March 2 In Jewish History
986: Louis V becomes King of the Franks. Louis was the last of the Carolingian, a dynasty under whom the Jews had done rather well, all things considered. Charlemagne was the most famous of the Carolingian rulers and he supported his Jewish subjects despite opposition from church leaders. Louis le Débonnaire who reigned from 814 to 833 was another of the Carolingians who gave special protection to his Jewish subjects. During the reign of Carolingians the Jews were active in commerce, medicine and agriculture, especially in the field of viticulture a fact of which we are reminded when we study about Rashi. The change in dynasties would not have an immediate effect on the Jews living in France. Life for them would not really changed until the first crusade in 1096.
1349: In Erfurt, the capital of the German state of Thuringia, 1,000 Jews were killed in a single day of violence in a pogrom brought on by hysteria surrounding The Black Death which struck Europe in 1340. During this outbreak of what was probably bubonic plagues millions died in Europe removing approximately one third of the continent’s population. “Modern research has revealed that the plague was probably carried by boat from an Asian source, but at the time the affected communities had no idea why and how such a terrible affliction had come upon them so suddenly. In seeking an explanation, they needed a scapegoat and lighted upon the Jews living in their midst. In many villages, towns and cities, Jews were accused of causing the sickness by poisoning drinking water in wells and fountains.” [Editor’s note: for those tracking sweeping patterns of history, note that blaming Jews is not different or rational today than it was in what was supposedly the unenlightened Dark Ages.
1382: The Mailotin Riots began in Paris. These riots were similar to the tax riots held two years previously. Both times the Jews were considered accomplices in over-oppressive taxes. Sixteen Jews fell victim to this outbreak violence.
1836: Texans signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos, effectively creating the Republic of Texas. Adolphus Sterne was one of the many Jews who supported the cause of Texas Independence both on and off of the battlefield. Sterne was “an East Texas merchant who became a principal source of financial backing for the Texas Revolution. Born in the Rhineland in 1801, he arrived in Texas in time to fight in the ill-fated 1826-27 Fredonia Rebellion at Nacogdoches. He was sentenced to be shot but was released on the promise never to bear arms against the government again. He kept to the vow in the 1836 struggle for independence but supplied funds, coordinated with his old friend Sam Houston, who he had known in Tennessee before coming to Texas.”
http://www.texasalmanac.com/topics/culture/jewish/jewish-texans
1855: Alexander II becomes Czar of Russia. Alexander gets high marks from many historians for two reasons. First, he is the Czar who freed the serfs. Second he was a lot better than his two successors, Alexander III and Nicholas II. Alexander earned the goodwill of the Jewish people because “he called a half to the cantonist system that separated Jewish youths from their families, a staple of the previous Czars anti-Semitic program.” From then on, “only Jews of draft age would serve, and under the same rules as well as other Russians.” Under his reign, universities liberalized their admission policies for Jews and Jews were allowed to enter the legal profession. Jewish businessman and craftsmen were allowed to work outside of the Pale and enter into the commercial life of many major urban areas. The Czar was no liberal. His changes in policies were caused, in part, by a desire to attract investment from Jewish European financiers. The Czar’s reforms were proving to be too little too late. When the Czar saw Jewish names among opponents, his anti-Semitism rose to the surface as can be seen by the closing of Yeshivot and his opposition to legal equality for Jews when the issue came up at the 1878 Congress of Berlin.
1859: Birthdate of Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich whom we know as Sholom Aleichem, the most famous Jewish author of his times. As with many Russians of his periods, Sholom Aleichim has two birthdates on the secular calendar – one on the Julian calendar and one on the Gregorian calendar.
1868: An article published entitled “The Alleged Illegal Action of the American Consul at Jerusalem” described a dispute that took place recently in Jerusalem involving a Prussian Rabbi, named Markus, a Prussian Jewess named Steinberg, her sister who had converted to Christianity and Victor Beaubouchier, the American Counsel in Jerusalem
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9804E6DB1230EE34BC4A53DFB5668383679FDE
1876: Birthdate of Pope Pius XII, the Holocaust Pope.
1877: Rutherford B. Hayes declared winner of the 1876 Presidential Election. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but Hayes won a majority of the disputed in the Electoral College giving him and the Republicans the White House by one vote. As President, Hayes worked to protect the well-being of Jewish communities in Europe. In 1879, his Secretary of State, William Evarts said that “this government has ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries.” Hayes backed up these noble sentiments in negotiations with the government of Romania where he worked to try and improve the condition of Jews living under that anti-Semitic regime.
1888: The Convention of Constantinople was signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace. The one major exception to this would be the state of Israel. For years, the government of Egypt denied ships flying the flag of Israel from using the canal. The Egyptians also denied access to ships that had visited Israeli ports from using the canal.
1900: Birthdate of German-born American composer Kurt Weill.
