This Day, May 19, In Jewish History

May 19 In Jewish History
(10 Iyar 4063): Isaac Alfasi passed away. Born in Fez in 1013, he is also known as the "RIF". He compiled the first codification of Jewish law, called Sefer Halachot. It still appears today in every volume of the Talmud. Joseph Caro later used it as a basis for his work. Sefer Halachot was the most important codex until Maimonides' Mishna Torah. Alfasi was 25 years old when Hai Gaon died. He was called Gaon by many authorities and his death marked the very end of that (Gaonic) period. His students included Judah Halevi and Josef ibn Migash.

1588 – The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon. The Armada was the most massive fleet of its day including 130 ships and 30,000 soldiers and sailors. The Armada was designed to take control of the English Channel and facilitate the invasion of England from the Netherlands. The English were at a great a disadvantage in terms of ships and manpower. The all important question was when would the Armada begin its trip north? Until the English knew this they would not when or where to make their first move. Dr. Hector Nunes, a secret Jew living in England provided the information about the Spanish departure. The Jews may have played a small part in one of the great turning points in history, but it was a small part that made a big difference.

1604: The town of Montreal is founded. Jews would not start arriving in Montreal until the 18th century following the British defeat of the French. Today Montreal boasts a vibrant Jewish community number approximately 90,000 which some describe as the “most Orthodox” in North America. However it has lost its position as the leading Jewish community in Canada to Toronto because of the rise of the French separatists and their poliltical party, Parti Quebecois.

1792 - The Russian army entered Poland. Ultimately Poland would be partitioned among its three imperial neighbors. Much to the dismay of the Russians, the partition brought them a large mass of Jews, something they found quite upsetting to say the least.

1802: The Légion d'Honneur is founded by Napoleon Bonaparte. Among the Jewish recipients are Rabbi Langer of New York’s Congregation Orach Chaim, Rabbi David Feuerwerker,a veteran of the French Army who served with the Marquis during World War II Alfred Rossi, David Saul Marshall, political leader in Singapore, Victor Attias and Henry Smadja who were members of the Jewish Resistance in Tunisia during World War II,

1882: As part of a blood libel investigation an entourage of mounted policemen arrived in Tisza-Eszlar, a small Hungarian village. The investigation revolved around the disappearance of a fourteen year old Catholic housemaid named Esther Solymossy. The police directed their attention toward Joszef Sharf, custodian of the local synagogue.

1896 - The village of Metula was founded with funds supplied by Baron Rothschild. Metula was the northern most town in Palestine and would become the northern most town in Israel. Metula is close to the border with Lebanon.

1896: Herzl is received by Agliardi, the Papal Nuncio in Vienna.

1897: Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde creates a Jewish theatre manager named Issacs whom he describes as “A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt…He was such a monster.” This does not mean he was an anti-Semite. After all, Ada Leverson, the English Jewess, invited Wilde to her Salon after he had been arrested.

1901: Herzl sends a letter to the Sultan and asks for a final audience before his departure.

1903: Menachem Ussishkin arrives in Vienna to prepare for his visit to Palestine to make land purchases for the Geulah Committee and to organize the Yishuv.

1909 - Birthdate of composer Shlomo Yoffe or Schlomo Joffe. Born in Warsaw he studied piano, theory in Samara, Russia from 1918 until 1921 and, in 1924 in Warsaw joined the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatza'ir, playing the mandoline, tuba, baritone and clarinet in its folk orchestras. He graduated from the Teachers' Seminarium in Poznan (Poland) in 1928, and in 1930, following agricultural studies in Brno (Czechoslovakia), moved to Palestine, helping to establish a kibbutz in 1932. Only after 1940 did he begin to be involved with music again, at first teaching and arranging music at the kibbutz Beit Alpha. After a period of concentrated study (1947-53), with Prof. J. Tal and Prof. O. Partos at the New Jerusalem Academy of Music, and privately with A.A. Boskovich, he devoted himself to composition and teaching at the district conservatory for kibbutzim at Beth-She'an Valley, where he was director until 1973. In the 1950s, under Boskovitch's influence, he used elements of Near Eastern Jewish song, maqam, heterophony and a form of chromatic modality, often in the expression of biblical and Israeli dramas, for example in the cantata "Tales of Mount Gilboa" (953), but also in his Prokofiev-like neo-classical symphonic works. These features remained evident in later works, despite the influence of Schoenbrg in the compositions of the 1960s and the influences that followed a visit to Darmstadt in 1962 and meetings with Lutoslawski and Penderecki. His cantata "Rising Night after Night" (1978), for example, exhibits many contemporary aspects, including extended vocal techniques, clusters and a deformed folk melody, but despite these developments, Joffe always remained, through his teaching, association and biblical roots, a 'kibbutz composer'. 1911: The Turkish government instructs its Minister at Teheran to protest the Persian government attacks against lives and property of Ottoman Jews at Kermanshah.
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1911: The King of Italy confers Knighthood of Order of Crown on Rabbi Abraham Elbgen, Chief Rabbi of Crete.

1911: Jews of Constantinople take a prominent part in the celebrations of the anniversary of the Sultan's accession to the throne.

1911: The idea to form a Federation of Synagogues is planned in Cairo.

1914: Birthdate of Max Perutz, Austrian-born British molecular biologist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962.

1919: In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk moves to Samsun from Istanbul with a few followers, to oppose the Ottoman government, which eventually leads to the Turkish War of Independence and the creation of the modern Turkish state. As part of his reform programs Ataturk made religious faith a matter of individual conscience. He created a truly secular system in Turkey, where the vast Moslem majority and the small Christian and Jewish minorities are free to practice their faith. As a result of Atatürk's reforms, Turkey -unlike scores of other countries- has fully secular institutions.

1921: The Emergency Quota Act passes the U.S. Congress establishing national quotas on immigration. Because of the convulted quota system established by this law, immigration from southern and eastern Europe effectively came to an end. This had the effect of closing the American Door for the Jews of eastern Europe and Russia. The strict enforcement of this law would also mean that European Jews would have no place to go when Hitler came to power.

1935: T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, died from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident. Lawrence is connected in the popular mind with his role in providing British support for the Arab Revolt during World War I. But Lawrence was not one of those British Arabists who were, at best, disdainful of the Jewish people. As can be seen from the following, Lawrence welcomed the settlement of the Jewish community in Palestine. “In 1919 Lawrence drafted a letter for Emir Feisal for a meeting with Felix Frankfurter, a leader of American Zionists. In his letter Feisal wished “the Jews a hearty welcome home” and asserted “our two movements complete one another.” “There is room in Syria for both of us” he concluded. The letter was published in the New York Times on March 5, 1919. In “The Changing East,” Lawrence wrote of “the Jewish experiment” as a conscious effort, on the part of the least European people in Europe, to make head against the drift of the aces, and return once more to the Orient from which they came. The colonists will take back with them to the land which they occupied for some centuries before the Christian era samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe. They propose to settle down amongst the existing Arab-speaking population of the country, a people of kindred origin, but far different social condition. They hope to adjust their mode of life to the climate of Palestine, and by the exercise of their skill and capital to make it as highly organised as a European state. The success of their scheme will involve inevitably the raising of the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves in point of time, and the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world. It might well prove a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power. However, such a contingency will not be for the first or even for the second generation, but it must be borne in mind in any laying out of foundations of empire in Western Asia “
1941 - Birthdate of Nora Ephron. Born in New York to parents who were dramtists, Ephron attended Wellsley. She has been a novelist, screenwriter and director. Some of her hits include “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Michael” and “Heartburn.” She was married to Carl Bernstein.

1941 - The Palmach ("peluggot mahaz" - "assault companies") commando units were established by Yitzhak Sade as a defense from any Axis (Germany and Italy) attack on Eterz Israel. Later they assisted in planning and executing the dropping of Parachutists in occupied Europe. At its peak (November 1947) it had approximately 5000 members which were mainly responsible for capturing Safed and Tiberias as well helping to open the road to Jerusalem.


1943 -Berlin was declared "Judenrein", Jew Free.

1943 - In the House of Commons, the courageous Eleanor Rathbone attacks the British government for the defeatist attitudes expressed at the Bermuda Conference and notes that the Allies are responsible for the deaths of any Jews if they refuse to help.

1944 - Jews deported from Paris to Kovno, Lithuania, are machine-gunned by guards in a fenced enclosure after some of the prisoners attack SS troops.

1944 - The Germans transport Hungarian Jew Joel Brand to Turkey with a proposal from Adolf Eichmann that the Western Allies exchange 10,000 trucks for one million Eastern European Jews. Eichmann calls it "blood for trucks." Arrested by the British, Brand is sent to Lord Moyne (resident minister of state in the Middle East), who comments: "What shall I do with those million Jews?"

1944: Mel Mermelstein the man who would defeat the Institute for Historical Review in an American court and had the occurrence of gassings in Auschwit during the Holocaust declared a legally incontestable fact. was deported to Auschwitz along with the rest of the Jewish community.

1948: During the War for Independence two civilian leaders from Kibbutz Deganya arrive at Ben Gurion’s offices begging for help in fighting off the attacking Syrian armored column. Ben Gurion responded candidly “We don’t have enough artillery, enough airplanes. Every front needs reinforcements. The situation is extremely grave in the Neveg, in the Jerusalem area and in the Upper Galilee.” And if anything, Ben Gurion was understating the desperate situation. So far the only help he had to send to Deganya was Moshe Dayan who had little more than his eye-patch with which to face the Syrians, Iraqis and Jordanians. Ben Gurion sent the two leaders to Yigal Yadin, his Chief of Staff. Yadin listens to the report and then advises them to let the Syrian tanks breach the kibbutz so that the defenders can disable them with Molotov cocktails. Their angry response shocks Yadin into action. If Daganya is lost the North is lost. With the Egyptians advancing from the Negev and the Arab Legion besieging Jerusalem, Yadin’s position seems more like Custer than King David. Yadin meets with Ben Gurion. In a table-pounding dispute, Yadin attempts to convince the Old Man to send four 65 millimeter artillery pieces that had been intended for Jerusalem north to Deganya. This is the sum total of the Israeli artillery reserve and the weapons lack sights (you know, the things you aim the gun with). Ben Gurion agrees to send two of the canon North with Dayan under the condition that they be returned promptly to help with the fighting around Jerusalem.

1948 - The provisional government council of Israel proclaimed a state of emergency.

