This Day, December 20, In Jewish History

December 20 In Jewish History

69: General Vespasianus occupied Rome on the same day that the Emperor Vitellius was murdered. Vespasianus is better known as Vespasian, the Roman general who was in charge of putting down the Great Revolt in Judea. He broke off his military action to come back to Rome and seize power. His son Titus would destroy the Temple in 70. Before leaving for Rome, Vespasian gave permission for the establishment of what would become the community of scholars at Yavneh.

1192: Richard the Lionhearted captured in Vienna. Richard was returning home after the Third Crusade when he was taken prisoner by Leopold, duke of Austria. Leopold then sold him to the Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry offered to return Richard to his homeland if his brother Prince John paid the ransom. The Jews of England paid 5,000 marks towards the ransom. This was three times the rate paid by the Christian citizens of the realm.

1497: Isaac Abravanel completed the “Yeshu'ot Meshiḥo" (The Salvation of His Anointed).

1522: Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate the Isle of Rhodes. Based on references in the Book of the Maccabees, Jews had lived on Rhodes since the second century BCE. However, in 1500, The Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes “expelled all the Jews who did not choose to convert to Christianity” making the Island “Jew Free” for a couple of decades. Suleiman the Magnificent conquered the island “he invited Jews from various parts of his empire to come to Rhodes and start a new community. The Jews that came were Sephardim, the ones who had found refuge in the Ottoman Empire following the expulsion from Spain in 1492. These Jews brought with them their culture, their customs and traditions, one of the cultural aspects was linguistic, the language they spoke was Espanyol, as they called it, also known as a "Ladino" and "Judeo-Spanish" The Jewish Quarter of the city was affectionately known as "La Juderia". Suleiman is also the Sultan who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and was the patron of Dona Gracia and Joseph Nassi.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans as huge swath of land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains became part of the United States. Jewish settlement in the region had been hampered by the anti-Semitic codes and practices of the European powers – Spain and France – that had owned the land. Now that it was the hands of the United States, the territory Jews could settle and thrive in a land that would come to include cities like New Orleans, St. Louis, and Denver each with their own thriving Jewish communities

1821: Birthdate of Michel Levy, the native of Phalsbourg who became a prominent French publisher.

1827: In New Orleans, a group of Jews with Germanic roots led by Jacob Solis formed Shaarei Chesed, an Orthodox Synagogue. In 1881, the congregation merged with Neufutzot Yehuda to form what would become Touro Synagogue, one of the Crescent City’s leading Reform congregations.

1860: South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States. Jews had been living in South Carolina since colonial times. It was in South Carolina that a Jew was for the first time elected to serve in the legislature. The Jews of South Carolina served with distinction in the American Revolution and Beth Elohim has been a part of Charleston since the beginning of the 19th century. When war the Civil War began Benjamin Mordecai donated $10,000 to “The Cause” and at least 182 Jews from South Carolina fought with the CSA. [During the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Charleston will be site of a symposium on the role of Jews, Slavery and the Civil in 2011.]

1861: In the U.S. House of Representatives Congressman Williams S. Holman’s of Indiana “resolution, instructing the Committee on Military Affairs to report a bill amendatory of the present laws, so as not to exclude in the appointment of chaplains any religious societies, was adopted. Mr. Holman mentioned that at present Jewish Rabbis were excluded, notwithstanding there were large numbers of Hebrews in the army.

1861: Arnold Fischel, a Rabbi from New York City who had gone to Washington, DC to seek President Lincoln’s help in changing the law so that Rabbis could serve as chaplains in the Union Army wrote a letter to Henry Hart describing his visit to the city, the fruits of his labor and a detailed description of his visits to the camps and hospitals of the Army of the Potomac which, according to him the number of Jews is very large.

1870: The Executive Committee in charge of the Hebrew Charity Fair voted to donate an assortment of items valued at $1,000 to the Soldier’s Orphan Fair taking place at the armory on Broadway. The donation is the committee’s way of thanking the non-Jewish community for their support of the Jewish fundraising event.

1878(24th of Kislev, 5639): In the evening, Kindle the first light of Chanukah

1882: Henry Phillips, a leading member of the Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) Congregation Mickvé Israel of Philadelphia, presided at the "bar dinner" given to Chief Justice Sharswood on the retirement of the latter. This was the last public occasion in which he participated as a member of the Philadelphia bar, of which he had become a leader.

1885: Birthdate of Albert C. Cohn who served as Justice on the New York State Supreme Court. He was the father of Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer who worked for Joe McCarthy.

1888: Birthdate of Yitzhak Baer a German-born Israeli historian whose expertise was medieval Spanish Jewish history. He passed away in 1980.

1890: Birthdate of Bella Fromm the German journalist who covered the rise of Hitler until she fled to the United States where she published “Blood and Banquets. A Berlin Social Diary: A Berlin Social Diary.”

1898: Jacob H. Schiff the donated a new building to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association located at Ninety-Second Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City
.
1899: "The retired British priest and die-hard Egyptophile Greville Chester" wrote a letter today describing the destruction of the Ben Ezra building in Cairo

1901: Birthdate of Louis I Kahn. This world famous architect had trouble getting commissions early in his career because he was Jewish. His work can be found from the Yale Campus, to the Salk Institute, to Fort Worth to Bangladesh. He passed away in 1974.

1902: Birthdate of columnist Max Lerner whose famous quotes include “When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.” “Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts.”

