948: While the fighting flared, the diplomats dithered.  The United Nations decided that the Arab rejection of the extension of the truce that had been proposed by Count Bernadotte was a “breach of the peace” and ordered a permanent cease-fire.  The Arabs ignored the threat of sanctions and rejected the cease-fire. 

1948: Israeli forces renewed their attempts to retake the Old City by launching attacks on the New Gate, the Jaffa Gate and the Zion Gate, none of which would prove successful.

1948: During Operation Dekel, Israeli planes attacked the village of Saffuriya

1948: Israeli forces began another attack on the Latrun Fortress, the Jordanian held military installation that was blocking the road to Jerusalem.

1948: Yosef “Sprinzak was elected to the position of speaker of the provisional parliament.”

1949: “Miss Liberty,” a musical with lyrics and music by Irving Berlin, “directed by Moss Hart and choreographed by Jerome Robbins” opened on Broadway at the Imperial Threatre

1949: “The best known version” of "I Can Dream, Can't I?" a popular song written by Sammy Fain with lyrics by Irving Kahal “was recorded by the Andrews Sister” who were not Jewish.

1949: “Any Number Can Play” the film version of the novel by the same name directed by Mervyn LeRoy, produced Arthur Freed and with a script by Richard Brooks was released in the United States today.

1951: Ted Lurie, The Jerusalem Post reporter and future editor, visited Eilat and described the difficulties facing the new settlers. There was no bakery, the water tasted rusty and caused diarrhea, there was no facility to chill water or bottled drinks. But a large cold-storage plant was being planned to make the import of meat from East Africa possible.

1952: The first production of “The Seven Year Itch” the hit comedy by George Axelrod, the son of Russian Jewish immigrant Herman Axelrod took place at the Fulton Theatre in New York City.

1953: “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” the movie version of the Broadway musical with a book by Joseph Fields and music by Jules Styne, produced by Sol C. Siegel and starring Marilyn Monroe who would later convert to Judaism, was released by 20th Century Fox today in the United States.

1954: “A national income of $600,000,000,000 a year with jobs available for 100,000,000 persons with the next twenty-five years was described as probable” today by Samuel Bronfman, president of the Distillers Corporation-Seagrams, Ltd during a speech delivered at the Waldorf-Astoria.

1954(14th of Tammuz, 5714): Sixty-five-year 0lf Newark born Pace Institute graduate, Jacob N. Spiro, a veteran of the Mexican Border incursion and the WW I and a thirty-year veteran of the leather goods industry passed who was married to Ida Agriss Spiro with whom he had two children, passed away today while on vacation.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/07/17/83767963.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&pageNumber=13

1955: “The Cobweb” the film version of the novel by the same name co-starring Lauren Bacall with music by Leonard Rosenman was released in the United States today.

1955: Eighteen Nobel laureates signed the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons. The declaration was created by Otto Hahn and Max Born.  Hahn had stayed in Germany after the rise of the Nazis and played a major role in the atomic program.  Born had to leave Germany in 1933.  He had become a Lutheran but his parents were Jewish and as far as the Nazis were concerned Born was still Jewish.

1956(7th of Av, 5716): Forty-one-year-old Canadian born author David W. Petegorsky who was the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress passed away today

http://www.archeion.ca/david-w-petegorsky-fonds;rad

1958: Five thousand U.S. Marines landed in Beirut, Lebanon, to protect the pro-Western government. This landing took place at the same time that the pro-Western government of Iraq was being overthrown. The fighting in Lebanon was part of an on-going struggle between the Christians and the Moslems which had supposedly been settled by a power-sharing agreement set up by the French before they ended their imperial role there. The collapse of this power-sharing agreement would explode in a civil war in the 1970’s, the aftermath of which exists today. Needless to say, this instability in its northern neighbor has added to Israel’s problems.

1959: “A Hole in the Head,” a film version the 1957 play be Arnold Schulman who wrote the script for the movie was released in the United State States today.

