This Day, July 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

July 20

356 BCE:  In Macedonia, King Philip II and Queen Olympia gave birth to Alexander the Great. You can draw a straight line from Alexander’s Hellenization of Asia Minor to Chanukah to Tisha B’Av, 70 CE.

http://www.biography.com/print/profile/alexander-the-great-9180468

70: During the Siege of Jerusalem, Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots.

1031: Fifty-nine-year-old King Robert II of France, who “conspired with is vassals to destroy all the Jews who would not accept baptism” and inspired mob violence against the Jews including “the learned Rabbi Senior” passed away today.

1263: Pablo Christiani, a converted Jew, and Raymond of Penaforte, compelled King James of Aragon to force a debate between him and Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides). The Jews were afraid that no matter what the outcome they would lose, so they pleaded with Nachmanides to withdraw. The King ordered him to continue. Although the outcome was preset (the Christians "won"), the King was so impressed that he rewarded Nachmanides with a present of 300 maravedis. Pablo was given permission to continue these debates throughout Aragon with the Jews having to pay his expenses. Two years later Nachmanides was convicted for publishing his side of the debate. Although he was not severely punished by the King, he decided to leave Spain for good and settled in Eretz-Israel.

1402: During the Ottoman-Timurid Wars, Timur led the forces of the Timurid Empire to victory over the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara. This defeat could not have been a source of joy for the Jews living in the Ottoman Empire. Bayezid had proven to be a friend of the Jewish people. “In 1394 Sultan Bayezid invited the French Jews who were molested by King Charles VI, to settle in the Ottoman Empire. They established communities in Edirne and the Balkans. The French Kings had the habit of inviting the Jews to establish commerce and borrowing money from them. However often, when payment was due, they expelled them; only to re-invite them when they needed further financing.” Bayezid died a year after the defeat.

1454: The reign of King John II of Castile and León who overturned the Valladolid laws that restricted Jewish activities and adopted “a more tolerant attitude toward the already battered Jewish population of Castile following the mass wave of conversions” that had taken place from 1391 to 1415, came to an end today.

1588: As the English prepared to meet the Spanish Armada, their fleet “tacked upwind…thus gaining the “weather gage” which would give the smaller fleet an edge in the upcoming battle.

1660: Miguel de Barria “the Spanish poet and historian “whose Hebrew name was Daniel ha-Levi and who was the son of a converso Simon de Barrios (Jacob Levi Caniso) and Sarah Valle” set sail with “152 coreligionists for West Indies, specifically Tobago, where his wife died which led him to return to Europe.

1624(4th of Av): Rabbi Abraham ben David of Lemberg passed away

1633 (13th of Av): Rabbi Nathan Shaprio, a leading Kabblist from Cracow and author of Megale Amukot passed away.

1660: Miguel de Barrios with 152 coreligionists and fellow-sufferers set sail for the West Indies. Soon after his arrival at Tobago his young wife died, and he returned to Europe. He went to Brussels and there entered the military service of Spain

1706: Shabbethai ben Joseph Bass who had founded printing business in Dyhernfurth, a small town near Breslau which produced its first book, a work by Rabbi Samuel ben Uri of Waydyslav in 1689, was forced to leave Breslau as a result of local hostility to Jews.

1729: In King William, VA, Captain Mordecai Abrahams married Sarah Levy today after which they had at least two children, Mordecai and Jacob Abraham.

1771(9th of Av, 5531): Shabbat Chazon; Parashat Devarim; Erev Tish’a B’Av

1774: Judith Polock and Savannah, GA native Philip Minis, the parents of Abigail Minis were married today in Newport, RI.

1775: At the request of the Continental Congress, Jews fasted and prayed for the success of the colonies against the British, and to be spared from the "agony of war."

1778: In New York City, Rachel Heilbron and Haym (Chaim) Solomon who bankrupted himself to help finance the American Revolution gave birth to Ezekiel Salomon

1778: In Sandersleben, Rabbi Joachim Heinemann and his wife gave birth to Jeremiah Heinemann the German author whose secular jobs including serving as the inspector of a teacher’s seminary in Berlin.

1789: Philadelphian Solomon Bush, a veteran of the Continental Army during the American Revolution wrote to President Washington today whom he addressed as “Your Excellency,” saying “Permit one who has fought and Bled in the service of his Country, with heart felt pleasure to Congratulate Your Excellency in your late dignified appoint [Washington’s election to the presidency] offering up his sincere prayers to Almighty God for your health and happiness, and the prosperity of his Country…”

1789: Solomon Bush, who was practicing medicine in London “notified President Washing of the seizure of an American ship from New York because the British alleged that numerous seamen aboard were natives of Britain.”

1790(9th of Av, 5550): Tish'a B'Av observed on the same day that the first U.S. Congress adopted “The Act for the Government and Regulation of Seaman” which the first federal labor law.

1795: In Baltimore, Frances Etting, the Philadelphia born daughter of Michael Gratz and Miriam Gratz and her husband  Captain Reuben Etting gave birth to Elijah Gratz Etting.

1797: Birthdate of German native and future resident of Detroit Hannah Bachman Butzel, the wife of Moses Leo Butzel with whom she had three children including Fannie, Magnus and Martin.

1798: In Charleston, SC Rebecca Hyams, he daughter of Colonel David Maysor and Sarah Sarzedas and her husband David Hyams gave birth to Moses David Hyams

1800: Simon and Johanetta Levy gave birth to their third child Raphael Levy.

1808: Napoleon decreed that all Jews of the French Empire must adopt family names.

1808: Today in accordance with newly adopted law, Samuel Marx Levi, the son of Rabbi Samuel Marx Levi became Samuel Marx when he adopted “the family name Marx for himself and his siblings

1817: In Epinal France, Berr Marx Cerfberr and Marianne Cerfberr gave birth  to journalist Maximilien Charles Alphons Cerfberr, the husband of Augustine Cerfberr de Medelsheim and father of Gaston Cerfberr de Medelsheim who “was attached in 1839 to the penitentiary administration in the Ministry of the Interior and inn 1848 held for a short time the position of commissary of the republic in the department of Saône-et-Loire.”

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4187-cerfberr-maximilien-charles-alphonse-of-medelsheim

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/cerfberr-maximilien-charles-alphonse

1819: Birthdate of Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim the native of Frankfort-on-Main who was the grandson of Gumpel, the banker of Hamburg who became a distinguished jurist.

1820(9th of Av, 5580): Tish’a B’Av

1820(9th of Av, 5580): Judah Moses Ancona, the wife of Hannah Montefiore Ancona and the father of Moses Montefiore Acona, who had been born in 1760 and “was part of a Sephardic family which came to England in the 18th century” passed away today after which he was buried the Sephardi New Cemetery in London.

1823: Pius VII, the Pope who rebuilt the walls of the Rome Ghetto and returned the Jews to its confines after they had been freed by Napoleon passed away today.

1823: Achille Fould married Harriot Goldschmidt at the Great Synagogue today.

1828(9th of Av, 5588): Tish’a B’Av observed

1829: Birthdate of Thomas Rowe one of Australia's leading architects of the Victorian era who designed the Great Synagogue in Sydney

1830: Birthdate of Francesca Janauschek, the Prague native who gained fame as 19th century character actress Fanny Janauschek.

1833: In Brno, Löbl Strakosch and Julia Schwarz to their daughter Aloisia.

1834: Birthdate of Jacques Errera, the native of Venice who was a successful banker and the father of botanist Leo-Abram Errera.

1837(17th of Tammuz, 5597): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the first time during the Presidency of Martin Van Buren.

1837: Birthdate of Nena Frank Lewith, the wife of  Edward Joseph Lewith with whom she had four children – Hulda, Arthur, Josephine and Henry Lewith – who was buried in Charleston, SC when she passed away in 1907.

1838: In Plymouth, NC, Captain Denis Daly, a sea-captain and ship owner, and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of Lieutenant John Duffy of the British Army gave birth to drama critic and playwright John Augustin Daly whose first work was “Leah, the Forsaken,” which is “set in an Austrian village in the early 1700’s” and is a tale of forbidden love between Rudolf “the son of the town’s magistrate” and Leah, a Jew whom the law “prevents from settling” in the town and who also wrote “Under the Gaslight” which starred the Jewess actress Rose Eytinge.

1839(9th of Av, 5599): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon; Erev Tish’a B’Av

1839(9th of Av, 5599): Fifty-nine-year-old Charity Hays, the Bedford, NY born daughter of Esther Etting and David Barrack Hays and the wife of London, England native Jacob da Silva Solis with she had seven children passed away today in New York City.

1841: Rinah J. Ottolengui and Columbia, SC native Jacob I. Moses who had been married in 1839 gave birth to Dr. Montefiore Jacob Moses, who married Rosa Jonas in 1863 and with whom he had had seven children – Belle, Mary, Montrose, Walter, Edwin, Montrose (who was apparently named for his older brother who had already passed away) and Eva.

1842: In London, Charlotte and Lionel Nathan Rothschild gave birth to their second son Alfred Charles Rothschild, the first Jew to serve as “a director of the Bank England,” a position which he held for twenty years.

1845: Nathan and Catherine Levy were married at the Great Synagogue today.

1847: Birthdate of painter and graphic artist Max Liebermann. "Liebermann was one of the leading German impressionist painters." He painted in the manner of the Dutch impressionists rather than the French impressionists. This meant "he often painted people at their everyday tasks and explored the effect of changing sunlight on colors and shadows." When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they included his works in their first showing of "degenerate art." He died in 1935 having been stripped of all his honors and ordered not to paint. Eight years later his was wife committed suicide. I must admit a prejudice. I like his works.

http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/index.php/max-liebermann.html

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/Liebermann/gallery

1849: In Russia, Chayim Ydel Aronin and his wife gave birth to Aryeh Leib Aronin, the rabbi of Congregation Adath Israel in Sheboygan, Wisconsin who was “progenitor of the” Aronin clan in the United States that included Ben Aronin, “the Chicago Jewish community’s quintessential Renaissance Man,” a lawyer who “wrote Jewish-themed songs and plays” and his cousin Sanford Aronin.

1852: Twenty-four-year-old Sarah Naar Cardozo the daughter of Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto and Rachel Lopes Mendes Peixotto and her husband  Abraham Hart Cardozo gave birth to Daniel Henry Cardoza, Sr. the husband of Clara Cardozo and the father of Daniel Henry Cardozo, Jr. his first-born son.

1855: According to today’s “New by the Mail” column, “A Protestant lady in St. Louis with seven children has joined the Hebrew congregation there.”

