This Day, October 31, In Jewish History

OCTOBER 31 In Jewish History

445 BCE: In Jerusalem Ezra, the Scribe reads the Scroll of the Law, the Torah, to the Jews of Judea as described in Nehemiah 9:1.

1345: Birthdate King Fernando I of Portugal. During his reign Jews not only enjoyed a certain amount of self-government through the position of a Chief Rabbi or Ar-Rabbi Mor. The King trusted Jews so much that Don Judah served as his chief treasurer and Don David Negro served as “his confidant and counselor.”

1391: Birthdate of King Duarte of Portugal who during his reign enacted laws prohibiting Jews from employing Christians.

1497: Last date given by King Manuel for Jews to leave Portugal. Four years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, he had ordered them expelled from Portugal. As his real desire was not to see the Jews leave for financial reasons, he only opened one port forcing most of them to remain behind after the designated date then baptizing them against their will.

1517: Luther posted 95 theses on Wittenberg church starting the Protestant Reformation. From the point of view of Jewish history it is ironic that Luther took his action on Halloween, the holiday known for trick or treat. In his battle with the Pope, Luther sought to gain the support of the Jews. He publicly admitted that Christians had ill-treated the Jews and it was time to change. He believed that once the Jews experienced Christian love, Jews would embrace his version of Christianity en masse. When the Jews refused to convert, Luther turned on them and became a virulent anti-Semite. At the same time, the Jews would become the unwitting victims as the Protestants and Catholics engaged in a variety of religious wars that would consume Europe for the next one hundred years.

1655: As the week long Tishrei festivals come to an end, Manassah Ben Israel prepared to make his voyage where is to meet with Oliver Cromwell whom he hopes will allow the Jews to return to the British Isles.

1655: A “humble address” is sent from Manasseh ben Israel to Oliver Cromwell, The Lord Protector. A fortnight later on 13 November he submitted a petition for the readmission of Jews to England.

1759(10th of Cheshvan, 5520): An earthquake killed several hundred Jews in Safed. Safed is the town most people connect with Jewish mystics and the famous Shabbat Eve hymn, Lecha Dodi. Prior to the earthquake, Safed had been a thriving city. The first printing presses in the Middle East were set up in Safed and the first Hebrew book published in Eretz Israel was produced in Safed in the year before the earthquake. The quake was one of a series of disasters including plagues and Arab attacks that would turn the town into a comparative backwater until the creation of the modern state of Israel.

1835: Birthdate of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer, known as Adolph von Baeyer, the first Jew to ever receive the Nobel Prize. A native of Berlin, this German chemist was acknowledged in 1905 for synthesizing dye indigo and was awarded the Davie Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1881, for his work with indigo. He passed away in 1917.
1841: In the first Jewish marriage in New Zealand, David Nathan wed Rosetta Aarons in Kororareka.

1842(27th of Cheshvan, 5603): Rabbi Solomon Hirschell passed away. Born in 1761, he was the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, from 1802 until his death. He is best remembered for his unsuccessful attempt to stop the spread of Reform Judaism in Britain by excommunicating its leaders. His father was a Polish Jew from Galicia Hirschel Levin, Chief Rabbi of London and Berlin and a friend of Moses Mendelssohn. His older brother was Talmudist Saul Berlin.
1849; Mordecai Manuel Noah wrote to Daniel Webster today inviting him to attend the Hebrew Benevolent and German Hebrew Benevolent Society banquet to be held in New York on November 13. In the letter, Noah informs Webster that there are 13,000 Jews living in New York City and that number is continuing to rise daily.

1864: Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state. It was a series of silver strikes, the most famous of which was the Comstock Lode, that attracted large numbers of early settlers to Nevada including Jews as well as Gentiles. For example, when Eureka, Nevada experienced its silver strike the town’s population reached four thousand inlcuding more than one hundred Jews. Among these Jews was Ben C. Levy a native of France who became superintendant of two mines and who, along with his wife, was a leader of the Jewish community. David H. Cohen was typical of these early Jewish settlers. He began as a “49er” in California, moved on to Virginia City, Nevada before “striking it reach” with a liquor business in Austin, Nevada. Adoph Sutro left the most lasting monument to the intrepid Jewish population of Nevada’s early days. This placer panner turned entrepeneur raised the money for the construction of the four mile long Sutro Tunnel designed to drain water from the mines thus making them safer and more protective. The man who made the modern Nevada was Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel, the man behind Las Vegas. As of 2000, there were an estimated 77,100 Jews living in Nevada, representing an increase of 277% from 1990.

1857: In a letter to the editor published in today's New York Times, "Grace, a farmer's wife" expresses her indignation of having the farmer classed with "the Wall-street gamblers or Chatham-street Jews." In New York, Chatham street was the center of the second-hand clothing business, an industry dominated by immigrant Jews who allegedly took advantage of their Christian costumers.

1860: The News of the Day Column published today reported that “a ball and banquet in aid of the ‘Jews Hospital in New-York’ was given at the City Assembly Rooms last evening, which was largely attended by members of the Jewish faith and others. Donations in aid of the Hospital were received from those present, and from absent persons, by letter, amounting to $14,000. Among the donors was Gov. Morgan, who sent a complimentary letter in closing $100.”