1902: Birthdate of baseball catcher Moe Berg. In a day when most baseball players were barely literate Berg stood out as a Princeton graduate who was multi-lingual. His major league career lasted from 1923 to 1939. He was a journey-man catcher, described as “good field, no hit.” The stories about his eccentricities are too numerous for this brief entry. Suffice it to say, he makes the television character “Monk” look normal. His real claim to fame was his espionage work. During barnstorming trips to Japan in the 1930’s, the Japanese speaking Berg would leave the group to do his own “explorations.” Among other things, he took a series of pictures in Tokyo which later were used to help plan the famous Doolittle Raid during World War II.
1903: Herzl receives Leopold Greenberg's report. Greenberg was the owner of a successful advertising agency, publisher of the Jewish Yearbook and an ardent Zionist.
1905: Birthdate of composer Marc Blitzstein
1909: Birthdate of composer Hanoch Jacoby
1911: Sophie Tucker recorded “Some of these Days” on a four inch cylinder. “Some of these Days” was written by African American composer Shelton Brooks in 1910. “Some of these Days” was Tucker’s signature song and the title of her autobiography.
1913: The New York Times reported that Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, Rabbi of the Congregation Orach Chayim of New York was recently appointed replace the late Dr. Hermann Adler, who was serving as Chief Rabbi of the British Empire when he passed away in July of 1911.
1914: Birthdate of Martin Ritt director of The Long Hot Summer.
1915: Vladmir Jabotinsky formed a Jewish military force to fight in Palestine against the Turks in World War I.
1917: Birthdate of American fiction writer David Loeb Goodis
1926: Birthdate of American economist Murray Rothbard.
1931: Birthdate of Lionel I. Pincus “an American finance executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur” who “ran the private equity firm Warburg Pincus from 1966 to 2002.”
1932: The New York Times reported on speech by Senator Dill of Washington praising the appointment of Benjamin Cardozo to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1935: Birthdate of Canadian native, actor Al Waxman.
1935 (27th of Adar I, 5695): Samuel Sachs, an American investment banker passed away. He was born in Maryland in 1851 to Jewish immigrants from Bavaria, Germany. Sachs along with his longtime friend Philip Lehman of Lehman Brothers pioneered the issuing of stock as a way for new companies to raise funds. He married Louisa Goldman, the youngest daughter of close friends and fellow Bavarian immigrants, who had already seen their older child wed as well. Sachs then joined his father-in-law Marcus Goldman's firm which prompted the name change to Goldman Sachs in 1904. Together they underwrote securities offerings for such large firms as Sears, Roebuck and Company. During this time Goldman Sachs also diversified to become involved in other major securities markets, like the over-the-counter, bond, and convertibles markets which are still a big part of the company's revenue today. Sachs retired in 1928 and died in 1935.
1938: The Palestine Post (the progenitor of today’s Jerusalem Post) published the farewell message of the retiring High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, addressed to the people of Palestine. In a separate letter to the Post, Sir Arthur wrote that “though rather busy during most of my leave in England, I always found time to read The Palestine Post... I hope to read your paper in future years.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported that Sir John Woodhead, Sir Allison Russel and Mr. A.P. Waterfield were appointed by the British Government to serve as members of the Technical Commission which will proceed to Palestine to investigate conditions for the country’s eventual partition.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that An Emek settler, Abraham Goldschlager, 38, was murdered by Arab terrorists near Mishmar Ha¹emek. Tirat Zvi came under heavy Arab fire.
1939: Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope and takes the name Pius XII. As Secretary of State for the Vatican he had negotiated a concordat with Hitler. As Pope, he would remain silent about the Nazis and the Holocaust even when a Roman Catholic nun who converted to Judaism years ago was taken to the death camp because, under Hitler’s Race Laws, she was really a Jew. Based on this alone, one wonders what this Pope thought about the meaning of baptism.
1940: “The police imposed curfew regulations at Tel Aviv tonight after breaking up widespread demonstrations protesting against British restrictions on the sale of Arab lands to Jews.
1942: As Purim began, Jews from Minsk refused to cooperate in latest deportation. Germans and Ukrainians retaliated by searching houses, dragging children to sand pits and throwing them in alive, throwing candies in after them as they died. By the end of Purim 5,000 Jews were murdered in Minsk. Jews all over Europe were tortured, murdered or deported that day included those from Krosniewice, Baranowicze, Lvov and Zdunska Wola
1942: At Janowska, eight laborers were ordered to stand in a barrel of water by Gestapo chief Dibauer, because "they didn't look too clean." They all froze to death by the next day as the ice hardened around their feet.
1943: Over 2,500 Jews in Salonica are crammed into 593 rooms in the Baron de Hirsh Ghetto. The ghetto was surrounded with high wooden fences, topped with barbed wire. Signs in German, Greek and Ladino warned Jews not to leave, under penalty of death.
1943: The daily transports to Treblinka continued. Included are New York Born Yetta Flater and London born Helene Rosenberg. Three hundred of the deportees that day were over 70 years old.
1943: In explaining the Nazi commitment to the Final Solution, Goebbels writes in his diary, “We are so entangled in the Jewish question that henceforth it is impossible to retreat.”