1856(17th of Tammuz, 5616): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Franklin Pierce

1858((9th of Av, 5618): Tish’a B’Av observed on the day that an all-star baseball team from New York played their counterparts from Brooklyn in what would be the first game in the baseball rivalries between the teams from Gotham and Brooklyn that only ended when the Dodgers and the Giants moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

1859: Birthdate of German botanist and Zionist leader Otto Warburg whose family originally came to Germany in the 16th century and who was “one of the members of the El Arish expedition, appointed by Theodor Herzl as the agricultural member of the team led by Leopold Kessler.”

1862: As General George B. McClellan turned into a disaster, August Belmont wrote Thurlow Weed to express his view that the only way to effect re-union was by negotiations if possible.  He called for a cessation to the war effort because it was too costly in terms of human life and treasure. (Belmont was Jewish.  McClellan and Weed were not.)

1863: In describing conditions in Memphis, TN, a year after it had surrendered to forces of the Union Army, the New York Times reported that “There remains in the city but a portion of the old citizens, the balance are vagabonding in Dixie, or are carrying a musket in the Southern army, or have left their bones on the hundred battle-fields of the South. Their residences here have been seized by the Government, and to-day the palatial dwellings of many an old aristocrat are occupied by National officials, and the hordes of Jews, who follow in the rear of an army, like wolves behind the hunters.” [Anti-Semitic references like this stand in stark contrast to acceptance of Jews as can be seen by the change in the law allowing Rabbis to serve as chaplains and the reality of the thousands of Jews who fought for the federals, some of whom reached the rank of general.]

1863: The 11th Regiment of the New York State which was commanded by Colonel Joachim Maidhof when it was mustered into federal service in 1862 was mustered out of United States service today.

1864: Colonel Frederick Knefler commanded the 79th Indiana Infantry at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, part of Sherman’s audacious campaign to capture Atlanta.

1864: Today, “at the battle near Peach Tree Creek” near Atlanta, GA, “Colonel Edward S. Salomon, the commander of the 82nd Regiment, Illinois Volunteers “performed a most gallant and meritorious part in repulsing the repeated onslaughts made by the enemy” and “in the face of a furious raking fire, held his line for four hours” after which “the enemy withdrew from his front with great loss.”

1864: After three years, Aaron Lazarus who risen from the rank of Private to that of Brevet Captain in the 28th Regiment of United States volunteers completed his enlistment while serving as the Regimental Adjutant

1865: Leopold Hoffman who had risen from the rank of private to Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant in the 12th Cavalry completed his three year enlistment today.

1865: Philadelphians Lt. Anton Goldschmidt, Sergeant Ephraim Rosenthal, Quartermaster Sergeant Abraham Weinbach, Captain Leopold Meyer, Captain Jacob Herzog and Sergeant Elias Reubenthal completed their service with the 113th Regiment of the Twelfth Cavalry in the Union Army.

1867: In St. Louis, MO, A.S. and Isabella Hill gave birth to Washington University graduate and Republican party member Louis P. Aloe, the “president of A.S. Aloe, Co, opticians” and the husband of Edith Rosenblatt with whom he had three daughter – Clara, Viola and Louise.

1869: “The Innocents Abroad” Mark Twain’s travelogue describing his visit to Europe and the Holy Land (including what is now the state of Israel) is published.  For more about the famed American humorist’s attitude towards Jews see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/twain.html

1870(21st of Tammuz, 5630): Forty-year-old French journalist Lucien-Anatole Prévost-Paradol the son of Léon Halévy passed away today in Washington, D.C.

1871: British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada. In 1858, the first large body of Jews arrived in British Columbia along with others seeking their fortunes in the Fraser River Gold Rush.  By 1863, there were enough Jews living in Victoria, B.C. to establish Congregation Emanu-El, now Canada's longest serving synagogue. Ten years after B.C. joined the confederation, the Jewish community would receive its next influx of settlers as refugees from Russian anti-Semitism settled in the Canadian West.

1872: Beatrice Rachel Faudel, the daughter of Helen Levy and Sir George Faudel and the granddaughter of Joseph Moses Levy married Phillip G. Henriques of Grosvenor Square with whom she had one son born in 1894.

1873(25th of Tammuz, 5633): Rabbi Asron Gunizburg, the Austrian born son of Moses Gunzburg, the husband of Caroline A. Kuh and the father of Virginia and Clara Gunizburg passed away today in Boston.

1874: In Pittsburgh, PA, Mary Leavitt and Samuel Levin gave birth to Duquesne College and University of Pittsburgh trained lawyer Leonard S. Levin, the husband of Stella Fink and assistant City Attorney in Pittsburgh for  two years who was President of the Men’s Society of Temple Rodef Shalom and second vice president of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods.

1875(17th of Tammuz, 5635): Tzom Tammuz

1875: In New York, Emma Goodman and Israel Stone gave birth Rosetta Stone, a teacher in the Antique Department of the New York School of Applied Design for Women and a member of the New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women who worked with “Jewish girls at the State Reformatory for Women and House of Refuge.”

https://books.google.com/books?id=yqFKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA104&lpg=PA104&dq=Superintendent+Spectorsky&source=bl&ots=U-UXBXhdFu&sig=xnKg75QJVrdHjp3iJaw4t0Um28M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CPr-UdWJAsjUyQHGj4DYDQ&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Superintendent%20Spectorsky&f=false

1875(17th of Tammuz, 5635): Thüringen, Germany native Rosina Meyer Dreyfus, the mother of Isaac Dreyfus and mother-in-law of Bertha Simon Dreyfus, passed away today after which she was buried in the Congregation Anshe Emeth Cemetery in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

1876: Birthdate of German mathematician Otto Blumenthal.  Blumenthal converted at the age of 18.  He may have believed that he would find the path to academic success a lot smoother as a Protestant.  In the end, it did not save him from the Nazis.  Blumenthal died in concentration camp in 1944.

1880: In Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany, Julie Rosenberg, the Westphalia born daughter of Abraham Bendix Weinberg and Frieda Sophia Weinberg and her husband Isaac Rosenberg gave birth to Albertina Sophie Hedwig Rosenberg.

1881: It was reported today that in Neu Stettin, at least 30 anti-Semitic rioters who attacked the editor of the Neu Stettiner Zeitung, were arrested today.

1881: Rabbi David Levy officiated at the wedding of Phil Lewinson of Darlington, SC to Sarah Weinberg of Charleston, SC.

1881: “Jews In Spain” published today, relied on information from the London Times to report that “In Spain, Praxedes M Sagasta the President of the Council of Ministers wrote to a prominent European Jewish author H. Guedalla that “article 1 of the Constitution of Spain is the most decisive revocation of the edict of banishment against the Jews in the year 1492.  Thus, all of your coreligionists who wish can come to Spain without any obstacle whatever…”

1882: “A Great Fire In Smyrna” published today described the conflagration that left 6,000 people homeless including many of the city’s sizable Jewish population.  The Jews are the primary agents “in the barter and sale of merchandise from Asia, Syria, Baghdad and Persia.”

1882: During the Freight Handler’s Strike, the strikers stopped providing food for the Jewish and Italian workers whom they had convinced to honor their strike.  Mr. Wolkawoech, the President of the Jewish Freight Handlers’ Union reluctantly provided enough funds to cover the cost of the evening meal.  [Yes there were Russia Jews among the striking workers as well as Russian Jews among what would later be called scabs.]

1883: Birthdate of Bialystok native and CCNY and Long Island College trained ophthalmologist  Nathan Cohen.

1883: In Hungary, as the trial of a group of Jews charged with killing a Christian girl continued, it was reported that a constable testified that he had tortured one of the prisoners with thumbscrews. 

1884: “Lamb and Mint Sauce” published today described John Brady’s contention that the custom of eating tansy (bitter) puddings and cakes at Easter was introduced by the monk as a symbolic remembrance of the bitter herbs used by Jews at this time of year.  The monks included bacon in their dishes “to denote contempt for Judaism.”  According to Brady, the Jews “have contrived to diminish the bitter flavor” or their tansy “by making a it into pickle for their paschal lamb.”  From all of this has come the custom of combing mint with sugar to create the mint sauce or jelly eaten with the leg of lamb. [This was based on information provided by an annual publication, Clavis Calendaraia.]

1885(8th of Av, 5645) Erev Tish’a B’A

1885: “Jews in Paris” published today summarized a report by the Judische Presse that described the growth of the Jewish population in Paris.  In 1789, there were only 500 Jews living in the French capital.  The numbers have grown: 3,000 in 1806; 12,000 in 1842; 40,000 in 1872; more than 50,000 in 1885.  Jews are more active in the general population as can be seen by the fact that the number of Jewish generals has grown from one in 1821 to five in 1878.

1886(17th of Tammuz, 5646): Tzom Tammz

1886: Farrer Herschell, 1st Baron Herschell completed his term in office as Lord Chancellor in Great Britain.

1887: Mrs. Betty Michaelis “began mandamus proceedings” before Judge Potter today, “in which she asks that the Henrietta Verien be commanded to restore her to membership on the ground that her expulsion was not done according to law.” The legal action stemmed from a fight that she had with Mrs. Henrietta Loser, the President of the Henrietta Verein.

1887: Louis Keptlovwitch, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who has been arrested on charges of bigamy, was confronted by both of his wives – the one he married in Poland and the one he married in New York – today. 

1888: Isaac and Lotta Alper gave birth to Abraham Joseph Alper, the husband of Lena Zion Alper.

1888: In Fall River, MA, founding of American Brothers of Israel, a congregation that holds services daily at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. that maintains a cemetery “southeast of the city, near the Rhode Island state line.”

1889: Effective today, Coney Island’s Brighton Beach Hotel announces that it will completely exclude members of the “Hebrew Race” as guests.  The hotel was following the policy adopted by Messers Cable and Breen the lessees of the New York establishment. 

1890: The manager of the Bank and Steamship Passage at 78 Canal Street and his soliciting agent Louis Silikowitz, were arrested on charges of having swindling their customers, most of whom were Polish and Russian Jews out money with which they had been entrusted to buy tickets for family members still in members.

1890: It was reported today that Sol B. Solomon has raised $300 from the guests at the Long Beach Hotel to pay for the excursions provided by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children.

1890: A portion of the 12th annual report of the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children published today showed expenditures of $3,221 and a balance of $7,126 “which is deposited in the seven leading savings banks” in New York City.

1890: Birthdate of Theda Bara. Born Theodosia Burr Goodman in a wealthy suburb of Cincinnati, Bara’s mother was Swiss and her father was a Jewish tailor. She was known as a "vamp" and one of the first "sex symbols" of the silver screen. She passed away in 1955.

1891: “Mercy for Russian Jews” published today described a relaxation of “the persecution of the Jews” by the government.  Decrees expelling Jewish artisans from St. Petersburg have “been indefinitely postponed” and “and orders have been seen to the press” to have newspapers “refrain from publishing articles like to excite animosity against the Jews.” 

