This Day, December 27, In Jewish History

December 27 In Jewish History

175 BCE (Tevet 3585): This day marked the completion of the Septuagint translation of the Bible into the Greek language. According to a letter from Aristeas to Philocrates, 72 sages, (six from each Israelite tribe) were brought to by Ptolemy II Alexandria to translate the Bible into Greek. Based on the legend, each sage was isolated and wrote a separate translation, but when all 72 were compared, they were all identical. The text of the Septuagint and the Tanach are not the same. Some viewed this translation as a positive event because it showed an interest of Greek intellectuals in Jewish thought and philosophy. Others contend that this translation was necessary because the Jews of Alexandria had such limited knowledge of Hebrew that they could no longer read the text in the original.

1351: Birthdate of King Juan I of Aragon. In 1392, Juan granted amnesty to those who had attacked the Jews of Majorca and the Christians who sheltered them in 1391. At least 300 Jews were murdered. Juan granted the amnesty “because they had done it for the welfare of king and state; and he further declared all debts of the Christians to the Jews to be null and void.”

1459: Birthdate of John I Albert the Polish monarch also known as King Jan I Olbracht. In 1495, he transferred the Jews Cracow to the nearby royal city of Kazimierz, which helped to create a major European center for Diaspora Jewry. “With time it turned into a virtually separate and self-governed 34-acre Jewish Town, a model of every East European shtetl, within the limits of the gentile city of Kazimierz. As it developed into a safe haven for European Jewry, its population increased reaching a total of 4,500 Jews by 1630.

1480: In Spain, a second royal decree was issued directing the Mayor and other officials of Seville to assist the inquisitors in their work since they had shown an inclination to protect the converted Jews with to whom they were drawn either because of reasons of kinships or friendship.

1503: Followers of Zechariah of Kiev were burned in Moscow, on charges of Judaizing. This term refers to helping non-Jews convert to Judaism

1504: "Proselytizing" Jews in Moscow and Kiev were expelled after a few high officials converted to Judaism.

1657: Three years after the first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam and dealt with the bigotry of Peter Stuyvesant, a group Englishman living in the Dutch colony submitted a petition to the Governor-General requesting the lifting of the ban on Quaker worship. Known as the Flushing Remonstrance, they were greeted with even greater hostility by “Peg-leg Pete” than he had shown to the Jews.

1812(24th of Tevet, 5573): Shneur Zalman of Liadi founder of Chabad Hasidism passed away (date based on adjusted secular calendar). Born in 1745, Shneur Zalman of Liadi was a descendant of the mystic and philosopher Rabbi Judah Loew (known as the "Maharal of Prague"). He was a prominent disciple of Rabbi Dovber of Mezeritch, the "Great Maggid" who was in turn a major disciple of the founder of Hasidism Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer known as the Baal Shem Tov ("Master [of the] Good Name"). After the death of Rabbi Dovber of Mezeritch, his students dispersed over Europe. Rabbi Shneur Zalman became the leader of Hasidism in Lithuania, and is accepted as one of the great Hasidic leaders. The movement he founded was moved to the town of Lubavitch in present-day Belarus by his son and successor Rabbi Dovber Schneersohn. In 1940 the Chabad Lubavitch movement moved its headquarters to Brooklyn, New York in the United States with branches all over the world staffed by its own Lubavitch-trained, and ordained, rabbis with their wives and children. He involved himself in opposing Napoleon's advance on Russia and supporting the Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel, then under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Due to false charges from his Misnagdim opponents in Vilna, he was imprisoned by the Czar on charges of supporting the Ottoman Empire, since he advocated sending charity to the Ottoman territory of Palestine. The day of his acquittal and release, the 19th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, is celebrated as the "Hasidic New Year" by Lubavitch Hasidim, who have a festive meal and communal pledges to learn the whole of the Talmud known as "Chalukat Ha'Shas." Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi is well known for his systematic exposition of Hasidic Jewish philosophy, entitled Likkutei Amarim, and more popularly known as the Tanya, first published in 1797. (The fuller and more authoritative version of this work dates from 1814.) Due to the popularity of this book, Hasidic Jews often refer to Shneur Zalman as the Baal HaTanya.He is also well known for his work Shulchan Aruch HaRav, his version of the classic Shulkhan Arukh, an authoritative code of Jewish law and custom. The work states the decided halakha, as well as the underlying reasoning. The Shulchan Aruch HaRav is used by Lubavitch Hasidism. However, citations to this work are sometimes found in non-Lubavitch sources such as the Mishnah Berurah and the Ben Ish Chai. Rabbi Zalman is one of three authorities on whom Shlomo Ganzfried based his Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh. Descendants of Rabbi Shneur Zalman adopted the names Schneersohn or Schneerson to accommodate Napoleonic edicts that required all subjects to take permanent surnames. (Prior to Napoleon's conquests and the winds of Enlightenment he brought in his wake, Jews only had their traditional names such as Shneur ben (son of) Boruch.) The last two Rebbes of Chabad Lubavitch, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880-1950) and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), adhered strictly to their family surnames.

1854: An article entitled “Coming Events” published today reported on the prominent role that Benjamin Disraeli will be playing in the upcoming session of Parliament as the lead of “the loyal opposition.” Among other things, he is expected to join with Lord Derby in support Parliamentary reform along the lines of the Chartist Movement. This will set him on a collision course with Lord John Russell who talks more about reform than he delivers. “Disraeli will probably propose that every householder shall have the elective franchise and that representation shall be based upon population. If he he goes to this extent Russell will be ‘nowhere’ in the race and Disraeli will become champion of popular rights.” [Did Disraeli’s Jewish roots explain the fact that a leader of the Conservative Party was a leading proponent for this most liberal reform? Is there a connection between social justice and Judaism that a trip to the baptismal font cannot wash away?]

