This Day, December 25, In Jewish History

December 25 In Jewish History

0337(14th of Tevet, 4098): Earliest possible date on which Christmas was reported to have been celebrated on December 25th.

800: Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome. Charlemagne supported most of the policies and edicts Pope Gregory the Great and Pope Stephen IV. However, he ignored their edicts concerning Jews. For the most part, Jews were allowed to participate in the economic and social life of the Empire within the limits of Medieval Society. The Jews of Narbonne (France) supported Charlemagne’s father Pepin in his war with the Moslems and Charlemagne remembered this. Unfortunately, Charlemagne’s policies toward the Jews died with him in 814.

1000: At the start of the 11th century, Hungary was established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary. In this case, Christian means Roman Catholic. Religious belief aside, Stephen used Catholicism as an instrument of national unification as he established his rule over pagans and those of his subjects who sought support from the Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) Empire. Based on archeological evidence Jews had probably been living in what was now Hungary since the third century. The first written mention of Jews living in Hungary is found in a letter from the end of 10th century written by the famous Sephard, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. There were enough Jews living in Hungary by the end of the 11th century that at the council of Szabolcs, the Church prohibited marriages between Jews and Christians, work on Christian festivals, and the purchase of slaves. At the same time, the Hungarian King Kolman took measures to protect Hungarian Jews from Crusaders passing through the kingdom.

1066: Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England. There is no record of a Jewish community in England before Norman conquests. A group of Jews arrived from Rouen (France) in London at the start of William’s reign. There is no record as to why William allowed this and his immediate successors followed policies that were inimical to Jewish interests.

1100: Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned as the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity. This is one of those events loaded with subtle irony. This coronation was the culmination of the First Crusade, during which the Christian warriors drove the Jews from the City of David. In other words, if Jesus had been alive for Baldwin’s coronation, he wouldn’t have been able to attend the event. Please note, Baldwin and his successors were not laying claim to the throne of King David

1312: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in different parts of Austria

1369: The King of Sicily required Jews to wear a special badge

1480: Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin, both Dominican friars arrived in Seville. Seville’s population included a significant number of New Christians, who enjoyed the comparative quite of the city. That ended with the arrival of the friars who brought the Inquisition with them.

1599: Portuguese settlers establish the village of Natal in Brazil. At this time, the only Jews living in Brazil were New Christians or Conversos. Dutch forces would occupy Natal from1633 to 1654, a period during which Jewish communities flourished under the religious toleration brought from Holland.

1808: In the seemingly never ending intrigue swirling around the German prince and his Jewish financier, sixteen year old Jacob Rothschild, son of A.M. Rothschild arrived in Prague with a chest full of papers belonging to Wilhelm, the exiled Landgrave.

1834(23rd of Kislev, 5595): David Friedländer, a German Jewish banker, writer and communal leader passed away.

1853(24th of Kislev, 5614): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1856: Evidence continued to be presented today in The Huntington Trial a case being heard before Judge Capron which had recessed on the previous Saturday “because one of the jurors was a Jew and had conscientious scruples about working on his Sabbath…” despite the fact that the case has to be completed by December 31. The eleven Christian jurors did not request a postponement because today is Christmas.

1860: An article published today entitled “Suicide of A Patient At The Jew’s Hospital: reported that “Elias Kemp, an old man, who, for nearly a year past, has been an inmate of the Jews' Hospital, No. 140 West Twenty-eighth-street, under treatment for spinal disease, died today in consequence of a razor-wound in his throat, which he had inflicted last Sunday with the object of taking his life. The fact that his disease had recently assumed unfavorable symptoms, and the physician had pronounced him incurable, led him to commit the act. Coroner O'Keefe held an inquest upon the body. Deceased was a native of Poland.

1863: Birthdate of Regina Margareten. She came to the U.S. as a young bride in 1883. With her husband and her parents, she helped to open a grocery store on New York's Lower East Side. The first year in New York, the family members baked Passover matzo for themselves. The second year, they made enough to sell in the store, and the matzo business soon became the family's sole occupation. After Regina's husband died in 1923, she was formally named treasurer of Horowitz Brothers & Margareten Company and became one of the company's directors. She held these positions for the rest of her life. Margareten also acted as the company's quality control department, tasting every batch of matzo. By 1932, Horowitz Brothers & Margareten Company was using 45 thousand barrels of flour and grossing over one million dollars per year.In addition to her work at the business, Margareten was the matriarch of an extended family of over 400 members. Her obituary, which described her as the "matriarch of the kosher food industry," also reported that she was a member of over 100 charitable organizations. Throughout her life, she played an important role in the family business, working in her office daily until two weeks before her death in 1959 at age 96

1866: Birthdate of Avraham Mordechai Alter also known as the Imrei Emes after the works he authored. He was the third Rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, a position he held from 1905 until his death in 1948. He was one of the founders of the Agudas Israel in Poland and was influential in establishing a network of Jewish schools there. It is claimed that at one stage he led over 200,000 Hasidim.

1870(1st of Tevet, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1879: It was reported today that a group of Rabbis and prominent laymen have formed an association to promote a stricter observance of the Sabbath, which for the Jews falls on Saturday. It is predicted that the association will not find much success among the eighty to ninety thousand Jews living in New York since strict observance of the Sabbath would cost them two day’s worth of business since they would still be bound by the general populace’s Sunday observance. Failure because of business considerations is not unique to Jews since attempts to have Christians return to the observance of the Sabbath in the spirit of the Puritans failed for this very reason.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots began in Poland. In Warsaw twelve Jews were killed, many others were wounded and some women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

1886: Birthdate of Franz Rosenzweig. Born in Germany, Rosenzweig was “an existential philosopher.” According to one description of The Star of Redemption, his seminal philosophic work Rosenzweig “sees the world as consisting of three elements – man , the universe and God, which enter a relationship through revealing themselves to one another. The three points form a triangle, which intersect with a second triangle of creation, revelation and redemption. Their relations become historical forces” which in one case is Judaism – hence the star. Revelation, which is a continuing process of good, leads to redemption. Man helps to bring the universe to redemption by converting his love for God into his love for his fellow man. Rosenzweig pioneered the construction of a Jewish-Christian relation without polemic, which became the basis for postwar interfaith dialogue.” In his personal life, Rosenzweig fought crippling paralysis with the assistance of his wife. He passed away in 1929. According to a poll conducted by Commentary Magazine in 1965, Rosenzweig was “the most influential modern Jewish thinker.” Quotes from Rosenzwewig: “Jewish prayer means praying in Hebrew.” (This from a man who translated the entire Bible into German) “We owe our survival to a book – the only book of antiquity that is still in living use as a scroll.” “Asked, ‘What does Judaism think about Jesus?” he answered ‘It doesn’t.’”