1959(9th of Tammuz, 5719): Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch passed away.  While his works covered a variety of themes, from a Jewish point of view, one of his most interesting works was Schelomo, a composition for cello and orchestra written in 1915 that was completed during Bloch's "Jewish Cycle," which lasted from 1912–1926

1959: Birthdate of Istanbul native David Tzur, who made Aliyah at the age of six and pursued a career in security with the government before being elected to the Knesset in the elections of 2013.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189006#.VRMh5fmsWhE

1960:” Pension Schöller is a 1960 West German comedy film” featuring Leo Askin as “Fritz Bernhardi” was released today/

1961: David Saul Marshall who would later serve as the first Chief Minister of Singapore began serving as the the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Anson today.

1963: It was reported today, that in Los Angeles at the 66th annual convention of ZOA, California Congressman James Roosevelt, the eldest son of FDR expressed his support for Israel saying that “If Israel is to survive, the U.S.A. must convince the Communists and the Arab world that the full strength of our military and economic resources are behind the achievement of peace between Israel and her neighbors.” (JTA)

1965: “Eve of Destruction,” written by P.F. Sloan was recorded with Sloan on guitar and Hal Blaine on drums.

1965: Birthdate of David Miliband, leader of the British Labour Party.

1966(27th of Tammuz, 5726): Seventy-seven year old Sally Pinansky Wingersky, the daughter of Nathan and Ida Ginsberg Pinanski passed away today after which she buried at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery in West Roxbury, MA.

1967(7th of Tammuz, 5727): Parashat Balak

1967: Carole Avnet, the daughter of Lester Avnet and the granddaughter of Russian-Jewish immigrant Charles Avnet, the founder of what became Avnet, Inc. married Jerome B. Rochelle this afternoon at the home of her parents.

1967: During the War of Attrition an Israeli Air Force Mirage III is shot down by Egyptian MiG-21.

1968: ABC broadcast the first episode of “One Life to Live” a soap opera in which Doris Belack appeared for nearly a decade as “Anna Wolke Craig” a role which she created

1969(29th of Tammuz, 5729): Eighty-eight-year-old, the German born son of banker Leo Isaac who came to the United States in 1915 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: Rod Carew ties the record with his 7th steal of home in a season.  Carew is not Jewish, although he has been mistakenly identified as one.  He is married to a Jewish woman and his children have been raised in the faith of their mother.

1970: “The Revolutionary,” based on the novel of the same name produced by Edward R. Pressman was released in the United States today.

1970: “Joe,” with a screenplay written by Norman Wexler was released today in the United States.

1970: “The second internation Summer Science Institute, bringing together teen-age science enthusiasts from six countries” opened at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.

1972(4th of Av, 5732): Parasaht Devarim and Shabat Chazon.

1973: General Shmuel Gonen assumed command of Israel’s Southern Front.  He replaced Ariel Sharon who was leaving the army to go into politics.  Just prior to the change in command, Sharon told Defense Minister Dayan that Gonen lacked the experience to handle the command if war should break out.  Dayan assured Sharon that Gonen had plenty of time to gain the needed experience since there was not going to be a war in 1973.

1973 CIA Director Richard Helms sent a telegram to Henry Kissinger,  Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor, stating that King Hussein of Jordan had told him that Jordanian intelligence had learned of a Syrian attack to recapture the Golan Heights originally  which had been delayed since June could take place at any time; probably sooner than later. One of the Jordanian intelligence sources was the commander of a Syrian armored brigade, and the Jordanians had obtained a copy of the battle plans, which had been coordinated with Egypt and Iraq. Once again, instability in the Middle East is shown not to be “an Israeli problem.”  In fact the Americans would call upon the Israelis to assist in thwarting the planned attacked.3

1974: Birthdate of Menachem Stark.

http://forward.com/news/190580/who-was-menachem-stark-and-why-was-he-murdered/

1974: “Over 150 Belgian academics handed a petition to Soviet Ambassador Sobelev expressing concern at the fate of their colleagues who seek to emigrate from the USSR.”

1976(17th of Tammuz, 5736): Tzom Tammuz

1976: It was reported today that the Labor Party Government is being pressed by a large number of British citizens “to take some firm action” in response to the “presumed death of 73 year old Dora Bloch, an Anglo-Israeli who disappeared after the Israeli raid on Entebbe.