1902: Birthdate of philosopher and author Sidney Hook.

1903(1st of Tevet, 5664): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1904: At a meeting of the Council of Jewish Women Mrs. Solomon Schechter presented a paper entitled "The Problem of Religious Observance" which contended that congregational singing is an important factor in the religious services of the Jews, and pleaded for a return to the use of beautiful ancient melodies, which at present are sadly neglected and almost disappearing.

1906: Dr. Solomon Schechter, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary presided over a mass meeting in Cooper Union which was sponsored by the Zionist Council of Greater New York. When Dr. Schmarja Levin, a member of the recently dissolved Russian Duma, was introduced the crowd waved small Zionist flags in the pattern adopted by the Zionist Convention held in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. Speaking in Yiddish, Levin presented the Zionist argument that Jews would always be treated as outsiders and needed to establish their own nation in their historic homeland.

1907: Albert Abraham Michelson wins the Nobel Prize for Physics. The physicist was the first American to win a Noble Prize in a field of science.

1908: Ossip Gabrilowitsch was injured today in Danbury, Connecticut, when he rescued Clara Clemens from run-away sleigh that overturned when the horse pulling the sleigh bolted. Clemens is the daughter of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, the famous American author. [Gabrilowitsch was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and orchestra conduct who had settled in the United States. He would marry Clara in 1909 and would be the father of Samuel Clemens’ only grandchild.]

1911: Birthdate of Hortense Calisher. The daughter of a Southern Jewish perfume-maker and a German immigrant, author Hortense Calisher was born in New York City. She has written about her own family in three memoirs. The most recent, Tattoo for a Slave (2004), traces the history of her father's family from before the Civil War to her own lifetime. A 1932 graduate of Barnard College, Calisher published her first short story, "The Middle Drawer," in 1948. She did all of this while raising two young sons. Like much of her later work, this O. Henry Award-winning story drew upon themes of Calisher's own life. Most of Calisher's fiction features Jewish characters, but their ethnic identity is usually background rather than a dramatic element. Calisher has been a Guggenheim fellow twice and a National Book Award finalist three times. Though popular fame has eluded her, she has been lauded as a "writer's writer" with a wide imaginative and formal range, and has been praised for both intricate plot and rich character development.

1911: A caricature of Lucien Wolf with the caption “Diplomaticus” was published in Vanity Fair. Born in 1857, this native of London, was journalist, historian and advocate of Jewish rights who passed away in 1930.

1914: The Battle of Champagne in France started on this day. Many Oriental Sephardim fought in this battle, and gave their lives. Many of them were Jews from the Ottoman Empire who were educated in the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools in Turkey. These Jews felt they owed a debt to France.

1915: During World War I the last ANZAC troops evacuated Gallipoli. If Gallipoli had succeeded, the Allies would have been able to open a supply route to Russia and end the stalemate on the Western Front. This would have meant no Russian Revolution and no humiliating peace that would give the Nazis a road to power. The Zion Mule Corps served at Gallipoli. The Jewish unit acquitted itself with distinction and help. This helped to convince the British to create regiments of Jewish troops that would help to liberate Palestine under General Allenby. The Zion Mule Corps is one of the progenitors of the modern IDF.

1916(25th of Kislev, 5677): 1st day of Chanukah

1917: Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, which eventually become the feared NKVD is founded. Regardless of its various names, Jews could be counted among the members of, and victims of the Secret Police. For example, Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda whose father was a Jewish watchmaker (his mother was a Russian) was head of the NKVD during the 1930’s where he oversaw the show trials and murders of such Old Bolsheviks as Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev both of whom were born Jewish before giving up Moses for Marx and Lenin. Yagoda himself would fall victim to Stalin’s wrath and would arrested and executed by the same NKVD.

1917: Colonel Sir Ronald Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor for Jerusalem, arrived in the City of David.

1917: Birthdate David Bohm, American-born physicist, philosopher, and neuropsychologist. Bohm worked on the Manhattan project. Like many others who worked with Oppenheimer, Bohm fell afoul of the spirit of McCarthyism in the 1950’s

1922(1st of Tevet, 5683): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1924: Adolf Hitler freed from jail before completing his full sentence. This attests to his growing political power and popularity. Hitler had spent 8 months in Landsberg Prison for his role in the famed, failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. The term was a slap on the wrist and presaged the anarchy that would envelop the Weimar Republic. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, his “literary masterpiece” that was a blueprint for the havoc he would unleash on the world.

1924: Spanish newspapers published a signed decree from the king of Spain saying Sephardic Jews dispersed along the Mediterranean coast and in other countries, which "in one way or another" claim descent from families, which once lived in Spain can apply for full Spanish citizenship.

1926: Birthdate of David Levine, painter and artist who is famous for his caricatures.

1928: Tel Aviv Mayor, David Bloch, is scheduled to arrive in New York today aboard the SS Leviathan. Mayor Bloch is coming to the United States to seek financial support for the development of Zionist programs in Palestine. A delegation of “Jewish and labor leaders headed by Abraham Shiplacoff the former Assemblyman of Brooklyn” is scheduled to greet the Mayor and his associated including Dr. C.H. Arlasaroff and Miss Goldie Meyerson. Miss Meyerson would gain lasting fame as Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister.