1891(24th of Kislev, 5652): In the evening, Kindle the first light of Chanukah

1894: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association was held this morning in the schoolrooms of the Temple Emanuel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Third Street. Julia Richman was chosen to serve as a member of the board of directors for the upcoming year. During the meeting Ms Richman presented the report of the Discipline Committee. It showed that 3,283 children between the ages of eight and fourteen years were enrolled as of November 30. Children are required to attend public schools as a condition to participating in the afternoon classes devoted to religious subjects and instruction in Hebrew. The Association offers a total of sixty one classes.

1895: Birthdate of Abraham "Abe" Landau the chief henchman for New York gangster Dutch Schultz. Landau was Schultz's most trusted employee, often given tasks that required coolness and cunning rather than gunfire and brutality. According to some sources, “It is very likely that he never actually killed anyone during his gang years.”

1895: On this date, Herzl wrote in his diary “I was just lighting the Christmas tree for my children when Rabbi Moritz Güdemann arrived. He seemed upset by the "Christian" custom. Well, I will not let myself be pressured! But I don't mind if they call it the Chanukah tree - or the winter solstice.” Guidemann was the Chief Rabbi in Vienna who believed in Jewish nationalism but considered the Jewish religion as an integral part of Jewish identity. As far back as 1871, however, he had strongly protested against the proposal of the Jewish community of Vienna to strike from the prayer-book all passages referring to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and had even gone so far as to threaten to resign from the board of trustees if his protest should remain unheeded. But in 1897, when Herzl’s Zionist movement was in its infancy, he wrote against the tendencies of Zionism to lay more stress on the national than on the religious character of Judaism, for which he was severely attacked by the friends of the Zionist movement. When you consider the complexity of his views, you can understand his consternation at seeing Herzl lighting a Christmas tree.

1898: Herzl publishes his article "Französische Zustände" - "French States of Affairs" about the Dreyfus Affair.

1906: Birthdate of Clark M Clifford. Clifford is best known as the ultimate Washington lobbyist and Mr. Fix-it and as the US Secretary of Defense who changed Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy. But Clifford said that his proudest moment was the role he played in the United States recognition of Israel. In 1948, Clifford was a White House aide to Harry Truman. He supported Truman in this decision despite the advice from the “striped pants boys” at the State Department that this was not a wise thing to do.

1915: Birthdate of Alfred M. Lilienthal “an American Jew, who was a prominent critic of Zionism and the state of Israel.”

1916(30th of Kislev, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1916: Birthdate of Allen Adler, the son of Yiddish theatre manager Adolph J. Adler, the grandson of Yiddish theatre great Jacob Adler and Sonya Adler and the nephew of Luther and Stella Adler. A veteran of World War II, Adler co-authored the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet” and in 1957 “Mach One,” his science-fiction novel was published. Adler fell victim to the infamous Red Scare and was blacklisted. He passed away in January of 1964.

1917: Mass celebration in Washington D.C. marking the British taking Jerusalem from the Turks during World War I. Jewish units of the British Army took part in the fighting.

1917: The observance of Christmas Mass by British forces in Jerusalem and Bethlehem is punctuated by “desultory Turkish artillery fired from the north and the east.”

1917(10th of Tevet, 5678) Asara B’Tevet

1924: Birthdate of Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone. Born Jewish, Serling converted for the sake of domestic tranquility

1925(8th of Tevet, 5686): Karl Abraham passed away. Born in 1877, Abraham was the German psychoanalyst who studied the role of childhood sexual trauma in relation to the symptoms of mental illness. He was initiated into psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung (1904). He first met Freud in 1907, and subsequently became one of his most reliable collaborators. Covering a wide range, Abraham's papers include work on depression, mania, autoerotism, repressed hate, as well as others on applied psychoanalysis that include papers on the Day of Atonement and a major one (1909) in which he connected myths with dreams and viewed both as wish-fulfillment fantasies. Abraham founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society (1910). He made pioneering efforts in the psychoanalytic treatment of manic- depressive psychosis.

1930(5th of Tevet, 5691): Eugene Goldstein passed away. Born in 1850, Goldstein was the German physicist who discovered and named canal rays (1886) which emerge through holes in the anodes of low-pressure electrical discharge tubes (later shown to be positively charged particles). Earlier, he coined the term "cathode ray" (1876) emitted from a cathode. He was the first to see that they could cast a shadow, and were emitted at right angles to the surface. He also investigated the wavelengths of light emitted by metals and oxides when canal rays impinge on them. When the Berlin Urania, opened in 1889 it had five scientific departments and a "science theatre", it was Goldstein who had recommended the "hall of physics in which the visitor could experiment on his own". Students of his that continued his work included Wien and Stark.

1935: Birthdate of author and feminine activist Anne Roiphe. Born Anne Roth, she is best known for writing Up the Sandbox.

1940: Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Pal Joey" premiered in New York.

1940: The British government; suspended the quota for legal immigration to Palestine for three months. The Zionists saw this as punishment for illegal immigration activities in general and specifically, the events surrounding the Patria. There is a positive correlation between the British attitude towards Jewish immigration during and after World War II and the violent activity of the Irgun.

1941: During World War II, the Battle of Hong Kong ends as the forces of British Empire were defeated by those from the Empire of the Rising Sun thus beginning the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong. Jews had begun settling in Hong Kong when the British took control in 1842. However most Jewish merchants preferred mainland communities such as Shanghai. During the 1930’s as the Japanese forces took control of more of mainland China, these same Jewish businessmen and many Jews who had found fled the Nazis, moved to Hong Kong. No matter how distasteful Japanese rule might have been, for the Jews, it was better than having fallen into the hands of the Nazis. Of course, this does not in any way provide expatiation for the treatment of the Chinese population at the hands of their harsh Japanese occupiers.