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that former defense minister Moshe Dayan called for an arrangement whereby Jews and Arabs would live together in the administered territories, with the Arabs remaining Jordanians and the land remaining under Israeli control. He stressed that Israelis were in the territories by right, not as conquerors. Questioned whether Arabs would agree to this, he replied that if we had to do things according to the desires of the Arabs, we could pack our bags and go to Canada. A delegation of Israeli legal and atomic energy experts visited Washington to work out final details of the sale of two US 450-megawatt reactors to Israel.

1977: The I Love NY Logo designed by Milton Glaser today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_New_York#/media/File:I_Love_New_York.svg

1977(29th of Tammuz, 5737): Eighty-two-year-old talent and literary agent Adeline Jaffe passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schulberg-adeline-jaffe

1978(10th of Tammuz, 5738): Parashat Chukat

1978(10th of Tammuz, 5738): Sixty-nine-year-old Phillip P. Elfenbein, “the son of Samuel and Celia Elfenbein” and “husband of Sarah Elaine Elfenbein” passed away today in “West Covina, CA.”

1979: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services were scheduled to held today for seventy-six-year-old “Rabbi Joseph Hyman Lookstein, a Jewish educator long prominent in Orthodox Judaism and rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side for half of Its more than 100 years.”

1979: It was disclosed today, “on the eve of Israel Air Force Day” that “a sophisticated American made reconnaissance and intelligence gathering aircraft, the Hawkeye, recently acquired by Israel is fully operational and has already seen action.” (JTA)

1981(13th of Tammuz, 5741): Three people were murdered and 25 more injured “in rocket attacks today in northern Israel.

1982: “The Last American Virgin” directed by Boaz Davidson who also wrote the script, produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan and filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg was released in Germany today.

1983(5th of Av,5743): Sixty-six-year-old U.S. Army WW II veteran Leon Abrahams, the New York born son of Max and Fannie Danovitch Abrahams passed away in Branford, CT after which he was buried at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, NY

1986(8th of Tammuz, 5746):  Actor and comedian Benny Rubin passed away at the age of 87.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/17/obituaries/benny-rubin-an-actor-and-vaudeville-comic.html

1986(8th of Tammuz, 5746): Sixty-year-old Edmund I. Kaufmann, the District of Columbia born “son of Cecil David Kaufmann and Isabelle Kaufman” and husband of Myrna D. Kaufmann passed away today.

1988: “Aviya's Summer,” a movie version of the Hebrew-language bestseller that was an autobiographical novel by actress Gila Almagor was released in Israel today.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095433//

1990: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning at Temple Beth El  in Spring Valley for sixty-three-year-old leukemia victim, Republican State Senator Eugene Levy a WW II veteran serving in the Navy Medical Corps, the husband of Geraldine Schak Levy and the father of William Levy.

1991(4th of Av, 5751): Seventy-nine-year-old New York native Morris “Moe” Spahn the all-star basketball player for CCNY who went on to a successful pro career in the American Basketball League and was the father Dartmouth basketball player Steve Spahn, passed away today.

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=basketball&ID=187

1991: Award winning “British economic historian” Robert Skidelsky, the father of journalist William Skidelsky and university lecturer Edward Skidelsky, “was created a life peer as Baron Skidelsky, of Tilton in the County of East Sussex.”

1991: The Landmarks Preservation commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the New York Public Library, Aguilar Branch, and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site. “The Aguilar Branch of the New York Public Library initially was built for the Aguilar Free Library Society which was founded in 1886 as an independent library to provide circulating books for immigrant Jews.  The society was named after Grace Aguilar a popular 19th century British novelist and essayist of Sephardic Jewish descent.” (As reported by the Landmarks Preservation Commission)

1992: In “Orphans Gather For A Family Reunion” published today Ron Grossman provides a history of the Marks Nathan Home.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-07-15/features/9203030739_1_orphanage-family-reunion-bleak-house

1997(10th of Tammuz, 5757): Fifty-eight year old NYU player and coach Mark Reiner passed away today.