1855: An article published today entitled “Do You Eat Pork?” reported that “physicians have just discovered that the tape worm only troubles those who eat pork” According to The Gazette Medicale “ the Hebrews are never troubled with it” while pork butchers are “peculiarly liable to it and dogs that are fed Pork “are universally so afflicted.”

1861: Rabbi Abraham Fischel wrote a letter to Henry I. Hart describing the conditions of the troops encamped around Washington, DC which he has visited while waiting to hear from Congressional leaders about his efforts to get the law changed so that Jews can serve as Chaplains in the Union Army.

1868: Rumanian Jews were excluded from the medical profession.

1874: It was reported today that Rabbi Moses Dimant who had been jailed for failing to provide the four dollars in court ordered support for his wife Liebe was released today on a writ of habeas corpus. The writ was obtained by the wife who said she no desire to see her husband in jail.

1874(19th of Tevet, 5635): Asher Jacob Covo, Chief Rabbi of Salonica who was born in 1797, passed away.

1878(1st of Tevet, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1879: In New York City, as part of Hospital Saturday, Jewish congregations collected pledges estimated to total more than $20,000. In years gone by, this money would have gone exclusively to Mt. Sinai Hospital. This year the money will go to a city-wide fundraising effort for all participating hospitals. The total raised yesterday does not count contributions by individual Jewish donors or donations made by businesses owned by Jews.

1891: Based on information that first appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette it was reported today that “Notes of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land” in which F.R. Oliphant describes his visit to Palestine has recently been published in Great Britain. Oliphant recorded the final years of Laurence Oliphant which included a variety of anecdotes involving Germans, Druses and Romanian Jews whom the older Oliphant had rescued from economic distress when he found living on the streets of Haifa.

1893: The American Jewish Historical Society opens its second annual meeting at the Columbia College Library Building in New York City.

1896: Birthdate of German writer and playwright Carl Zuckmayer. Zuckmayer did not think of himself as being Jewish until the rise of Hitler. His mother was the daughter of Protestant church councilor who had converted from Judaism. This made him Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis and no doubt accounted for his fleeing to the United States where he spent World War II.

1906: Birthdate of actor Oscar Levant

1907: Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), granted letters of protection to Rabbi Haim Nahoum and his team who were sent by the Alliance Israelite Universelle to study the condition of the Falashim (Ethiopian Jews).

1908: Dr. Herbert Friedenwald, Secretary of the American Jewish Committee said today that Russian newspapers he had just received showed that Czarist state had resumed the persecution of its Jewish citizens.


1908: Based on a letter whose contents were made public today in London, Israel Zangwill has denied reports coming from the United States that he is planning on turning his play “The Melting Pot” into a novel which would be dedicated to President Theodore Roosevelt.
1913: The Sisterhood of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue will hold its annual Chanukah celebration at the Astor Hotel.

1916(2nd of Tevet, 5677): 8th & final day of Chanukah

1916: In New York City, the packing companies which slaughter cattle in accord with the laws of Kashrut met with representatives of the Federation of Retail Kosher Butchers and agreed to sell them kosher meat for 15 cents a pound. Last week, they had been charging 18 cents a pound which led to a boycott by the kosher butchers. The packing companies further promised that before they raised prices again, they would meet with the butchers and explain the reason for the increase.

1917: Colonel Ronald Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor of Jerusalem,viewed the distant mountains of Moab in the glow of the sunset. For the first time since the Crusades, 600 hundred years ago, a Christian power controls Jerusalem. From the Jewish point of view, the Christian power was Great Britian which, under the terms of the Balfour Declaration, was committed to the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.

1919(5th of Tevet, 5680): Sir Charles Solomon Henry passed away. Born in 1860, he “was an Australian merchant and businessman who lived mostly in Britain and sat as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1906-1918.”

1921: In Atlanta, GA, Alan and Edith Gavronski Lipshutz, gave birth to Robert J. Lipshutz, the White House Counsel for President Jimmy Carter “who played an important behind-the-scenes role in negotiations leading to the Camp David peace accords.”

1923: Arthur Hays and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger to their third child, Judith Peixotto Sulzberger, who gained fame as “Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger, a physician whose philanthropy led to the creation of a center for genome studies in her name at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons..” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1926: Latkin Square in Bronx was named for the first US Jewish soldier to die in WWI

1927: At the behest of Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, is expelled from the Communist Party.

1927: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s “Show Boat" premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. If you need more of a Jewish connection than Kern and Hammerstein, this Broadway hit was based on the novel of the same name written by Edna Ferber. When Edna Ferber published Show Boat in 1926, she was already an established writer, with eleven books, two stage plays, and a Pulitzer Prize (for So Big, 1925) to her credit. But when the musical adaptation of the novel opened on Broadway with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Jerome Kern, it was unlike any earlier production. Combining music and dance with fully formed characters and serious themes, “Show Boat” departed from both operetta and the musical comedy revue, establishing a new style of American musical. Ferber's work in Show Boat and in later novels grew from a keen eye and a gift for observation of the world around her. Raised in often precarious economic circumstances in small towns in Iowa and Wisconsin, Ferber always identified with the lives of ordinary working people. She believed that they had "a kind of primary American freshness and assertiveness." She tried to communicate those qualities and do justice to the lives of working folks in all of her writing. Ferber's work also drew on the oppression she felt she had experienced as both a woman and a Jew. Subjected to anti-Semitism as a child, she felt she had gained strength from facing her tormentors. Similarly, she believed that women's experience of social limitations led them to develop special strengths. Many of her early works featured strong women overcoming social obstacles to professional success. Show Boat, which tackled the theme of interracial marriage, also addressed the issue of social constraints. After its successful Broadway debut, “Show Boat” ran for 572 performances, and was later made into a film twice. Revival performances continue to entertain audiences across the country.