1942 (17th of Tevet, 5703): Nazi forces in Cracow capture and murder Aharon Liebeskind leader along with Heshek Bauminger, of the Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO). Bauminger will be captured and killed in March of 1943.

1943: Trucks carrying naked Jewish women make regular trips to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Any woman who leaps from a truck is immediately shot down.

1943(28th of Kislev, 5704): Shabbat Shel Chanukah

1943: The U.S. government sent a telegram informing Adina Werfel that, while returning from conducting a Hanukah service for American soldiers in Casablanca, the small plane carrying her husband, Rabbi Louis Werfel (the “flying rabbi”) had crashed into the Algerian mountains due to limited visibility caused by bad weather. Werfel was an Orthodox Rabbi serving as Chaplain with the United States Army Air Force.

1944: In an Upper Silesia Labor Camp, the Nazis selected 60 Jews to be shot because they no longer were able to work.

1945: Birthdate of Evelyn "Eve" Pollard (Evelyn, Lady Lloyd), OBE an English author, journalist and a former editor of several tabloids.

1946(2nd of Tevet, 5707): 8th & final day of Chanukah

1947: Two British soldiers were killed and at least three more were wounded tonight when gunmen from the Stern Gang \fired on a group of Tommies who were celebrating Christmas in a Tel Aviv cafe.

1947: In Brooklyn, NY, Loa Schleifer and Morris W. Wasserstein gave birth to Bruce Wasserstein, t”he Wall Street investment banker who helped pioneer the hostile takeover in the 1980s and reshaped the mergers and acquisitions business into a high art…” (As reported by Sorkin and de la Merced

1948: After passing through Jewish and Arab checkpoints, Christian pilgrims are allowed to enter Bethlehem.

1949: Israel and Jordan ease armistice restrictions so pilgrims can attend Christmas services in Bethlehem. Most people in Holy Land are UN personnel and diplomats, because Jordan prohibits other pilgrims from returning directly to Israel.

1950: Birthdate of Yehuda Poliker “an Israeli singer, songwriter, musician, and painter. Poliker's father, Jacko, tells the story of his escape from Auschwitz in the 1988 film "Because of That War" (Biglal Hamilhamah Hahi), which features music by his son. The film includes interviews with Yehuda Poliker and Ya'akov Gilad, whose Polish Jewish parents also survived Auschwitz.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Hapoel Hamizrahi and Mizrahi finally resolved to join the Mapai-General Zionists-Progressives government coalition.

1952: The town of Hatzor is founded in the Galilee, developing from the Ma'abarah located there. The immigrants came from the camp in Rosh Pinah where the living conditions were described as “poor.”

1952: The French press was highly critical of Lebanon, which had turned down the Israeli offer to enter the Lebanese territorial waters in order to save the French liner S.S. Champollion, which sank in a heavy storm, having split on reefs off Sidon on the Lebanese coast. All but 26 of the 328 passengers and crew lost their lives, mostly while trying to swim the 200 meters separating them from the shore. According to the French press all passengers, crew and the ship could have been saved, had Lebanon accepted the prompt Israeli assistance offer.

1955(10th of Tevet, 5716): Asara B'Tevet

1961(18th of Tevet, 5722): Otto Loewi passed away. Born in 1873, Loewi was the German-born American physician and pharmacologist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Sir Henry Dale) "for their discoveries relating to the chemical transmission of nerve impulses." Sadly, just two years later he was a victim of Nazi persecution, imprisoned for being Jewish. As ransom for his life, he was forced to hand over his possessions, including his Nobel Prize money, and Loewi escaped to England. From there he moved to America in 1940. His research showed that it was the release of a certain chemical (the transmitter) acetylcholine that enabled the transmission of nerve impulses. Loewi also investigated action of drugs able to blockade or assist nerve impulse transmission.

1969: The French discover that the berths that had been holding five embargoed Israeli missile boats are empty. The absence of any announcement about the embargo's termination prompted media inquiries, which failed to elicit convincing explanations. "Where are they?" asked a banner headline in a local newspaper. “The boats were indeed on the run. Battered by towering waves as they crossed the Bay of Biscay, they dropped anchor in a Portuguese cove alongside an Israeli freighter fitted out as a refueling ship, one of several support vessels deployed along the 5,150-km. escape route. When the boats entered the Mediterranean, British maritime monitors on Gibraltar signaled "What ship?" A Lloyd's helicopter circled the silent vessels but saw no identity numbers or flags. The British monitors, guessing the boats' destination from the media reports, flashed "bon voyage" in salute to Nelsonian flair. Stung by Israel's audacity, French defense minister Michel Debre called for the air force to interdict the vessels which had been spotted off the North African coast racing east. Prime minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas refused. Near Crete, IAF Phantoms roared low overhead protectively and waggled their wings. The boats would sail into Haifa harbor on New Year's Eve, 1970, to cheers for a bravado display of high-stakes hutzpa. For Israel's navy, however, the flight from Cherbourg was no lighthearted caper but a matter of life or death - its own. These missile boats were part of decade long development project designed to give Israel a naval capability that would help the Jewish state meet the nautical threat posed by its Arab neighbors who were being supplied by their Soviet and East Bloc patrons.

1977: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat met in Ismailia, Egypt. During negotiations, Sadat tells Begin that there can be no separate peace between Israel and Egypt. To gain peace with Egypt, Israel must agree to the pre-1967 boundaries and recognize the right to Palestinian self-determination. Rather than lose momentum or stop the negotiations, Begin and Sadat established several working committees to examine different aspects of the peace process.

1977(15th of Tevet, 5738): Comedian Charlie Chaplin died at age 88.

1983: In an article entitled “Israel’s Founding Father,” James Feron reviewed Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire by Dan Kurzman.