1891: “The young man who had killed three Russians” during an attack on the Jewish community near Veile, Russia” and several other Jews were scheduled to go on trial today and when the expected guilty verdict is returned the Jews will be shipped to Siberia.

1892(25th of Tammuz, 5652): Eighteen-month-old Siegfried Bloch, the son of Leopold and Klara Bloch passed away today after which he was buried in his hometown of Eichstetten.

1892: As of today, the coroner has not made a determination in the cause of death of Behr Israelson. Doctors claim he died of apoplexy but his Jewish neighbors claimed he was clubbed to death by a policeman. The Jews would not let the coroner’s jury hear the case because there it had no Jewish members.

1893: Three men who claim to be tailors and Russian Jews were arrested and charged with assault at the Essex Market Police Court based on evidence gathered Alter Shapiro, the Vice President of the Hebrew Protective Society that showed them to be part of a ring that robs and tortures Jews living on the lower east side.

1893: The Marshall, who had arrived at the apartment of Mrs. Sarah Goldstein at 181 Orchard to execute the order of eviction gave her an extra day to seek relief from the courts since she said her six children who had measles were still too sick to be moved.

1894: Birthdate of Joseph Louis Felsenfeld, the Columbia University trained dentist who practiced in Brooklyn and who lived at 909 Driggs Avenue in 1916 and 1917.

1894: In defending the blackballing of Mr. Peixotto from the Republican Club as being based on reasons other than his being Jewish, Chairman Joseph M. Deuel was reported today to have said that “There are probably fifty Hebrews who are in good and regular standing in the club…There are Hebrews on the Executive Committee of the club and on the campaign committee.”

1895: “Hebrew Technical Institute Open” published described the school’s unique summer course for which 200 boys ranging in age from 12 to 15 have enrolled so that they can continue their education in the workshops, laboratories and drawing rooms of the facilities on Stuyvesant Street.

1895: Birthdate of Samuel Randolph Parnes, the native of New York City and WW I veteran who was a textile manufacturing executive and trustee of the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1895: Wolf Silverman was arrested tonight and “charged with an attempt to swindle the Empire Life Insurance Company.”

1895: Birthdate of László Weisz, the native of   Bácsborsód, Hungary, who gained fame painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy who like so many of his generation left his native land with the rise of the Nazis, settling first in England before finding final refuge in the United States where he died in 1946.

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-moholy-nagy-laszlo.htm

1896: Birthdate of Rome native Ernest Ascoli who was deported from Drancy to Kovno Ghetto on Transport  73 on May 15, 1944 and died some time during that year.

1896(10th of Av, 5656): Nathan Greenstein the co-owner of clothing business on Hester Street who was taken ill last month and hospitalized in Mt. Sinai passed away today after which his chevre chadish Society of Human Wisdom of the City of Pinsk refused to honor its commitment resulting in a lawsuit in the Fourth Civil District Court in New York.

1896: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and WW I veteran Samuel Salzman who attended Columbia and was active in the Jewish community as can be seen in his involvement with the Hebrew Orphans Asylum and the Federation of Jewish Charities.

1896: It was reported today that an ambulance had arrived too late yesterday to save the life of Charles Liebhaber who had been ill for weeks but still insisted on observing the fast for the 9th of Av.

1896: Herzl met with the Association des Etudiants Israëlites Russes.

1897: Funeral services were held today for Mrs. Julia Lauterbach, the widow of Moses Lauterbach, at her home on East 58th Street followed yb burial at Cypress Hills Cemetery.  She was one of those who incorporated the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York, a group which served as Vice President for 11 years.

1898(1st of Av, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Ave

1898: Among those serving with the 6th Missouri Volunteer Infantry when it was mustered into service at Jefferson Barracks for service in the Spanish-American War were Captains John H. Goldman and Adolph J. Jacobs as well as Musicians Oscar Bennewitz and Lewis Bloch, Corporal William A Feigel and dozens of privates.

1898: Second Lieutenant B. Albert Lieberman of Kansas City was appointed to serve as an Assistant Surgeon in the 6th Missouri Volunteer Infantry.

1898: Birthdate of New York native and Cornell University trained research chemist, Nathaniel Fuchs, the husband of Jeanette Fuchs and the father of Lucy Berkowoitz who “was credited with saving the Army millions of dollars during World War II with the discovery of new method of manufacturing khaki dye” for which he received a citation from the U.S. Army.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/01/27/84873805.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1899(13th of Av, 5659): Seventy-four-year-old Charlotte de Rothschild, the French socialite and wife of Nathaniel de Rothschild passed away today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_de_Rothschild#/media/File:Gerome-CharlotteRothschild,_by_Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me.jpg

1900: New York City architect E.G. Cohen, the namesake for the E.G. Cohen Medal,  mourned the death of his father, Jacob Cohen, the Savannah born wholesale grocer who became a leading cotton exchange broker  who passed away on July 19 at his cottage in Sullivan County, NY.

https://www.cohenconnect.org/medalists

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1900/07/21/102611521.html?pageNumber=7

1900:  NYU trained attorney Julius Henry Cohen, the Brooklyn born son of Elizabeth Wolf and Henry Cohen who while serving as “counsel for the manufacturers in the cloak strike of 1910” helped to create the “Protocols of Peace” in the women’s wear industry married Ida Strasburger today.

1901(4th of Av, 5661): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon

1901: “The Jews” published today provided a review of the Volume One of The Jewish Encyclopedia, “prepared by more than 400 scholars and specialist” under the leadership of managing editor Dr. Isidor Singer published The Funk and Wagnalls Company.

1902: In “Is Yiddish A Jargon” published today, A. B. Rhine defended Yiddish against the claim that it was a jargon and not language contending “a language derives its importance from its literature and in this respect Yiddish by no means inferior to any of the minor languages of Europe” such as Danish or Norwegian while adding that “as a matter of fact, Yiddish has ‘literary monuments’ of such lasting value that they will outlive the language itself.”

1903: Herzl writes to Leopold Greenberg (“an English Zionist and future editor of the Jewish Chronicle”) in London to do whatever possible to revive the Sinai enterprise. This is a reference to offers by the British Foreign Office to allow Jews from Eastern Europe to settle in a part of the Sinai Peninsula known as the Brook of Egypt.  Another, better known of these schemes, was the offer to allow Jews to settle in Uganda as a temporary Jewish homeland.  These desperate proposals came against a backdrop of Pogroms in Russia and a general worsening of conditions for Jews in Eastern Europe. While Zionists in German, Austria and Britain were willing to consider such alternatives, the Zionists of eastern Europe rejected them out of hand.  Those living in the greatest physical saw the spiritual danger in accepting anything less than Eretz Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.  In the man time Herzl wrote desperately, "We must indeed take East Africa, or at least the Charter, but we must not deceive ourselves as to the fact that all the non-English Jews are against East Africa. I shall have to use a great deal of patience for it, whereas El Arish is popular." Herzl also prepares steps to approach Portugal for a Charter for Mozambique, Belgium for a territory in the Congo and Italy for a section of Tripoli. 

1904: In Vilnius, Meyer and Dora Rogoff Goldsmith Stein gave birth to Julius Rogoff the husband of Francs Rogoff Silverstein Giovanni who is not to be confused with Dr. Julius M. Rogoff “the pioneer in scientific research on the adrenal gland.’

1904(8th of Av, 5664): Eighty-two-year-old Marcus Goldman a German-born American businessman and entrepreneur who founded Goldman Sachs which became one of the world's largest global investment banks passed away.

http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=100

1905(17th of Tammuz, 5665): A month after the Russian fleet was annihilated by the Japanese bring on a crisis which would lead to a mini revolution in 1906,

1905: Today in Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnipro, Ukraine), was stopped by the Jewish self-defense group. One man in the group was killed.

1906: Antoine Louis Targe, a French officer whose investigations helped to establish the innocence of Dreyfus was made an officer in the Legion of Honor.

1906: Dreyfus was made a Knight in the Legion of Honor.

1906: In Baltimore, MD, Max and Annie Kowalsky Hurwitz gave birth to Dickison College graduate and Dickinson School of Law trained attorney Solomon Hurwitz, the husband of Martha Lehrman Hurwitz with whom he had two children, Robert and Judi, and a member of Bethel Temple in Harrisburg, PA who was “senior partner the law firm of Hurwitz, Klein, Benjamin and Brown and the chairman of the 1964 Harrisburg Israel Fund Committee.

1907(9th of Av, 5667): Fast not observed because it is Shabbat.

1908: In a letter to the New York Times, William Maude provides commentary on the antiquity of an ancient copy of the Book of Joshua obtained by Dr. Moses Gaster in Samaria.

1909: George Clemenceau, who was “more cognizant of Jews that the average politician or journalist of the Third Republic” and who carried on an “eight-year battle in his newspapers La Justice and L’Aurore to gain justice for Alfred Dreyfus, resigned as Prime Minister of France today.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467111?seq=1

 1910: Jacob Marinoff, the Pinsk born son of Meyer and Leah Maifnoff  who was the founder of the Yiddish weekly Der Graiser Kundes (The Big Stick) married Esther Salkowitz today.

1910: In the Shaarei Chesed neighborhood of Jerusalem founded by Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Porush Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Leib Auerbach, who was rosh yeshiva of Shaar Hashamayim Yeshiva, and Rebbetzin Tzivia gave birth to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, the rosh yeshiva of the Kol Torah yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel

1911: In Great Britain, the Home Secretary offered additional amendments to the Sunday closing clauses of the Shop Hours Bill.

1911: Arthur David Samuel who would die while serving as a 2nd Lt. in the British Army during World War I married Mary Esther Jewell today.

1911: In New York City, the Jewish Morning Journal, reported that Turkish Government had issued “orders to the Governor of Jerusalem to facilitate naturalization of Jews as Ottoman citizens.”

1912: Jewish immigrants Clara (Hessner) and Joseph Boudin gave birth to St. John’s Law School trained civil liberties attorney whose clients included baby-doctor Benjamin Spock and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame who was the husband of poet Jean Roisman and nephew of equally famous and controversial attorney Louis Boudin

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/obituaries/leonard-boudin-civil-liberties-lawyer-dies-at-77.html

1913: It was reported today that “an analysis of the relations existing between the Jews and modern capitalism will be published shortly by E.P. Dutton and Company under the title The Jews and Modern Capitalism by German author Werner Sombert “who has devoted himself to” economic research.

1913: In Philadelphia, Norfolk native Edward L. Brylawski, a member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange  and Hortense Mendelsohn gave birth to their fourth child Michael Brylawski.

1913: Wilhelm Frankl, the Hamburg born son of Jewish businessman who was a World War I fighter ace credited with 20 aerial victories and earned Pour le Mérite, Royal House Order of Hohenzollern and Iron Cross, l earned pilot's license number 49 today.