1861: The General News column published today reported that “A murder of a most atrocious nature has been committed in New-Jersey, on the body of a German Jew named Sigismund Felluer. Deceased had only been in this country a few days, and had property in jewels and diamonds to the amount of $50,000. A man with whom Felluer left the Prescott House, and a Jewess in whose company Felluer was seen, are suspected, and the police are diligently searching for them. A reward of $500 for the discovery of the murderer or murderers has been offered by the friends of Felluer.

1875: It was reported today that “eight Jews and Jewesses were recently baptized in London.

1875: It was reported today that in England, a revision of the Book of Isaiah has been completed and work on a revision of the translation of the Book of Jeremiah has reach the midpoint of that book of the Bible.

1875: It was reported today that the Jewish messenger said of Moody and Sankey, “We give the two enterprising gentlemen the credit of being honest in their intentions, earnest in their work and as the past has proved, disinterested in the pecuniary results of their vast undertakings. Would that we could say the same of all our Deacons and Trustees, Pastors and Rabbis” [ Moody is Dwight Moody, the famous evangelist. Sankey is Ira David Sankey, “The Sweet Singer of Methodism” who was known for his composition and singing of gospel music. During a trip to the United Kingdom, the two raised tens of thousands of dollars for the use of missionaries.

1875: Birthdate of Eugene Meyer. A Yale graduate, Meyer established his own very successful banking firm. Starting with World War I, he served actively on numerous government boards and committees. He gained lasting fame when he bought the bankrupt Washington Post at public auction. As published of the Post until 1946 and then as chairman of the board of the Washington Post & Times Herald, Meyer was instrumentally in making the Post a leading American newspaper and creating a media empire that included the Washington outlet of CBS and Newsweek Magazine. He passed away in 1959. His daughter, Katherine Graham would continue his work and take the Post to levels of which he only dreamed.

1879: According to reports published today from Berlin, Romania is seeking to gain formal recognition of her independence in light of her government’s recent action concerning the emancipation of the Jews.

1905(2nd of Cheshvan, 5666): Three hundred Jews were killed in a Pogrom in Odessa, Russia.

1905: Rabbi Moses and Tamara Shorr were married at Königsberg

1911(9th of Cheshvan, 5672): At Constantinople Daoud Effendi Molho, a member of the Ottoman Diplomatic Staff, passed away at the age of 67.

1912: In Lancaster, PA, Laurence B. Myers and Edith Hirsh Myers gave birth to Robert Julius Myers the actuary who helped to create the Social Security program and to set America’s official retirement age at 65

1917: During World War I, the “last successful cavalry charge in history” took place at the Battle of Beersheba. The Battle of Beersheba was part of the British campaign against the Ottoman Turks. In an era dominated by machine guns, barged wire and massed heavy artillery, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade charged four miles of Turkish trenches, overran them and captured the wells at Beersheba. The British needed to take Beersheba because its wells would provide the water needed for a successful campaign. On October 30, 2004, the day before the anniversary of this event Jews around the world would read an account from the book of Bereshit of contest between Abraham and Abimelech over the wells at Beersheba. Surely some Rabbi in Sydney or Melbourne would include mention of this battle in his d'var torah on the sedrah. The capture of Beersheba leads to the seizure of Gaza by British troops including the Jewish Soldiers of the 39th Battalion of Royal Fusiliers.

1917: In Great Britain, “the cabinet overrode the opposition of two cabinet members and authorized the Foreign Secretary to issue a much-diluted version of the assurance of support that Weizmann had requested.” This “statement of support” would soon be known as The Balfour Declaration.

1919: An article entitled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” written by Marin Henry Glynn, the former of governor of New York appeared in today’s issue of The American Hebrew. Glynn lamented the poor conditions for European Jews after World War I. He “referred to these conditions as a potential ‘holocaust’ and asserted that ‘six million Jewish men and women are starving across the seas’. Because of these coincidences, the article has been exploited by Holocaust-denial groups. Others, while in no way intending to deny the Holocaust, nonetheless acknowledge that the commonly-quoted figure of six million deaths is an estimate, that the actual number may have been less, that not all of the victims were Jewish, and that there is a wide margin of error.”

1924: Birthdate of Yehuda Klien who as Yehuda Amital would become an Orthodox rabbi, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion and a member of the Israeli cabinet

1925(13th of Cheshvan, 5686): Max Linder, French actor, director and screenwriter, passed away.

1926(23rd of Cheshvan, 5687: Erich Weiss better known as magician Harry Houdini, died in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.

1926: Following his recent arrival in the United States Dr. Chaim Weismann, President of the ZOA announced that “he had come to work with his friends on behalf of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. He said that he feld confident that this time, as on earlier occasions, his pleading would find a sympathetic response among the great Jewish Community of America.
1927: Birthdate of Lee Grant, star of “Portnoy’s Complaint.”