1930(7th of Tevet, 5691): Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, son of German born Anglo-Jewish chemist Ludwig Mund and Frieda, née Löwenthal Mund passed away.

1932: Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City. This American cultural landmark was a project produced by three people – multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and two Jews, Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who previously opened the Roxy Theatre in 1927 and RCA chairman David Sarnoff.

1935: Birthdate of Rabbi Raymond Apple who served as the Senior Rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Sydney between 1972 and 2005]. In this role, he was one of Australia's highest profile rabbis and the leading spokesman for Judaism in Australia

1935: Birthdate of Dr Victor Brailovsky a native of Moscow, a computer scientist and MK who served as Minister of Science and Technology. Bailovsky was a refusnik who spent three years in a Soviet prison because he wanted to make Aliyah. He finally was allowed to leave for Israel in 1987.

1936: Birthdate of Doctor Lee Salk.

1937: The Palestine Post reported two British army casualties: an officer and a private, both of whom fell while searching for arms in Arab villages in Galilee. Rafael Yavneh, 26, was shot and badly wounded at km. 16 of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road in the fourth Arab attack on Jewish transport within a week. The Arab Defense Party met at the house of Bisharra Debbas, a Christian and the former governor of Acre, and appealed to stop terror and to consider a new Arab representative body - an Arab Higher Council - as the alternative to the radical Husseini Arab Higher Committee.

1937: The Haganah decides to establish Field Companies under the command of Itzhak Sadeh.

1938(5th of Tevet, 5699: Poet Osip Mandelstam died in one of the labor camps of Stalin’s Gulag.

1943: The keel of the SS Meyer London, a “liberty ship” was laid today. The ship was named in honor of Meyer London, a Jewish political leader and reformer who was one of only two Socialists to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Ironically, London had voted against the declaration of war that led to American involvement in World War I.

1944: Arrow Cross members came to the shelter run by Sister Sara Salkahazi's. The Hungarian nun was active in hiding Jews from the Arrow Cross and the Nazis. Salkahazi and four Jewish women who did not manage to either hide or flee were taken to the bank of the Danube, where the Arrow Cross men stripped them, shot them and threw their bodies into the river. At the site where Salkahazi and those who shared her fate were executed, not far from the tourist mecca of Budapest's main market, a modest memorial has been erected. Her name and memory also grace a tree on the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And now, the Catholic Church has also recognized the importance of her deeds.

1945: The World Bank was created with the signing of an agreement by 28 nations. Among Jews associated with the bank were Eugene Meyer, the first president, James Wolfensohn and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom served as Presidents between 1995 and 2007 and Stanley Fischer, Lawrence Summers and Joseph E. Stiglitz who served as Chief Economist from 1988 to 2000.

1945: The British authorities in Palestine blamed the Haganah for bomb blasts and gun battles in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, including an attack on a Tel Aviv arms depot.

1945: “Terrorists struck tonight in the heart of Jerusalem, blowing up the Civil Investigation Department building in the Russian compound near the main post office. At least three policemen are dead and six injured.” Other attacks were reported on a police station in Jaffa and installation of the Royal Engineers Workshops in Tel Aviv.

1945: “In the greatest mass arrests in the history of Palestine more than 1,500 people were taken into custody tonight” after unidentified people blew up the British police station in the center of Jerusalem.

1947: It was reported today that the British police in policed had revealed that the headmaster of the government school in Ramallah had received a warned that the Irgun would blow up the school.

194714th of Tevet, 5708): A convoy that counted Gold Meir (future Prime Minister of Israel) as one of its passengers came under attack. Seven Jews were killed by the Arab attackers.

1947(14th of Tevet, 5708): Hans Beyth, a central figure in welcoming newly arrived immigrant children to Eretz Israel, was one of seven Jews killed by Arab snipers as they traveled in convey coming from the coast up to Jerusalem. Beyth had just completed arrangements for the care of 20,000 young survivors of the Holocaust and other youngsters from Europe.

1947: Houses belonging to Jews and Arabs were set on fire today in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv region.

1947: As communal strife continued to intensify, troops had to be used to end a six hour between Jews and Arabs near Tulkarm.

1947: A private source in Haifa said tonight that in the last 48 hours the verified deaths included nine Jews, eight Arab and two Britons. Forty-three people were reported to have been wounded during the same period.

1948: Members of the Moslem Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Fahmy Norashy Pashy because of Egypt’s failure to win the war in Palestine.

1948: Israel bombs Arab forces in Gaza.

1948: Fighting between Israeli and Egyptians in Fallujah.

1948: During Operation Horev, an Israeli armored brigade attack al-Auja. The successful attack led to the surrender of Egyptian forces in the area.

1948: Birthdate of actress Tovah Feldshuh

1950(18th of Tevet, 5711): Max Beckmann German-born painter/graphic artist passed away at the age of 66.

1951: Birthdate of Henryk Halkowski historian, journalist, essayist and translator of Jewish origin, scholar of Hasidism and the history of Krakow's Kazimierz.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel Rokach, mayor of Tel Aviv for the past 17 years, had relinquished his post to Haim Levanon, the Deputy Mayor.

1952: Birthdate of David Knopfler Scottish-born guitarist, singer and songwriter. David and his brother Mark were part of Dire Straits.

1953(21st of Tevet, 5714) Poet Julian Tuwim passed away. Born in 1894 in Łódź, “he studied law and philosophy at Warsaw University. In 1919 Tuwim co-founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Antoni Słonimski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. He was a major figure in Polish literature, and was also known for his contribution to children's literature.”