1947: In Tel Aviv a radio announcement by the Irgun was heard in which the Jewish organization took responsibility for yesterday’s attack on a British officers’ club in Jersualem yesterday. The Irgun said the attack was in retaliation for British attacks in Haifa on Friday, February 28.
1947: In response to the latest wave of violence, the British imposed martial law throughout Palestine. At 4 A.M. British troops occupied Petah Tikav Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv as well as other coastal communities while the government in Jerusalem imposed additional restrictions on Mea Sharim.
1947(10th of Adar, 5707): Four year od Ketti Shalom died tonight after having been shot by British forces as she stood on the balcony of her home in Jersuaem, which is under martia law. Her mother was wounded but survived the shooting.
1950(13th of Adar, 5710): Ta'anit Esther
1950: A bill was introduced in the Iraqi parliament allowing the Jews of Iraq to immigrate to Israel. Introduction of the bill required a large cash payment by the Israeli representatives. The “Jews could leave provided they left behind all gold, jewelry and valuables and provided that they also gave up their Iraqi citizenship.”
1950: In Iraq, Parliament passed the Revocation of Citizenship which had been introduced earlier on that same day by Saleh Jabr, the Minister of the Interior.
1950: A horse named Tel Aviv is entered in the second race at Hialeah Park in Miami.
1952: Birthdate of comedian and early star of SNL Laraine Newman.
1953: Birthdate of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported from Washington that the Eisenhower administration decided to pay more attention to Arab countries and less to Israel. The first concrete step in this direction was granting Egypt an $11m. credit so it could purchase American arms.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that twenty Jewish families from Poland arrived in Austria on their way to Israel. They reported that the Polish Jews were in a state of panic and more families were expected to follow.
1956: Morocco gains its independence from France; date celebrated as Independence Day in Morocco. Jews are known to have settled in what is no Morocco during Roman times. In 1948, the ancient Jewish community had over a quarter of a million members. Following violent attacks, large numbers of Jews began leaving for Israel. At the time of independence, Jews served in the parliament and held at least one ministerial post. The new government banned immigration to Israel. The ban was lifted in 1963 and Jews began moving en masse to Israel. The ancient community has now dwindled to a couple of thousand members.
1970: “The white minority Rhodesian Front government, led by Ian Smith, severed ties with the British crown; Smith declared Rhodesia an independent republic.” The majority black population resisted the Smith government. A civil war broke between the Smith government and the black population which was represented by ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union). Because of the civil war, most of the Jewish population (approximately 7,000 in number as of 1961) left the country. Eventually the minority white government was defeated and the Republic of Zimbabwe was formed.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/zimbabwe.html
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt was counting on US President Jimmy Carter to put forward an American peace package to put pressure on Israel and to break the apparent deadlock over the Israeli-Egyptian “declaration of principles.” In Israel government sources declared that the positions of the two sides remained far apart on major issues, especially on the problem of the future of the “administered areas.”
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Venezuela had announced that there were no obstacles in selling oil to Israel and welcomed cooperation on other aspects of energy.
1981: Rockets from Lebanese territory struck several homes in the Galilee town of Qiryat Shemona today, wounding three people.
1983: Shulamit Ran's Verticals “was premiered by pianist Alan Feinberg at New York's Merkin Concert Hall. The New York Times described the work by the Tel Aviv native as “rhapsodic and intriguing.”
1986(21st of Adar I, 5746): Marcel Liebman, Belgian historian and Holocaust survivor, passed away at the age of 56.
1987: Law-enforcement officials said today that federal prosecutors are on the verge of seeking the indictment of Aviem Sella, a prominent Israeli Air Force officer who the Justice Department alleges played a key role in directing the espionage activities of Jonathan Jay Pollard,
1988: Dr. Inamullah Khan, secretary general of the Pakistan-based World Moslem Congress has been named as the winner of the $369,000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion even though there are reports that the prize winner has been associated with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel causes.
1991(16th of Adar, 5751): French musician Serge Gainsbourg passed away at the age of 62. Born Lucien Ginzburg, Gainsbourg survived the Nazi occupation of France to become a leading poet, songwriter, singer and director.
1992(27th of Adar I, 5752): The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, suffered a disabling stroke while praying at the gravesite of the previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch.
1993(9th of Adar, 5753): Yehoshua Weissbrod was stoned and then shot dead by Palesinian terrorists in the town of Rafa.
1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel
by Yaron Ezrahi, the children’s book, When Chickens Grow Teeth: A Story From the French of Guy de Maupassant retold and illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin and Too Much Is Never Enough by Russian born architect Morris Lapidus, the man who “created Miami Beach in the 1950’s
1998: After almost three months of negotiations, Ronald Perelman and Al Dunlap reach an agreement involving the sale of Sunbeam and Coleman.
2001: The Times of London reviewed The Jewish State: The struggle for Israel's Soul by Yoram Hazony
2002: Eleven Israelis were killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including The Pieces From Berlin: Swindling Holocaust Victims by John
Sutherland and Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent by Gerald Sorin.
