This Day, September 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"l
September 26
1087: Coronation of King William Rufus, the second son of William the Conqueror who “managed to prevent in England the massacres of Jews that occurred in Rouen, and across France and the Rhineland, in the bloody frenzy the preceded the departure of the First Crusade in 1096” was fatally struck by an arrow which may have been a hunting accident or part of calculated plot to remove him from the throne.
1187: Saladin launches his attack on Jerusalem
1280: “Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, a kabbalist and mystic who proclaimed himself Messiah in 1284 was released from imprisonment in Rome where he had been jailed for twenty-eight days for his attempt to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism. (pg 271 Green
1348: Pope Clement VI issued a Bull contradicting the libel against the Jews stating that they were suffering just like the rest of Europe. Other rulers issued similar denunciations but with little effect or no effect.
1350: Coronation of King John II of France, The Jews had been banished from France so there were no Jews living in his kingdom when he took the throne. Thanks to the King’s folly, the Jews would return during his reign. During the Hundred Years War, King John II was captured the English after the defeat at Battle of Poitiers. The English demanded a substantial ransom from the impoverished and impotent French Dauphin, the future Charles V. To raise funds, Charles enticed the Jews to return to France with a liberal charter of rights. He then levied heavy taxes on them which helped to free the king. A wiser monarch than King John might have avoided the crushing defeat at Poitiers which meant that the Jews would have continued to be exiled from a large portion of Western Europe.
1587: Birthdate of Lisbon native Dom Jacob Curiel, known by his alias Dom Duarte Nunes da Costa, a Sephardi Jewish merchant, diplomat, and nobleman who “was ennobled by John IV of Portugal” and who was the father of Moses Curiel who was an “agent of the Portuguese Crown in Amsterdam.”
1629: Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller returned to Prague after having finally been released from prison. The terms of his release included payment of large fine and being deprived of the right to serve as a Rabbi any place in the Holy Roman Empire. He took to his bed, a broken man, for three months. Friends succeeded in having the sentence reduced and helped him obtain a position in Russia. The tragedies that befell this sage were not brought on by the gentiles. Rather, it was his fellow Jews in Bohemia, who felt that they had been, taxed unfairly who went to the civil authorities and lodged charges against him. Then, and only then, did the Emperor become involved.
1669: Today marked a continuation of events that had begun on September 25, 1669, in what can only be described as another blood libel. After a warrant had been sworn out for the arrest of Raphael Levi in the matter of the disappearance of 3-year-old Christian child, the Jews of Metz (Germany) convinced him to surrender to authorities. The Jews were animated by what they sensed was a growing threat to their safety. Levi was a fifty-six-year-old merchant of medium height with a long, black beard who had traveled to the Levant, Italy, Germany and Holland on personal and Jewish communal business. Currently, he lived at Boulai, a village near Metz, where he was the leader of the synagogue. Levi told authorities that he come to Metz to buy a shofar for the upcoming holiday, oil, wine and fish. He arrived in Metz at 10 in the morning, left the city about one in the afternoon and arrived at Boulai by four in the afternoon. The prosecution decided that he must have seen the child around 1 p.m., grabbed him and taken him home. Of the eighteen witnesses called, five claimed to have seen a Hebrew enter the city but only one of them identified Levi as being the person they had seen. One witness “declared that he did not think” Levi “was the man he had met. Regardless, the court found Levi guilty and sentenced him to death. Levi appealed to a higher court which granted him the right to call his own witnesses. In the meantime, Levi was held in jail awaiting the determination of his final fate. [More will follow on this sad, but all too typical tale of European anti-Semitism]
1673: At a conference held in Wischaw, Moravia, today, between representatives of the government and of the Jews it was agreed that 250 Jewish families might return to Vienna and occupy fifty business places in the inner city on payment of 300,000 florins and the former yearly tax of 10,000 florins. In view of the hopelessly depleted treasury, the royal exchequer considered this offer a “remarkable piece of good fortune.”
Read more: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=76&letter=V&search=Albert#ixzz1YvBPfL2D
1679: In Dresden Samuel Benedict Carpzov and his wife gave birth German Old Testament Scholar whom the Jewish Encyclopedia says “represents both an advance and a retrogression in Biblical science — an advance in fullness of material and clearness of arrangement (his Introduction is the first work that deserves the name), and a retrogression in critical analysis, for he held fast to the literal inspiration of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and bitterly opposed the freer positions of Simon, Spinoza, and Clericus. His antiquarian writings are still interesting and useful.
1699: Birthdate of Anglo-Irish actor Charles Macklin who revolutionized the portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Macklin
1755(21st of Tishrei, 5516): Hoshana Raba
1762(9th of Tishrei, 5523): Kol Nidre
1762: Birthdate of Moses Schreiber, known to his own community and Jewish posterity as Moshe Sofer, also known by his main work Chasam Sofer, (trans. Seal of the Scribe and acronym for Chidushei Toras Moshe Sofer), (1762 – 1839), was one of the leading Orthodox rabbis of European Jewry in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was a teacher to thousands and a powerful opponent to the Reform movement, which was then making inroads into many Jewish communities in Austria-Hungary and beyond. As Rav of the city of Bratislava, he maintained a strong Orthodox Jewish perspective through communal life, first-class education, and uncompromising opposition to Reform and radical change.
1764(29th of Elul, 5524) Erev Rosh Hashana
1767(3rd of Tishrei, 5528): Shabbat Shuva observed on the birthdate of “Austrian composer and conductor Wenzl Muller.”
1768(15th of Tishrei, 5529): Sukkoth
1773(9th of Tishrei, 5534): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre
1774(21st of Tishrei, 5535): Hoshana Raba observed for the last time before the start of the American Revolution.
1775(2nd of Tishrei, 5536): Second Day of Rosh Hashana
1778(5th of Tishrei, 5539): Parashat Vayeilech; Shabbat Shuva observed as in the area around New York, George Washington is facing a British Army stronger than that which Burgoyne had led at Saratoga in 1777.
1783(29th of Elul, 5543): Erev Rosh Hashana observed on the same day of a partial solar eclipse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1768
1787(14th of Tishrei, 5548): Erev Sukkoth
1789(6th of Tishrei, 5550): Parashat Vayeilich; Sabbat Shuva observed for the first time during the Presidency of George Washington.
1792(10th of Tishrei, 5553): Yom Kippur
1794(2nd of Tishrei, 5555): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
1794: Mungo Park, the Scottish explorer who “noted the presence of Jews in the region of Timbuktu” “offered his services to the African Association” to lead an expedition to “discover the course of the Niger River.”
1798(16th of Tishrei, 5559); Second Day of Sukkoth
1801(19th of Tishrei, 5562): Shabbat shel Sukkoth observed for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson
1802(29th of Elul, 5562): Erev Rosh Hashana
1803(10th of Tishrei, 5564): Just two and a half months after the announcement of the Louisiana Purchas, Jews observe Yom Kippur in a much larger United States.
1803: Isaac Nunez Cardozo, the London born son Sarah and Aaron Nunez Cardozo and his wife Judith Cardozo gave birth to Rebecca Roxas, the wife of Jacob Roxas.
1804(21st of Tishrei, 5565): Hoshana Raba
1805(3rd of Tishrei, 5566): Tzom Gedaliah
1806(14th of Tishrei, 5567): Erev Sukkoth and Erev Shabbat
1809(16th of Tishrei, 5570): Second Day of Sukkoth
1810: Birthdate of Eleazer Levy Hyams, the native of Charleston, SC who passed away in Natchitoches, LA in the summer before the start of the Civil War.
1813(2nd of Tishrei, 5574): Second Day of Rosh Hashana observed during the War of 1812.
1815: In the Hague, Mozes Abraham Verveer, the “son of Abraham Salomon / Shabtay Cohen Kloot and Marretje / Mata Mozes Tokie” and his wife Saartje Isaac van der Velden gave birth to Salomon Moses Abraham VerVeer, the husband of Rosette Barend van Weerden.
1817(16th of Tishrei, 5578): Second Day of Sukkoth
1817: Birthdate of Jacob Israel who is among the Jews buried in Natchitoches, LA.
1818(25th of Elul, 5578): Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech; Leil Selichot
1821(29th of Elul, 5581): Erev Rosh Hashana
1822: In the UK, Myer Collins, the son of Hyman Collins and Mary Davis was circumcised today.
1823(21st of Tishrei, 5584): Hoshana Raba
1825(14th of Tishrei, 5586): Erev Sukkoth observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.
1825(14th of Tishrei, 5586): Fifty-five-year-old Sarah de Lyon, the Savanah born “daughter of Levi Sheftall and Sarah Sheftall, the ife of Abraham I. de Lyon and mother of Isaac de Lyon; Sarah Russell; Rina de Lyon; Judge Levi S. de Lyon; Abraham I. de Lyon; Jacob de Lyon; Benjamin de Lyon; Hannah (Anna) de Lyon; Joseph de Lyon; Rebecca Fulton and Mordecai S. de Lyon” passed away in her hometown today.
1829(28th of Elul, 5589): Parashat Nitzavim; final Shabbat of 5589
1832(2nd of Tishrei, 5593): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
1832: In London Michael (Meyer) Solomon, “a successful Bishopsgate manufacturer, and one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the City of London” and his wife Catherine “Kate” Levy gave birth to painter Rebecca Solomon, the sister to two other painters – Simeon Solomon and Abraham Solomon.
1832: In “The New Year’s Eve and Day of the Sons of Abraham,” published today the Sydney (Australia) Monitor reported that “the Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews’ Synagogue held over Mr. Rowell’s shop in George Street which is elegantly fitted out as such on Monday evening, being the last night of the year, according to the ancient chronology of the tribe of Judah, when prayers were said. On Tuesday morning and again in the evening, other meetings took place and worship was again performed.
The congregation formulated detailed rules of conduct. A committee member not attired in decent and respectable manner was to be fined a guinea for each such offence. No person could officiate at a service without permission from the president. No conversation must take place during services; and “those Gentlemen being the junior branches of their families will take special care they behave themselves in a manner becoming a place of Divine Worship”. The order of service and religious principles of the congregation were to be those laid down by the Chief Rabbi of London.
1834: In Dover, UK, Betsy Isaacs and Solomon Nathan gave birth to Nathan Nathan.
1835(3rd of Tishrei, 5596): Parashat Ha’Azinu; Shabbat Shuva
1836(15th of Tishrei, 5597): Sukkoth observed for the last time during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, also known as “Old Hickory.”
1837: Joseph Wolff, the son of a rabbi who converted to Christianity was ordained as a deacon today in Newark, NJ.
1838: In Germany, Elias and Babette Mandelbaum Sanger gave birth to Waco, TX businessman Lehman Sanger, the founder of Sanger Brothers, husband of Isabella Sanger and the father of Estella, William, Isaac, Philip, Eli, Joseph and Bertram Sanger.
1838(7th of Tishrei, 5599): Seventy-four-year-old Samuel Hays, the New York born son of Isaac Hays and merchants who had worked with Chaim Salomon and who had been married to Richea Gratz since 1794 passed away today in Philadelphia, PA.