1928: Ernest Bloch’s “America: An Epic Rhapsody in Three Parts for Orchestra,” has its first performance at today’s matinee performance of the New York Philharmonic

1930: At services this morning, Rabbi Louis Newman will deliver a sermon on “Compassionate Marriage and Other Marriage Problems” at Rodeph Shalom in New York City

1930: At services this morning, Rabbi Israel Goldstein will deliver a sermon on “Compassionate Marriage: What is wrong with it?” at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City.

1930: Cleveland’s Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver will deliver a sermon on “The Role of Religion in a Changing World” at the Free Synagogue which is meeting in Carnegie Hall.

1930: Rabbi Nathan Krass will deliver a sermon on “If I Were a Jew” at Temple Emanu-El.

1936: “Arturo Toscanini and his wife arrived by plane today from Alexandria, Egypt and then drove to Tel Aviv where he will conduct the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Simon Less, 24, a milkman, was killed near the Jerusalem quarter of Beit Hakerem. Shlomo Ben-Nun, 27, a policeman, was kidnapped and later murdered by armed Arabs near Kfar Hittin. A police squad killed one Arab terrorist and jailed another. Jewish buses were shot at and a number of passengers were wounded.. In Berlin, Herr von Schwabach, a prominent half-Jewish banker, committed suicide when refused permission to marry his Aryan fiancée. The Lwow University closed owing to renewed anti-Jewish violence.

1939: Miss Sophia Harris daughter of Mrs. Louis I. Harris and the late Dr. Harris, one-time Health Commissioner of New York was married tonight at the Hotel Whitehald to Rabbi Leo Geiger of Congregation Sha'arey Israel in Macon GA. Rabbi Nachman Arnoff performed the ceremony.

1942: The Nazis shot 560 Jews in the Rakow forest. “The story of the massacres that took place at the Rakow forest is typical of the Nazi atrocities during the WWII. The Nazis liquidated the ghetto of Piotrokov, the first ghetto built by the Germans in Poland. While most of the inhabitants of the ghetto were deported to be murdered at Treblinka, one group of 560 Jews was shot to death in the forest outside of town.”

1943: The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a resolution by sponsored by Iowa’s Senator Guy Gillette and 11 of his colleagues proposing “that President Roosevelt set up a commission of diplomatic, economic and military experts to devise ways ‘to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.’ The Nazis were charged in the resolution with having ‘exterminated close to two million’ Jewish men, women and children in Europe.”

1944: In response to the activities of Lechi (the Stern Gang), Churchill “dropped all discussion of the Jewish state proposal that had been scheduled for promulgation on this date.”

1945: Fifty-two Palestinian Jews detained at a camp at Latrun halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv…were transferred to military custody today and deported to Eriterea.” The British believe that the Jews are part of an “underground terrorist organization” but have not formally charged them with any crimes. The 52 join 300 Jews already imprisoned at Eriterea under similar conditions. When other prisoners at Latrun found out about the deportations they began a hunger strike.

1945: In an article entitled “Baghdad Worried by Zionist Issue and the Russian’s Activity,” Clifton Daniel reports that “Iraq is probably the fountainhead of the pan-Arab movement and hotly anti-Zionist.”

1945: Council Law No. 10 was signed by 23 countries establishing the war crimes commission at Nuremburg. Approximately 5000 people were tried with 600 receiving the death sentence

1945: The British deport 52 suspected Jewish terrorists who have been held at Latrun to Eritrea.

1946: Birthdate of Romanian born author and poet Andrei Codrescu. Codrescu is a naturalized American who teaches at LSU and is a regular contributor on National Public Radio.

1946: Today the Jewish Agency for Palestine announced establishment of an annual grant to the Children's Foundation of the Holy Land in memory of Miss Henrietta Szold founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, on what was the 86th anniversary of her birth.

1948: King Abdullah of Palestine appoints Sheikh Hussan Medin Jarallah as mufti of Jerusalem. Haj Amin el Husseini is recognized as mufti of Jerusalem by other Arab states.

1949: The UN Trusteeship Council asks Israel to call off transfer of its government to Jerusalem.

1949: The UN Economic Survey Mission plans several projects to be covered by the aid program for Arab refugees including irrigation and hydroelectric development in Arab Palestine and Arab countries. No funds are allotted for Israel which is absorbing thousands of Jewish refugees who have been forced to flee from the Arab and/or Moslem countries in which they have been living.

1946: Birthdate of Uri Geller, Israeli psychic

1948: Canada recognized the state of Israel.

1952(2nd of Tevet, 5713): 8th day of Chanukah

1960: Auschwitz-commandant Richard Bär was arrested in German Federal Republic.

1961(13th of Tevet, 5722): Dramatist Moss Heart passed away.


1964: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol formed his cabinet and became head of the Israeli government. Eshkol was a compromise candidate of whom little was expected. In one of the irony of history, Eshkol would be Prime Minister when Israel was faced with its greatest military challenge in May and June of 1967. Under Eshkol’s leadership, the Israeli forces won the Six Days War, which among other things, resulted in the re-unification of the city of Jerusalem.

1966: A Chanukah Festival for Israel featuring Sophie Maslow and company is scheduled to be held at Madison Square Garden.

1967: Premiere of "The Graduate", starring Dustin Hoffman

1968: Israeli author and Editor Max Brod passed away. His most famous work was The Redemption of Tycho Brahe. He edited the works of Franz Kafka and was executor of Kafka’s estate.