1949 – Mary Antin, author of The Promised Land, passed away

1950 - The aliyah of Iraqi Jews began. The first deportation of Eretz Yisrael Jews to Babylonia took place in 597 B.C.E. The bulk of Eretz Yisrael Jewry followed them to Babylonia 11 years later, in 568 B.C.E. The first return of some Babylonian Jews to Eretz Yisrael took place in 539 B.C.E. The majority, however, remained in Babylonia, where they were destined eventually to make a major contribution to Judaism through the creation of the Babylonian Talmud and the Geonic responsa. It was not until 1951, 2,548 years after the arrival of the first Jewish deportees in Babylonia, that this ancient Jewish community began its own liquidation through an aliya to Israel.

1969: Palestinian terrorists from Jordan bombard the Musa Alami School near Jericho.

1974: Sandy Sasso became ordained as the first female Reconstructionist rabbi by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia

1989 – Dr. Abel J Herzberg passed away. Dr. Abel J. Herzberg was a lawyer in Amsterdam when he was arrested in 1943, along with his wife, and taken to the Dutch transit camp at Westerbork. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944 and, as a Zionist, he was put on the list of 1300 Jews who were available to be sent to Palestine in exchange for German citizens held as prisoners by the Allies. He was on the list of 272 Jews who were selected in April 1944 to go to Palestine, but at the last minute 50 names were crossed off the list and Dr. Herzberg had to go back into the Star Camp with the other Dutch Jews. Dr. Herzberg survived and after the war, he went back to being a lawyer in Amsterdam. He published the diary that he kept in Bergen-Belsen. It appeared in English under the title, Between Two Streams: A Diary From Bergen-Belsen.

2002: In The Observer Michael Sfard the laywer representing Israeli conscripts who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines explains why a growing number of soldiers are disobeying orders, in order to protect the basic values on which Israel was founded.

2004 - Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day - is the anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty that occurred during the Six Day War. Yom Yerushalayim is celebrated on the 28th of the month of Iyar (one week before Shavuot). In 2004 Iyar 28 corresponds to May 19 on the secular calendar.

2006: The Jewish Chronicle revealed that the Claims Conference highest-paid official, executive vice-president Gideon Taylor, was awarded $437,811 (£240,000) in salary and pension (2004 numbers). An advisor to British survivors in compensation claims in the 1990s, Dr Pinto-Duschinsky, commented: "It is wrong for the executive vice-president to earn annually the same as the compensation for several hundred former slave labourers. The moral authority of the leading Jewish organisations is gravely weakened by excessively high salaries for top officials."

2006: In an article entitled “Long, long ago, when basketball was kosher” Haaretz reported on a gathering of about 125 Yeshiva University (YU) alumni and friends at the school's Jerusalem campus for a nostalgic evening with "The YU Dream Team of the 1950s" - six former basketball players from New York City who later immigrated to Israel.

2007: After 13 performances at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Felicja Blumental International Music Festival comes to a close.

2008: At the Israel Museum opening of an exhibition entitled “Swords into PlowsharesThe Isaiah Scroll and Its Message of Peace.” On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Israel Museum presents the longest, best preserved, and most complete Dead Sea Scroll document ever found, in a special installation in the Shrine of the Book. Never before shown in an extended public display, this 2.60 meter-long section of the Isaiah Scroll comprises the first twenty-eight chapters of the Book of Isaiah, including Isaiah’s celebrated message of peace: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares…" (Is. 2:4). In order to illustrate this important message, iron tools from the days of the prophet Isaiah (8th century BCE) will be displayed alongside the Scroll. A Hellenistic seal depicting a dove carrying an olive branch, newly excavated and never before displayed, will also be on view. The exhibition is curated by Adolfo Roitman, Head of the Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Chief Curator of Archaeology.

2008: At the Stephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, an evening of Israeli music entitled “The Sharett Sisters in Concert.”

This Day, May 18, In Jewish History

May 18 In Jewish History

0323- Alexander dies at the age of 32. Despite the legend, there is no proof that Alexander ever came to Jerusalem. He did pass through Judea on his way to conquer Egypt and on his way from the victory. He left the Jews in peace to practice their religion and to live in a semi-independent status. This was his standard treatment for all those who did not oppose him. He and his subordinates encouraged Jews to settle in Egypt and throughout Asia Minor. The Jews were allowed to live in their own communities where they were governed by their own councils and courts. Alexander was viewed as an enlightened monarch in much the way that Cyrus the Great had been.

576 - Over 500 Jews were forcibly baptized in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

1096: (23rd Iyar): Jews of Worms (Germany) were massacred by Crusaders. The survivors hid in the Bishop's palace for one week, after which they were either murdered or forcibly baptized.

1152: Henry II, King of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. This marrriage produced two futurue Kings of England – Richard I (known as the Lionheart) and King John, the monarch who signed the Magna Carta. For the Jews, Henry’s reign was an improvement over that of his predecessor, King Stephen. While Richard was semi-protective of his Jewish subjects, they suffered at the hands of those who weileded power while he was off crusading or fighting to protect his lands in France. In the first part of his reign, John maintained a positive relationship with his Jewish subjects, but as time went on he turned on them and made unrealistic financial demands on the community.

1291 - After a two month siege, the fortress at Acre (Israel) falls to the Fatamid Egyptians, thus bringing about the end of the Crusades. Subsequently, the various crusading armies never succeeded in uniting as a cohesive force. The infighting and separate treaties defeated them as well as the Fatamid armies.

1721- In Madrid, the oldest known victim of the Inquisition was burned alive. She was Maria Barbara Carillo and was 96 years old.

1872: Birthdate of Lord Bertrand Russell, British mathematician and philosopher. Lord Russell was pro-Palestinian describing them as innocent refugees and describing Israel as occupying land ‘given’ by a foreign power to the Jewish people for the creation of a new state.

1876: Wyatt Earp starts work as a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas. When he died, Earp’s ashes were buried in a Jewish cemetary in Colma, California. No, the famous marshall was not Jewish but his wife Josie was and her family had enough power and influence to wriggle around the laws forbidding such burials.

1897 -Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Algeria.

1896: The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” is constitutional. This decision marked the legal nadir in the field of civil rights in general and race relations in particular. It was from this pit that several organizations, many of them funded by Jews and/or with a stastically disproportionate Jewish involvement, had to climb until the High Court would declare in 1954 that separate but equal was inherently unequal.

1901: Herzl is called to the palace again. He is presented a tie-pin with yellow stones. Herzl hands out the sum of 40.000 francs to Nouri Bey and Crespi for having brought the audience about.

1902: Herzl receives a letter from Constantinople that his letter concerning a request for the creation of an Israelite University in Jerusalem was submitted to the Sultan.

1904: Birthdate of Senator Jacob K Javits. Born in New York, Javits graduated from NYU Law School. He served in the Army during World II. Following the war he became active in Republican politics in New York. Before coming to the Senate, Javits served in the House of Representatives and as Attorney-General for the state of New York. Javits was a leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party and staunch supporter of the Civil Rights movement. Javits served until January, 1981. Having been defeated he resumed his law practice and lectured at Columbia. He passed away in 1986.

1905: Frederick Kerry arrived in the United States. Now a Roman Catholic, at birth Kerry was a Jew named Fritz Kohn. He and his Jewish wife Ida were baptized in 1901 to avoid the stigma associated with being Jewish in Austria. Frederick Kerry is the grandfather of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. At least two of his relatives perished in the Holocaust.

1910: Turkish Minister of Education advocates adoption of Hebrew as national language of Turkish Jews.

1910: Franz Kafka and a few of his friends gathered to observe Halley’s Comet.

1911 - Gustav Mahler died at the age of 50. Born Jewish, Mahler converted to Catholicism, so he could become head of the court opera in Austria. His conversion did not spare him the contempt of his enemies.

1912: Birthdate of Richard Brooks. Born Richard Sax, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Brooks gained fame as film writer, director and producer. Brooks was received Oscar nominations for the screenplays for Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In Cold Blood and The Professionals. He won an Academy Award in 1960 for Elmer Gantry.

1921 - Ra'anana, an agricultural settlement is founded in the Sharon region.

1921: The Nation included an essay by Lily Winner entitled "American Emigrés." The article asked, "Why has America the 'melting-pot' failed to Americanize? Why is Congress, in its hysterical weathervane fashion, passing bills to restrict immigration when, by casual inquiry, it could ascertain that the margin between arrivals of new people and departure of old, is so slight as not to fill the hearts of employing capital with boundless joy?" Winner explained that while American businesses were eager for the cheap labor of immigrants, these workers found little welcome in American society. She condemned the lack of programs to teach American manners and values, and lamented the frequent return of immigrants who, American capital in hand, could begin new lives back in their homelands. Today her essay seems to combine a still timely critique with intolerant ethnocentrism. In fact, Winner's concern for the maltreatment of immigrants in American cities placed her among the progressive voices of her time. Immigration was only one of the causes dear to Winner's heart. In addition to urging acculturation of foreigners, she became deeply involved in the birth control movement, writing frequent articles for Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review. The Review, considered radical in its day, was "dedicated to the principal of intelligent and voluntary motherhood." Winner's essays, like others in the magazine, called for the emancipation of women and their right to control their own fertility on the grounds that such control would make them better mothers of the children they chose to bear. Winner also wrote frequently for a Jewish periodical, The Modern View. Displaying the breadth of her writing talents, her pieces in the View were mainly stories that spoke to the temptations and challenges of assimilation but which usually ended with the heroine's recommitment to Jewish ritual and values.
By the time Winner gained her by-line in these diverse publications, she had already made a name for herself as a playwright. In 1915, while still a 24-year-old stenographer in Missouri, where she was born and raised, Winner co-wrote The Crutch, which was accepted in that year by the Shuberts, who planned to stage it with actor Louis Mann in the starring role. Winner went on to work not only as a writer for niche publications but also as a globetrotting journalist. She wrote about the medieval cities of Germany, royal ghosts in England, and her 1924 meeting with the Pope. She also worked for a time as the advertising manager of the Perry Photo Novelty Corporation. At a time when white middle-class American women were just beginning to take on public roles as reformers and workers in significant numbers, Winner carved out an uncommon career that brought her travel, adventure, and income.

1930: Birthdate of Senator Warren B Rudman. Born in Massachusetts, Rudman grew up in New Hampshire. A Korean War Era Veteran, Rudman practiced law in New Hampshire before being elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1980. He served until January 1993, having chosen not to run for re-election. He is best known for the Graham-Rudman-Hollings Act, also referred to as the Balanced Budget and Deficit Control Act.

1930: Birthdate of Barbara Goldsmith, author of Little Gloria Happy At Last

1933: As part of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt signs the law creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). David Lienthal, the son Jewish immigrants from Czechoslovakia, was the Director of TVA responsible for its early success and its ability to participate in the Manhattan Project during World War II.