1930: Dr. Karl Landsteiner, who was just named as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine talked today “of his researches that led to the discovery of a serum for infantile paralysis; of his studies of human blood groups, which have opened a new field in the establishment of the paternity of children…and of his work in immunology…” His work in the classification of blood into thirty subdivisions has improved the selection of blood donors transforming transfusions from a “dangerous operation” to “a safe and frequently used procedure.”

1930: Tonight approximately eight thousand “Jews gathered in Tel Aviv to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Vladimir Jabotinsky” and to protest against the White Paper on the British Policy in Palestine.

1931: Professor Otto Warburg’s explanation of “how respiration takes place in the cell” and proof that “a living cell can breathe only in the presence of the iron carried by a specific enzyme” was published today. This is the work for which Warburg won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Warburg explained that his conclusion had differed from Dr. Heinrich Wieland’s because he had used living cells and Wieland, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1928, used dead cell material.

1936: Birthdate of actor and director Michael Landon. Born Eugene Orowitz, Landon first gained fame playing the part of Little Joe on the hit western Bonanza. Pa Cartwright was played by Jewish actor Lorene Greene. Later he played the father on another television hit, Little House on the Prairie. Once again Jewish artists helped to create the cultural American myth. He died of cancer in 1991.

1939: Psychologist Otto Rank passed away. Born Otto Rosenfeld in Vienna in 1884, Rank was one of Freud’s closest aides and colleagues. He later split with Freud and became one his critics. He extended psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and other works of creativity. Instead of the Freudian Oedipus-Complex he took the trauma of birth to be more profound. He was living in New York City when he passed away.

1939: In what is now central Israel, Kfar Warburg or Warburg Village was founded by members of the "Menachem" organization. It was named after Felix M. Warburg, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the United States and a founder of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

1940: The French authorities in Morocco tried to impose the Vichy racial laws on its own Jewish population of over 150,000.

1940: During World War II, the Nazi air attacks against the British Isles known as the Battle of Britain ended. The good news was that the victory of the RAF (Royal Air Force) meant there would be no invasion of England. The British would live on to fight another day. The bad news was that the end of the Battle of Britain meant that Hitler was working to put his plan to invade the Soviet Union into effect. The invasion of the Soviet Union would lead to the murder of millions of Jews.

1941(10th of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis murdered 200 Jews in Kleck (Byelorussia) when its council members tried to make contact with non-Jews from outside the ghetto. Jews had lived in Kleck since 1529. At the start of the war, there were more than 4000 Jews living in the town. After putting most of the Jews in a ghetto, the ghetto was set on fire and most of the Jews perished. The community was not rebuilt after the war.

1942: Local peasants betray six members of the Jewish Fighting Organization near Kraków, Poland, alerting German troops to the Jews' presence.

1942: Three thousand Jews readied for deportation from eastern Poland to the Belzec death camp are stripped naked to prevent resistance.

1943(2nd of Cheshvan, 5704: Max Reinhardt passed while living in New York. Born Max Goldman, Reinhardt was an influential Austrian actor and director.

1944: Birthdate of Kinky Friedman, musician and candidate for governor of the state of Texas in 2006.

1944: The gas chambers at Birkenau were silenced and ceased operating. The Germans began to dismantle them in a futile attempt to hide their evil deeds.

1946: Two bombs exploded at a Jerusalem railway station killing a British constable. Meir Feinstein, a British army veteran, Daniel Azulai, Massoud Bouton and Moshe Horowitz were captured afterwards and charged with the bombing.

1948: The United Nations observers in Jerusalem reported that “Last night the cannons thundered again in most part parts of the city. There have been 108 instances of Arab firing at Jewish positions in the city during the last week.”

1948: Despite their lack of modern equipment, Israeli forces liberated the Galilee panhandle and actually took the land all the way to the Litani River in Lebanon at the end of Operation Hiram.
1948: During the Israel War of Independence a ceasefire was scheduled to go into effect today at eleven o’clock

1950: During the Korean War, Tibor Rubin “manned a .30 caliber machine gun at the south end of the unit's line after three previous gunners became casualties. He continued to man his machine gun until his ammunition was exhausted. His determined stand slowed the pace of the enemy advance in his sector, permitting the remnants of his unit to retreat southward.” (From his Medal of Honor citation)

1954: The Algerian Revolution against the French begins. The French were sure that President of Nasser was a driving force behind the Arab uprising in Algeria. They would join with Israel
and Britain in an ill-fated attempt to unseat him in what became known as the Suez Campaign in 1956. Much to the dismay of France, President Eisenhower would join with the Soviets to keep Nasser in power.

1956: Britain and France begin to bomb Egypt airfields during the Suez Crisis. According the scenario, the bombing was supposed to be part of European intervention designed to save the canal. It would be a week before the Anglo-French military force would show up in Egypt. This meant that the dirty work of the infantry fell to the Israelis. In point of fact the Israelis had moved quicker than planned and the Egyptians had folded like a cheap suit leaving the Anglo-French forces with no fig-leaf to cover their mission.