1841: In New Yor, Hetty Maria Gomez married twenty-five-year-old Charleston, SC native Hyman Hart two years before the birth of Eudora Hart, the wife of Gratz Nathan and mother of Constance and Frank Henry Nathan.
1843(2nd of Tishrei, 5604): Rosh Hashanah
1844: In Prague, Daniel and Lizzie Sicher gave birth to Missouri resident Lizzie Sicher Fishell, the husband of Ferdinand Fishell and the mother of Regina, Samuel, Henry, Daneil, Mamie and Arthur Fishell.
1845:In Brussels, Karl Marz and Jenny von Westphalen gave birth to their second daughter Jenny Laura Marx, the wife of “revolutionary writer Paul Lafargue” and the sister of Eleanor Marx.
1846(6th of Tishrei, 5607): Shabbat Shuva
1846: Birthdate of William Daub, the native of Nidda, Germany and husband of Miriam Lederer who in 1866 came to the United States where he worked for V.H. Rothschild and Company, organized and served as president of “Temple Hand-in-Hand, (Yad b’Yad) the first synagogue in the Bronx and, starting in 1901, servings Superintendent of the Lebanon Hospital in New York City.
1855(14th of Tishrei, 5616) Erev Sukkot
1866 came to America where he became a factor superintendent for V.H. Rothschild and Company and organized and served as President of “Temple Hand-in-Hand, the first synagogue in the Bronx.
1849(10th of Tishrei, 5610): Yom Kippur
1849: Fifty Jews gathered in San Francisco for the first observance of Yom Kippur in that city.
1851(29th of Elul, 5611): Erev Rosh Hashana
1851: In Vincennes, Indiana, “prosperous merchant Adam Gimbel” and his wife Fridoline Kahnweiler Gimbel gave birth to Jacob Gimbel, one of the brothers who founded Gimbels in Philadelphia.
1854: “Jamaica” published today reported that sermons are still being preached on the island in an attempt to get additional funds to support the destitute Jews in Jerusalem and its environs. Despite the depressed economic conditions on the island, almost four thousand dollars has been collected which will be forwarded to Sir Moses Montefiore.
1855(14th of Tishrei, 5616): Erev Sukkoth
1855: One day after he had passed away at the age of “8 years and 4 months,” Leon Rosenthal the sone of “Lewis Rosenthal and the former Charlotte Bamberger” was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”
1860(10th of Tishrei, 5621): Yom Kippur
1860: The Cattle Markets column published this evening attributes some of the sluggishness in sales at the cattle yards on 44th street to the fact that the Jewish buyers were not there to make purchases because they were observing the Fast of Yom Kippur.
1860: Today’s General News column included an item styled, “Yom Kippur – Day of Atonement’ that reported, “From sunset last evening until sunset to-day is observed by the Jews as the most solemn fast in their calendar. It is the “Day of Atonement,” and during the time specified they abstain entirely from food and drink. According to Hebrew tradition, the Yom Kippur, even before the giving of the law, was a Day of Atonement and pardon. It is customary in the evening for parents to bestow their benediction on their children. If any quarrel or dispute exists between the Jews, it is obligatory on them to become reconciled. The moral influence of such a day, when all Jews, rich or poor, meet together in the synagogues and unite in the prayers, must necessarily be great… The origin of the fast is found in Leviticus, chapter xxiv., verse 26, which is as follows: “And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, and say, also on the tenth day in the seventh month is the day of atonement: it shall be a holy convocation unto you. And ye shall afflict your souls, and offer a burn offering unto the Lord. And ye shall do no work in that same day, for it is a day of atonement to atone for you before the Lord your God. And every soul that shall not be afflicted on the same day, He will cut off from among His people. And every soul that does work on that same day, that soul will I destroy from among His people. Ye shall do no manner of work; this is a statute for ever unto all your generations, and throughout all your dwellings. It shall be unto you, the first among your Sabbaths, and ye shall afflict your souls, on the ninth day of the month at even; from even to even shall you celebrate your Sabbath.”
1861(22nd of Tishrei, 5622): Shemini Atzeret
1861: “Benefit to the Jewish Hospital” published today reported that the will of Henry Hendricks has been admitted to probate and leaves $1,000 to the Jew’s Hospital and “$500 to Rev. J.J. Lyon, the Minister of the Congregation of the Shearith Israel.” Hendricks was the member of a prominent Sephardic family. Hendricks is an anglicized form the Spanish name Henriques.
1861: Jews and Christians alike took part in a national day of “fasting, humiliation and prayer.” Jews filled their synagogues as the people of New York ceased from commercial activity in a manner not even seen on the Sabbath.
1861: Francis Reinhard completed his service with Company B of the 27th Regiment.
1862(2nd of Tishrei, 5623): On the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah, Union Forces under the Command of Don Carlos Buell solidify their position in Louisville, KY, thwarting the Rebel efforts to take the border state into the Confederacy.
1863: Alfred Cromelien, a first lieutenant Company C of the Fifth Cavalry resigned his commission today after being twice captured by the Confederates.
1863: In Minsk, Israel Freedman and his wife gave birth to Samuel Aaron Freedman a graduate of the Warsaw Conservatory of Music who served congregations in Russia and Cleveland, Ohio as a cantor before accepting a similar position at Congregation B’Nai Amoona in St. Louis, MO.
1863: Leopold and Sofie Sara Peck gave birth to Samuel Sema Peck
1864: Adolph Marix, who was aboard the U.S.S. Maine when it blew up in Cuba, entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy today and when he graduated four years later, he was the first Jew to do so.
1864: Founding of the Harmony Circle of Baltimore whose members would include Jacob Preiss, Sylvan Hayes Lauchheier, Jesse Rosenfield, Isaac A. Oppenheim, L.B. Bernei, H.I. Hambruger, Leon C. Coblens and Louis N. Gutman.
1865(6th of Tishrei, 5626): Twenty-two-year-old Cornelius Levy, the Richmond, VA born son of Hannah and Isaac Abraham Levy passed away today in Philadelphia.
1867(16th of Elul, 5627): Fifty-five-year-old English born boxer Israel “Izzy” Lazarus who retired from the ring in 1837 and then moved to New York with his wife where they “joined their two boxer sons Harry and Johnny” and he became a boxing promoter.
1868(10th of Tishrei, 5629): Yom Kippur observed on the same day that General Phillip Sheridan wrote to the Governor of Kansas describing his plans for an unusual winter campaign against the Cheyenne and the National Labor Congress whose platform called for “a reform of the monetary system” and attacked the banking system” continued its meetings in New York City.
1870(1st of Tishrei, 5631): Rosh Hashanah
1870: All of the 27 synagogues in New York City were filled with Jews celebrating their New Year.
1870: Chatham Street, the Bowery “and the various other streets” where the Jews conduct their business were as devoid as empty as they would be on the weekly day of rest.
1871 Four days after he had passed away, “58-year-old Maurice Benesh” was buried in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1871: In Lithuania, “Aba Ascher Levin and Golda Reizel Margolis gave birth to Baltimore clothing manufacturer Isaac Aaron Levin, an organizer of the Hebrew Charities and husband of Rachel Levin.
1870: “At Charlottenlund Palace in Gentofte Municipality north of Copenhagen,” Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and his wife Louise of Sweden gave birth to Christian X of Denmark who in 1933 attended the ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Grand Synagogue and who according to a popular myth donned the Yellow Star of David during the Nazi occupation (something he wrote about in his diaries”
1873: In Brooklyn, Elizabeth Wolf and Henry Cohen gave birth to NYU trained attorney Julius Henry Cohen, the husband of Ida Strasburger who while serving as “counsel for the manufacturers in the cloak strike of 1910” helped to create the “Protocols of Peace” in the women’s wear industry.
1874(15th of Tishrei, 5635): Sukkoth
1874: “Chag Hassakoth” published today described the observance that began yesterday evening of the “Jew Festival of ‘Succoth,’ more familiarly known as the Feast of Tabernacles.” “The attendance at the synagogues and temples was not large, in consequence of the holiday following so close on the New Year.”
1875: In New York, theatre impresario Oscar Hammerstein and his first wife Rose Blau gave birth to William “Willie” Hammerstein, “the manager of Victoria Theatre and Roof Garden” who had married Annie Nemo, the sister of his first wife Helen Nimo with who had two sons, Reginald and Oscar, the award winning “teammate of Jerome Kern and Richard Rogers
1875: It was reported today that there are 19 Jewish congregations in New York
1877: Founding of the Herxheimer Fund which provides financial assistance that ‘enables poor Jewish students to attend normal schools in Germany.
1878(28th of Elul, 5638): Two days before the celebration of Rosh Hashanah the Great Synagogue of Warsaw which would be destroyed by the Nazis in 1943, opened today.
1878: Several cases were heard in Part II of the Court of General Sessions (NYC) in which the defendants were charged with violating laws that banned keeping live fowl in dwellings. The accused were all Jews who claimed that Jewish law required them to keep live fowl in their possession for three days before they could be killed. Since a religious defense was being used by the defendants, the prosecutor insisted that no Jews should serve on the jury. After the jury had been seated, one of the jurors was excused because he looked like a Jew. It turned out that the juror was the brother of a Christian minister. The jury acquitted all of the accused.
1879(9th of Tishrei, 5640): Erev Yom Kippur
1879: In Philadelphia, Rosa E. Wolf and Sime Loeb gave birth to Drexel Institute and University of Pennsylvania educated broker and author Oscar Loeb, the husband Rebecca W. Thomas and member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange who was a vice president of the Jewish Chautauqua Society, a director of Rodeph Shalom and the editor of both The Review Magazine and the Red and Blue Magazine.
1879: In Sussex, England “Nathaniel Louis Cohen and his wife Julia Matilda Cohen, the daughter of Jacob and Matilda Waley” gave birth to “Charles Waley-Cohen.”
1879: “The Jewish Feast of Atonement” published today reported that “this evening the solemn fast of Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement, the most important observance in the Jewish ritual will commence by the Jewish throughout the world. The fast lasts from sundown on Friday evening until sunset on Saturday” a time during which “the devout Israelite does not permit either or drink of any kind to pass his lips.” The article noted that Orthodox Jews observe the fast strictly while some Reform congregations in the United States have abolished the practice. “The services…consist chiefly of repeated confessions of the sins which have been committed during the past year and prayers for forgiveness.”
1880: Birthdate of Rochester, NY native and Columbia trained laryngologist Dr. Harold M. Hays.
1881: “A Hebrew Memorial Meeting” published today described how Mr. Samuel Greenbaum, President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association presided over the Association’s memorial service honoring the late President Garfield. Among the dignitaries who attended the service was Mr. R.J. de Cordova who gave an eloquent eloquent eulogy. Congressman Einstein concluded his remarks by saying. “Garfield needs no granite shat to mark his grave; he will live forever in the hearts of his countrymen.”
1881: In Wilkes-Barre, PA, Adelheid Auerbach and Isaac Jacobosky gave to Lehigh University trained civil engineer Gilbert Garfield Jacobosky, the husband of Audrey Blumenthal and member of the United States Army Corps of the Engineers who reached the rank of Lt. Colonel while serving during WW I who returned to Wilkes-Barre after the war where he as a member of B’nai B’rtih.