1914: As Europe hurdles mindlessly through a series of thoughtless actions that will lead to WW I with all that that would mean for the world in general and the Jewish population in particular, “Germany began mobilizing its Navy and told shipping companies to bring their vessels back to German ports in a move that would avoid confiscation and help enhance its supply capacities.

1915(9th of Av, 5675): Tish'a B'Av

1915: Georgia Governor Harris “announced tonight that he would accompany the Prison Commission” when it goes “to Milledgeville to investigate the attack on Leo M. Frank.”

1915: Today, following the attack on Leo M. Frank by a fellow prisoner,” Rabbi David Marx and H.A. Alexander, the attorney for Frank in his final battle in the courts” arrived at Milledgeville “to comfort Mrs. Frank who has been under great strain since the attack on her husband.

1915: Today the Austrians conquered Russian controlled Lublin, Poland. This would appear to be the realization of a deathbed prophecy by the Chozeh of Lublin (Yaakov Yitzchak Horowitz) came true.  When he died on July 15, 1815 (9th of Av, 5575) he said that 100 years from the day of his death, the Russians would lose their control over Poland. 

1916(19th of Tammuz, 5676): 2nd Lt. Joel Jacobs who had been at the Perse School, Cambridge before the war was killed today while serving with the Yorkshire Regiment.

1916: Alexander Protopopov, the Chairman of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce who would express his belief that “the Jews will get equal rights in Russia” after he became Minister of the Interior met with Czar Nicholas II prior to his appointment to that important position.

1916(19th of Tammuz, 5676): Eighty-three-year-old Algernon E. Sydney, not be confused with the 17th English political of the same name, passed away today in London.

1916: “Following an appropriation of $400,000 for Jewish relief in Russia, the Joint Distribution Committee of Jewish Relief Funds, which has distributed a total of more than $4,000,000 announced” today that a committee of five headed by Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, Chairman of the Kehiliah, would soon be sent abroad “to study conditions in the warring countries on the eastern front and investigate the methods employed in the distribution of the relief funds.”

1916(19th of Tammuz, 5676): Simon Lewis, a collector of old Hebrew manuscripts passed away today at Spitalfields.

1917: During WW I and the Russian Revolution, in Minsk, Balta and Kherson “provincial organizations including zemstvos, committees of soldiers and workmen and town executives” issued a “strong appeal to soldiers to ignore all anti-Semitic incitement to attack Jews.”

1917: The Union of Italian Rabbis was formed today in Bologna.

1917: In Warsaw, “at a meeting of the Municipal Council, anti-Jewish members charge that Jews gave the German and Austrian governments the idea that these two nationalities were the masters of Poland” and that “prominent Jews in Berlin and Vienna are using their influence against the Poles.

1917: According to a statement given to the Associated Press, “the disaster that befell the Armenian nation is now being meted out to the mixed non-Turkish population of Syria and Palestine” including the Jews in Jerusalem.

1918: During WW I, Louis Henry Cohn of Brooklyn took part in the fighting along the Ourcq River in France that would last for five days.

1918: Pediatrician Sophie Rabinoff who was part of the “first American Zionist Medical” sent to Palestine by Hadassah in 1918” was photographed today in London.https://jwa.org/media/sophie-rabinoff-in-uniform

1918: Plans are going forward at Camp Upton on Long Island for the consecration of “an ark donated by State Supreme Court Just Irving Lehman” in the military camp’s non-denominational chapel.

1919: Birthdate of Shlomo Zalman Auerbach an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, posek, and rosh yeshiva of the Kol Torah yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel. “Auerbach was the first child to be born in the Shaarei Chesed neighborhood of Jerusalem founded by his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Porush, after whom he was named.”

1919: Dr. Rudolph I Coffee, the former director of the social service department of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith in Chicago and the current Rabbi at Temple Judea in Chicago “preached today in the Methodist Episcopal Church” in Chicago.

1919: At a meeting of the Municipal Council in Warsaw, “anti-Jewish members charged that Jews gave the German and Austrian Governments the idea that two nationalities were the masters of Poland and of using the influence of prominent Jews in Berlin and Vienna against Poles.”

1920: Birthdate of Lev Aronin the native of the Soviet Union, who became International Chess Master in 1950.

1920: Birthdate of Detroit native Byron Lester Krieger the foil, saber and épée fencer, first inspired “by his English teacher Beatrice Merriam who “represented the United States in the Olympics in 1952 in Helskinki and 1956 in Melbourne”

http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/324428/ex-fencing-champion-dies-in-havdalah-candle-fire/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_BreakingNews_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202015-11-10&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

1920: As the French sought establish their control over Syria, King Faisal who had expressed the belief that Zionism was not inimical to the interests of the Arabs, sent word that he was submitting to French General Gouraud’s ultimatum that he disband his army and submit to French authority.

1921(14th of Tammuz, 5681): Benjamin Bennett Levy, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Civil War, passed away today.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7980294

1922: In Vilna, the administrator of the city’s Jewish Hospital, Solomon Kagan and his wife Leah gave birth to Saul Kagan the refugee from Hitler’s Europe who “was the founding director of the Conference on the Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1922: In Oradea, Romania, Chaim Meir Hager, “the fourth grand rabbi of Vyzhnytsia (Viznitz in Yiddish), the village in the Carpathian foothills in what is today western Ukraine” and his wife gave birth to Mordechai Hager, the rabbi who led the “Viznitz sect” which settled in Kaser, an “upstate New York village.” (As reported by Joseph Berger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/obituaries/rabbi-mordechai-hager-dead-led-large-hasidic-sect.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1923: Sadie (née Schindler) and Philip Sendak, a dressmaker gave birth to children’s author Jack Sendak the brother of Maurice Sendak.(As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

1924: Birthdate of Ann Gilbert. Born in Szydlowiec, Poland, Ann was a Holocaust survivor. She spent over four years in concentration camps and was liberated in April 1945. She married Fred Gilbert (Felek Gebotszrajber) on Jan. 2, 1946, in Scwabisch Hall, Germany. Ann was a consummate homemaker, an accomplished seamstress, and devoted to her family. She and Fred lived in Cedar Rapids from 1949 to 1986, where she was an active member of Temple Judah and in the community. She was a lifetime member of Hadassah. From 1986 to 2003, Ann and Fred lived in Los Angeles, where she was a much sought after seamstress to film and motion picture stars. Ann and Fred were also very active in the survivor community. They were regular speakers at the Simon Wiesenthal Center-Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She and Fred lectured frequently about their experiences. In 2003, she and Fred returned to Cedar Rapids to be near to Lena. Ann remained a constant source of inspiration until she passed away in 2008 at the age of 84.

1925: “Dr. Joseph A. Rosen returned on the Leviathan of the United States Lines today from an extended tour through Russia, the Ukraine and the Crimea, after expending $800,000 for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in settling in the Crimea and the Ukraine 20,000 Jews on farmlands since December 1922.”

1926(9th of Av, 5686): Tish’a B’Av

1926: Sixty-five-year-old Charles S. Spiegelberg, the Santa Fe, N.M. born son of Berta and Levi T. and Spiegelberg the husband of Lydia M. Spiegelberg passed away today in Manhattan.

1926: Maxwell “Mordecai” Abbell, the Lodz born son of Morris and Freida Abbell who owned a chain of hotels and office buildings, and his wife Fannie Abbell gave birth to their daughter Nahami Abbell.

1927: “Representatives of the Jewish population of the city of Homel protested to the Soviet authorities regarding the treatment of Jewish cemeteries by the Red Army was has constructed stables on the oldest Jewish cemetery in that town.

1927(20th of Tammuz, 5687): Fifty-four-year-old New York born American electrical and mechanical engineer Arthur Arton Hamerschlag, the husband of Elizabeth Ann Tollast Hamerschlag and the father of Ralph Robinson Hamserschlag  who was the first President of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the  director of Industrial Research passed away  today.

1927: Birthdate of Barbara Rose Berman, the Bronx native who gained fame as “Barbara Bergmann, a pioneer in the study of gender in the economy who herself overcame barriers to women in the world of academic economics.” (As reported by Nelson D. Schwartz)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/business/barbara-bergmann-trailblazer-for-study-of-gender-in-economics-is-dead-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1928: In Brooklyn, Isaac Solow, a bricklayer and Jennie (Brill) Solow gave birth to Manhattan real estate developer Sheldon Henry Solow, the husband of Mia Fonssagrives Solow. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/realestate/sheldon-h-solow-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1929(12th of Tammuz, 5689): Parashat Chukat-Balak

1929: Today, “Joseph Polstein, president of the Hennessy Realty Company, a Manhattan apartment house builder is on his way to Leningrad, at the invitation of the Soviet Government” as a representative of a group of New York builders who are “studying conditions in the Russian city with a view to erecting a large group of multi-family houses of the type now being constructed in New York.”

1929: Dr. Henry Moskowitz, executive chairman of the American Ort is scheduled to address the International Ort Conference in Berlin today.

1930:  Maxim Litvinov is named the Soviet Union's Commissar of Foreign Affairs.  Born Meir Henoch Mojszewicz Wallach-Finkelstein in 1876, into a wealthy Jewish banking family in Białystok in Congress Poland, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. The party was an illegal organization, and it was customary to use pseudonyms. He changed his name to Maxim Litvinov, but was also known as Papasha and Maximovich. Over the years, his politics become more radical in response to the increasingly repressive policies of the Russian government.  He joined the Bolsheviks where he became a confidante of Lenin.  Litvinov carried out a variety of diplomatic missions for the Soviets after the Russian Revolution.  As Foreign Minister, Litvinov was a key participant that led to recognition of the Soviet government by the United States in 1933.  Litivinov sought to create an anti-fascist alliance with western powers during the 1930’s.  When the British and French caved in at Munich, Stalin decided to work on developing relations with Hitler’s government.  To that end, he removed Litvinov since it would not due to have a Jew negotiating with the Nazi government.  After the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, Litvinov was sent to Washington to negotiate a Lend-Lease that would provide the arms the Soviets needed to meet the Nazi onslaught.

1931: According to a report Ralph Hayes gave to Winthrop W. Aldrich, the chairman of the distribution committee of the New York Community trust today, the University of Jerusalem received $11,383 from the trust during the first six months of 1931.

1932(16th of Tammuz, 5692): Sadie Strauss (nee Katz), the widow of Erwin Katz and mother of Howard G. Strauss passed away today in New York City.

1932: Caroline Rauschkolb, the widow of the late Frank Rauschkolb and mother of Abe, Benny and Leo Rauschkolb passed away today in New York.

