This Day, February 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
February 21
362:
Athanasius returns to Alexandria so he can lead the fight against various
Christian heretics such as the Arians. His negative views about the Jews
were really part of his fight against Christian heretics. His “anti-Jewish
rhetoric served to stigmatize Christians who resisted” the efforts of
Athanasius “to reform the Alexandrian (local) practices of Lent and Easter
along more international (catholic) lines.” For more on this view of his works
and writings one should read “Jewish Flesh and Christian Spirit in Athanasius
of Alexandria” by David Burke, Journal of Early Christian Studies –
Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 453-481
1513: The
papacy of Julius II came to an end. His greatest claim to fame was that
he gave Michelangelo the paint brush for the Sistine Chapel. Samuel
Sarfatti, a Jewish physician, took care of the Pope’s health needs. His
papacy was a period of benign neglect for the Jews. Julius was more
interested in temporal pleasure than doctrine so he pretty much left the Jews
alone; not a bad deal considering what other Popes did to the Jews.
1519: Upon the
death of Maximillian, the Jewish community at Regensburg numbering
approximately 800 souls, (one of the oldest in Germany,) was expelled. The
synagogue was destroyed and a chapel, built in its place. About 5,000
gravestones were taken from the Jewish cemetery and used for building the
Christian house of worship.
1520:
Birthdate of Moses Isserles, the Ashkenazic rabbi from Cracow best known for
writing HaMapah (The Table Cloth) a “gloss” on The Shulchan Aruch (Set Table)
of Joseph Karo. Karo relied primarily on Sephardic sources. Isserles used
Ashkenazic sources to create a table cloth that would cover the set table thus
making Caro’s work viable for the large number of Jews living in Northern and
Eastern Europe.
1619(7th of
Adar, 5379): Rabbi Ephraim Solomon ben Aaron of Luntshits, author of Keli
Yakar passed away. (The Jewish Encyclopedia shows his date of death as March
3)
https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2015/199/6871920_1437300948.jpg
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5807-ephraim-solomon-ben-aaron-of-lencziza
1629: Isaac
Pallache, the Sephardic son of Joseph Pallache and nephew of Samuel Pallache “a
Jewish-Moroccan merchant, diplomat and pirate who met stadholder Maurice of
Nassau and the States-General in The Hague to negotiate an alliance of mutual
assistance against Spain” registered as a student today at the University of
Leiden.
1665: Emperor
Maximilian II granted permission to Christophe Plantin, whose work included the
Plantin Polyglot Bible the first four volumes of which were the “Old
Testament” which contained two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin
translation, to print Hebrew books in Antwerp.
1668: John
Thurlow, the English politician who served as secretary under Oliver Cromwell
and who was part of the St. John Mission which “studied the Jewish Question,”
met with Menasseh ben Israel and were “entertained by the synagogue” in
Amsterdam passed away today.
1677(19th
Adar I, 5437): Forty-four-year-old Philosopher Baruch de Spinoza, the Amsterdam
born son of Sephardic Jews Michael Spinoza and his second wife Hanna Deborah who
had been expelled from the Jewish community passed away today. His philosophy
and his life are too complex for this simple summary page. I did not understand
why he was banned from the Jewish community when I first read about him as a
Religious School student. His philosophy baffled me when I first read it
at Tulane. Since I do not fake it, I suggest you begin your quest at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Spinoza.html. and go from there.
Good luck.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
1683:
Birthdate of Johann Christoph Wolf, the “German Christian Hebraist” who created
the 4 volume Biblotecha Hebrae published between 1715 and 1733 which among
other things provided many Christians with their knowledge of the Talmud for
more than 150 years.
1730: The
papacy of Benedict XII came to an end. In 1727, he had issued Emanavit Numer
that laid down the conditions under which Jews could be forcibly baptized. Two
years later, he issued Alias Emanarunt that “forbade the selling of
goods by Jews.” (For more see The Inquisition: A History by Michael C.
Thomsett)
1743: George
Frederic Handel’s oratorio, “Samson” premiered in London. The
musical was based on the figure depicted in the Book of Judges and is
another example of how Jewish culture enriched the culture of the Western
World.
1769(14th
of Adar I, 5529): Purim Katan
1769: As Jews
observed a minor festival, Benjamin Franklin wrote to Lord Kames acknowledging
receipt of his “excellent paper on the preferable use of oxen in agriculture.
1772(17th
of Adar I. 5532): Amsterdam native Hannah Solomons, the wife of Prussian born
Benjamin Sheftall, “one of the forty immigrants who arrived in Savannah in July
of 1733,” who was the first author of the “Sheftall manuscript” and who “was
known for his anti-slavery views, whom she married in Savannah, GA and with
whom she had two sons, Levi and Solomon passed today in Savannah home to a
large clan whose members included
1777(14th
of Adar I, 5537): Purim Katan is observed for the last time with the
Continental Congress meeting in Baltimore, where it has taken refuge due to the
occupation in Philadelphia.
1795:
Birthdate of Rio de Janeiro “songwriter and music professor” who wrote the
Brazilian National Anthem, and who given the history of his name was probably
the descendant of Marranos or Secret Jews.
1799: Mrs.
Elizabeth Barnett, the widow of Nathan Barnett married Naphtali Hart today in
Easton, PA.
1803: Edward
Despard and six others are hanged and beheaded for plotting to assassinate King
George III of the United Kingdom, and to destroy the Bank of England.
1810: David
Davis married Elizabeth Benjamin at the Great Synagogue today.
1810:
Birthdate of London native John Jonas, the son of Middlesex native Jacob Jonas
and the husband of Sarah Ruben.
1816(22nd
of Shevat, 5576): Seventy-three-year-old Abraham Alexander, Sr. the London born
son of Judith and Rabbi Joseph Raphael Alexander and the husband of Ann Sarah
Hugenin Irby, his second wife who was a convert and with whom he had two sons
Moses and Abraham, Jr. who was the
Chazan of Congregation of Beth Elohim in Charleston and a Lieutenant in the
Revolutionary Army passed away today in Charleston.
1816: One day
after she had passed away, Polly Israel, the wife of Israel Israel and the
mother of Henrietta and Harriet Israel was buried today in the UK.
1821:
Birthdate of Elisabeth “Eliza, or Élisa” Rachel Félix better known
only as Mademoiselle Rachel. She gained fame as an actress and as the mistress
of the rich and famous including Napoleon III.
1832: Two days
after he passed away, Philip Goodman, the father of Louis Goodman and the
father-in-law of the former Julia Salamon was buried today in the UK.
1835: In
Maracaibo, Venezuela, Abraham Benjamin Nones, the Philadelphia born son of
Miriam Marks de Nones and Abraham Benjamin Nones, and his wife Maria del
Rosario Martinez gave birth to Isabel Nones Martinez.
1838(26th
of Shevat, 5598): Fifty-nine year old French linguist Atntoine Isaac Silvestre
de Sacy, the son of Abraham Silvestre, a Jewish notary, and the father of
journalist Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy passed away today in Paris.
1839:
Birthdate of Vienna native and Austrian violinist Edouard Rappoldi, the husband
of pianist Laura Kahrer who was a concert master in Rotterdam and a concertmaster
of the Dresden opera orchestra.
1841: In
Rotterdam, Sara Wolf and Benjamin Phineas Moses Spiers gave birth to Lucas
Moses Spiers.
1843: A
committee of representatives, including eight from the Great Synagogue, met for
the second time in two days under the chairmanship of Isaac Cohen in the Vestry
room in Duke’s Place.
1845(14th
of Adar I) Purim Katan
1848: Karl
Marx published the Communist Manifesto. Marx was not Jewish but his
father was. This fact has not stopped a myriad of anti-Semites including
Adolph Hitler from equating Judaism with Communism.
1849: In
Hamburg a Provisional Decree for the Purpose of Introducing Article 16 of the
Basic Rights of the German People with Regard to the Israelites” was “passed by
a Resolution of the Council and the City Assembly” today.
https://jewish-history-online.net/source/jgo:source-9
1849: Due to
the civil rights granted under the Frankfurt Constitution which into effect
today in Hamburg, forty-two-year-old lawyer Gabriel Riesser, the grandson of
Rabbi Jakob Pinchas Katzenellenbogen and Rabbi Raphael Cohen was able to become
a citizen of Hamburg where he was elected to the city’s parliament in 1859.
1851: In
Aldgate, London, Isaac and Leah Isaacs gave birth to Barnet Isaacs who gained
fame as diamond and gold mining entrepreneur Barney Barnato who claimed that
his birthdate was July 5, the same as contemporary Cecil Rhodes.
1852: 1st of
Adar, 5612): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1852: Pope
Pius IX wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, “insisting that he revoke the right
of the Jews to live outside of the Ghetto.”
1852: In
Baltimore, MD, Israel Cohen the son of Benjamin and Kitty Cohen and his wife
Cecilia Eliza Cohen gave birth to Benjamin Isaac Cohen.
1852: Austen
Henry Layard, the archeologist who excavated Nimrud and Niniveh as described in
Discoveries at Nineveh completed his service as Under-Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs.
1856(15th
of Adar I, 5616): Shushan Purim Katan
1856: A blood
libel case occurred in Constantinople, with Jews being targeted with violence
from Greeks, Armenians, and Turks. This occurred only three days after the
Ottoman “reforms” which were to bring equality.
1857(27th
of Shevat, 5617): Parashat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim observed for the last
time during the Presidency of Franklin Pierce “who was the first U.S. President
to appoint a Jew” to serve as United States Charge D’Affaires and Ambassador at
the Hague in the Netherlands. (Dennis Brian)
1860: In
Esztergom, Hungary, Rosalie Wiess and Phillip Schwartz, a captain in the
Hungarian Army gave birth to Julius Schwartz, the husband of Annette Hirschman,
who served as a Lt. of Artillery in the Hungarian Army until 1880 and came to
the United States where he served as Richmond County (NY_ Park Commission,
worked as manager for the Equitable Life Insurance Society for Staten Island
and President of the Staten Island Hebrew Benevolent Society and Free Loan
Fund.
1860: An
Imperial decree issued today granted the Jews of Lower Austria, Moravia,
Silesia, Hungary, Voywodina, and the Banat, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and
the Littoral Districts, the right of possessing real property. They cannot,
however, exercise the rights of patronage, jurisdiction, or scholastic
representation, attached to such possession.
1860: Uriah P.
Levy was appointed Commodore and given command of the U.S. Navy’s Eastern
Mediterranean fleet. A Jewish officer in the Navy at this time was rather
unusual. Levy dealt with his share of anti-Semitism during his career
including a court-martial at the end of which he was fully exonerated. Levy
waged a successful fight to end flogging as a form of punishment in the
Navy. He was an ardent admirer of Thomas Jefferson. After
Jefferson’s death, Levy bought Monticello and restored it to its former
luster. The restoration included reclaiming Jefferson’s library which
numbered about 2500 volumes. When Levy passed away in 1862, he left the
estate to the people of the United States. Levy was proud of his Jewish
heritage. He served as the first president of Washington Hebrew
Congregation which is still one of the dominant Reform congregations in Washington,
D.C. Forty-three years after President Monroe had made Levy a lieutenant,
President Buchanan gave him command of the Mediterranean Squadron. With command
came the Navy’s highest rank: Commodore. The American fleet and frigates from
Russia and Sardinia boomed out a thirteen-gun salute in the harbor at La Spezia
as the pennant bearing a single star ran up the main mast of his flagship, USS
Macedonian.