1881: Birthdate of Ernst Gräfenberg, the German born American physician who developed the IUD. Gräfenberg literally owed his life to Margaret Sanger who ransomed him from a Nazi prison and brought him to the United States.
1883: Rachel Davis and Joseph Lipkie gave birth to Rosa Lipkie.
1883: “The extra measures adopted by the Government for securing public safety” that were necessitated by the violence following the assassination of the Czar in 1881 “have been prolonged for a year throughout the principal Provinces of Russia.” (Editor’s note – there was a wave of Pogroms that began after the assassination of Alexander III that lasted off and on for several years.)
1884: “Defending Mr. Friedman” published today gave David Longsdorf’s account of the events surrounding the elopement of Sarah Scheuer and his friend Henry Friedman. Longsdorf contends that the two had known each other for almost a year; that contrary to the claims of the bride’s father, he had known the groom since the first of the year. The two lived within a block of each other and the groom’s sister had helped the bride with preparations for a New Year’s party in 1884. The real objection to Friedman stems from the fact that while he could provide Sarah with a comfortable lifestyle, her father opposed the marriage because Friedman could not provide her with the lavish lifestyle of her father. (Yes, this is the stuff of which news was made long before Entertainment Tonight, etc.)
1884: The Jews of New York City are scheduled to hold the first in a series of mass meetings to protest the refusal of the School Superintendent to allow children to be excuse from class for Yom Kippur.
1884: The first in a series of services marking the centenary of Sir Moses Montefiore are scheduled to be held in synagogues today all over Europe.
1884: In Stry Austria, Bessie Fuchs and William Gardner gave birth Mrs. Benjamin L. Abraham,
who served as President of the Philadelphia Chapter of Hadassah and was “chairman of the Women’s Division of the United Palestine Appeal…”
1885: Judgment has not been rendered in the suit brought by Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun which is attempting to recoup funeral expenses from the estate of the late Joseph Levy who had committed suicide in Patterson, NJ.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0264/ms0264.html
1887: Twenty-month-old Russian born Sonya Kalish, the future Sophie Tucker, and her family arrived in Boston having changed their name to Abuza to avoid problems created by the fact that her father had successfully eluded military service under the Czar’s anti-Semitic regime.
1888(21st of Tishrei, 5649): Hoshana Raba
1888(21st of Tishrei, 5649): German born Hannah Kramer Wassman, the mother of Carolina Wassman Laski and the mother-in-law of New York City merchant Marks Laski, passed away today after which she was buried in the Brotherhood of Israel Plot of the Salem Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn
1888: Birthdate of the famed, influential poet, T.S. Eliot. Was the author of “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song J. Alfred Prufrock” an anti-Semite as some have alleged? For at least one answer read T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form by Anthony Julius.
1889: Birthdate of famed German intellectual, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party on
1889(1st of Tishrei, 5650): Rosh Hashanah
1889: Possible birthdate of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira known as the Baba Sali or the “Praying a leading Moroccan rabbi and kabbalist who was renowned for his alleged ability to work miracles through his prayers. He was one of the leaders of the Aliyah of Moroccan Jewry to Israel, which saw the transfer of nearly the entire population of that community to the Holy Land. He passed away in 1894. His burial place in Netivot, Israel has become a shrine for prayers and petitioners. The confusion about his birthdate comes from the fact that he was reportedly born on Rosh Hashanah 5650. But he is also reported to have been born in 1890. Rosh Hashanah in 1890 corresponds to 5651 on the secular calendar.
1891: The New York Times reports Kaiser Wilhelm II has reversed his policy of not providing financial help to Russia and has permitted to Jewish banking houses in Berlin to open subscriptions for a new Russian loan.
1891: Solomon Hirsch, the United States Minister to Turkey sailed with his family on voyage that will take him back to America for a vacation that he hopes will last until December.
1892: Health authorities announced that there were no cases of cholera in New York City. “The present epidemic reached Western Europe from Russia and was mainly if not wholly due to the migration of the Jews whose persecution has been driving from that country.”
1893: In an unfolding conspiracy aimed at Jacob Bauman “who is connected with some of the wealthiest Hebrew families” in New York Max Kestenbaum and Ernest Sachs were arrested and immediately claimed that his wife, Mrs. Annie Baumann had paid them to lie during their divorce proceedings.
1894: “A Most Successful Beggar” published described the fate of Charles Burkowitz, a blind Russian Jew whose successful begging over the last ten years netted $3,000 which his uncle stole and took with him to Boston.
1895: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and University of Cincinnati trained attorney Naomi Ranson.
1895: The trial of Morris Schoenholz who is charged with arson in the first degree and is represented by Abraham Levy began today in Part I of the Court of General Sessions.
1896(19th of Tishrei, 5657): Shabbat chol hamoed Sukkoth
1896: “Thespians Sara and Jacob Adler give birth to their son Jay Adler, the American actor who was the brother of Jacob and Sara Adler.
1897(29th of Elul, 5657): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1897: Birthdate of Bedriska Berlinerova who was living in Prague when she was deported to Ujazdow where she was murdered.
1897: Orders were issued from Police Headquarters to ignore the Sunday closing laws and allow the Jewish businessmen on Hester, Orchard and Ludlow Streets to conduct business prior to being closed for two days due to the Jewish New Year.
1897: Windows were unbarred, and fire escapes were created in many of the buildings being temporarily used for High Holiday services on the Lower East Side following inspection visits by city building inspectors.
1897: Birthdate of Max Schur, the native of Stanisławów who became a doctor and a friend of Sigmund Freud.
1897: A report of Rowland Strong published today described the meeting of the Oriental Congress where a paper had been read describing a tribe of Abyssinian Jews who are strictly observant but are faithful to the king “and exhibit no desire join Herr Herzl in his trip to Palestine.”
1898(10th of Tishrei, 5659): Yom Kippur
1898: Samuel Bellarach, Samuel Weingarten and Major Harry Weinstock, all of whom were serving with the 1st California Volunteers were reported to have attended services today in the Phillipines.
1898: The list of evening classes that will be offered by the YMHA starting in October published today included bookkeeping, stenography, typewriting, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Jewish History, literature, political economy, drawing and sketching.
1898: A summary of the third annual report of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of which Mrs. Ester Wallenstein is President published today noted that there are currently 43 children under the age of five staying at the facility on Mott Street. The asylum does not care for children over the age of five.
1898: Dr. Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to give a sermon today entitled “A Pure World.”
1898: “Yom Kippur Observance” published today reported that “At sundown yesterday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most solemn of all Jewish days of religious observance, began for Jews of both the orthodox and reform churches, to end at sundown to-day. These twenty-four hours are specially dedicated to fasting and prayer and serve the purpose of reconciling the soul of the devout Jew to his God.” http://gershwin.com/
1898: In Brooklyn Morris Gershwine and his wife Rose (Moishe Gershowitz amd Roza Bruskina) gave birth to Jacob Gershwin who gained as composer George Gershwin who wrote most of his works together with his elder brother lyricist Ira Gershwin including Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess.
1899: In Lithuania, Morris Jehiel Shubow and Esther Shubow gave birth to Harvard educated Rabbi Joseph Shalom Shubow, the husband of Beatrice Shubow who “voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Army, served as a chaplain in Europe with the Ninth Army through 1946, and traveled with a portable ark that could be strapped to a jeep after which in March 1945, having accompanied the troops who had just crossed the Rhine into Germany, he led a Passover seder in Goebbels’s castle – an event that was front-page news around the world.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/shubow-joseph-shalom
1900: Birthdate of Gertrude Luckner the German social worker who was named as righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for assisting Jewish families in German and Poland; acts of heroism that resulted being imprisoned in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.
1901: The steamship Deutschland, part of the fleet of The Hamburg-American Line led by general director Danish born Jew Albert Ballin arrived in New York this “morning after a passage marked by the roughest weather, yet the great vessel was only 5 hours and 5 minutes behind her best record for the west-bound voyage.”
1902: Hugo and Annie Piesen gave birth to Maurice “Pete” Piesen
1902 (24th of Elul, 5662): Seventy-three-year-old Levi Strauss, the man who put America in Blue Jeans, passed away today in San Francisco.
http://lsco.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Levi-Strauss-Full-Biography.pdf
1902: “Mercedes” was legally registered as a brand name for one of the automobiles manufactured by DMG. The car was named for Mercedes, the daughter of Jewish businessman Emil Jellinek.
1902: An item in the Jewish Chronicle of London focused on the consecration of a Sefer Torah and shofar in addition to several large barrels of apples and small containers of honey, all to be used by Jewish immigrants sailing shortly for South Africa. The short piece stressed that these items were needed since “the immigrants will be on the high seas during the ensuing festivals.”
1903: In Chicago, banker and Zionist Bernard Horwich, the Lithuanian born son of Keize and Yakov Yankel Horwich, and his wife Mamie Horwich gave birth to Theodore Horwich.
1904: Railroad executive Newman Erb is back in New York with the body of his wife who was killed in a train wreck yesterday and in which he was seriously injured.
1904: Three Days after she had passed away, “72-year-old Sara Isaac Pereira Mendoza (nee Monis), the wife of “Isaac Moses Pereira Mendoza” with whom she had eight children” was buried at the “Nuevo (New) Jewish Cemetery.”
1905: “Albert Einstein published the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the special theory of relativity.”
1906: Replying to a deputation of municipal officials today “who complained of the violence daily committed by members of the reactionary League of the Russian People against peaceful citizens, Jews and Christians alike, Gov. Gen. Kaulbars said he doubted whether it was possible or even desirable to attempt to suppress the “exasperation of the loyal elements against the revolutionary students, who are guided exclusively by Jews.”
1907: New Zealand gains dominion status in the British Empire. Jews first arrived in Zealand in the 1830’s. By the turn of the century, the Jewish population had reached about 1,300 souls which was less than one per cent of the population. Most of the Jews lived in Auckland and Wellington, home of Beth El Synagogue.
1908(1st Tishrei, 5669): Rosh Hashanah
1908(1st of Tishrei, 5669): In Philadelphia, thirty-seven-year-old Blanche A. Allman, Steppacher, the daughter of Pauline and David Allman and husband of Emanuel Meyer Steppacher passed away today after which she was buried in Mount Sinai Cemetery.
1909: “The Sabbath School of Beth Ahabah” which is expecting a large enrollment and is looking for teaching is scheduled to open today.
1910: In Brooklyn, “a bricklayer immigrant from Russia” gave birth to Zachary Fisher, the founder along with Larry and Martin of Fisher Brothers, the “real estate development company and the husband of the former Elizabth Kenowsky
https://www.fisherhouse.org/about/our-history/zachary-fisher/
1910: “Seven doctors, constituting the medical staff of the Beth David Hospital, 246 East Eighty-second Street, having resigned at the request of the Board of Directors, the Directors held a special meeting at the hospital tonight, at which the formation of a new staff was postponed until the annual meeting in October.”
1911(4th of Tishrei, 5672): Fifty-two-year-old Leah F. Bissinger, the wife of Benjamin Bissinger, the mother of Tessie Bernheim and the daughter of Gertrude and Herman Felsenthal passed away today.