1933: Cardinal Pacelli issued a concordant known as the Hitler Concordant. Hitler described it as” unrestricted acceptance of National Socialism by the Vatican." Cardinal Pacelli later became Pope Pious XII. In its spirit all teaching priests were to greet their students with "Heil Hitler, praised be Jesus Christ."  (editor’s note: There is not space to review the pernicious effect of this agreement but consider the following When Einstein was told how Pius XII directed a Polish priest to keep silent about the murder of Jews, because of the Concordat the Holy See had signed with Nazi Germany "obliged the Church to tread softly", he replied "There are cosmic laws, Dr. Hermanns. They cannot be bribed by prayers or incense. What an insult to the principles of creation. But remember, that for God a thousand years is a day. This power maneuver of the Church, these Concordats through the centuries with worldly powers... the Church has to pay for it.")

1933:  In Germany, two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.

1933(26th of Tammuz, 5693):  Seventy-year-old Sir Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson, 1st Viscount Burnham GCMG, CH, TD, JP, DL, a British newspaper proprietor and a Liberal Unionist politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1885 and 1916 when he inherited his peerage passed away today.

1933: In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism. This may be seen as part of companion piece to a rally held in March 1933 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  The demonstration in London was certainly not representative of British public opinion or policy.  Many of the movers and shakers in Great Britain were impressed with  the cleansing effect that the Nazis were bringing to Germany, marking them as pro-German, anti-Semitic or both.

1934: In Rochester, NY, Ben Krasnow, “a commercial artist (sign painter), and to the former Gertrude Goldstein from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada both of Russian Jewish parentage” gave birth to Robert Alan "Bob" Krasnow the music executive who re-vitalized Elektra Records. (As reported by Ben Sisario)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/arts/music/bob-krasnow-revitalizer-of-elektra-records-dies-at-82.html?_r=1

1934: The Court of Appeal today quashed the death sentence passed by the District Court on Abraham Stavsky on June 8 for the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, prominent labor leader and member of the Jewish Agency Executive of Palestine. The Appeal Court found that the evidence was insufficient.  Thousands of supporters of Stavsky, who dodged a date with the hangman, reportedly danced in the streets of Jerusalem as they celebrated a victory for the Revisionist faction of the Zionist movement.

1935(19th of Tammuz, 5695): Parashat Pinchas

1935: In Shanghai, “the Municipal Council, after an investigation, said today that the reports of ritualistic murders in a Jewish cemetery were false.”

1935(19th of Tammuz, 5695): Ninety-year-old German native, Rabbi Joseph Kahn, the husband of Rosalie Kahn and father of University of Michigan trained civil engineer Moritz Kahn who is credited with the creation of “pre-case reinforced concrete ships where were used by the English Admiralty in W.W I” passed away today after which he was interred at the Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan.

1935(19th of Tammuz, 5696): Seventy-eight-year-old Minnie Ranshohoff, the “daughter of Julius and Duffie Freiberg” and the wife of Dr. Joseph Ranshoff with whom she had had five children, passed away today.

1936(1st of Av, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Av

1936: Birthdate of Harvey David Luber. The Chicago native became a first-rate photographer, a leader of the Little Rock Jewish community and a great friend.

1936: “Earl Peel, who was Secretary of State for India” has been name to a chair “a commission that is inquiring into the unrest in Palestine” the other members of which are Field Marshall Sir William Birdwood, Sir Horace Rumbold “who has a fluent command of Arabic and has been Ambassador to Constantinople” and “Reginald Coupland, Professor of Colonial History at Oxford University.

1936: The Palestine Post reported that since according to the 1935 Official Palestinian Report on Migration certain professions became overcrowded, the government had restricted the admission to the country of all those belonging to the medical, legal and engineering professions. [Editor’s note: This seemingly innocuous ruling came at a time when educated Jews were trying to leave Germany.] Arab snipers shot at British soldiers patrolling the Nablus Road in Jerusalem. Lengths of railway track were found removed near Tulkarm. Arab hawkers asked for police protection in order to be able to sell their wares. They complained that the general strike brought them ruin, starvation and death. Several more prominent members of the Arab "National Guard" were interned at Sarafand

1937: Today, The American Citizen Members of the Arab National League and “a group of Americans interested in the Far East question” including Professor Elihu Grant of Haverford College and Dr. Leland W. Parr of the George Washington Medical School urged President Roosevelt “to take no part in the Jewish-Arab controversy.”

1937: Today, William Green, the President of the American Federation of Labor issued “an indignant statement to the press” expressing his opposition to the proposed portioning of Palestine and accusing the British of “cool persecution of the Jews.”

1938(21st of Tammuz, 5698): Forty-five-year-old Julius S. Berg, the Manhattan born son of Morris and Celia (Weinstein) Berg who was wounded at Arras, France in May of 1918 and who went to serve in both houses of the New York state legislature while being married to Rose Schram passed away today.

1938: “The Henlein newspaper Die Zeit” reported today “that two more important industrial concerns owned by Jews – the Boemish-Krumau engine works owned by Ignatz Spiro his sons and the Nestomicer sugar refinery owned by Dr. Bloch-Bauer – are leaving the Sudeten German area for Prague which will cost 400 Germans and 199 Czechs to lose their jobs.

1939(4th of Av, 5699): Dutch sculptor Joseph Mendes da Costa passed away.  “Best known for making sculptures and ornaments for buildings” Mendes da Costa was a member of “Ars et Labor” which would become the Dutch version of Art Nouveau. 

1939: British policy on Palestine--particularly the latest decision to cut off legal immigration for six months, beginning Oct. 1--came under heavy fire in the House of Commons tonight. The opposition Laborites contended that the decision to suspend immigration was proof of failure of the government's new policy.

1939:  Birthdate of Judy Chicago.  For over four decades Chicago has been a leading educator, artist and shaper of the feminist movement.  One of her most famous works is the multi-media history of women in Western Civilization entitled “The Dinner Party.”

1940: “The Breeze and I,” a popular song with English lyrics by Al Stillman “first reached the Billboard magazine charts today and lasted 9 weeks on the chart, peaking at #2.”

1940: Ten-year-old David Judah Lawrence, the future alpine skiing race arrived in New York aboard the Pan Am Yankee Clipper thanks to the visas given to him and his family by “Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes.”

1941: A Jewish ghetto at Minsk, Belorussia, is established.

1941: Today, marked the celebration of the 50th anniversary of City Park during which Felix J. Dreyfous “received a golden bowl filled with fifty park-grown roses “ at a time that Dreyfous was celebrating “his 50th consecutive year as member of the park of board of commissioners” which he now served as President.

1942: The first detachment of the U.S. Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAC’s) begins basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Among this group of volunteers are twelve Jewish women: Ruth Ginns, Beatrice Berg, Carolyne Casper and Jean Korn from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Kathryne Goldfluss, Rose Ross and Joan Strongin from New York, New York; Bee Rosenberg and Ruth Spivak from Chicago, Illinois; Rita Fink and Isabel Bayley of Buffalo, New York; and Elizabeth Morgenstern of Seattle, Washington.

1942: The Jews of Kleck tried to revolt as the Germans circled their town. Only a few hundred escaped. The 1,000 remaining Jews were shot dead.

1942: In Cologne, “Jewish children and some of their teachers including Erich Klibanksy” were deported to Minsk today.

1942: The Germans murder 1000 Jews at Kleck, Belorussia; 400 flee into forests. Two from the latter group, Moshe Fish and Leva Gilchik (from nearby Kopyl), will form a partisan group;

1942: The Jews from Kowale Panskie, Poland are deported, to the Chelmno death camp.

1942: In Warsaw, Rabbi Alexander Zusha Friedman, a “leader in Agudat Israel, called on the people not to oppose the Germans with force.”God will not permit his people to be destroyed. We must wait and a miracle will certainly occur." Agudat Israel, like many groups in the Judenrat, were afraid that any "violent" opposition would mean the liquidation of the ghetto. http://jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?search=warsaw

1943(17th of Tammuz, 5703):Tzom Tammuz

1943(17th of Tammuz, 5703): Five hundred slave laborers are murdered at Czestochowa, Poland.

1943: Over two thousand Jews are deported from Holland to Sobibór.

1943:  Two Jews escape from Sobibór 

1943: General Leslie Grove, the director of the Manhattan Project acknowledged J. Robert Oppenheimer’s importance to the program to build the Atomic Bomb when he issued a written order to the Manhattan Engineer District commanding them to approve Oppie’s security clearance regardless of any negative information that might have been gathered.

1944: “Since You Went Away” a film about the U.S. home-front in WW II, produced by David O. Selznick who also wrote the screenplay and with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States by United Artists.

1944: As of today, almost all of the Jews of Rhodes “had been captured and were being held in improvised concentration camps” while they were being robbed of their valuables and their homes were being looted by the Nazis. (Editor’s Note: “At this point one should mention the humanitarian stance shown by the Turkish consul, Selahettin Ulkumen, who intervened to save not only Turkish nationals but whole families as well, even at the remotest proof of their Turkish citizenship. He managed to save from the Nazis approximately 40 Jews who would have otherwise been led to death. For his acts, he was awarded after the War the title of "Righteous among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.”)

1944: The most famous plot to kill Hitler failed. This event has been romanticized by various revisionists. The plotters realized that they could not win the war. They thought that with Hitler gone, they could at least negotiate a peace treaty with the West. The plotters were not only incompetent, they were delusional as well. [For more about people who really worked to opposed Hitler see the recently publish “Red Orchestra.”]

1945: Laurence Adolph Steinhardt began serving as the United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia following his service as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.

1946: Birthdate of Israel Carmi (Weinstein) the native of Egypt who perished in 1968 at the age of 22 when the Israeli Submarine Dakar sank.

1947: “More than 4,500 unauthorized Jewish immigrants who were deported from Hafia, ostensibly to Cyprus, are being returned to France, informed quarters indicated tonight.”

1947: Today a Haifa court order three Americans – Captain Bernard Marks, the skipper of the Exodus, Arthur Ritzer the ship’s cook from Brooklyn and Cyril Weinstein, a seaman from New York – “held under $4,000 bond each for trial within fifteen days on two charges, ‘abetting persons to illegally immigrate to Palestine’ and ‘being members of the crew of a Haganah ship which carried 4,700 illegal immigrants into Palestine waters.”

1948: Samuel Rothberg, who has just returned from Palestine “where he made a survey on the settlement of Jewish displaced persons” said that the “extension of the truce in Palestine has proved disadvantageous to Israel” since among other things, it has disrupted Israel’s economy because of the country’s limited manpower.

1948: “Jewish sources said today that 1,500 Jewish men women and children” have left Sofia, Bulgaria

1949(23rd of Tammuz, 5709): Fifty-nine-year-old Polish born “trade union official Nathan Schedletzsky, a member of the “Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America” and the “business agent for the “Pants-makers Local No.8” passed away today in New York City.

