This Day, July 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
July 23
501: A violent
earthquake hit Eretz Yisrael during which the town of Akko was totally
destroyed.
636: Following
the Battle of Yarmuk Arabs took control of most of Eretz Yisrael from the
Byzantine Empire.
1253: The Jews
were expelled from Vienne, France by order of Pope Innocent III
1263: The
“Barcelona Disputation” – a debate between Pablo Christiani, “a converted Jew”
and Moses ben Nachman ordered by King James of Aragon continued for a third
day.
1298(13th of
Av): Massacre of the Jews of Wurzburg, Germany.
1312: King
Frederick II order today that in Palermo Jews must live outside the city wall
in a ghetto; and although they were soon afterward allowed to come into the
city, they were still compelled to live in one quarter.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=30&letter=P#ixzz0XGOjHmG8
1401: In San
Miniato, Tuscany, the condottiero Muzio Sforza and Lucia da Torsano gave birth
to Francisco Sforza of Milan, the founder of the Sforza dynasty who in 1452
“defied Pope Pious II’s order to tax the Jews of the duchy one-fifth of the
value of their possessions in order to finance the crusade against the Turks.”
1588: The
English fleet foiled the attempt of the Armada to establish a base off the Isle
Wight from which the Spanish could invade the British Isles.
1626:
Birthdate (on the secular calendar) of Sabbatai Zevi, the most famous of the
Jewish false messiahs. He died in 1676 after converting to Islam and becoming a
low-level official in the Turkish government.
1649:
Birthdate of Giovanni Francesco Albani, the future Clement XI who in1704 issued
a bull that “dealt with the education of potential converts, encouraged forced
preaching to Jews, and emphasized the importance of providing financial
assistance to Jews who converted” and “asserted that new converts were to be
fully accepted into the Catholic community.”
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Conversion
1666(os):
Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, under whose leadership a
group of Sephardic Jews migrated to Suriname in 1652 and “settled in the
Jodensavanne area” passed away today. (Editor’s Note – I have not been able to
find out why this English Lord helped the Jews find safe haven but hopefully
somebody else has and will share his with me)
1679: Las Excelencias y Calunias de los Hebreos in which Isaac
(Fernando) Cardoso a Jewish physician, philosopher, and polemic writer defended
his co-religionist appeared in Amsterdam.
1713: Rabbi
Tzvi Hirsch ben Yaakov Ashkenazi placed Nehemiah Chiya Chayun under the ban,
because the investigating committee appointed by the Sephardic directorate had
not yet made its report. In consequence of this measure, both Ashkenazi and
Moses Chagiz were subjected to street attacks, more particularly at the hands
of the Portuguese, who threatened to kill them. In the midst of the constantly
increasing bitterness and animosity, the report of the committee, which had
been prepared by Solomon Ayllon, Chacham of the Portuguese congregation, alone,
was publicly announced. It was to the effect that the writings of Chayun
contained nothing which could be construed as offensive to Judaism. It was
publicly announced in the synagogue that Chayun was to be exonerated from every
suspicion of heresy.
1729:
Middlesex, England born Captain Mordecai Abraham married Sarah Levy today in
Londo after which they gave birth to “at least 3 sons and 4 daughters.”
1741: Potash
manufacturer and candle maker Moses Lopez, the Portuguese born son of Diego
Jose Lopez and he husband of Rebecca Rivera who had been naturalized in New
York City in 1740 “was made a freeman” today.
1763: Isaac
Elizer, a Newport, RI merchant and the husband of Richa Isaacs “was naturalized
today in New York City.
1768(9th
of Av, 5528): Shabbat Chatzon; erev Tish’a B’Av
1768(9th of
Av): Rabbi Isaac Spitz, author of Birkat Yizhak passed away.
1769: Today, Berlin
born Ezekiel Solomon, who “helped raise funds for Shearith Israel Congregation
in Montreal and who was the brother of
Esther (Solomon) Hart married Elizabeth
Dubois today in Montreal after which they had five children – “Samuel Solomon, Joseph Solomon, Ezekiel
Solomon Jr, Guillaume Solomon and Elizabeth (Solomon) Davenport.”
1774(15th
of Av, 5534): Parashat Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu; Tu B’Av observered for the
last time before the first meeting of the First Continental Congress and for
the last time before the 13 Colonies rebelled against the British.
1784: Today
George Washington wrote to William Fitzhugh introducing him to “Mark Prager,
Sr., a member of the Jewish mercantile family that came to Philadelphia shortly
after the Revolution”
1787: The Jews
of Austria were required to take family names.
1792: In
Surinam, Eleazar Lyons and his wife gave give birth to Catherine Lyons the wife
of Philadelphian Jacob Moss.
1784: Today,
George Washington wrote to William Fitzhugh introducing him “Mark Prager, Sr. a
member of the Jewish mercantile family who came to Philadelphia shortly after
the Revolution” recommending Prager to him as “a Gentleman who is very
extensively engaged in Trade, & a partner in several very capital Houses in
Europe.”
1792:
Birthdate of Surinam native Mordecai Lyons, the son of Eleazar Lyons and
husband of May Bausman.
1803(15th
of Av, 5564): Tu B’A
1803:
Birthdate of Benzion Judah Ben Eliahu Berkowitz, the Russian author whose texts
dealt with the “Targum Onkelos’ (the Aramaic translation of the TaNaCh)
1806(11th
of Av, 5566): Parasaht Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu
1806:
Birthdate of Colonel Charles Stoddard, the British Diplomat whom Joseph Wolff,
the son of a Rabbi and convert to Christianity was sent to rescue from Emir in
Bukhara in 1843 – a mission doomed to failure since unbeknownst to the English,
Stoddard had already been murdered in 1842.
1806:
Following the issuance of a decree i by Napoleon, a special assembly of Jewish
leaders and Rabbis from all of the different French departments, today met in
Paris to discuss all outstanding matters including answering questions dealing
with accusations against the Jews made by the anti-Semites and which would fulfill the Emperor’s desire “to make Jews equal citizens in France, have a
conciliation between their religion and their responsibilities in becoming
French, and to answer all the accusations made against them” since he
wanted “all people living in France to
be equal citizens and benefit from our laws.”
1806: In Lorraine, France, Baruch Guggenheim,
the son of Sara and Jacob Wolff Guggenheim and his wife “Rosel Rosette Rosele
Guggenheim” gave birth to Jacob Guggenheim
1809(10th of Av, 5569): Tish’a
B’Av observed as the British under Wellington prepare to face the French Army
in Spain during the Peninsula Campaign.
1810: Gershom Seixas wrote a letter today to
Hannah Adams,of the in which he answered some of queries of the Jews which
appear to have been part of her research
for her 1812 work The History of the Jews from the Destruction of the
Temple to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
1812: Mordecai Lyons, the Surinam born son of
Eleazar Lyons, married May Bausman today in Baltimore on his twentieth
birthday.
1811(2nd
of Av, 5571): Abraham Abrahamson, medalist and “the master of the Prussian
mint” whose medals included one he created commemorating the Enfranchisement of
the Jews in Westphalia passed away today.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/620-abrahamson-abraham
1823(15th
of Av, 5583): Tu B’Av, “the Jewish day of love” observed ironically on the birthdate
of Coventry Patmore, the author of The Angel in the House, “a narrative
poem about the Victorian ideal of a happy marriage.”
1825(8th
of Av, 5585): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon; Erev Tish’a B’Av
1825:
Birthdate of Daniel Osiris, the Bordeaux native known as a philanthropist and
patron of the arts who “has had reproduced in bronze the colossal statue of
“Moses” by Michelangelo; and he is the possessor of the original
drawing for the well-known etching “Jews at the Wailing Place,” by
Alphonse Masson.”
1825: In
Bonfeld, Germany, Judith Jacobs and Samuel Ottenheimer gave birth to Jette
Ottenheimer, the wife of Simo Marx and the mother of Elias and Lazarus Marx.
1826(18th
of Tammuz, 5586): Tzom Tammuz
1826: One day
after she had passed away, Julia Salomons, the three year old daughter of
Barent and Rose Salomons was laid to rest today in the United Kingdom.
1830: In the
Hague, Leonardus Levy Abraham Verver, the Amster born son of Abraham Salomon /
Shabtay Cohen Kloot and Marretje / Mata Mozes Tokie and his wife Caroline Elkan
gave birth to Eva Verveer
1832:
Birthdate of violinist Adolph Pollitzer the native of Budapest who “became
leader at Her Majesty’s Theatre under Sir Michael Costa and also led the new
Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Choral Society.”
1833(7th
of Av, 5593): Rechli Lwow the wife of David ha-Levi Spitz passed away today.
1834:
Frederick David Goldsmid married Caroline Samuel in the Great Synagogue today.
1837(20th
of Tammuz, 5597): Eighty-three-year-old Acher Ascher, a native of Minsk who was
the husband of Gitlé Loëw passed away in Karlsruhe.
1839:
Birthdate of Simon Sterne, the Philadelphia born New York lawyer whose clients
included the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad Company and whose civic
endeavors included taking a leading role in overthrowing the “Tweed Ring.”
1843: In
Bavaria, future Bostonian Therese Weil, the daughter of Moses Bruell and Hanna
(Hannka) Bruell and her husband Jacob Weil gave birth to future Brooklyn
resident Maximillian “Max” Weil the husband of Gertrude Weill and the “father
of Hilda Irma Taussig; Mabel Williams Goldberg and Emma Cone.:
1846: “The
Montefiore Baronetcy, of East Cliff Lodge in the Isle of Thanet and County of
Kent, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom today for the banker
and philosopher Moses Montefiore in recognition of his services to humanitarian
causes on behalf of the Jewish people. He was childless and the title became
extinct on his death in 1885.”
1846: Rabbi
Isaac Meyer Wise arrives in New York from Europe.
1847: Prussian
Jews were granted equality.
1852: In
Philadelphia, Judith Simha Cohen, the Wilmington, DE born daughter of Charity
and Jacob da Silva Solis and her husband Myer David Cohen gave birth to Zitella
Esther Cohen.
1854(27th of
Tammuz, 5614): Engraver and artist Leopold Dick who was “appointed professor of
the art of engraving at the Royal District Industrial School of Kaiserslautern
in the Palatinate” in 1848 passed away today.
1855(8th
of 5615): Erev Tish’a B’Av observed as the Allies prepared for their sixth and
final bombardment of Sevastopol during the Crimean War.
1856: In
Norwich England, dance teacher Adelaide (née Soman) Klein and Herman Klein,
Latvian born Jew who “became a professor of foreign languages at the King
Edward VI Grammar School” gave birth to “English music critic, author and
teacher Herman Klein, the brother of Charles and Manuel Klein and the father of
“writer Denise Robins.”
1857: The
resignation of Baron Rothschild was announced today and a new writ was
published in London calling for an election to choose his successor. In London,
the electors responded by holding a public meeting in which they pledged to
return Rothschild to Parliament as their representative. They also passed a resolution calling the
government to do everything in its power to immediately settle the Jewish
question
1858: Passage
of the Oaths and Jewish Relief Acts in Great Britain. The act allowed each
House to decide the wording for the oath of office. It allowed Jewish office holders not to have
recited the words, “I make this declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian.