1969: Peter, Paul & Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" reaches #1

1972: Neil Simon’s "Sunshine Boys" premiered in New York.

1976: Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin resigned. Rabin was forced to resign over a financial indiscretion that took place while he had been Ambassador in Washington. His resignation opened the way for the election of the Likud and Menachem Begin. Up until then, Labor had controlled the Israeli governments chosen since 1948. This opening for the Right wing changed the political equation in Israel both in foreign and domestic affairs.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that Egypt and Israel agreed to incorporate all principles of UN Resolution 242 on their agenda. In the Knesset a number of members of Likud, Labor and the National Religious Party expressed fears about Menachem Begin's peace plans for Judea and Samaria and asked for explanations. It became evident that the prime minister faced a serious challenge from many of his own ardent supporters. The chief editor and political analyst of the Egyptian influential daily al-Ahram, Ali Hamdi el-Gammal, welcomed Begin's peace proposals as "very promising and encouraging."

1979(30th of Kislev, 5740): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1982(4th of Tevet, 5743): Pianist Arthur Rubinstein passed away.

1985: Howard Cosell retired from television sports after 20 years with ABC

1987: "Nuts" with Barbra Streisand premieres.

1987: Today, Egypt summoned the Israeli Ambassador, Moshe Sasson, to the Foreign Ministry to express concern over what it called ''the brutal, oppressive measures taken by Israel against the Palestinian people.'' It was the fifth protest statement issued by Egypt in the eight days.

1989: On the day of the American invasion, Mike Harari, a 62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, rumored to have been an Israeli spy, a gun-runner, and a military adviser to General Manuel Antonio Noriega vanished from Panama

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): First Day of Chanukah

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): Nathan Milstein, the Russian-born violin virtuoso, died yesterday at his home in London. He was 88 years old. There can be no argument about Nathan Milstein's exalted place in the hierarchy of 20th-century violinists. To many, Mr. Milstein -- the last surviving pupil of Leopold Auer, considered the 20th century's pre-eminent teacher of violin -- was the greatest of all exponents of the 19th-century violin repertory, though he played music from Bach to Prokofiev and had achieved a special affinity for the Bach unaccompanied sonatas. From the beginning, his playing was constantly described as "flawless," "aristocratic" and "elegant." A supreme technician, he nevertheless refrained from flaunting his extraordinary bow and finger dexterity. Instead he concentrated on the substance of the music, interpreting it in a warm, unaffected, personal manner. As a Romantic violinist he had in his repertory any number of virtuoso works, including his own "Paganiniana," a wild melange of violinistic stunts based on the famous 24th Caprice by Paganini. But even in works like these he managed to imbue the music with a kind of elegance that completely transcended any hint of vulgarity. He could well have been the most nearly perfect violinist of his time. Jascha Heifetz had a more electrifying technique, but there were those who considered him, rightly or wrongly, too cool and objective. Joseph Szigeti, who may have had a more probing musicianship and a wider repertory, never had the tone or technique of Mr. Milstein, who was able to bring everything together in a way matched by very few violinists of his time. Year after year, Mr. Milstein (pronounced MILL-stine) played in much the same flawless manner, with no apparent deterioration. He never seemed to age. Brown-haired, medium-sized, stocky but never looking stout, he came on stage and, in his imperturbable manner, made music as he always did. His playing, virtuosic as it could be when the music demanded, always gave the feeling of intimacy. It was characteristic that he elected to use a Stradivarius. The Stradivarius is a more subtle instrument with a smaller sound than the Guarnerius del Jesu instruments favored by more exhibitionistic players. Joseph Fuchs, the veteran American violinist and pedagogue, said that he had observed some significant changes in Mr. Milstein's playing during the 50 years they were friends. Mr. Milstein's tempos were faster when he was young, but as he grew older he slowed down, though he never could have been considered lethargic. But one thing Mr. Milstein always had, Mr. Fuchs said, and that was a natural, unforced way of handling the instrument. "There is a difference," Mr. Fuchs said, "between facility and technique. Many violinists have facility. Technique is all-encompassing, taking in finger, bow and everything else. Milstein was a great technician. One reason he played so well at so advanced an age was because of his completely natural way of playing. He never forced the instrument, he never threw his muscles into strained or awkward positions. And as a musician he never stood still. He was always experimenting, changing, probing. He never stopped working." Set All-Time Standards To Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic and a representative of the younger generation, Mr. Milstein ranked with Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler as one who set all-time standards. "Milstein