Soon after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, David Ben-Gurion watched in wonder as another one of his dreams was played out at Lydda airport. Hundreds of Jewish immigrants were arriving, the prophesied ingathering of the exiles. As they left the planes, they embraced the earth. Little did they know that the ground they kissed would be the ground they would sleep on, in windy tents in makeshift camps. Ben-Gurion knew. He had slept on floors as a Jewish laborer in Palestine, then a Turkish colony, 40 years earlier, and if he survived, they would too. It was an attitude that sustained him while exhausting others in his lengthy pursuit of Jewish nationhood. To follow the life of this historic figure, as Dan Kurzman has done with splendid thoroughness in ''Ben- Gurion: Prophet of Fire,'' is to pass many milestones on the road to today's Middle East. Others in the much-written-about Israeli leadership also walked this road, but none dominated the scene as Ben-Gurion did or for so long. He was in his 60's when Israel was founded, and he led the country until 1963. Mr. Kurzman, a former foreign correspondent and the author of ''Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli James Feron , a metropolitan reporter for The New York Times, was its Jerusalem bureau chief from 1965 to 1970. War,'' ''The Bravest Battle: The 28 Days of of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising'' and other books, has drawn on Ben-Gurion's unpublished diaries as well as on letters, interviews and his own Middle East experience to write this sympathetic but revealing biography of Israel's founding father. There are some surprises, personal as well as political. The author describes Ben-Gurion's lifelong love affair with Rachel Nelkin, a childhood sweetheart in Plonsk who sailed with him (and her mother) to Palestine. She married another settler, Yehezkel Beit-Halachmi, choosing a normal family life over Ben-Gurion's efforts to establish a nation, but they remained close. It was to be the most important personal relationship of his life. Ben-Gurion's marriage to Pauline Munweiss, a Brooklyn nurse, was something else. He met her on the rebound, and they had little in common. He was an intellectual; she seldom read and knew little of the world. He was a fanatical Zionist; she was attracted to Emma Goldman's anarchy. He was introverted and withdrawn, despite considerable oratorical skills; she was eccentrically outgoing and, in fact, was noted for her outrageous comments. Paula, as he called her, was a complainer, and she had plenty to complain about. Ben-Gurion only had time to be married at the Municipal Building in Manhattan and then returned immediately to a political meeting. Soon he was off on a speaking tour and then another - and then he enlisted in World War I's Jewish Legion, a unit of the British Army organized to fight in Palestine. Their separations produced a fascinating correspondence, much of it tender and some of it lyrical. She wanted him home, writing, ''I got so thin people don't recognize me,'' and ''My feet are swollen and there is nobody to help me, but I suppose your ideal is greater than I and our future child.'' He replied, ''You are sacred to me, the suffering angel who hovers over me.'' Seemingly resistant to guilt, Ben-Gurion focused instead on his dreams and ideals, on the friendships he was making among others serving in Palestine and on the single- minded pursuit of statehood for Israel. Paula and their firstborn, Geula, joined him in Palestine in 1919, two years after they had been married, unifying the young family but ending the most affectionate of the letter writing. If the decades before World War I were heavy with the fervor of Zionism for the young Ben-Gurion, those after the war were devoted to the realization of Israel's statehood through efforts to unite the many Zionist factions. And Mr. Kurzman's account, dominated by Ben-Gurion, revolves not only around how Israel was founded but also around the debate over what kind of a nation it would be. Mr. Kurzman tends to stand back, letting the actors tell the story. But if he would leave analysis to others, he has fixed the agenda, bringing many new insights to the notion that Ben-Gurion was singularly responsible for the creation of the state or could do no wrong. Particularly interesting is Mr. Kurzman's account of the debate among Zionist leaders over how to deal with the Holocaust. Some, including Ben- Gurion, refused to accept what was happening, then were opposed to an outcry. Later in the war, Ben-Gurion would speculate about the Holocaust but only in terms of what it would mean to the Zionist cause. ''It appears, then, that Ben-Gurion did not focus on trying to stop the catastrophe as it was happening, but on making the most of what might emerge when it had run its course,'' Mr. Kurzman writes. A friend of Ben-Gurion's describes his approach as ''realism,'' but the author notes, ''This was also the realism of Roosevelt and other Allied leaders in failing to make a supreme effort to cheat the gas chambers.'' Ben-Gurion died just 10 years ago at the age of 87. He had stepped down as Prime Minister a decade earlier, when power began to slip from his grasp. He saw the nation's youth moving toward his right-wing political enemy Menachem Begin and was entreating smaller and smaller audiences to ask themselves where Israel was headed. It is a question that continues to seize many.

1984(1st of Tevet, 5745): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1985: A small bomb concealed in a loaf of bread was found at a bus stop near Tel Aviv University today, the police said. A passer-by discovered the suspicious-looking loaf and informed explosives experts, a police spokesman said. The device was safely dismantled. No arrests were reported.

1987: Three Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated a short distance into Israel from Jordan tonight and were captured alive by Israeli troops after a shootout.

1988: In an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper published, Egyptian President Mubarak was quoted as saying he would go to Israel if the visit would help achieve peace. Prime Minister Shamir has said he would welcome a visit by Mr. Mubarak.

1989: During the American invasion of Panama the United States Embassy in Panama recanted its previous report that Mike Harari, a 62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad was an American ''prisoner of war.''

1990: Hadash lost one of its four seats in the Knesset when Charlie Biton broke away to establish Black Panthers as an independent faction

1994: Thirteen Israeli soldiers and civilians were wounded when a Hamas sponsored suicide bomber tired to board their bus at the entrance to the city, but was foiled they
managed to close the door. The terrorist succeeded in blowing himself up.