1934: The Academy Award is called Oscar in print for the first time by Sidney Skolsky. Skolsky was a close friend of Al Jolson and was responsible for the movie biography of the man who made the first “talkie

1936: It was announced in the House of Commons that a Royal Commission of Inquiry would be set up to investigate the cause of unrest in Palestine. The Commission became known as the Peel Commission because its chairman was Lord Peel.

1938 -The Palestine Post reported that Arab terrorists killed an Arab constable in Hebron. Arab farmers were robbed by Arab terrorists in villages around Jenin. The Public Works Dept. property was set on fire in Nablus and Jewish settlers near Hadera found their tractors and other machinery severely damaged.

1941- Jewish veterans honor their dead

1942- The New York Times carried a report by a United Press International correspondent who had been trapped in Berlin at the outbreak of the war (12/41) and who reached Lisbon after being traded as part of a swap for Axis nationals in Allied hands. According to the story 100,000 Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis in the Baltic States, almost that many in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

1942 - During a public protest of Nazi anti-Semitism staged in Berlin by Herbert Baum and his followers, portions of "The Soviet Paradise," a government-sponsored anti-Bolshevik exhibition, are set afire. Most members of Baum's group, as well as approximately 500 other Berlin Jews, are arrested.

1942 - Another 1,420 Jews arrived in the Lodz ghetto from Brzeziny. Like the Jews who arrived the day before, their children were taken away from them. They were sent to Chelmno to be gassed.

1943 - Nearly every resident of the Polish farming village of Szarajowka is shot or burned alive by the SS, Wehrmacht troops, and Gestapo agents. The crime was sheltering Jews. After the massacre, the village is razed.

1944 - Jewish partisan leader Aleksander Skotnicki is killed as his unit battles the armored SS Viking Division near the Parczew Forest in Poland.

1944 - Deportations from Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, to Auschwitz end with the transport of 2500 Jews.

1944: In Hungary deportations of Jews to Auschwitz would begin with a total of 437,000 being shipped to the death camp through July 7, 1944.

1945: The house in which Meyer Amschel Rothschild was born was destroyed as American planes bombed central Frankfurt during World War II.

1948 - Poland, Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, and Nicaragua recognized Israel.

1948 - The Arab Legion captured the police fort on Mt. Scopus. The illegal occupation of Mt. Scopus would end with the June War in 1967.

1948 - Fighting under Egyptian command Saudi Arabia joined the other Arab armies in their invasion of Israel.

1950 - As a result of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, 120,000 Jews fleeing Iraq were brought to Israel over the course of a year's time.

1953 - The Jerusalem Post reported that Abu Eliahu, 40, and Eliahu Ephraim, 45, two watchmen in the Jerusalem "corridor" were murdered by infiltrators. The Government approved the special unemployment relief tax scale and hoped to collect IL15m. compulsory advance payment on account of future taxes.

1965: Israeli spy Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the Syrians. This execution was aired on national Syrian television. After his execution, a sign with Anti-Zionist messages was placed on his hanging body. His body was left to hang for six hours. Eli was born in Alexandria, Egypt on December 26, 1928. The son of two Syrian Jews, Eli was raised in a strong Jewish and Zionist educational environment. True to their Zionist ideals, the Cohen family moved to Israel in 1949. However, Eli stayed behind to organize Zionist and Jewish activities in Egypt. Eventually, Eli moved to Israel and began training with the Israeli intelligence organization. His preparation was extensive and exhaustive. From weapons to Arab customs to espionage technology, he was trained to know everything about the craft of being a spy. In 1961, the Chief of Military Intelligence, Chaim Herzog, authorized Eli Cohen to be used as a spy for the State of Israel. Soon after, he was escorted to the airport with a ticket for Argentina where he would begin to establish his portfolio under his new assumed identity, Kamal Amin Ta'abet. While in Argentina, he established his cover as a Syrian émigré and began to make inroads within the Syrian community of Buenos Aries. In time, he established himself as a successful businessman and began to establish relationships among the Syrian diplomatic corps in Argentina. It was during this time that Eli met Col. Amin al-Hafez. Through his extravagant hosting of his diplomatic contacts, he was eventually invited to visit Syria to set up business operations. Late in 1961, Eli returned to Israel for a short visit with his wife. It was during this visit that he finalized requirements for his mission in Syria. There was no question that Eli was already making impressive progress within the Syrian political and social circuits. Staring in 1961, the Syrian Ba'ath Party was beginning its rise to power within the Syrian government. It was important to Eli that he travel to Syria as the party began to gain power and influence. Eli arrived in Damascus in 1962, acting as an Argentinean entrepreneur returning home to Syria. It was during this time in Syria that Eli was very careful to develop his relationships with members of the Ba'ath party. True to his style in Argentina, Eli hosted parties and hob-nobbed in the highest social and political circles. As Eli gained the trust of these high officials, they openly discussed matters of military and political importance with him. Between 1962 and 1965, Eli made three secret trips home to be with his wife and children. When the Ba'ath party seized power in 1963, Eli Cohen was well established and entrenched within the social elites of Syria. He became a “trusted friend” of the highest-ranking members of the Ba'ath party, all the while transmitting vital information home to Israel via a transmitter that was hidden in his home. His ability to pierce the highest ranks of the government continued the longer he stayed in Syria. He was invited to discussions regarding Syria's intentions to divert water from the headwaters of the Jordan River. In 1963, Eli transmitted the details regarding the diversion of the waters back to the Israelis. As a result, the IDF Air Force was able to effectively destroy Syrian plans for this project. Cohen exhibited another example of his daring espionage when he visited the Syrian-held Golan Heights, bordering Israel. The Golan was a “strategic asset” for Syria, which allowed them the ability to facilitate acts of aggression against the northern Israeli towns. The Golan was considered a top secret area open only to the top members of the Syrian military. Cohen, skilled in his craft, was able to not only get a tour of the area, but able to get a comprehensive military briefing of the Golan and all its positions. It was during this trip that the “famous” eucalyptus trees were planted. As Eli was being briefed as to the Syrian fortifications of the Golan, he suggested that they plant eucalyptus trees to give the Israelis the impression that the locations were not fortified, and also to offer shade for the Syrian soldiers. As the story goes, his ideas were implemented, and as a result, the Israelis knew where every single fortification was located as a result of the eucalyptus trees. His old contact from Argentina, Col. Amin al-Hafez had risen in the Ba'ath party and eventually became Prime Minster of Syria. After Col. Hafez came to power, he even considered appointing Cohen the Deputy Minister of Defense for Syria. In November, 1964, Eli made another visit back to Israel. During this trip he expressed his desire to end this assignment since changes were taking place in Syria that were not favorable to his cover. After much debate, Eli agreed to return for one more tour of Syria. The intelligence that Eli had provided was too valuable. During his final stay in Syria, Eli was less careful of his espionage transmissions. Alarmed that information was leaking out of the country, the Syrians, with the help of their Soviet advisors, conducted a comprehensive probe to find the intelligence leak. During January 1961, transmissions were pinpointed to Eli's home. Syrian intelligence caught Eli in the act, transmitting information back to Israel. He was apprehended and tortured, but didn't release any information of real value to the Syrians. Syria staged a public show and Eli Cohen was found guilty of espionage. Attempts were made to save Eli Cohen. World leaders and prominent businessmen, along with the Israeli government and the Pope attempted to arbitrate a solution for Eli, but with no success. Clearly, Eli's espionage contributions toward the security of the State of Israel were unmatched most. He was so skilled at his craft that he was easily able to assimilate into the day-to-day life within Damascus. He was able to achieve the unthinkable and befriended the highest echelons of the Syrian government and military. Not only was he able to gain access where others could not, he was in the position to provide input that allowed him to influence government and military decisions. There is no question that the intelligence that he compiled was highly instrumental in allowing Israel to quickly and effectively defeat the Syrians and gain the Golan Heights during the Six Day War. For his heroism and skill, Eli Cohen is known as Israel's greatest spy. But in all actuality, he might be a contender for the greatest secret agent of the 20th century

1977 - Menachem Begin became Israel's Prime Minister. Begin's election marked a major shift in Israeli politics. Begin was a disciple of Jabotinsky, leader of the Irgun, and the polar opposite of the Labor Zionists who had dominated Israeli politics even before the state had been created. Begin proved to be more of a pragmatist than had been expected. He met with Sadat and signed the Camp David Accords which led to the swapping of the Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt. Despite international furor, Begin bombed an Iraqi reactor, an action that people came to appreciate after the first Gulf War. Begin resigned after the death of his wife and went into a state of semi-seclusion. He passed away in 1992.

1978 -The Jerusalem Post reported the UNIFIL's admission that it had allowed the terrorists to move, together with their arms, into South Lebanon. The Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency were considering steps how to stop HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrants Aid Society), from helping Russian Jewish emigrants to go to destinations other than Israel. Only 72 out of the 1,086 Jews who left Russia in April, 1978, made their way to Israel. The Mifal Hapayis designated IL7m. for education and health in the West Bank and Gaza.

1991: The Associated Press reported that the B. Manischewitz Company was given a $1 million fine by United States District Judge Harold Ackerman for conspiring to fix the price of Passover matzoth. Manischewitz had pleaded no contest to a criminal indictment last month, saying it could not defend charges it conspired to fix prices from 1981 to at least April 1986. The indictment said Manischewitz, based in Jersey City, had conspired to raise the price of $25 million worth of Passover matzoth in cooperation with Horowitz Brothers & Margareten and with Aron Streit Inc., both of New York. Horowitz has since been taken over by Manischewitz. The Government has not said why Horowitz and Aron Striet were not indicted. The merchant banking firm of Kohlberg & Company acquired Manischewitz in January and had nothing to do with the scheme.


1994 - Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in what was supposed to have been one step along the road to peace with the Palestinians.

1996 – English businessman and racehorse owner Simon Weinstock passes away at the age of 44

2002: Zypora Spaisman, Polish born American actress and long time supporter of the Yiddish theatre, passed away at the age of 86.

2006: A Sarajevo publisher announced that The Sarajevo Haggadah, a centuries-old Jewish holy book that survived the Spanish inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust and Bosnia's 1992-1995 war has been reprinted in limited editions. The Sarajevo Haggadah was made into 613 copies on hand-made paper that recreates the appearance of the 14th century original by 95 percent, the head of the Rabic publishing house, Goran Mikulic, told Agence France Presse. The number of copies was chosen to symbolise the number of commandments, or mitzvot, that Jews are obliged to observe. "The edition was printed in Italy and almost everything was done by hand," Mikulic said. The original handwritten manuscript on bleached calfskin illuminated in copper and gold is the world's oldest Sephardic Haggadah, containing the text recited by Jews on the Passover holiday.