For the full text of the oath see: http://books.google.com/books?id=52INAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA531&lpg=PA531&dq=Oaths+and+Jewish+Relief+Acts+in+Great+Britain&source=bl&ots=uqsqgiu8t-&sig=vPWUAn-B9_B3E9pCbleZBi9SdsE&hl=en&ei=qbpITKi2CobmsQOo8_VI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
1860: A review
of Life in the Desert; or Recollections of Travel in Asia and Africa by
Colonel L. Du Couret, entitled “Asiatic Exploration.; The Journey of Du Couret
through the Arabian Desert” reports that “in the heart of Arabia, our traveler
found a considerable number of Jews, whose social condition seems to have been
even worse than their political state, which, in itself, is bad enough. More
Jews are found at Doan, a populous place, some leagues further on the route to
the eastward. “Many of these Jews,” says Du Couret,, “are
brokers, and some of them make a living by the manufacture of buskins and palm
leaf mats. They also lend out money at usurious interest to merchants trading
to Sana, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; but they carefully avoid any
display of wealth, to save themselves from the extortion of the Mussulmans, who
exact tribute from them. Such, under the rod of the Islam, are the modern
descendants of the prophet Isaiah and of King Solomon.” There is something
unpleasantly suggestive in the following passage from our author’s narrative:
“Doan, which is, in all probability, the Dan spoken of by Ezekiel, is, at
the present day, one of the largest and most important towns in Hadramaut,
ranking next after Schibam and Terim.”
1861: Louis
Manly Emanuel, the London born son of Manly and Hannah Emanuel who graduated
from the University of Pennsylvania as a Medical Doctor in 1860 began serving
as the Eighty-Second Regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War.
1862: Jacob
and Amalia Nathansohn Freud gave birth to Pauline Regine (Pauli), a sister of
Sigmund Freud who was deported to Treblinka in 1942.
1862: “Escape
of Mr. W.H. Hurlbert from Richmond” published today described the
year-long Southern sojourn of Charleston born author William Hurlbert, a Union
sympathizer who claimed that he visited the Richmond at the invitation of Judah
P. Benjamin, “the eminent Jew” with whom he found himself in total
disagreement. Hurlbert then visited
Charleston where he was seized by a mob that refused Secretary Benjamin’s order
to set him free. Hurlbert was then
imprisoned in Richmond over the objections of Secretary Benjamin where he
languished for almost a year before escaping.
[Editor’s note – For those trying to figure how much credence to give
Hurlbert’s account consider the following.
He was in Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign and later reported that
the Confederate forces
numbered between 80,000 and 90,000 (wildly exaggerated) most of whom
were facing Union General Fitz Jon
Porter (accurate) which means that had General McClellan pushed forward he would have
Richmond virtually unoccupied (accurate)]
1863: During
the Civil War Edward Tausig entered the U.S. Naval Academy.
1864(19th
of Tammuz, 5624): Parashat Tammuz observed on the same that the Confederates
defeated the Union forces at Kernstown, VA opening the way for the final Rebel
foray north of the Potomac River which would end at Fort Stephens at the edge
of Washington, D.C.
1869(15th
of Av, 5629): Tu B’Av observed for the first time during the Presidency of U.S.
Grant.
1870:
Birthdate of David Alter, the native of Austria and “publisher of Jewish weekly
magazines in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Youngstown and Toledo” who passed away in
Pittsburgh, PA.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/12/14/87565672.pdf
1871: In
Baltimore, MD, “Meyer and Rosa (Meyer) Hollander gave birth Jacob Harry
Hollander who became a “full professor” at his at alma mater Johns Hopkins and
who was the husband of “Theresa Gutman Hutzler” with he had three children –
Rosamund, David and Berthat.
http://jewishmuseummd.org/2010/09/ms-2-the-jacob-h-hollander-papers/
1872: W.P.
Wood and a Jew from Baltimore named Blumenberg are scheduled to arrive in
Raleigh, North Carolina tonight. The two
men have reportedly been sent to North Carolina by the Liberal Republican
Committee in an attempt to carry out a Tammany style ballot box stuffing. Wood has been given $9,000 for his part in
the scheme. Blumenberg, who has served
two years in the State Prison for Perjury was given $7,000.
1872: E.A.
Rosenbluth wrote a letter to the New York
Times in which he declared that he “and all my Jewish acquaintances” “will
vote for” General Grant.
1873: Five
days after he had passed away, seventy-five year Sir David Salomons, the son of
Levy Salomons and Matilda de Metz and “first Jewish Sherriff of the City of
London who also served as Lord Mayor of London was buried today at the West Ham
Jewish Cemetery.
1873:
Australian native Martha May (Levy) Cohen and Louis Samuel Cohen gave birth to
Harold Leopold Wolfe Cohen
1873:
Birthdate of Russian born NYU Law School graduate Alice Petluck, “the first
woman lawyer to practice in the Federal District Court in the Southern District
of New York and the first of her sex to argue a case in the Appellate Division,
First Department who co-founded the Bronx Women’s Bar Association after the
Bronx Bar Associated rejected her “because she was a woman and who was the
husband of Dr. Joseph Petluck with whom she had three children – Charles, Ann
and Robert – all of whom became lawyers.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/12/11/92769131.pdf
1874: It was
reported today that as soon as $160,000 can be raised for a new Hebrew
Theological College will be built in Cincinnati. The late Emanuel Deutsch was the leading
candidate to head the school but since his demise, Dr. Wise has renewed his
efforts to obtain the services of the best available scholar to lead the
effort. The school is to be so amply
endowed that students will not have to pay tuition or fees. Henry Mack has been elected to serve as
President of the Board of Governors.
1874: Melissa
Rogers Pinner and Moritz Pinner gave birth to Rogers Adolphe Pinner, a senior
partner of the Mutual Electric Company
1874(9th of
Av, 5634):Tish’a B’Av
1875: In
Moscow, Anna Brook and Samuel Danielson gave birth to pianist Jacques Danielson
who in 1892 came to the United States where he pursued his career, taught at
the New York College of Music and married Fannie Hurst in 1915.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/03/04/84243384.html?pageNumber=27
1876: A
reported published today described the scene witnessed by a group of “Cook
pilgrims” when they visited the “The Wailing Place of the Jews on the west side
of the Temple enclosure” in Jerusalem. The Jews come to the Wall where they can
touch the stones (which the writer erroneously believed were from the times of
King Solomon) and read from Lamentations and Psalms “in a wailing voice.” The
Jews “occasionally cry aloud in a chorus of lamentation, weeping. Blowing their
longs notes with blue cotton handkerchiefs” while “kissing the stones” worn
smooth “owing to centuries of osculation.”
1877: Three
days after she had passed away, Ann Isaacs, the widow of Samuel Isaacs was
buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.
1877: In
Manchester, England, “James David and Amelia Marsden Glass” gave birth NYU
trained attorney Montague Marsden Glass, the husband of the former Caroline
Patterson and the father of James and Elizabeth Mary Glass who was the “creator
of ‘Potash and Perlmutter’ and author of many other Jewish characters and
scenes.”
1879: In
Vitebsk, which was then part of Russia, Israel Mordecai Strunsky and Pearl
Schweistein gave birth to Simeon Strunsky, the graduate of Horace Mann High
School and Columbia College who served as a contributor in history to the Encyclopedia
Americana and “editor on the staff of the New International Encyclopedia
before joining the New York Times
where his most notable contributions were his editorial-page essays titled
“Topics of the Times.”
1879: Mr.
Austin Corbin told a TIMES reporter today that he had received numerous letters
from “nice people” approving the course he had taken in relation to
the Jews and urging him to persevere. He refused to permit copies to be taken
for publication, on the plea that the matter had had enough notoriety, and he
wished to let it die out.
1879:
Birthdate of German archaeologist Ernest Herzfeld who contended that structure
currently identified as Queen Esther’s tomb “may actually belong to Shushan
Dokht, the Jewish queen of King Yazdagerd I (ca. 399-420 CE), who is credited
with securing permission for Jews to live in Hamadan.
1879: It was
reported today that “A Berlin dispatch to the Pall Mall Gazette says: ‘Germany
has declined to entertain any proposals from the Roumania for the modification
of the provisions of the treaty of Berlin relative to the emancipation of the
Jews.’”
1879: In
Vitebsk, Israel Mordecai Strunsky and Pearly Schweistein gave birth to Simeon
Strunsky who came to the United States in 1887 and graduated from Columbia in
1900 after which he became an instructor in history and English for the
Educational League and the contributor to and/or editor of several publications
including the New International Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana.
1880(15th
of Av, 5640): Tu B’Av celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of
Rutherford B. Hayes.
1881: In
Loeben, Austria, Haim and Golda (Jassy) Alter gave birth to University of
Pittsburgh trained Chemical Engineer David Alter, the husband of Sadie
Silberstein, who was the “owner and publisher of the Jewish Criterion and the
owner and publisher of Jewish Times of Baltimore, MD and Washington, D.C. and
the Jewish Times of Florida.
1882(7th
of Av, 5642): Elizabeth Cohen, the Leiden born daughter of Emanuel Levie
Goldsmith and Alijda Joseph Joel Goldsmith and the wife of Moses S. Cohen
passed away today in New York city.
1882: “The
Jews and Wagner” published today expressed bewilderment at the German
composer’s expression of disdain for Jews.
According to the author, it was an un-named Jew who gave him his first
piano. And Giacomo Meyerbeer, the
German-Jewish composer, was the “first men who helped him.” Wagner claims that
the Jews of Vienna have conspired to harm his career, but his three most noted
critics –Hanslick, Scheel and Speidl- are Viennese Catholics.
1883: Today twenty-nine Jews of Trinidad,
Colorado met in the home of Sol Jaffe to organize a synagogue. They adopted the
name of Congregation Aaron in honor of the Jaffe brothers’ (Sol, Henry, and
Samuel) father. Samuel Jaffe, who became Trinidad’s first mayor, was chosen
vice-president. In 1889, Rabbi Leopold Freudenthal, became the congregation’s
second rabbi and served until his death in 1916. He gradually introduced
moderate Reform Judaism. In addition to Jews from Trinidad,…
1884(1st
of Ave, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Av
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Warner
1884: Robert
Pinkerton, whose detectives had arrested Mrs. Fredericka Mandelbaum yesterday,
described what he said was her 25-year career as the “most successful…receiver
of stolen goods – silks, diamonds” and other “swag” from burglars” that had
brought her to the attention of law enforcement officers throughout the United
States. (Mandelbaum was Jewish; Pinkerton was not)
1885: Sixty-three-year-old
President U.S. Grant and the General who saved the Union passed away today.
While some brand hi an anti-Semite for issuing General Order 11, such was not
the case. Grant had many prominent
Jewish supporters including the Seligmans. The vast majority of Jews voted for
Grant when he ran for President and while President he contributed to Adas
Israel and attended the dedication of the congregation’s new sanctuary. For a complete, highly readable description
of Grant’s relationship with the Jewish people see When General Grant
Expelled the Jews by Jonathan Sarna
1885: In
Cleveland OH, Herman and Sarah Fox Bubis gave birth to Ohio Wesleyan trained
gynecologist and obstetrician Jacob Louis Bubis, the husband of Etta A. Finke
Bubis.