1994: A Palestinian suicide bomber carrying a pack of explosives blew himself up here near a bus full of Israeli soldiers today, wounding 13 people and killing himself. The blast ripped through a bus stop, throwing bystanders into the air and showering a main road with twisted metal and shattered glass. Two of the 13 were seriously wounded in the explosion, near Jerusalem's convention center and central bus station, but most escaped serious injury when the bomb apparently went off prematurely. "I heard a horrific explosion, and when I looked out the window, I saw fire and things flying through the air," said Cpl. Sigalit Dori, a soldier on the bus. "People were screaming, and everyone got off. I saw an older man on the ground, full of blood. I was in shock." The militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the explosion, which came at dawn on Christmas Day, shutting streets and snarling rush-hour traffic on what was a normal workday in Israel. It identified the bomber as Ayman Radi, 21, of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. The suicide attack was the latest of several to occur this year despite restrictions on the entry of Palestinians into Israel. The bombing seems likely to reinforce Israeli concerns about the security implications of extending Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank, taking it beyond the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. For many Israelis, the attack was a chilling reminder of the suicide bombing in October that killed 22 passengers and the Hamas attacker aboard a bus in Tel Aviv. Many felt that they simply were lucky this time, and that with circumstances only slightly altered, the casualty toll could have been much worse. Though it coincided with Christmas, the attack seemed timed to strike at soldiers returning to their bases today from weekend leaves. The target was an area used as a pickup point for soldiers near the Jerusalem convention center and central bus station. The bomb tore apart a passenger shelter at the bus stop and an adjacent refreshment stand and phone booth, and shattered the rear window of the bus chartered by the army. The bus had begun moving away from the shelter just before the blast, and the driver had shut the rear door, sparing the soldiers serious injury. The two men who were seriously wounded, one of them a Palestinian, had been standing nearby. Police commanders said the bomber had carried powerful explosives, which apparently went off early, averting far more serious casualties. "He apparently had a malfunction, and luckily for us, he blew up when there were no civilians right next to him," said Assaf Hefetz, the chief of the Israeli police. "We were very lucky."

1994: Shimshon Moshe’s kiosk was torn apart by a blast from a suicide bomber standing at a bus stop, across from Jerusalem International Convention Center. The bomb exploded prematurely, wounding 13 and killing the suicide bomber. Moshe survived the attack and rebuilt his kiosk, which did a brisk business selling sandwiches, drinks, and snacks to travelers heading out of the city. Tipping his hat to fate, he ironically renamed his kiosk “Pitzutz Shel Kiosk” or “Blast of a Kiosk.” Seventeen years later, Moshe’s kiosk would again be the center of a bus bombing in Jerusalem.

1995(2nd of Tevet, 5756): 8th Day of Chanukah

1995(2nd of Tevet, 5756): Emmanuel Levinas passed away. Born in Lithuania in 1906, Levinas was a Talmudic scholar who was one of the major philosophic minds of the twentieth century. His work was greatly influenced by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig.

1995: The Israeli Government approved sweeping changes today requiring the country's powerful banks to sell substantial parts of their assets, a Treasury spokesman said. The move has far-reaching implications for the concentration of economic power in Israel as well as for the planned privatization of the banking sector. A key measure requires banks to reduce their holdings in any Israeli non-financial company to a maximum of 20 percent by 1999, a year later than a Government-appointed committee had recommended. The banks must also reduce their non-financial holdings in Israeli companies as a percentage of total capital to 15 percent by 2002, again a one-year extension of the original recommendation. They will be allowed to hold 5 percent more in non-financial assets outside Israel that are owned by foreigners. In theory, the reforms apply to all banks, but in practice the state-owned Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi are the only ones that hold significant non-financial assets. The extension of the timetable was intended to appease investors bidding for a controlling stake in Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank, in which the Government owns an 80 percent stake. The rest is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Bank Hapoalim will be forced under the Government's actions to divest itself by 1999 of either its 25 percent stake in Koor Industries or its 34 percent holding in Clal. The companies are Israel's largest conglomerates. The two groups bidding for Bank Hapoalim had called on the Government to soften the original recommendations. One group consists of Claridge, the Israeli investment arm of Charles Bronfman, the head of Seagram; the investor George Soros; Ted Arison of Carnival Cruise Lines, and the investment firm Goldman, Sachs & Company. The other is led by Israeli businessman Eliezer Fischman and includes Bear, Stearns & Company. Mr. Shohat said he believed that the investor groups would not withdraw their bids for Bank Hapoalim and that he hoped to complete the sale in the first half of 1996. The Government will begin the privatization of Bank Leumi after it finishes that of Bank Hapoalim.
1997: Jerry Seinfeld announced that this is the final season of his TV show.

2001(10th of Tevet, 5762): Asara B'Tevet

2001(10th of Tevet, 5762): Mari Kajiwara, an American modern dancer of stunning quality who mesmerized audiences as a leading member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Ohad Naharin Dance Company and the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel, passed away in Tel Aviv. She was 50 and had lived in Tel Aviv since Mr. Naharin, her husband and an internationally known choreographer, became artistic director of Batsheva 12 years ago. The cause was cancer, said a company spokesman. In the Ailey company, which she joined in 1970, Ms. Kajiwara made an immediate striking impression with technique that was both pure and powerful, enhanced by a luminous presence. Trained in both ballet and modern dance, especially Martha Graham's idiom, she combined an extended classical line with an extreme suppleness. Ailey created ''Landscape'' (1981) as a vehicle for her. It was a theatricalized ritual in which Ms. Kajiwara was rightly the adored figure. In other Ailey works, she carved distinct shape out of space, describing the form of every movement as few others could. Her extended line made the most of Ailey's ''Streams'' and the ''Fix Me, Jesus'' duet in ''Revelations.'' Other choreographers for the company cast her eagerly in their works. She triumphed in Joyce Trisler's ''Journey,'' where she remained rooted to the spot, all the while spellbinding in her yearning gestures. She brought a similar poetry to the very different role of the idealized woman conjured up by a chain gang in Donald McKayle's ''Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder.'' Despite a natural reticence, she imbued other roles in the Ailey troupe with an emotional depth that seemed to grow out of the very depth of her consummate technique. Ms. Kajiwara was born in New York City, where she attended the High School of Performing Arts and City College. She performed with the Glen Tetley Dance Company and the Norman Walker Dance Company before dancing with the Ailey troupe from 1970 to 1984. During that time, she became an assistant to Ailey, who sent her to stage his works for the Royal Danish Ballet, La Scala Ballet and other companies. After Ms. Kajiwara and Mr. Naharin married in 1978, she appeared with him in a series of concerts. In ''Haru No Umi,'' a duet choreographed by Mr. Naharin in 1982, Ms. Kajiwara embodied love lost, poignantly eluding her husband onstage. Together they formed the Ohad Naharin Dance Company in New York in 1984, performing with it until 1990. When Mr. Naharin, who was born in Israel, became Batsheva's artistic director in 1990, Ms. Kajiwara joined the company as both dancer and rehearsal director. She staged her husband's works for the Netherlands Dance Theater, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Frankfurt Ballet, the Cullberg Ballet, the Lyons Opera Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. In Mr. Naharin's works, the eloquence of Ms. Kajiwara's humanity was seen within a more experimental style. In ''Sixty a Minute,'' she and Mr. Naharin acted out a battle of the sexes by falling against a piano keyboard. In ''Mabul,'' Mr. Naharin's turbulent signature piece at Batsheva, she dropped her reserve and danced up a storm.