1956: An Egyptian frigate began shelling Haifa at 3:30 in the morning. A French destroyer, later joined by two Israeli ships, drove off the attacker. As dawn broke, the ship that bombarded Haifa with more than two hundred rounds was attacked by two Israeli warplanes. The damage to the vessel forced the captain to run up the white flag. Later that morning that captured vessel was ignominiously towed into the harbor at Haifa.

1956: In what would be part of a pattern for his career, Sharon disobeyed orders and launched an unnecessary attack into the Mitla Pass. The force was ambushed by the Egyptians and suffered a total loss of 158 killed and wounded. The Pass was taken, but the price was unnecessarily high. .

1956: The Egyptians put up a stubborn defense at Abu Agelia. This would be the start of a two day battle for this key piece of real estate that Israel need to protect and supply its forces on the way to the Suez Canal. Anybody who thinks that Arabs cannot fight need only go to Abu Agelia.

1963: Birthdate of comedic actor Rob Schneider.

1966: Birthdate of entertainer Adam Keefe Horovitz, a.k.a. King Ad-Rock.

1967: Birthdate of Adam Schlesinger, Jewish-American composer, musician, and producer. He has performed on bass guitar in the indie pop band Ivy and the power pop band Fountains of Wayne. In 1997 he also earned an Academy Award nomination for best original song for the title song to That Thing You Do!

1964: Barbra Streisand's album "People," began a five week stint at the top of music charts.
1982: A revival performance of Abraham Goldfaden’s “Shulamith” takes place at the Norman Thomas Theater in New York City.

1984: The Mapleton Park Hebrew Institute, which houses a synagogue and a yeshiva, at 2022 66th Street, Brooklyn, was virtually destroyed in an arson fire.

1991(23rd of Cheshvan, 5752): Joseph Papp, American theatrical producer, passed away.

1993: Galgalatz an Israeli radio station operated by Israel Defense Forces Radio began broadcasting this morning

1995(7th of Cheshvan, 5756): Austrian born violinist, Erika Morini passed away in New York at the age of 91. She had retired in 1976, and passed away soon after the theft of her Stradivari violin.

1995: Drs, Jennifer and Todd Burstain give birth to their second son Jonathan, who like his Biblical namesake, is fine and virtuous young man.

1996(18th of Cheshvan, 5757): William Rosenwald, who gave and raised millions of dollars in a life dominated by philanthropy that saved tens of thousands of lives and bettered countless others through education and the arts, died yesterday at his home at the age of 93. Mr. Rosenwald carried on a commitment to charity established by his father, Julius, a chairman and builder of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and was one of the three signatories to the agreement that founded a nationwide United Jewish Appeal in 1939. A private investor, Mr. Rosenwald had business interests at various times in enterprises that included the American Securities Corporation, an investment bank; Western Union International, and Ametek, a maker of precision instruments and small electric motors, like those used in vacuum cleaners. He was nevertheless best known for his tireless philanthropic dedication. ''I spend half my time in philanthropic work, half at business, half with my family and half at personal affairs,'' he said once with his characteristic good humor. Besides his longtime work with the United Jewish Appeal, Mr. Rosenwald served for four decades on the board of the Tuskegee Institute and for many years on the board of the New York Philharmonic. Long before many others realized the threat posed to European Jews by the Nazis, Mr. Rosenwald was busy working to save as many people as he could from the impending Holocaust. In the mid-1930's, he led a family effort to rescue relatives in Europe, and by 1948, the endeavor had succeeded in bringing 300 of them to the United States and had assumed responsibility for another 300 still in Europe. Not only did the Rosenwalds bring their kin to America; they also provided them with homes and found them jobs. But Mr. Rosenwald's experiences in Europe gave him first-hand exposure to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and in other countries where anti-Semitism was flourishing. In a 1935 interview, Mr. Rosenwald said: ''There is the thought in my mind -- and that I would like to get across to the Jews of America -- that to the extent that the Jews as a whole help their suffering brethren, we will fortify the Jews of all countries against anti-Semitic onslaughts.'' As a result, he was unremitting in his efforts to raise money to address the needs of Jews in distress. In 1939, when he became the organizer and first president of the National Refugee Service, later a part of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, he had already been working for three years to resettle refugees in communities outside New York City. And when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Mr. Rosenwald was in the forefront of efforts to support the immigration of thousands of European refugees to the Jewish homeland. ''The time has come for rededication on a scale that will measure up to the historic moment that our generation has been privileged to witness,'' he said. Mr. Rosenwald served the United Jewish Appeal as one of its three national chairmen from 1942 to 1946, when he began the first campaign that raised more than $100 million; and he headed the organization's campaigns in 1955, 1956 and 1957. He encouraged the combined campaign of the U.J.A.-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and served as the campaign organization's first president for three years beginning in 1974. For 50 years he was a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and he held various posts with organizations like the Council of Jewish Federations and the American Jewish Committee. Mr. Rosenwald, one of the five children of Julius Rosenwald and the former Augusta Nusbaum, was born in Chicago in 1903. He earned a bachelor of science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1924, studied liberal arts at Harvard University for a year, then attended the London School of Economics. Beginning in 1928, he went to work for Sears, Roebuck in various posts, including as a director from 1934 to 1938. In 1935, he began his career as a private investor. His many awards and honors included doctorates from Hebrew University and Tuskegee Institute. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

1999: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interesting including Rebellion by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann, Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail by Leslie Epstein and A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s by Roger Kahn.