2005: Start of the 12th Daf Yomi Cycle. Daf Yomi is translated as "Daily Page." Daf refers to the double-sided page of the Talmud. Daf is also the word for Plank. Tjere are those who say that the double meaning of the term Daf comes from a story about Rabbi Akiva who was saved by from drowning when he grabbed hold of a plank of a daf. By holding on a daf - a page of the Talmud, the Jew stays a float in the worldly sea. The program called Daf Yomi is "a systematic approach to the daily study of the Talmud formulated by Reb Meir Shapira of Lublin in 1923. The program enables Jews throughout the world to study the same daf or double-sided page of the Talmud simultaneously. Using this method, one can study the Talmud in a little over seven years. This system has become popular and there is plethora of sites that provide both text and audio explanations. There are also weekly summaries. The success of Daf Yomi has led to the creation of other cyclical study programs. These programs can be found on the web. Also, many congregations - Orthodox, Conservative and Reform - now have spontaneously formed lay study groups that cover this material. It is one more example of the burgeoning interest in Adult Jewish Education.
2006: The Jerusalem Post reported on deteriorating condition for Jewish communities in parts of the former Soviet Union. In Uzbekistan authorities are probing the murder of one of Tashkent's rabbis. And despite pleas from the Jewish community and international organizations, the Tajikistan government has started to destroy the country's only synagogue.
2006(2nd of Adar, 5766): Marty Stein, who helped start Stein drugstores and Stein Optical, has died of cancer. He was 68. Mr. Stein was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1994. He passed away in Milwaukee. A former pharmacist, Mr. Stein co-founded the first Stein drugstore in Menomonee Falls in 1961. He later expanded the chain into 19 stores, which he sold to the Walgreen Co. in 1979. He then started Stein Health Services Inc., which ran three companies in home health care, eye care and related fields. The Eye Care One division ran Wisconsin stores as Stein Optical and Chicago stores as EyeQ. Those were sold in the late 1990s.Mr. Stein also was involved in efforts to help Israel and Jewish immigrants, including serving as national chairman of a worldwide effort to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. By 1988, he had met President Ronald Reagan, the pope and Israeli leaders. Despite his international focus, Mr. Stein remained committed to helping those in his local communities.” There are two Americas in America," he once said. "There's the one where I live and there's the other one in places such as the inner city. I want to help other people who live in the other America to know the America I know. "Mr. Stein was active in groups such as the Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee. Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson called the news of Mr. Stein's death "devastating."
2006: This evening poet Rachel Tzvia Back gave a lecture entitled "Placing the Voice: The Personal and Political, Israel 2006" at Williams College. Though born in Buffalo, NY, she "is the seventh generation of her family in Palestine," according to this bio at The Drunken Boat. Her grandfather left there in the 1920s, seeking his fortune in America; in the 1980s she returned to Israel, completing the cycle, and lives there still.
http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2006/03/placing_the_voi.html
2007: Ethiopian born singer Aiiala Ingdsht releases her first album in Tel Aviv.
2007(12th of Adar, 5767): Former American Jewish Congress leader William Maslow died in his Manhattan home at the age of 99. Born in Kiev in 1907, Maslow moved to the United States with his family in 1911. He served as general counsel to the American Jewish Congress from 1945 to 1960, and as executive director from 1960 to 1972, guiding the organization’s fight against discrimination to the court system. Under Maslow’s direction, the American Jewish Congress fought housing restrictions on Jews in many communities, as well as discriminatory hiring and admissions policies at U.S. companies and universities. He filed the group’s amicus brief in Brown v. Board of Education and helping organize the 1963 March on Washington that featured the “I Have a Dream Speech.” He also founded the Commission on Law and Social Action, modeled after the ACLU and NAACP. A nephew of Paula Ben-Gurion, wife of Israel’s first Prime Minister, Maslow was a dedicated Zionist and helped lead Israel’s fight against the Arab economic boycott in the 1970s.
2008: The Washington Post featured a review of Richard M. Cohen's Strong at the Broken Places.
2008: TimeThe Sunday New York s features a review of Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright and The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Wiesberg.
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents what might be called“Jewish night the press” in a program styled “In the News With Jeff Greenfield—On the Election with Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein and Rich Lowry.”
2008: During Operation Hot Winter the “IDF decided to change its strategy today and sent a whole regiment (about 2000 men) into the Northern Strip to occupy Jabalya and Sajiyah but met stiff resistance from the Palestinians. In the bloodiest day for Gaza since 2002, close to 70 civilians were killed. Military deaths totaled 4 Palestinian fighters and 2 Israeli soldiers.”
2009: Sports Illustrated reports that Andy Roddic will “not be showing up at the Dubai Open” this week. “He’s ticked that Israel’s Shahar Peer was denied entry to the United Arab Emirates to ply in the women’s tournament.”
2009: At the 92nd Street Y, playwright, author and actress Anna Deavere delivers the Annual State of Anti-Semitism lecture entitled “Hatred Knows No Boundaries, a unique address on the issues of hatred, racial conflict and genocide
2009: In Washington, D.C. Jewish author Adam Gopnik discusses and signs his new book, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.