1911: Funeral services were held today in Chicago for Mrs. Belle Lesem.
1912(15th of Tishrei, 5673): Sukkoth
1912: Jacob Silverman, the son Mr. and Mrs. Shlomo Silverblatt and his wife Rachel Silverman gave birth to Baltimore resident David Silverman, the husband of Frances Octavia Silverman.
1912(15th of Tishrei, 5673): Sixty-one-year-old “communal worker” Hartwig Moss passed away today in New Orleans.
1912: Philip Klafter, Henry Horner, Jr. and George Halperin all from Chicago, Ill served as a delegate to the meeting of the Lakes-to-Gulf Deep Water Association which closed today in Little Rock, AR
1913: Birthdate of Berthold Beitz, “the German steel industrialist who saves Jews” (As reported by Melissa Eddy)
1913: A list of the locations of “provisional synagogues” which “provide decorous and impressive services for persons of limited means” to observe the upcoming high holidays published today included Clinton on Clinton Street, the Lyceum on Fourth Street, The Stuyvesant Casino on Second Avenue and the Auditorium of the Hebrews Technical School for Girls at Second Avenue and 15th Street.
1914(6th of Tishrei, 5675): Parashat Vayeilech
1914(6th of Tishrei, 5675): Forty-four-year-old Captain William Moultrie Moses, Jr., U.S.N. the Muscogee, GA born son of William Moultrie Moses and Penina Septima Robison, the husband of Anna Green Moses and father of William Moultrie Moses, III
1914: Israel Zangwill wrote from the Jewish Territorial Organization offices at King’s Chambers on Portugal Street that “there would be no great misfortune for humanity than a victory for German arms.”
1915(18th of Tishrei, 5676): Fourth day of Sukkoth
1915: Young Judea sponsored “seventeen gatherings in theatres” throughout New York City where 35,000 children attended illustrated lectures on Sukkoth followed by musical numbers” and a moving picture on “Jewish subjects.”
1915: It was reported today that 20,000 of the 30,000 Russian Jews living in Palestine have become Turkish subjects and that of the 8,000 who left Palestine, most settled in Egypt where “they are taken care of by a special Jewish committee acting for the Provisional Jewish Relief Committee.”
1915: It was reported today that the relief work for the Zionists in Palestine is being coordinated by Copenhagen bureau of the Provisional Jewish Relief Committee except for efforts in the United States which are being coordinated by the Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs.
1915: In Brooklyn founding of B’nai Israel Synagogue.
1915: In Columbus, Ohio, founding of Tifereth Israel.
1915: In Richmond, VA, founding of Zion Institute.
1915: “Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, President and founder of the National Farm School said today in an address to the Directors of the institution at Farm School, Bucks County, PA, that the farm should be enlarged and better equipped and that other such institutions should be established in order to take Jews from sweatshops and from congested districts in cities and place them on farms.”
1916: It was reported today, that in his letter to the American Hebrew, President Wilson paid “a high tribute to the citizenship of the Jews” writing that “No man who knows the history of America or, indeed of the world, could fail to appreciate their notable contributions to industry, philanthropy, intellectual development and political liberty.”
1916(28th of Elul, 5676): Elizabeth Solomon, a daughter of Isaac Solomon who had married Adelaide, Australia rabbi Abraham Tobias Boas in 1873 passed away today.
1917(10th of Tishrei, 5678): Yom Kippur
1917: “An appeal for a fund of one million dollars to alleviate the suffering of Jews in the European war zones” is scheduled to “be made in 1,000 synagogues” today
1917: During services at the B’Nai Israel in Bay Ridge, congregants contributed $10,000 to a fund for constructing a new synagogue. Rabbi Solomon Goldman officiated at the service.
1917: Congregants at Temple Emanu-El responded to the appeal of Louis Marshall contributing $20,000 and pledging another $30,000 to the fund that has been set up to provide financial assistance to the Jews trapped in the European war zone.
1917: Congregants at Temple Beth-El, which is served by Rabbi Samuel Schulman contributed between $9,000 and $10,000 to the fund that has been set up to provide financial assistance to the Jews trapped in the European war zone.
1917: Congregants as Ohav Zevek, the largest Orthodox synagogue in New York, contributed more than $17,000 to the fund that has been set up to provide financial assistance to the Jews trapped in the European war zone.
1917: Congregants at the Pincus Elijah Synagogue in New York City pledged close to $15,000 to the fund that has been set up to provide financial assistance to the Jews trapped in the European war zone.
1917: On Yom Kippur, Dr. Maurice H. Harris delivered a sermon at Temple Israel in New York entitled “Religion and Education.”
1918: Alvin Lucks, who was stationed at Camp Hancock, GA completed his time in “welfare service” today.
1918(20th of Tishrei, 5679): Sixth Day of Sukkoth
1918: Near Eclisfontaine, France, U.S. Army Sergeant Phillip Katz voluntarily crossed “an area swept by heavy machinegun fire,” advancing “to where the wounded soldier lay and carried him to a place of safety.” This bravery earned him a Congressional Medal of Honor
1918: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive began which would include the 77th Division of the U.S. Army, a unit with thousands of Jews in it, began today.
1919(2nd of Tishrei, 5680): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
1919: The Hahambashi of Turkey was granted an audience with the Shah of Persia, who paid tribute to the patriotism of Jews of Persia. The Shah attributed the progress of civilization to the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools.
1919: “An Exchange of Wives,” produced by Walter Hast opened on Broadway at the Bijou Theatre.
1919: In Manhattan, stockbroker Arthur Rosenthal and his wife Grace gave birth to Arthur Jesse Rosenthal, “a publisher of intellectual masterworks in an era of fast-buck publishing who led Basic Books in the 1950s and ’60s and created a model for universities nationwide by leading Harvard University Press to solvency in the ’70s and ’80s.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1920: Former Ambassador Abram I, Elkus and Miss Irma May, the fiancée of Rabbi Bernard Cantor are among those scheduled to speak at a memorial service to be held for Rabbi Cantor at the Free Synagogue.
1920: Miss Irma Abramowicz May of Lemberg, Galicia, fiancé of the late Dr. Bernard Cantor, spoke in Carnegie Hall before the congregation of the Free Synagogue this morning at a memorial service in Cantor’s honor. He was killed by Bolshevicks in the Ukraine in July while aiding the suffering Polish Jews caught in the Civil War racking the former Czarist Empire.
1920: In response to the death yesterday of Jacob Schiff “Personal tributes to his philanthropic instincts and the humanitarian work” poured in from a variety of sources including such Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, Dr. Cyrus Adler and Judge Mayer Sulzberger as well as leaders from the secular society including famed statesmen Elihu Root and George Baker of the Grover Cleveland Association.
1920(14th of Tishrei, 5681): Erev Sukkoth
1920: At this evening’s service Rabbi I. Mortimer Bloom is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Bringing in the Sheaves” at the Hebrew Tabernacle on Broadway.
1921: It was reported today that last night’s dinner at the Hotel Pennsylvania raised $85,000 dollars leaving the Jews of Brooklyn needing to raise $65,000 to cover the $150,000 operational deficit of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities for the last three months of 1920.
1921:In Johannesburg, South Africa to Solomon and Ida Rose (née Son) Susser gave birth to South African activist, doctor and epidemiologist Mervyn Wilfred Susser, the husband of “South African epidemiologist, activist and doctor Zena Athene Stein” with whom he “had three children: Ezra Susser, Ruth Susser and Ida Susser.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/mervyn-susser-92-dies-studied-illness-and-society.html
1922: It was reported today that “there are thirty-five Jewish girls at Radcliff now and several more are entered in the freshman class.”
1923(16th of Tishrei, 5684): Second Day of Sukkoth
1923: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today in Brooklyn for Samuel Blumenstock, the husband of Hadassah member Anna Blumenstock.
1923: “A Woman of Paris” “written, directed, produced and later scored by Charlie Chaplin” was released today in the United States.
1924: “Michael,” the film version of the novel Mikael featuring Grete Moseheim and Karl Fruend who also worked as a cinematographer was released today in Berlin.
1925(8th of Tishrei, 5686): Shabbat Shuva
1925: Second baseman Buddy Myer made his major league debut with the Washington Senators.
1926(18th of Tishrei, 5687): Fourth Day of Sukkoth
1926: Today, ten years after making his big-league debut with the St. Louis Cardinals, second baseman Sam Bohn made his last major league appearance with the Brooklyn Robins.
1927(29th of Elul, 5687): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1827: It was reported today that John L. Bernstein, Chairman of the Campaign Committee has announced “the appeals in behalf of the $500,000 campaign of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of America…will be made on the” Jewish high holidays “in the 175 synagogues” in New York City.
1927(29th of Elul, 5687): Seventy-four-year-old Russian born, Johns Hopkins trained archaeologist Immanuel M. Casanowicz, the assistant curator in the “Division Old World Archaeology at the U.S. National Museum” and Vice President of the Anthropological Society of Washington passed away today.
https://www.amazon.com/Paronomasia-Old-Testament-Immanuel-Casanowicz/dp/1378420187
1928: “The Lady with the Mask,” a silent film with a script by Henrik Galeen was released today in Germany.
1928: Following the attempt by the police to remove the mechitza at the Wall on Yom Kippur, a delegation consisting of Colonel Frederick H. Kisch, Dr. Joshua Thon, Chief Rabbis A.H. Kook and Jacob A Meir, and Mssrs. Kalvarsisky and Meyuchased met with Acting High Commissioner H.C. Luke for two hours today to discuss the need to discipline those responsible for the action taken against the worshippers and a way in which problems at the Wall could be avoided in the future. The police officials explained that they had removed the “screen” to avoid violence since the Moslems threatened to stone the Jews if the mechitzah remained in place.
1929: Today, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Daily Bulletin publicly expressed “their deep appreciation to Shalom Schwartz, editor of the Palestine Bulletin…” for risking his life during the recent emergency in Jerusalem for providing uninterrupted cable service so that the rest of the world might find out the facts during the violence that started in the last week of August and lasted into the first week of September.
1930: Abraham Herman, the President of HIAS announced today that appeals from Jews of many countries are urging the society, which is trying to overcome a $150,000 deficit, not to curtail its work.
1931(15th of Tishrei, 5692) First Day of Sukkoth and Shabbat
1931: “Sidewalks of New York” a comedy produced by Lawrence Weingarten and directed by Jules White was released today in the United States by MGM.
1931: “Five Star Final” a crime movie directed Mervyn LeRoy, produced by Hall Wallis, based on a play by Louis Weitzenkorn and starring Edward G. Robinson was released today in the United States by Warner Bros.
1931: “From pulpits embanked with fruits of the harvest rabbis of thirty Reform synagogues in the metropolitan New York area are scheduled to urge parents to register their children in religious schools as part of drive to “strengthen and renews Jewish spiritual life and awaken interest in synagogue membership.”
1932: Tribute to the work of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which, comprises all Reform congregations in the United States and Canada, and the urgent needs of the union at the present time were voiced by Ludwig Vogelstein at the first meeting this afternoon of a special committee which has been established in Congregation Emanu El on behalf of the welfare of the union.