1964: Elinor Bluemnthal married John Muir Gold.

1966: Birthdate of former professional football player and wrestler, Bill Goldberg. In 1998, Goldberg did a Koufax when he refused to wrestle on Rosh Hashanah.

1970: After 2,844 performances at the St. James Theatre, David Merrick’s “Holly Dolly” came to a close.

1970: The Golani Brigade took part in a retaliatory strike came against the village Yatar, a major guerrilla base.

1974: The Dear Abby Show ended its run on CBS radio after 11 years. Dear Abby is the pen name for a Jewess from Iowa, who along with her sister became the twin queens of advice during the last half of the 20th century.

1976: Malcom Toon left his post as U.S Ambassador to Israel.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Ismailia that the Begin-Sadat summit meeting made definite progress, despite the apparent Egyptian disappointment over the lack of an anticipated joint declaration of principles. While the US proposed a timely Israeli-Egyptian mediation, settlers at Ofra declared war on Begin's possible "occupied territories" concessions.

1981: In this excerpt from his “Travel Advisory,” Robert J. Dunphy describes the “dig” at Bet Shean and provides historic perspective for what is being unearthed in modern day Israel.
The trumpets sound as the gladiator enters the arena. The crowd roars and cries for blood as the man-eating beasts are unleashed and the contest is about to begin. The scene is easy to envision in Bet Shean, Israel, where a Roman amphitheater is being unearthed. Built around 200 A.D., the arena served as the site for gladiatorial combat, circuses and sports contests for more than two centuries. The first-century historian Josephus, whose writings also detailed the dramatic story of Masada, also in present-day Israel, mentioned the existence of several amphitheaters in the area but that in Bet Shean is the only one that has been found to date.The elliptical structure is 120 yards long and 73 yards wide. The arena floor was below ground level, and a high wall protected spectators from the wild animals in the gladiatorial contests. The three front rows of seats were hewn from white limestone and above them were wooden seats. The outer wall was made of black basalt. The dig is situated several hundred yards from a Roman theater, which for years has been one of Israel's most impressive tourist attractions. With the discovery of the amphitheater, the entire area will be converted into a giant antiquities park. Bet Shean, about two hours by car from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, was the site of a Roman garrison and the principal city in the north of the country.

1985: Abu Nida, the Palestinian terrorist organization, kill eighteen people during attacks inside the airports in Rome and Vienna. According to some, the attack was a fallback. The terrorists had really wanted to hijack El Al planes and destroy them over Tel Aviv (this is 16 years before 9/11).

1987: Three Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated a short distance into Israel from Jordan Friday night and were captured alive by Israeli troops after a shootout, the Israeli Army spokesman announced today. One of the guerrillas was wounded during the clash in a wheat field of an Israeli border settlement, but no Israeli soldiers or civilians were hurt, said the army spokesman, who released the account this afternoon.

1987: ''Furniture Making in East London: 1830 to 1980 '' an exhibition which is part of a celelebration of London’s East End’s Jewish heritage comes to a close at Geffrye Museum

1988: Yossi Ahimeir, an aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, said today that the Prime Minister may ask the United States and the Soviet Union to sponsor Middle East peace talks. Mr. Ahimeir said in a telephone interview that Mr. Shamir would make Moscow's renewal of diplomatic relations a condition of his proposal. The Soviet Union broke ties with Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

1992(3rd of Tevet, 5753): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1992: The standoff between Lebanon and Israel over the fate of 415 Palestinian deportees trapped in a snow-covered valley in southern Lebanon, continued today as both sides again rejected appeals to allow relief agencies to deliver food or medicine.Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose Government has blocked relief assistance from reaching the group since Monday, asked Washington to intervene with Israel to allow aid to reach the Palestinians. But at the same time, his Government turned down a request by the deportees to give the ill and injured treatment in Lebanese hospitals. An envoy of Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said he supported the Lebanese Government's decision to refuse entrance to the men. He said that if the deportees were accepted by the Lebanese, Israel might carry out new mass deportations across the border. Israel expelled the Palestinians last week, saying they had links to to two Islamic fundamentalist groups that Israel contends are behind attacks on soldiers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The expulsion came after five Israeli servicemen were killed in attacks for which the militant group Hamas took responsibility.

1995(4th of Tevet, 5756): Shura Cherkassky passed away. Born in the Ukraine in 1909, his family found refuge in the United States during the Russian Revolution. The brilliant classical pianist performed almost until the end of his life.

1998: The New York Times Book Section includes a review of On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov which tells the story of how a Jew born in a town south of Kracow became one Hollywood’s leading writers and directors.

1999(18th of Tevet, 5760): Leonard Goldstein passed away. Born in 1905, he became President of ABC. He orchestrated the merger of his United Paramount Theatres with ABC in 1953 and he headed the merged company called American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres. The company was renamed American Broadcasting Companies in 1968. In 1974, Mr. Goldenson received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York." The Leonard H. Goldenson Theater at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences building in North Hollywood, California is named in his honor.

2005: The New York Times featured carried a feature on Siegfried Sassoon, “A Wounded Poet Who Sang the Crucible of a Generation.” Sassoon’s father was part of the wealthy Sephardic Sassoon clan. Siegfried’s mother was a member of the Church of England. After his father deserted the family at the when he was four, Siegfried was raised in the faith of his mother, even acquiring that twinge of genteel anti-Semitism that was part and parcel of the upper reaches of English society.

2005: Under the title “Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein’s Strangest Theory,” the New York Times reported on the impact of the paper published seventy years ago by Einstein, Boris Podlosky and Nathan Rosen that provided the cornerstone for the new field of quantum information.

2006: The exhibition of Jerusalem painter Maureen Fain at the Artura Studio in Jaffa comes to an end.

2006: Heavy snow fell on Jerusalem forcing the Egged bus company to shut down its routes “citing dangerous road conditions. Snow began falling on the Golan Heights in the early morning hours and by evening reach as far south as Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev. Although it was technically too late, many Israelis began humming that old standard “I’m Dreaming of Chanukah Ch-e-vair.” (The last sentence is mean to be funny.)

2007: In Anaheim, California, the USY International Convention comes to an end.

2008: In a ritual rarity, three Torah scrolls are used because of Shabbat, Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh Tevet. The Prophetic readings are equally unusual due to Shabbat Chanukah, Machor Chodesh and Rosh Chodesh.

2008: Just days after the cabinet gave the military final approval to counter ongoing Palestinian rocket fire against communities in the western Negev; the IDF launched a massive operation, striking Hamas installations throughout the Gaza Strip on Saturday. The wide-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip was codenamed 'Operation Cast Lead,' after a Hanukkah poem by H.N. Bialik referring to a "dreidel cast from solid lead." At least 225 people were reported killed - the majority of them Hamas operatives - and nearly 400 wounded in the attacks. It was not clear if the aerial offensive would be coupled with a ground operation. Asked if Hamas political leaders might be targeted next, military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said "Any Hamas target is a target." Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a press conference that the IAF had succeeded in eliminating senior Hamas commanders during the offensive. According to witnesses, among the dead was Hamas police chief Maj.-Gen. Tawfik Jaber. Less than two hours after IAF air strikes hammered Hamas installations throughout the Gaza Strip, Palestinian terrorists launched on Saturday what many expect to be the beginning of a massive bombardment of Israeli territory. Over 80 rockets and mortar shells struck areas throughout the western Negev. In Netivot, 58-year-old Beber Vaknin was killed, one person was seriously wounded, and four others sustained light to moderate injuries when their house was hit by a rocket. All the wounded were evacuated to Soroka hospital in Beersheba. Later, a rocket hit a house in the community of Mivtahim, seriously wounding one person and lightly wounding another. A Magen David Adom team treated the wounded at the scene. In Ashkelon, at least 10 rocket strikes were reported, with one hitting an apartment building. For the first time ever, a rocket struck Kiryat Gat. The "Color Red" warning siren also sounded in Ashdod, although the location of a rocket strike had yet to be reported. Despite the massive casualties, Hamas remained defiant, vowing revenge and calling on all other Palestinian factions to join in the fight. "Today we are stronger then we've ever been," one spokesperson for the group said at a press conference. "We won't raise the white flag, we won't give anything up, we won't retreat." "We call on the Arab states in the region to take a stance against this massacre and not to be satisfied with just condemnations," he continued. At 11:30 am, over 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters swept into Gaza airspace and dropped over 100 bombs on 50 targets scattered throughout the Gaza Strip. The planes reported "Alpha Hits," which in IAF lingo means the bombs scored direct hits on their targets, including Hamas bases, training camps, headquarters and offices. Thirty minutes later, after the aircraft left Gaza's airspace, a second wave of 60 fighter jets and attack helicopters swept in, striking at 60 targets, including underground Kassam launchers - placed inside bunkers and missile silos - that had been fitted with timers. Hamas's Interior Ministry said that all security compounds in Gaza were destroyed. IAF attacks continued throughout the evening, with one strike reportedly killing three members of a rocket launching cell in the north of the Strip and wounding four others.

2008: The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long line of literary fakers and bringing down with a crash his story - embraced by Oprah Winfrey, among others - of meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp."I wanted to bring happiness to people," Rosenblat said in a statement issued today through his agent, Andrea Hurst. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world." Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence had been scheduled to come out in February, but Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), withdrew the memoir Saturday following allegations by scholars, friends and family members that his tale was untrue.Berkley Books is canceling publication of Angel at the Fence after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, the publisher said in a statement. Berkley will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work. A couple of days earlier, Berkley had offered a qualified defense of the book, saying it was a work of memory, a story whose truth was known only to the author. Hurst released her own statement, saying that Rosenblat had acknowledged to her that part of his memoir was not true. "He'd invented the crux of this amazing love story - about the girl at the fence who threw him an apple."Hurst, interviewed Saturday by The Associated Press, declined to offer details of Rosenblat's book deal, but said the amount of money was not a great deal. She said that rights to the book also had been sold to publishers in Poland, France and other countries. Rosenblat, 79, a resident of the Miami area, was virtually unknown to the general public until the 1990s when he began speaking of how he came to know his wife, Roma Radzicky. According to Rosenblat and his wife, he was a prisoner at a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Nazi Germany and she was a young Jewish girl whose family was pretending to be Christian and lived nearby. For months, they would meet on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence, where she would sneak him apples and bread. Rosenblat was then transferred to another camp and the two lost touch, until the 1950s, when they were reunited by accident - on a blind date - in New York. They soon married and earlier this year celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The Rosenblats were interviewed twice over the years by Winfrey, who has called their romance the single greatest love story ... we've ever told on the air. They have inspired a children's book and a feature film adaptation is scheduled to begin next year. Unlike such fake Holocaust memoirists as Misha Defonseca (Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years) and Benjamin Wilkomirski (Fragments), Rosenblat is indeed a survivor and records prove that he was at the Buchenwald camp. But scholars doubted his story, noting that the layout of the sub-camp made such an encounter at the fence virtually unthinkable (They would have met right by an SS barracks). A recent article in The New Republic quoted friends and family members who were outraged by Rosenblat, so much so that one of his brothers stopped speaking to him.

2008 (30 Kislev 5769) Beber Vaknin, aged 57, was killed by missile in his hometown Netivot when he went out of his house on Saturday morning.

2009(10th of Tevet, 5770): Joan Rodker, a longtime left-wing activist in Great Britain who had contact over decades with writers such as Doris Lessing, Jessica Mitford and others passed away today at the age of 95. Rodker “was seen as a ‘go‑to’ person among the London antifascist left,” the Guardian wrote, and the “convivial hostess” of London’s radicals, according to the Telegraph. Rodker was born in London to poet John Rodker, one of the Whitechapel Boys, a group of avant-garde Jewish artists and writers who helped define British Modernism, and Sonia Cohen, a dancer and artist’s model. Her parents sent her to an orphanage and she was raised in institutional settings, including a school in Prague, where she became influenced by left-wing and communist ideals. She traveled in a theater company throughout the Soviet Union during the years of collectivization. After World War II, Rodker campaigned on behalf of blacklisted singer Paul Robeson to travel outside the United States, and against the execution of American communist spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. She worked in British television as a producer and writer, including the popular series “Armchair Thriller,” and directed a film about Mexico. Screenwriter Clancy Sigal said Bodker “had a talent for triggering creativity in others that often eluded her own literary work,” and said she was the model for Molly Jacobs, in Lessing's award-winning 1962 novel “The Golden Notebook.” Rodker’s papers, in the University of Texas archives, document her relationships with Lessing and many other literary and political figures, including those associated with her father’s generation, as well.

2009(10th of Tevet, 5770: Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

2009(10th of Tevet, 5770: Yahrzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin)

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacci, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power — A Dispatch From the Beach by Gerald Posner and Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic by Michael Scammell.

2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller

2009: Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is expected to deliver his recommendations to the Supreme Court about "mehadrin" bus lines - which designate separate seating for men and women - some residents of the capital plan to make their voices heard on the subject.

2009: The Yerushalmim movement, along with members of the New Israel Fund and Meretz, is scheduled to lead a demonstration against the continued existence of the “hehadrin” bus lines. The demonstration, which is scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. in the capital's Government Quarter, is meant to pressure the transportation minister to reverse what protesters have labeled "gender segregation" and "religious coercion" on the buses. Jerusalem City Councilwoman Rachel Azaria, a member of the Yerushalmim movement and vocal critic of the mehadrin lines wants “the government ministers to understand that the public is not going to accept the situation as it is now." She says she hopes “this protest will lead to the dismantling of gender segregation on the bus lines. A number of interpretations of Jewish law make clear the need for the separation of men and women, within the context of modesty. A group of Jerusalem-based haredim demanded such provisions be made on a number of bus lines nearly 10 years ago, and Egged agreed. Today, some 55 such lines are in full operation throughout the country. Azaria and the groups she support contend that "There is no room for such bus lines in a democratic country.

2009: The United Synagogue Youth (USY) International Convention opens in Chicago, IL.

2009: In the following article entitled “Sigmund Freud saved by Nazi admirer,” Richard Woods reviews The Escape of Sigmund Freud by David Cohen.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was saved from Hitler’s persecution of the Jews by a long-standing Nazi who was fascinated with his work, a new book reveals. The fate of Freud and his family in Vienna hung in the balance after Hitler’s forces took over Austria in 1938. The psychoanalyst was first protected, then helped to escape to Britain, by Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi who had been put in charge of his assets. In twists of Freudian complexity, Sauerwald was put on trial after the second world war accused of plundering the Freud family wealth — only to be saved after the intervention of one of Freud’s daughters. The full story has emerged thanks to research by David Cohen, author of The Escape of Sigmund Freud, published by JR Books. By the 1930s Freud was famous in Europe and the United States for his pioneering work on the unconscious. He had founded the International Psychoanalytical Association with Carl Jung and helped to start a publishing business. His success had brought financial rewards and the family lived comfortably in Vienna. However, the Nazis ordered all Jews to declare their wealth and asserted that “all Jewish assets are assumed to have been improperly acquired”. “Kommissars” were appointed to oversee the process. Sauerwald dealt with Freud. According to Cohen, he controlled not only the family assets, “but in effect their destiny”. Luckily, he was no ordinary Nazi. Although he had made bombs for the Nazi movement, he had also studied medicine, chemistry and law. At the University of Vienna he had been a student of Professor Josef Herzig, who often visited Freud to play cards. That friendship seems to have influenced Sauerwald but so, too, did Freud’s writings. “The books had an extraordinary impact on him,” Cohen writes, “an impact Sauerwald knew he must not let his Nazi superiors suspect.” It was a dangerous line to tread. While Sauerwald used to knock politely on Freud’s door, the SS barged in. At one point SS troops hauled off Anna Freud, one of Sigmund’s daughters, for interrogation. Cohen reveals: “Sauerwald did not disclose to his superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts abroad. Instead, he took the evidence back to his own apartment, where he had a panzerkassette, a locked box for documents.” As tensions grew and war loomed, Freud decided to flee. To do so he needed an exit visa. For that he relied on Sauerwald. The Nazis wanted all the books of his publishing business to be destroyed. “Sauerwald did not want to see the books destroyed,” Cohen writes. “They were the root documents of psychoanalysis.” Instead, Sauerwald and an accomplice smuggled them to the Austrian national library, where they were hidden. Dismayed by an order to turn Freud’s home into an institute for the study of Aryan superiority, Sauerwald signed Freud’s exit visa. He also helped to raise money; in June 1938 Freud left Vienna on the Orient Express. Freud settled in London, telling one newspaper “all my money and property in Vienna is gone” — without mentioning his accounts elsewhere. In September 1939 he died of cancer. After the war suspicions arose that Sauerwald had made off with the family wealth. Harry Freud, a nephew of Sigmund and an officer in the US army, had Sauerwald arrested and put on trial. Sauerwald’s wife wrote to Anna Freud in London begging her to explain what Sauerwald had done. Anna replied: “There was not any doubt that your husband used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father.” She also wrote to Harry Freud: “[The] truth is that we really owe our lives and our freedom to [Sauerwald]. Without him we would never have got away.” Sauerwald was released and lived until 1970. Cohen said: “There are three main reasons why Sauerwald was so keen to help Freud. He had been the devoted student of a man who had been very close friends with Freud. He understood just how important a man Freud was academically and, finally, I think a little bit of money may have changed hands down the line.” This weekend David Freud, the Tory peer and great-grandson of Sigmund, said: “I didn’t know about this until I read the book. It was a pretty ambiguous relationship. But I think it rings true that he helped Sigmund in the way suggested.”
2010: The USY International Convention is scheduled to open today in Orlando, FL.

2010: Today marks the second anniversary of the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, the IDF’s operation in Gaza which was aimed at stopping the daily rocket attacks by Gaza-based terrorists towards southern Israel.

2010: In King County (Seattle), twelve buses were scheduled to hit the streets carrying an ad reading “Israeli War Crimes: Your tax dollars at work” with an image of a group of children next to it, showing one little boy staring out at the viewer while the others gawk at a demolished building. The ads were paid for by the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign. The ads did not run because King County Executive Dow Constantine said that the proposed ads may be a potential source of disruption to local public transit and implemented an interim policy that bans the Seattle transit service from accepting any new advertising that is non-commercial.

2010: An Israeli activist was sentenced to three months in jail today for his part in a 2008 protest by Tel Aviv cyclists opposed to the blockade of Gaza. The activist, Jonathan Pollak, is a 28-year-old leader of Anarchists Against the Wall, an Israeli group that joins Palestinian protesters in weekly demonstrations against the security barrier Israel is building on West Bank land it has occupied since 1967. He also works to draw media attention to the West Bank protests through another group, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee. Joseph Dana, an Israeli blogger and activist who works with Mr. Pollak, explained in a post on the blog +972 that his colleague was arrested in January 2008, as he took part in a “Critical Mass bicycle ride through the streets of Tel Aviv against the siege on Gaza. During the protest, Pollak was arrested by plain-clothes police who recognized him from previous protests and because, as claimed in court, they assumed he was the organizer and figurehead of the event.” Mr. Pollak’s conviction for illegal assembly at the bike protest activated an older three-month suspended sentence imposed on him for protesting the construction of the security barrier. The activist refused to apologize for his role in the protest or ask for leniency in a statement to the court. “I have no doubt that what we did was right and, if anything, not sufficient considering what is being done in our name,” Mr. Pollak said later in a telephone interview with Ana Carbajosa of The Guardian. “If I have to go to prison to resist the occupation, I will do it gladly.” Israel’s Ynet News reported that Dan Yakir, the chief legal counsel for The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, criticized the sentence, saying: The fact that Pollak was the only one arrested, even though he behaved just like the rest of the protesters, and the fact that bicycle demonstrations are usually held without police involvement raises a strong suspicion regarding personal persecution and a severe blow for freedom of expression, just because of his opinions. A prison sentence in the wake of a protest is an extreme and exaggerated punishment. In an interview with Russia Today, a Kremlin-financed broadcaster, Joseph Dana claimed that the jailing of Mr. Pollak was “a clear attempt to silence dissent on the Israeli left and part of a broader attack on non-violence” as a means of protesting Israeli policies.

2010: Israeli archaeologists said today they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans. A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old. "It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found. He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution." The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel. Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human. "Based on the evidence they've sited, it's a very tenuous and frankly rather remote possibility," Mellars said. He said the remains are more likely related to modern man's ancient relatives, the Neanderthals. According to today's accepted scientific theories, modern humans and Neanderthals stemmed from a common ancestor who lived in Africa about 700,000 years ago. One group of descendants migrated to Europe and developed into Neanderthals, later becoming extinct. Another group stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens - modern humans. Teeth are often unreliable indicators of origin, and analyses of skull remains would more definitively identify the species found in the Israeli cave, Mellars said. Gopher, the Israeli archaeologist, said he is confident his team will find skulls and bones as they continue their dig. The prehistoric Qesem cave was discovered in 2000, and excavations began in 2004. Researchers Gopher, Ran Barkai and Israel Hershkowitz published their study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
2010: An article entitled “Disaster Relief Group Still Finding A Need” published in today’s Cedar Rapids Gazette described the efforts to help the needy residents of Cedar Rapids who were displaced by the Floods of 2008. Jeff Schneider, a member of Temple Judah, has played a leading role in the effort which has “delivered 10 semi-trailer loads of furnuiture” to people who literally lost everything. Jeff started Temple Judah Disaster Relief which after two years of work is now faced with meeting the challenge as sources of funding in the community have dried up. While Jeff and three of the volunteers who inspired him – Tom Hill, Marie Hill and Rob Hill – continue to look for in-kind donations of old furniture, etc. they have not made any appeal for funds although volunteer contributions would be greatly appreciated.

2010: A two-day symposium on the history of the Jews in Indonesia being held at the University of Haifa came to an end to today. “The gathering included many firsthand accounts by former community members…who spoke about what it was like being part of a tiny Jewish minority in what is now the most populous Muslim country in the world.”

2010(27th of Tevet, 5771): Alfred E. Kahn, a Cornell University economist best known as the chief architect and promoter of deregulating the nation’s airlines, despite opposition from industry executives and unions alike, died today at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 93. Mr. Kahn, a leading regulatory scholar who wielded his influence in both government and academia, helped spur a broad movement beginning in the mid-1970s toward freer markets in rail and automotive transportation, telecommunications, utilities and the securities markets. Before deregulation, the airlines were tightly controlled by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which approved routes and set fares that guaranteed airlines a 12 percent return on flights that were 55 percent full. The changes Mr. Kahn orchestrated resulted in increased competition, lower fares and the rise of low-cost carriers like JetBlue and Southwest. But they also created severe financial problems for the industry, leading to bankruptcies and mergers. “I have to concede that the competition that deregulation brought certainly was terribly, terribly hard on the airlines and their unions, who had heretofore enjoyed the benefits of protection from competition under regulation,” Mr. Kahn said decades later. He added that he accepted “some responsibility” for the industry’s financial problems but said that it had eventually recovered, despite sharply rising oil prices and terrorist-related security costs. Before he tackled such national issues, Mr. Kahn served as head of the New York State Public Service Commission, the regulator for electricity, gas, water and telephones. He introduced pricing that varied by season or time of day, producing efficiencies benefiting utilities and consumers. But Mr. Kahn proved virtually helpless when, as the Consumer Price Index jumped in 1978 to 8 percent, President Jimmy Carter persuaded him to become inflation “czar” and to serve as chairman of the ill-fated Council on Wage and Price Stability, a job described by a sympathetic friend as serving as fire chief to a pyromaniac. Before long in his new post, the voluble Mr. Kahn, shunning “recession” as a euphemism, warned of a “very serious depression” if inflation were not tamed, prompting a private rebuke by the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, Stuart E. Eizenstat. So instead, Mr. Kahn began referring in public to a possible economic downturn as a “banana,” only to be chided by the president of the United Fruit Company and induced to shift once again to a different euphemism, “kumquat.” Mr. Kahn, operating without staff of his own and with inflation accelerating to above 10 percent, became so frustrated in late 1979 that he asked to be relieved of the job. “I can’t figure out why the president doesn’t fire me,” he joked grimly at the time. “Actually, I do know,” he added. “Nobody would be foolish enough to take this job.” His most significant public policy impact was undoubtedly as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, which he joined in 1977 under pressure from Mr. Carter and Vice President Walter F. Mondale. What Mr. Kahn had really wanted was to head the Federal Communications Commission. “I don’t think it’s my highest aspiration to make it possible for people to jet all over the world when the future clearly has to belong to substituting telecommunications for travel,” he recalled in a 2008 interview for this obituary, explaining his lack of enthusiasm for the civil aeronautics job. An academic, Mr. Kahn knew almost nothing about the airline business — to him planes were just “marginal costs with wings” — but he quickly mastered the arcana and politics of routes, pricing and costs. “Fred was clearly the perfect man to lead the airline deregulation effort,” said John H. Shenefield, a Washington lawyer, in a 2003 tribute as Mr. Kahn accepted an award from the American Antitrust Institute. “The climate had been prepared by the Ford administration, but it was the commitment of President Carter that made deregulation possible. And it was Fred Kahn, Carter’s field general for deregulation, initially in the airlines and later on with surface transportation, who made the difference.” Mr. Kahn, drawing on considerable gifts of persuasion and media insight, led the struggle for enactment of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the first total dismantling of a federal regulatory regime since the 1930s. Washington, he argued in various settings, had long fostered airline inefficiency and by thwarting competition was enabling carriers to keep fares artificially high. While the industry was financially battered by the new law and some smaller cities lost service, Mr. Kahn over the years stoutly defended his handiwork by saying that many more Americans were flying with greater choice of carriers and at lower fares than ever before. Alfred Edward Kahn, known as Fred, was born on Oct. 17, 1917, in Paterson, N. J., the son of Russian immigrants, and came of age during the Depression, which prompted his interest in economics. His father worked in a silk mill, eventually owning one himself. After taking degrees at New York University and a Ph.D. at Yale, Mr. Kahn went to Washington to work briefly as a economist for the Brookings Institution, the Justice Department’s antitrust division and the War Production Board before a 1943 Army stint that ended with a discharge for poor eyesight after basic training. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1947 after two years at Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he began an extended academic career distinguished by publication of “The Economics of Regulation,” his landmark two-volume treatise, first published in 1970. At Cornell, he served as dean of the college of arts and sciences and as a member of the board of trustees. He became a favorite of colleagues and students, often holding forth while padding about in stocking feet or sitting with legs slung over the side of his chair. Mr. Kahn was also an avid Savoyard, appearing in numerous campus productions of the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. “I was a ham,” he acknowledged, which “made for a special relationship with the students.” He appeared in “Iolanthe” and as the Duke of Plazatoro in “The Gondoliers,” but his favorite role was Jack Point the jester in “The Yeomen of the Guard.” At 90, Mr. Kahn recalled an ad for it in The Cornell Daily Sun saying, “Come see the dean of the arts college make a fool of himself.” A longstanding revulsion to bureaucratic language, which he attacked in a widely reported episode four days after arriving at the C.A.B., never waned. Try to write, he told the staff in a memorandum, “in straight-forward quasi-conversational, humane prose — as though you were talking to or communicating with real people.” This probably also impressed editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, on whose usage panel Mr. Kahn served for more than 25 years. During his two-year tenure at Ripon College, Mr. Kahn was involved in Wisconsin’s Progressive-Republican politics, long embodied by the father-and-son Robert M. La Follette dynasty. “I am a great fan of the La Follettes,” he said in the 2008 interview. “They would turn in their grave if they saw the protectionism that some of these people who now call themselves progressives are supporting.”

2011(1st of Tevet, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2011: In Iowa City. Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Chanukah party this evening.

2011: The Sephardic Music Festival in NYC is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: “Women Unchained” is scheduled to be shown at the Limmud Conference in London, UK

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