2006: Rabbi Ada Zavidov is declared the new chairwoman of the Reform Movement's Rabbinic Council at the opening of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism's 18th Biennial Convention. About 1,000 rabbis and movement members, including Rabbi Elliott Kleinman, vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism in America attend the conference, which focuses on the Jewish family. Zavidov, granddaughter of Aba Achimeir - one of the founding fathers of the Revisionist Party in pre-state Israel - is the first female Israeli native to chair the rabbinic council.

2007: Rosh Chodesh Sivan, 5767

2007: The five candidates for the leadership of the Labor Party face off in a Labor central committee meeting in Tel Aviv that will decide whether Labor should leave Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government.

2007: The University of Teramo closed one of its campuses to prevent a planned lecture by Robert Faurisson, a retired French professor who denies gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.

2008: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same name) the third of which is held at Barnes & Noble in Rockville, Md.

2008: The New York Times book section featured a review of Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Ellen Feldman’s novel entitled Scottsboro which “painstakingly recreates the infamous Scottsboro case, complete with all the twists and turns and society-exposing foibles.” Two Jewish lawyers,Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky, saved the lives of the defendants in this infamous case.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts it’s Temple Wide Picnic marking the close of the Religious School year; farewell until Fall.

2008: The Quad City Jewish Federation hosts Israeli Yom Ha’atzma’ut Rally in Bettendorf, Iowa featuring Sasha Grishkov, finalist from the Israeli television series A Star is Born (Israeli version of American Idol) who will perform with her Israeli band.

This Day, May 17, In Jewish History

May 17 In Jewish

1220: Second coronation of King Henry III in Westminster Abbey which was ordered by Pope Honorius III who did not consider that the first had been carried out in accordance with church rites. In 1253, King Henry established The Domus Conversorum (House of Conversion) which was a building and institution in London for Jews who had converted to Christianity. It provided a communal home and low wages.

1727: Catherine I of Russia passed away. The Catherine was the second wife of Peter the Great. She ruled for two years after Peter’s death. In that time she issued an edict expelling the Jews from the Ukraine and the rest of Russia and denying them the right to ever return.

1776: During the American revolution the U.S. Congress called on Americans to raise their voices in prayer, and among the verses read by the "anxious" Jews of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of New York was, "…And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares."

1814: The Constitution of Norway is signed and the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik is elected King of Norway by the Constitutional assembly. The first Jews arrived in what is now Norway in the last decade of the 15th century. The were Sephardim escaping the Inquisition and were referred to as “the Portugese Jews.” This constitutionth included in its second paragraph a general ban against Jews and Jesuits entering the country. In principle, Portuguese Jews were exempt from this ban, but it appears that few applied for a letter of free passage. When Norway entered into the personal union of Sweden-Norway, the ban against Jews was upheld, though Sweden at that point had several Jewish communities. In 1844, the Norwegian Ministry of Justice declared: "... it is assumed that the so-called Portuguese Jews are, regardless of the Constitution’s §2, entitled to dwell in this country, which is also, to [our] knowledge, what has hitherto been assumed."After tireless efforts by the poet Henrik Wergeland, the Norwegian parliament lifted the ban against Jews in 1851 and they were awarded religious rights on par with Christian "dissenters." In 1852, the first Jew landed in Norway to settle, but it wasn't until 1892 that there were enough Jews to form a synagogue in Oslo.

1836 – Birthdate Wilhelm Steinitz. Born in Prague, which was part of the Austrian Empire, Steinitz was the first official World Champion of Chess holding the title from 1886 to 1894. He suffered from a variety of mental problems after losing his championship. At one point he claimed to have played a game of Chess with God. He passed away in 1900 while living in Brooklyn

1844 - Birthdate of Julius Wellhausen, the German biblical scholar who, in his 1878 "History of Israel," first advanced the JEDP Hypothesis, claiming that the Torah was a compilation of four earlier, literary sources.

1849: In St, Louis, The Great Fire occurred when at 10 p.m. a fire broke out on the steamboat "White Cloud". Within 30 minutes, 23 steamboats were engulfed in flames. The fire swept up the levee, destroying tons of freight and 15 blocks of residences, warehouses, and stores. Businesses destroyed that were owned in whole or in part by Jews include: Isaac Jacobs, Abraham Jacobs, Lewis M. Levy, Simon Lewis, Raborg & Shaffner, Helfenstein & Co., Charles Roderman, Weil & Bros., L. Newman, Helfenstein, Gore & Co., Levy & Bros., H. Cohen, and Simon Abeles.

1860 - Alliance Israelite Universelle - was launched by a group of French Jews under the direction of Adolphe Cremieux. It was designed to defend Jewish rights and to establish world-wide Jewish educational facilities. The Franco-Prussian War diminished its universality and separate organizations were formed in Germany and England.

1866 - Composer Adolf Bernhard Marx passed away at the age of 70.

1874: Birthdate of Bertha Kalich, star of American Yiddish theatre[some sources say 1872 or 1875]. Raised in Lemberg, then part of Austria-Hungary, Kalich studied at the Lemberg Conservatory and joined the chorus of the local Polish theater at thirteen. She also performed in German, and later learned Romanian for a stint at the Romanian Imperial Theatre in Bucharest. Her success there put to rest, at least temporarily, fears that anti-Semitism would hinder her budding career. A story was later told that audience members had brought onions to pelt her with, but were so entranced that they threw flowers instead. The story may be apocryphal, but Kalich’s success was real. The acclaim that greeted her Romanian performances was enough to catch the eye of American producers, who brought Kalich to the U.S. in 1894.
In New York, Kalich performed mainly at Joseph Edelstein’s Thalia Theatre, where she starred as Desdemona in Othello, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and in A Doll’s House, all in Yiddish translation. Through these plays and others, Kalich sought to make her name as an actress rather than emphasizing the musical talents that had given her a start in Yiddish theatre. She also sought to raise the artistic standards of Yiddish theatre, emphasizing serious plays. She soon became a leading lady of American Yiddish theatre, and playwright Jacob Gordin wrote at least two roles especially for her: Etty in The Kreutzer Sonata and the title role in Sappho.
In 1905, Kalich made her debut on the English-language stage, in the title role of Victorien Sardou’s Fédora. A reviewer for the New York Times lauded her “remarkable emotional power” and “tremendous natural force,” but also criticized her performance as lacking in subtlety. The opening night audience, however, responded with a standing ovation and nearly a dozen curtain calls. She was one of just a few actresses to transition successfully from Yiddish to English theatre. Kalich continued to appear in English roles for another decade, but her emotional style gradually fell out of favor for the light American theatre then in vogue. She did, however, appear in revivals of roles she had first performed in Yiddish, and also in several early films. By 1915, she was returning more and more frequently to the Yiddish stage, in Philadelphia and Chicago as well as New York. In Yiddish theatre circles, her performances in English only enhanced her prestige. In turn, her success on the English-language stage helped raise the status of the Yiddish theatre. Kalich retired from the theatre in 1931, having gradually lost her sight to a malignant eye tumor. Unable to give up theatre entirely, she appeared occasionally even after her retirement, including in several productions mounted for her benefit. Her last appearance was in a staging of Louis Untermeyer’s poem “Heine’s Death” at the Jolson theatre, in February, 1939. She died in New York just a few months later, on April 18, 1939. Her New York Times obituary estimated that she had performed some 125 roles in seven languages.

1901- Herzl met with the Sultan of Turkey to discuss the establishment of a Jewish state and the obtaining of a charter. He failed in both attempts. However, The Sultan bestows on Herzl the Grand Cordon of the Mejidiye and authorized Hertzl to declare that the ruling Khalif was a friend and protector of the Jewish people. Herzl believed that a Jewish homeland could be created by getting approval of the venture from the political leaders of the day. That is why he sought out the support of the Kaiser. The state of Israel would eventually be a product of changed realities on the ground – the settling of the land by the Zionists – and political support from various political leaders such as Harry Truman in 1948.

1915: The last British government formed by the Liberal Party fell from power. The party of reform, the Liberal Party produced the first openly Jewish Member of Parliament. Lionel Nathan de Rothschild was first elected in 1847. However, Rothschild would not take his seat until 1858 since it took 11 years to pass the Jewish Disabilities Bill that made it possible for Jews to swear an oath that was not Christian. After World War I, the Labour Pary would supplant the Liberal Party as the chief opposition to the Conservatives.

1933 - In Norway, Vidkun Quisling establishes the Norwegian Fascist Party as well as the Hirdmen (King's Men), a collaborationist organization that's modeled on the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA). When the Nazis invade Norway during World War II Quisling will become the head of the Norwegian government. Quisling was such a notorious traitor that his name has now become a word in the English language that means “traitor.”

1933 - The Bernheim Petition, named for imprisoned Silesian Jew Franz Bernheim, is presented to the League of Nations to protest Germany's anti-Jewish legislation.

1934 - At New York's Madison Square Garden, thousands attend a pro-Nazi rally sponsored by the German-American Bund. Critics of Roosevelt’s policy towards Jewish refugees often overlook the reality of anti-Semitism in the United States. The Bund rally was merely the most public venue for this reality of the pre-war American landscape.

1939 - The British government issues a White Paper (commonly called the MacDonald White Paper) that limits Jewish immigration to 10,000 a year for five years. The White Paper allows 75,000 Jewish immigrants (up to 10,000 per year, plus an additional 25,000 if certain conditions are met) to enter Palestine. The White Paper also restricts Jewish land purchases in Palestine. British government policy will succeed in keeping the actual numbers of Jewish immigrants far below the quotas for settlement in England and Palestine. The White Paper was issued after two years of orchestrated Arab violence. Recognizing the White Paper as a death sentence for a Jewish homeland, the leaders of the Yishuv prepare to bring “illegal immigrants” into Palestine. The White Paper also sealed the fate for Europe’s Jews as it closed the last place of refuge. When World War II broke out Jewish leaders were caught on the horns of a dilemma. In true Jewish fashion when confronted with two choices, the Zionists came up with a third solution. “We will fight the war as if there is no White Paper and we will fight the White Paper as if there is no war.” The Arabs had no such problems as the fact that the Grand Mufti spent the war in Berlin proves.

1941- In cooperation with British Army intelligence, David Raziel, the commander of the I.Z.L. (Irgun Zva-i Leumi) led a group to sabotage the oil depots on the outskirts of Baghdad. Raziels car was bombed and both he and the liaison British officer were killed. Yes, this is Menachem Begin’s Irgun, the same Irgun that will attack the British in Palestine after the war is over; the same Irgun that blew up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in 1947

1942 - Two thousand Jews were deported from Theresienstadt to Sobibor, 500 miles away. Also, 2,000 Jews from Pabianice reached the Lodz Ghetto. All children under 10 were torn away from their parents and sent "elsewhere."

1943: The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC. Herman Heine Goldstine who passed away in 2004 at the age of 90 was one of the orginial developers of ENIAC. Adele Goldstine, his wife, wrote the technical description for ENICA.

1943 – The Nazis deport 395 Jews from Berlin to the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

1944: Joel Brand was flown in a German courier plane from Budapest to Istanbul where he met with two representatives from the Jewish “agency for Palestine, Wnja Pomeranz and Menahem Bader. Brand was a Hungarian Jew active in Va’adah (Vadat Ezra Vehatzala), the Jewish Resuce Agency in Hungary who was carrying the terms of Eichman’s offer to trade a million European Jews for 10,000 trucks, 1,000 tons of coffee or tea and 1,000 tons of soap. Eichman assured Brand that the trucks would only be used on the Eastern Front. At the same time, he told Brand that the Jews could go anywhere except Palestine because “the furhrer had promised his friend the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini” that he would not permit that. Pomeranz and Bader took the proposal back to Ben Gurion who then informed the British of the proposal. British Foreign Minster Eden and Secretary of State Hull would not persue the offer because they feared that if the Russians go wind of the negotiations, they would become even more suspicious of the western Allies (remember this was before the Second Front had opened) and might still make their own peace with Hitler. To ensure that nobody else heard about the negotiations, the British sent Brand to Syria for “temporary internment.” Of course the Soviets might have already known about the negotiations since Brand had been a Communist agent working in Berlin during the 1930’s

1948 – After two days of fierce fighting the Syrians overrun Zemach, killing all forty-two of the Jewish defenders

1948- In Tel Aviv, David Ben Gurion orders Moshe Dayan, the Haganah commander in the area, to ‘Hold the Jordan Valley’ no matter the cost.

1948 - Russia recognized Israel. Much to Stalin’s dismay, he lost the recognition race to the United States. Stalin had not fallen in love with the Jews. He saw Israel as a wedge that would lead to the break up of one his nemesis, the British Empire. With its large population of refugees from Russia, the state of Israel was never in danger of being seduced by Stalin or the Communists.

1948 - During the War for Independence, Israeli forces liberated Acre, Nebi Yusha, and Tel el-Kadi, Yes; this is the same Acre where Maimonides and his family landed when they first arrived in Eretz Israel.

1956 – Birthdate of comic Bob Saget

1959 - The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School was opened in the western section Jerusalem. The original facility had been on Mt. Scopus. When the Jordanian Army illegally captured the eastern section of Jerusalem, the facility on Mt. Scopus became untenable. The Israelis would return in June, 1967.

1967: In what would be a prelude to the Six Day War, President Abdul Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt. The UN force had been established as part of the peace agreement following the Suez War of 1956. Much to Nasser’s surprise, U Thant, the UN Secretary General immediately gave into Nasser’s demand an removed the peace keeping force. Israelis viewed the UN as the umbrella that closes when it starts to rain. The departure of the UN force gave the Arabs carte blanche to move large forces into the Sinai threatening the survival of Israel.

1983 - Israel and Lebanon signed a peace treaty.

1985- Abe Burrows, songwriter, composer, and writer passed away. Known in his own right for such hits “How to Succede In Business Without Really Trying” Burrows was the father of James Burrow the director of the hit sitcom “Cheers.

1999 -Labor Party leader Ehud Barak unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israeli elections

2002 - Dave Berg passed away. Born in 1920, the cartoonist may be best known for his work in Mad Magazine

2004 - Tony Randall passed away. Born Leonard Rosenbeg in 1920, this native of Tulsa, Oklahoma enjoyed a successful career in film, theatre and television. Most people know him as Felix Unger in the television verson of “The Odd Couple.”

2007: As part of Jewish Heritage Month, the National Archives presents a lecture entitled “Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the South.” Peter M. Ascoli, grandson of Julius Rosenwald, tells the remarkable story of Rosenwald’s lifelong devotion to hard work and success and of his giving back to the nation in which he prospered. The son of German Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald—president and CEO of Sears, Roebuck & Co.—was an exemplary businessman, pioneering philanthropist, and true humanitarian who played an important part in the history of America at the start of the 20th century. Yet few know the story of this immensely talented figure. His commitment to social justice and equality led him to involvement in a wide range of philanthropic projects—among them the building of more than 5,300 schools for African Americans in the rural South and the issuing of an unprecedented $1 million challenge grant to aid Jewish victims of World War I.

2007: Rabbi Simon Jacobson presents “Mysteries of Sinai: Find Revelations in the Everyday “ at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue in New York City.

2007: An exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art by photographer Barry Frydlender, the first Israeli to have a solo show at the museum

2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents “A Sacred Duty \ חובה מקודשת” a major documentary on current environmental threats and how Jewish teachings can be applied in responding to these threats.

2008 (12th of Iyar): Anniversary of the Jews of Rome being granted additional privileges by the head of the Catholic Church. On the 12th of Iyar, 1402, the Jews of Rome were granted "privileges" by Pope Boniface IX. They were given legal right to observe their Shabbat, protection from local oppressive officials, their taxes were reduced and orders were given to treat Jews as full-fledged Roman citizens.

2008: At the JCC in Manhattan the international premiere of new episodes from the Israeli comedy series “Arab Labor (Avoda Aravit)” followed by a conversation with writer and creator Sayed Kashua. “Arab Labor” is a satirical look at the Arab status In Israeli society, the controversy surrounding issues of identity and the sensitivities of both populations. Through humor, the series explores the daily conflicts that Arabs face between the desire to integrate and their own values and traditions.

This Day, May 16, In Jewish History

May 16 In Jewish History

0942: Saadia Gaon passed away. Born in 882, Saadia Gaon was the head of the Talmudic Academy of Sura (Babylonia). He was a recognized authority on the Talmud, and a profound student of philosophy and philology. Saadia was forced to deal with the challenge of assimilation of the upper-class Jews of Babylonia who were attracted to the Greek philosophers whose works had been translated into Arabic. Saadia wrote a philosophic work, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, in magnificent flowing Arabic. In it, he defended the rational underpinnings of Judaism and showed logically that every rational Jew could believe in the Torah as well as Aristotle and Plato. He wrote the first Hebrew grammar book which explained how the holy language worked. He provided a Hebrew dictionary plus a compendium of rhyming words for Hebrew poets. He was the first to write an Arabic translation of the Bible. He included commentaries, explanations, and grammatical notes as well. His translation continues to be the authoritative Bible for Jews in Arab lands. He also led a successful fight against the Kararites, a sect which rejected Rabbinic commentary as law.

1165 (3 Sivan) - Maimonides and his family arrived at Acre, Palestine. Having been forced to leave Spain because he would not convert to Islam, Maimonides and his family settled in Fez, Morocco. His work with Jews who had been forced to convert to Islam attracted attention of the local authorities and the family moved on to Palestine. Do to the poverty of the land and the uncertain conditions there, Maimonides finally settled in Egypt where he served both as a physician and leader of the Jewish Community. This year (2004) marks the 800th anniversary of the death of this famous scholar and sage.

1474 - Minister Pacheco of Spain used an attack he organized against "new Christians" as a diversion in order to enable him to capture the citadel of Segovia (and maybe the King). Although the plot was discovered in time, the Marranos were attacked by the organized mob, and men, women and children were murdered.

1527: Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic The recreation of the Republic led to the expulsion of the Jews. This event took place in the Jewish year 5300 (a year with Jewish mystical connotations), fueling messianic hopes helping to layer the ground for the rise of Solomon Molcho.

1790 - Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Warsaw.

1845: Birthdate of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, also known as Eli Metchnikoff. Born in the Ukraine, he was a Russian microbiologist best remembered for his pioneering research into the immune system. Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, for his work on phagocytosis. He passed away in Paris in 1916.

1864: Birthdate of Nathan Birnbaum Austrian journalist, Jewish philosopher and the founder of a Jewish nationalist organisation "Kadimah" ten years before Theodor Herzl became the leading spokesman of the Zionist movement. Birnbaum is credited for coining the term "Zionism". He died in 1937.

1868: President Andrew Johnson was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the United States Senate. According to one source, Johnson made several virulent anti-Semitic statements during his political career prior to becoming President. Considering the fact that the “Tarheel Tailor” was illiterate until adulthood, his anti-Semitic statements may be more a case of ignorance than anything else.

1881: Birthdate of Amy Loveman, a founding editor of the Saturday Review.

1904: Herzl's diary breaks off with a report to Jacob Schiff. Schiff was a successful banker and financer. He was one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century. He actively intervened on behalf of the Jews suffering in Tsarist Russia. Although he had reservations about Zionism, he was increasingly drawn to Herzl’s concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a practical way of lessening the suffering of Russia’s Jews.

1911: Masliach Effendi of the Turkish government ridicules the idea that Jews could become a menace to Turkey. He suggests appointment of committee to examine the whole question of Zionism.

1912: Birthdate of Rita Kanarek. In her senior year at N.Y.U. she married Alex Hillman founder and President of Hillman Periodicals. Mrs. Hillman became president of the Alex Hillman Family Foundation where she pursued her passions as an art collector and philanthropist. Among the beneficiaries of her largesse was the Phillips Beth Israel School of Nursing in Manhattan. She passed away at the age of 95 in November, 2007.

1912: Birthdate of author, historian and broadcaster, Studs Terkel. “My family was Jewish but not religious. My mother went through the rituals; my father didn't. He was a freethinker.” He passed away at the age of 93.

1916 - Birthdate of Ephraim Katzir, former President of Israel. Born Katchalski in Kiev, Katzir came to Palestine in 1925. A biophysicist, Katzir taught at Hebrew University and served as department hair at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. One result of his research was the creation of a synthetic fiber for internal surgery that can be dissolved by body enzymes. He served as Israel's fourth President (a largely ceremonial position) from 1973 to 1978

1916: Birthdate of Poet Adrienne Rich

1923: Birthdate of economist Merton Miller, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economics.

1929: Birthdate Baltimore native, Adrienne Rich, one of American poetry's foremost feminist and liberal voices.
1936: A bomb thrown by Arabs kills three Jews at the Edison cinema in Jerusalem. The Haganah demands permission to retaliate, but Ben Gurion refuses. The Edison Cinema was not just a movie theatre. It was a “citadel of secular European culture in Jerusalem. It opened in 1932 with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” sung in Hebrew. The Edison was the third largest cinema in the city and popular sport for British soldiers and officials.

1938 - The Palestine Post reported on the continued fighting between the police and British army units in the Acre District. At least 23 terrorists were killed there and numerous arrests were made. Jewish settlements repulsed numerous terrorist attacks, but complained that they were supplied with insufficient arms and too small a number of supernumerary constables for a successful defense. The Iraq Petroleum Co. pipeline was again set on fire.

1943 - The famous Tolmatsky Synagogue of Warsaw was dynamited by order of General Jurgen Stroop. It marked the last German "major operation" in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

1943 - SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop reports the final liquidation of the Jewish ghetto at Warsaw, although some Jews remain in hiding. The Germans reportedly lost 300 troops. Amazingly the Jewish resistance had proved fierce, by comparison than that of the French Army in 1940. The number of Jewish dead does not matter, since they would have perished in the showers and ovens any way. Death was not the question; the manner of death was the matter of choice. There were a few survivors of the Ghetto, one of them being the mother of Marsha Fensin, the former Cantor of Temple Judah.

1944 - The first of more than 180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.

1948: In New York City, the American Zionist Emergency Council sponsored a celebration of the creation of the Jewish state at Madison Square Garden that was so well attended 75,000 people had to be turned away.

1948: Based on a telegram from David Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharett, Abba Eban and not Mordechai Elisah, is to be Israel’s chief spokesman at the the United Nations.

1948 - Israel issued its first postage stamps.

1948 - Chaim Weizmann was elected first president of the State of Israel.

1948 -The Egyptian army suffered its first defeat at Nirim, in the Negev.

1948 - The Egyptians entered Gaza.

1948: Christopher Mayhew, the future Lord Mayhew, an anti-Zionist ally of British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, writes in his diary, “I must make a note about Ernest’s anti-Semitism, which has come out increasingly sharply these past few weeks with the appalling crisis in Palestine. There is no doubt to my mind that that Ernest detests Jews. He makes the odd wise-crack about the ‘chosen people’ and declares that the Old Testament is the most immoral book ever written…” This view of Bevin is fascinating when his role in enforcing the White Paper and his opposition to a Jewish homeland is being considered.

1955 – Birthdate of actress Debra Winger, the star of Officer and a Gentlemen.

1955 - Birthdate of Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of Seagram and Warner Music

1960: Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1967: General Fawzi, the Egyptian chief of staff, sent a message to the commander of the UN Emergency Force, General Rikhye of the Indian Army requesting the withdrawal of the UNEF from Egypt. The Egyptian Foreign Minister sent a cable to U Thant, UN Secretary General tell him that the Egyptian government ad decided to immediately terminate the presence of UNEF in Egypt and the Gaza strip.

1969 -Barbra Streisand appeared at a Friars Club Tribute

1973: Birthdate of actress Tori Spelling.

1973: Famed Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz passed away. His body was flown to Jerusalem for burial.

1974: Despite a terrorist attack the previous day on a school at Ma’alot, Prime Minister Golda Meir tells Secretary of State Kissinger that talks with the Syrians will continue. After a one day hiatus, she says, “We had all better back to peacemaking

1978 -The Jerusalem Post reported that in his 28th Annual State Comptroller's Report Dr. Yitzhak Nebenzahl called for a "Ministry of Administration." He said that while there are many links that tie people to its government, in Israel the administration is the weakest link in this chain. "A government," he explained, "is like an automobile. No matter how fine the car is, it will not ride well unless all four wheels are intact." The Report claimed a massive maladministration, and was specifically highly critical of the Treasury.

1984 - Comedian Andy Kaufman passed away. Born in 1949, Kaufman is best remembered for his many appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and for his portrayal of Latka on the television hit “Taxi.” He was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer and was 35 at the time of his death.

1984 - Irwin Shaw passed away at the age of 71. Born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in 1913 in the Bronx, his Jewish immigrants from Russia changed the family to Shaw and moved to Brooklyn. After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1934, Shaw wrote scripts for radio shows including Dick Tracey. After serving in the Army during World War II, Shaw produced his "great American war novel" The Young Lions, which became the basis for a successful film of the same name. Among other works by this highly prolific writer was Rich Man, Poor Man which became a hit t.v. mini-series.

1990 - Multi-talented entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. passed away at the age of 64. Born in Harlem in 1925, began his show business career at the age of four. Davis was the son of a popular vaudeville entertainer. He learned how to dance from the legendary BoJangles. He began dancing with the Will Mastin Trio and moved on to a singing career that included opening for Frank Sinatra. Davis was part of the Rat Pack and starred with the in cult classic Oceans Eleven. During the 1950's Davis was in an automobile accident in which he lost his eye. It was during this period of his life than he converted to Judaism. He will be remembered not just for his talent but for his support of the Civil Rights Movement as well.

1991: The Los Angeles Times featured a review of Wartime Lies, the first novel written by Louis Begley. "Wartime Lies is the story of a ‘lucky’ little boy. Lucky goes in quotation marks; the child went through terror and degradation. On the other hand, no one in his small family of well-to-do Polish Jews went to a concentration camp. Only two--his grandfather and grandmother--were killed; he, his father and his aunt survived and were able to prosper after the war, even before emigrating.”

1999: Angela Warnick Buchdahl was invested as the first Asian American cantor. Two years later, she became the first Asian American rabbi.

2006: Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard received the prestigious B'nai B'rith international Presidential Gold Medal for his "outstanding" support of Israel and the Jewish people at a ceremony in Washington

2006: A French politician and his sister sued France's state-run SNCF railway for transporting their father and three relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps. Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister Helene accused the SNCF of organising the transport of French Jews to the Drancy transit camp near Paris and billing the wartime government for its services. Of the 330,000 Jews living in France in 1940, 75,721 were deported to death camps and only about 2,500 returned alive. Alain and Helene Lipietz told the court their father Georges had been sent by train in mid-1944 from Toulouse in southwestern France to Drancy, usually the last stop for French Jews before they were put on trains to the death camps. He was freed from Drancy on August 18, only days before Paris was liberated by Allied forces. The SNCF billed the state for that transport which came two months after Allied forced had landed in Normandy, the two plaintiffs said. "The SNCF charged for third class tickets for people who were crammed 200 at a time in freight cars meant to transport 60 horses," Helene Lipietz said. "These were cars without water, food or toilets and they were able to pass through Allied lines even as French territory was being liberated and someone could have stopped these convoys," Alain Lipietz added. The SNCF's lawyer, Yves Baudelot, said the railway could not be held responsible for the transports because it had no choice but to cooperate with German occupying forces during the war.

2007: Thomas Cole, Rose Dobrof, Marc Kaminsky, Penninah Schram, Mark Weiss, and Steve Zeitlin present “Stories as Equipment for Living: Last Talks and Tales of Barbara Myerhoff” at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. “Stories As Equipment For Living” is a compilation of Barbara Myerhoff's unpublished talks on the meaning of stories, the tales she collected and the searching field notes that document her struggle to discover and maintain her personal and cultural identity - all that survive of the work she had undertaken in Los Angeles' orthodox Fairfax community. It is a true sequel to her groundbreaking best seller Number Our Days.”

2007: (28 Iyar, 5767) Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Reunification Day; Celebrating forty years of the return of Jerusalem to its rightful place as, one, undivided city serving as the capital of the Jewish state. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”(Psalms 137:5-6)

2007: Rabbi Mordecai Simon, chief administrator of the Chicago Board of Rabbis for thirty two years and host of the Sunday morning television show “What’s Nu?” passed away in Highland Park, Il, at the age of 81.

2008: At the Channel Inn in Washington, D.C., as part of the monthly meeting/luncheon of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same name) co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel and the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum.

2008: "Furo" is being performed for the first time in Israel, in a special temporary pavilion designed by Giora Porter on the Tel Aviv Port boardwalk. "Furo," by Ohad Naharin, the Batsheva Dance Company and the Japanese animation artist Tabaimo, features the creations of Israeli fashion designers Mirit Weinstock, Sasson Kedem, and Alla Eisenberg, as well as dancer and choreographer, Sharon Eyal. "Furo," Japanese for bathhouse, combines Japanese-style video clips by Tabaimo on three giant screens, dance segments performed by Batsheva dancers wearing Western-style designer clothes, and a lovely soundtrack by Ehud Fishoff

This Day, May 15, In Jewish History

May 15 In Jewish History

756 CE: Abd Al-Rahman won the battle against his co-religionist outside the city walls of Cordoba. He entered the city as victor. After he set up his Umayyad administration, Abd Al-Rahman mandated all Jews and Christians pay a jizya, a discriminatory mandated tax in accordance with the Koran for their "protected" status as dhimmis.

1248 - Odo of Chateaubroux "investigated" the Talmud and then condemned it. This was the second condemnation of the Talmud after an appeal was made by the Jewish community of France.

1252: Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes the torture of heretics as part of the Inquisition. Torture quickly gains widespread usage across Catholic Europe. There would be several Inquisitions during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaiisance. The primary aim was to destroy Christians who did not accept the doctrine as commanded by the Popes at Rome. Of course if you were going to rack or dunk or flay Christians, certainly there were those who would think that it would be alright to do the same to Jews. Interestingly, there were some Popes who disagreed saying that it was alright to treat the Jews badly, but not to actually do them physical harm.

1745 -In Prague, after many appeals and petitions, Empress Maria Theresa revoked her decree banishing all Jews in Moravia and Bohemia, allowing Jews to live there for an unlimited time. Only the Jews in Prague itself who were actually banished 3 years earlier were still under the order, but they were soon permitted to return on a restricted basis.

1756: The Seven Years War begins when England declares war on France. In America, the war is known as the French-Indian War. Officially there were no Jews living in Canada at the start of the war since Canada was a French colony and Jews were forbidden by law to live there. This changed as a result of the war. The first Jews entered Canada with the forces of Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the English military leader who conquered Montreal. There were several serving in his regiments including four officers. One of them, Aron Hart, remained, settled at Three Rivers where he became a large landowner and the father of four sons who helped to form the nucleus of the Jewish community in Montreal. On the other side of the line, some sources contend that a Converso was in the Commissary General for the French forces.

1799 - Birthdate of Adolf B. Marx, composer and educator. Marx was supposed to be a lawyer, but changed his mind after graduation and moved to Berlin to begin his musical studies. While composing, he also served a lecturer on Music at the famed University of Berlin and started the Stern Music Conservatory which became one of the leading musical schools of its time. Marx died in 1866, two days after his 67th birthday.

1800 - An English Jew saved the life of King George III.

1800 - A community of Jewish slaves, captured over a period of two centuries and held for ransom by the Knights of St. John on the island of Malta, was officially dissolved.

1862 - Birthdate of playwright and novelist Arthur Schnitzler. Born in Vienna, Schnitzler began his career as a playwright. He was a central figure in the Viennese literary community that spanned the last decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Schnitzler was a contemporary of Herzl and used him as a character in one of his novels. Schnitzler passed away in 1931. His works were later banned by German and Austrian Nazis.

1881 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Odessa, Russia.

1882- Alexander III issued the May Laws. They were designed to "cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism and one-third to starve." Jews were banished from all rural areas and towns of less than ten thousand people, even within the Pale of Settlement. These laws remained in quasi-effect until 1914 and provided the impetus for migration to America as well as expanded interest in the settlement of Eretz-Israel.

1889 - Birthdate of Bessie Hillman. Born Bessie Abramowitz, Hillman was active in the labor movement designed to alleviate the sweatshop conditions in the garment industry. She was active in the 1910 strike against Hart-Shaftner and Marx. The strike paid two dividends - the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the first meeting with her future husband, labor leader Sidney Hillman. An early role model for feminists, Hillman continued her labor work even after giving birth to her two daughters.

1895: Birthdate of Fanny Goldstein, a librarian and the founder of Jewish Book Week

1905 – Birthdate of businessman Abraham Zapruder, whose famed home movie documented the assassination of JFK

1905: Founding of Las Vegas, Nevada. According to an article in Hadassah Magazine there is little documented proof concerning the first Jewish families living in Las Vegas. Names like Bergman and Berman appear in the 1910 census In the 1920’s a family named Goldring served kosher food and proudly announced that they had produced the first Jewish baby born in the town. Other sources provide a replica of cattle brand found on bovines belonging to a Las Vegas Jew named Charles Field. The brand consisted of a diagonal “I” with the letter “C” superimposed over it. Of course the first two Jewish names that come to mind when mentioning Las Vegas are Meyer Lansky and his protégé Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Today Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the United States.

1911 - Birthdate of actor Leo Fuchs. His place of birth is given variously as Lemberg, Hungry and Lwow, Poland. Regardless, he came to the United States and began his career in the Yiddish Theatre. Fuchs appeared in "Broadway Plays" in New York and in London. He was seen on the television hit Mr. Ed. His film credits include The Frisco Kid and Avalon. He passed away in 1994.

1912 - Birthdate of composer Arthur Victor Berger. Born in the Bronx, Berger was a graduate of NYU and Harvard. Berger was well known in his native America as a composer, teacher and music critic, but was better known in Britain as a writer on music, particularly on the academic, musicological side. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 91.

1915 - Birthdate of American economist Paul Samuelson. Samuelson won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970. Jews account for 40% of all winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Fifty-four percent of the Americans who have won the award are Jewish.

1919: In the Winnipeg General Strike “virtually the entire working population of Winnipeg had walked off the job. 30,000 to 35,000 people were on strike in a city of 200,000. Even essential public employees such as fire fighters went on strike, but returned midway through the strike with the approval of the Strike Committee. The Winnipeg Police were technically on strike but remained on patrol in practice.” Opponents of the strike, especially those in the press including The New York Times demonized the strikers as Bolsheviks and Jews. Cartoons were produced depicting the strikers as hooked nosed Jews. In 2005, this historic event would become part of the popular entertainment world through a musical called Strike by Danny Schur. The hit play (in Canada) focused on the treatment of the Jewish and Ukranian workers and carried a message of universal brotherhood.


1933 - Dr. Alfred Strauss, a Jewish lawyer, was killed in Dachau.

1937: Birthdate of Madeleine Korbel Albright. first woman to be named Secretary of State (1997). A native of Czecholslovokia, Albright was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 1996, Albright discovered that her grandparents had been murdered at Auschwitz and Terezin. Her parents had converted to Roman Catholicism to escape the Holocaust. Albright has stated that she did not know she had Jewish ancestors until she was an adult. She May 15

756 CE: Abd Al-Rahman won the battle against his co-religionist outside the city walls of Cordoba. He entered the city as victor. After he set up his Umayyad administration, Abd Al-Rahman mandated all Jews and Christians pay a jizya, a discriminatory mandated tax in accordance with the Koran for their "protected" status as dhimmis.

1248 - Odo of Chateaubroux "investigated" the Talmud and then condemned it. This was the second condemnation of the Talmud after an appeal was made by the Jewish community of France.

1252: Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes the torture of heretics as part of the Inquisition. Torture quickly gains widespread usage across Catholic Europe. There would be several Inquisitions during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaiisance. The primary aim was to destroy Christians who did not accept the doctrine as commanded by the Popes at Rome. Of course if you were going to rack or dunk or flay Christians, certainly there were those who would think that it would be alright to do the same to Jews. Interestingly, there were some Popes who disagreed saying that it was alright to treat the Jews badly, but not to actually do them physical harm.

1745 -In Prague, after many appeals and petitions, Empress Maria Theresa revoked her decree banishing all Jews in Moravia and Bohemia, allowing Jews to live there for an unlimited time. Only the Jews in Prague itself who were actually banished 3 years earlier were still under the order, but they were soon permitted to return on a restricted basis.

1756: The Seven Years War begins when England declares war on France. In America, the war is known as the French-Indian War. Officially there were no Jews living in Canada at the start of the war since Canada was a French colony and Jews were forbidden by law to live there. This changed as a result of the war. The first Jews entered Canada with the forces of Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the English military leader who conquered Montreal. There were several serving in his regiments including four officers. One of them, Aron Hart, remained, settled at Three Rivers where he became a large landowner and the father of four sons who helped to form the nucleus of the Jewish community in Montreal. On the other side of the line, some sources contend that a Converso was in the Commissary General for the French forces.

1799 - Birthdate of Adolf B. Marx, composer and educator. Marx was supposed to be a lawyer, but changed his mind after graduation and moved to Berlin to begin his musical studies. While composing, he also served a lecturer on Music at the famed University of Berlin and started the Stern Music Conservatory which became one of the leading musical schools of its time. Marx died in 1866, two days after his 67th birthday.

1800 - An English Jew saved the life of King George III.

1800 - A community of Jewish slaves, captured over a period of two centuries and held for ransom by the Knights of St. John on the island of Malta, was officially dissolved.

1862 - Birthdate of playwright and novelist Arthur Schnitzler. Born in Vienna, Schnitzler began his career as a playwright. He was a central figure in the Viennese literary community that spanned the last decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Schnitzler was a contemporary of Herzl and used him as a character in one of his novels. Schnitzler passed away in 1931. His works were later banned by German and Austrian Nazis.

1881 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Odessa, Russia.

1882- Alexander III issued the May Laws. They were designed to "cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism and one-third to starve." Jews were banished from all rural areas and towns of less than ten thousand people, even within the Pale of Settlement. These laws remained in quasi-effect until 1914 and provided the impetus for migration to America as well as expanded interest in the settlement of Eretz-Israel.

1889 - Birthdate of Bessie Hillman. Born Bessie Abramowitz, Hillman was active in the labor movement designed to alleviate the sweatshop conditions in the garment industry. She was active in the 1910 strike against Hart-Shaftner and Marx. The strike paid two dividends - the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the first meeting with her future husband, labor leader Sidney Hillman. An early role model for feminists, Hillman continued her labor work even after giving birth to her two daughters.

1895: Birthdate of Fanny Goldstein, a librarian and the founder of Jewish Book Week

1905 – Birthdate of businessman Abraham Zapruder, whose famed home movie documented the assassination of JFK

1905: Founding of Las Vegas, Nevada. According to an article in Hadassah Magazine there is little documented proof concerning the first Jewish families living in Las Vegas. Names like Bergman and Berman appear in the 1910 census In the 1920’s a family named Goldring served kosher food and proudly announced that they had produced the first Jewish baby born in the town. Other sources provide a replica of cattle brand found on bovines belonging to a Las Vegas Jew named Charles Field. The brand consisted of a diagonal “I” with the letter “C” superimposed over it. Of course the first two Jewish names that come to mind when mentioning Las Vegas are Meyer Lansky and his protégé Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Today Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the United States.

1911 - Birthdate of actor Leo Fuchs. His place of birth is given variously as Lemberg, Hungry and Lwow, Poland. Regardless, he came to the United States and began his career in the Yiddish Theatre. Fuchs appeared in "Broadway Plays" in New York and in London. He was seen on the television hit Mr. Ed. His film credits include The Frisco Kid and Avalon. He passed away in 1994.

1912 - Birthdate of composer Arthur Victor Berger. Born in the Bronx, Berger was a graduate of NYU and Harvard. Berger was well known in his native America as a composer, teacher and music critic, but was better known in Britain as a writer on music, particularly on the academic, musicological side. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 91.

1915 - Birthdate of American economist Paul Samuelson. Samuelson won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970. Jews account for 40% of all winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Fifty-four percent of the Americans who have won the award are Jewish.

1919: In the Winnipeg General Strike “virtually the entire working population of Winnipeg had walked off the job. 30,000 to 35,000 people were on strike in a city of 200,000. Even essential public employees such as fire fighters went on strike, but returned midway through the strike with the approval of the Strike Committee. The Winnipeg Police were technically on strike but remained on patrol in practice.” Opponents of the strike, especially those in the press including The New York Times demonized the strikers as Bolsheviks and Jews. Cartoons were produced depicting the strikers as hooked nosed Jews. In 2005, this historic event would become part of the popular entertainment world through a musical called Strike by Danny Schur. The hit play (in Canada) focused on the treatment of the Jewish and Ukranian workers and carried a message of universal brotherhood.


1933 - Dr. Alfred Strauss, a Jewish lawyer, was killed in Dachau.

1937: Birthdate of Madeleine Korbel Albright. A native of Czecholslovokia, Albright was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 1996, Albright discovered that her grandparents had been murdered at Auschwitz and Terezin. Her parents had converted to Roman Catholicism to escape the Holocaust. Albright has stated that she did not know she had Jewish ancestors until she was an adult. In 1997, she was the first woman to be naamed Secretary of State.

1938 - The Palestine Post reported that while the armed Arab gangs continued to carry out robberies, commit arson, blow up culverts, dig holes in the roads and set up mines throughout the country, at least one such gang suffered heavy casualties when engaged by British forces near Acre. Many arrests were carried out in Tamra and the neighboring villages. Two British officers were wounded in this operation. An Arab mukhtar, village elder, was murdered near Nablus after he refused to pay ransom

1939 - The German refugee ship St. Louis leaves Hamburg. Most of the thousand or so passengers are Jewish escapees from Nazi Germany. They have landing passes for Cuba as well as quota numbers that could allow them entry into the United States three years hence;

1939- A women's concentration camp opens at Ravensbrück, 50 miles north of Berlin.

1940 - Thousands of refugee Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia are trapped behind German lines as Nazi forces push through Holland. The Dutch Army surrenders

1941 Polish Jews who have traveled by sealed train from the Biala Podlaska Jewish POW camp to Konskowola are murdered after the train's Nazi overseers discover that four of the POWs have escaped.