1999 (21st of Cheshvan, 5760): Britain's emeritus chief rabbi, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, died unexpectedly early this morning at his London home after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 78. Jakobovits served as chief rabbi of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Commonwealth from 1967 to 1991, when he was replaced by the current chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. Jakobovits was the first chief rabbi to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the House of Lords. Sacks called him "the outstanding rabbinic figure of his generation." Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Israeli minister for social and diaspora affairs, said that "the Jewish nation has lost an outstanding leader and a close friend," who bravely expressed his concern for the unity of the Jewish people and their "cohesion." Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, dean of the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco, called Jakobovits "the most eloquent spokesperson for the Jewish people bar none." He was the "father of modern Jewish medical ethics," said Lipner, a friend of the late rabbi for almost three decades. "He was a combination of enormous intellect, class and generosity," he added. Jakobovits came repeatedly to the Bay Area to address the annual Conference on Jewish Medical Ethics, run by the Institute on Jewish Medical Ethics of the Hebrew Academy. Lipner is also the dean of the institute. Jakobovits possessed considerable political foresight and was at the center of controversy in Israel during the 1980s when, at the height of the settlers' movement, he declared that peace is more important than territory and that it would be necessary to make compromises. Lipner noted that Jakobovits was at the forefront of many movements, regardless of prevailing sentiments. "His position on the peace process was not very popular," Lipner recalled. "Most people had a wait-and-see attitude or expressed hostility toward the accords, but Rabbi Jakobovits was one of the first people to really be an advocate for the peace plan." Underlying all of Jakobovits' teachings was his belief in the Torah as the guiding light of Jewish life. "Rabbi Jakobovits believed that the Jewish people had no alternative but to study the Torah and to teach it to their children," Lipner said. As Sir Immanuel and later Lord Jakobovits, he was regarded as "father confessor" to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was widely perceived as the spiritual leader of “Thatcherite” Britain. Prime Minister Tony Blair paid tribute to him as "a man deeply respected and widely admired throughout the whole of this country for his faith, his ability and his courage. He will be sorely missed." Opposition Conservative leader William Hague said he was "profoundly sad to hear of his death. He will be long remembered as both leader and teacher, unwavering in his commitment to moral responsibility, to education and to tradition." Jakobovits was born in 1921, in Konigsberg, East Prussia. He moved to Berlin with his family, but fled to Britain after the rise of Hitler and was joined by his family two years later. After attending a Jewish school, he went on to London University and the Jews' College and began work as a rabbi in London's Brondesbury Synagogue. In 1949, at 27, he was appointed chief rabbi of Ireland and in 1958 moved to New York, where he was the founding rabbi of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue. He returned to Britain in 1967 to take up the post of chief rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, a position he held until 1991. At the time of his retirement, he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize -- widely regarded as the "Nobel prize for religion" -- in recognition of his writings and teachings on a number of controversial subjects. These included defending school prayer in the 1960s, railing against the schism between secular and Orthodox Jews in Israel and introducing Hebrew ethics into medical practices. His publications include "The Timely and the Timeless," "Jewish Medical Ethics," "Journal of a Rabbi," "If Only My People: Zionism in My Life," "Harav Halord" and "Dear Chief Rabbi." He also edited the centenary edition of the "Authorized Daily Prayer Book" in 1990.A pre-funeral service took place at London's Hendon Synagogue Sunday afternoon. He was buried this week at Mount of Olives Cemetery in Jerusalem.

2003: As part of the government’s ongoing battle with Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky u Vladimir Putin froze shares of Yukos, his petroleum company, because of tax charges

2003: In Tel Aviv, the first ever Azrieli Circular Tower run-up competition (with 1144 stairs to the top) takes place. Winners of the contest get to participate in the following year's Empire State Building run-up competition.

2003: “Mazel Tov Y'all! The South as a Melting Pot,” Pam Kingsbury’s interview with Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn was published today.
http://www.southernscribe.com/zine/authors/Hoffman_Roy.htm

2004: The New York Times features a review of The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld. Translated by Aloma Halter

2004: The Founders and Builders and Charter Members of the Jewish Historical Society were honored at the Double Chai (36th) anniversary banquet held at Etz Chaim Synagogue.