1993: Fourteenth Maccabiah comes to an end.

1994: “Angels in the Outfield” a baseball comedy/fantasy co-produced by Joe Roth and Roger Birnbaum and music by Randy Edelman was released in the United States today.

1995: “He’s The Real Kosher Link” published today described the life and times of Rabbi David Hill, “the president of Real Kosher Sausage Company…the home to the last kosher salami factory in Manhattan.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/real-kosher-link-article-1.701144

1999(2nd of Av, 5759): Eighty-year old Benjamin Forester “Ben” Sohn the San Diego High School who was an all-star lineman at USC in the late 1930’s and played a season for the New York Football Giants passed away today.

1999: “The Last Days” a documentary that “tells the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Shoah” that “focuses on the horrors of life in the concentration camps” was released in Australia today.

1999: “Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1244, the nominated Dr. Bernard Kouchner as the second UN Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)

2000: Whizzing around Camp David in golf carts and on bicycles, as if they were resort guests and not confined like prisoners of diplomacy in a pressure-cooker summit meeting, Israeli and Palestinian leaders spent their fourth day in secluded negotiations today. (As reported by Deborah Sontag)

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Supreme Injustice by Alan M. Dershowitz, Vote: Bush, Gore and the Supreme Court edited by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard A. Epstein, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in October and currently available as an e-book on the Web site www.thevotebook.com) and the recently released paperback editions of Scandalmonger by William Safire and Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play by James Shapiro

2001: A revival of “Do I Hear a Waltz?” a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened today at the Pasadena Playhouse.

2001: TBS began broadcasting “The Mists of Avalon,” a mini-series co-starring Juliana Margulies.

2002: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects were convicted of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2003(15th of Tammuz, 5763): “Amir Simhon, 24, of Bat Yam was killed when a Palestinian armed with a long-bladed knife stabbed passersby on Tel Aviv's beachfront promenade, after a security guard prevented him from entering the Tarabin cafe and was wounded. The terrorist, who was shot and apprehended, is a member of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

2004: “With immigration to Israel down sharply in recent years, a charter flight delivered nearly 400 new arrivals from the United States and Canada today as part of an expanding program, Nefesh B’Nefesh” that has been bringing middle-class Jews from North America

2005: Today, The Washington Post reported that Judith Miller could face criminal contempt charges as the government continues to investigate the role Scooter Libby played in exposing Valery Plame’s CIA identity.

2005: Lily Gasway begins the celebration of her Bat Mitzvah by leading Friday Services at Temple Judah.  In Cedar Rapids, thanks to Lily and the Gasway family "Am Yisroel Chai."

2005(8th of Tammuz, 5765): Ninety-two-year-old Scottish author and literary critic David Daiches whose works included his 1956 memoir, Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood passed away today at Edinburgh.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jul/18/guardianobituaries.obituaries

2005: “Wedding Crashers” a comedy co-starring Isla Fisher and Jane Seymour was released in the United States today.

2006: In “Missile, Not Drone, Hit Israeli Warship” published today, the Guardian described the outcome of an investigation into an attack on an Israeli ship off the coast of Lebanon.

2006:  In response to orders from The Home Front Command businesses and clubs in Karmiel remained closed as Katyusha alerts rang throughout Karmiel sending residents into bomb shelters. In light of the situation, the Home Front Command has decided to operate a silent radio wave in the following frequencies: FM 102.2, 98.5, 95.7. This enabled those keep the Sabbath to leave the radio turned on and listen to emergency announcements. Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel cannot interfere with those who are “Shomer Shabbos.”

2007: Hadassah opens its 93rd national convention in New York City.

2007: Gad “Elmaleh premiered his fifth one-man show, Papa est en haut, in Montreal as part of the “Just for Laughs” festival

2007: Shimon Peres formally becomes President of Israel, a post that he will hold for a seven year term.

2007: The Rochester Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy.”