1941-Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbid Jewish music

1941-Twelve transported Jewish prisoners-of-war, are shot dead as a reprisal for the escape of four others, en route from Biala Podlaska to Konskowola, Poland.

1943 - In Rohatyn, Jewish ghetto police secretly plan to buy weapons and form escape parties to the nearby woods. Three weeks later the plan is foiled and all 1,000 Jews of the ghetto are killed.

1943 -The Warsaw ghetto was reduced to ashes and the uprising came to an end after an active resistance of four weeks.

1944 -Nazi deportation of Jews from greater Hungary began with the deportation of 14,000 Jews from Munkacs to Auschwitz. The roundup is directed by Eichman with “the full cooperation of the Hungarian police.”

1944: As part of the Nazi proposal to swap Jews for supplies including ten thousand trucks, Joel Brand is flown from Budapest to Istanbul to meet with two representatives of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. The two will listen to Brand and take the offer back to Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv.

1944 – On the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe, 878 Jews are deported from Drancy, France, to the Reval, Estonia, slave-labor camp. At the very time when Rommel, the Nazi General who is in charge of preparing to face the Allied onslaught, is bemoaning the lack of men and equipment, the Germans are busy shipping Jews to their death. This provides further proof that the creation of a Jew-Free Europe was an integral part of the German effort and not some tangential activity.

1948 - Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudia Arabia invade the state of Israel on its second day of existence. As soon as the Mandate ended, the Arab armies attacked with the aim of driving the Jews into the sea.

1948 – As the first day dawned on the new Jewish state, the Israeli military force had grown from 4.500 to 36,600 in the six months since the partition vote. This seemingly impressive total includes everybody not just combat troops. And it pales in comparison to the size (not to mention the equipment) of the invading Arab armies. At least 1,200 Jews had fallen in fighting during the same period and this does not count civilian casualties.

1948 – On Cyprus, the British open the gates of the detention camps. Thousands of Jews who had been imprisoned in their attempt to reach Eretz Israel, would now be free to leave for the new national Jewish home. Within days, many of those released would be fighting in the front lines against the invading Arab armies.

1948: Mordechai Ruttenberg took part in one of those small actions, described below, which helped to change history.
In Jerusalem, a young teenager and a member of Gadna (Gedudei Noar--Israeli youth corps offering pre-military training of teenagers) helping to defend Jerusalem “found a crate of Molotov cocktails in the Notre Dame Monastery, got really scared, and hid it. The Jordanians tried every possible way to break into the city, and on that day armored vehicles arrived via Damascus Gate and took up positions below the windows of the monastery. Someone shouted from the street, 'Hey, kid, where are the cocktails?' I didn't know what to do, so he explained to me how to throw them. From the window I threw one of the bottles onto the first armored vehicle, which immediately started to burn, and the Jordanians beat a hasty retreat. Afterward people wrote that the Molotov cocktails saved Jerusalem, because otherwise the Jordanians would have entered the city. I pretty much forgot the whole thing, but one day I heard a tour guide telling about the boy with the bottle, and I came out of the closet and said, 'I am that boy.'" That boy was the future Professor Mordechai Rotenberg who Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who taught at Hebrew University in the social work school, the criminology institute and the department of psychology.

1948: The American office of Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) opened a blood bank for Israel in New York City that was soon packed with donors.

1949: In Philadelphia, PA, opening of “3rd Sculpture International” which includes the works of Chaim Gross, Jacob Epstein, Jacques Lipschitz and William Zorach.

1951: Birthdate of Frank Wilczek winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.

1951: Pitcher Saul Rogovin is traded from the Tigers to the White Sox and still compiled a league leading 2.78 Earned Run Average.

1952 - Founding of Sde Boker (Cattle Rancher's Field) in the central Negev hills. Sde Boker began as a horse-breeding community. Later sheep were added to the breeding activity. As the desert was reclaimed orchards were planted by the settlers. Sde Boker's most famous settler was David Ben-Gurion who first moved there in 1952 when he resigned as Prime Minister in 1952. Ben Gurion saw Sde Boker as a key to reclaiming the Negev. In turn Ben Gurion saw reclamation of the Negev - making the desert bloom - as a key to the ultimate success of the new Jewish state.

1953 - The Jerusalem Post reported that a new railway line linked Hadera with Tel Aviv. The entire new track was constructed out of the French-manufactured material acquired with the aid of French railways. The funds came from the Development Budget. The Bavarian Cabinet decided to ban the return to Bavaria of Jewish Displaced Persons who left Germany for Israel after World War II and now decided to return to Germany. Kfar Saba celebrated its 50th anniversary.

1967 - Israel holds the Independence Day parade in Jerusalem without the usual numbers of heavy artillery and tanks. The full parade is not held because of an agreed limitation of tanks in the city, as laid down in the armistice agreement with Jordan. Egypt accuses Israel of having sent the "missing tanks and other weaponry to the north." Egypt names May 17 as the day on which Israel will invade Syria. A new song is born: "Yerushalayim shel Zahav" - "Jerusalem of Gold" by Naomi Shemer is performed for the first time on Independence Day. It soon becomes a kind of second national anthem.

1967: During a parade in Jerusalem marking the 19th anniversary of Israeli independence, a messenger brings word to Prime Minister Eshkol that “large Egyptian forces were moving into Sinai and advancing westward.” The message continued that in Cairo rumored reports had Nasser ordering the removal of the UN Emergency Forces from the Sinai and the Straits of Tiran.

1969 - Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned over a controversy concerning past legal fees.

1973: President Richard Nixon awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Air Force Sergeant John L. Levitow, the only enlisted airman to be so honored during the Viet Nam War. The citation reads as follows: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty. Sergeant John L. Levitow (then Airman First Class), U.S. Air Force, distinguished himself by exceptional heroism on 24 February, 1969, while assigned as a loadmaster aboard a AC-47 aircraft flying a night mission. On that date, Sgt. Levitow's aircraft was struck by a hostile mortar round. The resulting explosion ripped a hole through the wing and fragments mad over 3,500 holes in the fuselage. All occupants of the cargo compartment were helplessly slammed against the floor and fuselage. The explosion tore an activated flare from the grasp of a crewmember, who had been launching flares to provide illumination for Army ground troops engaged in combat. Sgt. Levitow, though stunned by the concussion of the blast and suffering from over forty fragment wounds in the back and legs, staggered to his feet and turned to assist the man nearest to him, who had been knocked down and was bleeding heavily. As he was moving his wounded comrade forward and away from the open cargo compartment door, he saw the smoking flare ahead of him in the aisle. Realizing the danger involved and completely disregarding his own wounds, Sgt. Levitow started toward the burning flare. Sgt. Levitow struggled forward despite the loss of blood. Unable to grasp the flare with his hands, he threw himself bodily upon the burning flare. Hugging the deadly devise to his body, he dragged himself back to the rear of the aircraft and hurled the flare through the open cargo door. At that instant, the flare separated and ignited in the air, but clear of the aircraft. Sgt. Levitow, by selfless and heroic actions, saved the aircraft and its entire crew from certain death and destruction. Sgt. Levitow's conspicuous gallantry, his profound concern for his fellowmen and his intrepidity at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.” Born in in 1945, Levitow passed away at the age of 55 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetary.

1974: A cell from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated into Israel from Lebanon. They entered an apartment in Ma’a lot, killing the Cohen family including their four year old son. The terrorist then stormed Netiv Meir School. “They took 105 students and 10 of their teachers hostage. They were from a religious high school in Safed and who were staying the school during a class trip.” The terrorists killed 22 students and three of the teachers before the IDF could mount an effective rescue mission.

1978 - The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Embassy in Washington reiterated that "the supply of advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and Egypt creates a serious threat to the security of Israel." President Sadat of Egypt, in a major policy speech, threatened domestic critics of his policy of negotiating with Israel, and took great pains in explaining why he had deposited one million pounds, received from Katar, in his personal account. The Israeli Cabinet, by a vote of 14 to three, backed the Chief of Staff, Raphael Eitan's declaration that Israel cannot defend itself without Judea, Samaria, and the Golan.

1983 - Meyer Lansky passed away, Born Maier Suchowljansky in Russia in 1902, Lansky moved to the United States in 1911. Lansky is probably the most famous of all Jewish mobsters. When faced with charges of tax evasion, Lansky fled to Israel, seeking protection under the Law of Return. Ultimately, the Israeli government gave him up and Lanksy came back to serve a prison sentence.

1985: Author and journalist Theodore White passed away. White first gained fame covering China during World War II for the Time/Life media empire. His honest reporting got him in trouble with Right Wing Americans and he ended up coming back to the States after the war. White had been so effective as a reporter because he spoke Chinese, a language he learned quite by accident while studying at Harvard. A whole new generation of Americans came to know him for his prize winning popular political science treatise, The Making in President which told the story of the Nixon-Kennedy campaign in 1960. It provided many Americans with their first insight as to how the American electoral system really worked. Although he was to right several “making of a President” books, none would come close to the original effort which spawned a whole new genre of political reporting.

2000: Israel and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) reestablish diplomatic relations.

2000: By decree of the French Republic President, Dr Meir Rosenne, Israeli diplomat, has been made Commander in the National Order of the Legion of Honour.

2005: Alan B. Gold, Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court passed away at the age of 87.

2006: Over 150,000 people attended the celebrations at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount Meron in the Galilee, where a large feast is traditionally held.

2007: In Washington, D.C. Theater J presents the last of performances of Arnold Wesker's “Shylock,” a landmark re-imagining of the three stories which inspired Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Featuring beloved international performer Theodore Bikel in the title role and Edward Gero as Antonio, this staged concert reading is presented in conjunction with the Shakespeare in Washington Festival.

2007: In London, the ZF presents “A Special Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Reunification of Jerusalem” featuring a speech by Moshe Arens, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States who also served as the Israeli Defense Minister and Foreign Minister.

2007: Four people were wounded by a barrage of at last 19 Qassam Rockets fired by Hamas terrorists at the western Negev town of Sderot. Palestinian leaders said that Hamas was trying to divert attention from internecine fighting in the Gaza Strip by renewing hostilities between Israel and the Palestine Authority.

2007: Giorgio Cavaglieri, an Italian-Jewish architect who designed airfields for anti-Semitic dictator Benito Mussolini before fleeing to America and spurring the urban-preservation movement passed away at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan from internal bleeding at the age of 95. His name is linked to some of New York's most-famous buildings. He transformed the old Astor Library in the East Village into Joseph Papp's Public Theater and created the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village -- a one-time Victorian courthouse with a turret -- is considered by many to be the first successful preservation of a historic building in New York City. Mr. Cavaglieri was born in Venice. He had graduated from Milan's Polytechnic University and was working for the insurance giant Assicurazioni Generali when Adolf Hitler came to power, w