1949: Birthdate of Jean-Louis Cohen, “a French historian of architecture and urbanism.”

1949: Israel's 19-month War of Independence ended. The government of Syria signed the last of four armistices, which marked the end of open warfare. The cessation of hostilities did not bring peace since the Arab states refused to come to grips with the reality of the existence of Israel.

1950: Harry Gold, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.  Gold’s Jewish pedigree provided fodder for anti-Semites who sought to make being Jewish and being Communist (or disloyal to America) one and the same thing.

1950: “The Men” directed by Fred Zinnemann, produced by Stanley Kramer, written by Carl Foreman, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released by United Artists today in the United States.

1950: In Israel, doctors employed by the Health Ministry will go on strike today unless their demands for increased pay are met.

1951: Abdullah Ibn Hussein Jordan's King was assassinated in Jerusalem. He was attending Friday prayers at a mosque when he was killed by those who were afraid he was negotiating with Israel. His grandson, Hussein, became the next King of Jordan. The assassination influenced the young king

1951: “The Law and the Lady” a comedy directed and produced by Edwin H. Knopf was released by MGM today in the United States.

1953(8th of Av, 5713): Erev Tish’a B’Av observed for the first time during the Presidency of Ike Eisenhower.

1954(19th of Tammuz, 5714): Herman Mantell, the husband of Carrie Mantell passed away today after which he was buried at Springfield Gardens in Queens County, NY.

1954:  United States Senator Joseph R. McCarthy accepts the resignation of his aide Roy Cohn.  Roy Cohn was the chief counsel of the Senate Committee that McCarthy used to conduct his investigations that smeared people, ruined lives and unearthed no “Communist conspiracy among those he paraded before the television lights.  All of those right-wing anti-Semites seemed to lose sight of fact that McCarthy’s chief henchman was one of those “New York Jews.”

1955(1st of Av, 5715): Rosh Chodesh Av

1955(1st of Av, 5715): Sixty-nine-year-old Edward S. Siskind, the Russian born Jew who was the first person of his faith “to participate in athletics at Fordham, a Jesuit university” where played baseball, football l and basketball and coached the football team in 1918, passed away today.

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Edward_Siskind.html

1956(12th of Av,5716): Eighty-three-year-old Jassy Rumanian native and a partner in Aron Brothers, Elia Aron a manufacturer of hats and caps for boys and men who at the age of 15 came to the United States where he “was an organizer  of the association that published the Jewish Daily Forward and raised three children – Leon, Sidney and Frieda – with his wife Molly Segal Aron passed away today

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/07/21/94299674.html?pageNumber=15

1956: Birthdate of Miami Beach, FL native and NYU educated composer and music professor Michael Gordon, the husband of Julia Wolfe and co-founder of the Bang on a Can music collective and festival.

https://michaelgordonmusic.com/

1957(21st of Tammuz, 5717): Parashat Matot

1957(21st of Tammuz. 5717): Seventy-year-old Etta A. Talheimer, the San Frisco born daughter of Minnie and Jacob E. Thalheimer and the wife of William Flatow, Sr. with whom she had three children passed away today.

1957(21st of Tammuz, 5717): Seventy-eight-year-old New York native and Columbia trained cardiologist Dr. Alfred Einstein Cohn, “an authority on the human heart and one of the first physicians to make electrocardiograms” who was the husband of Ruther Walker Price Cohn passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/07/23/84736623.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1958: At the New Montefiore Cemetery in Pinelawn, L.I., “Rabbi Nissin Telushkin, honorary president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council recited the prayers for the dead” when five hundred people gathered at the gravesite of Vladmir Jabotinsky, “Zionist leader an founder of the Jewish Legion during WW I to mark the 18th anniversary of his death.

1959(14th of Tammuz, 5719): Forty-eight-year-old “Morrie (Morris) Aronivoch, the Superior, Wisconsin major league outfielder nicknamed “Snooker” who played six seasons with the Phillies, Reds and Giants after a successful collegiate basketball career at U of Wisconsin-Superior and served with the U.S. Army in the Pacific during WW II passed away today shortly before his  “his third anniversary.”

1959: Birthdate of Samuel Israel III, the New Orleans born incarcerated hedge fund manager who was the subject of Octopus” Sam Israel, the Secret Market and Wall Street’ Wildest Con by Guy Lawson

1960: The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage.

1961: “Take Good Care of My Baby” a song written by the Jewish team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin was released as a “45.” (If you know what the number means, you probably grew up in what some called the golden age of Rock and Rool)

1961: The West End production “Stop The World – I Want To Get Off” a musical created by Anthony Newley who “was Jewish through his maternal grandmother.” Opened today.

1962:  Pope John XXIII sent invitations to all 'separated Christian churches and communities,' asking each to send delegate-observers to the upcoming Vatican II Ecumenical Council in Rome. Vatican II would result in an improvement in the relationship between the Jewish Community and the Roman Catholic Church.  Of course, there are those that would that anything would have to be an improvement over Pope John’s predecessor, Pope Pious, the Pope of the Holocaust.

1964: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today in Brooklyn for f Dr. Herman Bernard, the husband of Sally Birnbuam with whom he raised four children – Rudolph, Alfred, Beverly and Joseph Bernard and who was the “treasurer of the Brooklyn Zionist Region.

1965:  Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court. Fortas was a close friend of Johnson’s; one of the few people who could speak frankly with Johnson.  Fortas was “nominally” Jewish, and he warned Johnson that the American Jewish Community would not see him as the right person to hold what, since the days of Brandeis, had become “the Jewish chair” on the High Court.

1966(3rd of Av, 5726): Sixty-five-year-old Warsaw born “Rabbi Zvi Eisenstadt, a member of the presidium of Agudath Israel and of the Union Orthodox Rabbis who lived in Tel Aviv during WW II and came to the United States in 1946 where he raised his son Joseph with his wife Reisi passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/07/22/82490700.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=23

1967(12th of Tammuz, 5727): “As he was hard at work on the final revision of his latest book,” fifty-eight-year-old linguist Morris Swadesh passed away after suffering a heart attack.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1968.70.4.02a00070

1968(24th of Tammuz, 5728): Parashat Pinchas

1968(24th of Tammuz, 5728): Eighty-six-year-old Abraham Bitensky, “who retired in 1942 as president of the Abe Bitensky and Brothers, rayon and silk convertors” and the brother of Isaac Bitenksy passed away today in Far Rockaway, Queens.

1969: In an event that transcended national, religious and all such boundaries, Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon today.

1969: In response to Nasser’s War of Attrition which was the Arab response to Israel’s attempt to negotiate a peace after the Six Day War, Operation Boxer began with a series of crippling air attacks.

1969: Israeli commandos successfully finish their attack on Green Island by completely destroying the island fortress.  The press hails the attack as an Israeli Navarone, after the fictional island in the movie “The Guns of Navarone.”  But the casualties were not fiction.  Not only were they real, they were higher than expected.  The Israelis learned from the mission and went on to improve the functionality of their units.

1971: Nessim (Max) Cohen, the Moroccan born Israeli boxer who is he French middle weight champion, was in New York to promote his upcoming “bout with Emile Griffith, a five-time world champion.

1971: Syria and Jordan’s armies exchange fire over the common frontier. This would prove to be prelude to a Syrian attempt to seize Jordan, part of Syrian President Assad’s goal to create a Greater Syria.  In one of those strange twists, Israel moved tanks towards the area of conflict which Washington’s way of letting the Syrians know that they should back off and leave Jordan alone.

1972(9th of Av, 5732): Tish’a B’Av

1973: Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Japan Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam to Japan and forced it down in Dubai.

1973(20th of Tammuz, 5733): Fifty-three-year-old CCNY graduate and Ph.D holder from the Illinois Institute of Technology Dr. Herbert  H. Hyman, the husband of Ruth Hyman with whom he had two sons – Mark and David  -- who was “a senior chemist and assistant director of the chemical division of the Argonne (Ill.) National Laboratory” and who had “worked on the atomic bomb” suffered a fatal heart attack today in Chicago.

1974: In Washington, DC attorney Albert Foer and Esther Safran Foer, the daughter of Holocaust survivors gave birth to Columbia educated  writer and editor of The New Republic Franklin Foer, the brother of Jonathan and Joshua Foer.

1976: Today marked the start of what would become the Good Fence Policy along the border with Lebanon. The hope was that the medical treatment of Lebanese citizens in Israel and the beginning of trade between South Lebanon and Israel would start a new era of relations between the two countries. Like so many other peace initiatives this one died at the hand of terrorism.

1978: Birthdate of Elliott Yamin, born Efraym Elliott Yamin, who is an American singer known for his hit single "Wait for You" and placing third on the fifth season of American Idol.

1980:  The United Nations Security Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This is another reason that Israel tends not to trust the UN. In 1947, as part of the partition vote, the UN said Jerusalem would be governed by an international body.  When the Jordanians attacked Jerusalem and expelled the Jewish population from the Old City, the UN did nothing.  During the 19-year occupation of the city by the Jordanians Jews, of whatever nationality, were kept out of the city.  The UN did nothing.  But now that the Israelis controlled the whole city and it was open to Christians, Moslems and Jews, the UN acted to support the Arab view of the City of David.

1981:  The administration of newly elected Republican President Ronald Reagan suspends sales of F-16 fighter jets to Israel. 

1981(29th of Tammuz, 5739): Seventy-nine-year-old Joseph N. Katz the founder and board chairman of Empire Kosher Poultry Inc., passed away today http://www.empirekosher.com/history/

1983; The Israeli cabinet votes to withdraw troops from Beirut but to remain in southern Lebanon. The Israelis had gone into Lebanon because the PLO occupied the southern half of the country and was using it as base to attack Israel.  The government of Lebanon either could not or would not remove the PLO so Israel was forced to act or accept the fact that Arafat’s terrorists would have permanent base on Israel’s northern border.

1983(10th of Av, 5743): Ninety-year-old Nina Dorothy Jessel, the daughter of Edith Goldsmid and Sir Charles James Jessel passed away today in Harrow, Middlesex, England.

1984: “Best Defense,” produced by Gloria Katz who co-wrote the screenplay was released today in the United States.

1986(13th of Tammuz, 5746): Ninety-year-old Cambridge educated  “British literary scholar”  Joan Bennet (a.k.a. Joan Frankau)  “the daughter of London cigar importer Arthur Frankau and writer Julia Frankau” and the wife of Cambridge literary historian Henry Stanley Bennett whom she married in 1920 who “was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy in 1963 for her book Sir Thomas Brown: His Life and Achievement” and “as one of the expert witnesses in the Lady Chatterley Trial, helped counter the arguments of the prosecution by confirming Lawrence's reputation as a novelist, that the work was more than a description of sexual encounters, and that Lawrence's repeated use of ‘four-letter words’ were justified by literary intent” passed away today.