2007: The National Art Gallery presents a screening of “Children Must Laugh,” one of the few surviving documentaries about Jewish life in Poland before WWII.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book sections featured reviews of 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East by Tom Segev, translated by Jessica Cohen and Presence, a collection of stories written by Arthur Miller in the years before his death in 2005.

2008: In Washington, D.C. Professor Alvin S. Felzenberg discusses and signs The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game at the National Press Club.

2008: As part of complicated and controversial prisoner exchange, President Shimon Peres signed the pardon of Samir Kuntar, the terrorists who murdered several Israelis in cold blood in 1982.  Peres said that the pardon in no way should be seen as an act of forgiveness.  Arabs in Lebananon await the release of Kuntar who will be greeted as a hero.

2008: In suburban Washington, D.C., Ellen Rachlin, author of Until Crazy Catches Me and the forthcoming chapbook Captive to Residue, reads from her work as part of the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series

2008: The 79th All Star Game is played at Yankee Stadium in New York City. At least three players of Jewish descent made the lineups of Major League Baseball's All -Star teams. Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis will start for the American League Ian Kinsler, the second baseman from the Texas Rangers, will be a reserve for the American League. Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun will start for the National League. The all-star selections were announced Sunday. Youkilis, whose nickname is "The Greek God of Walks," openly identifies as Jewish. In explaining his charity work, he once told mlb.com, "In my religion, the Jewish religion, that's one of the biggest things that's taught, is giving a mitzvah, forming a mitzvah." He also said, "I was always taught as a kid giving to charity. You're supposed to give a good amount of charity each and every year." Both Braun and Kinsler have Jewish fathers and reportedly identify as half-Jewish.

2009: Once a year the banks of Paris’ Seine River are transformed into a makeshift beach known as “Paris Plages”, complete with parasols, beach chairs, amusement rides and plenty of shirtless Parisians. This year the French capital honors its twin city of Tel Aviv-Yafo with an Israeli beach party on the Seine’s left bank.

2009: At the 18th Maccabiah Games, Israel plays Australia in Cricket.

2009: At the Randi & Bruce Pergament Jewish Film Festival a screening of “Noodle, a touching comic-drama about two human beings, as different as Tel Aviv is from Beijing, on a remarkable journey together to find their way back to a meaningful life.”

2009: Today Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat ordered his municipality to halt all services to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim.

2009(23rd of Tammuz, 5769): Julius Shulman, an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph "Case Study House #22passed away.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-julius-shulman17-2009jul17-story.html#page=1

2009(23rd of Tammuz, 5769): Seventy-eight-year-old Avraham Ahituv “who served as director of the Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, from 1974 to 1980” passed away today.

http://israelspy.com/one-of-the-grand-old-men-of-israeli-espionage-security-has-died-like-zelig-involved-in-almost-everything-felled-by-scandal/

2009: “Mark Polansky was the commander of the STS-127 mission, which launched aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour” today.

2009: Swindler Sam Israel III was sentenced to an additional two years in prison for failing to report to authorities, effectively escaping prison before showing up to be jailed.

2010: In Washington, D.C. Norman Shore is scheduled to lead the final class of “I Kings: May the King Live! A Study of King Solomon and his Heirs.”

2010: Critically acclaimed Israeli choreographer Deganit Shemy, known for her aggressively physical work is scheduled to bring five dancers together for their final performance of the week in the courtyard at John Street United Methodist Church in New York City.

2010: Haim Pearlman, suspected of four counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder, was remanded in custody until July 22 by the Petah Tikva District Court today. The suspected, who is associated with the outlawed Kach movement, was arrested two nights ago by Jerusalem Police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

2010: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has appointed Meiron Reuven, Israel's ambassador to Colombia, as the new ambassador to the UN today Israel Radio reported.

2011: “Lucky,” a comedy starring Jeffrey Tambor was released in the United States today.

2011: In a time of communal sorrow, the funeral of Suzanne Katz, the wife of Bert Katz, is scheduled to take place at Eben Israel Cemetery in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2011: Firefighters extinguished a fire in the Golan today, after battling the blaze that broke out in the Ein Tina Nature Reserve yesterday.