2009: Israel's UN envoy filed a letter of complaint about the continued rocket attacks from Gaza to the Secretary-General and the president of the Security Council, whose rotating chair is currently held by Libya. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev warned that the Hamas attacks would hinder efforts to reach a "stable and durable cease-fire" - a deliberate echo of language adopted by the Security Council in its January resolution calling for an end to Israel's Operation Cast Lead offensive in Gaza.
2009: In an article entitled “The Good, the Bad, the Bible,” Lisa Miller examines The Good Book by David Plotz, “a naïf wandering in a strange land full of eccentric people and incomprehensible rules.”
2010: Today is the day the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema & TV has set as the dealine for submitting scripts based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem that could be used for television productions. The selected scripts will be eligible for special funding supplied by the foundation.
2010: At noon today a demonstration that will include members of the Union of Israel Journalists who are demanding the safeguarding of public broadcasting in Israel is scheduled to take place at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv. The demonstration is being initiated by a group of organizations concerned that the sharp deterioration in employer/employee relations at the Israel Broadcasting Authority, coupled with the souring of relations between the IBA and the Finance Ministry and other government bodies, may result in a decision that the IBA is no longer necessary.
2010: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Program under the direction of Dr. Brian Horowitz is scheduled to present to present a program entitled “Obama and Israel,” featuring Mitchell Bard of the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise
2010: Late today reports started to emerge that, contrary to initial reports, the Masorti synagogue in Concepcion was destroyed in the earthquake that had rocked Chile this past weekend. The head of the international Masorti organization, Rabbi Tzvi Graetz had been to Concepcion which was close to the epicenter of the earthquake. He said that ‘it was like the 'hurban habayit' [destruction of the Temple], the walls were all cracked and the roof had fallen down. I couldn't stay there, so I got the sifrei Torah and left,’”
2010: Amos Oz said today that the Khoury family of East Jerusalem had funded the translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness, his best-selling autobiography to promote coexistence. The translation which was done by Israeli Arab Jamal Gnaim, was done in memory of Khoury’s son George who was a promising Hebrew University law student when he was killed in a 2004 shooting attack while jogging on the university's Mt. Scopus campus.
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to present a program entitled “Jewish Confederates” at Adas Israel Congregation. JHSGW Board Member Les Bergen’s presentation will include information about “a female spy living just doors from the White House and her sister, who ran a military hospital in Richmond and became known as the ‘Confederate Clara Barton.’”
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; March, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
Monday, February 28, 2011
This Day, March 1, In Jewish History
March 1 In Jewish History
286: Roman Emperor Diocletian raises Maximian to the rank of Caesar. Diocletian was determined to restore greatness and stability to the Roman Empire. He was far more concerned about the Christians whom he saw “as the sole cause of the dissolution of the Empire, on account of their persistent struggle against the Roman state religion and their zeal for conversion” than he was about the Jews. When he attempted to unify the empire by ordering all of those under his reign to accept his divinity and “bring sacrifices to his cult,” Diocletian exempted the Jews. The only negative note of import surrounding Diocletian and his Jewish subjects had to do with accusation that they had mocked him because of his early origins as a swineherd. Judah III, the Patriarch, actually had to appear before the Emperor while he was in Tiberias to answer the charge. Judah assured him that while some may of spoken disrespectfully of Diocletian the swineherd nobody had uttered any words of criticism against Diocletian, the emperor. The explanation assuaged Diocletian but it has been used an example of the dangers of speaking L’shon Hara.
293: Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesares, thus beginning the Tetrarchy. This move on the part of Diocletian was part of an attempt to ensure a smooth transition of power after Diocletian resigned as Emperor. The plan would fail and would result in 19 years of turmoil that would end only when Constantine took the throne. For the Jews, this would mean an end to great Yeshiva at Tiberias. Those who could would flee to Caesarea where they would a haven at the yeshiva begun by Abbahu.
317: Crispus and Constantine II, sons of Roman Emperor Constantine I, and Licinius Iunior, son of Emperor Licinius, are made Caesares. Lucinius and Crispus would be killed, the latter by his father Emperor Constantine I. Constantine II would continue the anti-Jewish policies of his father. Among other things, he decreed that any Christians who converted to Judaism would forfeit their property to the state.
1274: Gregory X issued Turbato Code, a Papal Bull that forbade Christians from “embracing Judaism.”
1349 (Adar 10): Riots broke out in Worms (Germany). Many Jews fled to Heidelberg. Others in desperation set fire to their homes or were murdered. An estimated 420 people died that day. Their property was seized by the town.
1655: The Magistrate of New Amsterdam wrote a ruling making an attempt to expel the Jews. It read, in part, "Resolved that the Jews, who came last year from the West Indies and now from the Fatherland, must prepare to depart forthwith."
1655: The Sheriff of New Amsterdam as plaintiff filed suit against the defendant Abram de la Sina, a Jew, for the crime of keeping his store open during the hour the church gave a sermon.