1861(11th
of Adar, 5621): Ta’anit Esther
1861(11th
of Adar, 5621): Laura Lewis, the four week hold daughter of Esther and
Alexander Lewis passed away today.
1861(11th
of Adar, 5621): Hayyim Nissim Abulafia, a descendant of Hayyim Abulafia who
“had come to Tiberias in the middle of the 18th century” who had
served as chief rabbi of Jerusalem since the fall of 1854 following the death
of Isaac Kobo, passed away today.
1863: The
Illustrated London News published an article on the new Bayswater Synagogue for
which the foundation stone had been laid in July of 1862 and which would be
dedicated in July of 1863.
1863: Seventy-one-year-old
Enrico Marconi, the non-Jewish Italian architect who designed the Great
Synagogue in Lomza, Poland which “was built on the initiative of Rabbi
Eliezer-Simcha Rabinowicz “and destroyed by the Nazis passed away today.
1864: In
London Esther (nee Davis) and businessman William Miller gave birth to Leonard
Miller, the solicitor turned author who legally changed his name to Leonard
Merrick and whose works included Violet Moses “about a Jewish Financier
and his troubled wife” which was a “satire of middle class London Jewry.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/10/leonard-merrick-unloved-female-detective
https://books.google.com/books?id=jhcDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA478#v=onepage&q&f=false
1865: Cécile
Anspach and Baron Gustave de Rothschild gave birth to Aline Caroline de
Rothschild who became Lady Sassoon when he married Edward Sassoon in 1887. She
passed away in 1909 having given birth to two children – Philip Albert Gustave
David and Sybil Rachel Bettie Cecile.
1866: At
Rotterdam Johanna Hijmans became Johanna Kann when she married 26-year-old
Maurice Kann today.
1866: In Salzkotten,
Büren, Westfalen, Aron Abraham Weinberg, the son of Abraham Bendix Weinberg and
Hannchen Leffmann Weinberg and his wife Pauline Weinberg gave birth to Avraham
Alfred Weinberg who was murdered by the Nazis in 1941 and who was the husband
of the former Bertha Stern and the father of Russ Weinberg who married Shmuel Aron
Landman.
1867: Ion
Ghica who “was a valuable ally for Yiddish theater in Bucharest” and “on
several occasions expressed his favorable view of the quality of acting, and
even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater” completed his second
tour as Prime Minister of Romania today.
1867: In
Mannheim, Germany, Bernhard and Emma Kahn gave birth to banker and patron of
the arts Otto Hermann Kahn. While his name is unknown today, in his time Otto
Kahn was a major financial and cultural figure in the United States and
Europe. Kahn began his banking career in Germany. But he
reached greatness after moving to the United States in 1893 where he became a
partner in the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Described as Wall
Street Wizard, he helped “reorganize the U.S. railroad system, finance the
Allied effort in World War I and encourage banking reform after the 1929 stock
market crash.” He organized and bankrolled the Metropolitan Opera
Company. He also supported a whole slew of artists many of whom were
unknown and struggling at the time. Among the many recipients of his support
were Hart Crane, George Gershwin, Arturo Toscanni, Eugene O’ Neil, Paul
Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Ezra Pound. The eclectic Kahn was also a
favorite of the inventor Thomas A. Edison who kept a picture of the
banker-philanthropist on the wall of his New Jersey Home. Kahn
accomplished this and a lot more despite anti-Semitism and anti-German feelings
in the United States. He passed away in 1934. Here is something to think
about. If a man with a resume like Kahn can be so quickly forgotten, how
many of today’s “important people” will be remembered fifty years from now?
1873: Two days
after she had passed away, 36 year old Sarah Solomon, the daughter of Joseph
and Susan Lyon, the daughter of Joseph and Susan Lyon and the wife of Solomon
Lazarus Solomon with she had had nine children was buried today at the “West
Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1873: Rosetta
Moses, the daughter of Martha and Joseph Jonas and her husband Dr. Montefiore
Moses gave birth to Edwin E. Moses who died at the age of four months.
1874:
Benjamin Disraeli replaced William Gladstone as Prime Minister. Disraeli
was born Jewish, but his father had him baptized. The conversion came
over a dispute that the elder Disraeli had with the local synagogue.
Since he was not Jewish, Disraeli was not limited by English law in pursuing
his political career. At the same time, he was the target of anti-Semitic
barbs and he was quite proud of his Jewish heritage.
1874:
Birthdate of Bryn Mawr graduate and social worker Pauline Goldmark, the
daughter of Jewish immigrants, Regina Wehle and Joseph Goldmark the “retired
secretary of the National and New York State Consumers Leagues who was the
sister of labor reformer Josephine Clara Goldmark, the niece of composer Karl
Goldmark and the cousin of composer Rubin Goldmark.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldmark-pauline
1874:
Ferdinand and Jeannette Levy Falk gave birth to New Orleanean Arnold Falk, the
brother of Gustave, Myron and Gertrude Falk.
1875: In
Cracow, Dina Winberg and “hardware dealer” Pincus Weinber gave birth to Nathan
Weinberg “the highly successful milliner shops in Hoboken and Jersey City, the
husband of Gussie Shoengut and a supporter of the Independent Krakauer Hebrew
Sheltering Hoe, the Montefiore Home and Temple Beth El.
1875:
According to “Poland Today” described conditions in the present-day Russian
province which has shrunk from 282,000 square miles to 48,863 square miles
under the rule of the Czars. While the majority of the population is
Roman Catholic, “the money in Poland is chiefly in the hands of the Jews.”
1877: The 200th
anniversary of the death of the great Dutch Jewish philosopher on the secular
calendar was marked by the publishing of “Baruch Spinoza.”
1878: In Paris
“a Turkish Jewish father and Egyptian mother” both of whom were Sephardim gave
Mirra Alfassa who became a revered spiritual leader, holy figure, and yogic
guru in India, founding multiple ashrams, a school, and an intentional,
self-sustaining community.”
https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/21/1878/birth-mirra-alfassa-spiritual-leader-and-holy-figure
1878: Hyman
and Henrietta Braun Fineshirber gave birth University of Cincinnati graduate
and HUC ordained Rabbi William Howard Fineshriber, Sr. the husband of Mae
Cecile Wallerstein Fineshriber and the father of Bertha, Jacob and Aaron
Fineshirber who served congregations in Davenport, IA, Memphis, TN and
Philadelphia PA while also being a member of the American Council of Judaism
and the Red Cross.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0144/ms0144.html
1879:
“The Reformer and Jewish Times; A Journal of Progress in Religion,
Literature, Science, and Art” published its final edition today. It
first appeared in 1869 as “The Jewish Times: A Journal of Reform and Progress.”
1880:
According to “The Elder Disraeli’s Tomb” published today, the tomb of Benjamin
Disraeli, the grandfather of the Prime Minister which is located at the Spanish
and Portuguese Cemetery in the Mile-end-road has been repaired. The need
to recut and repaint the tombstone should come as no surprise since the elder
Disraeli was buried in 1816. No repairs have been made on the tombstone of the
Prime Minister’s grandmother who was buried in the same cemetery.
1880: It was
reported today the Jewish leaders in New York City have an issued an appeal to
their co-religionists throughout the United States to make generous
contributions to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Paris based charity
that provides financial support and educational opportunities for Jews living
under the Czar and the Ottoman Sultan. It is suggested that leaders take
advantage of the upcoming Purim festivities and address their congregations on
the Sabbath of Remembrances on the need for providing financial support.
1881:
Birthdate of Marc Boegner, the President of the Council of the Protestant
Federation who risked his life by writing to Marshal Petain “protesting again
the deportation of Jews and the inhuman manner in which orders for these
deportations were being carried out.
1881:
Birthdate of Rabbi Jonah Bondi Wise “an American Rabbi and leader of the Reform
Judaism movement, who served for over thirty years as rabbi of the Central
Synagogue in Manhattan and was a founder of the United Jewish Appeal, serving
as its chairman from its creation in 1939 until 1958.”
1882: It was
reported today that the reports of British Consular officials have “to a
certain extent” exaggerated “the seriousness of the anti-Jewish riots in
Russia” especially when it comes to “the reports of loss of life” and attacks
on Jewish women. Only about “100 Jews were shamefully” mistreated in
Warsaw of whom only 10 or 12 have died because of their injuries. However, the
reports of property destruction were not exaggerated.
1883(14th of
Adar I, 5643): Purim Katan
1884: In
Youngstown, OH, Emma and Charles Lippman gave birth to University of
Pennsylvania trained physician, Dr. Jay S. Liebman, the grandson of Rabbi
Lippman Liebman and husband of Helen Liebman with whom he had a daughter, Sarah
Frances who settled in Atlanta GA, where “he is the chief of the medical staff
of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Hospital” and “the examining surgeon of the
United States Casualty Company…”
1886: Twenty-two-year-old
Morris Harber, the Galicia born son of Yete and Mendel Harber who in 1881 came
to the United States and settled in Philadelphia where he became a successful
manufacturer of ladies’ shirt waists and a director both the People’s Bank and
the People’s Trust Company married Ida Shapiro today after which they had seven
children.
1886: In
Massachusetts, founding of the Lynn Hebrew Benevolent Society which meets the
first Sunday of each month and is supported by an auxiliary society – the
Ladies’ Hebrew Circle.
1888: Two days
after he had passed away, Heiman Kohnstamm was buried today at the “Balls Pond
Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1889:
Birthdate of Otto Wasserzug, the son of Berlin banker who gained fame as actor
Otto Wallburg who would win an Iron Cross while serving on the Eastern Front in
WW I which did save him from being murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.
1889:
Birthdate of Moritz Neumann, one of the many Jewish men from Leinsteinach who
served in the German Army during WW I.
1890(1st
of Adar, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1890:
Birthdate of New York City native and Columbia graduate, E Knight Harris, the
New York Law School trained attorney and member of the Queens Country
Republican Committee who was the chairma of Sunday Services Committee of Temple
Israel and the husband of “the former Nan Harris” with whom he raised a son,
Arthur Harris.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/11/11/80560079.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1892: As New
York City continued to deal with an outbreak of Typhus, the SS Etruria
which had been “detained at Quarantine” because she had a large “number of
Russian Jews among her steerage passengers” was allowed to dock today.
The Health Officer order the seventy Russian Jews to remained on board until
“their baggage” had been “thoroughly fumigated.”
1892:
“Non-Success of Russian Jews” published today which relied on information first
published in the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Voskhod has examined the
conditions “of Jews who left Russia during the persecutions of the last 18
months.” According to this monthly Jewish publication, those who went to
Palestine want to return to Russia because the agricultural settlements “have
been failures.” And things are so bad for those who went to United
States, “that were a society formed…to pay” their expenses “two thirds would
gladly avail themselves of its funds and return.” (This report may reflect the
philosophic stance of Voshkod as much as it does the conditions of the people
it described.