1886 In New
York City, Rachel “Ray” Lipsietz Haddas and Max Feidelson, the son of Yaakov
Feidelson gave birth to University of
George trained attorney Charles N. Fieldseon, the special assistant at the
Department of Labor and William and Mary faculty member who was the husband of
Adeline Brady Falk and the father of Charles and David Feidelson
1887(2nd
of Av, 5647): Parashat Matot-Masei
1887(2nd
of Av, 5647): Russian born Hebraist David Moses Mitzkun the author of Kinnor David” passed away today
in Wilna.
1888(15th
of Av, 5648):Tu B’Av observed for the last time during the first presidency of
Grover Cleveland. (Editor’s note – Cleveland was the only President two serve
two non-consecutive terms in the White House.)
1889(24th
of Tammuz, 5649): Miss Openheimer, an 18-year-old Jewess who was the daughter
of well-known Pittsburgh clothing merchant, died today at Harmony, PA when a
horse-drawn wagon in which she was riding collided with a train. Miss Oppenheimer was vacationing in Butler Country. Her brothers and father who were in Atlantic
City have not heard about the tragedy.
1890: Plans
for the upcoming festival intended to raise funds for the Home for Aged and
Infirm Hebrews sponsored by the B’nai Brith were published today.
1890: In memory of Mrs. Stern, Isaac Stern is
paying all of the expenses related to today’s excursion sponsored by the
Sanitarium for Hebrew Children for enjoyment of impoverished Jewish youngsters
and their mothers.
1890: “The
Cloakmakers’ Strike” published today described the violent labor confrontation
between manufacturers and the workers who were led by Joseph Barondess
1891:
Birthdate of movie mogul Harry Cohn, the son of Russian Jewish tailor, who quit
school and found work in vaudeville. He began working in the infant motion
picture industry in 1913. He founded Columbia Pictures where, as a producer he
won an Academy Award in 1934 for It Happened One Night. Cohn was noted for his
vulgarism and bizarre quotes. One of his most famous was, “Give me two
years and I will make her an overnight success.” Cohn was one of several
Jews who dominated the film industry in its early years. The interesting thing
is that they did not make Jewish movies or movies about Jews. They gained
success by giving the audiences slices of Americana. The created, or at least
nurtured a vision of America that Middle America wanted to see. He passed away
in 1958.
1891: In
Philadelphia, PA, the Jewish Alliance of American presented its plan of action
for dealing with the immigration of Russian Jews.
1892: “Reacting to claims that Jews don’t
really murder Christians to get their blood, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, carries an
article stating: ‘Unfortunately, although they tried to deny that the Talmud’s
followers commit such an atrocious act, one cannot reasonably deny its
existence.’”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/05/15/90594356.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1892: During the Homestead Steel Strike anarchist Alexander
Berkman failed in his attempt to assassinate steel magnate Henry Clay Frick.
Or
1892: The “first terrorist act in America,” as its perpetrator
described it, occurred today when Alexander Berkman, known as Sasha, a
20-year-old Russian immigrant outraged at the brutal suppression of the strike
at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead plant, burst into the office of Henry Clay Frick,
the plant’s manager, shot him twice, then tried to stab him. (As reported by
Elsa Dixler)
1893(10th
of Av, 5653): Tish’a B’Av observed the 9th of Av fell on Shabbat
1893(10th
of Av, 5653): Issac Burnheimer, a retired millionaire who was over the age of
80 and suffering from ill health passed away today at the Grand Union Hotel in
Saratoga Springs.
1893: “Victims
of the Czar’s Ukase” published today described the plight of Jewish refugees as
seen through the eyes of one family who arrived in the United States with only
seventeen dollars, eight of which they had to spend on rent and the rest was
spent on purchasing the necessities of life which have left them broke.
1894: Young
men “went among the audience selling copies…of The Arbeiter Freund, an
anarchist paper printed in Hebrew and published in London” before tonight’s
meeting of anarchists at Clarendon Hall.
1894: “What
Shall Royalties Do?” published today speculates on how Europe’s impecunious nobility
will support themselves and includes the possibility that someday, we may see
“a Hapsburg taken into partnership with a Rothschild.”
1894: One day
after he had passed away, 67 year old David Cohen was buried at the West Ham
Jewish Cemetery.
1894: Lizzie
Berus, a 17-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant from Paterson, NJ is to go on
trial in New York today on charges of having “procured diamonds by bogus check
from several jewelry firms in Upper Broadway.
1894: Police
are currently looking for George Patterson, the nephew of a prominent
Presbyterian minister, who is the husband of Lizzie Berus and thought to be the
mastermind behind a series of jewel robberies.
1895: As Wolf
Silverman sits in jail facings charges of fraud related to an insurance policy
purchased for his wife, the district attorney has also brought charges against
the woman known as “Jane Doe” who impersonated his wife when he bought the
policy and the insurance agent known as “Richard Roe” who sold the policy. It
is believed that Silverman is involved in a wider fraud ring that involves
several insurance companies and their employees.
1896: In
Laudenbach, Bavaria, Emil Worms, the son of Babbete and Gabriel Worms and his
wife Clara Worms gave birth to Jettchen Sondheim, the wife of New Yorker
Siegmund Sondheim.
1896: In
Avoyelles Parish, LA, Omega and Gustave Levy gave birth to Lucille Weil Levy
Bodenheimer the wife of Dr. Jacob Mahne Bodenheimer whom she married in New
Orleans in 1919.
1897: Mr. and
Mrs. Jacob Black, Russian Jews from Kiev who are 104 and 100 respectively were
awakened early this morning by a barking dog which is what saved them from
dying as their apartment at 184 Clinton Street went up in smoke.
1899: In
Haverhill, MA, founding of Beth Jacob which owns a cemetery on Merrimack Road.
1899: The
United Hebrew Charities acknowledged that it had collected $148.50 (with
contributions ranging from 50 cents to $25) to help settle a poor family that
had become chronic invalids from overwork in rural location where they can work
and take care of their children.
1899: The United Hebrew
Charities acknowledged that it had collected $148.50
1900: Today,
King Alexander I of Serbia, whose Jewish subjects were enjoying a new “breath
of freedom” thanks to the repeal of anti-Jewish restrictions in 1889, announced
his decision to marry his mistress; a marriage that would led to his
assassination and further destabilize the Balkans, the home to the start of WW
I.
1901: Seventy-seven-year-old Isaac Mautner, who
passed away yesterday was buried today in Bohemia
1902: Abraham and Shaindel Buchalter Nadler
gave birth to Gertrude Nadler, the wife of Harry Perlman whom she married in
1929.
1902: Mrs.
John M. Gitterman was the first to drink from the bronze fountain that was
presented today to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in
memory of her father, the late Simon Sterne.
1902(18th
of Tammuz, 5662): Twenty-year old Elsa Neumann, “the first woman to receive a
PhD in Physics from the University of Berlin passed away today.
1903: In
Louisville, KY, “Julius Handmaker and Agnes (Jacobstein) Handmaker gave birth
practicing attorney and law professor Herman Gilbert Handmaker, “a member of
the Kentucky State Legislature and B’nai B’rith who was married to Esther Marie
Jacobson in 1932.
1903 (28th
of Tammuz, 5663): Sixty-five-year-old British born author Benjamin Farjeon
passed away today.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1f1/farjeon-benjamin-leopold
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6025-farjeon-benjamin-l
1904(11th
of Av, 5664): Parshat Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu was observed on the same day
that “according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of
filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice cream and thereby invented the ice
cream cone. (Editor’s note – And what could be “comforting than a scoop or two
of your favorite delight in a sugar cone?)
1905: In
Rimbach, “Leopold Kahn, a mathematician and synagogue cantor” and his wife gave
birth to composer Erich Itor Kahn who with his wife Frida fled first to Paris
and then to United States where he founded the Albeneri Trio and became “a
performing member of the Bach Aria Group.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/06/86542554.pdf
1906(1st of
Av, 5666): Rosh Chodesh Av
1906:
University of Cincinnati graduate and HUC trained rabbi, Sidney Emanuel
Goldstein, the Marshall, TX born son of Jacob and Golda Goldstein married Susie
E. Sugarman today after which he went on to become a special lecturer at the
Jewish School of Social Work.
1907:
Birthdate of Cambridge, MA native and Harvard trained attorney Harold
Rosenwald, the husband of Betty Booth with whom he had three children who is
best known for his role in the prosecution of Louisiana political leader Huey
Long and the defense of Alger Hiss.
1907: George
W. Ochs opened “fourteenth annual assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society
tonight in Atlantic City with an address on immigration in which he
declared that “the wail that our
population is in danger of contamination and decadence by the infusion of
hundreds of thousands of Jews annually is a slander on the sturdiness of the
American character and preposterous in the light of history.”
1908: “Olcott
In a Play by His Wife” published today that Ragged Robin a play which is
scheduled to appear this autumn “includes five new songs by Manuel Klein,
composer of the music for the Hippodrome spectacles…”
1908: Dr.
Joseph Pedott of Chicago contribution $150.00 to the National Conference of
Jewish Charities.
1909: While
some Christian leaders took issue with the views expressed Dr. Eliot, the
President of Emeritus of Harvard on religion which they summarized as saying
all you to do is “love God and serve your fellow-man without regard to dogma”
Dr. Pereira Mendes, the rabbi of the Shearith Israel Congregation indicated in
a statement that “he was much interested in President Eliot’s views” because
“they corresponded with the spirit of Judaism.”
1910: Premiere
of “Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes” “a German drama film serial” starring
Paul Otto as” Arsène Lupin”
1911: Arthur
Welsh set one of his many records today when he was joined by a passenger “to
establish a new American two-man altitude record of 1,860 feet.”
1912(9th
of Av, 5672): Tish’a B’av
1912: In the
town of Moineşti, in the district of Bacău, the rav gaon Avraham Arie Leib
Rosen and his wife gave birth to Moses Rosen (David Moshe Rosen) the Rabbi (Rav
Kolel) of Romanian Jewry between 1948–1994 and president of the Federation of
Jewish Communities of Romania between 1964-1994 who led the community in his
country through the entire Communist era in Romania and continued in that role
after the restoration of the democracy by the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
1912:
Birthdate of Meyer Howard “Mike” Abrams, the son of Jewish immigrants, who
became a leading American literary critic.
1913(18th
of Tammuz, 5673): Chayim Hirsch Kahan, a fellow student of Professor Solomon
Schecter and “for the past 22 years, the rabbi of the Romanian Congregation in
Philadelphia” passed away today.
1913: Arabs
attacked the Jewish settlement of Rehovot.
1913:
Birthdate of “surrealist theorist and poet” Ghersaim Luca.
1914: In
Chicago, Fanny (Rozin) and Isidore Foreman gave birth screen writer and
producer Carl Foreman whose most famous work maybe “High Noon” the Gary Cooper
classic western that featured Grace Kelly in her first major film role.
1914: “The
first co-operative conference of Jewish farmers ever held in New York State”
came to an end today at Utica, NY.
1914:
Birthdate of Jana Klauberova, who at the age of 37 was deported from Prague to
Ujazdow where she was murdered.
1915:
“Governor Harris and members of the Georgia Prison Commission left” Atlanta
“tonight for Milledgeville where an inquiry will be begun tomorrow into the
attack made on Leo M. Frank at the State Prison Farm.”