1987 The Los Angeles law firm of Kadison, Pfaelzer, Woodard, Quinn & RossiThe Los Angeles law firm of Kadison, Pfaelzer, Woodard, Quinn & Rossi which had been founded in 1967 by “several prominent attorneys including “Morris Pfaelzer, the husband of U.S. District Court Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer” “went out of business” today.

1988: “Midnight Run” a comedic “buddy movie” directed and produced by Martin Brest, co-starring Charles Grodin, featuring Yaphet Kotto and with music by Danny Elfman was released today in the United States.

1989(17th of Tammuz, 5749): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the first time during the Presidency of George Bush.

1991(9th of Av, 5751): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon; Erev Tish’a B’Av

1994: Israel’s Shimon Peres visits Jordan, the highest-ranking Israeli official to do so.

1994: “The Client,” the movie version of the novel with the same name directed by Joel Schumacher, with a screenplay co-authored by Akiva Goldsman and music composed by Howard Shore was released in the United States today.

1995(22nd of Tammuz, 5755): Seventy-two-year-old Ernest Ezra Manel, the Frankfurt born son of “Henri and Rosa Mandel, were Jewish emigres from Poland” the WW II resistance fighter who survived and escaped from concentration camps and who identified with the ideology of Leon Trotsky passed away today.

http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/mandel.html

 1996: During the 1996 Summer Olympics, the artistic gymnastic events in which Kerri Strug competed opened today at the Georgia Dome.

1996: “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” a play set in the upper-class German-Jewish community living in Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939”  written by Alfred Fox Uhry, the Atlanta born son of social worker Alene Fox and furniture designer Ralph K. Uhry premiered at the Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta, GA.

1996(4th of Av, 5756): Raphael Patai passed away.  Born Ervin György in 1910, Patai, was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer and anthropologist.

1997: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem: A Diplomat's Story of the Struggle for Peace in the Middle East by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McGilligan and Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters by Erica Jong.

1997: A conference “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery” opened in Jersualem.

1999: Roman Bronfman and Alexander Tzinker formed the Democratic Choice faction.

2000(17th of Tammuz, 5760): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the first last time during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.

2001: After premiering at the Seattle International Film Festival, “Ghost World,” with a script by Daniel Clowes who had a Jewish mother and Terry Zwigoff, the son of dairy farmers who also served as director was released today in the United States.

2001: “America’s Sweethearts,” a comedy directed by Joe Roth, written, produced and co-starring Billy Crystal and featuring Alan Arkin was released in the United States today.

2002: As a reminder that Jews were not the only victims of the Nazis, we mark the death of concentration camp survivor and art Jan M. Komski.

http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Komski.htm

2003: At the Lincoln Center Festival, Israel’s Gesher Theatre gives its opening performance of its adaptation of “The Slave.

2003: Jewish Women International's first-ever international conference on domestic violence in the Jewish community held its first meeting in Baltimore.

2003(20th of Tammuz, 5763): Rabbi Bezalel Rakow, “an orthodox rabbi who headed Gateshead’s Jewish community” and who “was the chair of the Council of Torah Sages of Agudas Yisroel of Great Britain” passed away.

2004 (2nd of Av, 5764): Temple Judah mourned the loss of Rabbi Ed Chesman who passed away unexpectedly while vacationing with family in Florida.

2004: Ariel “Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate from France to Israel immediately, in light of an increase in French anti-Semitism (94 anti-Semitic assaults were reported in the first six months of 2004, compared to 47 in 2003). France has the third-largest Jewish population in the world (about 600,000 people).

2005: “Israel's Parliament easily voted down three bills today aimed at delaying the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip…”

2005: Ernst Zündel, a 66-year-old white supremacist and internationally known Holocaust denier who was deported to his native Germany from Canada in March, has been charged with 14 counts of hate crimes, a court in Mannheim said.

2006(24th of Tammuz, 5766): Charles Bettelheim passed away. Born in 1913 he “was a French economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI: "Centre pour l'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation") at the Sorbonne), economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization. He was very influential in France's New Left and considered one of "the most visible Marxists in the capitalist world."

2006(24th of Tammuz, 5766): Ninety-year-old Frank Reginald Nunes Nabarro  “a leading authority on solid state physics” who was Professor of Physics and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand passed away today.

2006: The following were among a total of 43 Israeli civilians (including four who died of heart attacks during rocket barrages) and 116 IDF soldiers were killed in the Israel-Hizbullah war: Maj. Benjy Hillman, 27; St.-Sgt. Rafenael Muscal, 21, of Mazkeret Batya; St.-Sgt. Nadav Baeloha, 21, of Karmiel; St.-Sgt. Liran Sa'adiya, 21, of Kiryat Shmona; St.-Sgt. Yonatan (Sergei) Vlasyuk, 21, of Kibbutz Lahav; Maj. Ran Kochva, 37, of Beit Hananya.

2007: Under the direction of Lauren Reece, The Footlighters ACT II performs "The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa.  Making this a Jewish as well as community even, Rabbi Portman of Agudas Achim in Iowa City will conduct an outdoor Shabbat Eve services on the grounds of what was Herbert Hoover’s boyhood home.

2007: The Crown Prosecution Service announced that Lord Michael Levy was not to be prosecuted in connection with the so called "Cash for Honours" affair and that there were to be no charges against him.

2007: World premiere of David Zellnik’s  “Ariel Sharon Hovers Between Life and Death and Dreams of Theodor Herzl” at Theatre J in Washington, DC.

2008: Fast the 17th Day of Tammuz, 5768

2008(17th of Tammuz, 5768): Israeli mathematician Michael Maschler best known for his contributions in the field of “game theory” passed away today.

https://sites.google.com/site/themichaelbmaschlerprize/arachnid-story

2008: The Washington Post book section features a review of Debra Winger’s memoir, Undiscovered.

2008: The Sunday New York Times book section features a review of Rapture Ready in which Jewish author Daniel Radosh explores Christian pop culture.

2009: In upstate New York, Marilyn and Lester Milton Bornstein gave birth to Michael Scott Bornestein who gained fame as Michael Oren the author who served as Israel’s ambassador.

2009: At the 18th Maccabiah Games, the basketball competition continues as Brazil plays Germany, the USA plays Argentina, France plays Mexico and the hometown Israelis tip off against Canada.

2009: In an interview given today, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism said that the vast majority of American Jews back a settlement freeze.  

2009(28th of Tammuz, 5769): Mark Richard Rosenzweig an American research psychologist who found in animal studies on neuroplasticity that the brain continues developing anatomically, reshaping and repairing itself into adulthood based on life experiences, overturning the conventional wisdom that the brain reached full maturity in childhood passed away at the age of 86.

2009: Amidst the controversy surrounding the planned screenings of “Rachel,” a film that investigates the death of anti-Israel activist Rachel Corrie, and its invitation to her mother, Cindy Corrie, to speak afterward, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Board President Shana Penn resigned from her post, citing “healthy differences on how to approach sensitive issues,” with five months left on a two-year term.

2010(9th of Av, 5770): Tish'a B'Av: 1,940th anniversary of the destruction of the Second Temple; 1,875th anniversary of the fall of Bethar.

2010: A judge at Tel Aviv District Family Court today rejected a request for a gag order on the contents of a box containing manuscripts written by Franz Kafka. Eva Hoffe, the Israeli woman who inherited the documents, was asked to pay court costs to the National Library and attorney Ehud Sol, the manager of the estate of Kafka's close friend Max Brod.

2010: Elena Kagan, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, won approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee on a nearly party-line vote today, her next to last hurdle before gaining a lifetime seat on the high court.

 2011: Anat Cohen, an Israeli jazz clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader, is scheduled to appear at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts at an event sponsored by Detroit Jazz Festival & The JCC Stephen Gottlieb Music Festival.

2011: Medical residents announced an indefinite strike today as they continued organizing protests throughout the country against a deal being drafted between the Israel Medical Association and the Finance Ministry to end the doctors' strike.

2011: Reports that an Israeli killed in the New Zealand earthquake in February was an intelligence agent were wrong, Prime Minister John Key said today..

2011: An affiliate of Leonard Blavatnik’s Access Industries “acquired Warner Music Group for $3.3 billion.”

2011(18th of Tammuz, 5771): Sixty-eight-year-old Myra Kraft, the wife of Patriots owner Robert Kraft whom she married while a student at Brandeis and with whom she had four son and whose philanthropy was one of the things that led to her being chosen as “one of the 20 Most Powerful Women in Boston” passed away today.

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2011/07/21/myra_kraft_paragon_of_giving_dies/

2011(18th of Tammuz, 5771): Eighty-eight-year-old portrait artist Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud and the brother of Clement Freud pass away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/arts/lucian-freud-adept-portraiture-artist-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all

2012(1st of Av, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Av

2012(1st of Ave, 5772): Thirty-year-old “Ari Ephraim Rubin, vice chairman of the Jewish Defense League died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound” today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jdl-vice-chairmans-suicide-continues-chain-of-violent-deaths/

2012: Fresh from her triumphal performance in Des Moines, Iowa, renowned soprano Sarah Jane McMahon is scheduled to return to Touro Synagogue in New Orleans this evening for the fifth in a series of musical programs devoted to works by Jewish composers.  [For more about this and other happenings in “The Big Easy” see the Crescent City Jewish News http://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/

2012: “5-Day Kosher Bike Trek” a 420 mile bike ride that began in and offers Kosher food for all riders is scheduled to end today at Santa Fe, NM.

2012: As it marks it last Shabbat weekend in its downtown Washington Avenue location in Iowa City, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a potluck supper before Friday services.

2012: Six months after premiering at Sundance, “The Queen of Versailles,” a documentary about David Siegel’s private residence directed and co-produced by Lauren Greenfield was released today in the United States.

2012: The tearful funerals of the five Burgas airport suicide-bomb bombings were held in the course of today, drawing hundreds — and in some cases thousands — of mourners. Two sets of childhood friends and a newly pregnant woman, they were blown up on Wednesday at the start of what was supposed to have been a vacation, on the bus that was taking them from their plane to the airport terminal in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort.(As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)

2012: After premiering in NYC four days ago, “The Dark Knight Rises” featuring Ben Mendelsohn as “John Daggett and Alon Abutbul as “Dr. Leonid Pavel” was released to the theatres in North American and the United Kingdom.

2012: A suicide bombing that killed Israeli tourists in Bulgaria this week bore hallmarks of Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists but the U.S. Defense Department has not yet concluded who was behind it, a Pentagon spokesman said today. The attack on a bus carrying Israelis at a Bulgarian airport, "does bear the hallmarks of Hezbollah," George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters.