2011: Five Kassam rockets were fired into southern Israel overnight and an additional mortar shell from Gaza landed in the Negev this morning. No one was hurt in the attacks and no damage was reported. The IAF responded to the rocket attacks with airstrikes on six targets in Gaza.

2011(9th of Tammuz, 5681): The original Penang Jewish community ceased to exist with the death of 89 Mordecai (Mordy) David Mordecai today.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/oeyvind/38778517515

2011: Defense Forces officials issued a statement Friday, condemning Hamas for not taking action to stop rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel, shortly after Chief of Staff Benny Gantz called an emergency meeting to discuss the increased violence in southern Israel..

2012: Those celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth of Walter Benjamin today might be reading his essay “On the Concept of History” or Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait by Professor Eli Friedlander, the head of the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University.

2012(25th of Tammuz, 5772): Centenarian Jacqueline Piatigorsky (Jacqueline Rebecca Louise de Rothschild) passed away today.

http://main.uschess.org/content/view/11816/141/

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jacqueline-piatigorsky-20120722-story.html#page=1

2012: “Spies, Traitors and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America” a creation of the International Spy Museum, is scheduled to open at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

2012: “Silk Stones,” an exhibition feature the works of Rochelle Rubinstein is scheduled to come to a close at the Yeshiva University Museum.

2012: Jack Markell, the Governor of Delaware began serving of as Chair of the National Governors Assoication.

2012: The final screening of Israeli documentary filmmaker Michal Aviad’s “Invisisble” at the Museum of Modern Art.

 2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family’s Legacy of Infidelities by Katharine Weber and Why This World George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family’s Legacy of Infidelities by Katharine Weber 

2012: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will arrive in Israel this evening in preparation for talks tomorrow for meetings with top Israeli leaders on Iran, Egypt, Syria and the frozen peace process with the Palestinians.

2012: About a hundred protesters clashed with police near the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem today, in a rally summoned following the self-immolation of a Haifa resident during a protest marking one year since the onset of social unrest in Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/hundreds-of-israelis-protest-state-s-social-policy-in-wake-of-self-immolation-1.451259

http://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-rally-in-solidarity-with-self-torcher-in-tel-aviv/

2012: The battle for universal draft arrived at the Arab public’s doorstep today when nearly 100 right-wing protestors held a demonstration in the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth in the lower Galilee.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/right-wing-activists-demonstrate-for-universal-draft-in-nazareth/

 

2013: The Seventh Biennale of Israeli Ceramcis is scheduled to open at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

http://www.eretzmuseum.org.il/e/282/

 

2013: In the evening members of the Fort Belvoir Jewish Congregation and Beth El Hebrew Congregation will join together for a Tisha B’Av observance that will include a study session – “Should Israel Build the  Third Temple?” – followed by the chanting of Eicha, Lamentations.

2013: Israel approved a request by the Egyptian army to increase its forces in Sinai, following a rise in violence in the peninsula in recent weeks.

2013: Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein barred Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu from running for the position of Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel because of derogatory statements he made in the past regarding the Arab community. (As reported by Jeremy Sharon)

2013: Ian Paul Livingston, the fourth generation son Litvak immigrants to Scotland “became a member of the House of Lords, as a life peer” today.

2013: Hamas has developed the ability to locally manufacture rockets with the range to hit Israel’s heartland including Tel Aviv, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said today. (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2014: Rabbi Shira is scheduled to lead a discussion of “What Does It Mean to Be Jewish?” at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue.

 

2014(17th of Tammuz): Shiva Asar Be-Tammuz – As a new round of enemies seek to “breach the walls of Israel” observance of a minor fast day that  commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. by the Babylonians and again in 70 C.E. by the Romans

2014: “Macon Openshaw, 21, of Salt Lake City who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah to firing three rounds from a handgun at the Congregation Kol Ami synagogue in Salt Lake City” is scheduled to be sentenced today. (JTA)

2014: Thirteen Palestinian children, six from Gaza and seven from Judea and Samaria, are expected to arrive today at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. The children are brought by the Israel- based international charity Save a Child's Heart to undergo life-saving heart treatments at Wolfson.