1915: It was
reported today that Leo Ditrichstein has terminated his relationship with
director David Belasco.
1915: In
Chicago, Illinois, a Summer Course sponsored by Hebrew Union College came to an
end.
1915: In
Milledgeville, GA, the warden at the prison reportedly believes that J.W.
Creen, the convict who tried to kill Leo Frank, “is insane.”
1916(22nd
of Tammuz, 5676): Sergeant Evelyn Joseph, the son of Fred and Matilda Louise
Joseph was killed in action in Flanders while serving with the 14th
Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
1916: “An
announcement made at the Aeolian Building” tonight” stated that “the General
Fund Day collection conducted by the Provisional Executive Committee for
General Zionist Affairs” raised about $20,000 today which “will be used to help
build new settlements for Jews in Palestine.”
1917: During
WW I, “The special commission representing national Hebrew organizations, which
was selected to co-operate with the Food Administration” sent a letter “to the
proprietors of Jewish Summer hotels and boarding houses asking them carry out
instructions to be issued from time to time” concerning the “campaign for food
conversation.”
1917:
Birthdate of Buffalo, NY, native Leon Yochelson, the graduate of U. of Buffalo
Medical School, WW II Veteran who served as Chairman of the Psychiatric
Institute of Washington and chairman of the department of psychiatry at George
Washington University Medical School.
1917: “Jewish
Socialists for Free Palestine” published today described an appeal by members
of Poale Zion who had been expelled from Palestine by the Turks to the
“Socialist brethren in the United States and Russia” that put them “firmly on
the side of the Allies and against” the Central Powers because they believe
that “the dream of Zionism for an independent Palestine an come true” only if
the Allies are victorious.
1917: It was
reported today that Colonel Theodore President, the former President of the
United States, has sent a letter to Jacob de Haas, the Executive Secretary of
the Zionist Organization of America, expressing his support for a Jewish
Legion, saying that he wished them “all luck in the movement to enlist that
Jewish Legion for the war against Turkey, one of the features of which is the
recovery of Palestine for the Jews..”
1918:
Birthdate of Abraham (‘Appie’) Bueno de Mesquita, the Amsterdam born comedian
who survived the Holocaust.
1919: Two days
after she had passed away, 59 year old Mary Marcus was buried at the East Ham
Jewish Cemetery.
1919: Today in
Chicago, Violet Stern married Arthur Winter, “the son of Mr. and Mrs. S.
Winter.”
1920: The
Zionist Conference here, probably the most important gathering of Jews ever
held, concluded today with the election of United States Supreme Court Justice
Louis D. Brandeis as honorary President of the Zionist organization; Professor
Chaim Weizmann, President, and Nahum Sokolow, Chairman of the Executive
Committee.
1921: Twenty-nine-year-old Lester Lipman Farber
the Grodno, Russia born son of “Rabbi Eliezer Lipman and Chaya Gitel
(Berkowsky) Farber” who was the President of Congregation B’nai Zion and the
founder of the Talmud Torah in El Paso married Lillian D. Flaum today.
1922: In
Zurich, State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler, the New York born son
of Mary and Louis Frankenthaler and his wife Martha gave birth to Marjorie Iseman Josepha Seeman
Iseman.
1923: The
New York Times reviews volume 4 of The Life of Benjamin Disraeli; Earl
of Beaconsfield by George Earle Buckle which covers the years 1855 to 1868.
1924: Among
the passengers sailing today for Plymouth and Harve aboard the French liner
Paris are Brooklyn Municipal Court Judge Jacob S. Strahn and his wife who will
go on to Jerusalem to organize a Jewish life insurance company
1925: In a
conference today with General Lincoln C Andrews, head of the government’s dry
enforcement unit, Rabbi Horowitz of New York, who represents the Orthodox
community “expressed the hope that the new plan of prohibition enforcement
would not interfere in any way with the use of wines for sacramental purposes.”
1926: Fox Film bought the patents of the Movietone
sound system for recording sound onto film.
Sol M. Wurtzel was the producer responsible for Fox moving its
operations to California and for making this purchase. Following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Fox
would be purchased and become part of production giant 20th Century
Fox.
1926: Sixteen-year-old
Philadelphia native Harry Blitman, a left-handed featherweight, fought and won
his first professional bout today.
1926: In
Ellenville, NY, “Morris Heller and the former Yetta Shapiro, Russian Jewish
immigrants who had been settled there by the Jewish Agricultural (and
Industrial Aid) Society” gave birth to Isaac “Ike” Heller the toymaker and
co-founder of Remco. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1927(23rd
of Tammuz, 5687): Parasaht Matot
1927: The two
weeklong convention of the Palestine Jewish Labor Federation came to a close
tonight in Tel Aviv.
1928: In
Philadelphia, PA, “Philip Cooper, an electrical engineer, born in Vilnius,
Lithuania as Pesach Kobchefski” and Rose Applebaum, a native of Bessarabia who
worked for Bell Telephone Company gave birth to Vera Cooper who married Robert
Cooper in 1948 and who as Vera Rubin became a pioneer in the field of Astronomy
for which she has won numerous awards and is the Rubin in “the Rubin-Ford
Effect” and the Rubin in “Asteroid 5726 Rubin.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rubin-vera-cooper
http://home.dtm.ciw.edu/users/rubin/
1928: Birthdate of famed pianist, teacher and conductor, Leon Fleisher. Fleisher is doubly famous. When at the height of his successful career
as a pianist, he lost the ability to use his right hand. Fleisher then discovered a body of music
written for the left-hand and gained greater fame for this accomplishment.
1929: Thirty-four-year-old
Philip Sendak, the son of Israel and Bluma (Buszlyn) Sendak and the husband
Sadie (Schindler) Sendak who came to America from Poland in 1914 “became a
naturalized U.S. citizen” today.
1930:
Birthdate of French historian Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet whose interest
included Jewish history and who was an active opponent of Holocaust denier
Robert Faurisson.
1931(9th of
Av, 5691):Tish’a B’Av
1931: As the
Weimar Republic is crumbling and the Nazis are on the threshold of coming to
power, the London Conference during which “seven powers” had been discussing
the German economy came to a end without addressing any of the problems.
1932(19th
of Tammuz, 5692): Parashat Pinchas
1932: In
Manhattan, Isaac Sherman, a Ukrainian businessman, and the Lithuanian pianist
Nadia Reisenberg gave birth to radio broadcaster, author,
music critic for the New York times, and
educator Robert Sherman.
1932: While
living in Berlin, 18-year-old Hermann Pressman wrote in his diary today, “This
evening my dear father has telephoned us from Nordenei (sp). He told us that he
and my sister Sonia are doing just fine. My mother and I then went to a beer
restaurant which was pretty nice. There was a dance and music. The ladies were
nothing much to write home about.” (His father Zysia and his sister Sonia were
staying at Nordeneie, a German resort near the North Sea.)
1933: More
than twenty leaders of the extreme wing of the Zionist Revisionist party were
arrested today in various parts of the country, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv
and two Jewish villages, Kfarsaba and Kalmania, when the police simultaneously
raided houses in connection with the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, member of
the Jewish Agency Executive of Palestine. Dr Arslosoroff was killed while
walking on beach at Tel Aviv with his on June 16. This was no random killing since
Arslosoroff’s killer held a flashlight into his face, asked “Are you Dr.
Arslosoroff” and only fired the three fatal shots after the doctor had answered
in the affirmative.
1934: While
Hadassah was trying to determine the best site for a hospital in Palestine,
Hadassah’s two-man team of experts – Dr. Nathan Ratnoff and Dr. Jacob Golub,
“the director of New York’s Hospital for Joint Disease – sent a cable today
that they had “conclusively determined Scopus most suitable site.” (Editor’s
note – that is Scopus as in Mt. Scopus.)
1935: “There
has been a lull today in the more violent aspects of the persecution that had
so suddenly burst again upon the Jews of Germany” but it may be taken for granted that the lull
is merely temporary.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that a
British soldier was killed in an Arab ambush near Tulkarm. Arab attacks were
reported from Ein Harod and Kfar Yehezkel. Arabs celebrated the 100th day of
their insurrection with demonstrations, calls for prayer and donations. But the
Arab Nashashibi Party proposed that the Arab Higher Committee should resign as
a protest against the non-fulfillment of their promises and leave the people to
decide the fate of their prolonged general strike by themselves.
1936: Arab
terrorists threw a bomb at a small religious school (Talmud Torah) in the
Yemenite Quarter of Tel Aviv. Nine children were injured. One of the terrorists
was later caught by a British constable and arrested.
1936: Dr.
Joseph Tannenbaum of the American Jewish Congress addressed 600 delegates at
the Hotel New York telling them “that the anti-Nazi boycott has proven a
relentless grinding machine in which Hitlerism must turn to dust” and that the
American Jewish labor movement has aligned itself with the boycott”
1936: “The
Jewish newspaper Danziger Echo was
suspended for ten months today.
1936: The
British government officially declared that there would be no change of policy
in regard to the issue of Jewish immigration into Palestine until the Royal
Commission was able to visit the country, study the subject and publish its
findings. Britain expected that all Arab terrorist activities would stop before
the commission’s arrival in the country. The British were wrong. The violence
did not stop.
1937(15th
of Av, 5697): Tu B’Av
1937: “The
German Government today imposed a special tax on eligible males who fail to
serve in the military forces” which “will fall heavily on the Jews who are
disqualified from service.”
1938(24th
of Tammuz, 5698): Parashat Pinchas; shabbat Mevarchim Chodesh Av
1938(24th
of Tammuz, 5698): Joseph Backer, the St. Louis merchant, not the Dutch painter,
passed away today.
1938: Jews
in Germany are ordered to apply for identity cards to be shown to police on
demand.
1938: “The
Nazi purge of Jews in annexed Austria eliminated Herr Reinhardt, Salzburg’s
impreressario and conductors Walter and Toscanini from participating in the
Salzburg Festival which opened tonight for the first time under Nazi control.
1938:
Birthdate of Leon H. Charney, the Bayonne, NJ native and graduate of Yeshiva
University and Brooklyn Law School whose accomplishments included everything
from writing The Mystery of Kaddish to serving as “a back-channel peace
broker between Egypt and Israel.”
1939: In
Budapest, “a plan for the partial exchange of populations between Hungary and
the United States to solve this country’s “Jewish problem” was
reported today to be under consideration by the government” which in which
Hungary would send her Jews, numbering almost 400,000, to the United States “in
exchange for families of ‘Aryan’ Hungarians already established” in the United
States.
1940(17th
of Tammuz, 5700): Tzom Tammuz
1940:
Birthdate of Daniel Saul Goldin who was appointed as the 9th Administrator of
NASA by President Bush in 1992 and served under three different Presidents.
1940: Hans
Frank issues order revoking the autonomy of all Jewish, Ukrainian and Jewish
independent aid organizations in the General Government.
1941: In White
Russia an Einsatzkommando unit commander reported that some Jews were able to
‘escape into the surrounding forests and swamps’ because they “had managed to
organize a ‘signal service’ between villages” that warned of the approach of
the Nazi killing squads.