was the complete violinist," Mr. Dicterow said. "You heard three notes of the man and you knew who was playing. It was pure, uncluttered, honest playing free of any technical problems. He set a standard that nobody today can touch. He had such incredible flow, such incredible fluency. And he always sounded so spontaneous. I know of no other violinist in history who was playing with such security at so advanced an age. He was a tremendous inspiration to me. I idolized that man." Like many Russian violinists of his period, Mr. Milstein came from the ghetto. He was born in Odessa on Dec. 31, 1903, and started studying the violin at the age of 4. He later said that he became a violinist because his mother made him study the instrument to keep him out of mischief. He had several teachers as a child, the best of whom was Peter Stoliarsky, later the teacher of David Oistrakh (who also was born in Odessa, in 1908). The young Milstein soon outstripped everybody around. At the age of 10 he played the Glazunov A-minor Violin Concerto with the composer on the podium. At 11, he was admitted into the Odessa Conservatory. When he was 12 he was in Auer's class in St. Petersburg. Among Auer's pupils were Mischa Elman, Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and Toscha Seidel, all Jews. In those days it was no easy matter for a Jew to gain admittance to the St. Petersburg or Moscow Conservatories, but Auer, once convinced of the genius of a young player, managed to arrange the necessary papers. Mr. Milstein remained with Auer for about three years and later in life said that Auer had not really taught him very much. Duets With Horowitz Mr. Milstein made his recital debut in 1915, accompanied at the piano by his sister. He soon started giving recitals all over Russia. In 1921 he started a lifelong friendship with a young pianist named Vladimir Horowitz. They thought much the same way about music, played through the entire literature at home and started giving concerts together. From all accounts, Mr. Milstein was a happy-go-lucky young man at that time, taking his great talent for granted, enjoying a good time, never worrying about the next day. In 1926 Mr. Milstein left Russia for Paris, arriving there with no money and no violin. For a short period he worked with the famous Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye. He soon found a patron, made a sensational debut in Paris, and his career as one of the great violinists was launched in the West. He promptly started the life of a major instrumentalist: concert tours, appearances with orchestras, recordings. In October 1929, Mr. Milstein made his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski's direction, playing the Glazunov A-minor Concerto. In 1942 he became a United States citizen. Three years later he married Therese Kaufman. The couple had one daughter, Maria Bernadette. His wife and daughter survive him, as do four grandchildren. Wonderful Raconteur In some ways his life was uneventful. It was the life of a dedicated musician, happy in what he was doing. Mr. Milstein was one of the few top musicians who never went out of his way to court publicity or engage in bizarre ventures that would put him in the news. In public he always maintained his dignity. In private he was a wonderful raconteur who delighted in the absurdity of many aspects of life. In conversation he would hop from one subject to another, with a crazy kind of logic behind everything. Whenever Mr. Milstein gave a concert, it always turned out to be a violinists' convention. Every violinist in the vicinity would attend, marveling at the ease and security of his playing. Mr. Milstein never worked much on technique. "The technique I acquired when I was 7," he once told an interviewer. As an interpreter he had certain mannerisms that marked his training and the musical period in which he grew up. As an exponent of the Romantic style, he did use certain slides that the younger generation considered old-fashioned, and his conceptions were in line with his Russian schooling. But he remained an apostle of moderation, never using the kind of fast, wide vibrato that Mischa Elman did, for instance. Mr. Milstein understood, as many literal-minded musicians today do not, that music has to be brought to life through the fingers, brains, ears, heart and experience of a performer who must necessarily express himself as well as the composer. "What makes an artist?" he once asked. "In the end it is temperament, personality, character that count most. Some musicians are not great technicians, but they give you a rich point of view." As with all Romantics, it was with the expressive side of music that Mr. Milstein was primarily concerned. But he never paraded any spurious emotions onstage. His interpretations were marked by a sweet, pure tone produced by an infallible bow arm, by vaulting melodic phrases and a keen sense of the music's structure. In an age when the new generation of critics tended to despise the performances of pre-Beethoven music by such towering figures as Heifetz and Horowitz, Mr. Milstein's Bach remained immune to criticism. And in his Romantic repertory he was acknowledged as a supreme master and the last great active exponent of the Auer school. In 1987 Mr. Milstein was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honors award for lifetime achievement in the arts. "From Russia to the West: The Musical Memoirs of Nathan Milstein," by Mr. Milstein and Solomon Volkov, was published by Henry Holt in 1990. (As reported by Harold C. Schonberg)