 

2014: In the wake of anti-Israel protests in several countries and violent attacks against Jews in France, Morocco and Australia, the Ant-Defamation League issued a security advisory to all Jewish institutions and synagogues.”

 

2014: Following another rocket attack from Syria, the IAF struck Base 90, a Syrian military airbase.

 

2014(17th of Tammuz, 5774): After Israel accepted the ceasefire; Hamas rejected it and continued to bombard Israel with rockets. 

 

2014(17th of Tammuz, 5774): Thirty-seven year old Dror Hanin, a civilian from Beit Aryeh, was killed by mortar fire from Gaza while he was delivering food and drinks to IDF troops.

 

2015: “Being There” is scheduled to be shown at the National Museum of American Jewish History as part of the “Seventies Summer Cinema” program

 

2015(28th of Tammuz, 5775): Eighty-nine-year-old English born actor Aubrey Morris passed away today.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/16/aubrey-morris?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it

2015: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host “Summer Wednesdays” where “kids can cool down and explore the exhibition Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak in his Own Words and Pictures.

2015: “The Second Mother” and “The Mud Woman” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2015: Following a similar episode two weeks ago when “a 20-year-old female IDF soldier was stabbed by a female Palestinian attacker outside of Bethlehem” a teenage girl stabbed an Israeli soldier today after which he was “evacuated to Tel HaShomer Hospital” and she “arrested by security forces.”

2015: Three masked men of African descent armed with handguns assaulted and robbed a family in suburban in a crime that was thought to have been motivated, in part, by the fact that the family was Jewish.

2015: A German court sentenced 94 year old Oskar Gröning, a former SS soldier to four years in jail for complicity in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

2015: Tonight, terrorists in Gaza launched a rocket attack on the Hof Ashkelon region.

2016: “Nazi Art Loot Returned…to Nazis” published today Doreen Carvajal and Alison Smale

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/arts/design/nazi-art-loot-returned-to-nazis.html?hpw&rref=arts&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016: “The First Monday in May” and “Johnny Guitar” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2017(21st of Tammuz, 5777): Parashat Pinchas;

2017(21st of Tammuz, 5777): Eighty-nine-year-old Oscar winning actor Martin Landau who gained fame as one of the agents in the original television series “Mission: Impossible” passed away today, (As reported by Anita Gates)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/movies/martin-landau-actor-academy-award-dies-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017(21st of Tammuz, 5777): Ninety-six year old Bob Wolff, for whom many is known for his broadcast of such famous sports events as Don Larsen’s Perfect Game, but who for the author of this blog will always be the voice of the Washington Senators, passed away today.  (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/sports/bob-wolff-dead-sports-broadcaster.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

2017: “Letters from Baghdad” a film that tells “the true story of Gertrude Bell and Iraq” is scheduled to open in Hudson, NY.

2017: Director Philippe Garrel and producer Caroline Deruas are scheduled to attend the screening of “Lover for a Day” at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2018: “The Testament” is scheduled to be shown today at the 9th Annual AXELROD Israel Jewish Film Festival.

2018: Three days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held for “Richard Siegel, Director Emeritus of the HUC-JIR Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management.”

http://huc.edu/news/2018/07/13/richard-siegel-director-emeritus-huc-jir-zelikow-school-jewish-nonprofit-management-zl

2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host two screenings of “Keep the Change”

2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Little Panic: Dispatches From an Anxious Life by Amanda Stern and Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart.

2019: According President Mike Fitts, now that the worst is over” from Hurricane Barry classes are scheduled to resume today at Tulane University, home of the Tulane University Jewish Studies Department and Professor Brian Horowitz as well as the alma mater of 2019 graduate Adam Burstein, the son of Drs. Todd and Jennifer Burstein

2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “The Rise of Yiddish Scholarship and the History of YIVP,” a lecture by Cecil Kuuznitz that explores “the origins of Yiddish scholarship and why YIVO's work was seen as crucial to constructing a modern Jewish identity in the Diaspora.”

2019: In Tunkhannock, PA, the Dietrich Film Theater, home of the Summer Fest Summer Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The Spy Behind Home Plate” which the LA times has rated as one of “the best movies of 2019 (so far).”