1933: Emil Ludwig, born Emiel Cohn, the biographer and historian, said today on his arrival on the French liner Paris that he hated biographies and would write no more of them.
1933: “The Empress of Abyssinia arrived here this morning for a visit to Palestine in circumstances quite different from those of the Queen of Sheba, the ancestor of her husband, who came to the Holy Land bearing rich gifts of vassalage for King Solomon 3,000 years ago.
1934(17th of Tishrei, 5695): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth
1934(17th of Tishrei, 5695): Eighty-three-year-old Alexander Moszkowski, the German Jewish author and philosopher who was the first to write a book about his friend Albert Einstein passed away today.
1934: It was reported today that the just published 36th volume of the American Jewish Year Book “contains a summary of what the preface calls ‘the continuing crisis in the lives of the Jews of Germany.’”
1934: Shipping officials announced today that “all steamers which carry Jewish immigrants from Constanza, Rumania and Trieste, Italy are completely booked until the end of October” and that “the majority of the tickets were purchased by Polish Jews emigrating to Palestine.
1935: Slugger Hank Greenberg declared that his Tigers were the best team in baseball; better even than the Chicago Cubs who think they will make it into the World Series.
1936(10th of Tishrei, 5697): Yom Kippur
1936: At Rodeph Sholom Rabbi Wendell told his congregants that “the world speaks of chaos, cruelty and mass murder, but the Jewish people speak of love and compassion” while standing as “one congregation with each person confessing all sins.”
1936: “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, the rabbi at the Free Synagogue delivered “a radio address on WABC” in which he reviewed the past year which he “found painful and dreary” because, among other things “Germany and Spain loom large and ominous again on the horizon of Jewish history.” (Everybody remembers about Hitler, but how many know about the threat posed by Franco and fascist Spain)
1936: At Kehilath Jehsurun, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein led the congregation “in a special prayer for the Jews and the British soldiers who have been killed in the riots in Palestine.”
1936: At Congregation B’nai Jershurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein delivered a sermon on “Integrated Personalities.
1936 At Ohab Zedek, Rabbi William Margolis told worshippers that “the Jew is the supreme pacifist” because he already understands “the utter uselessness and extreme horror of war.”
1936: At the Institutional Synagogue, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein called for “universal atonement” because the League of Nations and the “major powers” had permitted “first one and then another nation to annex unto itself land belonging to another nation” in the name of “peace” – “a peace that is a false peace.”
1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer “called for a fight for freedom” saying that “if the people of most of Europe have lost their nerve we in American cannot afford to do so” and “Jew and Christian must aid in this struggle.”
1936: After six days of detention, today, the Gestapo released Rabbi Emil Bernhard Cohn “the well-known Zionist scholar and author” whose “arrest is believed to have been in response to remarks made during his Rosh Hashanah sermon.”1936: It was reported today following their practice yesterday at Yankee Stadium The Maccabees, the Palestine soccer championship team, who are used to playing on clay found that the grass field gave them more speed and increased their chance for victory in tomorrow’s charity game.
1937(21st of Tishrei, 5698): Hoshana Raba
1937: The Palestine Post reported that another wealthy Christian landowner was murdered by Arab terrorists in the Maloul village, near Nazareth. [Editor’s Note: One of the unreported stories has been the departure of the Christian Arabs from PLO controlled territory. Other ancient Christian communities have felt the pressure of Arab and/or Islamic groups including those in Iraq, the Sudan, Lebanon and Nigeria.]
1937: In Brooklyn, jeweler Samuel Weintraub and his wife gave birth to Jerome “Jerry” Charles Weintraub.
1937(21st of Tishrei, 5698): Seventy-seven-year-old department store owner and philanthropist Edward Albert Filene, the Salem, MA born son of “William Filene and Clara Ballin” passed away today in Paris.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/dtfilene.html
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/09/26/96749418.pdf
1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Polish government published warning posters against disturbances of any kind and arrested large numbers of hooligans who took part in the recent anti-Jewish excesses. A Polish delegation which visited Madagascar reported that there were large areas of potentially fertile lands for a possible Jewish settlement.
1937: During the Arab Revolt, Lewis Andrews, the Acting Commissioner of the Galilee, Pirie-Gordon (the assistant district commissioner) and Andrews’ bodyguard (a British police constable) were on their way from attending service at the Anglican Christ Church, Nazareth when they were gunned down by four Arabs. Andrews died on the spot and the bodyguard died later at the hospital.
1938(1st of Tishrei, 5699): Rosh Hashanah
1938: Plans were made for Levi Yitzchok Bender and his wife to escape the clutches of Soviet authorities because he had visited the grave of Rebbe Nachman at Uman in defiance of the government’s ban on such religious observances.
1938: Birthdate of American actor Jonathan Goldsmith turned advertising executive who may be best known for his role as the “face” of Dos Equis Beer where he adopted the persona of “the most interesting man in the world.
1938(1st of Tishrei, 5699) Seventy-nine-year-old Lena Catosk Pearlstone, the Oskya born daufhter of Lois and Mina Hart and the wife of Barney Pearlstone passed away today in New Orleans after which she was buried in Waco, TX.
1939: “Freud’s body was cremated today “at the Golders Green Crematorium in North London, with Harrods of Knightsbridge acting as funeral directors, on the instructions of his son, Ernst following which “funeral orations were given by Ernest Jones and the Austrian author Stefan Zweig.
1939: In Manhattan “Robert Pilpel and Harriet (Fleishel) Pilpel gave birth to Judith Ehtel Pilpel who gained fame in the world of book publishing as Judith Appelbaum, the author of How to Get Happily Published. (As reported by Anita Gates)
1940(23rd of Elul, 5700): Official date of death for Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish intellect whose endeavors covered a myriad of fields. Benjamin actually committed suicide the evening before after finding out that the Franco government was going to force him return to France where he faced certain imprisonment by the Nazis.
http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=137556
1940: In Manhattan attorney Harold Herzstein and his wife Jean gave birth to historian Robert Herzstein.
1940: The Center of Jews (UHU) was founded in Slovakia to organize Jewish life. The UHU was a government apparatus to determine the fate of Jews in that country. UHU disbanded all 175 Jewish organizations in Slovakia.
1941: “It Started with Eve” a comedy directed by Henry Koster and produced by Joes Pasternak was released in the United States today by Universal Pictures.
1941: Paramount Pictures released “Hold Back The Dawn co-authored by Billy Wilder and co-starring Paulette Goddard whose father “was the son of a prosperous Jewish cigar manufacturer from Salt Lake City.”
1941: Today, in response to an anti-Semitic radio broadcast by Charles A. Lindberg in which he accused “Jews” among others “of fomenting a war hysteria and advocating the entry of America into the war” and contended that the Jews’ “greatest danger to this country lies in their large influence and ownership of our motion pictures and press” a document containing the signatures of 700 prominent Christian leaders appear accusing Lindbergh of “following identically the Hitler technique.” They contended that American Christians dare not repeat the mistake of German Christians who failed to speak forth their condemnation clearly and unequivocally when this evil first raised its head in that unhappy land…The only effective method is to attack anti-Semitism as a moral disease.
1941(5th of Tishrei, 5702): The SS shot 412 men, 615 women and 581 children in Kovno all of whom were Jews described as sick people and carriers of epidemics.
1941: The Nazi began deporting approximately 2,000 Jews from Łódź and to the Chełmno extermination camp
1941(5th of Tishrei, 5702): Jews of Swieciany, Lithuania, are massacred in the nearby Polygon Woods. Several hundred young Jewish men manage to escape
1941(5th of Tishrei, 5702): Seventy-four-year-old Sergeant Herman Kahn, a thirty-five year veteran of the New York Police Department, the husband of Ida Kahn and father of Rudolph Kahn passed away today
1941: In Ejszyszki, Lithuania, the killing of Jews that had begun on Rosh Hashanah came to an end. Almost four thousand Jews were killed. About 300 Lithuanians voluntarily participated in the killing “actions” undertaken by Einsatzgruppe A in the Baltic region, which annihilated about 90 percent of the Jewish population. Only 30 Jews from Ejszyszki survived the war.
1942(15th of Tishrei, 5703): Sukkoth
1942: Instructions were issued to the Swiss Police stating, “Refugees on the grounds of race alone are not political refugees”. This meant that thousands of Jews would now be sent back from the border. Swiss behavior regarding the Nazis and the Jews paints a peculiar picture. The supposedly neutral Swiss would be more or less or responsive to Nazi requests based on what was happening on the battlefields of Europe. In 1942 the Germans were in control of Western Europe and were blitzing their way across Russia so a ruling like this is not surprising. The Swiss would not surrender most the money deposited by Jewish refugees until a half century had gone by; and then only after litigation and political pressure.
1942: SS Lieutenant General August Frank advises camp administrators that jewelry and other valuables seized from Jews should be sent to the German Reichsbank, and that razors and other practical items should be cleaned and delivered to front-line troops for sale to them. Proceeds will go to the Reich. Further, confiscated household items are to be distributed to ethnic Germans.
1942: Brussels Jewish leader Edward Rotbel is deported to Auschwitz. Several hundred Dutch Jews are gassed there
1942: German railway officials meet in Berlin for two days to plan track upgrades and additional trains in order to hasten deportations of Jews.
1942: For three days search parties of German and Ukrainian police capture 1000 of 2000 Jews who escaped from the Tuchin (Ukraine) Ghetto on September 24. Some Jews would be taken to Tuchin’s Jewish cemetery and shot, while most are killed where they are found in the forest.
1943: Following the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, Abba Kovner led his resistance group on a dangerous trip through gutted buildings and dank swamps to the forests of Poland where they could continue the fight against the Nazis and their Estonian allies.
1943: One day after official instructions arrived ordering the deportation of the Jews of Rome the Nazis demanded that Ugo Foa, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, have the Jews hand over 110 pounds of gold within 36 hours or 200 Jews would be deported.
1943: Following the demand by the head of the German security police in Rome, that the Jewish community either pay a ransom of 50 kilograms of gold (worth about $56,000 at the time) within three days, or a list of Jewish men from the city would face deportation, “the Jews began hurriedly collecting gold, both among its own members and from non-Jews including the Vatican whose treasurer “Monsignor Nogara promised a loan of the needed quantity” if the Jews could not raise it elsewhere.
1943: At the Novogrudok, Belorussia, labor camp, Jews complete secret work on a tunnel dug under the wire. Of the 220 Jews who use the tunnel to attempt escape, 120 are killed or captured.
1943: Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia warned the Jewish community in his regular Sunday broadcast that the price of whitefish, which will be in greater demand for the Jewish holidays beginning next Thursday, was likely to be increased to $1 or $1.25 a pound, according to trade information.
1944(9th of Tishrei, 5705): Erev Yom Kippur
1944(9th of Tishrei, 5705): Sixty-one year old “British businessman, philanthropist and cricket enthusiast Sir Julien Cahn” passed away today.