2012(1st  of Av):Moshe Silman, the homeless man who set himself on fire at a Tel Aviv rally last weekend, died this afternoon at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer after succumbing to the burns which covered over 90 percent of his body.

2012: A Muslim husband and wife convicted of planning a terror attack against Jews in Manchester, England, were jailed today. Shasta Khan, who was convicted of preparing for acts of terrorism and two counts of possessing information likely to be useful in an act of terrorism, was sentenced to eight years in prison. The 38-year-old hairdresser, who had pleaded not guilty, will serve four years minus the 350 days she spent on remand. (As reported by Miriam Shaviv)

2013: “More than Carnival,” a season ending summer concert is scheduled to take place at the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

2013: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform for a second day at the Hampton Synagogue at West Hampton Beach.

2013: “The geeky numbers guy who turned the electoral vote counting into a national obsession with his FIveThirtyEight blog is leaving the New York Times for the sports network” (As reported by Forward Staff)

http://forward.com/articles/180844/geek-is-gone-nate-silver-to-dump-new-york-times-f/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Saturday-and-Sunday_Daily_Newsletter%202013-07-20&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/180844/geek-is-gone-nate-silver-to-dump-new-york-times-f/#ixzz2ZctSzkcr

2013: A leading minister confirmed Saturday that Israel would release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the renewal of peace talks, but said that the government is not bound to a settlement freeze as a precondition for the resumption of negotiations. (As reported by Michael Shmulovich and Ricky Ben David)

2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Falling Out of Time by David Grossman and Friendship by Emily Gould

2014: Carole Glauber is scheduled to talk about the photographers in her exhibit “Israel in Light and Shadow” at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocuast Education.

2014: As of 1:30 a.m. Israeli time, network television reports on the fighting between Israel and Hamas show pictures of Gaza but show no pictures of rockets falling in Israel or Israelis "running for their lives"

2014(22nd of Tammuz, 5714: Thirteen members of the Golani Brigade were killed today as they fought the terrorirsts in Gaza including Captain Tzafrir Bar-Or, a commander in the Golani Brigade, 32, of Holon; Major Zvi Kaplan, a commander in the Golani Brigade, 28, from Kedumim;

Gilad Yaakobi, 21, of Kiryat Ono; Sergeant Oz Mendelovich, 21, from Avtalion; Nissim Shon Carmeli, 21, of Ra’anana (“In life they were loved and admired; they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.”)

2015(4th of Av, 5775): Ninety-four-year-old Pennsylvania born pilot Lou Lenart whose colorful career included “saving Tel Aviv” on May 29, 1948 when he and three other fliers conducted “a forty minute strafing and bombing raid on a column of Egyptian tanks, trucks and troops” that would have been in the Jewish metropolis the following day were it not for this act of daring-do.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-lou-lenart-20150722-story.html

2015: In Jerusalem, the OU Israel center is scheduled to present a special lecture from Rabbi Herschel Schachter, the Rosh Yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), Yeshiva University.

2015: Archaeologist announced today that “thanks to a high-tech solution, a charred parchment scroll discovered by the shores of the Dead Sea bearing verses from the Book of Leviticus” has been deciphered for the first time. (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)

2016: At Temple Israel, in Memphis, TN, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to present “When Will We Find Peace?” in which he explores “the 17th of Tammuz – Tzom Tammuz” as a part of the program that “explores how observing the holidays enrich Jewish lives.”

2016: While working at “Freedom Square, the makeshift booze and nosh area just outside the Quicken Loans Arena” in Cleveland, 58 year old Joan Rosenthal described preparing platters of pierogis for those attending the Republican Presidential Convention. (As reported by Ron Kampeas)

2016: ZviDance, the Israeli dance troupe led by choreographer Zvi Gotheiner is scheduled to perform at the Doris Duke Theatre.

2016: UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host the final screening of “Labyrinth of Lies” a film “based on the investigations that led to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials” at the Cineworld in Manchester.

2016: Dr. Suzanne Schneider of the Brooklyn Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to lead another session of “Primo Levi: Memory, Meaning and the Holocaust” in which she examines the life of the Italian chemist turned “witness to evil” whose writings provided new perspective on the Holocaust.

2016: Eightieth anniversary of the birth of Harvey David Luber, of blessed memory.

2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last two screenings of “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer.”

2017: “A Woman’s Life” and “The Pot and the Oak” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

2017:”Sports attorney and former Washington Senator's broadcaster Philip Hochberg; Documentary Filmmaker Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and an upcoming film about Moe Berg); and author Frederic J. Frommer (You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions) are scheduled to take part in “Fielding Dreams: Washington’s Jewish Ballplayers.”

2017: After five days, the North American Jewish Choral Festival sponsored by the Zamir Choral Foundation is scheduled to come to an end today.

2017: Today “Britain’s National Archives released records showing Winston Churchill’s attempts cover up a Nazi plot to collaborate with the members of the British royal” who in this case was the Duke of Windsor, the German’s candidate for the throne if they had been successful. (As reported by Times of Israel)

2017: “Keep the Change,” “a documentary about a community of adults living on the autism spectrum: is scheduled to be shown on the opening night of The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival presented by the Jewish Film Institute.

2018: World premiere of “Footprints” which includes a presentation of work by “Dafi Altabeb, the recipient of the 2012, 2013, and 2016 Excellence Award for young choreographers from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and the 2014 Rozenblum Award for Excellence from the Municipality of Tel-Aviv…”

2018: In South Euclid, Ohio, the Mercury Theatre Company is scheduled to host a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Dreamcoat,” as part of the celebration of “its 50th anniversary.”

2019(17th of Tammuz, 5779): Parashat Balak:

2019(17th of Tammuz, 5779): Tzom Tammuz is postponed until tomorrow because of the rules concerning refraining from observing minor fast days on Shabbat.

2019: In Edmonton, Jonathan Scheinman is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah at Beth Shalom Synagogue.

2019: The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Before You Know It” and “Golda.”

2020: “The first of a series of planned free seminars on cybersecurity is scheduled to be held for the benefit of the Jewish community under the direction of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans” today.

2020: The United Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host the “2020 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators” which is a “virtual event.”

2020: As part of its virtual July celebration webinars, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host Adeena Sussan, “the Sababa Chef.”

https://www.emanuelnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/sababa-all-recipes.pdf

2020: The Jewish Museum of Maryland is scheduled to host a live digital program on “Preserving Holocaust History through Artifacts, Archives and Research.”

2020: Online, via Zoom, Dr. Shari Rabin, assistant professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Oberlin College, is scheduled to discuss Jewish immigration to the United States around the turn of the 20th century and its ramifications on contemporary American life

2020: Former Camp Newman executive director Ruben Ruben Arquilevich (now V.P. of URJ Camps, NFTY and Immersives) is scheduled to about how to recreate the magic of camp at home to give kids meaningful experiences this summer as part of the Osher Marin JCC Pivot series.

2020: The 11th Annual Axelrod Jewish Film festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The Crossing” the film that “tells the story of the adventurous 10-year-old Gerda and her brother Otto, whose parents are in the Norwegian resistance movement during the Second World War.”

2020: As Israelis awake, they are confronted by the reality that according to the Health Ministry, the number of Coved cases has surpassed 50,000 which has led the Defense Minister to commit more IDF troops to help specified localities to cope with the pandemic.

2021: East Bay Jewish film fest teams, Israeli Consulate and A Wider Bridge are scheduled to present “The Signe for Love,” a 2017 Israeli documentary about a deaf gay man raising a baby with his deaf friend.

2021: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present a workshop “Creative Nonfiction Writing for Genealogists.”

2021: Convicted sex offender and former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein  was flown to Los Angeles and taken to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility

2021: The United States Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host Piecing Together One Family’s Holocaust History Global Film Screening and Live Discussion.

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/mave7boxesfilm0721?utm_source=mkto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=E20210701PPGEMA&mkt_tok=MTY1LUtZTy02MTYAAAF-AcX4vDslN52DijaADG64Nd13crsRI2ekYXfHYzJPd4qg53VGFdSSQOb6oIDqrjo762pD-486lXVZZpuaCmr8Efh4V9CpTrzOnN_vxQRu9A

2021: The Williams Theatre is scheduled to present a performance of “Divorced.”

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/divorced-the-play-summer-tuesdays-in-williamsburg-tickets-158573450459

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present author Joshua Greene lecturing on “From Nazi Prisoner to Wall Street King: The Indefatigable Siggi Wilzig.

2021: The Park Avenue Synagogue in New York is scheduled to host a lecture by author Judy Batalion.

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a discussion of Mandela’s Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age as part of its One Museum, One Book Club program.

2022:LSJS is scheduled to host a lecture by Rabbi Harvey Belovski on “Continuous Revelation,” which is part of series “Why Rabbis Argue: The Genesis and Genius of the Oral Law.”

2022: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to present kinescopes of the sitcom “Stanley” followed by a discussion the Buddy Hackett sitcom led by Barry Jacobsen.

2022: On National Hot Dog, the Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled to host a talk by Steve Marcus, the creator of its new exhibition “Steve Marcus: Tog Dog of Kosher Pop Art.

2022 Boston Jewish Film is scheduled to present a screening of “Carol of Bells” at the West Newton Cinema.

2023: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a lecture by Trudy Gold on “Edward VIII: A Wasted Life?”

2023: The Summer Institute “Teaching the Holocaust” sponsored by the Iowa Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to continue today.

2023: Yeshiva University Museum’s Director Gabriel Goldstein is scheduled lead “a guided tour of The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries, illuminating the life and impact of the multifaceted luminary and great Jewish sage across continents and cultures through rare manuscripts and books.”

2023: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its next Seniors Chavurah.

2023: A reception marking the New York premiere of Orit Ben Shitrit’s video installations and paintings, curated by Maureen Sullivan is scheduled to take place this evening.

2023: Hundreds of anti-government protesters are scheduled to continue their march on Jerusalem which they plan to reach tomorrow..

2023: The Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled to host an in-person book talk and signing with Daniel Wolff, author of How to Become an American.

2024: Those on the Poland 2024 tour are scheduled to attend “morning services with the local community, followed by Kiddush and lunch and a walking tour of Kazimierz, the heart of Jewish Krakow, and its extant synagogues and other site.

2024: In Columbus, OH, as part of “No Tie July” Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host Hawaiian Shirt Shabbat where congregants can “have a staycation” when they wear their “favorite Hawaiian shirt to services..”

2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host lecture by Professor David Peimer on “Contemporary Israeli TV: "Fauda" the Series.”

2024: The Eden Tamir Center is schedule to host the “Season’s Final Concert” which will be “Ensemble Millennium/Toscanini Quartet, Ensemble in Residence and Friends”

2024(14th of Tammuz, 5784): Parashat Balak

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

2024: As July 20th 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 288 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.)