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): Stella Adler, an exponent of Method acting whom many considered the leading American teacher of her craft, died today at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91 years old. Miss Adler was born into a celebrated acting family rooted in the Yiddish theater. She made her stage debut at the age of 4, appeared in nearly 200 plays in the United States and abroad, and occasionally directed productions. She also shaped the careers of thousands of grateful performers, including Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty and Robert De Niro, at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting, which she founded in Manhattan in 1949 and where she taught for decades. Mercurial, with honey-blond hair and expressive gray-green eyes, Miss Adler was aristocratic, physically and vocally, and her teaching was passionate, scholarly and volatile, delivered with evangelical showmanship, wicked wit and pungent phrases. She kept her students spellbound by raging, purring, cursing, cajoling and, from time to time, complimenting. 'She Dares Her Students' Her classroom performances were among the most energetic in New York, Foster Hirsch wrote in his 1984 book "A Method to Their Madness." "Stella," he wrote, "is theatrical royalty who instills in her students a sense of the nobility of acting. She dares her students to act , to lift their bodies and their voices, to be larger than themselves, to love language and ideas." Miss Adler counseled: "The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there." Often blunt, she told one actress: "You've got no talent! Nothing affects you!" As a young actor mumbled through a monologue, she shouted, "Everything is Hoboken to you!" Miss Adler's most frenetic years were with the Group Theater, the experimental Depression-era company founded by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford. It was a pivotal movement in the growth of American performing arts, uniting writers, directors and actors in working to shape socially relevant theater. Members of the ensemble were leading interpreters of the Method, the technique based on the work and writings of Konstantin Stanislavsky, the legendary Moscow Art Theater actor and director, who died in 1938. The Two Methods The Method revolutionized American theater. Classical acting instruction had focused on developing external talents, while Method acting was the first systematized training that also developed internal abilities, sensory, psychological, emotional. Strasberg, who headed the Actors Studio until his death in 1982, rooted his view of the Method on what Stanislavsky had stressed in his early career, that the actor should perform extensive "affective memory" exercises, improvising and conjuring up "the conscious past" to convey emotion: for example, dwelling on a personal tragedy to show anguish. Miss Adler, opposing this approach, went to Paris and studied intensively with Stanislavsky for five weeks in 1934. She found he had revised his theories to stress that the actor should create by imagination rather than by memory and that the key to success was "truth, truth in the circumstances of the play." "Your talent is in your imagination," she taught. "The rest is lice." She discussed plays as scripts for actors, exploring the texts for performance clues. She also believed that the art, architecture and clothes of an era were important in shaping a role. One student volunteered, "When you told me to imagine a lake in Switzerland, I couldn't help but remember a real lake I had seen in Switzerland." "Then put your lake in Morocco," Miss Adler replied. "You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick." "Don't use your conscious past," she advised. "Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little." She encouraged students to read about Stanislavsky's exercises to ease muscular tension and aid concentration, but she did not teach them. Strasberg contended that she had abandoned the internal emphasis of the Method and that her classes were ineffectual. She argued that he so exceeded Stanislavsky's intent that his teaching was psychologically and emotionally intimidating and dangerous, producing neurotic, self-indulgent actors. Their approaches were vastly different, but the results could be similar. Ellen Burstyn, who studied with both teachers, as many other actors did, concluded: "Stella stresses imagination and Lee stresses reality. You use Stella's imagination to get to Lee's reality. They are finally talking about the same thing." 'You Can't Be Boring' Miss Adler demanded not only craftsmanship but also self-awareness, calling it the key to an actor's sense of fulfillment. When students failed to understand roles, she acted them out, insisting: "You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring." "Get a stage tone, darling, an energy," she advised, " Never go on stage without your motor running." Stanislavsky, she said, created a way for actors to bring the truth to audiences to lift their spirits and enrich their lives. One student accused Miss Adler of expecting too much of young people who "haven't gone out in the world and done all that experiencing she talks about." But most of her students shared the view of another who concluded, "Stella Adler taught me more in five minutes today than any of my other teachers have taught me in five years." Besides teaching principles of characterization and script analysis at her school, Miss Adler had been an adjunct professor of acting at the Yale School of Drama and for many years headed the undergraduate drama department at New York University. Stella Adler was born in Manhattan, on Feb. 10, 1901, the youngest daughter of Jacob Pavlovitch Adler and the former Sara Levitzky. The Russian immigrant couple, who led the Independent Yiddish Art Company, were the leading classical Yiddish stage tragedians in the United States. Stella's five siblings, most notably Luther, were also actors. She started on the stage in 1905 at the Grand Street Theater on the Lower East Side. Over the years, she played both girls' and boys' roles and then ingenues in a wide variety of classical and contemporary plays in this country and abroad. Her work schedule allowed little time for schooling, but when possible she studied at public schools and New York University. She was introduced to Stanislavsky's theories in 1925 when she began taking courses at the American Laboratory Theater school, founded by Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya, former members of the Moscow Art Theater. In the Group Theater, Miss Adler won high praise for performances in such realistic dramas as "Success Story" by John Howard Lawson and two seminal Clifford Odets plays, "Awake and Sing!" and "Paradise Lost." She was also hailed for directing the touring company of Odets's "Golden Boy." 'More to Give to People' Recalling her decade with the company, she deplored above all a dearth of good roles for women in what she regarded essentially as "a man's theater aimed at plays for men." But she credited the company with evoking in her an idealism that shaped her later career. "I knew that I had it in me to be more creative, had much more to give to people," she said. "It was the Group Theater that gave me my life." She also appeared in three films: "Love on Toast" (1938), "Shadow of the Thin Man" (1941) and "My Girl Tisa" (1948). Her later stage roles included a fiery lion tamer in a 1946 revival of the drama "He Who Gets Slapped" and, in London, an eccentric mother in a 1961 black comedy, "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad." Among the plays she directed was a 1956 revival of the Paul Green-Kurt Weill antiwar musical "Johnny Johnson." Miss Adler restated her theories in "Stella Adler on Acting," published by Bantam Books in 1988. In an interview in The New York Times, she said she hoped the book would "help actors who had no foundation and no place to get a foundation, and no culture in which a foundation was encouraged." In the past, she had often deplored the highly commercialized Broadway theater, the growing cult of the director and what she termed the "thoughtless, naturalistic" style of most American actors. Her lectures on playwrights and script interpretation are to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. (As reported by Peter B. Flint)