1942 (9th
of Av, 5702): Tisha B’Av
1942 (9th
of Av, 5702): Adam Czerniakow took his own life. Born in 1880, Czerniakow was
the leader of the Jewish council of Warsaw, the Judenrat. Czerniakow had held
the position for 3 years and kept a diary of over 1000 pages chronicling the
formation of the ghetto up to the beginning of the forced transports. The
Germans had ordered him to provide them with a list of names for deportation.
His response was a list of his own name written hundreds of times. The day
before his suicide, the Nazi officer in charge of the deportation procedure
threatened to shoot his wife if he didn’t cooperate. In his suicide note he
wrote “I am powerless, my heart trembles in sorrow and compassion. I can
no longer bear all this.”
1942 SS
Senior Colonel General Viktor Brack advises Heinrich Himmler that all healthy
Jews should be castrated or sterilized, and the remainder annihilated.
1942: The
German Foreign Minister, Von Ribbentrop, warned the Italian Chief of Staff,
that Italy should not resist efforts to deport the Jews of Croatia.
1942: The
Nazis opened the Treblinka Extermination Camp.
1942:
Deportation of Jews from Dobsina, Slovakia, to Auschwitz
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/11.asp
1943(20th
of Tammuz, 5703): Forty-year-old Salomon Sachs was murdered at Sobibor today.
1943(20th of Tammuz,
5703): Forty-year-old
Mandel Langer, a Jewish French partisan who was active as an anti-Nazi saboteur
since the end of 1942, is captured and executed in Toulouse, France.
1943: Colonel Josiah Clement Wedgwood, 1st
Baron Wedgwood, passed away. Swimming
against the establishment stream, he opposed the British decision to create an
Arab state east of the Jordan River, seeing it as a betrayal of promises to the
Zionists. He opposed the 1939 White
Paper on the same grounds.
1943: An urn containing the ashes of the
recently deceased German historian Bernheim who had lost his right to lecture
after losing his German citizenship due to the Nuremberg Laws was secretly
buried today by his “former colleagues” in the cemetery at Greifswald.
1944: Otto Armster, “a German military
intelligence-officer” who played a role in the July 20th plot to
kill Hitler was arrested by the Gestapo today, taken to Berlin and placed in
solitary confinement.
1944: Soviet
troops liberate the abandoned death camp at Majdanek, where about 500 inmates
are alive.
1944: Today, Stella
Levi, a native Ladino speaker and member of Centro Primo Levi NY’s Board of
Directors,her immediate family, and the entire Jewish community of Rhodes
(1,870 people) were deported to Auschwitz.
1944: The
Nazis deport 1700 Jews from Rhodes to Auschwitz “while the Italian authorities
who had governed the island from 1912 until 1943 idly stood by.”
http://www.jff.org.il/?CategoryID=1085&ArticleID=1562
1945: In what
was their first joint operation after having “resolved to against British rule”
a joint unit of Irgun and Lehi fighters, under the command of Yehoshua
Weinstein (Benyamin) blew up a railway bridge near the village of Yibne.”
(Jewish Virtual Library)
1945: “Prominent
Jewish figures in the civil and military life of the Soviet Union paid tribute
today to Shachno Epstein, executive-secretary of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee, who died on July 21st of a cerebral hemorrhage” (JTA)
1945(13th
of Av, 5705): Sixty-year-old Russian born Tufts College graduate Professor
Israel Pollock, one of the founders of the Hebrew Teachers College” in Boston
and the father of Mrs. Ann Shevach and Mrs. Eunice Kazis passed away tonight at
Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/07/25/88267201.pdf
1946: An Arab
mission arrived in Rome seeking “the Pope’s intervention” in finding a solution
for “the disagreements between Arabs and Jews in Palestine and to prevent the
arrival of …100,000 Jews” in Palestine.
1947: This
morning as “The Empire Lifeguard sat in the heavily guarded port of Haifa” a
bomb which the American crew had left aboard the ship “exploded below the
water” causing the ship to sink in the harbor.
1948(16th of
Tamuz, 5708): In Jerusalem, two more Israeli soldiers were killed by Arab
firing from Abu Tor.
1948: Arab
shelling from the village of Silwan damages the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
1948: The
possibility loomed today that the Israeli Government might conduct negotiations
with Soviet Russia for a supply of crude oil to be refined at Haifa.
1949(26th
of Tammuz, 5709): Parashat Matot –Masei
1949: Today, the
New Yorker magazine published an article by Liebling entitled
“Spotlight on the Jury” in which he opened by stating “The trial
of Alger Hiss, which produced some of the best and some of the worst newspaper
copy of our time” and concluded “This sort of thing obviously and
apparently lessens the chance of a fair trial next time. Perhaps the secrecy of
the jury room, like that of the voting booth, should be protected by law.”
1949: The
Turkish government authorized an Israeli, Victor Elyachar, to open an office in
Istanbul to answer questions about the new state of Israel. In October of the
same year, Elyachar was appointed Consul General of Israel at Turkey.
1950(9th
of Av, 5710): Tish’a B’Av
1950: In
Bucharest, Romania, Moses Kozinski and his wife, both of whom were Holocaust
survivors gave birth UCLA Law School Grad Alex Kozinski whose judicial career
took him all the way to serving as the Chief Judge of the United States Court
of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit” but did not cushion his fall from grace
following numerous “allegations of improper sexual conduct”
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-judge-alex-kozinski-20171218-story.html
1950: Based on
the wording of the Official Citations, today marked the beginning of a series
of heroic acts on the part of Corporal Tibor Ruman during the darkest days of
the Korean War that would lead to him being awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
1951: After
premiering in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the month, “Sirocco” a
film based on Coup de Grace by Joseph Kessel, directed by Curtis Bernhardt and
co-starring Lee J. Cobb was released in the United States today.
1951:
Thousands of mourners led the black-draped gun carriage carrying the coffin of
King Abdullah of Jordan to the royal cemetery in Amman. The Jordanian police
rounded over 70 suspects in connection with the king’s assassination, including
two relatives of the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.
There were clashes in the Jordanian-occupied Old City of Jerusalem between Arab
Legion Bedouin and the local Arabs.
1951: The
first immigrant from the U.S.S.R., 73-year-old Tova Lerner from Soviet
Bessarabia, arrived in Israel together with 993 newcomers from Romania.
1952: General
Neguib overthrew the monarchy and seized power. Some Israelis thought this
change presaged a possible improvement in relations with the Egyptians. The
last King of Egypt, Farouk, was man known for his personal and political
corruption. The Israelis thought the revolutionaries would bring Western style
reforms and that they would be more accepting of the Jewish State. Obviously
this did not happen. One of the men behind what was known as “The
Colonels’ Revolt” was Nasser. Nasser would soon seize the reins of power
and make the destruction of Israel a cornerstone of his Pan-Arab policy. In a
lesson that has still not been learned, Nasser said that he did not hate the
West because of Israel but hated Israel because it was Western. In other words,
anti-Western philosophy has been a staple of the Arab/Moslem world long before
the appearance of Bin Laden.
1953: “A
cottage hospital covering forty-two acres that will serve 100,000 members of
Kupet Holim, the sick fund of the General Federation of Labor, in the Negev and
Southern Judea was formally dedicated tonight in Rehovot in memory of Eliezer
Kaplan, Israel’s first Finance Minister.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1953/07/24/archives/israel-hospital-opened-u-s-labor-leaders-at-dedication-of-building.html?searchResultPosition=1
1954(22nd
of Tammuz, 5714: Fifty-one-year Bisbee, AZ born Leonard Goldstein, the twin
brother of Robert Goldstein whose eighteen-year career in films including
producing the popular and comic “Francis, the Talking Mule” film series, passed
away today.
https://collections.oscars.org/link/bio/128
1955:
Birthdate of Baghdad native Edwin Shuker who said of his parents who did not
flee to Israel in 1951 like most Iraqis. “like gamblers, they overplayed their
hand” but “were fortunate to escape from Saddam Hussein’s regime with their
lives.” (For more see In Ishmael’s House by Martin Gilbert; pgs. 302
ff.)
https://rememberbaghdad.com/contributors
https://www.sephardivoices.org.uk/Interviewee/-Edwin-Shuker
1955: Cordell
Hull, Tennessee political leader and U.S. Secretary of State passed away. Appointed by FDR, he served in the post until
1944 which made him the longest serving Secretary of State. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1945 for
his role in creating the United Nations, which at its inception, played a
positive role in the creation of Israel.
Hull blocked the admission of Jews fleeing Hitler as can be seen in his
role with the SS St. Louis and the SS Quanza. Hull’s wife was reportedly
Jewish, a fact they worked to keep from public knowledge lest it impede his
public career.
1956(15th
of Av, 5716): Tu B’Av
1956(15th
of Av, 5716: Carrie Mantell, the wife of Herman Mantell passed away today after
she was buried at Springfield Gardens in Queens County, NY.
1957(24th
of Tammuz, 5717): Ninety-four-year-old Alice Maud Olivia Stanley, Countess of
Derby, the daughter of William Montagu, the 7th Duke of Manchester
passed away today.
1957(24th
of Tammuz, 5717): Latvian born “American sculptor and painter Maurice Sterne,
the son of Naomi Schlossberg and Gregor Sterne and the husband of Vera Segal
whom he married in Vienna in 1923 whose works including the statues “The Awakening”
and “The Bombthrower” passed away today in Mount Kisco, NY after which he was
buried at the Kensico Cemetery.
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/maurice-sterne-4636
https://www.moma.org/artists/5654
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.51108.html
1958: A week
after opening in New York “Rock-A-By Baby” a comedy produced by and starring
Jerry Lewis, featuring Gary Lewis and with songs by Sammy Cahn and Walter
Scharf was released in New York today.
1959(17th
of Tammuz, 5719): Tzom Tammuz
1960: Author
and screenwriter Peter Viertel, the Dresden born of the writer and actress
Salka Viertel and the writer Berthold Viertel married his second wife actress
Deborah Kerr today.
1960: In New
York City, Edie and Ely A. Laundau gave birth to Jon Landau, the producer of
Titanic and co-producer of science fiction blockbuster Avatar.
1961(10th
of Av, 5721): Tish’a B’av is observed for the first time during the Presidency
of John Kennedy
1964: It was
reported today that “The Five Towns chapter of Brandeis University’s national
women’s committee will hold its Bring‐a‐New‐Member
luncheon on Aug. 10 at the home of Mrs. Robert Englander in Lawrence, L. I.”
1967: Herb
Gray, Canada’s first Jewish federal cabinet minister, Gray married lawyer
Sharon Sholzberg, with whom he had two children: Jonathan David and Elizabeth
Anne.
1967:
Birthdate of Mariane Pearl, the wife and widow of Danny Pearl.
1967: Denise
Scott Brown, the daughter of Jewish Rhodesian parents married fellow architect
Robert Venturi.
1968:
“Isabel,” the winner of four Canadian film awards, featuring Al Waxman as
“Herb” was released today.
1968: For the
first time, the PLO hijacked an El Al plane. El Al was the first airline to put
sky marshals on its flights and the first airline to introduce the security
measures that many tried to emulate after 9/11.