2003(30th of Kislev, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2004: According to reports published in today’s The Cedar Rapids Gazette the Israel Museum has announced that "an ivory pomegranate long touted by scholars as the only relic from Solomon's Temple is a forgery..." The collector alleged to have been involved in this forgery was the same person who claimed to have found a burial chest containing the bones of James the brother of Jesus. The pomegranate is actually about 3,500 years old and comes from the Bronze Age that pre-dated the time of the Temple. But the inscription tying it to the Temple was of more recent origins.

2004: For the first time since the latest wave of Arab violence, a Palestinian leader attended Christmas observances in Bethlehem. As a sign of possibly improving relations, 15,000 tourists were in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. This was the largest turnout since the latest wave of terror began in 2000.

2005: At Eilat, fourth and final day of the Red Sea Classical Festival.

2006: Haaretz reported that Journalist Uri Dan, 71, died yesterday from cancer. Dan, who wrote for Ma’ariv, the Israel Defense Forces magazine Bamahaneh and the New York Post, was a close friend of former prime minister Ariel Sharon.

2006: In an article “The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs” published today, Nate Bloom provides the following Jewish connections to the ASCAP’s list of the 25 most popular Christmas songs:

“Winter Wonderland” was co-authored by Felix Bernard, a Brooklyn born Jew

“The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)"was written in 1945 by Mel Tormé (1925-1999) and Robert "Bob" Wells (born 1922)--both of whom are Jewish. Tormé, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, is most famous as a jazz vocalist, but he did write about 250 songs, mostly with Wells. Tormé wrote the music for "The Christmas Song" and Wells penned the lyrics.

“Sleigh Ride” was the product of lyricist Mitchell Parish(1900-1993), who was a Lithuanian born Jew named Michael Hyman Pashelinsky whose family took him to Shreveport, LA when he was an infant.

"Let It Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" was written in 1945 by the Jewish songwriting team of lyricist Sammy Cahn (1913-1993) and composer Jule Styne (1905-1994).

“White Christmas” by Irving Berlin, the non-religious Jew who was the son of a rabbi.

"Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" and “Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” are both product of Jewish song writer Johnny Marks

"It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" co-authored by George Wyle (1917-2003), born Bernard Weissman in New York City, who got his start playing piano in the Catskills

"Silver Bells" co-authored by Livingston and Evans. Jay Livingston, who wrote the music, and Ray Evans (1915-2007), who wrote the lyrics, were a famous Jewish songwriting team with many big hits to their credit. Livingston (1915-2001) was born Jacob Levinson in a small industrial suburb of Pittsburgh. Evans was born in 1915 in Salamanca, a small city not that far from Buffalo, N.Y. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, as did Livingston, and the two met when they joined the university dance band. They formed their songwriting partnership in 1937 and it endured until Livingston's death. (By all accounts, these two guys were like brothers and Evans was absolutely devastated by Livingston's death.) According to ASCAP the most popular version of "Silver Bells" is the one by saxophonist Kenny G, who is Jewish.

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” co-authored by Walter Kent, Buck Ram (who were Jewish) and Kim Gannon (who was not Jewish) Kent (1911-1994) was born Walter Kauffman in New York. He was a practicing architect, an orchestra leader, and a composer. Most of his composing was for films. His other big hits were "The White Cliffs of Dover" and "I'm Gonna Live Till I Die." He is buried in a Los Angeles area Jewish cemetery. Ram (1907-1991) was also born in New York. His real fame came as a rock n' roll music writer and producer in the '50s, most notably with the Platters, a group he created. He is credited as the writer of such hits as "The Great Pretender," "Only You," "The Magic Touch" and "Twilight Time."

2007: At the Friedman Center in Santa Rosa, CA, a screening of “The Impossible Spy.” This riveting film tells the incredible but true story of Elie Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew and top Israeli intelligence recruit whose obsession with his mission as a double agent drove him to his death. Cohen, an accountant with a photographic memory, left his pregnant wife to join the Mossad’s Syrian section in 1959 and quickly infiltrated the highest ranks of the ruling Syrian Baath party. On the eve of his nomination as Syria’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Cohen was uncovered and executed in Damascus in 1965. Two years later, Israel achieved victory in the Six Day War, defeating the Syrian Army as a direct result of the information Cohen provided.

2007: A group of 40 new immigrants from Iran touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport , the largest since the fall of the Shah and Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. A total of 200 Iranian Jews have immigrated to Israel in 2007, compared to only 65 in 2006.

2008: In Downtown Manhattan’s East Village Simon Jacobson facilitates the Chanukah Drum Circle and Menorah Lighting featuring special Holiday Melodies

2008: MK Uri Ariel of Tkuma left The Jewish Home, a right-wing party formed by the merger of Moledet, Tkuma and the National Religious Party.

2008: The Maltz Musuem sponsors the Third Annual Chinese Food and a Movie. From noon to 4 p.m. visitors to the Museum can experience “Maccabees: The Original Superheroes” — dress up and have photos taken, watch short movies and vintage superhero films, make Hanukkah candles and join in candle lighting and songs, as well as enjoy egg rolls, latkes, donuts and holiday songs.

2008: In Washington, D.C. closing session of USY International Convention. This marks the forty-seventh anniversary (December, 1961) of the USY convention where Danny Siegel launched his career on a national stage and taught at least one attendee how to smoke cigars.

2008: Opening session of the Hazon Jewish food conference in Pacific Grove, California.

2009: From 11am to 3pm those in New York City can enjoy “A Special Day of Free Events”” at Yeshiva University Museum.

2009: The Rosenbloom Owings Mills (MD) JCC holds a day of Relaxation, Creation and ReJEWvenation where, among other things, families can make their own challah; children can make their own Shabbat kits, complete with centerpieces, tzedakah boxes, Kiddush cups and Havdalah kits and everybody can enjoy an appearance by ShinShinim, a teen Klezmer band from Ashkelon, Israel.

