This Day, November 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
November 2
655: The Ninth Council of Toledo which
was held under the auspices of King Recceuith and would adopt a resolution
“that all conversos, not only converted Jews also others who had come during
the Migration Period, had to pass Christian festivals in the presence of their
bishop so as to prove the veracity of their faith” and that “lack of compliance
with this last rule would in flogging or forced fasting, depending on the age
of the offend” opened today.
1285: King Peter III of Aragon passed
away. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Pedro III
“protected the Jews from the hatred of the clergy, who destroyed their
vineyards and disturbed their graves, and though he took especially severe
measures against the Bishop of Castellnou, who favored these outrages, yet he
did this more in his own interest than from any humanitarian motive. He was one
of the kings of Aragon who placed the Jews under contribution and exacted
enormous taxes from them. They supported him in his wars against Africa,
Sicily, and France with voluntary subsidies. When, in 1283, he was threatened
with invasion by France, he made the Jews of Faca and Gerona, and their
districts bear half the expense of improving the towers and fortifications; and
a year later the Jews of his state had to raise 130,000 sueldos in taxes at the
shortest notice. When he wished to marry his daughter to King Diniz of
Portugal, he found that the sum of 185,000 sueldos of the promised dowry was
lacking; thereupon he imposed a tax for that amount on the Jews. As soon as he
did not require money from the Jews he ceased to be gracious to them. In 1278
he threatened them with the loss of all their privileges if these were not
submitted to him for confirmation within a month. When, in 1283, the Jews of
Catalonia asked the Cortes of Barcelona for recognition as vassals of the
barons in whose cities or territories they lived or had acquired property,
Pedro opposed this request. He even declared that in the future no Jew might
come to court or act as "bayle" or tax-collector or hold any office
whatsoever entailing any jurisdiction over Christians. An oath was to be taken
by them in a specially prescribed form; and they were not to be permitted to
slaughter in the public slaughter-houses or within the cities they inhabited.”
1327: King James II of Aragon, who
employed a Jew as his secretary and interpreter, passed away. James levied a
special tax on the Jews to support his war against Sicily but for some reason
he exempted the Jews of Monzon from the tax. James followed in the
footsteps of his predecessors and allowed the Jews of Montpelier to practice
medicine with “the proviso that the Jewish physicians must pass the regular
examinations before exercising their profession.”
1492: Today, in Cuba, Christopher
Columbus who it is believed by some to have had Jewish roots two men including
his interpreter Luis de Torres, a converso on an inland expedition.
1389: In what would prove to be a good
thing for the Jews, Boniface IX began his papacy today. During his reign he
gave the Jews of Rome “legal right to observe their Shabbat, protection from
local oppressive officials, and a reduction of taxes as well as giving “to
treat Jews as full-fledged Roman citizens.”
1570: Thomas Kingsmill was appointed
Regius Professor of Hebrew which might seem strange to some since at this time
Jews were still banned from living in England.
1603: Birthdate of Adam Boreel, the Dutch
theologian and Hebrew Scholar who was a friend of Baruch Spinoza who provided
him with a home after he was expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community.
1648: Twelve thousand Jews were massacred
by Chmielnicki's forces. The revolt of the Ukrainians against their Polish
masters was a disaster for the Jews of Poland. When the slaughter
ended, the Jewish community had lost the position and prosperity it had gained
over the previous three centuries. As Poland, which had been a haven
for Jews fleeing persecution in Germany and Spain, descended into chaos Jews
would seek refuge in the Messianic phenomenon of Sabbatai Z’ Vie and the Chassidism
of the Baal Shem Tov.
1659(26th of Cheshvan
5420): Ship owner and grain contractor Abraham Israel Fernandes-Carvajal, the
Portuguese born son of of Capitán Luis José Carvajal Rodríguez de Matos and
Justa Mendes Enríquez who “was head of the crypto-Jewish community at the time
that *Manasseh Ben Israel undertook his mission to request the readmission of
the Jews to England” passed away today after which a memorial service was held
that was attended by diarist Samuel Pepys.
1687: Juan Bautista Diamante, “a minor
Spanish dramatist” whose family appeared to falsify family records to obscure
their Jewish origins passed away today.
1712: Elkan Frankel “was pilloried,
scourged and sent to the Wurzburg for life imprisonment” today.
1733: “This defamatory text against the
Jewish physician Simon Lefmans” was published today.
1780: A court of inquiry met at West
Point, NY and exonerated Colonel David Franks of any involvement in Benedict
Arnold’s plot to betray the United States and surrender West Point to the
British
1781: During the reign of King Joseph II of Austria an ordinance
was adopted that Jews were to be "considered 'fellow-men' and all excesses
against them were to be avoided.
1783: Elias Boudinot, who was persuaded by James Adair’s History
of the American Indians that the Native Americans were descendants of
the Ten Lost Tribes and that the Hebrew was the origin of their language
completed his service as “2nd President of the Confederation of
Congress.”
1786(11th of Cheshvan, 5547): Abraham Oppenheim,
the Mannheim born son of Lob Oppenheim who served as a Rabbi in Amsterdam and
Hanover passed away today.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11725-oppenheim-abraham
1791: Samuel Phillips married Rebecca Jacobs at the Great
Synagogue today.
1791: Birthdate of “Austrian industrialist and philanthropist”
Hermann Todesco.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_19910.html
1792: Aaron Aarons married Catherine “Kitty” Solomons at the
Great Synagogue today.
1793: Birthdate of Louis Jacques Begin the native of Liege who
served as a surgeon in Napoleon’s campaigns against Germany and Russia.
1797: In Charleston, Moses Cohen and his wife gave birth to
Rebecca Cohen, the wife of Abraham Jacobs.
1809: Birthdate of London native Elizabeth Haines the wife of
Mordecai Solomon and the mother nine children cinlduing Henry, Jane and Sarah.
1810: In London, Rosetta and Edward Emanuel Micholls gave birth
to Frances Micholls.
1815(29th of Tishrei, 5576): Herz Schiff’s son,
Moses Schiff, the father of Jacob Hirsh and grandfather of his namesake Moses
Schiff, passed away today.
1820: In London, Lydia,( nee’ Lyons) the widow of Sampson Samuel
gave birth to Sir Saul Samuel the Australian merchant and member of Parliament
who was born after his father had passed away.
1821: One day after she had passed away, 78-year-old “Gitla bat
Eliezer” was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”
1826: In Middlesex, Elizabeth Moses and Montague Leverson gave
birth to George Bazett Colwin Leverson,,the husband of Henrietta Johnassohn,
the father of Ernest, Benjamin, George and David Leverson.
1826: Joseph Davis married Miriam Phillips at the Great
Synagogue today.
1830: Birthdate of French composer Jules Emile David Cohen who
“composed new music for the choruses of two biblically based operas – “Athalie”
and “Esther.”
1830: Blumah Jacobs and Joseph Levy gave birth to Samuel Levy.
1830: Louis-Mathieu Molé,
“Napoleon's advisor on Jewish affairs who
was heavily involved with Napoleon's gathering of a Jewish Grand
Sanhedrin in 1807,” completed his service as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
1830: In Alsace-Lorraine, Wolff Levy and Dina Matz gave birth to
Samuel Wolff Levy, the husband of Babette Bloch, who came to the United States
when he was 16 and later served as the President of the Eureka Benevolent
Association, Treasurer of Associated Charities of San Francisco and founder of
the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society.
http://www.jmaw.org/samuel-wolf-levy-san-francisco/
1831: The formal establishment of the congregation that
came to be called The Great Synagogue (known in Hebrew as Beth Yisrael -
"House of Israel") took place today in Sydney, Australia.
1831: Philip Lucas was appointed to serve as a Magistrate and
Assistant Judge of the Court of Common for the Common Pleas for the Parish of
Kingston in Jamaica.
1831: Birthdate of Julius Stettenheim, the Hamburg born son an
art dealer, who gained fame as humor writer.
1833: In Philadelphia, PA, abolitionist Annis Pulling Furness
and abolitionist William Henry Furness gave birth to Horace Howard Furness who
worked with Professor Paul Haupt “on a new translation of Hebrew Bible” in the
last decade of the 19th century.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30D1FFB3A5911738DDDAF0894D8415B8585F0D3
1837: Helen Skirving Mowbray and the Rev. Ridley Haim Herschell,
who was a native of Strzelno, in Prussian Poland and who as “a young man
converted from Judaism to Christianity and took a leading part in found the
British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews” gave birth to
Farrer Herschell, 1st Baron Herschell
1840: Birthdate of Mark Antokolski, the Wilno native who gained
famed as a sculptor. Among his early works were "Jewish
Tailor", "Nathan The Wise", "Inquisition's Attack against
Jews" and “The Talmudic Debate".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Antokolsky#/media/File:MAntokolosky_Spinoza.JPG
1841: In Mannheim, Germany, Aaron and Sarah Strauss gave birth
to Alfred Abraham Strauss the husband of Blum Bar and Amelia Weinberg and the
father of South Carolina attorney Isaac Calhoun Strauss.
`1842(29th of Cheshvan, 5603): Isaac Cardozo Phillips
the New York born son of Joseph and Rachel Nunez passed away before he reached
the age of two.
1843: Lazarus Morgenthau, “the legendary patriarch of one
of the great Jewish American” families married Babette Guggenheim.”
1844: Birthdate of Mehmed V, the Sultan who was on
the throne when the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the
Central Powers, Germany and Austria. The Sultan was really a figurehead and
real power rested in the hands of the “Three Pashas.” Therefore, he cannot be
held responsible for the hostile treatment of the Jews living in Palestine. At
the same, during his reign, Jews served in responsible positions in the
government and in the military.
1847: One day after she had passed away, Abigail Nathan, the
daughter of Simeon Nathan and Catherine Barnet, was buried today at the “Brady
Street Jewish Cemetery.”
1848: Johann Jacobyhe gained great popular acclaim as a
member of a parliamentary delegation to the Prussian monarch with his remark,
"It is the tragedy of kings, that they will not hear the truth."
1852: In Lorraine, France, Mathiled and Alphonse Henrion Berr
gave birth to Louis Lehmann Berr, the husband of Henriette Alice Berr.
1853(2nd of Cheshvan 5614): Sixty-year-old Esther
Hetty Marks, the New York City born daughter of Jacob Naphtali Hart and Leah
Thérèse Hart, the wife of Alexander Marks and mother of Isaac Newton Marks;
Joseph Hart Marks; Julia Esther Emanuel; Jacob Hart Marks; David Hart Marks;
Isabel Marks; Leonora Marks; Theodore Marks; Jacob Washington Marks; Edwin
Marks and Marion H. Marks” passed away today in New Orleans.
1856: As reported in The News of
the World, in Italy the Pope "commands” people to turn in known
heretics-including Jews. He desires them to denounce family, friends, and
associates if appropriate to the "Holy Inquisition." The Pope
requests the "names of every one of whom they know."
1861: Philadelphian Samuel S. Bloom a 2nd Lieutenant
with Company H of the 111th Regiment began his “term of
service” today.
1862: In Philadelphia, Levi Goldsmith, the Hesse, Germany born
“son of Seligmann Falcke Goldschmidt and Schoenchen Hinka Goldschmidt and husband
of Henrietta Goldsmith” gave birth to Felix Lee Goldsmith the husband of Bertha
Goldsmith and father “of Frances "Fanny" Lee Goldsmith; Infant Goldsmith;
Lee Felix Goldsmith; Hortense Lee Havre and Minna E Goodman Kern” who is buried
in Norfolk, VA.
1862: Birthdate of Max Rabinovich, the
Vice President of the Grand Forks Building and Loan Association and in 1930 the
“honorary chairman of the North Dakota Allied Jewish Campaign” who was the
“husband of Pearl Harstein” and father of Anna and Joseph Rabinovich
1863: In Prague, Leopold and Sofie Sara
Pick gave birth to Rosa Pick who became Rosa Volk When she married Alexander
Volk with whom she had one daughter – Margarete Volk.
1864(3rd of Cheshvan, 5625): Antony Mayer
de Worms passed away in London.
1865: One day after she had passed away,
59 year old Hannah Levy, the wife of Aaron Levy, was buried today at the
“Bancroft Road (Maiden Lane) Jewish Cemetery.
1865: Birthdate of Bavaria native and
executive vice president of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation Mortiz Hilder, the
husband of Edna Bauman whom he married in 1901 and with whom he had two
children and who in 1883 came to the United States where founded Samstag and Hilder, “importers
and manufacturers” in 1892 and in 1915
in partnership with his brother “formed Standard Aniline Products Company which
during the first World War performed pioneer work in the making of dyes and
dyestuffs” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/01/28/96582274.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1865: Birthdate of Warren G. Harding,
29th President of the United States. During his presidency, Harding
signed into law an extremely restrictive immigration bill that had previously
been vetoed by Woodrow Wilson that used a quota system that all but put an end
to the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. On the other hand, he signed a
Joint Resolution passed by Congress that spoke of “favoring the establishment
in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.”