1944: Operation Market-Garden ends in failure. Montgomery advocated this plan to slice through Holland and seize the bridges over the Rhine River. The idea was folly and best and certainly was beyond Montgomery’s capability since it required rapid movement of his troops. Implementing the plan drew supplies away from the rapidly advancing forces of George Patton. Failure prolonged the war and increased the number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
1944: Victor Kugler, one of the people who helped to hide the Frank family who had been captured by the Nazis was among the 1,100 men forced to start digging anti-tank trenches.
1944: One thousand young boys are assembled at Auschwitz in the presence of Dr. Josef Mengele. Any boy whose head does not reach a board Mengele has nailed to a post is set aside for gassing.
1944: Archibald Maule Ramsay, a former British Army officer and Member of Parliament who was an out-spoken anti-Semite was released from custody today. He had been arrested in 1940 under regulation 18B which allowed the government to detain Nazi sympathizers. Following his release, he returned to his seat in the Commons where he attempted to have the Statue of the Jewry, a piece of anti-Semitic law dating back to the time of Longshanks, reinstituted.
1945: In response to an inquiry from the embassy in Washington “prompted by a published reported of anti’-Semitism, especially in Slovakia, the foreign office in Prague issued a message saying that “Czechoslovakia is seeking to practice toleration.”
1945: “President Truman indicated today that the United States would keep an open mind on the Palestine question, and he also denied flatly that President Roosevelt had made any commitment to King Ibn Saud not to support Jewish claims if and when they should arise.”
1946(1st of Tishrei, 5707): Rosh Hashanah
1946: Thirty-four-year-old Canadian born outfielder played his last major league team as a member of the New York Giants.
1946: Today, “one disclosure of literary importance was the announcement that ‘The Gioconda Smile,’ a short story published twenty-five years ago…will be rough to the screen by Zoltan Korda as an independent production.
1947: In Sdot Yam Israel, Hanne Ruth Warburg married Gershon Lasch.
1948: Prime Minister Ben Gurion met with his cabinet to discuss plans for the Galilee if fighting should be renewed.
1948: The Israeli cabinet decided against continuing the war with Jordan and conquering the Judea-Hebron region as well as Jerusalem thus avoiding a confrontation with Britain and leaving Israel free to confront Egypt in the south.
1948: The serialization of Oyf Fredme Vegn (On Foreign Roads) by Hirschbein which had begun in November in 1947 in Der Tag (The Day) was completed today.
1948: Birthdate of Ehud Yatom, the Netanya native who served as an agent for Shin Bet before being elected to the Knesset.
1949(3rd of Tishrei, 5710): Tzom Gedaliah
1949: Having “purchased the rights to the name ‘Sazerac Bar’ form the Sazerac Company and renovated a store front on Baronne Street,” Seymour Weiss opened the new Sazerac Bar which drew a large number of female customers because Weiss abolished “the men only house rule” and allowed women to patronize the bar.
1950(15th of Tishrei, 5711): Sukkoth
1950: On the eve of the Maccabiah games which open tomorrow, five hundred Jewish athletes from twenty countries are living in the Maccabiah Village (a converted army camp) as they prepare to compete in the first “Jewish Olympics” held since 1935. The games began in 1932 under the sponsorship of the Maccabee sport organization. Among the competitors are two Olympic champions from the United States – Henry Wittenberg, light heavy-weight wrestler and Frank Spellman, middleweight weightlifter.
1951(22nd of Tammuz, 5711: Seventy-four-year-old Lena Hemmelstiein, the orphaned Jewish child from Lithuania who founded Lane Bryant clothing chain for plus-size women passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lena-bryant-malsin
1952: It was reported today Alex Traub, who has designed engines for tanks and automobiles in the United States and Europe will be coming to Israel in January to act as an advisor on automobile engineering.
1952: Eighty-eight-year-old philosopher George Santayana whose famous aphorism “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is inscribed on a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration passed away today. For more on his relations with Jews and his anti-Semitism see
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/02/004-santayana-lately-revisited
http://berenson.itatti.harvard.edu/berenson/items/show/3028
1952: It was reported today that the new professors coming to work at the Institute of Technology in Israel include aeronautical experts Dr. Hirsch Cohen of PSU and H. Jerome Shafter of Princeton as well as “ a specialist in the solvent extraction of petroleum, Dr. Jacob M. Geist.’ (MIT)
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that two Jews, a soldier and a farmer, were murdered by terrorist infiltrators near the Egyptian border.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that a second group of urban workers who decided to return to the land, under the auspices of the town-to-the-village movement, settled in Upper Galilee, northwest of Ma¹ayan Baruch.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that after more than four months of protracted negotiations, Yitzhak Kariv, a local Mizrahi Bank manager, was elected mayor of Jerusalem by a right-wing coalition.
1953(17th of Tishrei, 5714): Shabbat Shel Sukkoth takes place during the 4th Maccabiah
1954: The former Eleanor Neyens and William “Bill” Scheuller gave birth to Zwingle, IA resident Deborah “Deb” Scheuller” a trained nurse and practicing attorney who married Mitchell Levin and as Deb Levin created the two blogs and made every Jewish holiday a memorable event!
1954(26th of Elul, 5714): Fifty-two-year-old Temple University Law School Graduate William M. Gerber, “who was an international vice president B’nai B’rith” and “a director of the Allie Jewish Appeal” passed away tonight at his home in Philadelphia.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/09/28/93410181.pdf
1955(10th of Tishrei, 5716): Yom Kippur.
1956: Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres drove to the headquarters of Colonel Ariel Sharon the officer commanding the paratroops who had been instructed to carry out an attack in reprisal for Arab attacks including those of September 23 and September 25 that had cost five non-combatant deaths among the Israelis.
1956: The IDF reprisal raid commanded by Ariel Sharon successfully attacked the Jordanian outpost at Wadi Fukin. The Jordanians lost 37 soldiers and two civilians at a cost of ten IDF dead.
1957(1st of Tishrei, 5718): On the first day of Rosh Hashanah Mitchell Levin chants Samuel for the first time.
1957: Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story opens on Broadway. The Jewish musician takes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and converts into a musical set among the gang culture of mid-twentieth century New York City.
1957: “The Joker is Wild” directed by Charles Vidor, based on biography about Joe E Lewis by Art Cohn and with music by Walter Scharf was released in the United States today by Paramount Pictures.
1958: Release date in the United States of the cinematic version of “Damn Yankees,” featuring lyrics and music by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross.
1958: In Athens, historian Donald Kagan and his wife gave birth to Ivy League educated historian and neo-conservative Robert Kagan, the husband of diplomate Victoria Nuland and brother of military historian Frederik Kagan.
1959(23rd of Elul, 5719): Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech; Leil Selichot
1959(23rd of Elul, 5719): Eighty-two-year-old Baltimore born American sculptor Ernest Wise Keyser, whose works included “Sir Galahad at Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Ontario which honours the bravery of Henry Albert Harper’ and was the nephew of sculptor Ephraim Keyser passed away today in ome.
1959: Eisenhower and Khrushchev conclude their two-day summit meeting at Camp David where the President urged the Soviet leader “to resolve issues concerning the status of Jews in the USSR citing the “deep concern” expressed to him by Jewish groups.”
1961: Bob Dylan, the musical voice of the counter-culture makes his debut. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, Dylan even made a bar mitzvah before assuming the role of musical rebel
1963: According to reports published today, “Jack Benny, who left the National Broadcasting Company 15 years ago to pick up a quick $2,260,000 at the Columbia Broadcasting System, will return to N.B.C. next fall.”
1963: Pitcher Larry Yellen made his major league debut with the Houston Colt .45’s.
1964: Twenty-six-year-old Auburn University graduate Alan Goodman Koch, the right-handed pitcher who began his major league career with the Detroit Tigers, pitched his last big league game today as a member of the Washington Senators.
1964(20th of Tishrei, 5725): Shabbath Shel Sukkot
1964: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Gilligan’s Island” a sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and co-starring Natalie Schafer as “Lovey Wentworth Howell.”
1965(29th of Elul, 5725): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1965: “President Zalman Shazar marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year, 5726 at dusk” tonight “with a message to Jews the world over”
1965: Birthdate of London native David Goldblatt, who has written a series of books about “football” (which Americans call soccer) including The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football which has been described as the “seminal football history.”
1965: In Chicago, “public relations consultant, coach and writer, Elaine Soloway and psychiatrist Dr. Harry J. Soloway” gave birth to award winning director Jill Soloway
1968: In New York City, business consultant Shepard A. Sheinkman and attorney Katherine Sheinkman gave birth to Benjamin Sheinkman who gained fame as actor Ben Shenkman.
1968(4th of Tishrei, 5729: Israeli physician Ben Shlomo Lipman-Heilprin passed away. Born in Bialystok in 1902, he studied medicine in Germany before making Aliyah in 1934. His accomplishments were of such merit that he was the first recipient of the Israel Prize for medicine.
1968: “Oliver,” the film version of Lionel Bart’s Broadway play of the same name was released in the United States today.
1969: Opening of the trial of the Chicago Seven. The accused leaders of the riots on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention included the requisite number of Jews. Ironically, the Judge in the case was also Jewish. At one point it was Abbe Hoffman versus Judge Hoffman.
1972: A two-day National Conference on Soviet Jewry during which Senator Henry Jackson of Washington “proposed legislation linking access to trade benefits for communist nations to liberalizing their emigration practices” comes to an end.
1973(29th of Elul, 5733): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1973: The first of two batches of reservists were called up by the Egyptian Army who were supposed to be participating in a training exercise but were, in reality, part of the invasion force that would strike Israel on Yom Kippur.
1973: The Israeli 7th Brigade was ordered to move one battalion to the Golan Heights to strengthen the Barak Armored Brigade, under the command of Yitzhak Ben Shoham.
1974(10th of Tishrei, 5735): Yom Kippur
1974(10th of Tishrei, 5735): Seventy-five-year-old Holocaust Survivor John Edgar Reinhardt passed away today.
1975: In Los Angeles, Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner gave birth to Jake Paltrow, the brother of Gwyneth Paltrow and cousin of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
1976(2nd of Tishrei, 5737): Second day of Rosh Hashanah observed for the last time during the Presidency of Gerald Ford.
1977: In Glen Dale, W. VA, Maria and Hal Pastern, “a high school/AAU coach and basketball promoter,” gave birth to Georgia Tech basketball coach Joshua Paul Pastner, ”the 2017 Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year.”
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Menachem Begin warned Gush Emunim not to implement its plan for an immediate establishment of 11 new settlements in Judea and Samaria, without the Ministerial Committee on Settlement¹s proper authorization. One of the on-going challenges for the Israelis over the last quarter of a century has been the willingness of some of the leader the “settlers’ movement” to disobey or disregard the law. This challenge transcends issues of Israeli security and goes to the heart of the nature of Jewish and not just Israeli values.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan argued in Washington that Israel had agreed only to a ‘symbolic’ reconvening of the Geneva Middle East Peace Conference. Israel, Dayan said, would refuse to negotiate at any forum which might include the PLO. A quarter of a century later, this whole issue has become meaningless in the sense that the Israelis have negotiated with the PLO since the days of the Oslo Accords. This does serve to show that the Israelis have been willing to shift their stance and deal with the Palestinians In a political venue. The fact of the matter is that the other side has still not matched this.