1565: Portuguese settlers founded the city of Rio de Janeiro. For the first two centuries of its existence, Jewish life in the city was hindered by the reality of the Portuguese laws against Judaism and the Inquisition. “New Christians” played an active role in the city’s commercial and social life but records show that at least 300 of these New Christians were found guilty by the Inquisition of secretly practicing Judaism. After Brazil gained its independence in 1822 and adopted a constitution in 1824 that allowed for religious toleration, more Jews began arriving in the city and played a more active role in its growth and prosperity. Today, Rio has the second largest Jewish community in Brazil.
1670: “A solemn proclamation was made in all public places that ‘for the glory of God’ all Jews should, on penalty of imprisonment and death, leave Vienna and Upper and Lower Austria before Corpus Christi Day, never to return. Hirz Koma and a physician named Leo Winkler, “made a last attempt to propitiate the emperor by offering him 100,000 florins and, in addition, 10,000 florins a year.”
1803: Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state. Under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance there was not to be any religious qualification for states formed in the region including Ohio. The first record of Jewish settlement in Ohio relates to the city of Cincinnati. By 1824, there were enough Jews living in the “Queen City,” that the Jews formed a congregation called the Sons of Israel. The twenty-four members of the congregation were not able to raise enough funds for a building until 1836. Max Lilienthal and Isaac Mayer were the first two rabbis in the state. By the time of the Civil War, the Jewish population was large enough that it sent almost 1,200 of its sons to fight in the Union cause.
1810: Georgetown College was chartered in Washington, D.C., making it the first Roman Catholic institution of higher learning established in the United States. Today Georgetown has approximately 1,600 Jewish students out of a student boy of 13,000 students. The school offers approximately 35 Jewish Studies Courses.
1823: In New York, Solomon Henry Jackson published “The Jew,” an anti-missionary journal. This is thought to be the first Jewish publication to be published in the United States. Jackson is also known for translating and publishing the first Sephardic Siddur in America. He published an English-Hebrew version in 1826.
1843: The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York passed a resolution prohibiting the performing of ceremonies at funerals of persons intermarried with Christians.
1851: Noting the appearance of Jews in Utah, Lorenzo Brown wrote in his diary today that he had seen “some Hungarian Jews living in the ward--emigrants bound for the [California] mines...forced to leave their native land because of the revolution.”
1852: The New York Times reported that a funding raising ball has raised $1,034 which will be donated to "The Hebrew Hospital" in New York City.
1858: The New York Times reported that in February of this year, Lord John Russell's bill that would modify the oath of office so that Jews could serve in Parliament had been "debated and read for a second time" in the House of Commons. [This was in the days before the transatlantic cable. Gaps between events and published reports are responsible for some of the inconsistencies in providing specific dates for events]
1858: Birthdate of German born philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel. Simmel’s family was Jewish, but when his father died, Simmel’s Catholic guardian converted him to the Church of Rome.
1860: “Gang of Rogues Started on a Traveling Tour,” an article published today, reported that “Five Polish and Prussian Jews, who have long been known to the police authorities of” New York City “as expert pickpockets and daring burglars… started on a Western traveling tour” yesterday evening. Information of their departure was given by two members of the gang, who have lately sundered relationship with their old associates.” According to these two, “the gang has for a long time gone by the name of the ‘Order of Vatabeds,’ a name till now kept private among the members.” Since it was impossible for the police to detain them in New York, “telegrams were sent to Albany, Buffalo and Dunkirk, stating the fact of their departure, and putting the public and Police on guard against their arrival. The names of the traveling troupe are Samuel Levy, alias "Old Levy"; Morris M. Goldstein, alias Goldever; L. Truebart; Michael Roberts, alias "Big Roberts," and Henry Wcyman. Most of them have served terms in foreign state prisons.”
1860: A column entitled "London Town Talk" published today provides a gossipy and negative view of William Ward’s elevation from Baron of Ward to Earl of Dudley. His elevation was attributed not to his virtue but to his wealth. According to the unnamed author the role of money should comes as no surprise since it was “Baron Rothschild’s millions” that made Lord John Russell an advocate of the bill to remove “Jewish disabilities” when it came to taking the oath to serve in Parliament.
1861: The New York Times reported that The Knoxville (Tenn.) Whig gave “a first rate” description of a “Jew” named Mordecai who distinguished himself a few weeks” ago since by presenting $10,000 to the Governor of South Carolina. The Whig stated that “Mordecai who is a druggist, visited New-York, Philadelphia and Boston, just before he did this act, and represented to his creditors that he was insolvent, and settled with them by paying 50 cents on the dollar.” [By this time, South Carolina had seceded from the Union so the money was going to support the Rebel government.]
1861: The Purim Ball, the last of the three great events of New York’s Winter Social Season was held this evening.