 2019: In New York, a bond hearing is scheduled in the case of registered sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, in which his attorneys will seek to have him released to his home and federal prosecutors will fight to keep him in jail, because, among other things, he is a flight risk.

2020: Mayyim Hayyim is scheduled to host a virtual program that includes study of mikveh’s biblical roots and a virtual tour of Mayyim Hayyim. 

2020: Live on Zoom, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Being Heumann with Judy Heumann” “an internationally recognized leader in the disability community and a lifelong civil rights advocate.”

2020: Case Western Reserve University is scheduled to host online “Moving West: A History of the Jewish Midwest” with Mara Cohen Ioannides the Senior Instructor, Missouri State University and President, Midwest Jewish Studies Association and the Ozarks Studies Association

2020:  JCRC is scheduled to host an on-line talk about ethnic studies, the upcoming revised draft of the state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum and the stakes for the Jewish community.

2020: Open Circle Jewish Learning is scheduled to host online “Poetry as a Spiritual Exercise.”

2021: The Jewish Community Library is scheduled to present Deborah Levinson talks about her  2018 book, The Crate, which tells “the true story of her parents surviving the Holocaust, resettling in Canada and then making a horrifying discovery underneath their cottage.”

2021: Hamaqom is scheduled to present the first lecture on “Love and Passion in the Biblical World” presented by Dr. Jehon Grist.

2021: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host lunchtime conversation with “author and journalist Julie Salamon and writer and actor Mara Wilson.

2021: The 7th Global Forum for Combating Ant-Semitism” is scheduled to come to an in Jerusalem.

2021: JWA is scheduled to host a book talk with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, professor and author of The Disordered Cosmos, “a journey into the world of particle physics that is vibrant, buoyantly non-traditional, and grounded in Black feminist traditions.”

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host “Quo Vadis Aida?”, the “2021 Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film that recounts and dramatizes the legacy of one of the worst mass murdrs in European history since the Holocaust…”

2021: Or Shalom Jewish Community is scheduled to host the “opener of a four-part lecture series with educator Vavi Toran focuses on how Jews and Arabs can coexist is Israel and the May violence.”

2021: Based on  announcement by the Prime Minister yesterday, as of today Israelis will now have to live with three news measures including “the enforcement of masks in enclosed spaces and fines for anyone who fails to do so; a return to social distancing, in particular at large events; and a recommendation for Israelis not to travel abroad” which are aimed a countering the “Delta pandemic which has seen the otal number of coronavirus cases soar from a little over 200 last month to more than 5, 000 at present.” (As reported by Adir Yanko)

 2022: Kan Kol is scheduled to broadcast a Piano Recital featuring the winner of the Sara and Joseph Seidner Prize.

2022: Despite reports of a new wave a more contagious strain of COVID, The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a “small group tour of The Vilna.

2022: After having signed a pledge with Israel “to deny Iran nuclear weapons” and after having received  Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor from President Isaac Herzog who “tanked his American counterpart of his longstanding support of Israel” yesterday, President Biden is scheduled to continue his trip to the Middle East with meetings in Saudi Arabia today.

2023: The Eden-Tamir Center is scheduled to sponsor the season’s final concert with the

Ensemble Millennium/Toscanini Quartet.

2023: In Stockholm, the police have given performed for a Torah and a Christian Bible to be burned today at a rally in the Sweden’s capital city

2023(26th of Tammuz, 5783): Double Portion Matot-Masay

2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a lecture by William Tyler on “Post-War Palestine, the Creation of Israel and War.”

2024:  The Agnon House travel event “Touring Jewish Life, Literature and Learning in Poland is scheduled to begin today with a 5:05 am flight from Ben Gurion airport to Chopin Airport in Warsaw.

2024: The Limud which is part of  “Week of Goodness” is scheduled to end this evening at 8pm Israeli time followed by an on-line Siyum.

2024: In Waterloo, IA, Sons of Jacob is scheduled to hold its monthly board meeting.

2024: As July 15th 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 283 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.)