1995: The trial of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin opened today only to be postponed for a month, while Israelis received an unexpected replay of the killing in an amateur video not made public before.

1996(10th of Tevet, 5757): Astronomer and science celebrity Carl Sagan passed away at the age of 62.

1996(10th of Tevet, 5757): Asara B'Tevet

1998: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The House of Rothschild Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson and The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy by David Klinghoffer

2003: The Klezmatics perform "Holy Ground: The Jewish Songs of Woody Guthrie," at the 92nd Street Y, featuring songs inspired or written by Guthrie's mother-in-law, Aliza Greenblatt.

2005: The Jerusalem Post reported on clean-up efforts at Beth El Synagogue in New Orleans. The work is being done by college students who are using their winter break to help clean up damage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Beth El was covered by ten feet of water and was the only synagogue in New Orleans completely destroyed by the storm.

2006: Haaretz reported on a case of technology, academia and physical courage converging to protect the history of the Jewish people. Emory University is planning to translate a professor's Web site on Holocaust denial into Arabic, Farsi and other languages common to countries where anti-Semitic views are widespread. Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who runs the site Holocaust Denial on Trial (www.hdot.org), said she hopes the translations will provide resources to people who have no historical accounts of the Holocaust in their native tongue. "I'm convinced that there are people in predominantly Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, who are being inundated with Holocaust deniers' claims and don't know that the deniers are fabricating and distorting," she said in a news release. Robert Paul, dean of Emory College, said the university is creating a $2 million endowment to help enhance the Web site. The site's stance on anti-Semitic views could create some security concerns for the university, he said. "That's always a threat, but that's the risk you take in a free society," he said in a telephone interview. Emory is located in Atlanta, Georgia, the same city from which Jimmy Carter sent forth his comparison of Israel with the Apartheid of South Africa.

2007: In the afternoon, Palestinian terrorists fired three rockets toward southern Israel with one hitting about forty yards from a school in downtown Sderot forcing twelve students to seek treatment for shock.

2007: In the evening five Palestinian terrorist were killed and Israeli soldier was badly wounded in fighting in Gaza about a mile from the border with Israel as forces of the IDF sought to put an end to the continuous missle attacks on southern Israel including the town of Sderot.

2007: According to unnamed sources in Los Angeles, the Spinka Rebbe has hired top criminal defense Attorney Donald Etra to defend him. Etra, who is an orthodox Jew, was college roommates with President Bush at Yale. Mr. Etra has also represented many other famous people that were faced with serious legal troubles. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, the Spinka Rebbe, his Gabbi, and six other men were charged in connection with an alleged tax fraud scheme in Los Angeles, California. American authorities claimed that the scheme involved soliciting tens of millions of dollars of donations to Spinka charities over a span of approximately ten years, then refunding 80-95% of the funds back to the donor through an Israeli bank, despite the donors' claiming a tax deduction on the full amount. Five Brooklyn Spinka institutions were also named as defendants. Spinka is the name of Chasidic group that was founded in Spinka, a Roumanian town near the Hungarian border.

2008:” Imagine This!,” a five million Pound West End production depicting the tragic story of the Warshowsky Family theater group who defy the oppressors and the ghetto's meager resources to put on a musical on the siege of Masada and warn their audience of the fate awaiting them in Treblinka, closes only a month after its official opening at the Drury Lane New London Theatre.

2008: In New York, as part the JCC Manhattan, Beit Midrash Yonatan Gefen facilitates a presentation entitled, “Why Do I Write? (Zionism as an Anti-depressant)” Poet, playwright, author of 20 books, translator, lyricist and satiric performer, Yehonatan Geffen has been a correspondent for Maariv since 1992 and his column appears there every Friday. A third generation member of the renowned Dayan family, he served as an officer in the Israeli Paratroopers and in the Golani infantry brigade. His talk will focus on writing as a weapon, as an attempt to find out the truth, as communicating and therapy, writing as falling in love and finally, the significance of writing in a language that was dead for over 1900 years.

2008: The slender Saturday edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette reads like a Jewish newspaper with articles entitled ‘Israeli election hopefuls siik the Obama touch” (complete with a picture of the President-elect at the Western Wall), “Hamas declares end of truce with Israel,” “Jewish Festival of Lights begins Sunday” and “Potential buyers showing interest in Agriprocessors.”

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of Hot, Flat and Crowed: Why We Need a Green Revolution — And How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman and A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz.

2009: The Washington Post features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Herblock: The Life and Work of the Great Political Cartoonist by Haynes Johnson and Harry Katz.

2010: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Chosen Peoples and Their Enemies” featuring Michael Walzer and Jackson Lears, Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz.

2010: “Some 1,200 new species and varieties have been discovered during the just-concluded first world “census” of marine life. The director of the census, Jesse Ausubel, will participate in a conference today at the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Humanities in Jerusalem. The occasion will also be marked by the screening there of Oceans, completed last year, which is considered one of the greatest nature films ever made. The 10-year-census cost $370 million, and 3,000 scientists from 80 countries – including three Israelis – participated in it. The Israeli conference was initiated and will be chaired by Prof. Alex Keinan, an adviser to academy president Prof. Ruth Arnon. Keinan notes that while the creatures that live on land have been studied since the Renaissance, the sea and its bottom had never been studied systematically until now. The Jerusalem meeting will be held to show biologists who specialize in animal life, and scientists in general, the findings and huge unpublished database that resulted from the decade-long work. Among the crabs, fish, worms and other “new” creatures that have been discovered is the first multi-cell organism to be identified that can live without oxygen. It was found on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea south of Crete by an Italian scientist. Sea plants, fish and bacteria unknown until now were also discovered. Ausubel, who is director of the program for the human environment at Rockefeller University in Manhattan and program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has played major roles in the formulation of both the US and world climate research programs.

2010: The Los Angeles Times featured a review of The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt, of blessed memory.

2010: An IDF soldier reported that three individuals attempted to stab him near a gas station in Givat Ze'ev in Jerusalem. According to the soldier, the three individuals exited their vehicle with one holding a knife. After the soldier loaded and aimed his personal weapon at the three, they returned to their red Toyota and fled.