1866(14th of Adar, 5626): Purim
1867: Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the Union. The Jewish community in Nebraska pre-dates statehood. Services were conducted in Omaha in the 1860’s. The oldest congregation in the state, Temple Israel, was founded in 1871 along with a burial society. The town of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln at this time and Lincoln became the state capital. Lincoln, Nebraska’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, also known as the South Street Temple was Lincoln’s first Jewish congregation. The Temple was founded in 1884, principally by German immigrants. The year 1884 must have been an auspicious one for Cornhusker Jews, since that is the same year in which the first synagogue building in the state was dedicated at Omaha. It was the home of Congregation Israel now known as Temple Israel.
1870: J.K. Buchner published Di Yiddshe Zeitunge, the first Yiddish weekly to be published in the United States. The language itself was more of a German Yiddish than the eastern European variant of the patois. The politics were conservative rather then socialist in direction.
1876: In Savannah, GA, the cornerstone is laid for the new home of Mikveh Israel. The new structure was required because the congregation had outgrown the old building.
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1886: First organized Arab attack on a Jewish settlement in what would become Eretz Yisrael. The attack was waged against Petak Tikvah, the first all Jewish village to be built in Palestine during modern times. The early settlers had a difficult time of it facing not only Arab marauders but malaria as well. The land on which the village was built was purchased by English Jew named Hayyim Amzalak who had moved to Palestine in 1830. Money for draining the malarial swamps in the area was given by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Much of the labor was supplied by Russian Jewish immigrants.
1888: Rabbi Joseph Silverman begins serving as spiritual leader for Temple Emanu-El replacing the legendary Gustav Gottheil. Silverman is the first American born rabbi to serve a congregation in New York City.
1891: With less than two months until the start of Passover, The Passover Relief Association, which provides matzoth and items to New York’s less fortunate Jews, finds itself with only $173.45 in its treasury. Considering the fact that the association spent $675.24 and the fact that the population of needy Jews has greatly increased, the association is in need of donations which can be sent to its members including the chairman, Benjamin Saidel.
1896: Theodor Herzl and Nathan Birnbaum meet for the first time. Nathan Birnbaum was born in Vienna, and lived there from.1864-1908, and again from 1914-21. In 1882, together with two other students in the University of Vienna, he founded “Kadimah,” the first organization of Jewish nationalist students in the West. In 1884, he published his first pamphlet, Die Assimilationsucht (“The Assimilation Disease/Mania”). He founded, published and edited Selbst-Emancipation! (“Self-Emancipation!”) The periodical promoted “the idea of a Jewish renaissance and the resettlement of Palestine.” It incorporated and developed the ideas of Leon Pinsker. In 1890, Birnbaum coined the terms “Zionist” and “Zionism,” and, in 1892, “Political Zionism.” In 1893, he published a brochure entitled Die Nationale Wiedergeburt des Juedischen Volkes in seinem Lande als Mittel zur Loesung der Judenfrage (“The National Rebirth of the Jewish People in its Homeland as a Means of Solving the Jewish Question”), in which he expounded ideas similar to those that Herzl was to promote subsequently. Birnbaum played a prominent part in the First Zionist Congress (1897) and was elected Secretary General of the Zionist Organization. However, he and Herzl developed ideological differences. Birnbaum had begun to question the political aims of Zionism and to attach increasing importance to the national-cultural content of Judaism. Birnbaum eventually left the Zionist movement and later became a leading spokesman for Jewish cultural autonomy in the Diaspora. He stressed the Yiddish language as the basis of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and was chief convenor of the Conference on Yiddish held in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1908. This was attended by leading Yiddish writers, and proclaimed Yiddish as a national Jewish language. Birnbaum propagated his ideas in writing and by lecturing in many Jewish communities. In the years preceding World War I he gradually abandoned his materialistic and secular outlook, eventually embracing full traditional Judaism. He may be seen as the forerunner of the modern Baal Teshuvah movement. His most famous book of this period was Gottesvolk (“God’s People”) first published in German and Yiddish in 1917 (translated into English in a shortened form by J. Elias in 1947 titled "Confession"). In 1919, he became the first Secretary General of the new Agudath Yisrael Organization. Dissatisfied with the spiritual complacency of the religious masses, he initiated a movement, the Order of the Olim (“[Spiritual] Ascenders”), to consist of small groups of people dedicated by their way of living to raising spiritual awareness within the larger Jewish society, thus leading toward a Jewish spiritual renaissance. Disturbed by the urbanized focus of Jewish life, he promoted the establishment of agricultural communities and other groups living a style of Jewish life more in conformity with nature. Settlement in Eretz Israel was to be for the prime purpose of fulfilling the spiritual role of the Jewish people. He lived in Berlin from 1912-1914, and again from 1921-1933. After the rise of Nazism, he left Germany for Scheveningen, Netherlands, where he edited Der Ruf ("The Call"), a platform for his ideas. He died there in 1937.
1903: In an article entitled “Light on the Jewish Question in Romania,” the New York Times summarizes an article that first appeared in The Romanian Bulletin that defends King Charles (a.k.a. Carlos I) against accusations that he is the prime mover in the persecution of his Hebrew subjects. The article depicts him as being sympathetic to their plight, but as constitutional monarch, all but powerless to defend the Jews against “unscrupulous ministers” who do not share his enlightened views of Romanian Hebrews.