2005: There are numerous signs that Israel is breaking out of its diplomatic and cultural isolation. First, the UN has scheduled a vote on the establishment of an international Holocaust remembrance day. The proposal, which was submitted by Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, enjoys a solid majority, with at least 100 out of a total of 190 UN members promising to approve it. The motion - which marks the first time Israel has submitted a resolution to the GA - calls for January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be recognized as an international day of Holocaust remembrance. As part of the proposal, all member states will be called upon to develop an educational curriculum meant to instill the memory of the Holocaust in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has expressed his support for the measure. The draft resolution reads, in part: "The Holocaust constituted a systematic and barbarous attempt to annihilate an entire people, in a manner and magnitude that have no parallel in human history. Six million Jews, a full third of the Jewish people, together with countless other minorities, were murdered. And yet, while the Holocaust was a unique tragedy for the Jewish people, its lessons are universal. "The United Nations, an organization founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and committed to `save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' and to uphold and protect the `dignity and worth of human beings,' bears a special responsibility to ensure that the Holocaust and its lessons are never forgotten and that this tragedy will forever serve as a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice." Second, the Jordaninans have agreed to end an anti-Semitic television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Third, Italian notables plan on taking part in public demonstration later this week protesting Iran’s call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

2006: For the first time ever, one of the largest and most prestigious music festivals in New York, the “Cmj Music Marathon” dedicates an entire evening to Israeli artists who sing in English. The festival which lasts through November 5, invited three Israeli artists to participate in this first time event.

2007: The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra performs Gershwin’s American in Paris, Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 6 and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 at the Jerusalem Theater in Jerusalem.

2007: At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem an exhibition entitled “Beliefs and Believers: Ancient Art from the Israel Museum” comes to an end. The exhibit includes “some thirty objects of critical and artistic merit, drawn from the permanent collection of the Israel Museum, shed light on the religion and rituals of the Land of Israel's early inhabitants. Featured among the works in the exhibition is a thirteenth-century BCE statue of the storm god, a prehistoric statue dated at approximately 10,000 years, ritual objects of the faithful, and breathtaking stone sculptures portraying Dionysus and Artemis.”

2007: The seventh Alex Rider novel, Snakehead by Anglo-Jewish author Anthony Horowitz was released today.

2007: Halloween - Should Jews participate in holiday celebrations. See, Rabbi Michael Broyde’s “Collecting Candy on Halloween: Harmless Pastime or Halachic Prohibition?” for one view on this topic. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/About_Jewish_Holidays/Secular_Holidays/HalloweenBroyde.htm.

2008: At the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, premier of “One Day You’ll Understand.” A meditation on loss, memory, identity and family legacy, directed by acclaimed Israeli director Amos Gitai, “One Day You’ll Understand” takes place in Paris during the Klaus Barbie trial of 1987. As the trial plays out on television, a French businessman finds himself increasingly obsessed with piecing together the truth about his family’s history – especially after discovering an Aryan declaration written by his father during the war. But to his frustration, his mother Rivka has shuttered away her past and refuses to share any memories with him.