1871: In
Bavaria, Johanna Reub and Abraham Decker
gave birth to Alfred Decker, the husband of Raye Hexterr who at the age of 13
came to Chicago where he founded “Alfred Decker and Cohn Company which became
Society Brand Clothes, Inc. one largest manufacturers of men’s wear in the
United States and was a member of both Temple Sholem
and Temple Emanuel.
1872: In San Francisco, Deliah (née
Stern) and Aaron Fleishhacker gave birth to businessman, banker and
philanthropist Herbert Fleishhacker, the husband “May Belle Greenbaum with whom
he had three children – Marjorie, Herbert, Jr. and Alan – who created “the
Fleishhaker Pool,” and founded what is now the San Francisco Zoological Garden
http://www.jmaw.org/fleishhacker-jewish-san-francisco/
1872: It was reported in New York today
that the Jews of Romania will not be immigrating en masse to the United States.
Such a plan had been considered by some as a way of relieving the miserable
conditions under which these people live.
1874: In Cologne, German Wilhelmine and Wilhelm Breitscheid gave
birth to SPD leader and anti-Nazi leader Rudolf Breitscheld who fled
to France where the authorities later turned him over to the Gestapo who
imprisoned him at Buchenwald where he died.
1874: Julius Levine, the Polish born son
of Liebe and Hinda Johnanna Lewin, and his wife Clara Levine gave birth to
Alida Levine who passed away shortly after celebrating her first birthday.
1874: In Paris, France, Esther and Moses
Gordon gave birth to University of Berne trained medical doctor Alfred Gordon,
the husband of Victorine Lyon and associate and chief of clinic for nervous and
mental diseases at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and author of a
textbook on Nervous Diseases.
1875: In New York, Louis and Rebecca Kahn
Affelder gave birth to Minnie Affelder.
1875: Birthdate of Cologne, Germany
native Rosalia Rothschild Bass, the wife of Hermann Simon Bass and the mother
of Max, Bertha, Emma, Frieda, Max, Julius and Alice Bass.
1876: In the United Kingdom, Martin Jaffé
and his wife gave birth to their “younger son,” Daniel Joseph, Jaffé, a civil
engineer who constructed waterworks in China and Jaffe Road in Hong Kong was
named in his honor.
1876: Birthdate of London native Charles
Joseph Singer, the son of Simeon Singer (a native of Hungary who served as a
rabbi at several English synagogues and is best known for his Authorized Daily
Prayer Book first published in 1890) a physician by training who gained fame as
medical historian.
1876: In Gervais, OR, Jeannette
Rothschild and Newman Goodman gave birth Harvard and Columbia educated
playwright Jules Eckert Goodman, the husband of Mair Farr Pfourts who joined with Montague Glass to create a
series of ethnic humor plays and films featuring the characters known as Potash
and Permutter and whose first success on Broadway came in 1910 with “Mother”
which was later adapted as silent movie in 1914.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/07/11/80409803.html?pageNumber=35
1876: In Chicago, Fannie Guggenheimer and
Samuel Alschuler gave Alfred Alschuler, the Chicago trained architect and the
husband of Rose Haas who trained under
Dankmar Adler before pursuing a career that included designing The Chicago
Mercantile Exchange and several synagogues including Anshe Emet and K.A.M
Isaiah Israel.
http://findingaids.archives.iit.edu/agents/people/221
1877: Birthdate of Aga Khan III whom
Doctor Waldemar Haffkine “approached” in 1898 “with an offer…to settle Jews in
Palestine” on land that would be purchased from” Ottoman Sultan’s subjects.
1879: It was reported today that some
Romans still do not like Jews. When a Jewish funeral procession
passed a saloon, some of the patrons jeered and then assaulted the
mourners. The police had to be called so that the procession could
continue. When the mourners were returning, they were again attacked
and the police had to be called out to prevent a riot.
1879: In Ohio, William and Mare Lederer
Pollak gave birth to Henriette Pollak Sittler, the wife of Joseph Sittler and
the mother of Idella and Rosylin Sittler.
1879(16th of Cheshvan,
5640): David Einhorn, the German born rabbi who became one of the first leaders
of the Reform Movement in the United States pass away today just eight days
before his 70th birthday.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/2012_64_01_00_southard.pdf
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Einhorn.html
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9505E1D71F3FE63BBC4B53DFB7678382669FDE
1881: “The specifications for a building
to occupied by the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum were filed in the Bureau
of Inspection of Buildings” in New York City today.
1881: Rabbi David Levy officiated at the
wedding of Edward H. Lopez to Cecile Ottolengui, the daughter of Israel
Ottolengui which took place at the bride’s home.
1881: Rabbis in Washington, DC have
joined with ministers of other denominations in soliciting funds to building a
hospital in memory of President James Garfield
1881: It was reported today that in
Germany, the “Jews…have instituted proceedings against Dr. Adolf Stoecker” for
his role “in stirring up the people against the Jews.
1881: It was reported today that the
Public Prosecutor in Berlin has instituted legal proceedings against Ernst
Henrici, “the notorious ‘Jew baiter’”.
1882: “The Jews and Cromwell” published
today recounts the efforts of Oliver Cromwell to convince the Council of State
to readmit Jews to the British Isles. Although he failed to win over the
Council, The Protector found a way to open the realm to a trickle of Jews who
became the cornerstone of the modern Anglo-Jewish community.
1882: Frankfurt native Edward Goetz, who
was naturalized in 1877, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish
Cemetery.”
1883: Five Jews from Neustettin went on
trial today in Koslin, Hungary on charges that they intentionally burned down a
synagogue to collect the insurance money.
1883: Based on the date on the
manuscript, today is when Emma Lazarus’ famous sonnet, "The New
Colossus," was either completed or presented to others. She wrote the poem
for an art auction "In Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund." The Statue
of Liberty, designed by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was erected
on October 28, 1886. It was given to the people of the United States by
France in recognition of the friendship between the two nations established
during the American Revolution. While France provided the statue itself,
American fundraising efforts paid for the pedestal. In 1903, sixteen years
after Lazarus's death, "The New Colossus" was engraved on a plaque
and placed in the pedestal as a memorial. In the 1880s when anti-Semitism was sweeping
through Eastern Europe and pogroms were a common occurrence, there was a
massive Jewish flight to America. During this time, Lazarus, already a
well-known poet, visited Russian refugees and helped at the Hebrew Immigrant
Aid Society. She became a spokesperson and advocate for the Jewish community
and responded with some of her most powerful works. Lazarus's famous lines in
"The New Colossus," "Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free," caught the national imagination
and continue to inspire the way Americans think about freedom and exile. The
poem captures what the Statue of Liberty came to mean to the millions of people
who migrated to the United States seeking freedom, and to those who continue to
come to this day. Cited frequently, including at the 2004 Republican National
Convention, the "The New Colossus" continues to symbolize America's
promise of opportunity and freedom to the "huddled masses" of every
land.
1884: Fifty-six-year-old Isaac Honig was
buried in Salem Fields Cemetery on Long Island following a funeral that had
been held at the home of his brother Henry Honig. A native of
Mayence, he came to the United States in 1850 and became a successful
realtor. He was an active supporter of the Hebrew Benevolent and
Orphan Asylum Society and Mount Sinai Hospital.
1884: It was reported today that the
Russians have found a new way to torment its Jewish population. In Pultowa, it
has been proposed to change the designation of every place in which there is no
town hall into villages” since, under the law, Jews can be expelled from
villages but not from towns.
1884: It was reported that the French
Minister to Morocco has threatened to take action if attacks on Jewish citizens
of France living in the North African country do not come to
half. French Jews in Fez “have been scourged for refusing to walk
barefooted in the streets.
1886: Isidor Rayner was elected to the
House of Representatives from Maryland’s Fourth Congressional District.
1886(4th of Cheshvan,
5647): Fifty-eight-year-old Russian born Samuel Lasker passed away today in
Little Rock AR.
1886: “Fourteenth-Street Theatre”
published today reviewed the “Caught in a Corner” by W. J. Shaw which centers
around “Isaac Greenwald” a Jewish broker “who bets, matches coins, plays tennis
makes love and upsets the plans of villainous speculators with equal facility.”
H.B. Curtis, who is known for playing Jewish comedic roles, stars in the role
of Greenwald.
1886: It was reported today that the
Jews, who usually vote Republican had voted for Abraham Hewitt, the Democratic
candidate for Mayor of New York instead of Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican
candidate. Roosevelt actually placed third, with second place going
to Henry George, the reform candidate who had established his own following
among working class and immigrant Jews.
1887: In
what is now part of Belarus, Sarah Savitsky and Max Mendel
Wolfson gave birth to Henry Austryn Wolfson “a scholar, philosopher, and
historian at Harvard University, the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center
in the United States”
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1976_28_01_00_feuer.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21063.html
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/harry-austryn-wolfson
1887: In Baltimore, Solomon Joseph
Goldstein and Rose Goldstein, “the sister of Isidor Zuckermann” gave birth to
Hyman Isaac Goldstein the University of Pennsylvania and Vienna trained
physician who discovered “Goldstein’s Toe Sign,” served in the Medical Corps,
USA, during WW II and was part of a family of doctors – Dr. Leopold Z.
Goldstein, Dr. Henry Z. Goldstein and David E. Cooper, the husband of his
sister who earned his DD.S from the University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1348.html
http://www.whonamedit.com/synd.cfm/3805.html
1887: “The Senatorial Fight” published
today examines the qualifications of the candidates seeking to be elected to
the New York State Senate. Assemblyman Jacob A. Cantor is the Democratic
candidate for the Tenth Senatorial District, a district that contains one fifth
of the voters of New York City. Cantor, who is Jewish, is described as an
effective reformer whose election would serve the city well.
1888: It was reported from Odessa, that
“foreign Jewish farmers have ordered to leave Poland within a month” and that
“foreign Jews in southern Russia expect to be expelled.”
1888: In Astryna (in modern day Balarus) Sarah and Max Wolfson
gave birth to Henry Austryn Wolfson “a scholar, philosopher, and historian at
Harvard University and the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center in the
United States”
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1976_28_01_00_feuer.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21063.html
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/harry-austryn-wolfson
1889: Joseph Toole, who laid the
cornerstone for Temple Emanu-El in Helena, began serving his term as Montana’s
first elected governor.
1889: North and South Dakota are admitted
as the 39th and 40th U.S. states. Jews came to the Dakotas before the
territories were divided into what would become two states. Nathan Dorfman, the
grandfather of the editor of “This Day… in Jewish History” moved from Chicago
and tried his hand at homesteading in the Dakotas. He lasted for one
winter before returning to the windy city. According to family lore,
Nathan and his brother Jake survived on a large supply of soda
crackers. Nathan left the land with Jake who supposedly enjoyed a
small financial success when oil was found on the land. “Many of the
Jews who came to North Dakota were lured by the promise of free land. Baron
Maurice de Hirsch, a banker and philanthropist, believed that Jewish immigrants
entering the United States should leave East Coast cities for the vast
interior, where they would disperse and assimilate into American society. He
set up a fund to encourage such migration.” Free land, wouldn't that have
sounded like the American dream?" asked Dianne Siegel, whose
great-grandfather ventured to North Dakota thanks to the de Hirsch fund. Other
Jews came as merchants or peddlers, sensing opportunity in the territory, which
gained statehood in 1889. "There was a Jewish merchant in just about every
town along the railroad," recalled Myer Shark, who grew up in Devils Lake,
N.D. Shark's father came to North Dakota in 1909 and opened a men's clothing
store. But Jews who settled the Great Plains didn't have an easy road. Hal
Ettinger, an architect in Lawrence, Kan., said his great-grandparents, Simon
and Sophie Ettinger, arrived in North Dakota via Chicago and St. Paul, Minn.,
where Simon had been a peddler. With six children in tow, the family moved into
a 12-by-14-foot shack where they homesteaded a 170-acre property with livestock
and crops. Simon died a year after being issued his land permit, and Sophie
moved to Chicago with the children, selling the property for $10. "Why a
German or Russian immigrant coming to the U.S. could possibly think they could
make it in North Dakota or the Dakota territories is unbelievable," Ettinger
said. "I guess it's some indication of how bad they had it" in the
Old World. The Jews who arrived on the plains had little inkling of what lay
ahead. Jews had not been allowed to own land in Russia and had little knowledge
of how to farm. Crop failures, harsh winters and prairie fires made harvesting
difficult, and life on the frontier did not include modern conveniences like
plumbing and heating systems. Additionally, accounts show that Jews weren't
always greeted hospitably. In 1885, 25 North Dakota farmers petitioned to have
a Jewish colony removed from a village called New Jerusalem. Shark felt the
prejudice. "Early in my childhood I learned I was different than the other
kids," he said. Shark said that a man in the community once tried to block
his mother from moving into his neighborhood, saying, "I don't like the
idea of a Jew building a home in that area." Still, Jews lived -- and
lived Jewishly -- in North Dakota. Siegel said that her family kept kosher, and
that the state's lone rabbi would come to town for major ceremonies. Shark
recalled that "the district judge would not set a term of court until he
checked with one of the Jewish residents to find out when High Holidays
were" -- even though the judge wasn't Jewish himself.”