2010: Seven mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into the Eshkol regional council today.
No injuries were reported and no damage was caused. Two weeks ago, in a similar incident, four to five mortar shells were fired into the same area and hit a residential area. One man suffered light wounds to his upper body. The wounded man was airlifted by the IDF to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba while fully conscious. Earlier on the day of the attack, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi had warned that the security situation at the Gaza Strip border is very fragile and may deteriorate rapidly

2010: Nearly 50 Conservative (Masorti) rabbis have signed a halachic statement allowing home rentals or sales to non- Jews in Israel, in a move to counter the statement recently signed by nearly 50 city rabbis that prohibited just that. In a lengthy response to the question of whether the city rabbis’ attitude was “really the standard and only approach to this question in Jewish law,” Schechter Institute President Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin examines the topic from all its angles, from its biblical sources to the opinions of 20th-century rabbis who considered the question. In the document, which was released today, Golinkin concludes that “according to Jewish law, it is perfectly permissible to sell or rent houses to non-Jews in the Land of Israel for all of the reasons cited.” “If we are concerned that certain areas of the country such as the Galilee need more Jews, we must achieve that by Zionist education, not by discrimination,” he added. “If there is concern that blocks of apartments are being bought up by Iran and Saudi Arabia, then the government of Israel must deal with this national problem.”mThe rabbis who had signed the original letter had explained that the motivation to their act was the phenomenon Golinkin mentioned. Nearly 50 Conservative rabbis signed Golinkin’s document. The haredi rabbinic leadership had spoken out against the original letter, as it might compromise the well-being of Jews in the Diaspora. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, head of the Har Etzion Yeshiva, bemoaned its tactlessness and failure to address the halachic question at hand with the complexity befitting learned rabbis. Despite the many demands to launch an investigation on suspicion of incitement to racism, neither the attorney-general nor the justice minister has taken any legal or administrative action against the city rabbis, who are indirectly employed by the state. In related news, the Brit Hoshech Legaresh (Dispelling Darkness Alliance), representing 16 social and pluralistic groups and dedicated to fighting racism, filled a Jerusalem theater hall on Monday with hundreds of people protesting hatred and racism.

2010(13th of Tevet, 5771): Steve Landesberg, an actor and comedian with a friendly and often deadpan manner who was best known for his role on the long-running sitcom ''Barney Miller,'' died in Los Angeles today. He was 74. On ''Barney Miller,'' which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982, Mr. Landesberg played Sgt. Arthur P. Dietrich, an intellectual detective with a quiet manner who seemed to have an unrivaled knowledge of practically any topic that arose, much to the bewilderment of his fellow detectives. He was also given to odd, unexpected pronouncements. In one 1980 episode he tells his boss, Captain Miller, played by Hal Linden, that he is working on a case that dates to 1973. Miller says: ''That was seven years ago! Nixon was president!'' Dietrich's low-key response: ''No, he's got an airtight alibi for this one.'' Mr. Landesberg received three Emmy Award nominations for that role. Set in a New York City police station, where most of the action takes place, ''Barney Miller'' portrayed a group of wisecracking detectives and the oddball characters who ended up there. Some police officers said the show represented the real life of rank-and-file officers better than many television detective dramas. After ''Barney Miller'' left the air, Mr. Landesberg appeared on ''The Golden Girls,'' ''Law & Order,'' ''That '70s Show'' and ''Everybody Hates Chris,'' among other shows. He had a recurring role on the short-lived 1998 sitcom ''Conrad Bloom.'' Most recently he played Dr. Myron Finkelstein, a Freudian therapist, in ''Head Case,'' a comedy on the Starz cable channel. In 2008 he played a pediatrician whose patient (played by Jason Segel, the film's writer and star) is in his 20s in the hit movie ''Forgetting Sarah Marshall.'' His other movies include ''Wild Hogs'' and ''Leader of the Band.'' His distinctively dry, deep voice was also heard in cartoons and commercials. Stephen Landesberg was born on Nov. 23, 1936, in the Bronx. He began his career as a stand-up comic in the late 1960s and became known for his off-center observations and eccentric delivery. He performed in New York comedy clubs alongside comedians like Freddie Prinze and Jimmie Walker. Mr. Landesberg appeared on ''The Tonight Show'' for the first time in 1971 and several times on ''The Dean Martin Show'' before landing his first recurring role, as a Viennese violinist, on the sitcom ''Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers,'' in 1974. Initial reports of Mr. Landesberg's death, relying on numerous biographical sources, said he was 65. In acknowledging that he was actually nine years older, his daughter said he had provided varying birth dates over the years. ''He got kind of a late start in show business,'' she explained, ''so he tried to straddle the generations. He fooled the whole world. People were surprised to think he was even 65.''

2011(24th of Kislev, 5772): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

2011: The Mobile Menorah Parade is scheduled to roll through uptown, downtown, and the French Quarter as Chabad celebrates Chanukah

2011: The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to open in NYC

2011: Girl-power aficionado Gloria Steinem is scheduled to join the activism-inclined five-piece pop rock band Betty for their late show.

2011: A jazz ensemble, featuring David Freeman, Oren Neiman, Doug Drewes and Ivan Barenboim, is scheduled to perform original compositions inspired by Chanukah, as well as new arrangements of music from the YU Museum’s “Jews on Vinyl” exhibition.

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