2008(2nd of Cheshvan, 5769): Studs Terkel, 96, the preeminent oral historian of 20th-century America who described the major events of his time through the experiences and observations of the ordinary men and women who lived them, died today at his home in Chicago after a fall. As a radio host and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Terkel used a folksy but probing interviewing style to draw out unfiltered answers from political leaders and common people alike. He illuminated America from the ground up, seeking out stories from bartenders, housewives, businessmen, artists, doctors, social workers, coal miners, farmworkers, bookmakers and convicts. "Who built the pyramids?" he once asked in his inimitable sweet growl. "It wasn't the goddamn pharaohs who build the pyramids. It was the anonymous slaves." Through his daily radio interview show, which was broadcast from 1952 to 1998 and nationally syndicated, Terkel's voice -- slow and mellifluous, with a working-class edge -- became known to millions of people. He always ended his show with a line from an old union song: "Take it easy, but take it." His best-selling books usually were transcribed from tape-recorded interviews with hundreds of people. His prolific use of the recording device led Time magazine to write that "next to Richard Nixon the person whose life has been most dramatically affected by the tape recorder is Studs Terkel." He won the Pulitzer for nonfiction for " 'The Good War': An Oral History of World War II" (1984). Besides two volumes of autobiography, his other major books included "Working" (1974), "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression" (1970) and "Division Street: America" (1966). These folk histories were told in first-person vignettes and anecdotes taken from interviews with a wide variety of people. Terkel was an artist of conversation who once described his work as "listening to what people tell me." He was unusually skilled at drawing out his subjects, who told him about their dreams and memories, their fears, frustrations and anxieties, the condition of their lives. "The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit," he once said in a speech. "It's only a question of piquing that intelligence." He described this process as "guerrilla journalism," but writer Garry Wills described Terkel's philosophy and politics as "underdog-ism." "Studs is a representative of an all-but extinct American breed," Chicago-born writer and lawyer Scott Turow told London's Guardian newspaper in 2004. "He is a leftist humanist, whose faith in the capacities of every human being has informed both his politics and his literary efforts." Besides his radio, TV and book work, Terkel also had been an actor in radio soap operas and films. He memorably played a newspaper reporter in "Eight Men Out" (1988), the John Sayles film about the 1919 "Black Sox" baseball scandal. He also was a playwright, jazz columnist, disc jockey, lecturer and host of music festivals. Despite his national celebrity status, his presence as an interviewer was barely discernible in most of his books. Like a psychoanalyst, he allowed his subjects to talk freely, with minimal questioning. But when he was interviewed, his eclectic references meandered from opera singer Enrico Caruso to civil rights activist Malcolm X to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He seemed comfortable dropping in references to Greek mythology as he discussed the closing of steel mills and auto plants. After he took a bad fall in 2004, he described the incident as "choreographed more by Bob Fosse than by George Balanchine." He was so closely identified with Chicago that it might surprise some to learn he was born Louis Terkel in the Bronx, N.Y., on May 16, 1912. "I came up the year the Titanic went down," he often said. He moved to Chicago in the early 1920s with his parents, Polish immigrants Samuel and Anna Terkel. His father, an admirer of Socialist labor leader Eugene V. Debs, was in poor health for much of his life. His mother, whom he described as a "tough little sparrow," operated a boardinghouse that catered to transient workers, railroad firemen, labor organizers and the like. Decades later, Studs Terkel would remember such characters affectionately, particularly the goofs, philosophers and radicals who orated from atop soapboxes in the patch of park known as Bughouse Square. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in philosophy and also from its law school, and came to Washington as a government lawyer in 1934. Bored by the work, he took up stage acting before returning to Chicago to write weekly radio shows for the Federal Writers Project alongside novelists Richard Wright and Nelson Algren. His continued acting, on stage and radio, often featured in gangster roles. During this period, he took his nickname from Studs Lonigan, the Depression-era antihero of the James T. Farrell novels about working-class Irish in Chicago. In 1939, he married a social worker, Ida Goldberg, who died in 1999. Survivors include their son, Dan Terkel. For many years, Terkel depended on his wife's income. "She made a lot more money than I did," he once said, recalling their early times together. "It was like dating a CEO. I borrowed 20 bucks from her for our first date. I never paid her back." In the 1940s, Terkel began hosting radio shows focused on lively and spontaneous interviews. From 1949 to 1952, he had a television interview show, "Studs' Place," which was canceled after the House Un-American Activities Committee raised questions about Terkel's earlier political associations. He told The Washington Post in 1983 that he had never been a communist but that he had "belonged to a left-wing theater group. Basically my name appeared on many petitions. Rent control. Ending Jim Crow. Abolishing the poll tax. You know, as subversive issues as that." He added that being blackballed from TV might have helped his career. "If it weren't for the blacklist I might have been emceeing [today] on these network TV shows and have been literally dead because . . . I'd have said something that would have knocked me off [the air], obviously. But I would never have done these books, I would never have gone on to the little FM station playing classical music. So, long live the blacklist!" His first book was "Giants of Jazz" (1957), a primer aimed at younger readers unfamiliar with such legends as Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. His greatest fame in print came from his oral histories. "Division Street: America" consisted of 70 interviews with people in or near Chicago. To Terkel, these conversations reflected the divisiveness and antipathies among rich and poor, black and white, young and old. A New York Times reviewer called the book "a modern morality play, a drama with as many conflicts as life itself." Then came "Hard Times," which he described as a "memory book" of the Great Depression, reflecting the "small triumphs" of those who survived the ordeal. It was a bestseller for five months and was translated into many languages. To produce "Working," Terkel spent three years recording the thoughts and reflections of 133 Americans from almost as many occupations on what they did for a living. Many were frustrated and dissatisfied by the monotony of their jobs and the lack of personal fulfillment. Reviewing the book, Peter S. Prescott of Newsweek wrote, "Terkel understands that what people need -- more than sex, almost as much as food -- and what they perhaps will never find, is a sympathetic ear." For " 'The Good War,' " Terkel talked to World War II privates and generals, civilians and celebrities, including Maxene Andrews, one of the singing Andrews Sisters. The book's title became a shorthand description of the nation's sense of common cause and shared sacrifice during World War II. In later books, including "The Great Divide" (1988) and "Race" (1992), Terkel's interviews reflected the widening abyss between the haves and the have-nots in American life. He was astounded by the high degree of ignorance of U.S. history and later described "The Great Divide" as being about "society's Alzheimer's disease." President Bill Clinton awarded Terkel a 1997 National Humanities Medal for giving ordinary people a national voice. "Through their words, he gives us a portrait of ourselves," the citation said. Terkel, who arrived at the White House ceremony in his customary red checkered shirt and red socks, told an interviewer: "Who do I choose? People who articulate what others feel but can't say."

2009: In Jerusalem the Camery Theater presents "Amadeus," with Itzhak Hezkiah, Itai Tiran, Chani Firstenberg, Ezra Daggan, Eran Mor, Ori Ravitz, Ohad Shahar/Moti Katz/Amir Kriaf, Eran Sarel, and ten dancers. The play tells the incredible story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told in flashback mode by Antonio Salieri, the mediocre composer who envies Mozart's natural, outstanding talent. The story takes place in 18th century Vienna

2010: Theodore C. Sorensen, who was a close adviser and counselor to John F. Kennedy for 11 years, writing words and giving voice to ideas that shaped the president’s image and legacy, passed away today at the age of 82. The Nebraska native was the daughter Annis Chaikin, a Russian Jew. However he was raised as a Unitarian. In reality, he was best known as Kennedy’s Ghost Writer and the real author of “Profiles in Courage.”