1978(24th of Elul, 5738): Sixty-seven Russian born Franco-American historian Zosa Szajkowski passed away today.
http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/tmr/tmr02/tmr02.035.txt
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0019_0_19444.html
1979: Abner Mikva, the Milwaukee born son Ida Fishman and Henry Abraham Mikva, who had escaped the pogroms in Ukraine, completed his service as a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois and began serving as Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
1980(16th of Tishrei, 5741): Second Day of Sukkoth
1980: U.S. premiere of “Resurrection” produced by Howard Rosenman.
1980: “Divine Madness,” a concert film starring Better Midler was released in the United States today.
1980: Refusenik Alexander Vilig, who was sentenced in February 1979 to 18 months’ imprisonment on a charge of draft evasion, was released today.
1980: Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories” was released today by United Artists.
1981: Today, “the IAEA Conference condemned” Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, which if completed, could produce weapons grade material “and voted to suspend all technical assistance to Israel but voted down a resolution to expel her from the IAEA.
1982(9th of Tishrei, 5743): Erev Yom Kippur
1982: “One Day At A Time,” the ever popular sit-com starring Bonnie Franklin began its 8th season.
1982: “Moonlighting” for which Hans Zimmer help to create the music was released today.
1983: St. Peter’s Church, Chapel and Cemetery Complex “a historic Episcopal Gothic Revival church at 2500 Westchester Avenue and Saint Peters Avenue in the Bronx, New York City” which was built in 1853 to designs by the architect Leopold Eidlitz:” was added to the National Registry of Historic Places today.
1984(29th of Elul, 5744): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1985: Opening of “Bernstein: The Television Work” at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City
1985: NBC began broadcasting the fourth season of “Family Ties” a sitcom created by Gary David Goldberg
1985: NBC began broadcasting the second season of “The Cosby Show” co-created by Ed Weinberger.
1987: “Unsettled Land,” an Israeli film directed by Uri Barbash premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival today.
1988: 15th of Tishrei, 5749): Sukkoth
1988: 15th of Tishrei, 5749): Forty-eight-year-old, journalist, author and ‘returning Jew’ Paul Cowan passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)
1994(21st of Tishrei, 5755): Hoshana Rabba
1995(2nd of Tishrei, 5756): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
1995: President Clinton nominated Merrick Garland, whom “the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave a ‘unanimously well-qualified’ committee rating – its highest – “to the D.C. Circuit seat vacated by his longtime mentor Abner J. Mikva.”
1997: After premiering at Cannes, “Ice Storm” a film version of the novel with a script by James Schamus who also served as one of the producers was released in the United States today.
1997(24th of Elul, 5757): Eighty-four-year-old All-American fullback Isadore “Izzy” Weinstock who played college ball for Pittsburg and pro-ball for the Philadelphia Eagles passed away today in Florida.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WeinIz20.htm
1998(6th of Tishrei, 5759):Parashat Veyeilch; Shabbat Shuvah
1998(6th of Tishrei, 5759): Esther Marowitz, the 106-year-old Beloit Michigan native and wife of Arthur Marowitz passe away today in Santa Monica.
1998: The International Puppet Festival which provided a “a rare revival of the E.Y.”Yip” Habrburg musical “Flahooley” closeed today in New York.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times by Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell, The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With the People Who Make Them by Studs Terkel and An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton by Richard A. Posner.
1999: Broadcast of the first episode for the second season of “Felicity” a television drama on which Brian Grazer served as executive produced that was created by J.J. Abrams and co-stars Greg Grunberg.
1999: FOX broadcast the first episode of the 11th season of the Simpsons, a cartoon sitcom developed by James Brooks and Sam Simon
2000: “In an effort to improve a strained relationship, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, met tonight for the first time since the Camp David peace talks ended two months ago.” (As reported by Deborah Sontag)
2000(26th of Elul, 5760): Seena Fish (Nee Israel), the Brooklyn Heights resident and wife of Charles Fish passed away today.
2001(9th of Tishrei, 5762): Erev Yom Kippur
2001(9th of Tishrei, 5762): Sixty-four year old Zvia Pinhas “was stabbed to death in her home” today by Fatah.
2002(20th of Tishrei, 5763): On the 6th day of Sukkoth, Rabbi Zerach Warfhaftig, the native of Volkovyski who made Aliyah in 1947 passed away. During WW II, he worked with Japanese Vice-Consul in Kaunas Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, the courageous diplomat who defied his government by issuing visas that saved the lives of thousands of Jews. Warfhatig was one of the signatories of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and served in the first 9 Knessets.
2002: NBC broadcast the first episode of “Good Morning, Miami,” “a sitcom created by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and starring Mark Fuerstein.
2002: Today “the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act Section 214 of which entitled “United States Policy with Respect to Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel,” included various statutes regarding the status of Jerusalem, including invoking the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 to urge the President to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, cutting budget authorizations for the publication of official documents “which lists countries and their capital cities unless the publication identifies Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” and authorizing American citizens born in Jerusalem to name “Israel” as their birthplace on official government documents.
2003(29th of Elul, 5763): Erev Rosh Hashanah
2003: It was reported today that the Prime Minister had implied that Ariel will be included in the security barrier being constructed to protect Israelis from suicide bombers.
2003: “The Duplex,” a comedy featuring Tony-Award winning actor Harvey Fierstein was released in the United States today by Miramax Films.
2004: Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil, a senior member of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in a car bombing in the al-Zahera district of southern Damascus, Syria for which the Israelis were blamed because of his involvement in the Beersheba bus bombing in August.
2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Just Enough Liebling by the legendary New Yorker Writer by A. J. Liebling, The Divine Husband by Francisco Goldman. Joy Comes in the Morning by Jonathan Rosen, Lying Together: My Russian Affair by Jennifer Beth Cohen, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy by Jussi Hanhimaki and an essay “Sex Books: The Elements of Sexual Style” by Amy Sohn.
2004(11th of Tishrei, 5765): Sixty-two-year-old Barristers Allan Edward Levy who was a champion of rights for children passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/allan-levy-6160521.html
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/sep/29/guardianobituaries.children
2005: Time Magazine of this date contains reviews of two books written by Jewish authors – E.L. Doctorow’s, The March and Myla Goldberg’s Wickett’s Company. Both novels center around historic events. The March is a tale told about Sherman’s March during the Civil War. Wickett’s Company uses the flu epidemic at the end of World War I as its backdrop. In the same issue, the movie review immediately following the book reviews reads “Guy Walks into a Shtetel” which is the opening gambit in a review of Everything Is Illuminated, a film about Holocaust survivors. These three items appearing in an icon of American culture help to sharpen one of the overarching questions being studied on Monday nights in Cedar Rapids – just what is Jewish culture? Is it anything done by Jews or does it have to have a uniquely Jewish content or is it a little of both?
2005: Richard H. Jones presented his credentials as U.S. Ambassador to Israel
2005: Israel killed Islamic Jihad commander Mohammad Khalil and his bodyguard
2005: Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan and Lady Elaine Sacks were amongst those praising David Collins, 21, on his receiving the 2005 Herzl Award. The award was initiated in 2004 to commemorate the centenary of Herzl’s passing, by the Department for Zionist Activities of the World Zionist Organization.
2005: On the Jewish calendar, 22 Elul, the Yahrzeit Joseph B. Levin, Yosef Dov ben Avraham Elimelch the man who taught me that Jewish education never stops unless the Jew chooses to stop his education.
2006: Canadian actress Jessalyn Sarah Gilsig and producer Bobby Salomon gave birth to their daughter Penolope.
2006: In Cedar Rapids, celebration of the birthday of Deb Levin, a true Ayshish Chayil or Woman of Valor. Like Rashi’s daughters, she is a student in her own right. Like Akiva’s wife, she challenges her husband to study and allows him the time to produce things like “This Day In Jewish History.” Thanks to her effort and support, there is a traditional Saturday morning service in Cedar Rapids and Torah and Adult Education pages on the Temple Judah Website. And if that is not enough, she makes one mean challah, creates kosher pizza from scratch and makes the best matzo balls in the world. When Joe Lieberman was running for President and came though Cedar Rapids, he needed a kosher meal to go. When he got on the plane, Deb was the one who provided him with myriad of dairy and parve homemade delights, all appropriately marked of course.
2006: Alan Hevesi said he will pay the state more than $82,000 for having a public employee chauffeur his wife, after his Republican challenger, Christopher Callaghan, asked the Albany County District Attorney’s office to investigate.
2006: As a part of the commemorative events marking 65 years since the tragedy at Babi Yar this evening’s special exhibits will be displayed in the Ukrainian House Arts Palace. “No Child’s Play,” organized by Yad Vashem, and “Forewarning the Future,” organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine, the Babi Yar Memory Foundation, and the Department of Culture of Kiev, will be opened by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
2007: Erev Sukkoth, 5769 in Cedar Rapids begins with a Sukkoth Potluck Dinner followed by evening services at Temple Judah
2007: Barrages of Kassam rockets and mortar shells continued to rain down on the western Negev as violence heated up in the Gaza strip.
2007: Israeli spokesman Mark Regev and Doug Cassel, a defender of Mershiemer and Walt’s book on the power of the Jewish Lobby appeared on Worldview, Jerome McDonnell’s radio show on WBEZ in Chicago.
2007: Judge Fidler declared a mistrial because of a hung jury in Phil Spector’s first murder trial in the death of Lana Clarkson.
2008: Having survived a plane crash in Columbia, SC, DJ AM, (Adam Michael Goldstein) was released from the hospital today.
2008: Happy Birthday Deb: another year of making so much joy and happiness a reality including two blogs – This Day in Jewish History and Downhome Davar Torah.
2009 (8 Tishrei, 5770): The observance of Shabbat Shuvah or the Sabbath of the Return takes on an additional meaning as we “return” to where we were a year ago, celebrating the birthday of Deb Levin.
2009: Israeli maestro Dan Ettinger makes his Met debut on the podium as Mozart’s comic masterpiece, Le Nozze di Figaro, returns to the Met in New York City.
2009: Director Roman Polanski was taken into custody in Switzerland today on a 31-year-old U.S. arrest warrant, organizers of the Zurich Film Festival said. Polanski had traveled to Switzerland to receive an award for his lifetime of work as a director. He was arrested in relation to a 1978 U.S. request, without specifying. Polanski fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. The 76-year-old French-born director, who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland, won an Oscar for directing the 2002 Holocaust movie The Pianist.
2010: Rich Recht Concert & Sukkot Celebration are scheduled to take place at Temple B’nai Shalom in Fairfax Station, VA.
2010: Family and friends join in celebrating the birthday of Deb Levin, an Ayish Chayel in the truest sense of the word. Not only does she make the best Kosher pizza on either side of the Mississippi River she is also for all of the technology related to two blogs – This Day…In Jewish History and Weekly Torah Reading / Weekly Torah Portion.
2010: “Last Gasps of the Morton D. May House” a slide show about this edifice designed by Samuel Marx was delivered today.
http://andrewraimist.com/2010_09_01_archive.html
2010: The creator of This Day…In Jewish History is scheduled to be interviewed on the South African radio station Chaifm by Ronnie Mink starting at 6 pm Johannesburg time, 11 am Cedar Rapids time. The interview can be heard by streaming audio at http://www.chaifm.com/
2010: The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including To the End of the Land by David Grossman and Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future by Robert Reich.