2009(8th of Tevet, 5770): Morris E. Lasker, a federal judge in New York and Massachusetts for four decades who struck down squalid, often brutal conditions in New York City jails and upheld prisoners’ rights perhaps more than any other jurist of his era, died today in Cambridge, Mass at the age of 92. The cause was cancer, his son Timothy said. Judge Lasker joined the federal judiciary in 1967 and presided over many high-profile cases, including Ivan F. Boesky’s $50 million insider-trading scandal, appeals by three former Black Panthers in the ambush slaying of two police officers in Harlem, and fights over civil rights, copyright infringement and other issues in 25 years on the bench in Manhattan and nearly 15 years in Boston. But Judge Lasker, a soft-spoken jurist who often found himself at the center of controversies, was best known for rulings in the 1970s and ’80s in the Southern District of New York that forced the city come to grips with horrendous conditions in its jails and violations of the constitutional rights of prisoners that, as he once put it, “would shock the conscience of any citizen who knew of them.” The judge knew the conditions in jails not only from evidence in lawsuits, but also from his own visits to the Tombs, the notorious Manhattan House of Detention for Men, where he found overcrowding, noise, vermin and stench, and to Rikers Island, the city’s prison complex in the East River, which housed thousands of detainees awaiting trials or serving sentences of less than a year. In 1970, when the Legal Aid Society filed the first of many class-action lawsuits on behalf of inmates, a prisoner entering the main detention center for men on Rikers Island faced a nightmare: locked in a filthy eight-foot cell with other inmates for 16 hours a day, with no easy access to telephones or medical care. Beatings by guards were common. Mental illness afflicted 25 percent of the inmates, and 75 percent were drug users. Cockroaches abounded. Toilets were foul. Meals were slop. In the Tombs, a fortress in Lower Manhattan where suspects often waited up to a week to see a judge, the conditions were even worse. Cells and pens designed for 925 inmates were occupied by 2,000. Prisoners slept on concrete floors without blankets and contended with roaches, body lice and mice. Guards were frequently accused of brutality. A suicide was attempted every week. Judge Lasker ordered the city to improve conditions. But after repeated warnings and hearings, in which the city pleaded for time and told of soaring prison populations and limited budgets, he ordered the Tombs closed in 1974. Over nine years, the Tombs was gutted and rebuilt at a cost of $42 million. When reopened in 1983, it resembled a school dormitory, with windowed, air-conditioned cells, a library, a commissary, a nurse’s station, a television area and other amenities. The city spent $1 billion in the 1980s to expand and modernize jail facilities, but still had to house inmates on barges and in prefabricated structures. Judge Lasker ordered hundreds of inmates released or transferred to state prisons, and threatened officials with contempt when they resisted. In other cases, Judge Lasker in 1987 sentenced Mr. Boesky to three years in prison in Wall Street’s biggest insider-trading scandal. Mr. Boesky had pleaded guilty to a single felony, but paid $100 million to settle civil charges and agreed to cooperate with investigators. In 1993 Judge Lasker denied retrials for three former Black Panthers convicted in the 1971 slayings of Officers Joseph A. Piagentini and Waverly M. Jones. He agreed that ballistics evidence had not been provided to their lawyers in a 1975 trial, but said it was not clear that prosecutors had withheld the evidence or that it might have changed the outcome. The judge in 1971 upheld a class-action claim by lawyers for George P. Metesky, the notorious “mad bomber” who planted dozens of bombs in New York in the 1950s, challenging his confinement at a prison hospital instead of one run by health authorities. Judge Lasker ruled, and the Supreme Court agreed, that since Mr. Metesky had been found insane and not tried for crimes, he could not be deemed “dangerous.” He and 275 other patients were ordered moved. In 1969, Judge Lasker refused to block distribution of a satirical poster depicting a smiling, pregnant Girl Scout, with the admonition “Be Prepared.” He held that “the reputation of the plaintiff is so secure against the wry assault of the defendant that no such damage has been demonstrated.” Edward Morris Lasker, as he was originally known, was born in Hartsdale, N.Y., on July 17, 1917, the son of Harry and Peggy Lasker. His father was an advertising executive, and his uncle and aunt, Albert and Mary Lasker, established coveted prizes for achievement in medical research. His father died when he was a boy, and he was raised by his mother and her second husband, Isaac H. Levy, a lawyer. When Edward Morris was about 2, his grandfather Morris died, and his name was changed to Morris Edward Lasker in the elder man’s honor. Morris Lasker attended the Horace Mann School and graduated from Harvard in 1938 and Yale Law School in 1941. His Yale classmates included Gerald R. Ford, Potter Stewart and R. Sargent Shriver. After serving in the Army Air Forces in World War II, he joined the New York law firm Battle, Fowler, Levy & Nearman. In the mid-’50s he was a justice of the peace in New Castle, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was named to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Many legal observers came to regard him as a thoughtful, effective jurist who loved the courtroom and was reluctant to retire. After he became eligible to step down, he took senior status in 1983, allowing for a lighter caseload. A decade later he was transferred to Massachusetts district court, where he continued to work for more than 15 years. Judge Lasker, who never formally retired, maintained a full court calendar until about two years ago; until last summer, his son said, he continued to preside over nontrial cases as a court-appointed mediator. Judge Lasker was often called an “activist” judge, intervening in government executive affairs in ways that critics said usurped legislative functions. But he defended the role of litigation in prison reform, especially “when either the legislature, or the executive, or both, are failing in their duties to assure constitutionally adequate conditions,” he wrote in an article for The Pace Law Review in 2004. He cited “gratifying progress” but an “unfinished agenda,” and warned: “Today, some 30 to 35 years after the courts began to accept responsibility for assuring decent prison conditions, the corrections community faces an even larger and more difficult problem — that is what I call America’s love affair with imprisonment.”

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit of Huna Mori bar Mor Zutra, The Exilarch ("Resh Galuta") of Babylonian Jewry who “, was executed in Pumpeditha by order of the Persian emperor.”

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit of Rav Mesharshia bar Pekod

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit B'nei Yissachar, Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dynov (1783?-1841), author of the Chassidic work B'nei Yissacha who passed away in 5602 (1841).

