This Day, June 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
JUNE 7
421:
Theodosius II, the Emperor whose code sought to reinforce Christianity as the
state religion at the expense of Judaism, married Aelia Eudocia Augusta, a
pagan who converted so that they could be married by the Church.
1099: During the First Crusade, the Christians
begin the siege of Jerusalem. The armies of the First Crusade (1096-99) reached
the walls of Jerusalem. The First Crusade would prove to be the most successful
of all of the crusades in terms of meeting the goal of reclaiming the Christian
Homeland from the Moslem infidel.
Forgotten in all of this were the true titleholders – the Jews – except
when it came to massacring them. It is
ironic that events on this same seventh day of June set matters to right.
1191:
As he continues on his quest to gain control of Jerusalem for the Christians,
Richard l leaves Tyre and heads for Acre where he will lay siege to the city.
1233(21st
of Sivan, 4993): Today, for the first time, Jews were ordered to wear
distinctive clothing was mandated in Spain. The following year Pope Gregory IX
developed guidelines for this, sent in the form of a letter to the King of
Navarra: "Since we desire that Jews be recognizable and distinguished from
Christians, we order you to impose upon each and every Jew of both sexes a
sign, viz, one round patch of yellow cloth of linen to be worn on the uppermost
garment."
1365:
Urban V issued “Sicuti judaeis non debet” a Papal Bull that forbade people from
molesting Jews or forcing them to be baptized.
1422: In Castello di Petroia, Guidantinio da Monterfeltro gave
birth to his illegitimate son Federico da Montefeltro, who “protected his
Jewish subjects during his reign in Urbino from 1444 to 1482.
1494:
Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which divided the New World
between the two countries. Considering the Inquisition and the Expulsion from
Iberia, this division could have meant that Jews would have been banned from
the Western hemisphere. Fortunately for
the Jews, Protestant Holland and Anglican England (as well as France) did not
recognize the treaty and had other plans for dividing the lands of the New
World.
1594(18th
of Sivan 5354): Roderigo Lopez a Marrano physician was hanged in England. Born
in 1525, he supposedly arrived in England as Francis Drake's prisoner of war.
He rose in importance to become Queen Elizabeth's physician (1586). Accused by
other members of the court of being a Spanish spy who was trying to poison the
Queen, he was arrested but the Queen refused to carry out the death sentence.
In June 1594 she finally consented and he was hanged. Throughout his trial he
was vilified as being a "Jew". According to some
accounts, Lopez was a foolish person who got in way over his head playing
politics at the Court of Queen Elizabeth. In the days of Good Queen Bess,
the rule of thumb was "when in doubt, hang 'em."
1651(18th
of Sivan, 5411): Polish Talmudist Abraham Rapoport, the “son of Israel Jelriel
Rapoport of Cracow and son-in-law of Mordecai Schrenzel of Lemberg who “was
president of the Council of Four Lands, and was administrator of the money
collected for the poor in the Holy Land” passed away today.
1654:
Louis XIV was crowned King of France. Louis’ record in dealing with the Jews
was, uneven to say the least. In keeping
with the mercantilist policies of his minister Colbert, Louis issued a charter
of liberty for Jews under royal authority in 1671. Among other things, this opened up the port
of Marseilles as a harbor where Jews could trade freely, much to the
consternation of the local Christian merchants.
When the merchants complained, Louis (in a reply probably written by
Colbert) responded: “Commercial envy will always impel the Christian merchants
to persecute Jews. But you should be
above such motives that issue from personal interests. You should take into consideration the
benefits the government derives from the industrial activity of the Jews, which
comprises all the parts of the world thanks to their association with their
coreligionists.” This benign attitude did not last forever. As Colbert fell from favor and Louis grew
more pious as he grew older, he acceded to demands to ban Jews from various
parts of his empire. In 1710, “He
ordered Jews ‘to leave the kingdom without any belongings,’ and told local
officials to take any and all means to expel Jews ‘because that is our wish.’”
1692: Port Royal, Jamaica is hit by a catastrophic
earthquake; in just three minutes, 1600 people are killed and 3000 are
seriously injured. Jew first started arriving in Port Royal in 1663, eight
years after the British took the island from the Spanish. Sadly, there is
little documentation of Jewish life in Port Royal, but earthquake survivor
Edmund Heath's account of the infamous 1692 event, notes the existence of a
Jew's street and synagogue which records locate on New Street running parallel
to Cannon Street. The Jewish legacy in Port Royal also includes a cemetery at
Hunt's Bay. During the 17th century it was not unusual to see Jewish families
carrying their loved ones by boat across the harbor to be buried.
1699:
“By an agreement dated today, the council of Worms pledged itself to grant the
Jews certain concessions, and this arrangement was confirmed by Joseph I.”
1772(6th
of Sivan, 5532): Shavuot
1733:
George Frideric Handel completed “Athalia,” an oratorio based on a play of the
same name by Racine. Both works depict
the life of the widow of the King of Judah whose murderous ways make her “a
Jewish Lady MacBeth.”
1737(8th
of Sivan, 5497): Levi Ulff whom “the king had appointed his Court and order the
royal regiments to secure their ribbons” from his ribbon factory which had been
moved to Charlottenburg in 1714 passed away today.
1753(5th
of Sivan, 5513): Erev Shavuot
1753: In Great
Britain, an Act of Parliament styled “The Jewish Naturalization Act 1753”
received royal assent today. The Act gave foreign-born Jews to become
naturalized by making application to Parliament. This meant that foreign born Jews would enjoy
the same rights as native born English Jews. While the act enjoyed support in
the House of Lords, it was repealed in 1754 due to opposition from the Tories
in the House of Commons. [Ed. Note – When the “Jew Bill was introduced in the
19th century, the pros and cons would be just the opposite with the
Commons supporting the bill and the Lords opposing it.
1758(1st
of Sivan, 5518) Rosh Chodesh Sivan
observed as the British lay siege to Louisbourg during the French and Indian
War.
1764(7th
of Sivan, 5524): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor recited as Boston deals with the
aftermath of an outbreak of smallpox.
1772(6th
of Sivan, 5532): First Day of Shavuot
1779:
Eighty-year-old William Warburton, the Bishop of Gloucester passed away. His major work was The Divine Legation of
Moses in which he uses the absence of the mention of the afterlife in the Torah
as a proof that Moses received a divine revelation which he then uses to defend
Christianity against the beliefs of the deists.
1780:
The Army was called out today to quell the “Gordon Riots” and among other
things arrested Lord George Gordon, the future convert to Judaism, on charges
of high treasons – charges of which he would be found not guilty.
1787:
Birthdate of Amsterdam native Mozes Aron Coronel, the husband of Ribca Abenda
and father of Aaron Coronel.
1790(25th
of Sivan, 5550) Beer Nehm Rindskopf, the thrice married son of Nehm Joseph
Rindskopf and Hindle Rindskopf passed away today in Frankfurt, Germany.
1791(5th
of Sivan, 5551) Ererv Shavuot observed on the same day General Lafayette wrote
from Paris to Thomas Jefferson “lamenting” the fact that Jefferson had left
France since he could have been so helpful in drafting the Constitution which
Lafayette feared would not solve the woes of his country that was being rocked
the Revolution that had begun in 1789.
1797: The Treaty
of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America
and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary) “which was submitted to the
Senate by President John Adams, received ratification unanimously from the U.S.
Senate” today including Article which reads “the Government of the United
States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…
1798(23rd
of Sivan, 5558): In Pesaro, Italy Jews were murdered following the retreat of
the French Army. The day became a fast
day
1804:
Dutch born Ann Magnus and Isaac Nathan Lear buried their unnamed child today.
1806:
Today, “the wealthy leaders of the Sephardic” community “of Bordeaux” expressed
their fear of the “evil that had manifested itself among their poor and sought
to prevent the infection by religious education during the old regime and also
by vocational training after the emancipation.”
1806:
Today, “the Philanthropic Society of the Bordeaux Jews maintained that poor
Jewish children could at least be taught arts and manual trades, for Jews were
longer exclude from these economic opportunities.”
1810(5th
of Sivan, 5570): Erev Shavuot observed on the day when the first issue of
Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, the first newspaper to open in post-Colonial Argentina
was published today leading to this date being honored as Journalist Day in a
country that became famous for the positive relations between the future Pope
and the local rabbis.
1810:
Richa Isaacs, the daughter of Abraham Isaacs, Jr. married Abraham Levy Today.
1815:
The Jews of Saxony “were permitted to give a reception of King Frederick
August, the Just.
1820:
“Isaac B. Barrett and Rachel J. Barret” gave birth to Esther Barrett who became
Esther G. Poznanski when she married “Gustavus Poznanski” with whom she had
four children.
1821(7th
of Sivan, 5581): Second Day of Shavuot
1828(25th
of Sivan, 5588): Parashat Sh’lac
1828:
In Berlin, Wilhelm Wolff Beer and Doris Beer gave birth to Julius Alfred Beer.
1829(6th
of Sivan, 5589): Shavuot
1829:
At New Street Covent Garden, Simon Marcus and Eleanor Levy gave birth to their
sixth child, Matilda Marcus.
1834(29th
of Iyar, 5594): Parashat Bamidbar
1837:
Birthdate of Alois Schicklgruber, the son of an unwed mother who would change
his name to Alois Hitler, the father of Adolph Hitler.
1840(6th
of Sivan, 5600): Shavuot
1842(29th
of Sivan, 5602): Rabbi Baruch Gougenheim, the French born son “Sara and Jacob
Wolff Guggenheim” and the “husband of Rosel Rosette Rosele Gougenheim” passed
away today.
1843:
In Denmark, the Supreme Court sentenced Meïr Aron Goldschmidt “to prison (6 times 4 days), a fine, and future censorship” for criticism of
the king that appeared in the satirical magazine “The Corsair” which he founded
and served as chief editor.
1845: Birthdate of “Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer,”
http://leopoldauersociety.com/leopold-auer-bio-2/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/music-history-composers-and-performers-biographies/leopold-auer
1848(6th
of Sivan, 5608): As Europe is rocked by revolutions, Jews observe Shavuot.
1850:
In Germany, Jacob and Eliza Weil Bodenheimer gave birth to Shreveport, LA
resident Harriette Bodenheimer, who married Captain Simon Levy in 1866.
1851(7th
of Sivan, 5611): Second Day of Shavuot; Shabbat observed on the same day that
Volume 6, Number 38 of the Scientific American was published with articles
about the “Fall of Bridge Near Frankfort, Kentucky” and an “Improved Flour and
Grain Dressing Machine.”
1852:
Birthdate of David Kaufman, the native of Moravia who became one of the leading
scholars in the fields of history and the philosophy of religion.
1853(1st
of Sivan, 5613): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1853(1st
of Sivan, 5613: Hertz Wolf (Fritz) Oppenheim, the Hanover, Germany son of Wolf
Jacob Simon Oppenheim and Gutrad Gertrud Jachet Oppenheimer, and the husband of
Catharine Oppenheim passed away today in Charleston, SC.
1854:
Benjamin Marks and Mary Aaron were married today at the Great Synagogue in
London.
1854:
In Philadelphia, PA, Meyer Guggenheim and Barbara Myers gave birth to New York
resident Isaac Guggenhim the husband of Carrie Sonneborn, “director of the
American Smelting and Refining Company, the National Park Bank” and a “member
of the firm of M. Guggenheim’s Sons.
1854: The New York Times reported
that Frederika Bremer has written a warm appeal to the Swedish Parliament
on behalf of the Jews.