1969(8th
of Av, 5729): Erev Tish’a B’Av
1969(8th
of Av, 5729): Seventy-seven-year-old “Sidney J. Weinberg, whose financial
acumen earned him the sobriquet ‘Mr. Wall Street’” passed away today. (As reported by Alden Whitman)
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20F10FC3C5D1A7B93C6AB178CD85F4D8685F9
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_gladwell
1969:
Birthdate of Rachel Goslins, the director of “God’s House,” a documentary about
Albanian Muslims who save Jews during World War II based on Besa: Muslims
Who Save Jews in World War II by Norman Gershman. A member of Adas Israel, she has served as
the Executive Director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
1969:
“Hannibal Brooks” a comedy based on a story by Michael Winner who also produced
and directed the film was released today in the United Kingdom
1971: Paula
Robison “premièred the first of Leon Kirchner’s compositions commissioned for
her, Flutings for Paula, in Sanders Theater at Harvard University.”
1971:
Birthdate of Edison NJ, native and Stanford University educated journalist Joel
Stein, the husband of Cassandra Barry whose columns included “Who Runs Hollywood’ “ which mocked the canard
of Jews controlling Hollywood.”
What I
Learned When My Son Was Born | HuffPost Life
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein19-story.html
1972(12th
of Av, 5732): Fifty-seven-year-old MIT Graduate William Lewis Abramowitz, an
expert in the plastics business who raised four children – Kenneth, Susan, Ava
and Gail – with his wife “the former Lena Epstein” passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/25/archives/william-abramowitz.html
1972(12th
of Av, 5732): Eighty-five-year-old New York native Moses Fertig, the CCNY
trained teacher and NYU trained lawyer Maldwin Fertig, the unsuccessful
candidate for President of the New York City Council who was “president of the
Bronx Young Men’s Hebrew Association passed away today.
1973: Birthdate of White House Intern, Monica
Lewinsky.
1974(29th
of Tevet, 5734): Seventy-eight year old Dr. Frank Pearcy, the Kelso, West
Virginia native and graduate of Rush Medical College who served on the faculty
of the University of W. Va., and the U of Texas passed away today.
1975(15th
of Av, 5735): Tu B’Av
1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that the
visiting governor of the Bank of Spain, Luis Coronel del Palma, expressed hope
of “a considerable improvement of relations between Spain and
Israel.” According to American experts the recent events in Lebanon and
the Syrian intervention there threatened the total dismemberment of the PLO and
the demise of Yasser Arafat who had lost control of all his forces. Mossad hit
teams were reported to have been waging a concerted assassination program
against all Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972
Munich Olympiad.
1977(8th
of Av, 5737): Parashat Devarim; Erev Tish’a B’Av
1978(18th
of Tammuz, 5738): Tzom Tammuz observed
1978: The Israeli
cabinet rejected Sadat’s call for return of 2 Sinai areas.
1978: In “Sex,
Torah, Revolution,” Alan Lelchuk reviewed Shosha by Isaac Bashevis
Singer.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/25/home/singer-sosha.html
1979(28th
of Tammuz, 5739): Eighty-one-year-old Argentine native Joseph Kessel who gained
fame in his adopted France as a journalist and novelist after having serviced
with the Free French in WW II passed away today.
1980(10th
of Av, 5740): Eighty-four-year-old Dr. Max Kadushin, a leading Conservative
Rabbi, passed away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10C16FC355D11728DDDAD0A94DF405B8084F1D3
1982(3rd
of Av, 5742): Fifty-three year old actor Vic Morrow died today in a tragic
accident while filming a movie.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/actor-and-two-children-killed-on-twilight-zone-set
1982: “Jewish
leaders said today that they have long shared Interior Secretary James G.
Watt’s view that the United States should speedily reduce its reliance on
imported oil and that such an approach will benefit Israel as well as other
American Allies” but they took issue with comments made in a letter sent to
Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens staying that “the American support for Israel
could jeopardized if “liberals of the Jewish community join with other liberals
of this nation in opposing the Regan administration’s accelerated energy
development policies.”
1983(13th of Av, 5743): Parashat Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu
1983(13th
of Av, 5743): Seventy-six-year-old Broadway producer and director Shepard
Traube, the recipient of the New York Drama Critics “best director prize” for
the long running “Angel Street” passed away today.
1983(13th
of Av, 5743): Ninety-four-year-old Lithuanian born Florence R. Dolowitz, the
Hunter College graduate and mathematics teacher who founded the Women’s
American ORT while raising two children – Grace and David – with her husband
Alexander Dolowitz, passed away today.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/dolowitz-florence
1984:
Convicted financier Shmuel Flatto-Sharon is attempting a comeback in the
Israeli elections being held today.
1985(5th of
Av, 5745): Eighty-seven-year-old Bessarabia born Benjamin Gold, the “former
president of the International Leather Workers Union” and former member of the
Communist Party who was the husband of “the former Sadie Algus” passed away
today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/25/nyregion/ben-gold.html?searchResultPosition=1
1986: Kathryn
Levin gave birth to her first-born Daniel “Danny” Jerome.
1987(26th
of Tammuz, 5747): Seventy-year-old Lewis Putzel, the husband of Emily Frankel
Putzel, passed away today after which he was buried at the Har Sinai Cemetery
in suburban Owings Mills, MD.
1987: Fifty
American volunteers pulled out of an archeological excavation site here today
after a group of rigorously Orthodox Jews mobilized international pressure to
halt digging in the area, which they say is an ancient burial ground. While 100
Israeli policemen, armed with riot sticks and tear gas, separated them from
three busloads of angry Orthodox protesters, the American archeological
volunteers spent the morning clearing dust off a fifth-century mosaic sidewalk
in Caesarea, a historic coastal city 25 miles north of Tel Aviv
1992(22nd
of Tammuz, 5752): Ninety-five-year-old New York born real estate magnate and
philanthropist May Rudin who founded Rudin Management with her husband Samuel
Rudin with whom she raised two sons—Jack and Lewis – while overseeing the
activities of the Samuel and May Rudin Foundation passed away today.
1994(15th
of Av, 5754): Triple Header: Parashat Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu; Tu B’av
1994(15th
of Av, 5754): Ninety-eight-year-old Viennese born, American film composer Hans
J. Salter passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/28/obituaries/hans-j-salter-98-composer-for-films.html
1995: At B’nai
Israel Synagogue Rabbi Leo Heim and Rabbi Hyman Weissman are scheduled to
officiate at the funeral services for ighty-eighty-year-old Lithuanian born
“South Texas farmer and rancher” and son of parents killed in the Holocaust,
Abraham Morris ‘Abe’ Katz, the husband Doris Goodman Katz with whom he had
three daughters – Annette, Sharon and Carol – and the man called the Onion King
because as President and founder of Valley Onions he “ created the Blue Baby
brand trademark and was instrumental in financing research at Texas A&M
University, which resulted in the development of the Texas 1015 Onion in 1982”
whose “deep commitment to Jewish causes was reflected in the late 1940’s when
he joined with Benzion Netanyahu in helping secure arms for the future state of
Israel,” developed a friendship with Menachim Begin and supported such Jewish
institutions as B’nai Israel Synagogue, the Hebrew Academy of Houston and the
Jonathan Netanyahu Academy of San Antonio
1996(7th
of Av, 5756): Sixty-nine year old New Jersey State Chief Justice Robert Wilentz
passed away today. (As reported by David Stout)
1997:
According to a report released today the July 14 collapse of a pedestrian
bridge at the Maccabiah Games was caused by a chain of failures involving the
bridge’s planning and construction.
1998: In
Toledo, the sixth congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies
(EAJS) under the presidency of Professor Angel Sáenz Badillos came to a close
today.
1999: After
having undergone “tests regarding her heart condition at the Akron City
Hospital in Akron, Ohio,” Janet Rosenberg Jagan “was discharged” today and
returned to Guyana where she would later resign her position as the country’s
president.
1999(10th
of Ave, 5759): Seventy-seven-year-old photographer Stanley Tretick passed away
today. (As reported by Nick Ravo)
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue9908/tretick.htm
2000: In
“Jerseyana: A Fading Jewish Haven,” published today Robert Strauss describes a
disappearing slice of Jewish life unknown to most Jews, that centered around
rural and small-town New Jersey
David
Uniglicht remembers gliding down the streets of this small town in the wooded
interior of Cape May County as if it were yesterday. ”You’d go down Washington
Avenue, that was the main street, and you would pass Collier’s Department Store
and Singers Barber Shop and Grossman’s grocery,” said Mr. Uniglicht of his
childhood in the 1950’s and 60’s. ”Down Adams Avenue, there was Siegel’s
kosher butcher. Outside the town center were Franklin’s children’s clothing
factor and the Rabinowitz Hat Factory and Bradstone’s, where rubber for
sneakers was manufactured. ”It was a Jewish community, a wonderful close-knit
community,” he went on. ”I can’t think there was a better way to grow up.”
None of those shops and factories are left in Woodbine, which is largely black
and Hispanic today. Now, the last vestige of Woodbine’s origins as a
late-19th-century Jewish agricultural community may also fade into history. The
Woodbine Brotherhood Synagogue on Washington Avenue in the center of the
borough — on the National Register of Historic Places — is under an agreement
of sale. Another synagogue, Tefares Israel, was razed in the 1960’s. Mr.
Uniglicht, who is chairman of the synagogue’s board of trustees, said it was
decided to have the building — the same one where his grandparents were wed in
1906 — put up for sale while still well maintained. While there have been no
weekly services there since the 1970’s, the synagogue has remained opened for
High Holy Days services every fall, with nostalgic visitors and vacationers at
the shore a few miles away joining the shrinking population of Jews here for
the traditional prayers. That is far from the thriving Jewish community that
used to inhabit Woodbine. In 1891, a local judge sold 5,300 acres of Dennis
Township to the Baron Maurice De Hirsch Fund for $37,500. Baron De Hirsch, a
Frenchman, believed that the Jewish community in America would thrive if it got
out of the cities and back to its agricultural roots. ”He recruited his people
from New York and Philadelphia and Chicago, Eastern European Jews who were
already here,” said Joseph Brandes, a professor emeritus of history at William
Paterson University, who wrote ”Immigrants to Freedom: Jewish Communities in
Rural New Jersey since 1882” (University of Pennsylvania Press). ”He also
thought it should be a balanced community, and so the farmers wouldn’t loaf in
the winter, he encouraged factories.” While there were other De Hirsch
communities in Southern New Jersey — Brotmanville, Rosenhayn, Alliance, Norma
and Carmel near Vineland — none of them were as prominent as Woodbine, which
was the only one that was not just a place name, but also an incorporated
borough. ”A writer in 1907 called Woodbine the first self-governed Jewish
community since the fall of Jerusalem,” said Dr. Brandes. ”It became a
prototype for the New Deal balanced communities like Roosevelt near Trenton,
with the hope of having agriculture and industry combine.” But in fact,
agriculture was not all that was happening in Woodbine. ”It was sandy soil and
had to be cleared of dense forest,” said Rachel Rodgers, the executive
director of the Cape May County division of culture and heritage. ”It was full
of mosquitoes and scrub bushes, horrible conditions for agriculture. So the
factories did a lot better.” The De Hirsch Fund established an agricultural
high school here, which taught the physical sciences and had a roll of
graduates who eschewed the land and became doctors and scientists. Gregory
Pincus, an early developer of the birth-control pill, attended the De Hirsch
school, as did Selman A. Waksman, who developed streptomycin, one of the first
cures for tuberculosis. The school has long since become the Woodbine
Developmental Center for the handicapped. For decades, the Jewish community
thrived here. ”People came here happily,” said Mr. Uniglicht, who today is an
administrator at the Woodbine center. ”It was far better than being in the
dirty city.” Sitting in William Eisenberg’s Haddonfield law office is the
loving cup his grandfather, also named William, was awarded by Woodbine’s
citizens in 1922 after serving as the town’s mayor. ”My grandfather was a
mason and helped to build the synagogue,” said Mr. Eisenberg, whose family
moved to Collingswood before he was born. ”My father and most of the family is
buried in the cemetery there. So it’s nostalgic for me. But things started to
dissipate even before World War II.” The Depression did not help the factories
here, though most managed to stay afloat during those times. And as children
went off to war and to college, they could not imagine returning. In the late
1940’s there was one more surge of interest: Legend has it that residents here
smuggled weapons out of Millville Airport to the Hagannah resistance movement
before Israel was formed in 1948. ”But then the suburban Jewish exodus
started, too,” said Dr. Brandes. ”Jews naturally wanted to be in communities
with other Jews and, primarily, moved to the places around New York and
Philadelphia.” The places Mr. Uniglicht revered — Singer’s and Collier’s and
the Rabinowitz Hat Factory — were all closed by the 1970’s. The hordes that
came from all over South Jersey to eat deli at Siegel’s found other places to
go. Even Mr. Uniglicht, though he works in Woodbine, moved to Vineland years ago.