2010(18th of Tishrei, 5771): Eighty-four-year-old investment manager and philanthropist Stanely Cahis, whose reputation was besmirched as a result of the Bernard Madoff Scandal passed away today. (As reported by Barry Meier)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/business/28chais.html
2011: Na terapiji the Slovenian version of the Israeli hit television show BeTipul premiered on POP Brio today.
2011: Memorial services sponsored by the Lo Tishkach Foundation are scheduled to be held in Brovary, Ukraine, to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of the Jews there during World War II.
2011: Israeli violinist Misha Vitenson is scheduled to join pianist Michael Brown and the Jupiter musicians in a performance of chamber music at Good Shepherd Church in NYC.
2011: Overcoming health challenges that would sideline a lesser individual, Deb Levin celebrates her birthday by preparing for the community celebration of Rosh Hashanah. In addition to all of her culinary skills, Deb is the creator of the architecture that makes possible This Day…In Jewish History and Weekly Torah Reading / Weekly Torah Portion.
2011(27th of Elul, 5771): Eighty-one-year-old Academy Award nominated screenwriter David Zelag Goodman passed away today. (As reported Daniel E. Slotnik)
2011: President Shimon Peres said today that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is the best Palestinian leader Israel could work with toward the goal of resuming the peace process
2011: An Israeli government committee established to respond to this summer’s protests recommended expanding social welfare spending by $8 billion over five years., according to The Jerusalem Post. “There is no news for the people of Israel, who will wake up in the morning and continue paying for the expensive cost of living.”
2012(10th of Tishrei, 5773): Yom Kippur
2012(10th of Tishrei, 5773): Eighty-three-year-old Sam Steiger, the New York native “who transformed himself into a Western rancher and served five terms in the House as a Republican from Arizona” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)
2012: When Illan Kaplan leads the “Downstairs Minyan” at Temple Judah, it will mark the continuation a more than century old tradition that began with Beth Jacob, the original synagogue in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2012: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left hours after the end of Yom Kippur tonight for New York to address the United Nations where he pledged to give a fitting response to Iran’s desire to “sentence us to death.”
2012: “While most Israelis had the day off on Yom Kippur, Magen David Adom paramedics had a busy day, treating 2,334 people across the country for a variety of ailments.”
2012: Friends and family will have to wait until after sundown to eat cake as part of the celebration of the birthday of Deb Levin, the “women of valor” whose contributions include being the driving force behind the Traditional Shabbat Minyan and the techie responsible for This Day…In Jewish History and Weekly Torah Reading/Weekly Torah Portion http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
“Tzom Kal” as well as “G’mar Hatimah Tovah”
2013: Israeli video artist Tal Rosner is one of the collaborators helping to create “Fold Here” which is scheduled to open at Montclair University.
2013: El Al is scheduled to cancel all its flight to Eilat starting today “due to a mandated change in flight route that the company says require additional tests for safety reasons.” (As reported by Sharon Udasin)
2013(22nd of Tishrei, 5774): Shemini Atseret
2013(22nd of Tishrei, 5774): Eighty-three-year-old Massachusetts native Irving Warshawsky passed away in Michigan today after which he was buried at Pelham, N.H.
2013: Charles Krauthammer “received the William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence” today.
2013: This evening at the 6th & I Historic Synagogue Rabbi David Shneyer is scheduled to lead “Dancin’ in the Streets” A Simchat Torah Celebration
2013: Seventy-nine-year-old Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig issued a formal statement for the first time saying he will retire in January of 2015.
2013: “Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed today.”
2014(2nd of Tishrei, 5775): Second day of Rosh Hashanah
שנה טובה, כתיבה וחתימה טובה.
2014: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEB! Nothing would be possible without you!
2014: This evening, Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at Westbury Theatre.
2014: “Transparent” a web distributed comedy created by Jill Soloway and starring Jeffrey Tambor was broadcast for the first time today.
2014: On the second day of the Jewish New Year Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas showed that there is nothing new in his “bag of tricks” when he “railed against Israel’s “absolute war crimes” and “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and said he’d seek a UN resolution to end Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories.” “Abbas accused Israel of committing genocide in its recent conflict with terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, and said that Israel was not interested in living in peace with its Palestinian neighbors.”
2015: In Salem, OR, Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Historic Elsinore Theatre
2015: Ramat Gan is scheduled to host the Dov Porat Chess Festival.
2015: “Tens of thousands of Israelis hit the road today, heading for the country’s national parks and forests a full day before the Sukkot holiday begins with “favorite destinations in the north include the Agamon Hula Tourism Park in the Hula Valley, through which millions of migrating birds pass each year, and Biriya Forest in the Galilee.”
2015: Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to open its doors free of charge on today as part of Smithsonian magazine’s 10th annual Museum Day Live!
2016: “Rabin, the Last Day” is scheduled to be shown at the Cineworld at part of the Jewish Film Festival in the UK.
2016: “An Israeli gas consortium today signed what Israel called a “historic” $10 billion deal with the Jordan Electric Power Company to supply the Hashemite Kingdom with natural gas for 15 years
2016: Friends and family of Deb Levin, who does it all from making kosher Pizza from scratch to creating the architecture for This Day…In Jewish History, are scheduled to celebrate her natal day.
2016(23rd of Elul, 5761): Ninety-year-old movie director Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)
2016(23rd of Elul, 5761): Ninety-three-year-old comic actor Milt Moss passed away today.(As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)
2016(23rd of Elul, 5761): Yahrzeit of Daniel “Danny” Mark Lewin and all the others who died during the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Exception.”
2017: “Police in St. Gallen, Switzerland, met with 61-year-old actress Renate Langer today who accused “Roman Polanski of raping her in 1972 when she was 15.”
2017(6th of Tishrei, 5778): At Har Adar near Jerusalem, “a 37-year-old Palestinian gunman shot and killed 20 year old Solomon Gabrieh, 25 year old Or Arish and Youssef Ottman” while wounding one other person.
2017: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEB! Nothing would be possible without you!
2018: The photographic exhibition “The Storied Druze Village of Yanuh-Jat” which is part of the “Home Lens on Israel” series is scheduled to come an end at the Temple Emanuel Streicker Center.
2018: This evening in Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss Elizabeth Poliner’s novel As Close to Us as Breathing
2018(17th of Tishrei, 5779): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth
2018: Best Birthday wishes to Deb Levin who has done it all from feeding Kosher food to a Jewish presidential candidate, to organizing a Shabbat minyan that in fourteen years featured everything from a Kosher Pizza Kiddush to Sundaes on Saturday and so much more that it almost impossible to list everything in which she has made a difference.
2019: Sixty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Deb Levin. You missed it by one month and one day. So instead of singing Happy Birthday, we say Kaddish. See 2017 and all of those years before for the truth of the matter.
2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host an “on-line event, “Through the Eyes of a Witness: World War II Begins.”
2019: Stanford University is scheduled to host “Writing History, Writing Biography: Capturing H.G. Adler’s Many Worlds” during which “biographer and translator Peter Filkins discusses the intersection of biography and history in shaping the story of Adler’s life, who survived four concentration camps and went on to chronicle his experience in two dozen books.”
2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final two screenings of “Safe Spaces.”
2019: In Berkley, CA, St. John’s Presbyterian Church is scheduled to host “Magic, Transformation and Teshuvah” during which “Rabbi Jonathan Seidel discusses the traditions, spells and heritage of the Ba’alei Shem in Hasidic tradition.”
2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “All in the Family: Songs and Trios by the Schumanns and the Mendelssohns” during which “the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble (Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky, pianists) will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann’s birth by joining with Anna Elashvili (violin), Andrew Janss (cello) and Pavel Sulyandziga (tenor) to present an evening of Songs and Trios from Clara and Robert Schumann and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn.
2020: Due to nationwide Pandemic Lockdown “Hebrew-language media reports suggested that synagogues would in any case be closed for the Sabbath.”
2020: The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2020: The virtual theatrical presentation of “The Art of Forgiveness” is schedule to be presented by Jewish Women’s Theatre “one of the best live theatre groups on the west side of Los Angeles.”
2020: Anne Lamott, “the Marin author is scheduled to read from her forthcoming book “Dusk Night Dawn” and speaks with Chochmat HaLev teacher Jhos Singer about the hills and valleys of the spiritual path.:
2020: Sixty-sixth anniversary of the birth Deb Levin Z”L who would have appreciated the irony that her birthday falls on “The Sabbath of Return”
2020(8th of Tishrei, 5781): Parashat Ha’Azinu; Shabbat Shuva;
2021: KlezCalifornia and Congregation HaLev are scheduled to present “Yiddish-klezmer choreographer-dancer Steve Weintraub teaching “how to express love and joy in a Jewish way” for Simchat Torah.
2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including More Than I Love My Life, a novel by David Grossman and the recently released paperback editions of Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman and Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker by Barry Sonnenfeld.
2021: The Addison-Penzak JCC is scheduled to host a gathering that includes lulav-etrog stations, arts, crafts storytelling (in Russian, English and Hebrew) and unveiling of new community mural.
2021: Sixty-seventh anniversary of the birth of Deb Levin Z”L who is missed more than ever.
2021(20th of Tishrei, 5782): Sixth Day of Sukkoth
2022(1st of Tishrei, 5783): Rosh Hashanah
2022: In one of those supreme ironies, the anniversary of the birth of Deb Levin Z”L falls on Rosh Hashanah
2022: Kanisse: A Modern Sephardic + Mizrahi Community is scheduled to present “Multicultural High Holiday Services” @ Pier 57 57 Hudson River Greenway (at 15th Street), New York, NY.
2023: Anniversary of the birth of Deb Levin, Z”L who left a whole that is still not filled.
2023: In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, JTA is scheduled to host for “The Yom Kippur War: 50 Years Later,” a conversation with expert Matti Friedman, author of Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai and JTA Senior Reporter Andrew Lapin.
2023: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a conversation between broadcast journalist Gayle King and America’s first Black female billionaire, Sheila Johnson, author of the memoir Walk Through Fire.
2024: The opening of Healing Measures, a powerful installation by Israel artist Hadassa Goldvicht, JCCMW?s artist in residence is scheduled to take place today.
2024: Seventieth anniversary of the birth of Deb Levin who will always be loved and remembered.
2024: JWA is scheduled to host a book talk with Temim Fruchter author of City of Laughter.
2024: Today, via zoom Meir “Soloveichik and Joseph Dweck, the senior rabbi of London’s Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, are scheduled to speak with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver about the divergences in Jewish traditions—Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, Mizrahi, and others—and why they matter.”
2024: Rebecca Kobrin,the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, the co-director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and a member of the Task Force on Antisemitism is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “JDC and the Power of Female Diplomacy: The Life and Leadership of Laura Margolis and Olga Feinberg, 1939-1949.”
2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a lecture by Trudy Gold on “The Jews and the Crisis of Modernity.”
2024: As September 26th 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 357 in captivity. (Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time)
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