1891: In
Pittsburgh, PA on Shabbat, the rabbi at Poale Zedeck Congregation on Grant
Street was prevented from preaching his announced sermon by Rueben Miller, the
Vice President of the synagogue who was to be the topic of the talk.
1892: “A Great
Hebrew Hospital” published today provided a lengthy history of Mount Sinai
Hospital which began as the Jewish Hospital. In addition to all of its
other accomplishments, it “was the first hospital in the city to admit women to
membership on its house staff.”
1893: Mr.
Weinstock wrote from Sacramento, CA to Pierre Botkine of Century Magazine
asking about the status of Jews in Russia “who enter the Greek Catholic
Church.” Specifically, he wanted to know if conversion brings “full civil
and political rights.”
1894(15th
of Adar 1, 5654): Fifty-one-year-old Bialystok born Khayim, who in 1860 moved
to Jerusalem with his parents where “he became a pioneer of the Yiddish press
in the land of Israel.”
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2018/08/khayim-pres.html
1895:
Birthdate of Szmul Zygielbojm (Zygelbojm or Zigelboim) “a Jewish-Polish
socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council
of the Polish government in exile” who in 1943 “committed suicide to protest
the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust.”
1895: Alfred
Dreyfus was “removed from his prison and transferred to an icy cell in a naval
cruiser” which would carry him imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
1896:
Students’ party at “Kadimah”. The students give Herzl a great
ovation.
1897:
Birthdate of Meir Ya’ari, the native of Galicia who made Aliyah in 1920 where
he helped to found Kibbutz Artzi before serving in as a member of Israel’s
first Knesset.
1897: In
correspondence bearing today’s date, “leading members of the Jewish community
in Tripoli sent a letter to the President of the Alliance that gave a grim
picture of Jewish life in rural Tripolitania.” The Jews reported
that they were living as “dhimmi.” An Arab mob had destroyed the synagogue in
the village of Zliten and in another village the authorities refused
to find those who had murdered one Jew and injured his companion.
1897: The
Board of Trustees of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum is scheduled to
meet today where they will take up Emanuel Lehman’s offer to provide $100,000
“for the endowment of an industrial and provident fund for the benefit of
graduates of the asylum.”
1898: As the
trial of Emile Zola, the publisher of the Aurore enters its final days
it was reported today that “public feeling against the Jews is so overwhelming
that” his conviction is a foregone conclusion.
1898: It was
reported today that Jews in Trenton, NJ are are still upset with the
anti-Semitic remarks of William J. Cossley, the Prosecutor in Mercer
County.
1898: In New
York City, Tina Pollack and Martins Linenthal gave birth to Harry Linenthal,
the husband of Miriam Landey who passed away in 1955 and Helene Myers and the
father of Dora Landey Linenthal.
1899: It was
reported today that “Max Regis, the former Mayor of Algiers” and “notorious
Jew-baiter…has been sentenced…to three years’ imprisonment” and ordered “to pay
a fine of 1,000 francs” for press offenses and glorify murder and pillage at
meetings in Algiers and Paris.” (These meetings were part of the
anti-Dreyfus violence that swept France.)
1899: In
Brooklyn,” Morris and Anna Krystal Gottschalk, Jewish immigrants from Poland”
gave birth to their sixth child, historian Louis Reichenthal Gottschalk.
1900:
Birthdate of Henry Cohen, the British physician and lecture who was honored as
the 1st Baron Cohen of Birkenhead for his contributions in the field of
medicine.
1901: “In
Zurich, German-born physicist Albert Einstein became a citizen of Switzerland.”
1902(14th
of Adar I, 5662): Purim Katan
1902: It was
reported that “an Israelite, who is a candidate for admission to practice as an
attorney and counselor in the courts of record” in the state of New York has called “attention to the fact that the
date set by the State Board of Law Examiners for a special examination of
candidates, residents of the First and Second Departments, at the Court House
of Appellate Division” in New York City “is April 22” which “is the Hebrew
Passover” and has asked for help in having the date changed either to April 21s
or April 15th.
1902(14th
of Adar I, 5661): Louis Brenner, the daughter of Brooklyn real estate developer
Levi Blumenau and the wife of “Brooklyn magistrate and Kings County
Commissioner of Jurors” with whom she had six children – Arthur, Mortimer, Rose,
Rica, Selma, and Caroline – passed away today.
1903(24th
of Shevat, 5663): Parashat Mishpatim
1903: It was
reported today the Kaiser Wilhelm believes “that it is self-evident that the
Old Testament contains many sections which are of a purely human and historical
nature and are not God’s revealed word” including “the legislative act on
Sinai… which can only be regarded as symbolically inspired of God when Moses
had to reburnish well-known paragraphs of the Laws perhaps derived from the
code of Hammurabi.”
1904: In
Richmond, VA, Harry and Hortense Eichel Campbell gave birth to screenwriter
Alan Campbell, the husband and colleague of Dorothy Parker.
1905: During
the Russian Revolution of 1905 the Chief of Police for the district that
included Bialystok was killed. Attacks like this would become an excuse
for the attacks against the Jews known as the Bialystok Pogrom that would
take place in June of the following year.
1906: It was
reported today that the International Free Scholarship Association which
“assists poor and deserving student of all nationalities and creeds” including
Jewish students” has hosted a Hindu Day at the Hotel Marie Antoinette in New
York.
1907: “Gen.
Kaulbars, the Governor General of Odessa, has at last been compelled to take
action against the Union of True Russians, a reactionary organization, for the
outrages upon Jews, although only to the extent of threatening the Union that
its members will be punished if the armed attacks upon citizens are repeated.”
1907: “The
Italian Government abandoned the idea of sending Prof. Luzzgatti, the former
Minister of the Treasury, to St. Petersburg for the purpose of negotiating a
new commercial treaty” because the Italians have received word that the
professor would be persona non grata with the Russians due to the fact that he
is Jewish.
1908: It was
reported today that the Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society “supports two
vacation houses, on at Bellport, Long Island and the other at Big Indian in the
Catskills.
1909: “Joseph
L. Buttenweiser, the ex-President of the Hebrew Technical Institute, Rabbi H.
Pereira Mendes and Judge Otto A. Rosalsky” were among the speakers at the
dedication of the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek which is led by Rabbi
Phillip Klein.
1910: Samuel
D. Warren, a former law partner of Louis D. Brandeis passed away today in
Boston, MA.
1910(12th
of Adar I, 5670: Polish born American rabbi, Joshua Siegel passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/seigel-joshua
1911: It was
reported today that objection was made to a resolution that had been introduced
by Assemblymen Spielberg and Schlivek calling upon Congress to take action
regarding the enforcement of the Russo-American Treaty of 1832 which includes
issuing travel papers to American Jews going to Russia which means that the
resolution will be tabled until next week when it will be brought up again for
debate and a vote.
1912:
Birthdate of Dr. Solomon Schonfeld, the British rabbi who saved thousands
during the Holocaust http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/british_hero_of_holocaust_government_honours_highgate_rabbi_dr_solomon_schonfeld_for_saving_3_500_lives_in_holocaust_1_2013751
http://www.jta.org/1984/02/10/archive/solomon-schonfeld-dead-at-72
http://www.ajr.org.uk/index.cfm/section.journal/issue.Dec07/article=971
1913(14th
of Adar I, 5673): Purim Katan
1913: It was
reported today that “the Society of the Jewish Institute, which has been formed
to establish a Jewish Educational Center in the neighborhood of lower Second
Avenue” has made arrangement “for a lecture series by noted Jewish authorities”
on the teachings the Hebrew prophets, the first of which will be given on
February 23 “at 11o’clock at Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre.”
1913: In
London, “lecturing before the Camera Club on his travels in Egypt and Arabia,
Julian Grande said to-night that he had succeeded in entering the shrine called
Aaron’s Tomb on the top of Mount Hot, which is jealously guarded by the
Mohammedans, and in taking photographs of the interior, though he was covered
by the rifle of an Arab fanatic.
1914: Dr. John
Tatlock and Marjorie Tatlock gave birth to Dr. Jean Frances Tatlock whom some
contend was the mistress of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Tatlock was a Communist and
this relationship would be used against him when his security clearance was
lifted after World War II.
1915: Dr.
Cyrus Adler, President of Dropsie College, presided over the opening session of
the 23rd annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society
which is being held at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City.
1915: “At a
meeting of the Jewish Community, or Kehillah, held today at the Educational
Alliance a report was approved calling upon the American Jewish Committee to
take the leadership in plans for meeting ‘the greatest crisis that has
overtaken the Jews in centuries’” – a crisis that “has been brought about by
the war” and the problems of which “must be solved by the 3,000,000 American
Jews.”
1915: “Life
and Times of the Famous Jewish Historian” published today provides a review of Josephus
by Norman Bentwich published by the Jewish Publication Society.
1915:
Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey and Attorney General Warren Grice left Atlanta
for Washington today where they will file a brief with the Supreme Court in the
case of Leo Frank, “asserting the right of every state of the union to make and
enforce its own criminal laws, from interference or supervision by the Federal
courts.
1915: William
Vincent Byars of St. Louis read a paper on the part played by the Gratz
brothers in the development of trade in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys at the
morning session of the annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical
Society.
1915: Leon
Huchner presented a paper on the life of Daniel Gomez a merchant in colonial
New York at the afternoon session of the annual meeting of the American Jewish
Historical Society.
1915: Another
600 or 700 refugees, most of whom are Jewish, arrived in Egypt today “reporting
that the situation in Syria is going from bad to worse.”
1916: C.H.
Rubenstein wrote to Simon Wolf, the “Chairman of the Board of Delegates on
Civil Rights of the Union American Hebrew Congregations describing the action
he took with Rabbi Rosenau in opposing “a bill now before the General Assembly
making the reading of the King James version of the Bible compulsory in the
public schools of Maryland.
1916: During
World War I, 1,400 German guns fired the open salvo in the Battle of
Verdun. The bloodletting would last for ten months at a cost over half a
million French casualties and four hundred thousand German casualties.
For the French, this pointless bloodletting would lead to a pacifism when
facing the threat of Hitler. Life in the trenches would lead to the
creation of the Maginot Line which also helped to pave the way for France’s
early collapse in World War II. In other words, a fairly straight line
can be drawn from a battle in 1916 and the rise of Vichy and French
collaboration with the Nazis that led to the death of so many Jews.
Additionally, the “hero” of Verdun was Marshall Petain, the same Marshall
Petain who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII, shipping Jews to Drancy,
the first stop on the way to Auschwitz.
1917:
According to the Overseas News Agency, the $250,000 that the U.S. Ambassador
has given to the Vienna Jewish Association which was collected by the American
Jewish community “is destined for the relief of Galician Jews and Jewish
refugees from the occupied territory of Galicia.”
1918(9th
of Adar, 5678): Fifty-two-year-old author and linguist Hedwig Lachmann passed
away. (As reported by Hanna Delf von Wolzogen)
1918:
During the fight to free Palestine from Turkish control, Australian units under
the overall command of General Allenby drove the Turks from Jericho and reached
the northern end of the Dead Sea. As a result of these victories, the British
would become the mandatory power after the war and the Balfour Declaration
would be worth the paper it was written on, for a little while at least.
1919(20th
of Adar I, 5679): As the right wing reasserts its authority in Germany, a
German aristocrat named Count Anton Arco-Valley shot Jewish born Bavarian
political leader Kurt Eisner in the back and killed him as he on his way to the
Munich Parliament.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Collier%27s_New_Encyclopedia_(1921)/Eisner,_Kurt
1919: In
Hungary, “the prime minister ordered the arrest of over one hundred prominent
Communists including Bela Kun” the son of “Samu Kohn, a lapsed Jewish village
notary” and “Roza Golberger, a Jewish convert to Protestantism.”
1919: Samuel
Hershel Sharove, the brother of fellow soldier Isadore Sharove and the son of David Sharove who “enlisted
in Ordnance Corps, Fort Myer, Va., December 15, 1917, and assigned to Supply
Division, Washington, D. C. ; transferred to Ordnance Training Company,
University of Pittsburgh; to Ordnance Training Camp, Camp Hancock, Ga. ;
returned to Washington ; here, while standing physical examination for
commission, it developed he had, in his eagerness to enter the service,
‘defrauded’ the Government upon original enlistment by memorizing the
eye-chart, his sight being bad; for this he was court-martialed and reduced to
first-class private, and placed in Class C, Limited Service, and assigned to
duty at Springfield, Mass., Armory was discharged today
1920(2nd
of Adar, 5680): Parashat Terumah
1920:
Birthdate of San Francisco Janet Loeb, who after marrying Dr. James L. Wolff
became Janet L. Wolff, a leading advertising executive who played a dominate
roll at J. Walter Thompson and whose iconic campaigns for such products as
Irish Spring Soap and Datsun automobile led to her being inducted into the
Advertising Hall of Fame.
1921:
Birthdate of Bronx native and son of Russian Jewish immigrants Albert “Albie”
Axelrod the WW II U.S. Navy veteran and CCNY grad who became one of America’s
leading fencers as can be seen by the bronze medal he won at the 1960 Olympics.
http://usfencinghalloffame.com/wp/axelrod-albert/
1921: The
Daughters of Zion Hebrew Day Nursery are scheduled to hold a ball tonight which
is a fund raiser of the school at 211 Varet Street that provides care about
fifty children of working mothers.
1921 Dr.
Maurice I Harris of Temple Israel delivered one in a series of four lectures on
Modern Jewish History at the Teachers’ Institute of the Free Synagogue on West
68th Street this evening.
1922:
Birthdate of DJ Murray “the K,” referred to as the Fifth Beatle.
1922:
Birthdate of Zivi Zeitlin, the native of Dubrovna who was raised in Palestine
and became “an internationally renowned violinist known for interpreting the
work of contemporary composers.” Zeitlin was 11 years old when he won a
scholarship to Julliard making him the youngest person to win such an honor
from the famed music school. In 1967, he became a professor at the
Eastman School of Music.(As reported by Margalit Fox)
1922: “The
Loves of Pharaoh” a “million-dollar epic” silent film directed by Ernst
Lubitsch premiered in New York today.
1922:
University of Pennsylvania graduate William M. Lewis, the Lithuanian born son
of Jonas and Mildred Lewis and husband of Marie Rosenthal was appointed to
served as a Judge of the Municipal Court in Philadelphia today by the Governor.
1923: In “To
Preserve Jerusalem” published today, Ronald Storrs, the first British military
governor of Palestine called Americans to support the Pro-Jerusalem Society
which was fighting to maintain the unique characteristics of the ancient city
and avoid such vulgarizations as having “factory chimneys in the neighborhood
of Solomon’s Temple or the Holy Sepulcher.”
1924: It was
reported today that “Palestine had cost the British Exchequer one million, four
hundred thousand pounds in 1923-24, but it was estimated that the would only be
one million pounds in 1924-25.
1925: In York,
PA, Lewis and Nettie Wolfson Leibowitz gave birth to Herschel Weldon Leibowitz,
“a Penn State University psychologist who was among the first scientists to
explore how the mind can misinterpret what the eye sees at night, a phenomenon
that contributes to traffic accidents.” (As reported by Benedict Carey)
1926: In
London, “Israel Zangwill, speaking at a meeting of the Jewish Drama League”
tonight “said that George Bernard Shaw had make the Jews his debtors because
all his translators and agents were Jews.”
1926: “A
contribution of $3,000 was announced” today “from national headquarters of the
United Jewish Campaign which is endeavoring to raise $15,000,000 from American
Jewry for their suffering coreligionist in foreign lands.”
1926:
“Speakers at the third annual meeting of the National Council of the Palestine
Foundation Fund at the Hotel Astor” today “declared that wealthy Jews have not
done their share in the last year toward the support of the fund for the
welfare of Jews in Palestine.”
1927: Dr.
Israel Konovitz, the President of the Hebrew Principals’ Association and the
father of Isidore Konvitz, a Columbia University graduate and instructor at the
Hebrew University, is scheduled to set sail on the Mauretania as he makes his
way to Palestine where he will study the education system.
1927: It was
reported today that Otto Kahn, Maurice Wertheim and Edward L. Bernays are
acting as committee to see what it would take to establish a permanent home for
the Habima Players in Palestine.
1928: Seventeen-year-old
Hunter College student Judith Wolfert, “the winner of the recent National Young
Judaea Oratorical Contest” is scheduled to set sail today on the Mauretania
bound for Palestine where she “expects to make a study of Palestine’s
agriculture, industries and culture.”
1928:
Texas banker and businessman Fred Farrel Florcence,
the New York born son of Lithuanian immigrants Mose and Celia (Freedman)
Fromowitz married Helen Lefkowitz passed
today.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/florence-fred-farrel
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/26/99832731.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1929: Sir
Julien Cahn XI, a cricket team Sir Julien Cahn founded and captained for made
its “first-class debut” in Jamaica.
1929: Sixty-nine-year-old
Sir John Grenfell Maxwell, the British General who when putting together the
forces for the Gallipoli landings selected Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson “to
raise and command a Jewish military unit to fight against the Turks in the
Middle East” passed away today.
1930: “As a
gesture of protest against religious bigotry Christian and Jewish leader joined
together tonight for the regular Friday evening service at Temple Israel in New
York.
1930: With the
entire Jewish community perturbed over the religious persecutions in Russia and
the fate of hundreds of thousands of declassed Jews in that country, Dr. Joseph
A. Rosen, head of the Agro-Joint closed a brief visit to the United States
today with a statement in which he sought to allay fears in Jewish circles of
an impending collapse of the Jewish colonies in southern Russia and he Crimea.
1931(4th
of Adar, 5691): Parashat Terumah
1931: It was
reported today that “Jewish craftsmen, doctors, teachers, agricultural
specialists and engineers who are said to be disgusted with Rumanian
anti-Semitism are streaming in the Soviet Union from Bessarabia.
1932(14th of
Adar I, 5692): Purim Katan
1932(14th of
Adar I 5692): Boris Schatz, founder of the Bezalel Art School passed away.
1932: The new
home for Sephardi Temple Tifereth Israel located on Santa Barbara Avenue was
dedicated today in Los Angeles.
1932:
“According to announcement sent out by the Jewish National Fund of America”
today, “an evergreen memorial of 500,000 pin and eucalyptus trees will be
planted in Palestine as a living tribute of the Jews of America” to George
Washington.
1932: It was
reported today that “Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo of the Court of Appeals…who has
been named a member of the United States Supreme Court” attended services at
the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the only Jewish congregation active in
New York during the Colonial and Revolutionary Period that celebrated the
bicentennial of the birth of George Washington.
1932: The
New York Times featured a review of The Tragedies of Progress by
Italian Jewess Gina Lombroso who is described as a severe critic “of the
trend in our technical civilization.”
1933: In
Tyron, NC, Mary Kate Waymon and John Divine Waymon gave birth to Eunice
Kathleen Waymon who gained fame as singer-songwriter Kathleen Waymon whose
repertoire included “Eretz Zavat Halav and who recorded “Strange Fruit,” a song
written by Abel Meeropol which was inspired after he saw “a photograph of two
young men being lynched.”
1933:
Birthdate of New York native Robert “Bob” Rafelson, “the son of hat ribbon
manufacturer” and nephew of screenwriter Samuel Raphaeslon, “the author of ‘The
Jazz’” whose most famous work may have “Five Easy Pieces which directed,
produced and also co-authored the script.
1934: The Los Angeles Times reported that
“Samuel Untermyer, head of the New York-based Anti-Nazi League came” to the
southern California metropolis “to speak about the dangers of Nazi Germany.]
1935: “When
the Jewish-owned steamer Tel Aviv” docked today in Palestine “for the
first time, the first passenger to land was” Georg Martini the correspondent
for The Völkischer Beobachter the official newspaper of the Nazi Party.
1935: It was reported
today that “Isadore B. Geller and Max Rosenfeld” have purchased from the
Riverside Drive Corporation the five and a half story apartment house containing
62 apartments near Gun Hill Road.
1936: In
Warsaw, the Polish Senate debated a proposal for “a mass emigration of Jews
from Poland” during which Senator Jausz Radzweill said that he felt “bound to
say that Germany’s example may encourage anti-Semitic troubles everywhere.”
1936: “The
National Democratic Party of Upper Silesia was ordered disbanded today on
charges of conducting anti-Semitic agitation.”
1937: Today’s
listing “Forthcoming Books” included The Dreyfus Case and Major Noah:
American Jewish Pioneer.
1937: In
Poland, citizens were informed by loud speakers, posters and leaflets of the
“creation of the new government party Colonel Adam Koc, commander of the
Pilsudski Legionnaires who said “we can never approve of violence and brutal
anti-Semitic outrages which degrade our national dignity and honor… but we
understand the instinct of legitimate defense of our people in their” move
“toward economic independence.”
1938: Semyon
Dimanstein who had at one time been head of Yevsektsiya, the Jewish
section of the Soviet Communist party, was arrested by Stalin. Within
short order he would be condemned to death and executed.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that British troops, assisted by police, inflicted
heavy casualties on a gang of armed Arabs halfway between Rosh Pina and Safed
and that there were about 500 suspected Arab terrorists interned at El Mizra
camp.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that R.E. Alderson, R.A.F. Squadron Leader murdered
by Arab terrorists near Atlit was buried with honors at Ramle.
1938: The
Palestine Post reported that The Jewish Agency, The Marine Trust Ltd. and
other Jewish organizations asked the government to speed up the development of
the Tel Aviv port in order to stop congestion and allow normal passenger
traffic. The basin had to be deepened, the quay space doubled and another
lighter basin added to the existing facilities.
1939: In a
further move to impoverish the Jews, the German government order them “to
surrender all objects made from gold, silver, precious stones and pearls.”
(Like Haman, Hitler knew that anti-Semitism was a profitable “business.”
1939: The
Italian government continued its “campaign against the United States as a whole
and Mr. Roosevelt in particular” by calling the President “an alarmist who is
…yielding to pressure from Jews bent on crush the totalitarian States to avenge
the persecution of their brethren in Germany and Italy…”
1939(2nd
of Adar, 5699): Eighty-seven-year-old Jewish philanthropist Jacques Teitel who
“for forty years filled an office” similar to that of a district attorney in
the United States and who after being forced to leave Russia “went to Germany
where he became president of the Union of Russian Jews in Germany” passed away
today in Nice, France.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/02/22/96020335.pdf
1940(11th
of Adar I, 5700): Fifty-four year old University Medical College (K.C. MO)
urologist Julius Frishcer , the son of George and Helena Frisher and the husband of Marion Sickle whom he married
in June of 1920 passed away today.
1940: Robert
Allan Jacob was admitted to the eighty-year-old architectural firm of Ely
Jacques Kahn which will now be known as Ely Jacques Kahn, Robert Allan Jacobs
Architects.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/02/21/92885766.html?pageNumber=39
1940:
Oberfuerher Richard Gluecks informed Himmler that he had found a “suitable
site” for a new “quarantine Camp” at Auschwitz.
1940: Czech
architect Otto Eisler arrived in Norway after fleeing his homeland which had
been taken over by the Nazis who had imprisoned and tortured him.
1941: “The
Strawberry Blonde” featuring George Tobias with a script by Julius J. Epstein
and Philip G. Epstein was released in the United States today.
1941: In the
Bronx, the former Martha Zipper and William Newman who made ties gave birth to Irving
Newman who gained fame as Rick Newman, the husband of Krysi Newman who gained fame
as the creator and owner of Catching a Rising, the Manhattan club “where Billy
Crystal, Robin Williams, Freddie Prinze, Jay Leno and countless other comedians
did some of their earliest work and sometimes returned to refine material…” (As
reported by Neil Genzingler)
1942(4th
of Adar, 5702): Parsahat Terumah
1942: It was
announced today that “Rabi Jonah B. Wise of Central Synagogue has accepted the
chairmanship of the war emergency campaign of the UJA in the New York
metropolitan area” and that Governor Lehman, Judge Julian W. Mack, Rabbi
Stephen S. Wise and Henry Ittleson have been named to serve as honorary
officers.
1943: The
Battle of Guadalcanal ended. Former champion boxer, Barney Ross won a
Silver Star the second highest medal given for battlefield gallantry for his
heroics during this grinding eight month long battle. Ross had enlisted
at the age of 32 and fought in the first of the island hopping battles that
would lead to victory over Japan in 1945.
1943: In
Paterson, NJ. stationary store owner Morris Roses and his wife, the former Ceil
Schwartz, both of whom escaped the Holocaust, gave birth to Dr. Allen Roses “a
maverick researcher whose team of scientists identified two genes that put
healthy people over 65 at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”
1943: Dutch
Roman Catholic bishops protested against persecution of Jews. This came as part
of the response to Nazi recent roundups of Jews in Amsterdam. The
“Righteous Gentiles” did make their attempts to help, but there were
just too few of them.
1943: In
Borough Park, Brooklyn, Abraham Geffen and Batya Volovskaya, the owner of “a
clothing store called Chic Corsets by Geffen gave birth to David Lawrence
Gefen, who founded “Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, DGC Records
in 1990, and DreamWorks SKG in 1994.”
1943: Sir
Harold MacMichael, High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine,
broadcast a speech tonight on the eve of Red Army Day in which he “warmly
praised the achievements of the Red Army.”
1944(27th
of Shevat, 5704): Dov Lopatyn was killed by a landmine today. While
serving as the head of the Judenrat in Lachwa he “refused the demand of the
Einsatzgruppen that the Lakhva Ghetto inhabitants line up for deportation and
led one of the first ghetto uprisings after which an untold number of the Jews
escaped to the Pripet Marshes. It was there the Lopatyn joined the
partisans with whom he fought until his death.
1944:
Birthdate of Dr. Sander L. Gilmnan, the New York native and Tulane University
alum whose accomplishments include the founding of the Jewish Studies program
at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
http://ila.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/gilman.html
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Jew_s_Body.html?id=6sTjj5uiVegC
1945: It was
understood today that the Vatican “has generally approved of the American
interest in the Middle East if only as a counter poise to possible Russian
influence” in the area” and that “it was recall that the Vatican was generally
believed to have been lined up behind the status quo in Palestine, giving
implicit approval to the policies of Dr. Chaim Weizmann.”
1946: British
soldiers and policeman are searching for those who attacked the police
headquarters tonight in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The attackers in Tel Aviv
were armed with machine guns and grenades and set-off at least 6 separate
explosions. The attacks followed searches of Jewish settlements by the
police that resulted in the seizure of rifles and “a clandestine radio.”
1946:
Congressman Augustus Bennett, a New York Republican, with the support of
Congressman Thomas J. Lane, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a resolution
today in the House of Representative calling for a “Congressional investigation
of the Palestine situation…The measure calls for a joint House-Senate committee
to be sent to the Holy Land to investigate conditions there and report its
findings to Congress.”
1946:
Birthdate of Monice Lenore Belson, the sister of Jerry Beslon, who gained fame
as screenwriter Monica Johnson.
1947: “Nora
Prentis” a film noir directed by Vincent Sherman, with music by Franz Waxman
and a screenplay by N. Richard Nash was released today in the United States.
1947: Edwin H.
Land demonstrated the first instant developing camera in New York City. It took
only sixty seconds to develop a black and white photograph. Most of us
know that such famous scientists as Einstein, Salk and Sabine were
Jewish. But how many knew that this famous college dropout was Jewish as
well? He is also given credit for creating improved lenses and sunglasses
as well as providing research on new theories related to color perception.
1948(11th
of Adar I, 5708): Parashat Tetzaveh
1948(11th
of Adar I, 5708): Seventy-six German born journalist and university professor
Gustav Mayer who moved to the Netherlands when the Nazis came to power before
making his way to England in 1936 where he began working on a “history of the
English Worker’s Movement” passed away today.
1948:
Twenty-eight-year-old Alf James won the South African Welterweight Title.
1948: The Arab
League voted to deny American oil companies pipeline rights in the Middle East
until Washington altered its Palestine policy reinforcing efforts by Secretary
of State George Marshall and others at the State Department to get President
Truman to reconsider his support for the creation of a Jewish state.
1949: Today,
President Truman told a delegation from American Association of English-Jewish
Newspapers, including Philip Slomovitz, the editor of the Detroit Jewish
News “that he was familiar with the
background of the British administration in Palestine and that he had outlined
his plan emigration of refugees to Ernest Bevin just before he was appointed
foreign minister.
1949: “The
United Palestine Appeal was directed today to implement immediately a decision
of fifty-five members of its board of directors for the return of Henry
Morgenthau Jr., former Secretary of the Treasury, and Henry Montor to the
leadership of the 1949 United Jewish Appeal campaign for $250,000,000.
1950: “A major
trade showing of imported giftwares made in handicraft shops in Israel”
“sponsored by the Palestine Galleries for Arts and Crafts” continued for a
second day the Pierre Hotel in New York City.
1951(15th
of Adar I, 5711): Shushan Purim Katan
1951(15th
of Adar I, 5711): Sixty-nine-year-old Sara Samuel who served as “Headmistress
of the girl’s department of the JFS” from 1938 “until her retirement in 1945”
and was the Secretary of the Stamford Hill Ladies’ Guild at the New Synagogue
for 15 years passed away today.
1955: David
Ben-Gurion succeeded Pinhas Lavon as Defense Minister.
1955(29th
of Shevat, 5715): Four months before the death of her husband,
seventy-five-year-old Sadie (Brahm) Lefkowotiz, the mother of Lewis, Harry,
Helen and David Lefkowitz, Jr, and the wife David Lefkowotiz, the Dallas rabbi
who defied the KKK, passed away today with her memory living on with the
creation of the Sadie and David Lefkowitz Collection of Judaica at the Perkins
School of Theology.
1955(29th
of Shevat, 5715): Seventy-six-year-old Dr. Alwin M. (Max) Pappenheimer the
Columbia trained pathologist who was on the faculty at Columbia and who was the
father of Dr. Anne P. Forbes, Dr. John R. Pappenheimer and Dr. Alwin M.
Pappenheimer, Jr. of NYU who followed in his father’s footsteps, passed away
today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/02/22/96627378.pdf
1955: Dr.
Edward Warner Brice, “the director of adult education of H.E.W. announced
“today “that he is going to Israel in an effort to tap Israeli knowhow,
developed in its successful aid program in Asia and Africa” to help improve the
foreign assistance efforts of the United States. (As reported by JTA)
1956(9th
of Adar I, 5716): Sixty-nine-year-old mobster and confederate of Al Capone Jake
Guzik passed away on the South Side of Chicago.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/guzik-jacob
1956(9th of
Adar, 5716): Seventy-eight-year-old composer and conductor Edwin Franko
Goldman, the Louisville, KY born son of David Henry and Selma Franko Goldman
and founder of the Goldman Band of New York City, whose marching music made him
the successor to John Phillip Sousa and who was the husband of Adelaide Goldman
with whom he raised a daughter and a son Richard Franko Goldman who succeeded
his father as conductor the Goldman Band, passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/02/22/313797562.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/edwin-franko-goldman-mn0001421180/biography
1958:
Birthdate of exercise expert Jake Steinfeld (Body by Jake).
1958: Egypt
and Syria having formed the United Arab Republic (UAL) elected the
Egyptian dictator Gamiel Nasser as its new President. Nasser was a
Pan Arabist – yes they show up year in and year out – who was determined to
destroy the state of Israel as his means of uniting the Arab World. He
failed on both counts.
1958: In
Cambridge, MA, Elaine Salovey, a registered nurse, and Ronald Salovey, a
physical chemist gave birth to their oldest child Peter Salovey, a descendant
of the Soloveichik rabbinic family who became the 23 President of Yale
University.
1959(13th
of Adar I, 5719): Parashat Tetzaveh
1959(13th
of Adar I, 5719): Seventy-five-year-old American anthropologist Paul Radin the
Lodz born son Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin and the brother of “legal scholar Max
Radin” passed away today.
https://www.academia.edu/262124/PAUL_RADIN_an_attempt_at_an_intellectual_biography
1960: ABC
broadcast “Land,” an episode of “The Rebel” directed by Irvin Kirshner.
1960: In
Bloomington, the weekend-long ceremonies marking the dedication of the Moses
Montefiore Temple came to a close.
1962: “Walk on
the Wild Side” a movie version of a novel by the same name with “opening and
closing sequences directed by Saul Bass” starring Laurence Harvey and with
music by Elmer Bernstein was released in the United States today.
1962: In
Brooklyn, Norma and Al Lerner gave birth to Randy Lerner the billionaire
businessman who took over ownership of the Cleveland Browns when his father
passed away.
1962:
Birthdate of Eliezer Sandberg, the Haifa native who has served as a member of
the Knesset and held at least two cabinet posts.
1964(8th
of Adar, 5724): Seventy-year-old New York born NYU trained attorney, Benjamin
A. Hartstein, “a trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the
husband of the former Hortense Aarons Hofman passed away today in Hollywood,
FL.
1965:
Eighty-five-year-old Ukraine native Isaac Streisand the husband of Anna
Streisand and father of the famous performer Barbra Streisand was buried today
at the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, NY.
1966: Jan
Peerce appeared in “Don Giovanni” today in what would be his “last complete
stage performance at the Metropolitan Opera.”
1968:
Birthdate of Daniel Jacob “Dan” Calichman the native of Huntington Station, NY
who “played college soccer at Williams” before going on to a career as
professional player and coach.
1968: “Bye Bye
Braverman” an American comedy directed and produced by Sidney Lumet, starring
George Segal and Joseph Wiseman, with music by Peter Matz and filmed
cinematographer Boris Kaufman was released in the United States today.
1969(3rd
of Adar, 5729): Two were killed and twenty more wounded in a terrorist bombing
attack at a Jerusalem supermarket.
1969(3rd of
Adar, 5729): Sixty-seven-year Itzik Manger (איציק מאַנגער) passed away. Born in
what is now the Ukraine in 1901, Manger lived in various European cities as he
wrote plays and poems in Yiddish. Towards the end of his life, he made Aliyah
and lived in Tel Aviv. Itzik’s Midrash and Songs of the Megillah
were two of his more famous works, both of which drew upon Biblical themes.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Manger_Itsik
1970: A
Swissair plane bound from Zurich to Tel Aviv explodes and crashes shortly after
takeoff; all 47 people aboard are killed.
1970: An
Austrian airliner carrying mail for Israel from Frankfurt, West Germany, to
Vienna is damaged by an explosion in flight; no one is hurt.
1971(26th
of Shevat, 5731): Eighty-five-year-old Madison, SD native Clare Stephen Jacobs
who won the Bronze Medal for Pole Vaulting in the 1908 Summer Olympics passed
away today.
1971: In
“Seeing the Sinai” Douglas Greener described his tour of the Wilderness 4 years
after the Six Day War.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0813F73B5F127A93C3AB1789D85F458785F9
1972: Today,
“Mel Brooks appeared as the 2000 Year Old Man to help celebrated the 2000th
episode of the original quiz show Jeopardy!”
1973: Israeli
fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert, killing
more than 100 people.
1974:
Refusniks “Vitaly Rubin, Vladimir Galatzky and David Azbel completed a hunger
strike” today.
1974: Israeli
forces left the territory on the western side of the Suez Canal. While
the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) began as a disaster for the Israelis, the
military outcome was a triumph. Troops under Sharon crossed the Suez
Canal and put a stranglehold on the Egyptian Army. The disengagement of
1974 led to the historic visit of Sadat and the peace treaty that followed.
1976(20th
of Adar I, 5736): Ki Tisa
1976(20th
of Adar I, 5736): Sixty-seven-year-old NYU graduate and WW II Army Air Forces
veteran Manuel Siwek, who as president of Grosset & Dunlap, the book
publisher, introduced a concept of mass marketing for books who was the husband
of the former Pauline Fancher with whom he raised two children – Donald and
Alexandra – passed away today.
1977:
Birthdate of Birthdate of Jonathan Safran Foer an American author whose works
include Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close and Eating Animals.
1977(4th
of Adar, 5737): Sixty-two-year-old Boston native Avery Berlow Cohan, the
graduate of Cornell who earned a Ph.D. at Columbia before serving as a teaching
fellow at Harvard and a professor of finance at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel for twenty years passed away tonight.
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that there were at least 2,000 guests at the
colorful opening of the 29th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem.
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Finance Minister Simha Ehrlich had set up a
special police task force to study how to implement the Shimron Committee’s
recommendations on fighting the organized crime in Israel.
1978: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt withdrew its diplomatic mission from
Cyprus after its 15 commandos were killed and some 50 injured in fighting
Cypriot soldiers and PLO terrorists in an attempt to free a plane at the
Larnaca airport, in which two Arab terrorists were holding Arab and Egyptian
hostages.
1980(4th
of Adar, 5740): Attorney Joseph Jonah Cummins, “the son of an Orthodox Rabbi,”
and husband of Laura Cummins, who for seventy years “founded or published
Jewish newspapers in Detroit, Toledo, St. Louis and Los Angeles and who “was
the first publisher to organize a boycott of Nazi products in the 1930’s and
later led national campaigns against the repression of Soviet Jews” passed away
today after which he was buried in Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, CA.
https://jewishjournal.com/community/3960/
1982: A
revival of “Little Me,” a musical written by Neil Simon, with music by Cy
Coleman and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh the cast of which included Bebe Neuwirth
closed at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.
1982: “After
1,604 performances and fourteen previews,” the curtain came down on the
original Broadway production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” a musical with a “book”
co-authored by Murray Horwitz.
1982(28th of Shevat, 5742): Gershom
Scholem passed away. Born on December 5, 1897, Scholem, was a Jewish
philosopher and historian who was raised in Germany. He is widely regarded as
the modern founder of the scholarly study of Kabbalah, becoming the first
Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Scholem is
best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941)
and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His
collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism
(1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews. He was
awarded the Israel Prize in 1958 and was elected president of the Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1968.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/scholem.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/scholem/
http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1967/remembering-the-scholems/
1983(8th of Adar, 5743):
Eighty-nine year old Columbia University graduate Louis Bernstein who was a
teacher and principal in New York City for more than 50 years passed away
today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/24/obituaries/louis-bernstein.html
1983(8th of Adar, 5743): Murray
Seasongood, who served as Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio from 1926 through 1930
passed away today at the age of 104.
http://www.seasongoodfoundation.com/murray.html
1985(30th
of Shevat, 5745): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1985(30th
of Shevat, 5745): Sixty-nine-year-old Nathan Pritikin, inventor and diet guru
took his own life today.
https://www.pritikin.com/home-the-basics/about-pritikin/38-nathan-pritikin.html
http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-23/news/mn-1021_1_nathan-pritikin
1986(12th
of Adar I, 5746): Eighty-one-year-old Louis H. Silberkleit, the co-founder of
Archie Comics Inc who married Nicole Bernheim after his first wife Lillian
Meisel, the mother of his son Michael died, passed away today.
1986: Leonard
“Cohen appeared as villain Francois Zolan in the “French Twist”
episode of the American television series Miami Vice originally broadcast
today.”
1987: The
Syrian army marched into Beirut. This was part of Syria’s plan to rule
“Greater Syria” a territory that would include Lebanon, Israel and
Jordan. At the behest of the United States, Israel blocked Syria’s plans
to seize part of Jordan in the 1970’s. As the bombing in Beirut this week
reminds us, the Syrians still dominate the Lebanese political scene.
1988: In
“Russia and the Jews: Photos of a Turbulent Past,” published today Chaim Potok
used his critique of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum to provide a
semi-sentimental journey through the world of Russian Jewry in the closing
decades of the 19th century and the opening decades of the twentieth
century.
1988: “In a
letter appearing in today’s Sunday’s New York Times, poet Yehuda Amichai,
journalist Amos Elon, and novelists Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua said Prime
Minister Shamir “would like to maintain the status quo forever and continue to
rule over 1.5 million Palestinians against their will.”
1991: Neil
Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” premiered at Richard Rodgers Theater in New
York City for the first of 780 performances.
1991: British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher delivers the keynote address at the retirement
dinner honoring Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the British
Commonwealth.
1992: “This Is
My Life,” the movie version of the book by Meg Wolitzer, directed by Nora
Ephron who co-wrote the script with her sister Delia Ephron was released today
in the United States.
1992: Israeli
forces withdrew from two villages in southern Lebanon today, ending a 24-hour
thrust against Shiite Muslim guerrillas who had fired salvos of rockets into
northern Israel. Hours after the withdrawal, the villages were again filled
with gunmen from the pro-Iranian Party of God, and fresh barrages of rockets
were fired at Israeli border villages.
1992(17th of
Adar I, 5752): In Granot Haglil, five-year old Avia Elizad was killed by a
Katyusha fired by Arabs in Lebanon as she ran to meet her father who was
returning from work. Her last words were “Daddy, Daddy!”
1992: A
Palestinian fatally stabbed Russian émigré today in Kfar Sava, northeast of Tel
Aviv. The assailant, from neighboring Kalkilya on the West Bank, stabbed the
woman in the neck with a kitchen knife and wounded three other émigrés before
being shot and subdued. Leaflets distributed in Gaza and signed by the Islamic
Holy War movement took responsibility for the stabbing.
1992: Opening
of “Lou Bernstein: Five Decades of Photographs” an exhibition of his works that
covers 20 years of wandering New York from the 1940s to the 1960s.
1993: After a
campaign sullied by charges of mischief and wrongdoing, Israeli rabbinical
elders and political leaders chose Chief Rabbis today for the Ashkenazic and
Sephardic branches of Judaism. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, 56, Chief Rabbi of Tel
Aviv, won the closely watched race to represent Ashkenazic JewsNS Rabbi Eliahu
Bakshi-Doron, 52, of Haifa, won the Sephardic contest
1993(30th
of Shevat, 5753): Sixty-eight-year-old cartoon pioneer Harvey Kurtzman passed
away today. (As reported by Richard D. Lyons)
http://www.harveykurtzman.com/
1994(10th
of Adar, 5754): Ninety-three-year-old Mary Woodard Lasker, the widow of Albert
Davis Lasker with whom she established the Lasker Foundation passed away today.
(As reported by Eric Pace)
1995(21st
of Adar I, 5755): Eighty-six-year-old pathologist Alwin M. (Max) Pappenheimer
passed away today.
1995: Leonard
Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann began serving “as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary” today.
1996(1st of
Adar, 5756): Science fiction writer Horace Leonard Gold passed away at the age
of 81.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1760058/Horace-L-Gold
19961st of
Adar, 5756): Composer and former President of ASCAP Morton Gould passed away at
the age of 82. (As reported by Bernard Holland)
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/22/nyregion/morton-gould-composer-and-conductor-dies-at-82.html
1997: Bob
Rafelson turned sixty-four today, on the same day which Blood & Wine, the
thriller he had directed was released in the United States.
1999: The
New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks With Beijing and
Moscow, Edited by William Burr and Ex-Friends Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana
Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer by
Norman Podhoretz
1999(5th of
Adar, 5759): Gertrude Elion, winner of The Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine in 1988,
passed
away. For more about this fascinating
woman in her own words see
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1988/elion-autobio.html.
1999: At the
Museum of Jewish Heritage, Family Heritage Week, with special activities,
including creating family trees and special tours, goes on through Sunday.
Exhibitions include ”Jewish Life a Century Ago,” with memorabilia from Jewish
rituals and celebrations in Europe in the early 1900’s; ”War Against the
Jews,” detailing events from 1933 to 1945, and ”Jewish Renewal,” focusing on
life after the Holocaust comes to an end.
2000:
Ninety-two-year-old General Kenneth D. Nichols, who played a key role in the
development of the Atomic Bomb during WW II and who was one of the driving
forces behind removing J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/25/us/k-d-nichols-92-leader-in-early-atomic-age.html
2001: As the
stench continues to rise from President Clinton’s last minute pardon of March
Rich,“Ehud Olmert, the mayor of Jerusalem and one of many prominent Israeli
supporters of Marc Rich’s successful quest for a presidential pardon, said
today that Mr. Rich gave $25,000 to his first mayoral campaign eight years ago.”
2002: The
State Department declared that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
was dead, a month after he’d been abducted by Islamic extremists in Pakistan.
2002(9th
of Adar I, 5762): A Palestinian terrorist shot 22-year-old Minhal Dragma during
the killing spree known as the Second Intifada. (Don’t you just love how the
terrorists come up with jazzy names for
murder?)
2002: A
videotape was released titled “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew
Daniel Pearl.” The video shows Pearl’s mutilated body and lasts 3 minutes and
36 seconds.
2003: Rabbi
Israel Kestenbaum, an ethics watchdog for a national pastors association and a
chaplain of the year for his work at ground zero, assumed a different role today,
that of defendant in a child pornography case” on the same day that “an
assistant district attorney, Jennifer Steiner, said that computers at the
rabbi’s home in Highland Park, N.J., had been searched and that the police had
found at least one image of child pornography and messages to another under-age
girl.”
2004: Bassam
al-Asker, one of the murdering terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro was
erroneously reported to have died today. (As of 2007, he was supposedly
living in Lebanon having spent 14 years training terrorists in Iraq.)
2004(29th
of Shevat, 5764): Eighty-four-year-old Milton “Milt” Rubenfeld who flew for the
RAF and the USAAF in WW II before ‘becoming one of the five founding pilots of
the IAF during Israel’s War of Independence” whose service was vital to the
success of the Zionist cause passed away today in Florida.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sklausne/NWin04.pdf
2005: Today, Israel
freed 500 Palestinian prisoners which was the latest good-will gesture intended
to strengthen a truce that has largely seems to be holding up.
2005(12th
of Adar I, 5765): Eighty-four-year-old Isabelle Charlotte Weinstein Goldenson,
“the wife of American Broadcasting Company founder and chairman Leonard
Goldenson, and a co-founder of the charity United Cerebral Palsy” passed away
today.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-mar-01-me-goldenson1-story.html
2006: The
Jewish author E. L. Doctorow was named the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for
fiction. The winning work was The March (Random House), his best-selling novel
about Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating march through the Confederate
South, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Doctorow, who also won the 1990
Pen/Faulkner Award for “Billy Bathgate,” will receive a prize of
$15,000 from the Washington-based organization, which is “committed to
building audiences for exceptional literature and bringing writers together
with their readers.”
2006: Wafa
Sultan, an American author and critic of Muslim society and Islam who trained
as a psychiatrist in Syria took part in Al Jazeera’s weekly 45-minute
discussion program The Opposite Direction. She criticized Muslims for treating
non-Muslims differently, and for not recognizing the accomplishments of Jewish
and other members of non-Muslim society while using their wealth and
technology. The video was the most discussed video of all time with over
260,000 comments on the video-sharing website YouTube. Sultan describes her
thesis as witnessing “a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam
will lose”. It has brought her telephone threats, but also praise from
reformers. Her comments, especially a pointed criticism that “no Jew has
blown himself up in a German restaurant”, brought her invitation to
Jerusalem by the American Jewish Congress.
2006(23rd of
Shevat, 5766): Abraham Lopez Cardozo passed away at the age of 91.
The New York cantor was known for his efforts to preserve the music of the
Spanish and Portuguese Jews (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/arts/music/23cardozo.html
2007:
Haaretz reported that only 19,264 people immigrated to Israel in 2006, down
nine percent from 2005.
2007: Today, “in
an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times,” on his 64th
birthday, movie mogul David “Geffen described Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton
in unflattering terms saying, ‘Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with
such ease, it’s troubling’ and that Hillary Clinton was “incredibly
polarizing” while Bill Clinton was “reckless” thus casting doubt on those who say he has
become a different person since leaving office
2008: In New
York, Susannah Heschel presents a lecture entitled “Biblical Scholarship and
the Rise of Racism.”
2009(27th
of Shevat, 5769): Parashat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim
2009(27th
of Shevat, 5769): Ninety-four-year-old award winning movie director Stanley
Donen, the Columbia, S.C. born son of Helen Cohen and dress store manager
Mordecai Donen who couldn’t wait to leave his home town, in part because of the
anti-Semitism and who gave us some of our greatest movies including “Singing in
the Rain and “On the Town” passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/obituaries/stanley-donen-dead.html
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/24/stanley-donen-obituary
2009: Two and
a half weeks after United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon discovered
five rockets ready to be launched toward Israel, a Katyusha rocket slammed into
the western Galilee near the town of Ma’alot this morning, lightly wounding
three people.
2009: The 92nd
Street Y presents “It Started With a Dream: David Zippel—Lyrics He
Wrote, Lyrics He Wishes He Wrote” during which
the Jewish Tony Award-winner and multiple Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award nominee
presents highlights from his own scores and shares his inspirations and
personal favorites from the iconic Songbook canon.
2009: The
Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, who leads a
small congregation in suburban Chicago, will become the second woman to head
the rabbinical assembly of Judaism’s liberal Reform movement.
2010: Family,
students and friends, including American historians Jonathan Sarna and Kimmy
Caplan will gather at 7 p.m. at Jerusalem’s Yedidiya Synagogue for a memorial
symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Geffen, who for 60
years was considered the dean of the Southern Orthodox rabbinate in the US.
2010: The
Jewish Agency for Israel is scheduled to open its three-day long meeting today
in Jerusalem. The meeting had originally been scheduled to be held in St.
Petersburg (Russia, not Florida.)
2010: The
Israeli Ballet is scheduled to perform Don Quixote, at the Walt Whitman
Theatre in Brooklyn, NY.
2010: A man
hurled a suitcase containing a makeshift bomb at Cairo’s main downtown
synagogue in the early hours this morning, causing no injuries or damage,
police said.
2010: The
Washington Post featured a review of Pulitzer: A Life in Politics,
Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris, a biography about the Hungarian
born Jewish immigrant who changed the face of American journalism.
2011: The
movies scheduled to be shown today at the Atlanta Jewish Film touch a wide
range of Jewish emotions and themes since they include Diary of Anne Frank and
American Tail, an animated film about “the immigrant adventure of
Russian-Jewish mice that flee persecution in pursuit of the American dream.”
2011: Israeli
pianist Idith Meshulam is scheduled to perform the second annual Music Of Now
Marathon in New York City.
2011: Suez
Canal officials said today that two Iranian naval vessels were expected to
start their passage through the strategic waterway early tomorrow. If the ships
make the passage, it would mark the first time in three decades that Iranian
military ships have travelled the canal that links the Red Sea to the
Mediterranean.
2012: Sue
Eckstein is scheduled to discuss her latest novel “Interpreters” in London as
part of Jewish Book Week.
2012: Pam Fox
is scheduled to discuss “A Place to Call My Jewish Home: Memories of the
Liberal Jewish Synagogue 1911-2011” in London as part of Jewish Book Week.
2012: Joshua
Cohen, Ruth Franklin and Adam Kirsch are scheduled to participate in “In the
Beginning Were Words: The Greatest Jewish Books” at the 92nd St Y in
Manhattan
2012: IDF and
Israel Police forces conducting anti-smuggling operations foiled a potential
terrorist attack when they discovered a powerful explosive device being brought
into the country.The authorities believe the intended target was IDF forces
that patrol the southern border. (As reported by the Jerusalem Post
Staff)
2012: As
tensions in Israel continue to rise due to threat of a nuclear Iran, the deputy
head of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces was quoted by a semi-official news
agency as saying today that Iran would take preemptive action against its
enemies if it felt its national interests were endangered “Our strategy
now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests,
and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their
actions,” Mohammad Hejazi told Fars news agency.
2013: In
London, The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is
scheduled to mark LGBT history month with a “screening two of the earliest
sympathetic depictions of same-sex attraction in the history of cinema” which
“were created in the German Weimar Republic.”
2013: The
Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present a
concert, “The Best of the Classics.”
2013: In New
York, Temple Shaaray Tefila is scheduled to host a Klezmer Jam.
2013(11th
of Adar, 2013): Fast of Esther
2013:
Three men were found guilty today of planning a “spectacular bombing campaign”
in the UK, including an attack on a synagogue.
2013:
Today President Shimon Peres exhorted the European Union and its member states
to place Hezbollah on their terror lists and warned Lebanon against initiating
violence against Israel.
2014:
Congregation Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim in Silver Spring, MD is scheduled to host
“Rockin’ Moroccan Shabbat Dinner” this evening.
2014:
“Hundreds of copies of The Diary of Anne Frank and related books were
vandalized in libraries in Tokyo, news reports said today. Library officials
notified police after some pages of at least 265 copies of the diary and books
about Anne Frank were found to have been ripped out at 31 libraries since
January.”
2014:
When attempts to disperse Palestinians who were throwing stones at soldiers
beyond the border fence, IDF soldiers opened live fire at “the lower
extremities of the main instigators” in an attempt to disperse them.
2014:
In Iowa City, Avremel and Chaya Blesofsky invite the community to attend the
brit of their son.
2015:
Yevgenia Pikovsky, Elyakum Salzman – violin; Dmitri Ratush, Vladislav Krasnov –
viola; Felix Nemirovsky, Yaacov Kashin – cello; Uri Arbel – double bass and
Marianna Sorkin – piano are scheduled to perform a program of Russian music at
the Eden-Tamir Music Cener.
2015:
Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the State Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio.
2015(2nd
of Adar, 5775): Fifty-eight-year-old filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky passed away
today.
2015: In Oslo,
“hundreds of non-Jews including many Muslims” are scheduled “to encircle the
synagogue as a gesture of outrage at the shooting at the Danish synagogue by a
Muslim fanatic” who murdered 37-year-old Dan Uzin who was providing security
during a bat mitzvah celebration. (JTA)
2016(12th
of Adar I, 5776): Eighty-three-year-old attorney and conservationist Henry
Diamond passed away today.
2016(12th
of Adar I, 5776): Ninety-four-year-old Rabbi Yohanan Sofer passed away early
this morning in Jerusalem.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/venerated-leader-of-the-erlau-hasidic-sect-dies-at-93/
2016: “Court
Vacancy” published today described the confirmation process for Supreme Court
Justice Benjamin Cardozo.
2016: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The
Yid by Paul Goldberg and West of Eden: An American Place by Jean
Stein.
2016: As
part of the Breman Museum’s “Bearing Witness” series, Mariella Crea is
scheduled to the story of her family who “rescued French Jews being transported
to the concentration camps by train” and smuggling them “to safety in
Switzerland.”
2016: The
Jewish Genealogical Society of New York and the American Sephardi Federation
are scheduled to sponsor Gene Milgrom’s discussion of her work “documenting an
unbroken maternal lineage back to 1480 in Pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal.”
2017:
“Families waited in silent clusters in a century-old Jewish cemetery” in
University City, MO where “they came with a single question: Was the grave of a
loved one among the nearly 200 that had been vandalized here over the weekend?”
(As reported by Monica Davey and Alan Blinder)
2017(25th
of Shevat, 5777): Ninety-seven-year-old Leah Frances (Posner) Adler, the
Cincinnati born daughter of Philip and Jennie Posner and longtime owner of The
Milky Way kosher restaurant who happened to be the mother of filmmaker Steven
Spielberg passed away today.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/LATimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=184237455
2017(25th
of Shevat, 5777): Ninety-five-year-old Kenneth Joseph “Ken” Arrow, the New York
born son Romanian Jewish immigrants Harry and Lillian (Greenberg) Arrow and
Nobel award winning economist passed away today.
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Arrow.html
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1972/arrow/biographical/
2017: “President
Trump called anti-Semitic violence “horrible” and vowed today to take steps to
counter extremism in comments that followed criticism that the White House had
not clearly denounced vandalism and threats targeting Jewish institutions. (As
reported by Fred Barbash, Ben Guarino and Brian Murphy)
2017: As part of its celebration of Black
History Month, in Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host its “second
annual Historic Jewish Atlanta Tour” devoted to the Civil Rights movement.
2017: ‘Der Golem” is scheduled to be shown at
JW3, the Jewish Community Centre in London.
2017: Rabbi
David Wolpe is scheduled to “present an in-depth profile” of the story of “King
David” as part of the “The Bible: The Greatest Stories Ever Told” at the
Streicker Center.
2017: Rachel Joselson and Rene Lecuona are
scheduled to present “Songs from the Holocaust” at the Voxman Music Building in
Iowa City.
2018: The Steicker Center is scheduled to host
“Einstein’s Brain: A (Gray) Matter of Dispute where a panel including Dr. Amir
Amedia, a brain scientist at Hebrew University “will explore questions such as
How should we treat Einstein’s legacy in the 21st century? And How do we
explain his genius and understand his enormous contributions?”
2018: In honor of Black History Month, The
Literary Guild of St. Simons Island, Inc, The Coastal Georgia Historical Society,Temple
Beth Tefilloh and the College of Coastal Georgia are scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald, a documentary of
how two men, Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, in the early decades of
the twentieth century, together helped finance and build 5,357 elementary
schools for African American children throughout the segregated South.”
2018: At the University of Virginia, the Brody
Center is scheduled to host “Bagels on the Lawn” followed in the evening by the
“4th Year Seminar: Judaism and Post College Life.”
2018: Shlomo “Momo” Filber, “one of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest and longest-serving aides appeared ready
to incriminate him today after agreeing overnight to become a government
witness, the latest twist in a spiraling graft scandal that seemed to dim Mr.
Netanyahu’s legal and political chances of survival almost by the hour.” (As
reported by Isabel Kershner and David M. Halbfinger)
2018: Today, “the Israeli army revealed that
the Military Intelligence Unit 8200 foiled an Islamic State attempt to bomb a
flight from Australia last August.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)
2019: In Lafayette, CA, Cantor Leigh Korn who
got his musical start at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA is scheduled to be
joined by “his cantorial friends from around the U.S.” for a “Cantors’ Concert”
at Temple Isaiah.
https://www.jweekly.com/event/cantors-concert/
2019: In San Francisco, “Jerusalem-based
professor and political analyst Reuven Hazan” is scheduled to deliver a lecture
“Making Sense of Israeli Politics” in which addresses the upcoming elections in
Israel..
2019: The Center for Jewish History is
scheduled to host “a lecture on genealogy tools for those interested in
researching Jewish community records and Jewish life in the Sephardi or Mizrahi
Diaspora.”
2020: In Newton, MA, Temple Emanuel is
scheduled to host a “Yiod’s roaring ‘20s Shabbat dinner” following Kabbalat
Shabbat Services.
2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for
Jewish Culture is scheduled to host Kabbalat Shabbat service and dinner that
includes the wit of comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi.
2020: The Oxford University Jewish Society is
scheduled to host the traditional Friday Night Dinner followed by the “termly
presidential elections.”
2020: Klezmatics co-founder and accordionist
Lorin Sklamberg is scheduled to join Latvian singer Sasha Lurje and fiddler
Craig Judelman for old folk ballads, Yiddish theater songs and more tonight at
the Jefferson Center for the Arts.
2020: In San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish
Museum is scheduled to host “The Denim Sefer Torah Mantles at Sha’ar Zahav”
during which Artist Avi Goldberg shares the story behind the unique Sha’ar
Zahav Torah mantles that are included in the Levi Strauss exhibit.
2020: In Coralville, IA, “a chavurah of
parents” is scheduled to meet for a Family Friday, which begins with a potluck
vegetarian dinner complete with Mac and Cheese.
2021: The New York Times features
reviews books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Bugsy Siegel: The Dark of the American Dream by Michael
Shnayerson and The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund.
2021: The London School of Jewish Studies is
scheduled to launch a campaign “Inspiring Teachers, Changing Lives” which will
feature “Tanya White, Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, Prof. Daniel Rynhold, S&P
Senior Rabbi Dweck and many more.”
2021: The Friends of the Israel Philharmonic is
scheduled to host Alex Ross as he shares insights from his newest book,
Wagnerism, a biography of the composer whose works have never been played
by the Israeli philharmonic
2021: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth
County is scheduled to present via Zoom, Dr. Jay Levin speaking on
“Relationships During the Covid-19 Pandemic.”
2021: Thanks to “a generous gift from the
Goldring Family Foundation, The
Center for Jewish-Multicultural Affairs (CJMA) and the New Orleans Public
Library are able to present a discussion of Enrique’s Journey by Sonia
Nazario as part of the Yiddish Book Center’s national “Coming to America”
Reading Groups for Public Libraries program.
2021: “After
hundreds of volunteers too part yesterday in a cleanup operation of the Israeli
shoreline,” investigations are scheduled to continue “to determine the cause of
an oil spill that threatens beach and wildlife.”
2022: The
National Library of Israel is scheduled to present a lecture on “The Renewal of
Yiddish Culture in Continental Europe” by writer, publisher and translator Dr.
Gilles Rozier.
2022: LSJS is
scheduled to host a lecture by Rabbi Johnny Solomon on “Division &
Multiplication in Parashat Vayakhel”
2022: Based on
the Health Ministry’s report yesterday evening that 9,933 had died since the
start of the Pandemic, it would appear as of today that “Israel was edging ever
closer to 10,000 COVID-19 fatalities” even as the government was announcing
further relaxation of measures that had been put in place to deal with the
public health crisis. (YNET)
2022: In the United States celebration of
President’s Day which Jews could observe by remembering their unique connection
with the nation’s chief executives starting with George Washington and the Jews
of Newport but also including but not limited to, Franklin Pierce who “signed
an Act of Incorporation establishing Washington Hebrew Congregation”, Abraham
Lincoln who made it possible for Rabbis to serve as chaplains in the U.S. Army
for the first time, U.S. Grant who contributed to the building fund for Adas
Israel and attended the congregation’s dedication, Teddy Roosevelt who
appointed the first Jew to serve in the Cabinet, to Woodrow Wilson who
appointed the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court, to Herbert Hoover who
appointed the second Jew to serve as an Associate Justice, to Donald Trump, the
first President to have Jewish grandchildren (and this does not include FDT,
HST and so many more)
2023: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to
present online “a virtual
discussion of the film “Shared Legacies,” about the African American Jewish
Civil Rights Alliance.
2023: In San
Francisco, CA, the BaBoo Showroom is scheduled to host “Watch and Nosh” during
which Chef Aliza Grayevsky Somekh of BishulimSF joins J. TV critic and co-host
of The Bagel Report podcast Esther D. Kustanowitz in presenting food-centric
clips from about eight Jewish shows, along with the food featured in them, such
as Jerusalem kugel from “Shtisel” and stuffed grape leaves from “Arab Labor.”
2023: The
Alliance For Jewish Theatre is scheduled to a Playwrights and Makers Group
Gathering via Zoom.
2023: The Combat
Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is scheduled to present “The Bishop of Assisi, A
Heroic Light in the Darkness of the Holocaust; A Digital Reception in Honor of
Righteous Among the Nations Monsignor Giuseppe Placido
2023: “Yemen Blues starring the charismatic Ravid
Kahalani” is scheduled to return to the iconic Joe’s Pub.
2023: The Center
for Jewish History is scheduled to present a lecture by Temple University
professor on the “ongoing struggles for emancipation that endured throughout
the twentieth century and that placed American Jews in contingent relationships
with other groups seeking the full rights of citizenship.”
2023: Oak Hill Consulting Partners, in
association with their featured artist Deborah Putnoi, are scheduled to
presents,“Forgotten Alliances: Blacks and Jews,” a public art show and
accompanying program designed to spur conversations and forge new partnerships
as well as to demystify current rhetoric between these groups that share such a
storied and critical past.
2023: In Abu Dabi, as a sign of the changing
dynamics in the Middle East, the International Defense Exhibition which
features the first ever national pavilion from Israel is scheduled to continue
for a second day.
2023: Mardi Gras
https://www.jewishnola.com/purim/contrastingcarnival
https://mardigrastraditions.com/l-j-goldstein/
2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host
a lecture by Jeremy Rosen on “Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text
be Relevant Today? Leviticus 26:14, Farewell Leviticus
2024: In Metairie, LA, the Chabad Seniors
Luncheon is scheduled to include an “Israel Update” and “short inspirational
clips from Israel showing modern-day heroism.
2024: YIVO is scheduled to present a lecture by
Marc Caplan who will examine the historical significance and legendary allure
of Weimar culture by considering three of its most significant Yiddish writers:
Moyshe Kulbak, Dovid Bergelson, and Der Nister (“the hidden one,”
Pinkhes Kahanovitch).
2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host
a lecture by David Herman on “Bellow, Roth and Malamud.”
2024: The JDC is scheduled to host a webinar by
Devi Mays on “Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern
Sephardi Diaspora.”
2024: The first Jewish Film Club, “a new
cinematic experience from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency” is scheduled to begin
today with a screening of “Crossfire.”
2024: Tikvah is scheduled to host a Special
Briefing with Our Chairman Elliott Abrams on:The Two-State Delusion &
Israel at War.
2024: The Streicker Center is scheduled to a
screening of Back to Gaza: A Short Film followed by a discussion of what Itai
Anghel saw and heard embedded with soldiers under unimaginable pressure.
2024: The 77th Annual Meeting of the Jewish
Federation of Cleveland’s Community Relations Committee & Sidney Z. Vincent
Memorial Lecture is scheduled to host a presentation on “Liberal, Progressive,
Zionist: Judaism’s Place in Intersectionality” by Hen Mazzig.
2024: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to
present lectures by Dr. Jeremy Brown on “The Surprising Influence of
Maimonides’s Treatise on Poisons” and Dr. Edward Reichman on “If the Rambam
Were Alive Today: Contemporary Jewish Medical Ethics Through the Eyes of
Maimonides.”
2024: As
February 21st begins in Israel, the Hamas held
hostages begin day 138 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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