2010: The 3 day-long Gateways Winter Retreat with Rabbi Mordechai Becher, Mrs. Debbie Greenblatt, Dr. Chaim Presby, Rabbi Jonathan Rietti, Mrs. Chaya Reich, Rabbi Mordechai Suchard and Rabbi Yonason Shippel is scheduled to enter into its second day at the Hanover Marriot in New Jersey.

2010: On Shabbat, Jews all over the world begin reading the Book of Shemot or Exodus.

2010: The Master Classes taught by American director Michael Mayer at the Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop in Tel Aviv come to an end.

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771): Bud Greenspan, award-winning filmmaker, writer, character and, arguably, the world's No. 1 fan of the Olympics, passed away today at the age of 84. Easily recognizable by his trademarks — big, black-rimmed glasses pushed up on his shaven head, a pipe and, depending on the season, a beige corduroy sport coat over a black turtleneck or a safari jacket over a polo shirt — Greenspan earned eight Emmy awards, a Peabody and generally high praise for his Cappy Productions films, most of which were Olympic documentaries. He was the recipient of an Olympic Order, the International Olympic Committee's highest award, and in 2004 was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame as a special contributor. Greenspan viewed the Games not necessarily as they were, more as he thought they should be. "They're two weeks of love," he told ESPN in 2002. "It's like Never Never Land. Like Robin Hood shooting his arrow through the other guy's arrow. It's a privilege to be associated with the best in the world. ... They bring things forward that they don't ordinarily do." Starting with the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Greenspan was the official Olympic filmmaker seven times, also recording Summer Games in 1996 in Atlanta and in 2000 in Sydney and Winter Olympics in 1988 at Calgary, 1994 at Lillehammer, 1998 at Nagano and 2002 at Salt Lake City. And when he wasn't the official documentarian, he acted, with his crew, as an independent filmmaker, which suited Greenspan just fine. Because if there was one thing he reveled in, it was being independent. Whatever else might be going on at any Olympic gathering — officiating scandals, cheating, doping, nationalistic and egotistic displays — Greenspan kept his lens focused on the athletes and the competition, looking for and presenting film stories that struck a chord with viewers, whether sports fans or casual watchers. He prided himself on skipping over what was being presented on network TV coverage in favor of tales of courage, valor and resilience, usually presented in stark simplicity. "I'm a storyteller," he said often. "We like to hear people say, 'Gee, I didn't know that.' " Brushing aside criticism that his work was journalistically incomplete and politically naive, his usual response was, "I choose to concentrate 100% of my time on the 90% of the Olympics that is good. ... I find the goodness in people, and I present them as people first and athletes second."He was especially partial to stories involving athletic perseverance, citing a pair of runners as prime examples, Tanzanian marathoner John Steven Aquari and British distance runner Dave Moorcroft. In the 1968 Mexico City Games, Aquari was the last man to finish the long race, hobbling into the darkening stadium more than an hour after the early finishers, his right leg bleeding and hastily bandaged, completing the marathon to the cheers of what few fans were left. Asked later by Greenspan why he had continued running, Aquari answered, "My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race. My country sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race." Moorcroft entered the 5,000-meter run in Los Angeles as the world-record holder, but also having recently suffered a stress fracture in his leg, a bout with hepatitis and a pelvic problem that interfered with his stride. He quickly fell off the pace and into last place, sprinting in ungainly fashion to keep from being lapped as the race ended. When Greenspan asked Moorcroft later why he had not quit, the runner replied, "Once you quit, it's easy to do it again. I did not want to set a precedent for the future." Greenspan's opinion? "People don't pay enough attention to those who come in fourth, seventh or 10th. It amazes me every time that someone can lose by a fraction of a second and no one pays attention to them." Greenspan knew firsthand about perseverance. Born Jonah J. Greenspan on Sept. 18, 1926, in New York City, he grew up with a lisp, which followed him into adolescence. Yet he chose to go into radio. He cured himself of the lisp and, by the time he was 21, having graduated from New York University, was sports director at WMGM, then the biggest sports station in the country. He also worked in the print medium as a sportswriter and in TV, first as a reporter, later as a producer. It was at the opera, however, that Greenspan developed his Olympic interest. Working occasionally as a non-singing extra at the Metropolitan Opera, he learned that a fellow extra, John Davis, had won a gold medal in weightlifting at the London Games in 1948. When Davis went to Helsinki to defend his title in 1952, Greenspan was there as a sportswriter and, taking a chance, hired a Finnish crew to film Davis' winning effort. After spending $5,000 to produce a 15-minute short, he went looking for a buyer. Coincidentally, the U.S. State Department was looking for examples of successful African Americans to counter Soviet propaganda during the Korean War about American racism, and it bought Greenspan's film for $35,000. "I thought, 'This is a good business,' " Greenspan told the Los Angeles Times in 1999. By the 1960s, Greenspan was peddling feature-length sports films, and in 1967, with his wife and business partner, Constance Anne "Cappy" Petrash, he formed his Cappy Productions company. "Cappy was a non-fan, but her outlook was perfect for the kind of thing we were doing," Greenspan told the Wall Street Journal in 1988. "She'd ask our subjects what books they read or whether they cooked, and the answers usually turned out to be wonderful. They gave our work a dimension others lacked." Cappy died of cancer in 1983, a year before Greenspan's first Games as official documentarian. Recalled Greenspan, "We didn't have children and she would say, 'The films will be our kids. ... They'll live long after we're here.' And that, in a sense, is immortality, and that is exactly what I think we're here for, to leave something for this generation and generations not yet born." (As reported by Mike Kupper)

2011: The Gateways Chanukah Retreat is scheduled to come to an end in Somerset, NJ.

2011: “Minus 16,” a work by Ohad Naharin, Israel’s most famous choreographer is scheduled to have its final performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center.

2011: Community Mitzvah Day sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans is scheduled to take place today.

2011: The 61st USY International Convention is scheduled to begin in Philadelphia, PA

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Man Seeks God: My Flirtations With the Divine’ by Eric Weiner, ‘Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790’ by Jonathan I. Israel and the recently released of paperback edition of ‘In The Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief’ by James Kugel.

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