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim and Adam and Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund.

2010: The Ruth Spector Memorial Mah Jongg Tournament is scheduled to take place at the JCC of Northern Virginia

2010: The Israeli film, Intimate Grammar, won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prize Film Award at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival today. The film, directed by Nir Bergman and starring actress Orly Zibershatz, was based on a novel by Israeli author David Grossman. The film follows the story of Aaron, a boy growing from childhood to adolescence in Israel in the early 1960s. Intimate Grammar won the Haggiag Award for Best Full-Length Feature Film at the 27th Jerusalem Film Festival in July. Bergman's first feature Broken Wings also won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prize Film Award in 2002.

2010: Susan Jacoby reviewed “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends” by Tom Segev.
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi-hunter and impassioned loner, is a legendary figure for his role in helping track down hundreds of Nazi war criminals, the most famous among them Adolf Eichmann. Wiesenthal's death in 2005, at age 96, was a coda for an entire generation of Holocaust survivors who are now passing from the Earth. What more could there be to say? Plenty, as it turns out in "Simon Wiesenthal," by Israeli journalist Tom Segev. A columnist for the newspaper Haaretz and the author of numerous books, Segev is one of the world's great investigative reporters, in a class with bloodhounds such as Seymour Hersh and the late David Halberstam. In this biography, the subject is not only Wiesenthal but the shifting relationship since the end of World War II of American, Israeli and European culture to what is now known as the Holocaust but was never called that in the first two decades after the war. Segev places Wiesenthal's life within a context almost unthinkable to Americans under 50 today, for whom Holocaust memorialization is a given. That the singular fate of European Jews under the Nazis was played down for many years after the war and that the U.S. government was none too eager to pursue Nazi war criminals who had taken refuge here are not widely known (even among young Jews). Segev notes that the Holocaust was also "wrapped in silence" in the young state of Israel and that many Israelis who had emigrated to Palestine before the war had denigrated survivors for "remaining in Europe instead and waiting to be slaughtered without doing anything to prevent it." Against this background, Wiesenthal emerges as a man of contradictions: a lone detective with close ties to Israeli and U.S. intelligence; a Zionist who chose to settle in Vienna, not Israel, after the war; a man who fought to extend the statute of limitations for Nazi war crimes in Germany and Austria but befriended Albert Speer - the only defendant in the Nuremberg trials to plead guilty - after his release from prison in 1966. Above all, although no one was more relentless in his pursuit of Nazis who murdered Jews, Wiesenthal was a humanist who rejected the idea of collective guilt and attributed his own survival partly to the help of individual "good Germans." Perhaps the most revealing fact in this biography is that within three weeks of his liberation from the Mauthausen concentration camp, Wiesenthal submitted a list of 150 war criminals - known to him personally - to American authorities. This was the first paper in a file that grew to more than 300,000 documents. A revealing photograph taken in his native town of Buczacz in eastern Galicia, now a part of Ukraine, shows Wiesenthal, the leader of a Zionist youth movement, in an ordinary jacket and tie surrounded by boys in uniforms. Even as a child, he recalled, he hated uniforms. One reason Wiesenthal became controversial in Jewish establishment circles is simply that he exaggerated achievements that needed no exaggeration. Segev, drawing on previously classified Israeli intelligence material, demonstrates convincingly that Wiesenthal told Israeli authorities in 1953 - seven years before the Mossad caught up with Eichmann - that the Nazi criminal was in Argentina. But many Israelis considered Wiesenthal a publicity hound who took credit for bringing Eichmann to justice that should have gone to the government - even though Yad Vashem, in charge of Israel's Holocaust memorialization, congratulated him on his "brilliant achievement." But there is a deeper reason for the ambivalent attitude of many international Jewish leaders toward Wiesenthal. In the long-running debate about whether the Holocaust was a unique crime to which nothing can be compared, he falls on the side of those who, while never denying the particularity of Jewish suffering, take a more universalist position. During the 1970s, when Elie Wiesel headed a council planning what is now the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, he and Wiesenthal were on opposite sides in a debate over whether gypsies - also targeted for extermination - should be represented on the the council. Wiesel opposed such representation. Segev's account of the very personal, often petty nature of the rivalry between the two (the author quotes directly from letters that reflect badly on both men) will give no comfort to those who believe in secular saints. But perhaps it is just as well - and the real achievement of this warts-and-all biography - to accept that truth, justice and memory are the province not of saints but of flawed human beings.

2011: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present a program based on “Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life” by Alicia Oltuski.

2011: An exhibition on the Mamilla Mall in Jerusalem featuring sculptures of stone, bronze and other materials, depicting Biblical scenes and characters, which were created by some of Israel’s top artists is scheduled to come to an end today.

2011: The David Posnack Jewish Day School in south Florida's Broward County, known as “the Rams” is scheduled to begin its Basketball Season today.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; October, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin