This Day, December 17, In Jewish History

December 17 In Jewish History

1141 (Tevet, 4902): After leaving Cairo, Jehuda Halevi arrived at the port of Damietta where he was warmly received by his old friend Abu Said Chalfon.

1187: Gregory VIII, the Pope who called for the disastrous Third Crusade, passed away. Each of the crusades was a disaster for the Jewish people in way or another. On top of everything else, the Third Crusade removed the protective hand of King Richard from England and left the Jews to suffer under the anti-Semitic Prince John.

1398: Tamerlane, also known as Timur, defeated the armies of Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud's in Delhi. This battle was part of the war between the Persians and the Mongols. According to one source, Timur brought Persian Jews to his kingdom so that they could help develop the textile industry. For more on this subject see Tamerlane and the Jews by Michael Shterenshis

1531: A Bull was issued by Pope Clement VII establishing the Inquisition in Portugal. Frei Diogo da Silva was made Inquisitor General.

1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England. Henry had reportedly sought support from Italian rabbis in making the Biblical case for his annulment. The Italian Jews were fearful of the Pope among whom they lived than they were of a distant monarch who did not let Jews live in his kingdom. The excommunication led to a weakening of the Church and the strengthening of the Protestant Reformation which helped to contribute to the Jews return to England in the 17th century.

1600: King Henry IV of France married Marie de' Medici. She is most famous as the mother of Louis XIII in whose name she reigned for seven years as Queen Mother and regent. During that time she defied the ban on Jews living in France by retaining Elijah Montalto as court physician. To gain his services Marie agreed to let him practice his religion and not to have to work on Shabbat. When Louis came of age he reverted to the practice of his predecessors and reaffirmed the ban on Jews living in his kingdom.

1728: Congregation Shearith Israel purchased a lot on Mill Street in lower Manhattan, to build New York's first synagogue.

1791(21st of Kislev, 5552): Chief Rabbi David Tevele Schiff passed away. He was the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of London from 1765 until his death. He was the son of Solomon Schiff, member of a famous and learned family from Frankfurt am Main. Tevele Schiff was educated in the schools of Rabbis Jacob Poper and Jacob Joshua Falk. He served as maggid in Vienna. He also was head of the Beth Midrash in Worms, and later Dayan in Frankfurt.

1794: William Moultrie completed his second term in office as Governor of South Carolina. In 1794, during his final year in office, Moultrie attended the consecration of Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC, possibly making him the first U.S. governor to attend such an event.

1819: Simón Bolívar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar in Venezuela). Jews served in Bolivar’s army and provided him with the financial backing that was necessary for his ultimate success.

1839: Birthdate of Ferdinand James Anselm von Rothschild an English politician and art collector, and a member of the prominent Rothschild family of bankers. He would pass away exactly 59 years later on his birthday.

1830: Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Venezuela and Columbia known as the “George Washington of South America” passed away. “Simon Bolivar found refuge and material support for his army in the homes of Jews from Curaçao. Jews such as Mordejai Ricardo and the brothers Ricardo and Abraham Meza offered hospitality to Bolivar as he fought against the Spanish, thus establishing brotherly relations between Jews and the newly independent Venezuelan republic. Several Jews even fought in the ranks of Bolivar's army during the war.” “The Jews of Curacao became involved with Simon Bolivar and his fight for the independence of Venezuela and Colombia from their Spanish colonizers. Two Jewish men from Curacao distinguished themselves in Simon Bolivar’s army, while another supplied moral and material support to Bolivar, as well as refuge for him and his family.”

1833: In Philadelphia, PA, Benjamin and Harriet Marx Etting gave birth to Frank Marx Etting who became Paymaster of the United States Army during the Civil War.

1851: In Baltimore, MD, Members of the Kaschurn Lodge, No. 3, a Jewish fraternal organization, met with Lajos Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian leader. They gave him seventy-five dollars. They also gave him three banners. The largest one had three full length pictures of Moses, Washington and Kossuth. Moses represented Asia; Washington represented America and Kossuth represented Europe. The two smaller banners contained the statement, in both Hebrew English, “Thy enemies shall come against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

1852: Benjamin Disraeli finished serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He will be replaced by Gladstone. This is the first of three times that Disraeli will hold this office in the English government.

1859: During his sermon at the Greene Street Synagogue, Rabbi Raphall delivered “a fervent appeal on behalf” of the Jews who had been forced to seek refuge at Gibraltar because of the war between Spain and Morocco. The Jews fled because of their justified fear of attacks by the enraged native population. Several thousand had been forced to leave all of their possessions behind and were now living in tents provided by the British colonial government and eating food provided by funds from the Jews of England. The congregation responded by immediately raising several hundred dollars to aid their suffering co-religionists.

1859: It was reported today that “From Austria, amid the echoes of Hungarian dissatisfaction, and Tyrolese boldness, come the reports of promised reform. It is stated as a certain fact that in a few days the Emperor will issue a decree, relieving the Jews from many disabilities under which they now lie. The law which forbade a Jew to have a Christian servant is already repealed; and the emancipated Israelite can now rejoice in the possession of a cook who hasn't a conscientious objection to getting up and making a fire, of a Saturday morning. The expected decree will abolish the old law, by which no one of the three witnesses required for a Christian's will could be a Jew -- a blind provision, which has been the source of more trouble to Christians than Jews. Then the rule, still on the statute-books in Austria, that a Jew's evidence in a civil case against a Christian should be considered as "doubtful," will be done away; as also the present prohibition, which prevents any but a Christian from filling the office of Notary. This last provision is no older than 1855. Before that year Jews were allowed to be Notaries, and it is said that there is a Jewish Notary in Prague, who was appointed under the old law, and holds his office still. It is proper that the Government should concede these rights to an oppressed class; but one cannot but notice how, through these reforms, it hopes to escape more pressing and important demands from its subjects. Hungary demands her constitutional rights, and the Emperor grants a couple of reforms to Venice. Tyrol desires her ancient and guaranteed privileges, and he emancipates the Jews at Prague! No matter -- the day is coming

1860: An article entitled “Affairs in France” published today described the conflict between the French Empress and Achille Fould, the Jewish financier and political leader whom she used to value as an advisor. The Empress has changed her view of Fould due to the influence of the Catholic clergy. Fould is not bothered by the possible loss of the Pope’s temporal power while the clergy and the Empress are greatly distressed by such a possibility. It is rumored that the Empress has said she will not return from England until Fould has been dismissed from office.

1862: General Grant, in issuing his infamous Order 11, ordered all "Jews as a class" expelled from his lines. In New York City 7000 Jews marched in protest against his decision. Lincoln rescinded his order. Grant never explained the order. Grant had shown something of a nativist streak in the 1850’s when he reportedly supported the Know Nothing Party. As President, Grant maintained cordial relations with Jewish leaders. He wanted to appoint Joseph Seligman to a Cabinet Post. He attended the the consecration of Adas Israel making him the first President to attend such a fuction. After leaving the Presidency, Grant lent his name to petitions protesting the treatment of Russian Jews

1870: This evening will mark the close of the Hebrew Fair which has been held for several days at the 22nd Regiment Armory in New York City.

1874: At today’s meeting of the Board of Alderman in New York, the resolution submitted a t a previous meeting in favor of permitting the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society to sublet their premises” which is property own by the city “was called up and laid over.”

1875: The three men convicted of killing a Jewish peddler named Abraham Weissburg are scheduled to be executed today in New York.

1875: It was reported today that in the Hebrew Charity Fair’s contest for most popular minister Dr. Einhorn is in first place with 43 votes followed by Dr. Isaacs with 37 votes. This is just part of the many activities connected with this pre-Chanukah fundraising fair.

1875: P. Nathan Rubenstein was identified as the man who had bought the knife that was used in the murder of Sarah Alexander. The same witness said she had not sold this unique item to Lewis Rubenstein, Nathan’s brother. Both of the young men are Jewish.

1878: Garnier and Schaefer will play tonight at the Hebrew Fair in Tammany Hill.[ Garnier and Schaefer were locally famous billiard players and this match must have been part of the fair’s fundraising activities.]

1891(16th of Kislev, 5652): Benedict Zuckermann, an observant German-Jewish mathematician and astronomer passed away today. He was a colleague of Henrich Graetz and a support of Zacharis Frankel.

1892: Birthdate of American biochemist Edwin Cohn. In 1940 the hard-driving Harvard biochemist Edwin Cohn broke plasma down into its different proteins — and saved millions of soldiers' lives Most fatalities in World War I occurred not from the direct physical damage of bullet wounds but from loss of blood. In the spring of 1940, as another war seemed inevitable, finding a way to replace lost blood became a medical priority. Edwin Cohn, a Harvard biochemist, took on the problem of breaking down blood plasma to isolate a protein called albumin that could be stored for long periods without spoiling, shipped efficiently and used easily on a battlefield to save lives. Patriotic blood drives yielded whole blood from which a small inventory of albumin had been accumulated by December 7, 1941. It was rushed to Pearl Harbor where it proved enormously successful in the first battlefield setting. Cohn headed up a government effort to oversee the production of albumin. His work throughout the war to improve the process and the consequent successes of blood products on the battlefield were one of the keys to victory for the Americans in World War II. He passed away in 1953.

1893: Birthdate of Erwin Piscator. The German born Piscator has been described as one of the most renowned figures of modern theater famous for his avant-garde productions at the Epic Theater in Weimar Berlin and his innovative contributions to the American stage.

1894: Birthdate of Arthur Fiedler. Fiedler gained fame as the conductor of the Boston Pops which he turned into an American institution. He passed away in 1979.

1901: Birthdate of Lee Strasberg. Strasberg was an actor and a director. But his greatest fame came from teaching others to act. He passed away in 1982.

1903 (28th Kislev): On the fourth day of Chanukah The Wright Brothers made their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. According to some, the success of the Dayton bicycle men was based on early work by Otto Lielenthal who died during a flight test seven years before. Arthur L. Welsh, a young Jew from Dayton, was one of the early pilots who were taught to fly by the Wright brothers. When Welsh died in 1912 during a test flight, he was the only pilot employed by Wrights who were close friends as well as his mentors.

1904: T.C. Evans reviewed “he Life of Lord Beaconsfield” by Walter Sichel, a “biographical study of the remarkable man, wit, statesman, novelist, the celebration of whose centenary is now at hand.”

1909: Muslims in Tunis protested when Jews were going to be put under French jurisdiction. Muslims stated that this was discriminatory and a violation of treaties, even though it was the Muslims the French were going to protect the Jews from.

1913: Birthdate of American business man Sol Linowitz. He served as Chairman of the Board of Xerox Corp and negotiated the return of the Panama Canal.

1914: The Turks expelled the Jews of Tel Aviv, sending them to Egypt. Many of the Jews were native Russians. Since Russia and Turkey were enemies during World War I, the Turks saw these Russian Jews as potential enemy agents or worse.

1917(2nd of Tevet, 5678): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1917(2nd of Tevet, 5678): Dov Ber Borochov, one of the founding fathers of the Labor Zionist movement, passed away.

1928: Aaron Copland is part of a group participating in a musical event at the New School for Social Work.

1929: In New York City, Oliver C. and Ida Panish Safir gave birth to William Safire. Unique among the Jews of his generation, Safire was a conservative Republican who was a speech writer for President Nixon. He spent almost three decades as a political columnist for The New York Times.

1930: According to reports published today, Arabs have failed to stop Jewish settlers from plowing their land at Hedera after they lost a lawsuit designed to keep the land from the Jews. After the police intervened, the Arabs agreed to await the outcome of the appeal before taking any further action. The Arabs said that they understood the recently issued White Paper to mean that all land in Palestine belonged to them.

1931: The meeting of the World Islamic conference came to an end in Jerusalem. The conference agreed to deny Jews access to the al-Akso Mosque as a first step to undermining efforts of the Zionists to live peacefully side by side with their Arab neighbors.

1935: Based on votes counted so far, Meier Dizengoff trails Laborite Joseph Aronowitz in the Tel Aviv mayoral election held on Sunday.

1937: Temple Shaaray Tefila began a weekend of services dedicating their reconstructed sanctuary. The Temple had been the victim of an arsonist’s fire in March necessitating this rebuilding projects.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that three Arabs were killed when British troops and police fought a large Arab gang near Tulkarm.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish boy of 16 was killed when a Polish hooligan shot him and threw a bomb at a shop in the village of Czarna, near Warsaw, completely demolishing it. Polish officials were reported to be planning to deport, with French approval, some 30,000 Jewish families, 120,000 persons to Madagascar, within the next six years. France demanded that the refugees be supplied with sufficient capital to make their planned farms profitable.

1940: Thanks to the efforts of Marge Iverson, the wife of Phillip Iverson, The St, Johnsbury Jewish Woman’s Club held its first meeting in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

1940: Drunken SS guards at the Sachsenhausen labor camp awaken Jews during a frigid night and order them to roll in the snow.

1941: The slaughter of the Jews of Skede, which began on December 15, came to an end. German security police and Latvian police marched almost three thousand Jews to a ditch, forced them to strip and then shot them in groups of ten. For those who doubt the truth, Yad Vashem has a photograph that was taken by one of the German or Latvian killers.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/06.asp

1941: German Christian church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstei, Anhalt, Thuringia and Lubeck announced that the “severest measures” should be taken against the Jews, who should be expelled from German territories.

1941(27th of Kislev, 5702): Dr. David Dubslo and two of his colleagues died of spotted typhus while treating Gypsies who had been sent to the Lodz ghetto. The Gypsies lived in a special section of the ghetto and had no doctors of their own.

1942: Dr. Samuel Goldenson is scheduled to officiate at the funeral services for David M. Bressler at Temple Emanu-El

1942: The Yishuv announces a 30-day period of mourning to commemorate the tragedy of the Jews in Europe.

1942: Pressure from members of Parliament, from Jewish groups in England, from the Anglican Church, from the British press, and from the Polish government-in-exile persuades the Allied governments to publish their first official recognition of atrocities in Poland. The Allied nations--Great Britain, United States, Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee--officially condemn the Nazis' "bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination." They vow to punish those responsible. Several U.S. State Department officials try to block this declaration. All previous and following declarations neglect to mention Jews.

1942: Accepting the United States government position that the Jews being massacred by the Germans can be helped only by a total and unconditional Allied victory over Germany, the American press continues to treat the Holocaust as just another war story, and is unwilling to discuss the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Given the Allied governments' knowledge of the Holocaust at this time, waiting until the Allied Armed Forces have achieved a total victory over the Germans indicates that the Allied governments have accepted the probability that the majority of European Jews will be killed before the Germans can be stopped.

1942: Jewish inmates at the labor camp at Kruszyna, Poland, near Radom, attack guards with knives and fists. Six prisoners are killed and four escape.

1942: The Allies issued a statement saying Jews were being taken to tBirkenau, the part of Auschwitz devoted to extermination and killed.

1943: Transport 63 departed with a cargo of French Jews being sent to Nazi-Germany

1943: Jews are executed at Kovno, Lithuania, as reprisal for an escape of several Jews from the ghetto.

1945: U.S. Senate votes for Wagner-Taft resolution calling for free entry of Jews into Palestine and establishment of Jewish commonwealth. Wagner is Senator Robert Wagner, a New York liberal Democrat. Taft is Senator Robert Taft a conservative Republican from Ohio. This shows the bipartisan support the measure had.

1946: Land purchases and budgetary matters were discussed at a meeting of the World Zionist Congress.

1946: Birthdate of Eugene Levy. A native of Hamilton Canada, this writer and comedic actor is best known to Americans for his role in “American Pie.”

1947: Birthdate of Eddie Antar. He was the cofounder of the electronics retail chain Crazy Eddie, Inc. He fled to Israel in February, 1990 to avoid. Later, he was extradited and convicted of securities fraud and racketeering.

1947: In the face of mounting violence and fearing that worse was to come, the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem opened a blood bank with goal of producing 1000 doses of plasma.

1947: The U.S. State Department expressed its fears that the Soviet Union is supplying arms to both sides of the Palestine conflict.

1947: The Arab League Council announced it will stop the proposed partition of Palestine by force and begins raids on the Jewish communities in Palestine.

1947: The State Department reported that the Arab League Council had begun buying weapons to implement its policy of thwarting the partition of Palestine.

1947: Moshe Shertok, Jewish Agency political head, charges that British are obstructing partition and that British administration does not protect Jews from Arab attacks, yet they prevent Jews from defending themselves.

1947: Dr. Nachmun Goldman, the Jewish Agency executive, reports Jewish plans for Swiss-like neutrality.

1948: Four thousand, one hundred Jews set sail from Yugoslavia for Israel.

1952: According to a report issued today by Moshe Kol, co-treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and chairman of the Youth Aliyah management committee in Israel twenty million dollars has been expended by Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, on its Youth Aliyah (youth immigration) activities in Israel in the last eighteen and a half years.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the new Mapai-General Zionists coalition won 73 seats in the Knesset.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York, more than 19,000 persons, attending the Hanukkah Festival of Lights, at the Madison Square Garden, purchased $2,575,000 worth of Israel Bonds.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that officers and men of the Jerusalem Area Police Force contributed IL 136 to the Post's Hanukkah Toy Fund, the largest amount given by any organized group of workers, and assisted the newspaper's volunteers in the distribution of toys and sweets in the Jerusalem Corridor's outlying ma'abarot.

1956: Time magazine “panned" Jewish playwright’s “Night of the Auk” saying “that a good case of actors…were unhappily squandered on a pudding of a script…that sounded like cosmic advertising copy.”

1959: Israel Bar-Yehuda completed his term in office as Internal Affairs Minister.

1959: Yisrael Barzilai completed his term in office as Communications Minister.

1959: Haim-Moshe Shapira begins serving as Internal Affairs Minister.

1964: Nobel Prize winner Victor Francis Hess passed away. A native of Austria, the non-Jewish Hess fled his native country because his wife was Jewish.

1965: Astronomer David H. Levy began his search for comets

1974: Birthdate of super chef Duff Goldman.

1978: Channel 2 (WCBS) broadcasts “Lamp Unto My Feet – Chanukah in Romania” at ten o’clock this morning.

1982: Opening of “Tootsie,” starring Dustin Hoffman.

1988: Abdeen Jabara, the 45-year-old president of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, an American citizen, was barred from entering Israel today. According to a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry the decision was based on Jabara’s record which includes “activities as a lawyer defending terrorists, attempts to prevent the collection of money for Israel, trying to legally prevent the entry of Prime Minister Shamir into the U.S., and an F.B.I. investigation against him.''

1989: The New York Times reviewed “Birth Power: The Case for Surrogacy” by Israeli lawyer Carmel Shalev.

1991(10th of Tevet, 5752): Asara B'Tevet

1992: After more than 18 months of racial and ethnic unrest, Jews and blacks joined hands tonight in an emotional session at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater to recall their past alliances and pray for future healing. The reason for the gathering was the showing of a documentary on the black soldiers who liberated Jews from Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II. But the real drama occurred on the great stage of the Apollo after the house lights came up and Jews and blacks hugged, wept, held hands and vowed to put their differences behind them. It was an emotional catharsis that included the singing of "We Shall Overcome," personal reminiscences from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mayor David N. Dinkins's quoting the great Talmudic sage Hillel. Those at the Apollo last night seemed weary of the fighting and eager to come together, nodding and applauding as the Mayor quoted the first-century Jewish scholar by asking, "If not now, when?"Mr. Jackson, who first suggested that the film, "Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II," be used as a vehicle for reconciliation , said, "The walls that came down in Dachau and Buchenwald must not be resurrected in Crown Heights or any place."As he spoke, he reached out for the hands with those around him. At one point he held tight to Rabbi Leib Glanz, an official of the Satmar Hasidic group, which is based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At another he clasped the hand of Abe Chapnick, a concentration camp survivor. Mr. Jackson, who angered Jews in 1984 when he called New York City "Hymietown," spoke softly and haltingly as he implored the group to remember it was bound by historic links. His appearance was one of several recently in which he has reached out to the Jewish community.As the film was shown at the Apollo last night before an invited audience of 1,200, it was also viewed by gatherings of blacks and Jews at more than 100 other locations around the city, including synagogues, churches and private living rooms. At the Apollo, the audience members included the Rev. Al Sharpton; Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X; Felix Rohatyn, the financier; Peggy Tishman of the Jewish Community Relations Council, Representative Charles B. Rangel of Harlem and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney."We intend to go on the moral offensive," Mr. Jackson told the crowd, "and take this message to the nation. We will defeat hatred and fear and violence.""The pain and violence surrounding Crown Heights is a challenge to come together, not to fall apart."After Mr. Jackson spoke, Rabbi Glanz prayed for healing, saying, "Let us have peace and show the world that we all have backgrounds where we suffered. Let us say to suffering, enough is enough."Rabbi Glanz's Satmar group was among those who met with Mayor Dinkins at a tense private meeting in Crown Heights on Wednesday. The primary group in Brooklyn neighborhood, the Lubavitch, had no major officials at the Apollo, although several Lubavitch followers attended. A Jewish communal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that tickets had been set aside for Lubavitch officials but that they declined to attend, saying that they did not feel that enough progress had been made at the Wednesday meeting to warrant their attendance. Several of the speakers at the Apollo last night recalled the great alliance between blacks and Jews. Symbols of that alliance, they said, included the tragic -- like the murder of three civil rights workers, two Jews and one black, in Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964 -- and the triumphant, the march through Selma, Ala., in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was joined by a host of rabbis. The focus of the evening was the encounter between two black Army units, the 761st Tank Batallion and the 183d Combat Engineers, and the emaciated, hollow-eyed survivors of Buchenwald. As one survivor, Rabbi Yisrael M. Lau, now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, said in the film, "To us, they looked like angels."Ms. Tishman called on the audience to "symbolically re-enact that moment of reconciliation and brotherhood.""Not simply to rekindle, but to refuel the lamp of brotherhood in this city," she said. Mayor Dinkins received a standing ovation when he took the podium to introduce the movie. He said that "images and words have been used to great harm" in the city, and that "it is our task to use them to heal."The work of reconciliation, he said, "will take more than one film and one evening." And he called the night at the Apollo "the first volley in a long campaign."

1992: As violence from Palestinian terrorist escalated 415 terrorist leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were flown to Israel’s northern border and deported to Lebanon.

1995: The New York Times featured a review of the recently published paperback edition of Yehoshua Kenaz’s The Way To The Cats, an “Israeli novel that presents old age with all its ravages” as seen through the life of its protagonist “Yolanda Moscowitz, 76, who is recuperating from a broken leg in a rehabilitation center in Tel Aviv, where she hopes that her dignity won't go the way of her beauty.

1996(7th of Tevet, 5757): Song writer Irving Caesar passed away. Born in 1895, he was originally known as Isidor Caesar. He wrote lyrics for "Swanee," "Sometimes I'm Happy," "Crazy Rhythm," and "Tea for Two," one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger, Schmidt Delivered by Holocaust survivor Louis Begley and Sex and Power by Susan Estrich.

2000: In an article published today entitled “A Haunting Legacy in Provence” Michael Frank provides a brief informative view of the history of a French Jewry.

“The story of Diasporic Jews is a long and poignant one. Here is a people whom history has sent packing from their place of origin. They touch down on unfamiliar soil and quickly arrange their lives with a mixture of the chameleonlike and the steadfast. They speak their host's language, wear his clothes, adapt his cuisine and use his architectural vocabulary to build their houses and their synagogues, yet all the while they nurture and are nurtured by their faith and their identity and their history, and they pass along this heritage to their children, often in the face of considerable persecution and pain. It is a story of endurance and longevity, an old story, but every time I happen upon it, as I did last summer in France, I am compelled by it anew. ''Happen upon'' was key, in this case, for me. I was living in Rome when one drizzly Saturday in May I received a call from friends who had rented a house in Provence for a week, rather off the beaten track near a village called Le Barroux, and they were summoning me there for a visit. I soon booked a flight and a car and three weeks later found myself cruising through Provence in a rented Ford. My concept of the region was molded by the movies of Marcel Pagnol, the travel reminiscences and essays of M. F. K. Fisher, the canvases of Cezanne and Derain and Van Gogh. Living in Rome had made me conscious of the long, tentacular reach of those dogged ancient empire builders, so I knew that they had left their mark on the Provencal landscape. I knew the houses were beautiful, the furniture elegant, the food first-rate. But I knew nothing of the region's connection to the Jews. On my first approach to Le Barroux, I circled around Carpentras, the nearest town of any size. I had been driving and exploring by then for many hours. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign: Cimetiere Israelite, it said, with an arrow pointing to the right. In my fatigue I thought I had imagined it. A Jewish cemetery, tucked away in this corner of Provence? Impossible. But the next day I saw it again, and I decided to investigate. For me investigation, like travel, begins in reading and proceeds with looking. I soon learned that the Jews had lived in the South of France from the time that it was known as Roman Gaul. In the period after the fall of Masada in 73, Jews fled into the region and lived there for some time, at relative peace until the 14th century, when the South of France was united with the French Kingdom, and the Jews were expelled from the Languedoc and Provence. They found unusual -- if conditional -- refuge under the Pontifical states of Avignon. The Popes for the most part welcomed and protected these banished French Jews and allowed them to live in the region known as the Comtat Venaissin, which is today part of the Vaucluse. At first these Juifs du Pape, as they were known, had freedom of residence and worship. They were allowed to work in trades and as craftsmen; they were doctors, bookbinders, scientists, masons. They resided among Christians but prayed by themselves. Then things changed. Before Jews came under the protection of the Popes, they had been required to wear a distinctive sign, the rouelle, or wheel. Now, as ethnic tensions grew, Jews were forced to live in ghettos, or carrieres (carreira means street in Provencal). They were banished from all professions except for friperie (secondhand clothes dealing), brocante (secondhand furniture selling) and usure (money lending). The Church prohibited them from owning property, charged them inflated taxes, and in 1524 required them to replace the rouelle with more visible signs: a yellow hat for men, a scrap of yellow cloth for women. By the middle of the 15th century, the Jews of Provence were confined to four towns: Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon and L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Despite the myriad hardships imposed on them, Jews were palpably present in local life: at their height in the 18th century, these four communities totaled about 4,000 people, in Carpentras alone numbering 1,000, or one-tenth the size of the town's Catholic population. Although by this period restrictions were relaxed, French Jews had no civil rights until the Edict of Tolerance in 1789 recognized the rights of all men. The edict definitively freed Jews from ghetto life and dispersed them again throughout France. What remains of the long Jewish sojourn in Provence today? In L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue: nothing. In Avignon: a substantial 19th-century synagogue built in the neo-Classical style, a replacement for an 18th-century building that burned. In Carpentras and Cavaillon: treasures, among them two sparkling, hidden, subtle, storied jewel-like 18th-century synagogues. (In Carpentras, the synagogue, which is still in use, is open year round; though services are no longer held at the synagogue in Cavaillon, it can be visited at set times between April and October, and by appointment the rest of the year.) The synagogue in Carpentras is the oldest in France. It was first built in 1367 and extensively rebuilt in 1741-43 by the architect Antoine d'Allemand and remodeled again soon thereafter. You enter at street level and climb a grand if plainly made staircase to reach the sanctuary. Neither the spare facade (decreed by the Catholic Church, which forbade elaborate exterior decoration) nor the stairs prepares you for the explosion of color and craftsmanship that distinguish this spacious room, which is arranged on two levels and decorated in characteristic Louis XV style. On the first level, against the wall facing East (and thus Jerusalem) is the Ark, the focus of the sanctuary. It is surrounded by carved paneling painted with a faux marbre finish and flanked by a row of unusual arched, screened openings that separate the men from the women during services. The rest of this level is similarly paneled but painted a strong blue-green picked out in gold. The ceiling is sky blue. A pair of small curved staircases leads up to a gallery above. Windows with fanlights, some fitted with colored panes of glass, suffuse the whole interior with gentle bright light. Hanging from the ceiling is a veritable inverted orchard of chandeliers and ritual lamps, some brass, some crystal, others tin. An intriguing rarity, seen in Provencal synagogues, is a tiny chair made for the prophet Elijah. A perfect Louis XVI fauteuil in miniature, gilded and upholstered in threadbare red velvet, it stands in its own niche to the right of the reading desk, a place for Elijah to monitor circumcision ceremonies. Forbidden to own property individually and prevented from being artisans, the Jews of Carpentras, it seems clear, were asserting themselves almost defiantly with this beautiful, burnished interior. It partakes of the local architectural vocabulary of its time -- boiserie, gilding, faux marbre and the rest -- yet is resolutely adapted to the customs of Judaism: the Torah scrolls stand behind a curtain in the Ark; men and women worship separately; the whole decorative scheme is devoid of graven images. Today in Carpentras and the nearby countryside there are about 80 families, my tour guide told me, many of them aged. They have no resident rabbi; an itinerant rabbi visits from Avignon to officiate during holidays and as needed. On the bulletin board outside the sanctuary a note announced that there would be no weddings or bar mitzvahs that summer. ''And during the war?'' I asked the guide. ''During the war,'' she answered, ''the region was occupied by the Germans. When they were approaching Carpentras in 1942, the director of the town museum collected and hid anything of value.'' ''What about the people?'' ''Some people were hidden too. Others were not.'' It was clear from her tone the conversation would not proceed any further. Beneath the synagogue but awaiting restoration and thus, alas, not accessible to visitors is a complex that includes a bakery with ovens for regular bread and matzo and a mikvah (ritual bath) with six flights of stairs. Both are still much as they were during the Middle Ages, when the synagogue, rather than standing in shy retreat as it does today in one of the town's many sweet squares, would have been enveloped by the teeming carriere. Here as many as 128 houses, which often rose to eight levels to accommodate the large population, turned inward, since Jews were not permitted to have windows facing out of the ghetto. People lived in crowded, squalid conditions and were locked in at night. As for the cemetery that first caught my attention, it too was closed to visitors and ''tres arbore,'' or overgrown with trees, the guide told me in a tone of voice that quickly closed this subject, too. Only later did I learn that the cemetery had been the site of an act of brutal anti-Semitism in May 1990, when the body of an elderly Jewish rug merchant named Felix Germon was exhumed and mutilated. The crime was not solved until six years later, when one of its five perpetrators, a gang of Hitler-worshipping skinheads from Avignon, confessed to the police. The guide was right about one thing: when I parked in front of the cemetery's tall, sober gates, I saw little beyond a furred thickness of trees and shrubs growing out of the only land that the Juifs du Pape were permitted to own. Here, amid the weeds and the ubiquitous cricket song, was probably the most potent display of the long Jewish association to Carpentras: the cemetery, while locked and tree-shrouded, was divided by a long path that led far into the horizon, a vast property, vastly populated. From the beginning, the Jewish community in Cavaillon was smaller than its counterpart in Carpentras, numbering between 150 and 200 people in the 18th century. The synagogue is commensurately more modest but no less refined in concept or execution. As at Carpentras, the synagogue incorporated an older (in this case, 15th-century) structure. Built between 1772 and 1774 by an unknown architect, its boiserie is white picked out in blue and gold, its columns are fluted and gilded, its walls pink. In its heyday the synagogue had seven Torah scrolls, a large number for so small a congregation and yet another possible sign of defiance, since the synagogue was one of the few places Jews were allowed to spend their money. Among the collection of chandeliers are six oil lamps from the original synagogue, and there is another miniature chair, gilded and covered in velvet, for Elijah. The synagogue was last used in 1920. Only 10 Jewish families remain in the area, and the seven impressive Torah scrolls have been transferred to Avignon. This exquisite building is only part of Cavaillon's Jewish story, however, because the ghetto of Cavaillon is at least vestigially intact. Its one cobbled street, which establishes the boundaries of the actual carriere, is clearly demarcated by arches at each end. All along this road, open and airy today, would have been tall, crowded, unsafe tenementlike buildings until the Revolution. Among those that remain are the rabbi's house and the mikvah (both under restoration and closed) and the bakery, which is underneath the synagogue and has been converted to a small but lovely museum (open April through October, or by appointment). It is assumed that women listened to the prayers from the bakery, through grates cut into the synagogue floor long since covered over. Here you can see the oven in which the bread known in Provencal as coudoles and in French as pains azymes -- matzo -- was baked. Here, too, is an array of touching objects: tombstones from the Jewish cemetery, which was paved over and turned into a square; Bibles and prayer books; cabalistic amulets and ketubahs, or marriage contracts, with delicately painted flowered borders. There are the doors of the original 15th-century Ark, much smaller and more primitive than the one fabricated in the 18th century and capable of holding only a single Torah. There are fragments of a Torah from L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, burnt, it is assumed, during the Revolution and discovered hidden in the roof of Cavaillon's synagogue, when it was restored early in this century. Another object found hidden in the roof was a prayer book inscribed, ''This book belongs to Citizen Cadet Cohen fils; whoever finds it will return it to me, otherwise he will be guillotined!'' Also on display is a photograph of an old, fragile Jewish woman in the ghetto. The picture was taken in 1913, which makes her one of the last surviving Jews of Cavaillon. She wears Provencal dress, a skirt, a heavy apron and a hat, and in appearance she seems so deeply of this town, this place, that it is easy to forget how apart the Jews were made to feel during their long and checkered sojourn in Provence. The people are nearly gone now, the Torahs packed off to more populous places and the ghettos erased, but these two synagogues and this touching museum remain to tell their powerful story.

2006: The Times of London names Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (translated by Sandra Smith) as number one on its list of “The Best Books of 2006.” This recently discovered volume written by a French Jewish author describes life in France in the early days of World War II. The book was written as Nemirovsky fled from the Nazis. She perished in the death camps before she had a chance to complete the work or edit it.

2006: The Jewish people should develop a long-term strategic planning mechanism to address the threats that endanger all Jews, according to recommendations submitted at today’s cabinet meeting. According to former US envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross "The nature of the threats to the Jewish people put a premium on better planning," Ross is chairman of the board of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jewish Agency think tank presenting the recommendations to the cabinet in the framework of its third annual assessment of the state of the Jewish people. The presentation focuses on several "emerging trends.” These include the rise of Islamic terrorism and its widespread use of anti-Semitic themes; the danger to Israel and the Jewish world as a whole from an Iranian nuclear bomb; a shift of power toward emerging nations such as China and India; and worrying demographic trends within the Jewish people. For Ross, the issues are closely intertwined. "At a time when radical forces question Israel's right to exist - and this is tied to anti-Semitism - it's a reason to strengthen the Israel-Diaspora relationship," he said. "In light of the general decline of Jewish identity, these relations are especially important.”At a time when the majority of Jews live in Israel, the Diaspora is more influenced by what happens in Israel," he said. "We want the government of Israel to understand the impact of its actions on the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora." The presentation includes four central policy recommendations: strengthening pan-Jewish identity by setting a shared Jewish agenda; improving the demographic situation by encouraging conversion and childbirth; improving Israel-Diaspora relations through Israeli government policy and education; and the development of a mechanism to create a joint political strategy. The presentation noted the effect of the Lebanon war on world Jewry, specifically the different reactions the war elicited from European and American Jews. Both communities were shaken by the perception that the war was not won decisively, but European Jews, "living side-by-side with large minority communities of Muslims," felt the lack of an Israeli victory more powerfully, according to the presentation. American Jews, on the other hand, were surprised at what they perceived as Israeli military vulnerability. They also expressed concern over high-level calls for a more "balanced" approach to US policy in the Middle East, which would come at the expense of Israel. The report, authored by Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola, confirms that Israel has the largest Jewish community in the world. Totaling 5,309,000, Israeli Jewry consists of 40.6 percent of the world's estimated 13.1 million Jews, according to the report. According to Della Pergola, if present trends continue, Israel will have more than 50% of the world's Jews by 2030. The report also notes that 92% of Jews reside in the 20 countries ranked highest in the UN's Quality of Life Index, indicating that most Diaspora Jews no longer need to move to Israel for economic reasons. According to institute director Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the proposed strategic planning mechanism would bring together agencies such as the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, organizations capable of fielding "not just the hard power, but also the soft power, of the Jewish people" and which have already served as "de facto managers of a pan-Jewish foreign policy." A senior official in a major US Jewish organization told The Jerusalem Post that the idea seemed misguided. "The Jewish people have a history of creating bureaucracies that cannot easily be dismantled long after the Jewish community has outgrown the need for them," the official said. Ross, however, defended the proposal. "We don't need a new bureaucratic level," he said, but there was an urgent need for "better coordination."

2006: In Boston, WGBH-FM (89.7) airs "Chanukah: A Time for Superheroes" The radio special is about the connection between superheroes and Judaism. It has input from Stan Lee, "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi, Bryan Singer of the X-Men movies, and Michael Chabon, an author who dissects comics and Judaism in his book "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

2006: The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) opened its 38th Annual Conference, San Diego, California.

2006(26th of Kislev, 5767): Dodger Pitcher Larry Sherry, who with his brother Norm formed the only all brother, all Jewish battery in baseball history that led a team (the 1959 Dodgers) to a World Series Championship, passed away.

2007: In Chevy Chase, MD, historian Walter Isaacson discusses his most recent book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, at the Friendship Heights Village Center.

2007: The Jerusalem Post reported that for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a chief rabbinical chaplain is servicing the spiritual and religious needs of Jewish soldiers in Russia's armed forces and various security services. The position is currently being filled by thirty four year old Rabbi Aharon Gurevich.

2007: The owners of the 2nd Avenue Deli “literally cut the salami and officially welcomed hungry patrons to its new address on 33rd Street near Third Avenue in Manhattan. Jeremy Lebewohl, the nephew of its founder, is the new proprietor. Once again we can savor the best tongue sandwich and meat knishes in the known world.

2008: In New York, Chamber Music at the Y features acclaimed Jerusalem born pianist, Benjamin Hochman

2008: The rocket that shattered the front windshield of Pinchas Cohen's bright yellow hatchback this evening narrowly missed his wife and son. So as he stood with his arms folded in front of him in the dark parking lot outside the Victory supermarket in Sderot on this evening, Cohen thanked God for saving his family. He turned his eyes in the direction of the sky. "Who else but God could have saved them?" he asked. This was the second time his family had been spared. Only last year, he said, a rocket fell meters from his Sderot home while he, his wife and their three children were vacationing in Jerusalem.

2008: Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, announced today that it had invested $90 million with Bernard Madoff, who has been charged with securities fraud. This means that “The Madoff Scam” may cost Hadassah the entire ninety million dollars.

2009: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation and the Potomac Chapter offer a program entitled “Harry Truman and the Founding of Israel” featuring Allis and Ronald Radosh, authors of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel.

2009(30 Kislev, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

2009: The third annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism comes to a close today in Jerusalem.

2009: Germany announced today that it was donating 87 million dollars to a new endowment for Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve barracks, gas chambers and other evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp.

2010(10th of Tevet, 5771): Yarhtzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin)

2010(10th of Tevet, 5771): Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

2010: "A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip in Hell" is scheduled to open at Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan

2010: A traditional Friday Night Shabbat services with MesorahDC complete “with soulful melodies, contemporary insights, and stories followed by a three-course dinner is scheduled to take place at the Historic 6th & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010: The Los Angeles Times published David Ulin’s list of the ten top books of 2010 which included three works by Jewish authors – Almost Dead by by Assaf Gavron, Freedom by by Jonathan Franzen and The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg.

2010(10th of Tevet, 5771: Mary Jane “M.J.” Bear, a journalist and Internet pioneer who built websites around the world, died today at the age of 48. Bear, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, worked for TV and radio stations. At National Public Radio she became a vice president. She also worked for Online, Radio Free Europe in Prague and Microsoft, in Vienna, Austria. She launched websites for Microsoft in Greece, Poland, Israel and Turkey, as well as TV programming in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. During her illness from leukemia, Bear created a website on Caring Bridge, which provides free and private websites “that connect people experiencing a significant health challenge to family and friends.” The site is now filled with touching tributes from friends and family. Bear took an active role in Jewish communities in every city in which she lived, and was a founding board member of the Online News Association, which is establishing an endowment fund in her name for young journalists.

2010: In an article published today entitled “Beneath the Dead Sea, Scientists Are Drilling for Natural History,” Isabel Kershner, describes how “an an international team of scientists has been drilling beneath the seabed to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years.”

2011: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos, CA.

2011: The third weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: Havdalah, Board Installation and Centennial are scheduled to take place this evening at the Union Of Reform Judaism Biennial.

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