1856(4th of Sivan, 5616): Parashat Nasso
1857: The New York Times reported that the Weekly
Gleaner: A Voice of Israel, a Jewish newspaper, is now being published in
San Francisco. Rabbi Julius Eckman was the paper's publisher.
1858: "New York City: The Rogue's Portrait Gallery"
published today says that Number 169 is a likeness of an old vagabond called
"Jew Mike.”
1859(5th of Sivan, 5619): Erev Shavuot
1860: In Vienna, Professor Dr. Simon Spitzer and Marie
Spitzer gave birth to Eugenie Spitzer who was married to Mortiz Wottitz and
then Zygmnunt Wartski.
1861: Today subscribers across the country opened the Jewish
Messenger to read a response by the
fledgling Shreveport Jewish community to column entitled "Stand By the
flag" written by Rabbi Samuel Isaacs. The resolution, signed by M. Baer,
President of the Shreveport community, proclaims: “We solemnly pledge ourselves
to stand by, protect, and honor the flag, with its stars and stripes, the Union
and Constitution of the Southern Confederacy with our lives, liberty, and all
that is dear to us.” In harsh language, Baer identifies Isaacs as “an enemy to
our interest and welfare,” and accuses him of raising “hatred and
dissatisfaction in our midst and assisting to start a bloody civil war amongst
us.”
1865: Ferdinand James Anselm von Rothschild married his cousin
Evelina de Rothschild the daughter of Lionel de Rothschild
1865:
Two days after he passed away, 84 year old Raphael “David” Picard, the Prussian
born son of Juda Lieb Leham Bicker and Keyla Catherin Wolf Ulmann was bured
today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1867(4th
of Sivan, 5627): Seventy-eight-year-old “Italian Hebraist” who had been
principal of the Jewish school at Florence and who had taught Professor Fausto
Lasino, passed away today.
1868:
In Lauterbach, Germany Babette and Gabriel Worms gave birth to future New
Yorker Emil Worms, the husband of Clara Worms.
1870:
The attorney representing Sigmund, Joseph and Julius Walberg who are “charged
with making false revenue returns as brokers” made a motion for discharge.
1870:
The news that a congregation in Charlottesville had voted to join the Reform
Movement was greeted with applauses at today meeting of the Rabbinical Council
being held in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1870:
The Rabbinical Council adopted a resolution providing for a “uniform reading”
of the Torah over a three year period at Sabbath services. The selections should omit “antiquated laws.”
1871:
In Cincinnati, Ohio, a meeting of the Rabbinical Council, the governing body of
the Reform Movement, the Prayerbook Committee was authorized to publish their
new work as soon as it was ready.
1871:
“Russian Tyranny and Jewish Resistance” published today reported that Jews in
Poland have resisted the government orders to do away with their traditional
attire, hair styles and beards. Since
the Jews are not following the news edicts, the police are stepping in to
shorten the long coats favored by some Jews and cutting off their “curls.” Lengthening the short pants of the Jews has
been more of a problem. But the greatest
challenge is getting rid of the beards.
In one rural town, the police grabbed an 80-year-old Jew and began
cutting his beard. He cried out and when
his co-religionists came to his aid, they were pounced on, forced into chairs,
and sheared in “a hurried and rough manner” that was deemed less than
“pleasant.” While the Warsaw Police have
avoided such extreme measures up until now, they will adopt them to ensure that
the government’s edicts are carried out.
1872:
Birthdate of painter and musicologist Rodolphe d'Erlanger.
1873:
Birthdate of Austrian native Maximilian Marion Apfel who in 1887 came the
United States where he graduated from the New York College of Pharmacy was an
active member of the Hebrew Free Loan Society.
1873:
“Hebrew Orphans’ Excursion” published today reported that the managers of the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Free schools have made plans provide the youngsters in
their care with excursions this summer starting on June 23.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B00E5DA1439E43BBC4F53DFB0668388669FDE
1874(22nd
of Sivan, 5634): Eighty-seven-year-old Karaite archeologist Abraham ben Samuel
Firkovich passed away today.
1875:
“Ancient Libraries” published today provides a series of interesting sketches
of the great libraries of the world including the following comments about the
Jews and their ancient literature. The
author assumes that the Biblical city Kiryat Sefer took its name from the fact
that it was a repository for works written by or inspired by Moses as well as
“rhapsodies of prophets, the verses of poets, works of historians and dark
sayings of proverbial philosophers.
Prominent among these must have been the contributions of the great King
Solomon who spoke 3,000 proverbs, whose songs were 1,005” who spoke with
“scientific method and precision about beasts, fowl creeping things and fishes
as well as plants including the Cedars
of Lebanon and hyssop growing out of the walls.
The author assumes that these Jewish libraries were “swept out of
existence” and much of the literature was lost except for fragmentary
references which can be found in books which have been preserved for religious
purposes.
1875(4th
of Sivan, 5635): Babette Marx, the wife of Alexander Blum with whom she lived
in Algiers and then moved back to Frankfurt to live with her sister Esther
Kosel, passed away today.
1876:
Alois Schiclgruber is officially recognized as the son of Johann Georg Hiedler
and his name is changed to Alois Hitler, a linguistic move that could not have
been anything but useful to the future Nazi murderer.
1877:
Birthdate of Louise Kahn Hirschman.
1877:Today,
Leopold de Rothschild laid the foundation stone for the New West End Synagogue,
which was founded by Sir Samuel Montague,
1878(6th
of Sivan, 5638): First Day of Shavuot
1878:
Rabbi Gustav Gotthel is scheduled to lead Shavuot Services at Temple Emanuel in
New York City
1878:
Rabbi Adolph Huebsch is scheduled to lead Shavuot Services at Ahavaht Chesed on
Lexington Avenue & 55th Street
1878:
Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs is scheduled to lead Shavuot Services at B’nai Jeshrun on
34th Street.
1878:
Rabbi Frederick De Sola Mendes is scheduled to Shavuot Services at Shaaray
Tefillah on 44th Street.
1878:
A man named Dixon was hung today in Vicksburg, MS, having been convicted of
brutally murdering a 45 year old Jewish peddler named Bachman while he was
traveling on the steamboat Fair Play in December of 1877.
1880: The New York Times published a review
of The Poetry of the Talmud by Simon Seckles.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9503E1DC1630EE3ABC4F53DFB066838B699FDE
http://archive.org/details/poetryoftalmud00seklrich
http://archive.org/stream/poetryoftalmud00seklrich#page/n5/mode/2up
1880:
Fifty-two-year-old General Frederick Vilmar commander of the 2nd
Brigade of the New York National Guard whom Julius J. Lyons, the son of Rabbi
Jacques Lyons served as Judge Advocate from 1875-1876 passed away today.
1881:
In Essex, NJ, Moises/Moritz Tintner and Adeline Tintner gave birth to JTS
ordained Rabbi Benjamin Abner Tinter, the holder of an AB, MA and Ph. D. from
Columbia who was “the first American-born rabbi and the first graduate of the
Jewish Theological Seminary to serve Congregation B’nai Jeshurun and who in
1930 was elected state chaplain of the American Legion, Department of New York,
1881: Oliver
Hazard Perry Belmont graduated from the Naval Academy. His father was August Belmont, the Jewish
financer for whom the Belmont Stakes is named.
His mother was the daughter of Oliver Hazard Perry and was not Jewish.
1881:
At the Republican State Convention, Louis Seasongood, a Jewish leader from
Cincinnati is among those being considered as the party’s nominee for
Lieutenant Governor. Seasongood had been
defeated by General Hickenlooper for the position two years ago.
1881:
It was reported today from St. Petersburg, that the “excitement against the
Jews here has abated but has not entirely disappeared.” [Editor’s note – what charming euphemisms for
anti-Semitic riots; as can be seen from the entries below, there was no
abatement. ]
1882:
It was reported today that the Mansion House Committee for the Relief of
Russian Jews has collected over eighty-two thousand British Pounds of which it
has spent all but 25 thousand pounds.
The Committee is going to send representatives to Hamburg to oversee the
departure of the Russian Jews from the German seaport.
1882:
At today’s session of the Republican State Convention being held in Columbus,
the party adopted the following resolution. “We condemn the terrible
persecutions inflicted upon the Jews of Russia and other sections of Europe,
and while he heartily approved the action of the Government in its efforts to
ameliorate the condition of these unfortunate people, we earnestly solicit a
continuance of its most energetic efforts to that end.”
1884:
Birthdate of NYC native and NYU trained attorney Morris Alfred Vogel.
1885:
Birthdate of Lithuania native Benyomen Flaysher, who in 1903 came o the United
States where “he received ordination into the rabbinate at the Yeshiva of Rabbi
Yitskhok Elchonon, studied law at La Salle University and at New York
University” and began publishing articles in Yiddish newspapers including “Dos
yidishe likht (The Jewish light), Yidishe tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper),
and Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), among others.”
1886:
Three days after she had passed away, 49-year-old Emilie Henriette Levis the
German born wife of Julius Levis with whom she had had five children was buried
today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1886:
“Indignant Rabbis” published today described the refusal of Mr. Taylor, the
principal of Central High School in Philadelphia, PA to excuse the Jewish
students for missing the upcoming final exams which have been scheduled on the
days of Shavuot. Despite pleas from the
city’s rabbis to reach some kind of accommodation, Taylor has remained adamant
which means the Jewish children could fail through no fault of their own.
1888:
In Minneapolis, MN, Albert and Pauline Cooperman gave birth to St. Louis
University trained eye, ear, nose and throat specialist Harold O. Cooperman and
husband of Anna Rabinovich, who was an associate surgeon at Minneapolis General
Hospital and a president of the Menorah Society.
1889:
“To Celebrate Two Anniversaries” published today took note of the fact that the
year 1892 “will witness the four hundredth anniversaries of the expulsion of
the Hebrews from Spain and the discovery of America and described plans already
being made by those meeting at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue to honor
both of these events.
1890:
In Bloomington, Illinois, “a gas jet, which had served as the eternal light” at
the Moses Montefiore Congregation “ignited a fire on the altar” that destroyed
“so much of the Temple’s interior that it had to be completely redecorated.
1890:
In Philadelphia, Dr. Solomon da Silva Solis-Cohen and Emily Grace Solis-Cohen
gave birth to Leo Solis-Cohen, M.D.
1891:
“The committee for the relief of Russian Jews reports” that many of the Jews
arriving at Charlottenburg “were wounded while fleeing from the Russian
police.” Even more Jews were killed and the exodus is assuming such vast
proportion” that the German Government will be forced to intervene “since
private charity will soon be powerless to cope with the demands”.
1891:
“Friends of the Jews Who Want Them Not” published today described “the
indignation of Western Europe” to “Russia’s barbaric expulsion of the Jews”
which is beginning to be mixed with a desire “to pass the exiled horde” on to
some other nation or nations. “The various organizations and committees which
have been formed” in Berlin, Vienna, Paris and London “to look out for the
comfort and safety of the Jews after they leave Russia” reportedly spend a
large amount of their funds on purchasing “passage tickets to America”
1891:
“The Field of Future of Wars” published today described the little known
eastern portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a primitive place where “the
village inns – low drinking places at best – are generally kept by Jews, who
entice by all means in their power, the peasants to come an consume as much
‘wodka’ as possible.”
1891:
“High Sheriff Benjamin Disraeli” published today reports that “an Irish
antiquarian has just discovered that the ‘Benjamin D’Israeli, Esq.,’ who was
High Sheriff of the Count of Carlow in 1810, was an uncle of Lord
Beaconsfield.” He died in 1814 and is
buried in St. Peter’s Church in Dublin. [Editor’s Note – If this report is
accurate and if this High Sheriff Disraeli was Jewish, it makes one wonder what
oath he swore when he took the office.
1892:
Twenty-seven-year-old CCNY grad and NYU trained attorney Joseph L.
Buttenweiser, the Philadelphia born son of “Laemmlein Buttenweiser and Leah
Buttenweiser” married Lean Weil today.
1892:
“Jewish Historical Society” published today described the organizational
meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society at JTS which included an
acrimonious debate between laymen and rabbis touched off by the fact that the
report of the Committee on Organization did not recommend a rabbi for any of
the officer positions. The debate became
so heated that Rabbi Kaufman Kohler “jumped up and left the room.”
1893:
Fifty-nine-year-old American actor Edwin Booth whose portrayal of Shylock was
that critics said, “there is no other actor who realize so well as he all the
meaning of the character – the bitter hatred, the firmness of purpose, the deep
passion, the unswerving faith and the tenderness of his undemonstrative
affection for his child” passed away today.
1893:
Birthdate of Samuel Pinanski, the native of Boston who was President of the
American Theatres Corporation and an officer of the Hebrew Free Loan Society.
1894: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Rutgers University trained
attorney Jules Tepper, the decorated WW I veteran and leader of the Essex
County (NJ) Republican Club who raised three children – Shirlee, Rita and
Leonard – with “his wife the former Lillian M. Schoenbrun.
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/20/archives/jules-tepper-dies-jersey-lawyer-77.html?searchResultPosition=1
1894:
In Richmond, VA, Solomon and Hannah Rothschild gave birth to University of
Pennsylvania and University of Michigan trained actuarial scientist and WW I
U.S. Army Captain, Stanford Z. Rothschild the husband of Marie Lowenstein, who was also
a lecturer at Johns Hopkins and member of the Hebrew Congregation in Baltimore.
1894:
In Rengshausen, Hessen, Germany, Abraham Höflich and Bertha Beilchen Höflich
gave birth to Nathan Höflich, the husband of Hilde Höflich and father of Gerda
Höflich who was murdered Majdanek at the age of 48.
1895(15th
of Sivan, 5655): Forty-four-year-old Berlin born composer and conductor Martin
Roder who came to the United States in
1892 “to take charge of the vocal department in the New England Conservatory at
Boston” passed away today.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12794-roder-martin
1896:
In New York, “Dr. Isaac M. Haldeman” delivered a sermon at the First Baptist
Church in which he said “that the Jews had been persecuted by all the civilized
nations of the world, so that they were driven to lying, cheating and other
vices. No tongue could describe the
tortures inflicted on them – not by pagans, but by Christians…”
1896:
Professor Isaac Franklin Russell of NYU Law School delivered a lecture at the
Hebrew Institute on “Tom Paine.”
1896:
“Mayor Strong Asked to Aid Peddlers” published today described the plight of
two Jewish peddlers who have been “driven from the streets by police” because
they like so many others have deprived of their livelihood i.e. selling collar
buttons and suspenders from various street corners.
1896:
The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band will perform at a strawberry festival this
afternoon sponsored by the Lebanon League which is raising funds for the
Lebanon Hospital at Westchester and Cauldwell Avenues.
1896:
“Beginnings of a Prime Minister” published today described the handicaps that
Benjamin Disraeli had to overcome in making his way to the top of the English
political ladder. It noted that he did
“not have the advantages of wealth or connected enjoyed by so many of his
race. His father was a “renegades” who
educated his son at “second class private schools” where he was not able to
make the friendships and associations that “wealthy Jews nowadays” make at
“public schools and universities.”
1897(7th
of Sivan, 5657): Second Day of Shavuot
1897:
No Orthodox Jew voted in the judicial elections held in Chicago today since
marking the ballot would violate the prohibition against writing on a Jewish
festival.
1897:
Birthdate of Austrian born composer and conductor, George Szell. He was best
known for his long, successful career as musical director of the Cleveland
Symphony Orchestra. He held the position
from 1946 until 1970.
1897:
“Myer S. Isaacs, President of the Board of Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch
Fund, has received a draft for $400,000, from the Baroness de Hirsch, as the
first advance on the donation of $1,000,000 recently made by the Baroness to
assist the poor of New York City.”
1898:
It was reported today that “gangs of peasants attacked and plundered he shop at
Frystak and wounded several Jews’ while the police in this Galician town “fired
on the mob killing six of the rioters and wounding five more.”
1898:
Three days after he had passed away, 51-year-old Lewis John Somers, the son of
Ann and Judah George Somers was buried today in London at the Plashet Jewish
Cemetery.
1899:
During ten days of meetings at The Hague that would end on June 17 Herzl met
several of the most representative Russian leaders. Baroness Bertha Von Suttner
introduced him to Russian State Counselor Ivan von Bloch who is responsible for
the calling of the Conference. The meetings resulted in Herzl's name being
brought favorably to the attention of the Czar. Herzl also met with Nouri Bey,
General Secretary of the Turkish Foreign Office who promises to get together a
group of officials to arrange an audience with the Sultan.
1900:
It was reported today that during the commencement exercise for the University
College and Applied Science at NYU, the Hebrew Language Prize had been awarded
to Henry Noble MacCracken, the son of the school’s chancellor.
1901:
Birthdate of Sam Katzman, an American film producer and director who began
working in the industry at the age of 13 when it was centered on the east
coast. He moved west with the industry
and enjoyed a successful 40 year career in film. He passed away in 1973.
1902(2nd
of Sivan, 5662): Parashat Bamidbar
1902: Birthdate of old New York native, Cornell graduate and
University of Vienna trained physician Dr. Alexander B. Gutman, the “noted
medical researcher and professor emeritus of medicine at the Mount. Sinai
Hospital” and husband of “the former Daisy Rieger” who “was a major in the Army
Medical Reserve Corps and, from 1943 to 1946 and a consultant to the
Office of the Air Surgeon” as well as the associate editor of Cecil and Loeb's Textbook
of Medicine .
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4586311/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gutman-alexander-b
DR,
A, B, GUTMAN, A CANCER EXPERT - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
1902:
Today reports from London said that “Vienna newspapers are calling attention to
the passage of small groups of Rumanian Jewish immigrants passing through
Vienna en route to the United States” because “they are fleeing to escape
poverty and distress” found in a country where “the disabilities they have
suffered practically exclude most of them from the opportunities enjoyed by
Christians” when it comes to “earning a livelihood.”
1903:
Chicago businessman, David Labowitch, the Hungarian born son of Rifka Gunward
and Leopold Labowitch, married Ida Shutan after which he served as President of
Temple Mizpah and a director of the Jewish Charities of Chicago.
1903:
Chess Master Julius Finn, the Russian born son of Dora Markel and Chaim Ber
Finn and treasurer of the Bronx Maternity Hospital married Dora Berson today.
1903:
In Pittsburgh, PA, the sixth annual convention of the Federation of American
Zionists is scheduled to continue for a second day.
1903:
Jacob Massel of Glasgow and Isaac Allen of New York addressed today’s meeting
of the Ladies’ Zion Society at New Brighton Synagogue on what has been
designated as “Convention Day.”
1904(24th
of Sivan, 5664): Moishe Finkel took his own life after shooting his wife and
actor David Levinson who was a romantic rival.
Born in 1850, Finkel was a leading member of the Yiddish theatre in the
United States. His tempestuous personal life would have fine material for
tragedy or melodrama. His professional
life was intertwined with such greats of the Yiddish theatre as Jacob Adler and
Boris Thomashefsky. And he was the father-in-law
of famed Hollywood actor, Paul Muni.
1904:
“The week long Seventh Annual Convention of the Federation of American
Zionists” during which resolutions were approved “for the founding of Yiddish
magazine, for the development of the work of the ‘Mizrach,’ for the
establishment of Hebrew classes and a system of tuition for Jewish children and
for the general supervision of the education of Jewish throughout the country”
came to a close today at Germania Hall in Cleveland, OH.continued to meet for a
third day at Germania Hall in Cleveland, OH.
1904:
In South Carolina, Rabbi J.J. Simenhoff officiated at the marriage of Clarence
Mintz and Tillie Selman.
1905:
“Oscar Hammerstein said” tonight “that negotiations between his representatives
in Paris and Mme. Sarah Bernhardt for her appearance in vaudeville next season
positively had not been given up” and that he “expects to bring over a number
of well-known European artists.”
1906:
“At a dinner given” tonight at Clinton Hall by the officers of the United
Hebrew Charities to some fifty well-to-do residents of the east side, Nathan
Bijur, one of the officers said that the organization was now staggering along
under a deficit of $40,000 and that unless that amount and more was raised by
August 10 the doors of the society’s main building and of several subordinate
houses would have to close.”
1907:
The “owner of six dwelling-houses in the parliamentary and metropolitan borough
of Islington” was ordered to appear today before Joseph H. Polka, Esquire, on
the justices of the peace for the county of London
1908:
Founding of Kinneret
1908:
Twenty-eight-year-old “Dr, Jacob Haas, an electric physician with a lucrative
practice on the east side” did not marry his niece Fannie Thaller, the daughter
of Max Thaller today, as planned by the two because Dr. Haas had attempted to
commit suicide at the end of May when he was overwhelmed by her family’s
opposition to the union.
1909:
In Croatia, Rabbi Avraham Marmorstein, the son of Yehuda Leib (Leopold)
Marmorstein and Rivka (Regina) Marmorstein, and his wife Antonia Toba
Marmorstein gave birth of Emil
Marmorstein
1910:
Eighty-six-year-old Goldwin Smith the British born Canadian academic who was a
political opponent of Benjamin Disraeli, passed away. “A pathological
anti-Semite, Smith disseminated his hatred in dozens of books, articles and
letters. Jews, he charged, were "parasites," "dangerous" to
their host country and "enemies of civilization." His bilious
anti-Jewish tirades helped set the tone of a still unmoulded Canadian society
and had a profound impact on such young Canadians as W.L. Mackenzie King, Henri
Bourassa and scores of others. Indeed in 1905 in the most vituperative
anti-Jewish speech in the history of the House of Commons, borrowing heavily
from Smith, Bourassa urged Canada to keep its gates shut to Jewish immigrants.
1911:
Following “the recent publication of President Taft’s censure of Colonel
Gerrard, who opposes the” promotion of Jewish enlisted men, “resolutions
demanding investigations in the Army and Navy to deter whether Jews are
discriminated against were introduced in the House today by Representative
Edwards of Georgia.”
1912:
Evening schools to be opened in New York City for Turkish Jews to learn English
during the summer months.
1912:
In Kharkoff, the police instituted “proceedings against Zionists for belonging
to an illegal organization and supporting institutions abroad.”
1912:
Russian Minister Count Sergei Witte denied accusations by his opponents “that
in 1890 he had sent millions to America to assist Jewish bankers.”
1912:
Several fires, of unknown origin, destroyed “large portion of townlets” near
Podolia, Lublin and Kalish “leaving several hundreds of Jewish families
homeless.
1913:
In Chicago, The Frist American Conference on Social Insurance which Lee K. Frankel
has attended as a delegate from New York came to an end.
1914:
The Federation of Oriental Jews held its second annual meeting today PS 91 in
NYC. The federation is made up of
representatives of 28 different organizations which have approximately 3,000
members. The federation estimates that
there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Oriental Jews living in New York. The term refers to Sephardic Jews most of
whom are recent immigrants from areas that have been under Ottoman rule
including Greece. Unlike their northern
and eastern European co-religionist, they do not speak Yiddish, relying instead
on Ladino for much of their colloquial conversation.
1914:
Twenty-one men received diplomas and five were ordained as Rabbis at today’s
graduation exercises held by the Jewish Theological Seminary at the Aeolian
Hall. Louis Marshall presided over the
event and read a speech prepared by Dr. Solomon Schechter who was unable to be
present because of ill health.
1914:
Simon F. Rothschild delivered the opening address at today’s ceremony
dedicating the newly constructed building in Brownsville that will house the
Hebrew Educational Society. Among other
speakers were Felix Warburg, Abram Elkus and from the world of New York
politics, Controller William A. Pendergast.
1914:
Over a thousand people attended today’s opening of a new building to house the
Harlem Hebrew School The school was begun five years and is supported by the
Yeishva Torah Chaim of Harlem. Almost
500 children attend the school which provides courses in Hebrew, the Bible and
Jewish history before and/or after public school hours.
1915: As of
today, the officers of the Hebrew Association for the Blind included President
Benjamin Berinstein, a lawyer” who as a blind student at Columbia made a name
for himself as a debater and member of Phi Beta Kappa, Vice President Jacob
Salmovitz, Recording Secretary Catherine Cohen, Trustee Henry Shapiro and
Sergeant-at’Arms Harry Kantrowitz.
1915:
“Today, the Exchange Telegraph Company has received a dispatch from Berlin by
way of Amsterdam saying the Berliner
Tageblatt declares that the German anti-Semitic organs are starting a new
campaign to prevent Jews from becoming officers in the army after the war.”
1915:
Dr. Cyrus Adler, the President of Dropsie College warned against the latest
attempt to separate the synagogue from the Hebrew School. Such an action “can only result in an
exaltation of ‘Hebraic culture’ as against ‘Jewish knowledge and Judaism.’ A
secularized Hebrew school is as much a paradox as a non-religious Jewish state
and a tragedy which will eventually destroy the synagogue and render asunder
the Jewish home.”
1915:
In Atlantic City, NJ, the delegates attending the national convention of the
Order of B’rith Abraham are scheduled to vote on resolutions endorsing the
meeting of a “Jewish national congress” “composing all the fraternities of the
race in this country” and demanding that the 11,000,000 Jews of Europe “be
according all the rights of free men” when the World War is over.
1915:
In Atlantic City, NJ, the delegates attending the national convention of the
United States Grand Lodge, Independent Order of B’rith Abraham “adopted
resolutions declaring Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to be the
‘great humanitarian’ extending ‘grateful appreciation’ to President Wilson for
his veto of the Immigration Bill which would have closed the gates of America
to their brethren and declaring for the immediate calling of a national
conference of Jews in America.”
1915:
“It was announced that Dr. Abraham Galante of Constantinople has been invited
to New York as the Chief Rabbi of the Oriental Jewish Communities in the United
States.”
1915:
No reason was given for failure of the State Prison Commission in Georgia to
announce “its decision today on the pleas of Leo M. Frank for commutation of
his sentence” as had been expected by the large crowd that had gathered at the
capital.
1915:
As of today, the officers of the Federation of Oriental Jews of America are
Honorary President Edward Valensi, President Joseph Gedalecia, First Vice
President Samuel Coen, Second Vice President Ezra Barcola, Third Vice President
Moses Shalom, Executive Secretary Albert J. Amateau, Recording Secretary Robert
Franco, Treasurer David Carasso and Controller Jacob Farhi.
1916(6th
of Sivan, 5676): As the Jews on both sides of the conflict observe Shavuot the
Germans take Fort Vaux during the Battle of Verdun, the contest of wills that
had begun in February and would last until December.
1916:
“The investigation being conducted into alleged discrimination against Jews in
the New York National Guard” continued today during which “most of the
officers…who were called to the stand repeatedly denied that they held any
prejudices against Jews or that the question as to the exclusion of Jews had
ever been discussed among the officers of their companies.”
1916:
Samuel Strauss, a member of the Board of Directors of the Educational Alliance
told those attending the school’s confirmation exercises “that unless the Jews
of this country made themselves more responsive to conditions of good
citizenship and service to America, America will become a place from which we
will have to move on again in our eternal wanderings.”
1916:
The Republican National Convention which Samuel S. Koening attended as a
delegate from New York opened today in Chicago.
1916:
Ruth Klauber and Philip Reinsberg were married today in Chicago.
1917(17th
of Sivan, 5677): Twenty-two-year-old
Joseph Bernstein, the Bradford, Yorkshire born son of Leah and Aaron
George Bernstein and a member of the
Bradford Hebrew Congregation was killed today while fighting with British
forces in France after which he was buried in Ypres.
1917:
In Petrograd, at the opening session of the Zionist Congress, President
Tschlenow read a telegram from the Minister of Foreign Affairs “announcing that
information received regarding the atrocities committed by the Turks against
the peaceful population of Palestine was of such a nature that it had been
considered advisable to communicate with the Allies, with a view to joint
representations to the Turkish Government through neutral Powers.”
1918:
In Berlin, the Tageblatt stated “editorially that the wording of the so-called
Jewish emancipation clauses of the Treaty of Bucharest” were “accepted without
sufficient examination by the representatives of the Central Powers” and make
it possible for the Romanian government to evade “its pledges with new tricks.”
1918:
“Zionists purchased Sarona, “a German Templer Colony established in 1871” which
is located between Jaffa Petah Tivkva.
1918:
Two days after she had passed away, 21-year-old Hettie Marcus, the daughter of
Samuel and Kitty Marcus was buried in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”
1918:
Italian Foreign Minister Baron Sidney Costantino Sonnino informed “Nahum
Sokolow that his Majesty’s Government is pleased to confirm the declaration
already mad through representatives in Washington, the Hague and Salonica, to
the effect that they will gladly use their best endeavors to facilitate the
establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national center, it being understood
that this shall not prejudice the legal or political status enjoyed by Jews in
all other countries.
1919(9th
of Sivan, 5679): Parashat Nasso
1919:
Conditions of Jews in the Palestine cities of Safed, Tiberias and Kfra Saba are
described as bad. The death rate is appalling. Thousands of Jews are
starving.
1919:
“During opening sitting of the Zionist Congress at Petrograd
1919:
Birthdate of Yohanan Aharoni the Frankfurt born Israeli archeologist who served
as chairman of the Department of Near East Studies and chairman of the
Institute of Archeology at Tel-Aviv University.
1920:
Eduard Bernstein, a leading German social democrat whose “Jewish parents, were
active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse where services were performed
on Sunday” began serving as a Member of the Reichstag from Brandenburg.
1920:
Today marked the third day of Temple Emanu-El’s fund raising fair and bazaar
which was being held at the Y.M.H.A. building in Brooklyn
1921:
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Russian-Jewish immigrant “Samuel and Anna Refkin” gave
birth to Isadore Irving Refkin, the U.S. Army enlisted man who served as a spy
and a saboteur in WW II. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/obituaries/irv-refkin-brash-accidental-spy-in-world-war-ii-dies-at-96.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article
1921:
In Utena, Lithuania, Nissan and Bella (Grossbard) Lown gave birth to Johns
Hopkins trained doctor Bernard Lown, the husband of Louise Lown and the father
of Anne, Frederic and Naomi Lown, who invented the first effective heart
defibrillator and was one of a group of co-founders of an international
organization that won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for its campaign against
nuclear war…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/health/bernard-lown-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Obituaries
1921:
President Warren Harding is scheduled to meet with Albert D. Lasker and discuss
his appointment to serve as Chairman of the Shipping Board.
1922:
It was reported today that Harvard officials were surprised on June 6 “to learn
that Governor Cox had decided to appoint a legislative committee of seven to
investigate, among other things, that the charge that the university is
discriminating again the Jews.”
1923:
In Jerusalem, Yechiel Halperin and his wife gave birth to Uzziel Halperin who
gained fame as “linguist and social activist” Uzzi Ornan.
1924(5th
of Sivan, 5684): Parashat Bamidbar; erev Shavuot.
1924:
“Sites and cities of Jewish interest in Palestine are not pointed out to their
full advantage to tourists to the Holy Land, according to Abraham L.C. Goodall,
a native of Palestine who announced today a series of distinctly Jewish tours
to that country,” the first of which will begin on July 5.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1924/06/08/101601244.html?pageNumber=64
1925:
Mr. and Mrs. Herman Luwish are scheduled to host at reception this evening at
the Jewish Centre in Brooklyn in honor of the engagement of their daughter
Miriam to Louis B. Seidman. A
reception is scheduled to be held this evening at the Jewish Centre in Brooklyn
celebrating the engagement
1926:
“The Chicago Rabbinical Association unanimously passed a resolution condemning
dances and card parties which take place either Friday evening or during the
Sabbath and urged the abolition of that practice” and “also decided that all
Jewish school children be urged to stay away from school on the first days of
the Holidays.” (JTA)
1926:
The body of Meyer London, one of only two Socialists to serve in the House of
Representatives “was taken to the Forward building, where it lay in state while
25,000 men, women, and children filed past the casket, paying their respects.”
1926:
“Louis Greenspan…whose automobile struck Meyer London was arraigned” today “in
the Homicide Court on a short affidavit…charging suspicion of homicide.”
1927(7th
of Sivan, 5687): Second Day of Shavuot
1927:
Dr. Nathan Krass of Temple Emanu-El was the principal speaker at a dinner
tonight at the Hotel Astor was which was a fund raiser for the Los Angeles
Sanatorium of the Jewish Relief Association.
1928:
Birthdate of Sirma native Herman Klein whose family was deported to Auschwitz
when he was sixteen years old.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/herman-klein
1928:
Patrolman Rudolph Aaronson of the 32-A
Precinct was placed on leave without pay for one day today.
1928:
In New York, Ethel (née Newman) and Ira Strouse gave birth to composer and
lyricist Charles Strouse whose first Broadway show was the 1960 hit “Bye Bye
Birdie.”
1929:
The Lateran Treaty which normalized relations between Italy and the Vatican is
ratified. The agreement gave Mussolini,
the Italian Prime Minister, a greater measure of respectability. The Mussolini Connection would set the tone
for the Vatican’s relationship with Hitler when he came to power. Italy's anti-Jewish laws of 1938 prohibited
marriages between Jews and non-Jews, including Catholics. The Vatican viewed
this as a violation of the Concordat, which gave the church the sole right to
regulate marriage between Catholics. But this was not enough of an issue to
disrupt the relationship between Rome and the Vatican.
1929:
The original Broadway production of Blackbirds, a musical revue with lyrics by
Dorothy Fields “opened at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, France.
1930(11th
of Sivan, 5690): Parashat Naso
1930:
It was reported today that Thomas Jefferson High School students Louis Kushner
and Abraham Schuchman had won medals at the sixth annual Inter High School
French contest in New York City.
1931:
In his annual address to the convention of B’nai B’rith which was being held in
Atlantic City, Abraham L. Wolk of Pittsburg, the president of the grand lodge,
urged B’nai B’rith to sponsor a regular radio broadcast about Jewish cultural
and historical lore which he said would “bring about a better understanding of
the race and closer relations between the Jews and Christians.”
1932: In Melsungen, Germany, Nathan Höflich and
Hilde Höflich gave birth to Gerda Hoflich who was murdered at the age of nine
at Sobibor.
1932(3rd
of Sivan, 5692): Sixty-three-year-old Polish “neurologist and psychiatrist’
Edward Flatau who wrote of the first modern books on migraines passed away
today in Warsaw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Flatau#/media/File:Flatau_migrane_de.jpg
1933:
Today, Prime Minister J. Ramsay MacDonald addressed the opening session of the
Anglo-Palestine Exhibition in London.
1933:
“The Seven Deadly Sins,” “a satirical ballet chante” composed by Kurt Weill premiered
today in Paris.
1933:
Today, “one week to the day after he had been arrested on a charge of allegedly
putting a false interpretation upon new concerning police actions in a raid on
the Jewish section of Berlin, Otto Schick, editor of the Berlin bureau of the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency was breed by the Nazi authorities.”
1934:
Caviar featuring Nanette Guilford as Elena opened on Broadway at the Forrest
Theatre today.
1934:
Birthdate of San Jose, CA native “Samuel Lipman a pianist and critic who was
the publisher of The New Criterion, a conservative journal of the arts” and the
husband of Jeaneane Lippman. (As reported by William Honan)
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/18/obituaries/samuel-lipman-is-dead-at-60-a-cultural-critic-and-pianist.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://newcriterion.com/issues/1995/1/samuel-lipman-1934-1994
1935(6th
of Sivan, 5695): Shavuot
1936(17th
of Sivan, 5696): Seventy-one-year-old German actor Hermann Picha passed away
today in Berlin.
1936:
Leon Blum the first Socialist and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of
France presented his list of ministerial appointments to the Chamber of
Deputies. Blum was attacked in anti-Semitic diatribe by right wing deputy named
Xavier Vallet who will later serve as an official with the Vichy Government.
1936: Five Arabs
were killed and many were wounded this afternoon in a clash with British troops
and policemen after an attack on several Jewish-owned buses outside Jerusalem.
A British soldier and a British police corporal were seriously wounded.
1936:
“A large Jewish-owned timber depot in the heart of Jerusalem was set afire by
Arabs tonight and the flames spread to several nearby stores. The damage to the timber depot was put at
$40,000.00.
1936:
“Nazi pamphlets printed in Arabic were distributed in Acre blaming the British
for “favoring” the Jews.
1936:
A young American tourist who would come to be known as President John F.
Kennedy arrives in Jerusalem during a visit to the Middle East.
1936:
A reception organized by James W. Gerard, the former Ambassador to Germany, in
honor of anti-Hitler Professor Georg Bernhard, is scheduled to be held tonight
at the Hotel New Yorker.
1937:
The Palestine Post reported that the
London Evening Standard protested editorially against the long delay in the
publication of the report of the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine, while
all sectors of the Palestine population "waited for a real peace."
The House of Commons was told that no fees were paid to the Commission members,
but one of them continued to draw his salary of £4,500 a year, as president of
the Industrial Court. The cost of the commission's subsistence allowances,
traveling and other expenses amounted to £2,837, 18 shillings and 3 pence.
1937: “Two
hundred rabbis, most of them alumni, were welcomed” today “by Dr. Cyrus Adler,
president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America at the 37th
annual convention of the Rabbinical Assemly of America which opened” this
morning where support for the “general spirit of the New Deal,” “the loyalist
forces in Spain” and the Wagner Labor Relations Law” were expressed.
1937:
The Palestine Post reported that
refugees from Nazi Germany recalled the circumstances of the secret execution
in Berlin of an American Jew, Helmut Hirsch, who was accused of spying.
1938: In
Shaker Heights, Ohio, Saul and Dorothy Goldstein gave birth to Michael
Goldstein, the student of opera turned “music publicist” and music journalist.
(As reported by Vincent M. Mallozzi)
1939: Albert
Einstein wrote to Wilfred Israel saying, I was extremely glad with your
friendly letter and especially with the fact that you are finally safe. What
you have done was truly heroic, but I couldn't get rid of the feeling that you
are too good for this world, but even more so for the environment, in which you
insisted on staying for so long. With the hope of seeing you again once more in
this life, heartily regards to you and yours,”
1939: “Another
ship attempting to land 260 illegal (Jewish) immigrants north of Haifa was
captured today.
1939:
Birthdate of New York native Mark Reiner, the NYU basketball player named
“Player of the Year” in 1961 whose coaching career at Brooklyn College was
marred by allegations of impropriety brought by former athletic director Joseph
Margolis in 1986.
1939: Today,
with supplies running low and with a complete breakdown in negations, Captain
Schroeder told the passengers of the SS St. Louis that they would be returning
to Europe, and barring some unforeseen consequences, that would mean Germany.
1939:
Palestine was today the scene of further Jewish and Arab terrorism. One life
was lost in the retaliation and counter-retaliation, and six Jews and one Arab
were injured, in addition to considerable damage to government property. The
tension continues to run high. A bomb was exploded today on the main railway
line 150 yards from the main station.
There were four other bombing attacks in Tel Aviv during the rest of the
day.
1940(1st
of Sivan, 5700): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1940: :
Following the Farhud, today, “the reinstated monarchist Iraq government set up
a committee of enquiry to investigate the events which “according to Peter
Wien, made every effort to present the followers of the Rashid Ali movement as
proxies of Nazism.
1940: “After
the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, David
Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, wrote to his wife from London about
Churchill’s speech following the evacuation. “I know that you cannot stand
against Hitler with speeches, Without
planes and tanks and bombs and cannons we will not destroy the ‘Mechanized
Attila’…But Churchill’s speech was undoubtedly the steadfast and stubborn
persistence of the English nation to stand and fight to the end.” “The phrase ‘Mechanized Attila’ had been
coined by Leon Blum the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of France. After quoting Churchill’s speech that
included the immortal words “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on
the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…” Ben Gurion writes his wife that
these words ‘were not merely a jest.
This is the spirit of the rebellious England and in it a guarantee for
better days – even if not the soonest.
1941(12 of
Sivan, 5701): Parashat Nasso
1941: Today,
days after the Farhud, “the
reinstated monarchist Iraqi government set up a committee of enquiry to
investigate the events.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud
1941: It was
reported today that “despite all the obstacles and difficulties arising out of
the war situation, the Joint Distribution Committee is today functioning
throughout Europe” with “help being extended in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia,
France and Holland and possibilities of immigration being made available to the
Jews still remaining in Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Slovakia.”
1941: Release date for “Shining Victory” the first film directed by
Irving Rapper written by Howard Koch with music by Max Steiner.
1942(22nd of Sivan, 5702): The Jewish ghetto at Krakow, Poland, is liquidated; 6000
Jews from the city are murdered at Belzec.
1942(22nd of Sivan, 5702): A Jewish woman who has escaped from the
Warsaw Ghetto into the city proper is dragged back to the ghetto and shot.
1942: The
Jewish Yellow Star is made mandatory in Occupied France
1942(22nd of
Sivan, 5702): Alan Blumlein died when his Halifax bomber crashed. The
British-born radar and electronics expert was on active duty with the Royal Air
Force (RAF). He was part of an elite
group of specialist working on the electronic counter measures and devices that
helped to give the Allies an edge over the Axis in the dark days of World War
II. His death was described in The
Daily Telegraph as a national loss. Air Chief Marshall Sir Phillip Joubert
described it as a catastrophe for the war effort, and Sir Archibald Sinclair,
Secretary of State for Air, wrote that ‘it would be impossible to over-rate the
importance of the work on which they were engaged’, which had undoubtedly saved
thousands of lives.”
1943 Dr.
Klaus Clauberg reports from Auschwitz that the apparatus to sterilize 1000
Jewish women a day is being set in place.
1944: In the
United States, premiere of “Christmas Holiday” directed by Robert Siodmak with
a screenplay by Herman J. Mankeiwicz.
1944: The
first phase of the deportation and mass murder of the Hungarian Jews is
complete. Nearly 290,000 Jews have been killed in 23 days.
1944: At the
height of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, Hannah Szenes crossed the border
into Hungary.
1944: Joel
Brand arrived at Aleppo today where two men, who later were identified as
British intelligence, “pushed him into a waiting Jeep with its engine running.”
1945: In
Brooklyn, attorney Bernard Fink and the former Sylvia Caplan gave birth to
attorney and social activist Elizabeth Marsha Fink.
1945: Today,
twenty-five-year-old Zelman Cowan, the future Governor-General of Australia,
married 19-year-old Anna Wittner, with whom he “had four children, Shimon,
Yosef Kate and Ben.”
1945: Today,
Jan Peerce and the “RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sylvan Levin”
recorded “Bluebird of Happiness” a 1934 ditty comped by Sandor Harmati, “with
words by Edward Heyman.
1945(26th
of Sivan, 5705): Eighty-one-year-old Dr. Charles Isaiah Hoffman, Rabbi Emeritus
of Oheb Shalom Synagogue passed away today.
Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
and practiced law from 1886 until 1900 when he began studying for the Rabbinate
at JTS. Six months after his graduation
in 1904, he filled the pulpit of the Newark, NJ congregation while helping to
create several Jewish periodicals including “The Jewish Exponent.” [Editor’s
note – Dr. Hoffman’s decision to pursue the pulpit as “a second career” was as
uncommon in his day as it apparently has become common in our own times.]
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0813FE395F1B7B93CAA9178DD85F418485F9
1946: In
Manhattan, “Sam Steinfeld, who worked in the import-export field and the former
Faye Litsky” gave birth to Allan Howard Steinfeld who succeeded Fred Lebow as
head of the New York City Marathon. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)
1947: The
Oujda and Jerada pogrom which took place in northeastern Morocco began
today.
1948: Edvard
Beneš resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than sign a Constitution
making his nation a Communist state. Beneš was one of the most decent and
democratic leaders of his time. As a
leader of the Czech government-in-exile during World War II he condemned the
treatment of European Jewry and supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
1948:
Mordechai Weingarten the Jewish community leader who had participated in the
negotiations that resulted in the surrender of the Old City to the Arabs was
placed under house arrest when he returned to western Jerusalem.
1949: “Bernard
Baruch” is scheduled to “present an award to Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, the United
Nations Palestine mediator at a dinner” tonight “at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.”
1950: Mrs.
Martha Sharp, the wife of a Unitarian minister from Chicago and the vice
chairman of Children to Palestine, visited the children’s village of Ben Shemen
in Kfar Vitkin, thirty miles north of Tel Aviv. A grant of $25,000 from her
organization is being used to build housing for children who escaped from the
European Holocaust and have known no real home.
The Village is named after Reverend Samuel A. Eliot, “the organizer of
this interfaith rescue movement.
1950: The
Mizrahi Women’s Organization of American hosts the second day of a two-day
donor luncheon series for 3,000 members of its metropolitan branches to
initiate an all-year silver jubilee celebration. Mizrahi in Israel has grown from a single
home for adolescent girls in Jerusalem to a networked of 49 projects including
13 institutions for children.
1950: “Armored
Car Robbery” directed by Richard Fleischer was released today in the United
States.
1952(14th
of Sivan, 5712): Parashat Nasso
1952: It was
reported today that Dr. Franz Kallmann of Columbia University delivered “an
address at the opening of the 42nd annual meeting of the American
Psychopathological Association at the Park Sheraton where the two-day meeting
is devoted to a discussion of ‘Depression.’”
1953:
Birthdate of Joan Stein, a Tony-winning theater and television producer who
helped to launch several long-running L.A. stage productions, including
"Love Letters," "Forever Plaid" and Steve Martin's
"Picasso at the Lapin Agile."
1953(24th
of Sivan, 5713): Seventy-seven-year-old Julius I. Peyser the World War I
veteran, lawyer, banker and Zionist who graduated from Georgetown University
and taught at George Washington University passed away today.
1953(24th
of Sivan, 5713): “A youngster was killed, and three others were wounded, in a
shooting attacks on residential areas in southern Jerusalem.”
1954(6th
of Sivan, 5714): Shavuot
1954:
Forty-one-year-old WW II code-breaker Alan Turing, who “sponsored two Jewish
refugee children from Austria and helped educate them in the UK” passed away
today.
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/enigma-codebreaker-alan-turing-two-jewish-refugees/
1956:
Sixty-five-year-old actor Sam Jaffee married 32 year old Betty Ackerman with
whom he would co-star in the television series “Ben Casey” and with whom he had
happy marriage until his death in 1984.
1956: David
Saul Marshall completes his services 1st Chief Minister of
Singapore.
1956(28th
of Sivan, 5716): Eighty-year-old French author Julien Benda whose most famous
work was The Betrayal of the Intellectuals passed away today.
1957(8th
of Sivan, 5717): Eighty-seven-year-old Paterson, NJ businessman Samuel Cohen,
the founder of Samuel Cohen and Sons glass and hardware business and the
honorary president of the Paterson Hebrew Free Loan Association who was the
father of four children – Edith, Mary, Abram and Joseph – passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/06/08/84723892.html?pageNumber=19
1958(19th
of Sivan, 5718): Parashat Beha’alotcha
1961:
Holocaust survivors provided shocking testimony at today’s session of the trial
of Adolf Eichmann. [Editor’s note – In a time when there a myriad of Holocaust
Memorial Museums dotting the landscape and the Shoah was talked of only in
hushed tones, the following article by Homer Bigart provides what, for its time
was a blinding revelation.
1961: In the
U.S. premiere of “The Curse of the Werewolf” a horror film with music by
Benjamin Frankel.
1961: The World Wrestling Championship in which Boris
Gurevich won a Silver Medal came to an end today in Japan
1961(23rd of Sivan, 5721): Sixty-one-year-old
Milton Charles Calechman, the “son of Abraham Calechman” and “brother of Harold
Calechman” passed away today after which he was buried in the “B’nai Jacob
Memorial Park” in New Haven, CT.
1962: “Lulu,” an Austrian crime drama featuring Leon Askin,
the son of Holocaust victims, in the role of “Medizinialrat Dr. Goll” was
released today in Austria.
1964: Today, at Rodeph Sholom Synagogue, Rabbi Harry Nelson
officiated at the wedding of Barbara Ann Solomon and Edward Julian Pasternak.
1964: Third baseman Stephen Allan “Steve” Hertz, the future
manager of the Tel Aviv Lightning, played his last major league as a member of
the Houston Colt .45s.
1965: The
$64,000 Question premiered on CBS-TV. Louis Cowan who has worked to rescue Jews
from Germany before the war, created the show. Hal March, a Jewish comic and
actor whose real name was Harold Mendelson was the show’s host. Charles Revson, the Jewish Canadian Cosmetic
King, had his company, Revlon, sponsor the show.
1965(7th of Sivan, 5725): Second Day Shavuot
1965(7th of Sivan, 5725): Twelve days before his 75th
Birthday McGill
University alum and Harvard Ph.d. Abraham Aaron Roback the Goniondz, Russia, born son of
“Isaac and Libby (Rahver) Roback” d psychologist, and contributor to
Yiddish journals who was a faculty member at several schools including Clark
University, MIT, Radcliffe and Harvard passed away today. (Some show his death
date as June 5)
1965(7th of Sivan, 5725): Shavuot; Yizkor
1965: “A statement authorized
Augustin Cardinal Bea, chairman of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian
Unity, declaring that the forthcoming session of the Ecumenical Council ‘would
confirm the declaration repudiating the charge of deicide against the Jewish
people’ was published in Rome today.” (JTA)
1965(7th of Sivan, 5725): Comedic actress Judy Holiday passes away at the
age of 43 on the same day Jews are reciting Yizkor
http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/judy_holliday_dies
1966(19th of Sivan, 5726): Eighty year old Jacob M. Budish,
the Russian born American author and academic who specialized in the Labor
movement passed away today.
http://www.jta.org/1966/06/08/archive/jacob-m-budish-noted-jewish-labor-economist-and-author-dead
1966(19th of Sivan, 5726): Sixty-seven-year-old NYC native and
Columbia University trained dentist Dr. Louis W. Scaletter, the husband of the
late Martha Gitlin Sscaletter and the father of physicians Howard and Raymond
Scalettar passed away today.
1967: Six months after premiering in Japan, “El Dorado” a cowboy movie
co-starring James Caan was released in the United States today.
1967 (28 Iyar,
5727): Dorothy Parker passes away. Born
Dorothy Rothschild in 1893, Dorothy
("Dottie" or "Dot") Parker was an American writer
and poet best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th
century urban foibles.
http://www.dorothyparker.com/nytobit.html
http://dorothyparker.com/gallery/new-york-times-obituary
1967: Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem uniting the city
for the first time since the establishment of the state. Today
at 10:15, with the radio confirmation, "The Temple Mount is in our
hands," the Israeli flag was raised above the Western wall.
1967 (28 Iyar, 5727): Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem
Unification day). Prior to the 6-Day War, Israel had sent repeated requests to
King Hussein of Jordan appealing to him remain outside the conflict (trying,
therefore, to prevent a three-front war). Due to Arab League pressure, Jordan
began to shell Jerusalem on June 5. When the Jordanian force crossed the
cease-fire line at Government House, Israel retaliated. General Uzi Narkis
brought in Colonel Motta Gur to lead the attack in Eastern Jerusalem.
1967: “David
Rubinger, an Austrian-born photojournalist, chronicled the birth of the modern
state of Israel, its leaders, its triumphs” took the iconic photo, of the
Israeli paratroopers Zion Karasanti, Yitzhak Yifat and Haim Oshri at the
Western Wall today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratroopers_at_the_Western_Wall#/media/File:Soldiers_Western_Wall_1967.jpghttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/middleeast/david-rubinger-dead-israeli-photographer.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1
1967: Israeli forces captured Jericho, Bethlehem,
Sharm-el-Sheikh, and lifted the blockade of the Gulf of Eilat. The entire
Jordanian bulge on the western bank of the Jordan came under Israeli control.
Hostilities between Israel and Jordan came to an end upon their acceptance of
the cease-fire demanded by the Security Council of the U.N., 1967.
1967: On the
third day of fighting, the IAF destroyed hundreds of Egyptian vehicles trying
to flee across the Sinai in convoys and trapped thousands more in narrow Sinai
passes.
1967: By the
end of the third day Jordan's air force of 34 combat aircraft had essentially
ceased to exist and the Jordanian military was no longer in the fight.
1967: A
successful joint attack by armor units and elements of the Golani led to the
capture of Nablus this afternoon.
1969(21st
of Sivan, 5729): Parashat Beha’aloctcha chanted for the first time during the
presidency of Richard Nixon.
1970: Myrna
Lamb’s musical “Mod Donna” closed today at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in
New York today.
1970: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today for seventy-eight year old Broadway and
Yiddish Theatre star Menasha Skulnik followed by burial “in the Yiddish Theatre
Alliance section of the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens.”
1971:
Singer-songwriter Carole King achieved stardom with the release of her album Tapestry
1972: German Chancellor Willy Brandt visited Israel
1973(7th of Sivan, 5733): Second Day of Shavuot;
Yizkor
1974: Refusniks Valery and Galina Panov obtained exit
visas.
1975: "Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees)"
“a popular song written by Fred Fisher and his daughter Doris Fisher” reached
the “number one in the UK Singles Chart” today.
1977: THE MARCH ON PARIS 1914—of Generaloberst Alexander von Kluck — and
His Memory of Jessie Holladay," which opened today at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, is the wittiest, most appealing film yet made by Walter
Gutman, the stock-market analyst, art critic and patron, painter, philosopher
and lover of beauty who, at 74, is one of the more exuberant of independent
American filmmakers.”
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that according to Aviation Week
Israel was having second thoughts about buying the American F-16 fighter, and
planned to design its own fighter plane. Egypt started digging a tunnel under
the Suez Canal, about 20 km. north of Suez city.
1978: Six
months after opening in Japan, “Capricorn One” directed and written by Peter
Hyams, starring Elliot Gould and with music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in
the United States today.
1978:
President Carter nominated Louis Hl. Pollack to serve a Judge on the United
States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
1980(23rd
of Sivan, 5740): Parashat Sh’lach
1980(23rd
of Sivan, 5740): Sixty-six-year-old Montreal born, American raised painter,
printmaker and muralist Philip Guston passed away today in Woodstock, NY.
https://www.philipguston.org/home
1981(5th
of Sivan, 5741): Erev Shavuot
1981: The Israeli air force attacks and destroys the Iraq nuclear reactor
at Osiriq. Both the United States and leaders in the Israeli opposition
condemned Menachem Begin. After Operation Desert storm the American State
department belatedly praised his actions, admitting it had saved countless
lives.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operation-opera-raid-on-iraqi-nuclear-reactor
1982(16th of Sivan, 5742): Ninety-one-year-old
Portage, PA native Hyman “Goldie” Goldstein the Dickinson College football
player described by legendary coach Pop Warner as “being a star kicker, passer
and ball carrier” possessing “the rare quality of fine judgment and
generalship” who went on to serve in the Navy during WW I and pursue a legal
career in Carlisle, PA passed away today.
http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/hyman-goldstein-1891-1982
1983: It was reported today that “Leaders of an official anti-Zionist
Committee set up six weeks ago” have said “that they were satisfied that Jewish
emigration had effectively stopped because most Soviet Jews who wanted to leave
have gone.”
1984(7th of Sivan, 5744): Second Day of Shavuot
1984: “The Revolt of Job,” “a gently told story of one Jewish couple's
attempt to defeat their family's extinction in the Holocaust by adopting a
non-Jewish boy, a child who would survive to carry on their line” is scheduled
to have its last screening at the Vandam Theatre in New York. (As reported by
Seth Mydans)
1985: “Perfect” a romantic film featuring Laraine Newman and Jann Wenner
was released in the United States today.
1987: An article published today entitled “Celebrating the East End’s
Jewish Heritages” provides a brief overview of the history of the Jews who
settled in London and a schedule of the events for this summer's Jewish East
End Celebration.
1991: U.S. premiere of “City Slickers” a mid-life crisis comedy starring
Billy Crystal, featuring Josh Mostel, Lindsay Crystal and Jake Gyllenhaal with
a script by Lowell Ganz.
1992(6th of Sivan, 5752): For the last time Shavuot is
celebrated during the Presidency of George Brush.
1993:
Yitzhak Rabin completes his term as Interior Minister
1993:
Prof. Shimon Shetreet completed his term as Science and Technology Minister of
Israel
1993:
Shulamit Aloni replaced Moshe Shahal as Minister of Communication.
1993: Aryeh Deri begins his term as Interior Minister.
1993:
Moshe Shahal succeeded Amnon Rubenstein as Energy and Water Resources Minister
1995: Uzi Baram completes his term as Minister of Internal
Affairs.
1996(20th
of Sivan, 5756): Max Factor passed away.
Factor arrived in the United States at the start of the 20th
century. He was a pioneer in the
cosmetics industry who parlayed his work with Hollywood movie stars into his
own cosmetics company, the name of which survives under the Max Factor
Cosmetics label.
1997(2nd
of Sivan, 5757): Parashat Bamidbar
1997(2nd
of Sivan, 5757): Seventy-five-year-old Dr. Stanley Schacter, the Columbia University
professor who “was one of the few social psychologists to be elected to the
National Academy of Sciences.” (As reported by Karen Freeman)
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/23/02/29.html
1998:
The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including The Process: 1,100 Days That
Changed the Middle East by Uri Savir
1999: Marigold Merlyn Baillieu Myer (Lady Southey AC) the
youngest daughter of Sidney Meyer and Margery Merlyn Baillieu Myer “became a
Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her service to the community in the
support of health care, medical research and the arts.”
2000:
In “Bittersweet Homecoming for a Well-Traveled Exile” published today Richard
Bernstein provided a review of Stonedial by George Konrad whose “main
character” is “Janos Dragoman, a Jew who returns to the Hungarian city of his
youth…”
2001:
David Wright Miliband assumed office as a Member of Parliament for South
Shields.
2002: Seven
soldiers were buried today at the Hadera military cemetery today. They were part of a group of 17 Israelis,
including 13 soldiers who were killed when a stolen car packed with explosives
pulled alongside a public bus and exploded near the northern town of Megiddo.
2003(7th of Sivan, 5763: Second Day of Shavuot and Shabbat
2003(7th of Sivan, 5763): John Jay Dystel, the son Marion Dystel
and publisher Oscar Dystel passed away today.
2004: The Supreme Court ruled that the 88-year-old niece and heir
of an Austrian Jewish art collector can pursue her lawsuit against the Austrian
government and its national art gallery for the return of six paintings by
Gustav Klimt that belonged to her family before the Nazi takeover.
2005:
A mortar shell fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza struck a greenhouse in
the Israeli settlement of Ganei Tal today, killing three workers-- two
Palestinians and a Chinese laborer-- and wounding five more. Who were
Palestinians from Khan Yunis,
2006: Hebrew Book Week begins. Despite the name, the “week” will last for 10 days. This
year's theme is “Developing the Galilee and the Negev.”
2006:
The Central Council of Jews, Germany’s main Jewish organization elected
Charlotte Knobloch as its leader. The 73
year old Holocaust survivor from Munich is the first woman to hold this post.
2007:
In “Rebuilding Jewish Life in New Orleans,” published today Bruce Noland
describes how “financial incentives and other effort are starting to pay off”
in a post-Katrina World.
Twenty-three
and single, Katie Tutwiler is another of those idealistic young people pouring
into post-Katrina New Orleans. Tutwiler moved to New Orleans fresh out of
college last summer, tugged by a moral call to join the city's great story of
post-hurricane reconstruction. Although she is only nominally Jewish, Tutwiler
has been aggressively courted by the area's Jewish community. She received a
$1,000 moving grant and was offered a year's free dues to a synagogue and a
one-year membership to a Jewish community center. The recruiting effort may be
paying off. Tutwiler, a self-described religious "seeker" shopping
for a religious identity, has signed up with Birthright Israel for a free trip
to Israel this summer, even as her personal exploration also includes attending
Catholic Masses. Tutwiler is in play, so to speak, and thus qualifies as a
poster child for the New Orleans Jewish community's year-old "newcomers
program," which to date has devoted an estimated $180,000 to recruit young
Jews to rebuild the city's Jewish community, and the larger city as well.
Prominent African American leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson have lobbied
for the "full right of return" of all displaced city residents,
including poor black people stranded in other cities. But there has not been a
specific effort to lure black residents back to New Orleans, where they made up
two-thirds of the population before Katrina. The newcomers program is just one
of the initiatives in a five-year "strategic plan" New Orleans Jews
recently fashioned as part of a $24 million blueprint to revitalize a small but
sturdy community that had been shrinking and graying even before Katrina made
landfall in 2005. The plan's first goal is to recruit young Jews to New Orleans
and nourish them here through the newcomers program. But plans are afoot to
fashion incentives to retain at least 50 of the area's 400 to 500 Jewish
college students who graduate each year, Michael Weil, executive director of
the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said. Besides recruiting, there
are 11 goals in the strategic plan, Weil said, including maintaining ties with
an estimated 3,500 permanently dislocated Jewish New Orleanians; building
support systems to nourish Jewish families; fostering collaboration among local
Jewish institutions; developing Jewish education; and a national fundraising
and public relations campaign. "It's ambitious, it's doable and we're
going to make it happen," said Weil, an economist and strategic planner
who worked in Israel before he was hired by the federation in 2006. The
newcomers program that aided Tutwiler so far has distributed incentives to 116
Jewish individuals or families, said Jennifer Samuels, who helps run the
program. Weil estimated that the total number of Jewish newcomers, including
those who didn't apply for incentives or haven't yet been identified, is closer
to 850. The day Katrina made landfall, the area's Jewish community was
estimated to be about 9,500 (less than 1 percent of the metro area population),
down from an estimated 13,000 nearly 25 years ago. Research by Louisiana State
University sociologist Frederick Weil and others estimated that Katrina reduced
the area's Jewish population to about 6,000 in the summer of 2006. They believe
the number rebounded to 7,000 to 8,000 earlier this year. Tutwiler said her
decision to come to New Orleans was born out of a desire to join a wounded but
still fascinating community, and was not triggered by financial incentives. As
the daughter of an Episcopalian father and a nonobservant Jewish mother, she
said she grew up in a home with no strong religious influence. She knows only
the opening phrases to a few common Hebrew prayers, and until recently, she did
not know there was a synagogue in her hometown of New Iberia, La., about 100 miles
west of New Orleans. "I'm Jewish," she said, "but not quite in
the fold." Tutwiler heard about the Jewish incentives program from her
grandmother, Catherine Kahn, a New Orleans resident and board member at Temple
Sinai, who urged Tutwiler to check it out. Now Tutwiler sometimes accompanies
her grandmother to temple and has begun to inquire about her Jewish heritage.
In that sense she is quite typical, Michael Weil said. "There's a pattern
here" among newcomers, Weil said. "They tend to be on the margins of
mainstream Jewish life. These are not your regular synagogue-goers. Their
Judaism is more virtual than real. They're less actively involved. But they're
motivated. They see themselves as pioneers." He said their willingness to
help rebuild the city often is part of a deeply Jewish imperative toward public
service called "tikkun olam" or "repairing the world."
"You'd think that when you're hit with a major disaster it would knock you
flat and you wouldn't have the strength to get up again," Weil said.
"But what this community has said is, we're not accepting that. We think
we're important, and we have a future, and we intend to go to some significant
place, and we'll do whatever it takes to get there."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060603565_pf.html
2007:
A revival of “Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical comedy with music by Richard
Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart” opened today at
the Chichester Festival Theatre.
2007:
In London, Israel Connects presents “Portraits of Israel.” The exhibition is a collection of the
photographs of Rudi Weissenstein taken from 1932 through 1999. Weissenstein was
the official photographer at the signing of the Israeli Declaration of
Independence in 1948.
2007(21st
of Sivan, 5767): Eighty-three-year-old poet and translator Michael Hamburger
passed away today.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/11/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries
2008:
In Washington, D.C. The JCC presents “David Buchbinder's Odessa/Havana.”
An exciting Jewish-Cuban musical fusion,
Odessa/Havana is led by award winning trumpeter and composer David Buchbinder
and includes some of today’s most accomplished jazz musicians.
2008:
As a foretaste of celebrating Shavuot, in Cedar Rapids, at Temple Judah,
traditional Shabbat morning services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids features a
“Sundaes on Saturday” Kiddush.
2008(4th
of Sivan, 5768): Ninety-one-year-old Dr. Montague Ullman passed away today.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=Montague-Ullman&pid=111558365#fbLoggedOut
2008;
Sportscaster Jim McKay passed away at the age of 86. “His professionalism and
sensitivity melded in 1972. During the Munich Olympics, as he left the hotel
sauna and was about to go into the swimming pool on his only day off, he
received word that Arab terrorists had invaded the Israeli living quarters in
the Olympic Village. Mr. McKay hurried to the studio, and for 16 consecutive
hours he anchored ABC’s extraordinary news coverage, with field reporting from
Peter Jennings, Howard Cosell and others. The episode ended with the murder of 11
Israeli athletes, coaches and trainers. When that word reached Mr. McKay, he
said he thought that he would be the person who told the family of David
Berger, an Israeli-born weight lifter whose family lived in Shaker Heights,
Ohio, “if their son was alive or dead.” He looked at the lens and said,
“They’re all gone.” When ABC finally signed off, Mr. McKay, physically and
emotionally spent, returned to his hotel room. Only then did he realize he had
been wearing a wet swimsuit beneath his trousers. The next day, Mr. McKay
received this cable from an old CBS colleague: “Dear Jim, today you honored
yourself, your network and your industry. Walter Cronkite.” Mr. McKay’s work at
Munich won him an Emmy Award for news coverage, the first for a sportscaster,
and the George Polk Award. Through the years, he won 12 more Emmys.”
2009:
The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Red and Me by Bill Russell,
Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson and the recently published paperback
edition of Audition: A Memoir by Barbara Walters.
2009:
The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or
of special interest to Jewish readers including American Passage: The
History of Ellis Island by Vincent J. Cannato.
2010:
The New Yorker is scheduled to publish its “20 Under 40” list of fiction
writers worth watching that included Jewish authors Jonathan Safran Foer, 33; Rivka Galchen, 34; Nicole
Krauss, 35; Gary Shteyngart, 37; David Bezmozgis, 37.
2010:
Sirius/XM Radio star and Broadway pianist Seth Rudetsky is scheduled to perform
at the Washington Jewish Music Festival.
2010(6th
of Sivan, 5770):
Rabbi Mordecai Eliyahu passed away.
2010(6th
of Sivan, 5770): Eighty-seven-year-old Rabbi Jacob Milgrom considered by many the
world’s foremost authority on the biblical Book of Leviticus passed away today
in Jerusalem.,
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58341/rabbi-biblical-scholar-jacob-milgrom-dies-at-87
2010:
Shahar Pe'er, an Israeli professional tennis player,
was ranked Number Fourteen today which was her career-high rating as a single’s
player.
2010: Former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin has been
acquitted of allowing minors to work at the Postville slaughterhouse. Today,
Jurors acquitted him of all 67 counts of child labor violations.
2010: The funeral for Steve Averbach, the former Monmouth County
resident who was paralyzed in an attempt to thwart a suicide bomber in
Jerusalem in 2003 was scheduled to take place today in Israel.
2010:
Navy commandoes foiled a major terrorist attack from
the Gaza coast shortly before dawn today morning, and the Air Force strafed a
rocket launching cell
2010(25th of Sivan, 5770): Rabbi Mordecai Eliyahu former chief rabbi who encouraged
Israelis to oppose removal of settlements and blamed Reform Jewry for the
Holocaust passed away at the age of 81.
2010: Joe Schlesinger, the Canadian television journalist and
author “received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Queen's University in
Kingston and delivered the convocation speech to a part of the graduating class
of 2010 from Queens Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He declared that the students
would forget a good part of what they learned but they can find out what they
need to know in the realm of facts by ‘googling it’!”
2011: Congregation Beth Israel in Glendale, Wisconsin, is
scheduled to present a program entitled “The Levite & His Concubine.”
2011(5th of Sivan, 5771): Erev of Shavuot
2011(5th of Sivan, 5771): Ninety-one-year-old Mietek
Pemper, the secretary who actually compiled what became known as “Schindler’s
List” passed away today. (As reported by
Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/world/europe/19pemper.html
2011(5th of Sivan, 5771): Eighty-eight-year-old Leonard
B. Stern, the man who created “Mad Libs” passed away today in California. (As
reported by Margalit Fox)
2011: Bradlee Birchansky and Jon Burstain, two outstanding young
men, are scheduled to be confirmed this evening during Shavuot services at
Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2011: Carolyn Goldmark Goodman, the wife of Oscar Goodman “was
elected Mayor of Las Vegas with 60 percent of the vote.”
2011:
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) introduced a resolution
calling for the withholding of U.N. funding if the General Assembly recognizes
a Palestinian state.
2011:
U.S. President Barack Obama said today he and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that any Palestinian effort to seek UN
recognition for statehood should be avoided.
2012: The Carmen at Masada Opera Festival is scheduled to open,
2012: The Anat Cohen Quartet is scheduled to perform in
Washington, DC.
2012:
Israel’s Defense Ministry announced today that it
will erect between 20,000-25,000 tents for African migrants at various
detention centers by the end of the year.
2013:
“Fill the Void,” a film about an orthodox Chasidic family from Tel Aviv, is
scheduled to open at several theatres across the
United States including the Clay in San Francisco, the Bethesda Row Cinema in
Bethesda, MD and Shrilington 7 Theatres in Arlington, VA.
2013: Tel Aviv hosted its 15th annual Gay Pride Festival today,
with a record-breaking 100,000 spectators and participants attending the
celebrations, including droves of tourists from all over the world.
2013: Yediot Aharonot reported today that the US recently
conducted a test of its bunker buster bomb, destroy a replica of an underground
nuclear facility in an effort to show Israel and other ally states that it is
capable of striking Iran’s nuclear plants.
2014:
The Tel Aviv International Student Film, which this year has enjoyed the
unexpected support of Steve Tisch of the New York Giants is scheduled to come
to an end. (As reported by Debra Kamin)
2014:
“Paradise Cruise,” a film about an Israeli photographer and her rebellious
boyfriend, is scheduled to be shown at Windmill Studios.
2014:
The traditional minyan at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids celebrates the 80th
birthday of Murray Wolf.
2014:
Today, “Pope Francis entreated social media followers to pray for Middle East
peace” just one day before the Presidents of Israel and the PA are to visit the
Vatican and join the Pontiff in a special prayer for peace.
2014:
“Hatnua MK Amram Mitzna said today that he will make every effort to convince
his party members to leave the coalition and bring an end to the government of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)
2015:
The New York Times features reviews
of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Words Without Music: A Memoir by Philip Glass, Jonas Salk:
A Life by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, The New World, a novel
co-authored by Eli Horowitz and Coup de Foudre “a thinly — or possibly
barely — veiled account of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, in which
Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a housekeeper at a New York
City hotel” by Ken Kalfus.
2015:
“The Members Book Club” at the National Museum of American Jewish History is
scheduled to discuss Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman.
2015:
“Touchdown Israel” and “Sallah Shabati” are scheduled to be shown at the Israel
Film Center Festival.
2015:
“A Walk on the Moon” starring Diane Lane is scheduled to be shown at the
Borscht Belt Film Festival.
2015:
The Darom Film Festival is scheduled to open at Sderot.
2015:
“Lincoln and the Jews,” an exhibition sponsored by the New York Historical
Society “inspired by the publication of Lincoln and the Jews: A History
co-authored by Jonathan D. Sarna is scheduled to come to an end today.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158493
2015:
“A court awarded filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici NIS 800,000 ($260,000) in damages
today in a libel case against a former Israel Antiques Authority curator Joe
Zias who had accused the three-time Emmy award winner of falsifying material in
a documentary about the origins of Christianity.”
2015:
“Israeli jets struck target in the Gaza Strip early this morning “hours after
rocket from the coastal Palestinian territory exploded in southern Israel.”
2015:
In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host “Secret Jewish Services in a
Nazi POW Camp - Stalag Luft 1” during which Ron Levine will give a presentation
discussing how his father, Henry Sanford Levine, led weekly Shabbos and High
Holy Day secret Jewish services in a Nazi POW camp, Stalag Luft 1. Henry Levine
was a navigator on a B-17 that was shot down over Nazi Germany. After the
Gestapo located him they transferred him to Stalag Luft 1, where he became a
POW. Ron’s father made a wooden Mogen David while imprisoned. It is made of two
triangles not permanently attached so they could be kept separately as two
innocuous triangles. Triangles meant nothing to a Nazi guard. A Mogen David
could get you killed. Ron has the Mogen David in his possession. Towards the
end of the war, special barracks were built for the Jewish POWs so they could
be transferred to the Death Camps. The Russians liberated the camp before the
Jewish POWs could be executed.
2016:
“Every Word has Power,” a “concert film shot at Lincoln Center, featuring
musician Basya Schechter (of Pharaoh’s Daughter) adapting ten of Rabbi
Heschel’s poems into song” is scheduled to be shown at the 17th
Annual Washington Jewish Music Festival.
2016:
“Man in the Wall” and “Encirclements” are scheduled to be shown at the Israel
Film Center Festival in Manhattan.
2016:
The work of Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz is scheduled to be honored at the
22nd Aleph Society Dinner at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
2016: In Portland, the Mittleman Jewish Community
Center is scheduled to present Rabbi Jonathan Porath speaking on “How Jews of
America Saved Jews of Europe During the Shoah: The Story of the Joint
Distribution Committee.”
2016:
Women of the Wall Executive Director Leslie Sachs was detained by police this
morning for carrying “a Torah scroll into the prayer plaza in contravention of
Orthodox regulations imposed at the site.”
http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2016/06/IMG-20160607-WA0027.jpg
2016:
“Between Kermanshah To Majdanek” is scheduled to be shown at the Cinema South
Film Festival in Sderot.
2017(13th
of Sivan, 5777): Seventy-seven year old Ed Victor, the Bronx born son of
Russian Jewish immigrants who transformed himself into a leading London
literary agent passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2017:
It was reported today that “Naomi Alderman’s The Power has become the
first science fiction novel to scoop the Baileys prize for women’s fiction.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/07/baileys-prize-naomi-alderman-the-power
2017:
“La Putyka, a Czech circus, is scheduled to perform “Slapstick Sonata” and “La
Putkya,” a cornucopia of acrobatics, theater, live music and puppets at Zion
Square” today.
2017:
In Alexandria, VA, Beth El Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host “What Makes
Jewish Music Jewish? – a special musical morning with NPR’s Miles Hoffman.”
2017:
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research & Center for Jewish History are
scheduled to host the first session of Hannah Arendt: The Origins of
Totalitarianism taught by Dr. Samantha Hill.
2017:
Novelist Dora Horn is scheduled to lead a tour of the Yeshiva University
Museum’s exhibition “City of Gold, Bronze and Light: Jerusalem between Word and
Image” in she “explores Jerusalem's role in the work and imagination of modern
Jewish writers.”
2018:
“Dov Boros, a survivor of the ghetto in Budapest, Ida Kersz who was saved by a
Polish Catholic family and Dr. Adina P. Sella who found safety in Italy during
the Holocaust” are scheduled to speak at the Israel at 70 celebration hosted by
the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center.
2018:
JW3 is scheduled to host two screenings of “Entebbe” in London.
2018:
“The Power of Protest: The Movement to Free Soviet Jews, a special traveling
exhibit created by the National Museum of American Jewish History, is scheduled
to be for the last time at the State Historical Museum of Iowa today.
2019(4th
of Sivan, 5779): Jewish Math Time – in the evening, count the 49th
and final day of the Omer
2019:
As students complete their exams, the Oxford Jewish Society is scheduled to
host Kabbalat Shabbat Services followed by a Friday night dinner.
2019:
“CIJA Pride Shabbat is scheduled to take place is Edmonton, Alberta.
2019:
In Los Angeles, the Royal Theatre is scheduled to host a screening of “The Spy
Behind Home Plate” followed by a Q and A with director Aviva Kempner
2019:
On the secular calendar, 52nd anniversary of the liberation of east
Jerusalem and the re-unification of the city after 19 of illegal occupation by
the Jordanians.
2020:
The Maine Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The
Spy Behind Home Plate” online today.
2020:
The Brooklyn Film Festival which has hosted an on-line screening of the U.S.
premier of the Israeli film “On the Side” is scheduled to come to an end today.
2020:
David Broza is schedule to welcome us into his living room on-line where he
will be performing “His most popular songs alongside some rare ones.”
2020:
The New England Yachad is scheduled to present on-line “YAYA Chavurah.”
2020: During the virtual presentation of “Roots of
Yiddish Comedy,” Klezmer teacher, Yiddishist and singer Jeanette Lewicki is
scheduled to talk about how early Yiddish comedians spread Jewish values.
Includes records, music and live performance.”
2020:
Live on Zoom, the American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to a virtual
class of Soapbox Yoga.
2020:
Live on Zoom, the American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present
“Yemenite Men and Women and their Music.”
2020:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Away From Chaos: The Middle
East and the Challenge of the West by Gilles Kepel and Trumpocalypse:
Restoring American Democracy by David Frum.
2021:
A Virtual Exhibition of the Barbara C. Freedman Artists’ Beit Midrash is
scheduled to open at the Streicker Center.
2021:
Joanne Greenaway, the Chief Executive, LSJS is scheduled to share the Torah she learned from the great
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l.
2021:
Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz is scheduled to lecture on “Jewish Renewal: Principles
and Practices with Congregation Nevei Kodesh.
2021:
The National Library of Israel is scheduled to host a lecture on Minhag Italia.
https://www.nli.org.il/en/visit/events/minhag-italia
2021:
Leah Hochman is scheduled to “talk about her survivor experience in both
Yiddish and English at on the second day of The 2021 FJMC International
Convention.
2021:
The JCC of Greater Boston 17th Annual Golf Benefit is scheduled to take place
today.
2021:
The Facebook Live Worldwide Premier of “Upheaval” that tells the story of the
“journey of Menachem Begin is scheduled to take place today.
https://www.facebook.com/events/297309961962132
2022:
The LBI Book Club will host Helen Epstein, the first tenured woman Professor of
Journalism at NYU and the “author of numerous books about her family including
the trilogy Children of the Holocaust
(1979); Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History
and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma.
2022:
The Illinois Holocaust Museum, Congregation Kol Hadash; Temple Chai; The Mitchell Museum
of the American Indian are schooled to host an online lunch and learn “Jewish
and Indigenous People of Australia” that examines the role indigenous people
played in opening Australia to Jewish refuges escaping Nazi-occupied Europe…”
2023:
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana is scheduled to begin his trip to Morocco today which will be the first official
visit by a Knesset speaker to the parliament of a Muslim country. (As reported
by Lazar Berman)
2023:
The Center for Jewish History Gala “honoring Professor Michael Meyer, Ph.D. and
all CJH Fellows, past & present is scheduled to take place this evening.
https://mailchi.mp/2dd803f4c9f3/2023-gala?e=b18af5875b
2023:
Temple Judea is scheduled to host a screening of “Matter of Size.”
2023:
The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to resent a screening of the documentary
“Shared Legacies: The African American-Jewish Civil Rights Alliance.”
2023:
Cantor Schwartz is scheduled to host an “evening celebrating the rich fabric of
the Israeli people and their music in an event which will feature special
guests Bat Ella, Cantor Chaim Dovid Berson, Gili Yalo, and Michael Feigenbaum,
and will include Cantor Davis, all accompanied by an augmented PAS Ensemble
directed by David Enlow.”
2024:
The 26th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to
host a screening of “Looking For Chloe” and “a Full-Course Shabbat Dinner with
Rabbi Benjamin Malul.”
2024:
Temple Zion is scheduled to host Nishmat
Hayyim: The Breath of Life Project which “presents weekly sessions to help
deepen and continue the meditative discipline together, cultivating wisdom,
compassion, happiness, and the ability to respond to this complex life and
world.”
2024: The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra is scheduled to perform concert
featuring Ernest Bloch’s “Avodat Hakodesh/Sacred Service” and Maurice Durufle’s
“Requiem.”
2024(1st
of Sivan, 5784): Rosh Chodesh Sivan; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2024:
As June 7th begins in Israel, an
unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism sweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day 245 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.)