For Mr. Uniglicht, the decision to hold the last services at the synagogue was
not a hard one. ”There isn’t a Jewish community here,” he said. ”We had a
nice reunion on the 100th anniversary of the synagogue in 1993. It has been
nice to have services here, but Jews also have to focus on the future.” Scott
Novick, who lives in Cape May Court House a few miles away, has bid for the
building and has a tentative closing date in the fall. Mr. Novick has told
residents that he intends to keep it functioning as a synagogue, though he has
not elaborated. The Borough of Woodbine and the State Police had considered
buying the building and converting it to office space, but balked when
consultants put the buying price and the cost of renovation at about $500,000.
But as Mr. Eisenberg put it, ”Those people in the graveyard who escaped
oppression in Europe would have haunted the place if people in shiny boots and
revolvers were in there anyway.”
2001: 16th
Maccabiah comes to a close.
2001(3rd
of Av, 5761): Sixty-year old Rabbi Alan Bergman, who served Congregation Temple
Israel in St. Louis before moving to the Chicago area where her served “as
Director of the Great Lakes Region/Chicago Federation of the Union American
Hebrew Congregations” for a quarter of century while raising three children –
Daniel, Marc and Saralyn – with his wife the former Marcia Sky passed away
today in Highland Park, Illinois after which he was interred at Westlawn
Cemetery.
2001: Haim
“Saban announced that he and News Corporation would sell Fox Family Worldwide
Inc for $5.3 billion to The Walt Disney Company.”
2001: Matt
Bloom lost the WWF Intercontinental Championship to Alliance member Lance Storm
in Buffalo, New York
2001: “Issues
in Jewish Philosophy,” a colloquia sponsored by The European Association for
Jewish Studies (EAJS) opened today.
2002:The
Knesset approved the Tal Law as an attempt to reach a compromise to the public
demand that the Israeli ultra-Orthodox citizens would share an equal extent of
obligations which other Israeli citizens are required to fulfill, specifically
requiring them to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The coalition upheavals
delayed the initial adoption of the Tal law.
2002: The IDF
bombed the building in which Hamas leader Salah Shehade was sleeping. He was the mastermind behind a series of
suicide attacks that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians.
2003:
Best-selling author Peggy Orenstein and Academy Award winning filmmaker Steven
Okazaki gave birth to their daughter Daisy Tomoko.
2003:
President Bush presents Edward Teller with the Medal of Freedom, six weeks
before Teller’s death.
2004: “The
Bourne Supremacy” on which Doug Liman who had directed the first of the “Bourne
films” served as executive producer was released today.
2005: Pitcher
Craig Breslow made his major league debut with the San Diego Padres.
2005:
Several explosions rocked the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Shiek in the early
morning hours which were aimed at a number of resort hotels catering to
tourists from Egypt, Europe and Israel.
2005: The Jerusalem Post reported that Ariel
Sharon will not change the date of the evacuation from Gaza. The
evacuation date is August 17. Sharon fought attempts in the Knesset by
the anti-disengagement forces to postpone the evacuation. He has also
dismissed suggestions from those favoring the evacuation, including the Vice
Premier and Shimon Peres to advance the date of the evacuation. The
evacuation date is a matter of law, having been enacted in legislation passed
by the Knesset. It would take three votes to change the law, something
Sharon does not care to attempt. At the same time, he will not act
unilaterally to move the date because it is critical that Israel maintain
itself as society that accepts and respect the rule of law.
2006: The
San Francisco Chronicle reviewed How This Night Is
Different by Elisa Albert
2006: The New
York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers Fear:
Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz – An Essay in Historical Interpretation
by Jan T. Gross and the recently released paperback edition of Freud’s
Requiem: Mourning, Memory, and the Invisible History of a Summer Walk by
Matthew Von Unwerth an “elegantly meandering look at Sigmund Freud’s life and
the intellectual world he moved in that examines an obscure 1915 essay, ‘On
Transience,’ in which Freud records a conversation with the poet Rainer Maria
Rilke and the psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé.”
2006(27th of Tammuz, 5766): Ursula Merkin, the widow of
Hermann Merkin, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yeshiva
University passed away today.
http://forward.com/news/519/she-contained-multitudes/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E5DB1F3AF937A15754C0A9609C8B63
2006: The
following were among a total of 43 Israeli civilians (including four who died
of heart attacks during rocket barrages) and 116 IDF soldiers were killed in
the Israel-Hizbullah war: Shimon Glickblich, 60, of Haifa; Habib Awad, 48, of
Ibellin.
2007: In Krakow, Poland, the Cinema Pod Baranami / Festival of Jewish
Culture presents a screening of “Hungry Hearts,” which is “based on the short
stories of Anzia Yezierska, the first writer to bring stories of American
Jewish women to a mainstream audience.”
2007(8th of Av, 5767): Ninety-three-year-old Hungarian born
writer George Tabori. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/theater/27tabori.html?_r=0
2007(8th of Av, 5767): Seventy-four-year-old Ronald Norman
Miller the songwriter who created the lyrics to the Grammy Award winning hit
“For Once in My Life” passed away today in California.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/aug/23/guardianobituaries.obituaries1
2007: The New Republic features
reviews of 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed The Middle
East by Tom Segev and Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble
in the Six-Day War by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez by Israeli historian
and author Benny Morris as well Nathan Glazer’s review of Robert Moses and
the Modern City: The Transformation of New York.
2008:
At the Karmiel amphitheater Let Us
Grow showcases 3,000 children from all over the country in a mosaic of
dances choreographed especially for them featuring such singers as Tal Mosseri
and Yoav Yitzhak.
2008: Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt an artist and Holocaust survivor had
surgery today after having been “diagnosed with an aggressive form of abdominal
cancer.”
2008: Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Connect, a version of Facebook
Platform for users.
2008: In an example of interfaith at its best, members of Temple Judah
loaded their cars with clothing items shipped to Cedar Rapids by Chabad of Des
Moines and took them to Community of Christ Church for distribution to victims
of the Cedar Rapids Flood of 2008.
2008(25th
of Tammuz, 5678): Eighty-seven-year-old Professor Leon A. Feldman the refugee
from Nazi Germany who earned a Ph.D. and smicha from Yeshiva University and who
founded the Department of Hebraic Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey
passed away today.
http://ucmweb.rutgers.edu/inmemoriam/?q=inmemoriam_record&id=165
2008(25th
of Tammuz, 5768: Officer David Chriqui of Rishon Lezion, 19-year-old border
policeman who was shot near the Lions’ Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem on
July 11 died of his wounds today. Officer David Chriqui of Rishon Lezion was
shot in the head at close range by a man thought to be a Palestinian. Jerusalem
police officer Imad Gadir from Kafr Zarzir in the Western Galilee has recovered
from his wounds.
2008:
Senator Barack Obama opened a day of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders
sharing breakfast with Ehud Barak before traveling to the West Bank to meet ith
Mahmoud Abbas.
2009:
Closing ceremony of the 18th Maccabiah takes place at Latrun
2009: Chicago’s Millennium
Park celebrated its fifth anniversary with a blockbuster event of song and
spoken word called SHELebration: A Tribute to Shel Silverstein.
2009:
In New York City, rooftop premiere of Keren Cytter’s feature length film,
“The Great Tale.” The Tel Aviv native “creates films that appropriate
and transform different cinematic genres, such as film noir, melodrama,
documentary, and soap opera. Often set in cheap domestic interiors, Cytter’s
films depict dysfunctional families and alienated friends on the verge of
nervous breakdown.”
2009:
Several rabbis were arrested as part of a public corruption and international
money-laundering investigation in New Jersey. According to reports, among the
44 people arrested this morning by the FBI along with the rabbis were the
mayors of three New Jersey towns, a deputy mayor and a state assemblyman.
2010:
As part of “Downtown Shabbat”Robyn Helzner, one of the leading interpreters of
world Jewish music, and Cantor Larry Paul are scheduled to lead a
Carlebach-inspired service at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in
Washington, D.C.
2010: An Israeli government decision to shelve a controversial
bill on Jewish conversions drew praise today from liberal Jewish groups in
Israel and the U.S. who opposed the legislation and waged a vocal campaign to
get it thrown out.
2010:
From L.A. to Cedar Rapids and points unknown, family and many friends celebrate
the birthday of Charlene Wolfe, a “balabus” par excellence.
2010((12th
of Av, 5770): Daniel Schorr, whose
aggressive reporting over 70 years as a respected broadcast and print
journalist brought him into conflict with censors, the Nixon administration and
network superiors, died today at the age of 93. (As reported by Robert D.
Hershey, Jr)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jul/26/daniel-schorr-obituary
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/media/24schorr.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2010:
In “At War With Itself” Leo Damrosch provides a detailed reviews of Dreyfus:
Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century by Ruth Harris.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Damrosch-t.html
2011:
In Iowa City, Agudas Achim Sisterhood’s annual Mitzvah Fund Event will include
this evening’s University Repertory Theater production of Neil Simon’s
“Lost in Yonkers.”
2011:
The Daniel Ori Trio is scheduled to perform three sets of originals and new
arrangements from the upcoming album Emuna at the Barn Next Door in NYC.
2011: Ten of thousands gathered in central Tel Aviv tonight for a
mass rally against soaring housing prices and Israel’s high cost of living.
2011: The first-ever reunion of the Ritchie Boys began today at
the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
2011(21st of Tammuz,
5771): Jewish-British singer Amy Winehouse, whose hit single
“Rehab” became the anthem for troubled celebrity culture, has been
found dead at her home in north London, Sky News reported today.
2011(21st of Tammuz,
5771): Ninety-two-year-old Robert C.W. Ettinger, the “founding father” of the
cryonics movement, passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/30ettinger.html
2012: Shiva services for Lauren
Becker, of blessed memory, are scheduled to be held at the home of her father
Harold in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2012: “One Day After Peace” is
scheduled to have its American premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film
Festival.