1889(8th of Cheshvan, 5650): Parashat
Lech-Lecha
1889(8th of Cheshvan, 5650): Rachel
Cohen Simon, the New York born daughter of Morton and Phebe Phillips Cohen
passed away today after which she was buried at the Montefiore Cemetery in
Price Hill, OH.
1890: Reports that Jews are supporting
the entire Tammany ticket were refuted by large number of Jewish leaders who
claim that they are supporting the People’s Municipal League and “denounced as
an insult the bid for the Jewish vote by Tammany” saying that the Jewish has
never been a “class vote” and all that the Jews want is “honest and efficient
government.”
1890: George M. Bersick announced that he
has received the endorsement of Harmonia, Fiedelo and other leading Jewish
clubs in his bid to be elected to the Assembly from the 21st District.
1891(1st of Cheshvan, 5652): Rosh Chodesh
Cheshvan
1891(1st of Cheshvan, 5652): Julia
(Lewenthal) Cantor, the wife of American lawyer and political leader, Jacob
Aaron Cantor, passed away.
1892: Israel Levy married Ester Levi in
London today.
1892: The opinion was published today
that in light of the three day demonstration in London by unemployed Jews,
English Jews seem “to be less philanthropic than American Jews” because
unemployed Jews in the United States “have not been permitted to become a
public charge…because they have been taken care of by their co-religionists.”
1892: “Slighted by Gladstone” published
today expressed surprise at the decision of the Prime Minister and other
leaders to boycott the inaugural banquet of Lord Mayor-elect Stuart Knill
because he is Catholic since Polydore De Keyser who is also Catholic has held
the job and his successor was Henry Aaron Isaacs who was Jewish.
1893: Two days after she had passed away,
79-year-old Frances Phillips, the daughter of Lawrence Phillips and Esther
Spyer was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.
1894: At the start of the Dreyfus affair
when some Frenchmen were really trying to find the spy in their midst, the
Italian military attaché Colonel Panizzardi telegraphed in cipher to his
government "If Captain Dreyfus has had no intercourse with you, it would
be to the purpose to let the ambassador publish an official denial, in order to
forestall comments by the press." This telegram, written in cipher, and of
course copied at the post-office, was sent to the Foreign Office to be
deciphered. The first attempt left the last words uncertain; they were thus
translated: "our secret agent is warned." This version, communicated to Colonel
Sandherr, the chief of French counter-intelligence, seemed to him a new proof
against Dreyfus.
1894: A letter was sent to the Committee
of Seventy today signed by several prominent Jewish leaders including Simon
Sterne, Jacob Schiff and Max J. Lissauer refuting the “unjust accusations”
that William L. Strong, the Republican candidate for Mayor of New
York City, had opposed the election of Theodore Seligman to the Union League
Club.
1895: Miss Julia Richamn, a public school
principle and “who is also an active worker at the Hebrew Institute and the
Hebrew Free Schools addressed a meeting at Arlington Hall where she expressed
her pleasure at seeing the that “first organization of the boys and girls to
assist in keeping the east-side streets clean was formed at the Hebrew
Institute.”
1895: Birthdate of Judith Epstein, the
Worcester, MA born Hadassah leader.
1896 Family physician Dr. J. C. Lewinsky
and long-time family friend Solomon Kuntz spoke today at the simple funeral
services of 28-year-old Abraham Fox and his mother, 60 year old Christine Fox
who died within two days of each other.
1896: Birthdate of Sir Jack Cohen the
native of Northumberland and husband of Kitty Sinclair who was served in World
War I, held a variety of elective offices as a member of the Labour Party and
was chairman of the Sunderland Zionist Society. (He is one of
several people with this name, so it is easy to confuse the facts about their
respective lives>)
1896: The funeral for Samuel Corn, who
enjoyed a successful career in the cap and furrier trade before entering the
field of real, is scheduled to take place at 9:30 this morning at Temple Israel
on the corner of 125th Street and 5th Avenue.
1897: The forces of Tammany were
successful in today’s elections which disappointed Rabbi Gustav Gottheil
because he was afraid “that the cause of good government had suffered and that
the progress of the last few years would lost.”
1898:”Sacrificed Herself By Fire”
published today describe the death of Kate Hart, “a devout Roman Catholic” who
had fallen in love with Charles Mundag, “a devout Jew” whom she married despite
parental opposition.
1898(17th of Cheshvan,
5659): Julius Goldschmidt of Milwaukee who had served as Consul General in Vienna during the administration of President Harrison and who has
been serving Consul General in Berlin since last year passed away today.
1898: Theodore Herzl was part of a
delegation of Jews who met with Kaiser Wilhelm II in
Jerusalem. Herzl’s meeting with the Kaiser was part of his plan to
rebuild the Jewish national home by gaining the support of leading political
leaders. The Kaiser had his own agenda in the East. A
settlement of German Jews in the Middle East would have provided him with
leverage in dealing with the English in Egypt. But the Kaiser was
afraid to give Herzl too much support lest he offend the Turks who ruled the
ancient Jewish homeland. In the end, Herzl accomplished much less
with this meeting than he thought he had.
1898: In an action that would presage the
famed reforesting project of the JNF complete with Tree Certificates, Zionist
leaders Herzl and Wolffsohn plant trees in Motza near Jerusalem. One is a cedar
and the other is a date-palm.
1899: Isaac Stern Chairman of the
Executive Board of the Mount Sinai Hospital voiced his opposition to plans for
building the Emanuel Hospital and Dispensary saying, “that he had not heard of
any real support of the new hospital except from twelve or fifteen physicians”
and Isaac Wallach said he is opposed to the plan because it will be a duplicate
of effort that will deplete Jewish resources.
1899: “Oppose Emanuel Hospital” published
today described the opposition of Isaac Stern and Isaac Wallach of Mount Sinai
Hospital to the construction of a new hospital that would be supported by
donors from the Jewish community.
1899: The Boers begin their 118-day siege
of British held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War. According to the Jewish
Encyclopedia, “Jews fought on both sides during the Second Anglo-Boer War
(1899–1902). Some of the most notable fights during the three years' Boer war —
such as the Gun Hill incident before the Siege of Ladysmith — involved Jewish
soldiers like Major Karri Davies. Nearly 2,800 Jews fought on the British side
and the London Spectator counted that 125 were killed. Around 300 Jews served
among the Boers during the second Boer War and were known as Boerjode: those
who had citizenship rights were conscripted along with other burghers
("citizens"), but there were also a number of volunteers. Jews fought
under the Boers' Vierkleur ("four colored") flag in many of the major
battles and engagements and during the guerilla phase of the war, and a dozen
are known to have died. Around 80 were captured and held in British POW camps
in South Africa. Some were sent as far afield as St. Helena, Bermuda, and
Ceylon to where they had been exiled by the British. Some Jews were among the
Bittereinders ("Bitter Enders") who fought on long after the Boer
cause was clearly lost.”
1900: Nina Jenny Warburg, the daughter of
Salomon and Betty Loeb, and her husband Paul Moritz gave birth to Bettina
Warburg who became Bettina Grimson when she married Samuel Bonarions Grimson.
1900: Featherweight Joe Bernstein, born
Youselle Bernstein “was knocked out in the seventh round in Louisville, KY” in
fight to become World Featherweight Champion.
1901(20th of Cheshvan, 5662):
Parashat Vayera
1901: In Kiev, Israel and Celia Goldberg
gave birth to Herschel Goldberg, the brother of “Hyman Goldberg, a syndicated
columnist and food critic for the New York Post and author of
several books including Our Man in the Kitchen" who
gained fame as author Harry Grey, the husband of Mildred Beck with whom he had
three children – Beverley, Harvey and Simeon.
1902: “President Eliot of Harvard
University, in a brief but exceedingly interesting address delivered before a
great audience of Jewish residnets of Boston in Temple Ohabei Shalem this
afternoon, spoke of ‘The Duty of the Jewish Youth Toward Their Persecuted
Brethren’.”
1902: Birthdate of Isaak Semyonovich
Brook, Russian pioneer in the field of computer technology. In 1939,
the 37-year old Doctor of Technical Sciences, presented a paper at a
session of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, in
which he described a mechanical integrator capable of solving differential
equations up to the sixth order. The integrator was built under Brook's
supervision at the Electric Systems Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences Power
Engineering Institute. Brook's report aroused great interest because there were
no other such machines in the Soviet Union at that time. Only the US and Great
Britain had one model each.
1903: The Amsterdam Theatre “which was
constructed by the partnership of Jewish impresarios A.L. Erlanger and Marcus
Klaw” opened today in New York City.
1903: Simon I. Kohn the Philadelphia born son of Juliam and Simon I. Kohn
and University of Pennsylvania trained
medical doctor, who in 1904 became the visiting physician at the Jewish
Hospital, and member of the board of directors of the Community Health Center,
a part of the Federation of the Jewish Charities while holding “various
positions with the Philadelphia Department of Health” and being a member of
Rodeph Sholem Congregation married Elsa Leberman today.
1903: “A dispatch to the Tagblatt from
Posen says that a bloody conflict between five hundred Jews and a force of
Russian gendarmes occurred at Warsaw on October 31 during the enlisting of
recruits.”
1904(24th of Cheshvan,
5656): Sixty-five-year-old Giuseppe Ottolenghi who began his
military career in 1859 and rose to the rank of brigadier-general in 1888 and
who, after holding a series of successively more important position was named
commandant of the Italian army’s first corps in 1903, passed away today.
1905: At Odessa, the massacre of the Jews
that began on October 30 during which “the police and Cossacks murdered all the
Jews in one quarter as large as that of La Chapelle in Paris,” “poured boiling
water on the children and threw the old men out of windows” leaving 1,500
corpses in their wake, appeared to have come to an end today.
1905: “Workmen carrying the Emperor’s
portrait attacked the Jewish shops at Kernson today and plundered the market.”
1905: During today’s celebration in
Vyazma marking the granting of a constitution, “a Jewish service was held in
memory of those who died in the cause of freedom.”
1905: In Bachmut, Bessarabia, a three-day
long attack began on the Jews that appeared to have been organized by the
police that including the beating of Jewish students, the sacking of Jewish
stores and the plundering of Jewish residences.
1905: In Minsk, the doctors at the Jewish
Hospital worked all night “on the wounded brought in from the railroad station
where the troops had fired volleys at the demonstrators.”
1905: Riot, Slaughter, Looting” published
today described how the Jews have been victims of mobs in several cities
including Kiev, Minsk, Kherson and Elizabethgrad where, after having attended
services at the Cathedral, “loyalists bearing a lot a portrait of Emperor
Nicholas went to the Jewish quarter” where they beat, wounded and killed
several Jews while sacking their houses and stores.
1906: In Baltimore, MD, Frieda and Louis
Phillip Hamburger gave birth to Louis P. Hamburger, Jr. the “husband of Klare
Hamburger” and “father of Fritzi Hamburger.”
1907: The Tennessee Volunteers coached by
Izzy Levene continued their winning ways today against Chattanooga bring their
record to 5 and 1.
1908: Governor Hughes final night of
campaigning included a stop at Clinton Hall “where 800 or 900 east siders” most
of whom were Jews were holding a meeting presided over by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
where the governor was cheered after give a speech where he denounced bigotry,
intolerance and discrimination.
1908: Corinne Bernheimer, the St. Louis
born daughter of Ella Hayman and Marcus Bernheimer married Alvin Louis Bauman
and as Corrine Bauman she served as National Treasure of the Council of Jewish
Women, member of the board of directors of the Jewish Sanatorium of St. Louis
and a member of Temple Israel in St. Louis.
1909: “The second monthly meeting of the
Council of Jewish Women was held” today “in the Sabbath School Room of Temple
Beth Ahalah in Richmond, VA.
1909: Professor F.C. Woodward of Richmond
College is scheduled to deliver a lecture, and Mrs. Sigmund Mesdames Hutzler
and Clarke are scheduled to perform a piano duet at “the second general meeting
of the Council of Jewish Women” at Temple Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Va.
1910: “Tablets in memory of Arthur
Ehremann, Theophilus M. Marc, Sigmund Neustad and Ludwig Stettheimer were
unveiled” tonight at “the annual meeting of the United Hebrew Charities.”
1911: Russian Premier Kokovtzoff has
heeded the appeal of the 1,500 Jews who have settled in Ekaterinoslaff since
1882 to modify the original order of expulsion. Under the revised
order issued by the provincial governor today, only those Jews who have settled
in the province since 1906 will be expelled.
1912(22nd of Cheshvan,
5673): Parashat Chayei Sara
1912: William Sulzer, the Democratic
candidate for Governor delivered a speech tonight in the Grand Music Hall which
“is in the famous Eighth Assembly District where the “population is Jewish in
the reation of at least six to one.
1912: “Oscar S. Straus, the Bull Moose
candidate for Governor, wound up his-campaign tonight with nine speeches, the
last of which was delivered to a crowd of 4,000 persons in the Academy of
Music, Brooklyn.”
1912: During a campaign stop, William
Sulzer who is running against Oscar Straus, the first Jewish cabinet matter
“said he had always been loyally supported by the Jews.”
1913: “Charles J. Vopicka, President
Wilson's Minister to Rumania, Servia, and Bulgaria, who is believed to be armed
with instructions from the Washington Administration to take vigorous steps
with a view to the amelioration of the plight of the Jews in Rumania left
Berlin to-day for Bucharest.
1913: Twenty-three-year-old Columbia
University educated attorney Meyer Eichman, the Jersey City, NJ boron son of
Hannah Pollock and Morris Eichmann married Mary Goldberg today during the same
month wen he was admitted to the New Jesey Bar.
1913: In Kiev, “counsel for the defense
in the trial of Mendel Beiliss succeeded in preventing the reading to the jury
of the minutes of previous cases dealing with alleged ritual murders.”
1914: “The Man from Mexico,” a silent film produced by Adolph Zuko and
Daniel Frohman
1914: Russia declared war on the Ottoman
Empire. With this declaration of war, the Ottomans regarded the Jews of
Palestine, a large number of whom were from Russia, as enemies of the state and
treated them accordingly.
1914(13th of Cheshvan,
5675): Mrs. Gertrude Virginia David, the New York born daughter of banker
Joseph and Fanny Levy Joseph, “one of the oldest Jewish families of New York
City and one of the oldest members of the Shearith Israel” and the wife of
Montreal attorney Moses Samuel David passed away this evening “at the home of
her daughter, Mrs. Isoline Graff.”
1914: A protest was held in Sophia,
Bulgaria by the Jewish community, against ritual murder accusations in a case
associated with memorial services for soldiers who fell in war.
1915: In New York, state elections which
newly naturalized Jewish citizens had been urged to participate in at a rally
held Adolph Lewisohn Stadium, took place today.
1915: Michael Sidney Luft, a minor movie
producer who would gain fame as the husband of Judy Garland, was born to Jewish
parents who had immigrated from Germany and Russia.
1916: Turkish military leader Djemal
Pasha orders barricades erected to prevent Jews from praying at the Western
Wall in Jerusalem.
1916: Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer
author of German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies
Abroad, 1938-1945 was born in Berlin today into what had been a Jewish
family until his grandfather, Gustav, the director of one of Germany’s largest
banks, converted to Protestantism. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1916(6th of Cheshvan,
5677): Dr. Henry W. (Pinchas HaLevi) Schneeberger, the Rabbi at Chizuk Amuno
Congregation in Baltimore, MD passed away. On the afternoon of his
death The Baltimore newspapers that afternoon ran a photograph of Dr.
Schneeberger with a caption above it saying, ‘Grand Old Man’ Dies after Long
Illness, Beloved Rabbi Dead.’”
1917: Arthur Balfour, British Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, sent Lord Rothschild a letter declaring the government's
sympathy and support for the Zionist cause. Known as the Balfour Declaration,
this document helped to supply the legal and international political
underpinnings for the nascent Zionist movement. Almost thirty years
to the day of the sending of this letter, the UN would vote to create a Jewish
state in Palestine.
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild:
I have much pleasure in conveying to youon behalf of His Majesty's
Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist
aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the
knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours,
Arthur James Balfour
1917: Winston Churchill who was Minister
of Munitions wrote Sir Frederic Nathan the Jewish explosives expert asking why
his ministry was collecting 25,000 tons of horse chestnuts. Nathan
explained to Churchill that the horse chestnuts were part of Dr. Chaim
Weitzman’s experiments to create large quantities of acetone which was need to
make cordite the smokeless powder used as the propellant in making ammunition.
1917: Four days before the hotly
contested election for Mayor of New York, “Oscar S. Straus, Chairman of the
Public Service Commission and former Ambassador to Turkey declared that any
candidate who refused to buy Liberty bonds was treasonable” which was an
indirect “slap” at Morris Hillquit the Socialist candidate.
1917: In Russia, “food riots and
anti-Jewish disturbances” took place at Tambov, Belopolie and Alexandrovsk,
1918(27th of Cheshvan,
5679): Parashat Chaeyei Sara
1918(27th of Cheshvan,
5679): First Lieutenant Louis G. Bernheimer, the son of Sidney Bernheimer of
New York and a pilot with Aero Squadron, along with his Observer, “on their own
initiative went on a reconnaissance mission, flying fifteen kilometers behind the
German lines, securing valuable information on the condition of the bridges
across the Meuse River and activity in the back areas while also harassing
enemy troops.”
1919: “On the second anniversary of the
Balfour Declaration, the Zionist Actions Committee issued a manifesto
declaring” its hope “that the British Government will adhere to the declaration
made by Mr. Balfour which the world Zionist organization hopes will be realized
with the next few months.”
1919: In London, the “Conference of
Mizrahi Societies of the United Kingdom sent a telegram to Dr. Weizmann and Mr.
Ussishkin in Jerusalem pledging support to their political and economic
endeavors for Palestine.”
1919: On Declaration Day, Lord Curzon,
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, sent a message to Nahum Sokolow “declaring
that there has been no change in the policy of His Majesty’s Governemnt with
regard to the establishment of a National Jewish Home in Palestine.”
1920: Birthdate of Morris Mazer, the son
of Brooklyn kosher poultry worker, who as Bill Mazer became a “fixture” in the
world of those who covered sports in the New York area. (As reported by Richard
Goldstein)
1920: Twenty-four-year-old Carnegie Tech
graduate, and Washington College Law School trained Attorney, the son of Noah
and Paula Grobstein who was a chemist and WW I veteran married Ethel Sobel
today.
1920: Warren G Harding
elected President on his 55th birthday. Warren Harding was
the first President to sign a Joint Congressional Resolution endorsing the
Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate supporting the establishment in
Palestine of a national Jewish home for the Jewish people. The resolution was
signed September 22, 1922.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/warren-g-harding-a-forgotten-zionist-hero-648118
1920: Twenty-five-year-old graduate of
the College of Agriculture at the University of California David Aaron Shapiro, the Russian born son of
Mordechai and Feige Shapiro. “the owner and manager of a large ranch in
Petaluma, CA” and the Chairman of the Petaluma Zionist District married Ida
Diamond today.
1920: Nathan David Perlman was elected as
a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 14th District.
1920: Henry Abrams of Indianapolis,
Indiana, was re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: In New York City, Otto A. Rosalsky,
the judge of the Court of General Sessions was re-elected today.
1920: Simon L. Adler of Rochester, NY,
was re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Elijah Adlow of Boston, Mass. was
elected to the State Legislature.
1920: M.C. Ansorge of New York City was
elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Benjamin Antin of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Bernard Aronson of New York City
was elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Isaac Bachrach of Atlantic City,
NJ, was re-elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Harry Baum of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Maurice Bloch of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Mitchell Erlanger of New York City
was elected judge of the Supreme Court.
1920: Bernard Finkelstein of Boston,
Mass, was elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Noel B. Fox of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Ralph Halpern of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Maxwell S Harris of New York City
was elected the State Senate.
1920: Gustave Hartman of New York City
was elected judge of the City Court.
1920: Henry Jaeger of New York City was
elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Julius Kahn of San Francisco, CA,
was re-elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920. Milton Krauss of Peru, Indiana, was
re-elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Nathan Leibman of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Meyer London of New York City was
elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Isaac May was re-elected Mayor of
Rome, GA.
1920: Morris A. Penter of Pueblo, CO, was
elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Nathan D. Perlman of New York City
was elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: M. Warley Platzek of New York City
was elected judge of the Supreme Court.
1920: L.G. Moses of New York City was
elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Samuel Orr of New York City was
re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Schuyler M. Meyer of New
York City was elected to the State Senate.
1920: M.D. Reiss of New York City was
elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Louis B. Rosenfeld of Hartford, CT,
was elected to the State Senate.
1920: Adolph J. Sabath of Chicago,
Illinois, was re-elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Albert B. Rossdale of New York City
was elected the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Joseph W. Schulman of Chicago,
Illinois, was elected Judge of Municipal Court today.
1920: Charles Shulman of Boston, Mass.,
was elected to the State Legislature today.
1920: Isaac Siegel of New York City was
re-elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Coleman Silbert of Boston, Mass.,
was elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Charles Solomon of New York City
was re-elected to the State Legislature.\
1920: Joseph Steinberg of New York City
was re-elected to the State Legislature.
1920: Nathan Straus, Jr. of New York City
was elected to the State Senate.
1920: Sol Ullman of New York City was
re-elected to the State Senate.
1920: Lester D. Volk of Brooklyn was
elected to the United States House of Representatives.
1920: Isidor Wassservogel of New York
City was elected judge of the Supreme Court in New York and Bronx Counties.
1921(1st of Cheshvan,
5682): Rosh Chodesh Chesvan)
1921(1st of Cheshvan,
5682): Rabbi Zalman was among four Jews murdered when Arabs rioted in Jerusalem
on the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration injured an addition 20
people.
1921: Graduation ceremonies for the first
class of nurses to complete the three-year program at the Hadassah nursing
school are postponed due to Arab riots.
1922: “Peter the Great” a biopic about
the Czar co-starring Fritz Kortner was released in Germany today.
1922: Founding of the moshav Balfouriyyah
on the fifth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
1923: At a meeting commemorating the
sixth anniversary of the Balfour declaration and the dedication of the
Palestine colony Balfouria, named in honor of the British statesman Israel
Zangwill was criticized by speakers at the American Zion Common-wealth meeting
today at the Hotel Commodore.
1924(5th of Cheshvan, 5685): Zionist
leader Dr. Menachem Mandel Scheinkin was killed today in a streetcar accident
in Chicago. Dr. Scheinkin was born in Balta Bessarabia 54 years
ago. He was a rabbi in the small town before moving to Palestine
thirty years ago. He worked to development the Jewish settlements
founded by the late Baron Rothschild and was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.
1924: “The Man from Mexico” a film
version of a Broadway play produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman was
released today in the United States.
1925: “Loney Haskell, representing the
Jewish Theatrical Guild” is scheduled to “address the Godmother’s League in the
Nursery Auditorium this afternoon.
1926: It was reported today that “Harry
Houdini’s body may lie in state at the National Vaudeville Artists’ club house,
the Hippodrome or a public funeral parlor until his funeral which will take
place on November 4 or November 5.
1926: “The family of a Polish merchant
who died leaving a clause in his will that his body be cremated, and the city
health authorities meet with the resistance of the Warsaw Rabbinate who refused
to allow burial in the Jewish cemetery of the ashes of the cremated body.”
1926: Moissaye Joseph Olgin,
a Ukrainian-born writer, journalist, and translator ran as Socialist for a seat
in the U.S. Congress.
1927: In El Paso, TX, WW I Marine veteran
Errold Baum Lapowski, the Gainesville, TX born son of Nathan and Eva Lapowski
and his wife Eleanor Lapowski gave birth to Jean Klein Lapowski who became Jean
Klein Schechter when she married Irving Schechter with whom she had two
children.
1927: In the Bronx, Emanuel and Anna
Frank Cohen give birth to Morris Leo Cohen, a “book lover who shunned the
practice of law because it was too contentious and became one of the nation’s
most influential legal librarians, bringing both the Harvard and Yale law
libraries into the digital age.”
1928: “Louis Marshall, Chairman of the
Non-Zionist Conference on Palestine announced that he has appointed Felix M.
Warbrug, Dr. Lee K. Frankerl, Dr. Cyrus Adler, James H. Becker, David A. Brown,
Colonel Herbert H. Lehman and Dr. Julian Morgenstern as “the seven American
non-Zionist representative to the extended Jewish agency.”
1928: Tonight, Louis Marshall declined to
comment on $100,000 libel and defamation filed against by David S. Polier in
which plaintiff alleges that Marshall had “stigmatized” him “as a person of low
mentality and unprincipled conduct, of religious bigotry and of petty and
low-minded political principles” because of his comments as Jewish voting
patterns.
1929: Today, Shmuel “Samuel” Eisner” and
his wife Fannie gave birth to their youngest child Rhoda, the sister of
“cartoonist and publisher” Wil Eisner, one of those responsible for the
popularity of the graphic novel.
1929: Birthdate of Harold
Faberman, founder and Artistic Director of the Conductors Institute at
Bard College. Harold Farberman was born on New York City's Lower East
Side. Coming from a family of musicians (his father was the drummer in a famous
1920s klezmer band led by Schleomke Beckerman; his brother was also a drummer),
it was inevitable that he would pursue music as a career. After graduating from
the Juilliard School of Music on scholarship in 1951, Farberman became the
youngest member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) when he joined its
percussion section.
1930: In “Fair Play to the Jews”,
published today Churchill attacked the Passfield White Paper that contended
Britain’s’ obligations to the Jews and Arabs under the Mandate were
equal. Churchill contended that the British owed a debt to the Jewish
people as embodied in the words and spirit of the Balfour
Declaration. To say otherwise was a betrayal of British honor.
1931(22nd of Cheshvan,
5692): Fifty-five-year-old “prominent Jewish actor of Shakespearean plays
“Morris D. Maxman,” “the funder of the Jewish Art Theatre in London” passed
away today in Los Angeles.
1931: “Emulating the anti-Semitic
students of Cracow University, students of Warsaw University launched an attack
against their Jewish colleagues” which included an “attack on first-year Jewish
law students who were driven from the University grounds.”
1932(3rd of Cheshvan, 5693): Fifty-nine-year-old
theatrical agent and founder of the William Morris Agency, William Morris, born
Zelman Moses in Vienna, the husband of Emma Berlingoff and the father Ruth and
William Morris, Jr whose clients included Eddie Cantor, the Marx Brothers,
Burns and Allen and Martha Raye passed away today.
https://localwiki.org/hsl/William_Morris
1932: Birthdate of Nobel Prize winning
physicist Melvin Schwartz.
1933:
The Hungarian comedy film ”Miss Iza,” featuring Sándor Radó who died at the hands of
the Arrow Cross and directed Steve Sekely, the son of Jewish parents who named
him István Székely, was released today
in Hungary.
1933(13th of Cheshvan,
5694): Sixty-three-year-old Samuel S. Piser, a native of Russia who came to
Chicago when he was sixteen and has operated an undertaking business for the
last twenty years, passed away today.
1934(24th of Cheshvan,
5695): Eighty-nine-year-old Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild a member
of the French line of the House of Rothschild whose early support of
Zionism included the establishment of the Palestine Jewish Colonization
Association, passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/rothschild.html
1934: “The Merry Widow” the cinematic
version of the operetta produced by Irving Thalberg and Ernst Lubitsch who also
was the director, with a libretto by Victor Leon and Leo Stein and a screenplay
by Samson Raphaelson was released in the United States today by MGM.
1934: Funeral services were held this
afternoon for former Russian revolutionary Simon Oscar Pollock, the “counsel to
the Political Refugees Defense League of Work followed by internment at Mount
Zion Cemetery in Queens, NY.
1934(24th of Cheshvan,
5695): Seventy-four-year-old Joseph Isaac Bluestone, the Lithuanian born sone
of “Golde Chaya Bluestone and Chaim Bluestone,” the husband of Sarah Rachel
Bluestone and the father of Columbia trained physician Ephraim Michael
Bluestone, a Lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps during WW I, a director of
the Hadassah Hospital in Palestine and director of Montefiore Hospital.
1934: “Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round” a
musical comedy-drama co-starring Jack Benny and Sid Silvers with a score by
Alfred Newman was released today by United Artists.
1935: “A review of the problem of the
agunah -- the deserted wife -- was issued today by the Rabbinical Assembly of
America -- comprised of leaders of conservative Jewry.”
1936: It was reported today that most of
the newspapers in Vienna have expressed “great satisfaction” that Otto Lowei, a
professor at Austria’s Graz University was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in
Medicine. The clerical newspapers are the exception to the rule,
which may be because Lowei is Jewish. The Clerical Reichspost gave
the story four and a half lines and the Weltblatt hid the story in the Personal
News Column.
1936: Birthdate of Martin Aronstein, a
native of Pittsfield, MA whose career as lighting designer on Broadway spanned
36 years and whose creations earned him five Tony award nominations.
1936: Father Charles E. Coughlin denied
he had ever “assailed Jews” but admitted he had challenged the Jews “to abandon
the philosophy of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.”
1936: Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis
Powers.
1937: Republican Stanley M. Isaacs was
elected Manhattan Borough President.
1937(28th of Cheshvan 5698): Eighty-two-year-old
Vladimir Jochelson, the Jewish revolutionary who used his time as an exile in
Siberia to study the “language, managers and folk-lore “of the indigenous
peoples of the Russian North.”
http://archives.nypl.org/mss/1565
1937:” I'd Rather Be Right,” a musical
with a book by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and
music by Richard Rodgers premiered on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre The story
produced by this Jewish quartet, is a Depression-era political satire set in
New York City, about Washington politics and political figures, such as
President Franklin Roosevelt. The plot centers on Peggy Jones and her
boyfriend, who needs a raise in order for them to get married. The President
steps in and solves their dilemma. It starred George M. Cohan as Franklin
Roosevelt. (Some people mistakenly thought that Cohan’s name was a form of the
name Cohen and that he was Jewish.)
1937: On the 16th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, “the
Syrian newspaper al-Ayyam expressed support for the measures
being implemented by the French authorities to protect the Jews Quarter of
Damascus from Muslim attacks.”
1938: As a result of The Munich Agreement Hungary was “awarded
the Felvidek region of South Slovakia and Ruthenia.
1938: Abraham Liessin, well-known Yiddish poet and editor
of Zukunft, the literary and political monthly collapsed Wednesday while
reading a poem at the funeral services for his friend and associate, B. Charney
Vladeck. (As reported by JTA)
1938: Birthdate of musician
Jay Black of “Jay and the Americans.”
1938: Krystyna Skarbek the future British
espionage agent whose father was a Polish Catholic noble and whose mother was
Jewish married Jerzy Giżycki in Warsaw.
1938: Today, Michael Schapp, the
president of Bloomingdale’s announced the appointment of I. A. Hirschmann the newly created post of director of
advertising and sales promotion.
1939: It was reported today that 1000
people attended the annual benefit luncheon of the Flatbush division of the
Jewish Sanitarium and Hospital for Chronic Diseases where approximately one
thousand dollars was raised.
1939: “An understanding of each other's
objectives and cooperation in working out programs common to all religions and
races is a sure antidote for intolerance and an essential of democracy,
speakers agreed today at a symposium on "The American Community" at
the Hotel Astor under the auspices of the National Conference of Christians and
Jews.”
1940(1st of Cheshvan,
5701): Parashat Noach; Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
1940: It was reported today that “the
government of Croatia, a semi-autonomous province of Yugoslavia enacted a
decree making the sale of business enterprises and industries subject to
government approval “which was said to be directed against the liquidation by
Jews of many industries since the recent enactment of anti-Semitic laws.”
1940: It was reported today that
“delegates to the twenty-sixth annual convention of Hadassah, the women's
Zionist organization of America, have accepted a budget of $200,000 here for
colonization and land reclamation work carried on by the Jewish National Fund,
official Zionist land-buying agency in Palestine.”
1941: The Nazis deported more than
15,000 Serbian Jews to a concentration camp at Sajmiste, Yugoslavia. They are
later killed in mobile gassing units disguised as Red Cross vans.
1941: The Germans begin
the construction of an extermination center at Belzec, Poland.
1941 A Jewish ghetto at Grodno,
Belorussia, is established.
1941 A Nazi-sanctioned concentration
camp opens at Hadjerat-M'Guil, North Africa.
1941: Diana Barnato Walker, the daughter
of Woolf Barnato and granddaughter of Barney Barnato who secured the family
fortune in his diamond and gold mining operations, “was admitted to the ATA's
Elementary Flying Training School at White Waltham” today.
1942: On the 25th anniversary
of the Balfour Declaration, Churchill sent a telegram to Weizmann and a message
to the Jewish Chronicle recognizing the special suffering
being endured by the Jewish people and reiterating his continued support of
Zionism
1942: Starting today, “the entire ghetto in Izbica was liquidated which led to a week
of horrific killings at the cemetery. Several thousand Jews (estimated at
4,500)were massacred by the Sonderdienst battalion of Ukrainian Trawnikis in an
assembly-line-style, and dumped into hastily dug mass graves.[6] The murders
were committed by trained killers who drank heavily, but the soldiers of German
Reserve Police Battalion 101 who rounded up the condemned prisoners drank also,
especially at night.”
1942(22nd of Cheshvan, 5703): The
Nazis begin deportations in the Bialystok region. Reportedly, 3,000 to 6,000
Jews were deported from Siemiatzycze. Hundreds were shot while trying to revolt
against the round up. The resistance was led by Herschl Shabbes. Hundreds of
Jews managed to escape from the actions. Some Poles helped the Jews hide while
others didn't. Those who were caught assisting a Jew were shot. When the train
of Siemiatzycze Jews reached the Treblinka station, one car was heard singing
"Hatikvah'. Some of the people were stripped naked in near freezing
temperatures, taken to the fields and shot dead. All the rest but 152 of the
3,200 were gassed. As part of the Action in the Bialystok region,
hundreds of small towns would be raided, their Jews rounded up for deportation.
The total of captured Jews was estimated to be above 100,000. There were too
many to be processed immediately. Interim camps were then set up. Eventually
most of them would be transported to Treblinka over the next several weeks and
months.
1942(22nd of Cheshvan, 5703): In the
Lithuanian town of Marcinkance, 370 Jews who refuse to board trains for
deportation bolt for the ghetto boundaries. In the mêlée that follows, 360 Jews
and many guards are killed. Between deaths and successful escapes, not one Jew
is left to board the trains
1942(22nd of Cheshvan, 5703): In Zolochev, Ukraine, the
chairman of the Jewish Council is murdered by Germans after refusing to sign a
paper saying that the liquidation of the ghetto was necessitated by the spread
of a typhus epidemic. The poet S. J. Imber, the nephew of the author of
Hatikvah is among the 2500 Zolochev Jews deported to Belzec.
1942: More than 100,000 Jews
remaining in the towns and villages in the Bialystok region of Poland are
arrested and deported to holding camps at Zambrów, Volkovysk, Kelbasin, and
Bogusze before being sent to the Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps.
1942: Wolfram Sievers, head of Germany's Ancestral Heritage
Society, requests skeletons of 150 Jews. SS chief Heinrich Himmler approves a
plan to establish a collection of Jewish skeletons and skulls at the Strasbourg
Anatomical Institute in France, near the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration
camp.
1942: The Nazis shipped the Jews of Rujenoy were shipped to
Treblinka. Among them was the family of Yitzhak Shamir, who
according to the future Prime Minister of Israel, were not able to leave for
Palestine when that opportunity was still a possibility “because they could not
afford the £1,000 fee demanded by the British.”
1943: Nazis liquidated Riga ghetto
sending the remaining 1,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto to Birkenau.
1943(4th of Cheshvan, 5704): The Germans
commenced operation "Harvest Festival" - the destruction of the
survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising who were held captive since April.
Within a few days 50,000 Jews would be shot in ditches at Majdanek. At
Trawniki, all the Jews were machine-gunned down. Of the 500,000 Warsaw Jews
driven away from the ghetto and placed in camps between July 1942 and May 1943
only about three hundred survived. Some of the survivors would form
a Kibbutz in Israel memorializing the brave stand of their fallen comrades.
1943: Stanley Isaacs, a political ally of
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was elected to the New York City Council.
1943: In Genoa, “the hunt for Jews
began…when two German police agents entered the office of the Jewish community
and forced the custodians, Linda and Bino Polacco, to turn over membership
lists and summon members to a meeting at the synagogue the following morning.
(As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)
1943: While serving in the U.S. Navy,
Kirk Douglas married Diana Dill with whom he had two sons – Michael and Joel
Douglas.
1943: No worse night for fiddle playing
could have been than the wet and the wan one of this evening, when Josef
Piastro, who in an earlier season had played in this city as J. Piastro
Borisoff, gave a violin recital in Town Hall. He is the brother of Michel
Piastro, former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra,
who is now on tour as a soloist.
1944(16th of Cheshvan,
5705): Fifty-four-year-old Jennie Avent Feinstein, the wife of Isaac Feinstein
passed away today after which she buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing,
NY.
1944: Orders were sent from Berlin to
suspend killing of Jews at Auschwitz. This was not a humanitarian
act.
1944: The 104th Infantry
Division in which Rabbi Gunter Plaut “served as a front-line chaplain” took
part in “a coordinated attack over the Mark River at Standdaarbuiten and established a bridgehead and the rest of
the division crossed the river.
1945: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Egypt.
1945: “Confidential Agent” a film set in the Spanish Civil War
co-starring Lauren Bacall and Peter Lorre with music by Franz Waxman was
released today in the United States.
1945: While responding to parliamentary
questions, British Foreign Minister Bevin of the newly installed Labor
Government made the observation that “if the Jews, with all their suffering,
want to get too much at the head of the queue, you have the danger of another
anti-Semitic reaction through it all.” While Britain has had its Philo-Semites,
anti-Semitism is a common currency whether it be the genteel kind of the
Conservatives or the more uncouth variety found among some members of Labor at
this time. Bevin’s statement was an indication that he and Prime
Minister Attlee were about to turn against the promises of the Balfour
Declaration and continue to enforce the White Paper adopted as British policy
in 1939.
1946(8th of Cheshvan,
5707): Parashat Lech-Lecha
1946(8th of Cheshvan,
5707): As thousands of survivors languish in DP camps hoping to reach Palestine
or a safe haven in the west, Jews read Parashat Lech-Lecha , in what might be
considered an ironic twist.
1946: “A jeep hit a road mine tonight
near Petah Tikvah and a bomb exploded near a bridge over the Kishon River in
the vicinity of Haifa as new violence erupted in Palestine at the end of a
one-day strike of Palestine's Arabs against the Balfour Declaration.”
1947: “The world of religion
owes and incalculable debt to Judaism,” President said in a message issued
today “by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in commendation of its
American Jewish cavalcade.”
1947: The National Finance Council of the
National Welfare Board ended it three-day meeting in Detroit today by adopting
a 1948 budget amounting to $1,447,800 which, among other things, will go to
help support the National Associating of the Jewish Community Centers, the
Y.M.H.A. and the Y.W.H.A.
1948: President Harry S. Truman
surprised the experts, by narrowly winning re-election over Republican
challenger Thomas E. Dewey. Truman’s upset victory was due in part
to heavy support among Jewish voters in critical states with large electoral
votes such as New York. Truman’s liberal social policies such as
support for federal school lunches and health insurance for the elderly were
popular among Jewish voters. Most Jews will remember and revere
Truman as the man who supported the creation of the state of
Israel. Despite opposition from most of the leaders in his
administration, including George C. Marshall whom Truman revered, the man from
Missouri ensured the United States was the first nation to recognize the
re-born Jewish state.
1948: On the anniversary of the Balfour
Declaration, the Israeli military cancelled the blackout in West
Jerusalem. “’The city blazed with lights and its citizens crowded
the streets and cafes to taste the future they had fought for.’”
1948: Marcus Sieff sends a letter to
Winston Churchill stating that “many Israeli leaders were anxious to see ties
with Britain renewed, but that British policy in the United Nations Assembly
with regard to Israel and the Arab States prevents any such rapprochement.”
1949: Today, in agreement with the family
of “English businessman and Zionist” Daniel Seiff, the Daniel Sieff Research
Institute which had been found by Chaim Weizmann in 1934 “was renamed the
Weizmann Institute of Science in his honor.”
1950: “Harriet Craig” a melodrama
directed by Vincent Sherman was released in the United States by
1951(3rd of Cheshvan,
5712): Ninety-year-old Martha Bernays, the widow of Sigmund Freud, passed away
today Columbia Pictures.
1951: Today in Tel Aviv, United States
Sculptor Jo Davidson presented a bust of the Earl of Balfour, “the former
British Foreign Secretary who issued a declaration thirty-four years ago today
pledging British support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in
Palestine” to President Chaim Weizmann.
1952: In Los Angeles, Lilia Fink, “an
English professor” and Federick Fink, a shoe store owner gave to educated
businessman Laurence Douglas Fink, “the chairman and CEO of BlackRock” and the
husband of Lori Welder whom he married in 1974 and is the mother of their
children.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100206092301/http://people.forbes.com/profile/laurence-d-fink/12231
1953: Major General (Ret) Kenneth Nichols
became General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which enable him
to initiate the AEC Personnel Security Board hearing on the loyalty and
trustworthiness of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer
1955: “‘Hill 24 Doesn't Answer,’ an Israeli-made
feature had its première tonight at the World Theatre.”
1955: Birthdate of Medford, Massachusetts
native Bob Tufts, the major league pitcher who went to Princeton before going
into professional baseball and got an MBA at Columbia after he left the game.
1955(17th of Cheshvan,
5716): Ninety-one-year-old Samuel Shulman the Russian born American rabbi whose
first pulpit was at Temple Emanu-El in Helena, Montana and who eventually
replaced Kaufman Kohler as the rabbi Temple Beth-El and Temple Emanu-El in New
York City passed away today.
1955: Hadassah, the Women's Zionist
Organization of America, has been designated by the Government as the central
agency for the distribution of surplus American food in Israel.
1955: A force of paratroops from the
890th Battalion augmented by a Nahal company attacked the Egyptian emplacements
at Sachba while units from the Golani Brigade's 12th Battalion attacked
Egyptian emplacements at Ras-Siram this evening in the start of Operation
Volcano.
1956: Israel captured Gaza, Sheham
and El Arish (the Egyptian capital of the northern Sinai) during the war with
Egypt.
1956: Much to everybody’s surprise
Israeli tanks came to within ten miles of the Suez Canal. The IDF captured
sixty armored cars and forty modern tanks from the retreating
Egyptians. These weapons were part of the large mass of modern
weapons that the Soviets had supplied Nasser in exchange for Arab support and
much of the future Egyptian cotton crop. The weapons were much
better than anything the IDF had and would be incorporated into the arsenal of
the Israeli military forces.
1956: During the Sinai Campaign, the
specter of a wider war opened when the Syrian embassy in Washington informed
the United States government that Syria had ‘decided to implement immediately’
the joint Egyptian-Syrian defense pact.
1956: The governors of Gaza City and the
Gaza strip surrender to the Israelis.
1956: “Emergency Hospital” a dramatic
film directed by Lee Sholem and produced by Howard Koch was released today in
the United States.
1956: “The Rack” a film about Korean vets
starring Paul Newman with a script by Stewart Stern was released in the United
States by MGM
1956: U.N. Secretary-General Dag
Hammarskjöld informed Israel that the General Assembly had passed a cease fire
resolution.
1958: In France, “Raymond Assayas, otherwise known as Jacques
Rémy, a screenwriter/writer of Turkish-Jewish origin and Catherine de Karolyi,
a Hungarian fashion designer” gave birth to “French author, music journalist
and radio presenter” Michka Assayas “known for his rock reviews and the
Dictionnaire du rock published in 2000 and his radio show on radio France Inter”
and for his novel Exhibition, who “is the brother of French film director and
screenwriter Olivier Assayas
1959(1st of Cheshvan, 5720): Rosh Chodesh
Cheshvan
1959: “The Dock Brief” and “What Shall We
Tell Caroline?” produced by David Susskind were broadcast on “The Play of the
Week.”
1959: During the Congressional
investigations of the “Quiz Show Scandals,” Charles Van Dorn admits that he had
received answers in advance when he appeared on the hit quiz show,
“Twenty-One.” Van Dorn was part of a famous family of WASP intellectuals. “Twenty-One”
was the creation of two Jews named Jack Berry and Dan
Enright. Herbert Stempl, a Jew from Brooklyn, was the contestant who
“took a dive” so that Van Dorn could win.
1960(12th of Cheshvan,
5721): After a short illness, “Mrs. Blanche Bruner Levy, the widow of Julius H.
Levy, the former executive secretary of the New York Clothing Manufacturers
Exchange” who had performed as “a concert pianist under name” and “gave operalouges
with Mrs. Edwin Franko Goldman” passed away today at Lawrence, L.I.
1960(12th of Cheshvan,
5721): Seventy-four-year-old Boise born and Jefferson Medical College trained
physician, Dr. Ralph Falk, the chairman of the board of Baxter Laboratories and
WW I Army Medical Corps veteran who was the husband of Mrs. Marian Citron Falk
and the father of Carol and Ralph Falk 2nd, passed away today.
1960(12th of Cheshvan,
5721): Seventy-seven-year-old NYU Law School Graduate and “former Domestic
Relations Court Justice” I. Montefiore Levy, the former President of the New
York Guild for the Jewish Blind” and member of the Board Education who led the
effort before WW I “to permit women teachers to continue at work although
married passed away today.
1961: “The fifth Knesset started with
David Ben-Gurion’s Mapai part forming the tenth government” today.
1961: Eliyahu Sasson began serving as the
Minister of Postal Services in Israel.
1961: Eliyahu Sasson began serving as the
Minister of Communications.
1961: Dr Giora Yoseftal began serving as
Israel’s first Minister of Housing and Construction.
1961: Elections confirm the predominance
of the Labor movement. Mapia remained the largest party with forty-two
seats. But this was still 19 short of the sixty-one seats needed for
a majority which meant that Ben Gurion would have to form another coalition
government.
1961(23rd of Cheshvan, 5722):
Sixty-eight-year-old Samuel Alan Massell, the Atlanta born son Clara Mitnick
Massell and Ralph Massell, the husband of Florence Rubin Massell and the father
of Shirley Solomons and Sam Masell the Mayor of Atlanta from 1970 to 1974 passed
away today.
1961: Birthdate of Nancy Morris, the
Montreal native “a Reform rabbi, who was appointed to Glasgow Reform Synagogue,
formerly known as Glasgow New Synagogue, in October 2003, making her the first
female rabbi in Scotland.”
1963: In the UK, June Flewett and Sir
Clement Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud gave birth to Matthew Freud, the
head of Freud Communications.
1964: King Saud of Saudi Arabia is
deposed by a family coup and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal. Saud was
on the throne during the 1956 Suez war and stopped exporting oil to Britain and
France due to the Suez Crisis. At the same time, he was an opponent
of Nasser’s imperial dreams and provided aide to the royalist forces in Yemen.
As king, Faisal continued the close alliance with the United States begun by
his father and relied on the U.S. heavily for arming and training his armed forces.
Faisal was also anti-Communist. He refused any political ties with the Soviet
Union and other Communist bloc countries, professing to see a complete
incompatibility between Communism and Islam, and associating Communism with
Zionism, which he also criticized sharply. He also engaged in a propaganda and
media war with Egypt's pan-Arabist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and engaged
in a proxy war with Egypt in Yemen that lasted until 1967 (see Yemeni Civil
War). Faisal never explicitly repudiated pan-Arabism, however, and continued to
call for inter-Arab solidarity in broad terms. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli
War, launched by Faisal withdrew Saudi oil from world markets, in protest over
Western support for Israel during the conflict. This action quadrupled the
price of oil and was the primary force behind the 1973 energy crisis. It was to
be the defining act of Faisal's career, and gained him lasting prestige among
many Arabs and Muslims worldwide. The new oil revenue allowed Faisal to greatly
increase the aid and subsidies begun following the 1967 Arab-Israeli to Egypt,
Syria, and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
1965: In Israel, elections scheduled to
be held will pit former Premier David Ben-Gurion and his newly formed Israel
Workers Party against Premiere Levi Eshkol whom Ben Gurion had selected as his
predecessors two years ago. (As reported by James Feron)
1966: “The Professionals” an Oscar
nominated western directed, produced and written by Richard Brooks and edited
by Paul Zinner was released today by Columbia Pictures.
1966: In Flushing, Queens, “attorneys Arthur and
Arlene Coleman-Schwimmer” gave birth to David Schwimmer best known for his role
as Ross on the television hit Friends but who demonstrated the
fact that he does have some range as an actor when he played a miss-fit officer
in the World War II series, Band of Brothers.
1969: Birthdate of Tehran native and
George Washington University trained lawyer Makan Delraim, the Republican son
of “Persian Jewish refugees who supported Donald Trump and began serving as
U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Anti-Trust Division in 2017.
1970: Bella Abzug was elected to the
United States House of Representatives on a proudly feminist, anti-war,
environmentalist platform.
1970: Roger Greenspun reviewed “WUSA”
directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with music by Lialo Schifrin and co-starring Paul
Newman and Laurence Harvey.
1973: Birthdate of New York City native
“Amy Nadya Finkelstein” the MIT Professor of Economics and winner of “a
MacArthur Genius fellowship” in 2018.
https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/afink
1973: "Barbra Streisand ...and
Other Musical Instruments" airs on CBS TV.
1975: From 7;30‐8 A.M., WARC‐AM is scheduled to broadcast “Message of Israel. 100 Years of
American Reform,”
1975: The impact of the
publication of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape was
reflected in four different articles published in the Washington Post
1976: Jimmy Carter who
received 71% of the Jewish vote defeated Gerald Ford who received 27% of the
Jewish vote in the U.S presidential election. Carter will be
remembered as the man who brokered the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel as
well as the ex-President who voiced increasingly anti-Israeli opinions as the
20th century gave way to the 21st century.
1976: In Israel, founding of the
Democratic Movement for Change known as DASH.
1977: “Madame Rosa” the cinematic
adaptation of The Life Before Us by Romain Gary which tells the story of “a
frail, aging, retired Jewish prostitute and Auschwitz survivor” directed by
Moshe Miarahi who also wrote the script was released today in France.
1978(2nd of Cheshvan,
5739): Eight-six-year-old producer Max Gordon passed away today.
http://www.playbill.com/person/max-gordon-vault-0000029063
1979: “Amadeus” by Sir Peter Shaffer
premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London.
1979: Los Angeles born U.C. Berkeley
School of Law graduate Harry Pregerson began serving as a Judge of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
1979: H. Lee Sarokin received his
commission as Justice for the United States District Court for the District of
New Jersey today.
1981(5th of Cheshvan, 5742):
Fifty-one-year-old Baltimore born Korean War veteran Ed Libov, the husband of
Rhona Libov with whom he had three children – Gail, Steven and Howard – who was
the founder and President of the advertising
agency Ed Libov Associates and who “was chairman of the board of the American
Friends of Boys Town in Jerusalem, a member of the Metropolitan New York
Coordinating Council for the Jewish Poor and a founder of the Mediterranean
Dead Sea Canal project for generating electric power in Israel” passed away
today.
https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nachmansohn-david.pdf
1984: A Brooklyn synagogue two blocks
from one that was virtually destroyed in an arson fire two days agi was the
target of an arson attempt this evening. The latest fire was set in the doorway
of Congregation and Talmud Torah Tifereth Israel, at 2025 64th Street in the
Bensonhurst section. A passer-by spotted the small fire at 6:35 P.M. and put
out the flames, the police said. The Fire Department said that a flammable
liquid had apparently been splashed on the door. The fire caused little damage.
The earlier fire occurred at the Mapleton Park Hebrew Institute, which houses a
synagogue and a yeshiva, at 2022 66th Street.
1986(30th of Tishrei,
5747): Sixty-six-year-old Paul Frees, the man with a million voices whom we all
heard when we watched Rocky and Bullwinkle passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-06/local/me-16406_1_paul-frees
1988: Yitzchak Shamir led
Likud to victory in the Israeli election.
1988: “Gracie Allen Still Steals the
Show” published today provides a review of Gracie: A Love Story by
George Burns was well as providing a brief summary of how devoted Burns was to
the wife who made his career.”
1988(22nd of Cheshvan, 5749):
Screenwriter Lukas Heller, the native of Kiel whose film credits including
“Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” and who is the father of British writers Bruno and
Zoe Heller, passed away today.
1989(4th of
Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety-six-year-old Polish born Talmudic scholar Rabbi Selig
Starr, the son of David Starobinsky and Gute Tova Feldman and the husband of
Pearl Cohen who in 1921 came to the United States where he settled in Chicago,
married Peal Cohen and “As the instructor of the highest-level shiur at Skokie,
Illinois's Hebrew Theological College, he was responsible for most of Orthodox
rabbinical students in the Chicago area over several decades” passed away
today.
https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Selig_Starr_-_Biography
1990: James Bartleman completed his
service as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.
1991(25th of Cheshvan, 5752): Movie
Producer Irwin Allen, best known for The Poseidon Adventure, passed
away.
http://www.iann.net/irwinallen/
1991(25th of Cheshvan, 5752): Eighty-one-year-old
Yosef Aharon Almogi passed away in Haifa. Born in the Polish part of
the Russian Empire, he made Aliyah in 1930 and served in the British Army
during World War II. During his political career he served in the
Knesset and held various cabinet posts.
1993: Ehud Olmert defeats Teddy Kollek,
ending Kollek’s twenty-eight tenure as Jerusalem’s mayor.
1993(18th of Cheshvan, 5754):
Leo Adler, “an innovative seller of newspapers and magazines, a self-made
millionaire, and a strong advocate first of Baker and then Baker City, Oregon”
and Creator of the Leo Adler Trust who was the son of Carl Adler, the “the
proprietor of the Crystal Palace which sold stationary and books in Astoria”
and the Salem-born Laura Hirsch the
oldest daughter of a prominent German Jewish family” passed away today.
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/adler_leo_1895_1993_/#.ZDSububMJPY
1994(1st of Kislev,
5755): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
1994: The Hobcaw Barony, which consisted
of over 15,000 acres in South Carolina acquired by Bernard Baruch which became
a nature preserve and eventually came to be owned by The Belle W. Baruch
Foundation “was named to the National Register of Historic Places”
http://www.hobcawbarony.org/BellB.htm
1994: Snapple, a maker of bottled and
canned iced tea and fruit drinks, founded by Hyman Golden and Arnold Greenberg
in 1972, “announced today that it had agreed to be acquired by the Quaker Oats
Company for $14 a share, well above the $5 a share that Snapple got when it
went public in December 1992” but well below “the $23 a share other had paid
“when Snapple insiders unloaded 9.2 million shares a year ago.”
1997: The New York Times featured
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest
including The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the
Judicial Process by Richard Polenberg, Paris in the Fifties by
Stanley Karnow, Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her
Mother's History by Helen Epstein, Strangers to the Tribe:
Portraits of Interfaith Marriage by Gabrielle Glaser, Roadkill by
Kinky Freeman, My Vast Fortune by Andrew Tobias, The
Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat by Susan Fromberg
and Memoirs by Sir George Solti.
1997(2nd of Cheshvan,
5758): Eighty-year-old German born Gerhard Heumann who earned his U.S.
citizenship through his service with the “Flying Tigers” and went to become a
leading aviation engineer and General Electric executive passed away.
1999: A recording of “The Famous 1938
Carnegie Jazz Concert” Benny Goodman’s ground-breaking music tour de force
which had been recorded at the time was reissued today.
1999: The Anthology of Contemporary
Hebrew II by Tamir Lahav-Radlmesser was published today.
https://www.eurozine.com/anthology-of-contemporary-hebrew-poetry-ii/
2000(6th of Cheshvan,
5761): Parashat Noach
2000(6th of Cheshvan,
5761): Ayelet Shahar Levy, 28, and Hanan Levy, 33, were killed and ten others
were injured in a car bomb explosion near the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem
for which The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility,
2001(16th of Cheshvan,
5762): Elazar Menachem Man Shach a leading Haredi Rabbi in Bnei
Baraik passed away today at the age of 102.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elazar-shach
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/09/business/elmer-balaban-cinema-magnate-dies-at-92.html
2001(16th of Cheshvan,
5762): Shoshana Ben Ishai, 16, of Betar Illit and Menashe (Meni) Regev, 14, of
Jerusalem were killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire with a
sub-machine gun shortly before 16:00 at a No. 25 Egged bus at the French Hill
junction in northern Jerusalem. 45 people were injured in the attack.
2001(16th of Cheshvan,
5762): Rabbi Morton M. Applebaum who was Rabbi of Temple Israel from
1953 to 1979, and continued as Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Israel until his death
passed away today.
2001: Radio Liberty reported that fifty
gravestones in a Jewish cemetery were desecrated in Baku, Azerbaijan.
2002: Matan Vilnai completed his term
Minister of Culture and Sport.
2002: Binyamin Fuad Ben-Eliezer completed
his term as Minister of Defense.
2003: The New York Times book
section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special
Jewish interest including Family Circle: The Boudins and the
Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy, Autumn of the Moguls:
My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and
Messed Up Big Media by Michael Wolff and George
Gershwin: A New Biography by William G. Hyland
2004: After today’s murder of Theo van
Gogh, Dr. Raphael Evers, the Rabbi of Rotterdam and a recognized leader of the
Dutch Jewish community was among the three clergymen who presented “a
Samenlevingscontract (Cohabitation Agreement) to the President of the Dutch
House of Representatives.
2005: German Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer praised the decision of The United Nations General Assembly to
unanimously approve the proposal to set January 27 as the "International
Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust."
2005: As further evidence of the changing
face of Conservative Judaism in Israel three new female rabbis and
one male who were ordained on at the Masorati/Conservative movement's Schechter
Rabbinical Seminary, with religious backgrounds ranging from Orthodox to
secular and a variety of cultural heritages, including Moroccan and French.
2006: Following a call by Baruch Marzel,
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Hillel Weiss for a “holy war” against the upcoming
Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, “a demonstration” today “in Meah Shearim led to
rioting” with “thousands of protestors blocking roads with burning garbage
cans.”
2006: The Helicon Association's Sha'ar
Poetry Festival opens at the Hebrew-Arabic Theater Complex in Jaffa.
2007: Richard Pratt, the Polish
born Jewish Australian businessman and the Visy group
received a A$36 million fine, representing both the largest fine in Australian
history and an estimated 0.75% of the Pratt fortune] Federal Court judge
Justice Heerey said Mr. Pratt and his senior executives were knowingly
concerned in the cartel, which involved price fixing and market sharing
2007: Physician Oliver Sacks discusses
and signs Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain at
Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
2007: This evening, four mortar shells
were fired at an Israeli community north of Gaza.
2008: Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, a
travelling exhibition, which displays original Steinberg works came to a close
at Kunsthaus Zürich
2008: James Galway, “the man with
the golden flute," gave a concert at Tel Aviv's Performing Arts Center.
2008: The New York Times featured
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest
including The Road To Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler’s List by
Mietek Pemper with Viktoria Hertling, assisted by Marie Elisabeth Müller;
translated by David Dollenmayer and Searching for Schindler: A Memoir by
Thomas Keneally
2008: The Washington Post book
section reviewed Chagall: A Biography by Jackie
Wullschlager and featured the work of Jewish poet Brenda Hillman including a
poem entitled “Partita for Sparrows,"
2009: Mitch Albom, author of the
bestselling Tuesdays with Morrie, read from and signed his new inspirational
book, Have a Little Faith: A True Story, at the Sixth & I
Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
2009: At the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, Thomas M. Bloch
leads a presentation entitled: “Stand for the Best” during which he discusses
“What I Learned After Leaving My Job as CEO of H&R Block to Become a
Teacher and Founder of an Inner-City Charter School
2009(15th of Cheshvan, 5770): Sixty-one-year-old
Shabati Kalmanovich “a KGB spy, who later became known in Russia as a
successful businessman, concert promoter and basketball sponsor” was killed
today.
2009 (15 Cheshvan, 5770): Seventy-three-year-old Lord
Leonard Steinberg, a much loved leader and philanthropist who passed away
today.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/21548/lord-steinberg-dies-ritz-hotel-london
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituaries/6526477/Lord-Steinberg-of-Belfast.html
2009 (15 Cheshvan, 5770): Sixty-eight-year-old Amir Pnueli,
“who turned a philosopher’s explorations of time, logic and free will into a
critical technique for verifying the reliability of computers, passed away
today.” (As reported by Kenneth Change)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/15pnueli.html
2010(25th of Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty-eight-year-old
Sarah Doron passed away. A native of Lithuania she made Aliyah in
1933 and pursued a political career that led to her being elected to the
Knesset as a member of Likud.
2010: “Political newcomer Steve Katz, was elected assemblyman
for the 99th Assembly District as a candidate of the Republican
and Independence Parties.”
2010: Proposition 19 which would have legalized marijuana in the
State of California, a cause to which George Soros had contributed a million
dollars, failed to pass in today’s election.
2010: The New York Times reviewed two books by
Jewish authors: Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff and Frank: The
Voice by James Kaplan
2010: Cedar Lake is scheduled to present the New York
Premier of Israeli born Hofesh Shecter’s “The Fools” at the Joyce.
2010: Eric Cantor, the only Republican Jewish member of the
House of Representatives, is among those standing for office in the U.S.
elections which are scheduled to be held today.
2010: Today's US midterm elections propose to present a
disproportionately large number of Jewish candidates for high office, some of
them in quite unexpected places. Several already well-known political names in
important races are California Senator Barbara Boxer (D), running for
re-election in a close race with former Hewlett Packard executive Carly
Fiorina, and former Connecticut state attorney-general Richard Blumenthal who
has maintained a slight lead against Linda McMahon of WWE wrestling fame for the
state's open Senate seat. Blumenthal has managed to maintain a single-digit
lead, despite a minor scandal over exaggerated claims of Vietnam War service,
in no small part due to Connecticut women's discomfort with McMahon's close
ties with a sport known for violence and a significant element of misogyny
2011: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to a present a
lecture entitled “Glikl’s Legacy: Jewish Women in France before the Revolution”
by Professor Jay Berkowitz, the Center’s inaugural National Endowment for
the Humanities Senior Scholar Fellowship,
2011: File photo taken today of the South Gate of the Inner town
of Karkemish taken by the Joint Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition at the
site of the Biblical Battle of Carchemish mentioned in Jeremiah 46:2.(As
reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)
2011: Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is
scheduled to come to a close tonight in Washington, D.C.
2011: Six months after premiering at Cannes, “La Source Des
Femmes,” featuring Hiam Abbass was released today in France.
2011: Israel test-fired a ballistic missile today, at the
Palmahim Israel Defense Forces base in central Israel.
2012: After premiering at the Toronto International Film
Festival, “A Late Quartet,” a simply marvelous must see movie directed and
co-produced by Yaron Zilberman, with a script by Seth Grossman and Yaron
Zilberman was released today in the United States.
2012: U.S. premiere of “A Late Quartet” a must see “little
cinematic gem” produced and directed by Yaron Zilberman who co-authored the
script along with Seth Grossman.
2012: As part of the Turkish-Jewish Festival, Tikvat Israel in
Rockville, MD is scheduled to follow Kabbalat Shabbat with “an authentic
vegetarian Turkish dinner prepared by Beyhan Cagri Trock author of The
Ottoman Turk and the Pretty Jewish Girl – Real Turkish Cooking.
2012: Beth El, Shir Tikvah, Temple Israel, Kol Ami, &
Emanu-El are scheduled to host the WRJ Central District Convention.
2012: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced
the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel in an interview with Channel 2 that
aired in its entirety tonight.
2012: The comments by Defense Ministry security and
diplomacy chief Amos Gilad do not reflect the positions of the security
establishment nor do they reflect the positions of Gilad, the Defense Ministry
said in a statement today.
2012: The Ritual Committee of Temple Judah is scheduled to host
a Spaghetti Dinner as part of the Friday night Shabbat celebration.
2012: In “The Lox Sherpa of Russ & Daughters” Corey
Klignannon described the role of Chappte Sherpa “saving the salmon” at the
“popular lox purveyor” as Hurricane Sandy struck New York.
2012: “Orchestra of Exiles” is scheduled to open in Los Angeles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX5_2NERXVw
2012: Ninety-fifth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
2013: In Jerusalem, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to
host a chamber music concert, “From Mozart to Kleizmer.”
2013: The 19th annual San Diego Jewish Book
Store is scheduled to begin this evening
2013: The Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, California, is
scheduled to host a screening of “Orchestra of Exiles” and a performance of by the
string quartet from the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
2013: IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported that IDF fired at two
Syrians who approached the border fence from the Syrian side in the southern
Golan Heights while trying to steal mines. (As reported by Maor Buchnik, Yoav
Zitun)
2013: German Chancellor Angela Merkel today cautioned
her countrymen against the dangers of anti-Semitism, a week ahead of the 75th
anniversary of Kristallnacht, a series of pogroms carried out against German
Jews in 1938.
2013: In a review published today “of an American
production of the play, Bad Jews, Times of Israel critic Jordan Hoffman
said, “Bad Jews” was the “finest work about Jewish assimilation [he had] come
across since Philip Roth’s 2004 novel ‘The Plot Against America.’”
2013: Tom Maayan “started at point guard in Seton Hall’s first
of the season” today.
2013: “Oregon or Bust” is scheduled to come to an end at the
Oregon Jewish Museum.
http://www.ojm.org/experience/exhibit-oregon-or-bust
2014: The New York Times features reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for
Hitler’s Men by Eric Lichtblau, Villiage of Secrets: Defying
the Nazis in Vichy, France by Caroline Moorehead and Lincoln
and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold
Holzer
2014: Under the leadership of Amy Barnum, Hadassah is scheduled
to hold its annual Donor Dinner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2014: Artist Shirley Gittlesohn is scheduled to host “an
informal tour of her exhibit ‘L’Chaim—To Life! At the Oregon Jewish Museum and
Center for Holocuast Education
2014: A Day of Jewish Learning, an “annual adult education
conference featuring seventy sessions” is scheduled to take place at American
University in Washington, DC.
2014: The Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come
to an end today.
2014: “A senior Hamas official rapped Israel for closing the
crossings into the Gaza Strip on today, two days after a rocket was fired from
the coastal enclave at southern Israel.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)
2014: “Police Chief Yohanan Danino told an emergency meeting of
the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee that he is determined to maintain the
right of Jews to access the Temple Mount compound, including by deploying as
many officers as it takes to enable visits.” (As reported by Stanley Winer)
2014: “Part of a wrought-iron gate, bearing the Nazis’ cynical
slogan “Arbeit macht frei” or “Work sets you free,” was stolen from the former
Dachau concentration camp, police said today
2014: “Holocaust Education Week” is scheduled to begin today.
http://holocaustcentre.com/HEW
2015(20th of Cheshvan, 5776): Ninety-one-year-old
timpanist Richard Horowitz passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2015: The Aleph Society is scheduled to host its annual dinner
with Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz.
2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Peretz
Markish and the Destruction of Soviet Jewish Culture” which include a screening
of a documentary on the poet and playwright and readings from his works by
Yiddish actor Shane Baker.
2015: “Marrying An Ice Cream Factory” is scheduled to be shown
at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles.
2015: Three people including an 80-year-old woman were wounded
this afternoon in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in the central city of
Rishon Lezion, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv
2015: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is
scheduled to host a screening of Boris Maftisr’s “Guardians of Remembrance.”
2015: “Holocaust Education Week” is scheduled to begin today.
http://holocaustcentre.com/HEW
2016(1st of Cheshvan,
5777): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
2016: “In a sign of a growing rift, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized American Jewish leaders today as a
struggle over a stalled plan for equal prayer rights for both sexes at a
Jerusalem holy site erupted with mutual recriminations and a tumultuous protest
led by liberal rabbis carrying Torah scrolls”
2016: Holocaust Education Week’s
“scholar-in-residence Ron Levi, who holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace
and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, is scheduled to speak
tonight at Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue with HEW’s opening night speaker
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, professor of history at Fairfield University in
Connecticut, about how the Holocaust fits into the current political climate.”
2016: The Center for Jewish History is
scheduled to host its “Young Jewish American Composers Concert.”
2016: Ninety-year-old Miriam Weinstein”
the mother of movie moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein passed away today. (As
reported Anita Gates)
2016: Today, “A group of Conservative and
Reform rabbis and Women of the Wall members’ tried to bring Torah scrolls into
the Western Wall compound in Jerusalem.”
2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and
Educational Center is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Rachel G. Saidel on
“Women in the Holocaust.
2017(13th of Cheshvan,
5778): Ninety-six-year-old Irv Refkin, whose work for the OSS during WW II
included acts of sabotage and risky spying earned him the Bronze Star, the
Distinguished Service Award from OSS Society and the newly created
“Congressional Medal to World War II Spies” passed away today. (As reported by
Sam Roberts) Yes, there was a real “James Bond and he was a 5’6” Jew from
Wisconsin
2017: In Toronto, start of the 37th Annual
Neuberger Holocaust Education Week.
2017: “Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz the author
of Does the Soul Survive: A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives
& Living with Purpose is scheduled to lecture on “Past-life regression.
Reincarnation. Near-death experiences” at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center
2017: The JNF community breakfast,
“Northern Ohio Breakfast for Israel” with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is scheduled
to begin at 7:30 this morning.
2017: The American Jewish Historical
Society is scheduled to host a “book talk launching and celebrating Najat
Abdulhuq’s Jewish and Greek Communities in Egypt: Entrepreneurship and Business
before Nasser, followed by a response from Joyce Zonana (CUNY BMCC), author of
Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile's Journey.
2017: The United States Senate adopted
the “Concurrent Resolution “Recognizing the 100th anniversary
of the Balfour Declaration.”
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-115sconres29is/xml/BILLS-115sconres29is.xml
2017: 100th anniversary of the
Balfour Declaration.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/balfour.html
2018: “Enduring Tension: (En)countering
Antisemitism in Every Age,” an exhibition that explores the long history of
anti-Jewish bias in the United States within an international context”
co-sponsored the Kennesaw State University Museum of History and Holocaust
Education is scheduled to open today at the Breman Museum in Atlanta.
2018: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah,
which under the leadership of Jill Diner has honored those murdered in
Pittsburgh by making donations to the Tree of Life Congregation, the ADL and
HIAS, is scheduled to include special memorial observances in tonight’s
services.
2018: National Jewish Book Month is
scheduled to begin today.
2018: The 15th Annual
Holocaust Education Week is scheduled to come to an end today.
https://theajc.ns.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/038-HEW-BROCHURE-2018_3-page-001.jpg
2018: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is
scheduled to host a piano recital featuring Tatyana Rubina.
2018: Funeral services are scheduled to
be held for ninety-seven year Pittsburgh massacre victim Rose Mallinger “at
Congregation Rodef Shalom.”
2019(4th of Cheshvan,
5780): Parashat Noach;
2019(4th of Cheshvan)
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
https://mailchi.mp/jewishreviewofbooks/mayse-zeitlin?e=b40a1dec43
2019: 102nd anniversary
of the Balfour Declaration
2019: In San Francisco, Congregation
Emanu-El is scheduled to host “Rabbi Sydney Mintz and author Dr. Richard Miller
(“Psychedelic Medicine”) as they talk about healing medicines, followed by a
multi-dimensional sound bath experience.”
2019: In San Francisco, the “Regional
chapter of Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces is scheduled to hold two “A
Night of Heroes” events.”
2020: One hundred third anniversary of
the Balfour Declaration
2020: Jewish Gateways is scheduled to
present Buddhism teacher Lyn Fine leading a workshop based on Isabel
Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” about racial
inequality in society.
2020: The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival
is scheduled to begin today.
2020: Live on Zoom, the American Jewish
Historical Society is scheduled to present “Live from the Archives: Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Her Role Models and the Hadassah Archive”
2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled
to present Michael Kaufman’s second lecture “The Banality of Evil: Hannah
Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.”
2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Isabel
Berg is scheduled to lead the Temple Judea Book Club in a discussion
of The Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin.
2020: Holocaust Education Week is
scheduled to begin.
https://www.holocaustcentre.com/HEW
2021: David E. Kaufman is scheduled to
lecture in-person on “History and Memory: Key Themes in the Jewish Experience:
Part One” at the Streicker Center.
2021: George Will is scheduled to discuss
his new book American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent,
2008–2020, at the Streicker Center.
2021: British officials, including Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, and COP26 organizers have apologized to Israel’s energy
minister Karine Elharrar who has muscular dystrophy, after she was
unable to attend yesterday’s events because she could not access the venue in
her wheelchair.
2022: Oshman Family JCC president-CEO and
author of “Why Do Jewish?” Zack Bodner is scheduled to give a talk
titled “Jewish Leadership in the 21st Century” presented by JLeaders, Hillel of
Silicon Valley, Jewish Silicon Valley, Jewish High Tech Community, Jewish
Community Federation and Oshman Family JCC.
2022: The Boston Jewish Film Festival is
scheduled to open with a screening of “Karaoke.”
2022: Painter Siona Benjamin is scheduled
to discuss her book, Growing Up Jewish in India, which
recounts the Jewish communities of India and their unique customs, her own
story, and how her art is a portrait of Indian and Jewish cultures/traditions.
Presented by Jewish Community Library and SACHI: Society for Art & Cultural
Heritage of India.
2022(8th of Cheshvan): Yahrzeit of Avraham Elimelch ben
Yosef Dov, whose nickname was Melech and whose English name was Abraham Levin
and the Hebrew namesake of Mitchell A. Levin and the father of Joseph B. Levin.
2022: Today, Maccabi is scheduled to return to Sammy Ofer “for the
group’s closing match against Benfica.”
2022: Reimagine is scheduled to present its latest virtual
pandemic vigil, this one a conversation with Amy Bloom, author of the recently
published “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” which is co-presented by JCCSF.
2023: As part of JWA’s “Jewish Women in the Medieval World
Series,” Sarah Ifft Decker an assistant
professor of history at Rhodes College and the author of Jewish Women in the
Medieval World, 500-1500 CE (2022) and The Fruit of Her Hands: Jewish and
Christian Women’s Work in Medieval Catalan Cities (2022) is scheduled to
deliver a lecture on “Capable Wives and Working Widows: Jewish Women’s Lives in
the Medieval World.”
2023: As part of the Jewish Values and Strategy in Wartime series,
Tikvah online Academy is scheduled to host a lecture by Hussein Aboubakr
Mansour on “The Arab-Israeli
Relationship: Past, Present and Future.”
2023: The Nashville Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to
an end today.
2023: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a live
performance of “Vilna: A Resistance Story” which portrays the previously
“untold story” that “follows heroes from the Vilna Ghetto who rose up, fought
back against Nazism, and did all they could to preserve Jewish culture for
future generations,”
2023: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Jewish
Challenges, Jewish Solutions In the Wake of the Unthinkable” during which Rabbi
David Wolpe will engage in a conversation with nine “leading writers, thinkers
and activists “about what they believe our community needs most at this
critical moment, from the sharpening of our focus on Israel to new ways to
tackle antisemitism from all sides, the promotion of Jewish pride,
consensus-building and ancient wisdom – and how their views have and have no
shifted since the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas.”
2023: The Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum is
scheduled to present “Conversations
about Reproductive Rights” as part of its Nights at the Round Table series.
2023: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to Ben Nadaff-Hafrey
(The Last Archive, Revisionist History) as he “moderates a panel including Bill
Healy (Somebody, You Didn’t See Nothin), Mary Kidd (NYPL and Preserve This
Podcast), Natalia Petrzela (Welcome To Your Fantasy, Past Present) and Renate
Evers (LBI, Exile), who will discuss how collecting organizations and scholars
and podcast creators can utilize and make sense of the proliferation of-digital
media and safeguard podcasts against digital obsolescence.”
2023:
As November 2 begins in Israel, the Raffa border crossing has been opened, over
200 hostages begin their 27th day in captivity and “a Cornell
University student is in custody facing
federal charges after he was arrested yesterday for allegedly threatening to
kill Jewish students at the school in posts online...”
(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)
2024:
Balfour Declaration Shabbat – 107th anniversary of the Balfour
Declaration
Balfour Declaration |
Palestine, Rothschild, History, Significance, & Impact | Britannica
2024:
In Jerusalem, the Eden Tamir Center is scheduled to host a “Russian Winter”
concert with Janna Gandelman, violin Hillel Zori, cello and
Arnon
Erez piano.
2024(1st
of Cheshvan, 5758): Parashat Noach and Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2024:
The JCC Fundraiser is scheduled to take place in New Orleans
2024:
As November 2nd begins in Israel, an
unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that has included Hamas supporters
calling for Zionist passengers on a New York subway to raise their hands,
sweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day 392 in captivity
while Israelis brace for more rocket attacks by Hezbollah, Iran and terrorists
based in Iraq (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)