2012: The Knesset
Control Committee is scheduled to discuss the aspects of the annual State
Comptroller’s Report that deal with the Temple Mount, including security and
unsupervised building. (As reported by Melanie Lidman)
2012: As it prepares to move to its
new location, members of Agudas Achim under the leadership of Rabbi Jeff
Portman gather at the Agudas Achim Cemetery to bury old prayer books, bibles,
talisim and other religious artifacts in the time honored manner of the Jewish
people.
2012: Today President Shimon Peres
condemned Syrian government statements that it would deploy chemical weapons in
the event of a foreign invasion and said Israel would do whatever it takes to
eliminate the threat these weapons pose to the Jewish state.(As reported by
Ilan Ben Zion)
2012: DNA evidence believed to
belong to the culprit and his female accomplice in last week’s bombing at the
Burgas Airport was reportedly found at the Hotel Perfekt in Varna, Bulgaria,
Bulgarian TV station BTV reported today (As reported by Aaron Kalman and Ilan
Ben Zion)
2013: The 17th annual
Jerusalem 3×3 Streetball tournament sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality is
scheduled to open at Safra Square.
2013: From Cedar
Rapids to California and lots of other places, people celebrate the birthday of
Charlene Wolff, a culinary wizard and pillar of the Jewi
2013: Coalition and
Labor MKs praised the passing of the government’s haredi enlistment plan in its
first reading today, after a long debate in which haredi MKs used creative
means to demonstrate their opposition. (As reported by Lahav Harkov)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-mks-mourn-as-draft-bill-passes-first-reading/
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=320731
2013: Prince William
and Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge walked out St. Mary’s Hospital
with their infant who was born in the Lindo Wing which was named for Frank
Charles Lindo, a member of a famous British Sephardi family who paid for the
wing in 1937.
2014: The Historic
Sixth & I Synagogue is scheduled to host “The Great Walk of Chinatown”
which explores the history of this unique Washington neighborhood.
2014: “The US
Federal Aviation Administration barred flights to Israel this evening for 24
hours, citing security concerns” but El Al continues with its full flight
schedule. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)
2014: Oren Shaul who
was identified today as the seventh of the soldiers “caught in in a deadly
ambush in Gaza City’s Shejaiya area” was reported missing in action and
presumed dead despite claims from Hamas that he is there prisoner. (As reported
by Mitch Ginsburg)
2014: “French Prime
Minister Manuel Valls denounced anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism,
this old European disease,” he said in a speech, has taken “a new form. It
spreads on the Internet, in our popular neighborhoods, with a youth that has
lost its points of reference, has no conscience of history, and who hides
itself behind a fake anti-Zionism.”
2014: The 97th
National Convention of Hadassah is scheduled to come to an end in Las Vegas.
2015: Dr. Ori Z.
Soltes is scheduled to lead a private tour for those wishing to “learn more
about Sy Gresser’s sculptures while viewing the exhibition ‘Stone, Silence, and
Speech.’”
2015: The Museum of
Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host two performances of “My Report to the
World” The Story of Jan Karski.”
2015(7th
of Av, 5775): Eighty-eight-year-old obesity specialist, Dr. Jules Hirsch passed
away in Englewood, NJ.
2015: The Naomi
Prawer Kadar International Yiddish Summer Program at Tel Aviv University is
scheduled to come to an end today.
2015: The Friends
and family of Charlene Wolfe are excited to share in what she calls “a
milestone” birthday as she turns 75.
2015: In “Why Is It
So Hard to Get a Great Bagel in California?” published today Elizabeth Weil
wonders why bakers in San Francisco have so much trouble replicating the
product produced in New York City.
2016: Under the
leadership of Israeli-born choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, ZviDance is scheduled
to perform at the Doris Duke Theatre.
2016: The funeral
was held today for Heshy Jacob “the Lower East Side’s last Jewish power
broker.” (As reported by Josh Nathan-Kazis)
2016: PININA
featuring the choreography is scheduled to open Sally-Anne Friedland at
Peridance Capezio Center.
2017: Scott
“Blumstein, 25, of Brigantine, New Jersey, pulled a deuce on the river — the
final card of a poker round — to win with a pair of twos in a dramatic finish
today to poker’s most prestigious event.” (As reported by Marc Brodsky)
2017: The New York Times featured reviews
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The
Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera by Adam Begley, Young Radicals:
In the War for American Ideals by Jeremy McCarter which includes a portrait
of Walter Lippmann and We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from
Syria by Wendy Pearlman as well as an interview with Calvin Trillin.
2017: The San
Francisco Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Keep the
Change” and “a live performance from the Marcus Shelby Quartet” today.
2017: “West pf
the Jordan River” and “In Her Footsteps” are scheduled to be shown on the last
day of the Jerusalem Film Festival.
2017:
“Menorah: Worship, History, Legend” that featured “roughly 130 artifacts,
including menorahs from different periods and depictions of them in paintings,
sarcophagi, sculptures and medieval and Renaissance drawings and manuscripts”
and has been on displayed “simultaneously at both the Jewish Museum as well as
the Braccio di Carlo Magno Museum in the Vatican” is scheduled to come to a
close today.
2018: The Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National
Conference for English Language Arts Educators which is designed to “introduce
participants to the” United States
Holocaust Memorial “Museum’s pedagogical approaching to teaching about the
Holocaust, as well as Museum resources” is scheduled to open today.
2018: With violence a reality on the Gaza
border, Israelis show that they can still life to the fullest with Besarabia
scheduled to host “Open Jam and Mic”
2018: The world awakes to a mixed bag of news
from Israel’s north with Syrians claiming that the IAF has struck a base manned
by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and approval from the civilized world for
Israeli’s daring rescue of the White Hats.
2019 is scheduled to present a session of “The
Beginnings of Modern Jewish Literature” during which Eugene Orenstein analyzes
“the rise of Modern Yiddish literature as a result of the struggle between
Hasidism and Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment movement.”
2019: In San Francisco, CinéArts Palo Alto is
scheduled to host a free screening of “The Rabbi Goes West,” a film “about a
haredi guy,” Chabad Rabbi Chaim Bruk, “who uproots himself from everything he
knows to move to” Montana.
2019: In New York, the Quad Cinema is scheduled
to host a screening “The Other Story” directed Avi Nesher.
2019: “The Canadian Friends of Hebrew
University (CFHU) and the University of Alberta” are scheduled to co-sponsor a
lecture by Hebrew University Professor Yoram Yovell the “psychiatrist, brain
researcher, psychoanalyst and author of “two best sellers”
2019: The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is
scheduled to host screenings of “King Bibi” and “Made in Auschwitz: The Untold
Story of Block 10.”
2020: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is
scheduled to “virtually,” “Losing Our Humanity: An Evening With Cate Blancette
and The Stateless Team.”
2020: Baghdad born Edwin Shuker, the Board of
Deputies’ vice president is scheduled to celebrate his 65th
birthday.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/board-vp-honoured-for-work-protecting-iraqi-religious-freedoms/
2020: The Jewish Museum of Maryland is
scheduled to host a livestream presentation by Rabbi Dr. Eli Yoggev on “How to
Be Jewish in Space.”
2020: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is
scheduled to host an on-line screening of “Watermarks,” following by a
discussion with director Yaron Zilbermanand Professor Raanan Rein.
2020: The JWA’s Book Club is scheduled to host
a virtual author talk “with Chavi Karkowsky, maternal-fetal medicine physician
and author of High Risk:
Stories of Pregnancy, Birth, and the Unexpected.
2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is
scheduled to host a virtual book club program, “One Museum, One Book” which
will feature a discussion of the New
York Times bestseller Lilac Girls: A Novel, with an online
discussion moderated by the author herself, Martha Hall Kelly.
2020: “Addison-Penzak JCC in Los Gatos is
scheduled to present a virtual program on overcoming fears, phobias and stress,
with a look at the Jewish mourning period between Tammuz 17 and Av 9.”
2020: As Israelis prepare to face the day, they
may be questioning how the country will pay for newly agreed to pay raises for
members of the Israel Union of Social Workers and the Prime Minister’s request
for an increase in defense funding along with the additional demands created by
the Pandemic.
2021: The Jewish Arts Collaborative is
scheduled to present, online, “JLive With Stuart Hecht,” the “American theater
historian and professor who has worked extensively in Chicago theater history
and more recently on assimilation and the American musical.”
2021: American basketball legend Sue Bird and
Israeli gymnast Linoy Ashram are among the Jewish athletes scheduled to compete
in the Olympics which are scheduled to open today.
2021: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to
broadcast a Young Artists in Concerts” featuring pieces by Arnold Schoenberg
performed by members of the Tedarim Ensemble.
2021: Labyrinth of Peace is scheduled to be
shown online at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
2022: S.F. Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to
screen a new hybrid feature-documentary about Andrea Dworkin, a radical
feminist and writer who had groundbreaking takes on pornography, sexism and
rape culture, and who once thought about becoming a rabbi.
2022: The Cambridge Jewish Center of the Arts
is scheduled to present a Family Shabbat Service “which is tailored for
children up to the age of six and their parents.
2022 (24th of Tammuz, 5782): Parashat Pinchas
2023: The Osher Marin JCC is scheduled to
present “New Moon, New Mountain: Forest Bathing, “ a two-and-a-half-hour
meditative forest excursion led by Forest Therapy Guide Emily Wolf McMane, with
exploration of themes of destruction and rebuilding in preparation for Tisha
B’av.”
2023: In New Orleans, the Btesh Family Chabad
House is scheduled to host a fish fry lunch
2023: Yeshiva University Museum’s Director of
Museum Education Ilana Benson is scheduled to lead “a guided tour of The Golden
Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries, illuminating the life and impact of
the multifaceted luminary and great Jewish sage across continents and cultures
through rare manuscripts and books.”
2023: In Sharon, MA Temple Kol Tikvah is
scheduled to present “SummerFest 2023.”
2023: The Museum at Eldridge Street is
scheduled to host “Synagogues of the Lower East Side,” a walking tour of
neighborhood that used to be home to hundreds of “Jewish houses of worship.”
2024: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host
the second lecture by Dr. Eric Goldman on “The Jewish Paul Mazursky.”
2024: In the third session of the series
“Agnon is hosted in the Khan, “Bilha Ben-Eliyahuand Ruhama Elbegg are
scheduled to lead a conversation about writing and sources of inspiration
following the novel “I Remained for You” and the novella “In the
Blood of Her Days” at Agnon House.
2024: The Jewish Women’s Summer Happy Hour is
scheduled to take place from six in the evening until nine in Manhattan.
2024:The Streicker Center is scheduled to host
the final session of Hebrew for Advanced Beginners and Intermediate Hebrew.
2024(17th of Tammuz, 5744): On the
Jewish calendar, observance of American Independence Day. In 1776, the 4th
of July fell on the 17th of Tammuz. So for those of you who want to
celebrate American Independence, for a second time in July here is your chance.
2024: Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to
spend his second day in Washington before addressing Congress on July 24.
2024(17th of Tammuz, 5784): Tzom
Tammuz
for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2024: The Center for Jewish History is
scheduled to host a matinee performance of “The Trial of Adolf Eichman which is
described as a “compelling and thought-provoking theatrical experience.
2024: As July 23rd 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 291 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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