1914: Birthdate of Aaron Ruben the Chicago native who gained fame as a producer, writer and director for some of the most popular television comedies of the 1960s and ’70s, notably “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and “Sanford and Son
1911: Birthdate of chess grandmaster Harry Golombek
1917: The U.S. government released the plaintext of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public. Barbara Tuchman, the noted Jewish historian, wrote The Zimmerman Telegram a fascinating volume covering this little known event which had a major impact on America’s decision to enter World War I on the side of the Allies.
1919: Emir Feisal, the son of Emir Hussein, Grand Sharif of Mecca and the leader of the Arabs of Hejaz sent a letter to Felix Frankfurter. According to Martin Gilbert he wrote, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.” “I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and derived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is notional and not imperialist: our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success with the other. I look forward, and the people with me look forward to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once against take their place in the comity of the civilized peoples of the world.”
1920: Tel Hai, a Jewish village in the Galilee is attacked by Arabs. Joseph Trumpeldor, the one-armed Jewish military leader and one of the Zionist movement’s first military heroes was killed in the ensuing battled along with five men under his command. “Trumpeldor was born in 1880 in Russia. Originally in training as a dentist, he volunteered for the Russian army in 1902. During the Russo-Japanese War he participated in the siege of Port Arthur, where he lost his left arm and was captured. Subsequently, he received four decorations for bravery, which made him the most decorated Jewish soldier in Russia. In 1906 he became the first Jew in the army to receive an officer's commission. In 1911 he emigrated to Palestine then under the Ottoman Turks, living for a time at kibbutz Deganya. When World War I broke out, he went to Egypt, where together with Vladimir Jabotinsky he developed the idea of the Jewish legion to fight with the British against common enemies and as a result, the Zion Mule Corps was formed in 1917, considered to be the first all-Jewish military unit organized in close to two thousand years, and the ideological beginning of the Israel Defense Forces. He saw action in Gallipoli, where he was wounded in the shoulder. Upon his return to Russia in 1918, he established the He-Halutz, a youth organization that prepared immigrants for aliyah (moving to Palestine), and returned to Palestine himself, then under the British Mandate. He was one of the founders of the Zionist Socialist movement in pre-state Israel.. After his death Trumpeldor became the symbol of Jewish "self-defence", and his memorial day on the 11th day of Adar is officially noted in Israel every year. Supposedly, his last words were, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country". There is no proof whether this is true.”
1921: The Political committee of the Zionist Organization met in London to discuss Churchill’s forthcoming visit to Palestine.
1922: John Schuburgh a member of the Middle East Department (of the British Government) sent a visiting Arab delegation a letter reiterating British support for the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
1922: Birthdate of Yitzhak Rabin (יצחק רבין). A Sabra, Rabin was a soldier-statesman who served as Prime Minister from 1974 until 1977. The scandal which drove him from office would open the way for the Right-Wing Likud to take power for the first time since the founding of the Jewish State. Rabin would return as Prime Minister in 1992. He would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking attempts to end the violence in the Middle East. Sadly, the man who had avoided death at the hands of Israel’s Arab enemies, met death at the hands of a Jewish fanatic bent on derailing the Peace Process. Would events been different had Rabin lived? We will never know. Just as a killer at Dallas had thwarted the American electoral process, so a killer thwarted the democratic process in Israel in 1995.
1926: Birthdate of Robert Clary. The French born actor gaineded fame playing the part of LeBeau on “Hogan’s Heroes.” The irony is that Clary was the only one of his immediate family members to survive imprisonment by the Nazis during World War II.
1928: Joseph Levy, writing in the described the ceremonies that marked “the recent inauguration of the plantation of the Balfour Forest at Ginegar, in the Valley of Jezreel, Palestine.” As part of the ceremony, Sir Alfred Mond delivered an address in which he “paid high tribute to Lord Plumer, the High Commissioner, for the devotion he has shown during his tenure in office and to the Jewish national fund. The entire cost of the Balfour Forest is being borne by the Jews of Great Britain. The project is part of the Zionist led reforestation project that is vital to the renewal of Palestine.
1932: On a radio broadcast on the day of Cardozo's confirmation, Clarence C. Dill, Democratic Senator for Washington, called Hoover's appointment of Cardozo "the finest act of his career as President"
1932: The Maccabee Association of the United States announced the members of the swimming and track and field teams that will be sent to compete in the Jewish Olympic Games that will take place at the end of March. The selection committee was chaired by Sol Goodstein.
1934: As of this date, according to a report prepared by Morris Rothenberg, President of the ZOA, there are a quarter of a million Jews living in Palestine which marks a significant increase from the total of 85,000 Jews living there in 1921.
1935: Birthdate of Judith Rossner, author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
1936: Birthdate of Richmond, VA native Shirley Bernice Politzer who would gain fame as “Dr. Shirley P. Glass, a psychologist who strove to redefine the nature of infidelity” and the mother of Ira Glass, producer of “This American Life.”
1937: Winston Churchill retains Hungarian born Jew Emery Reves as his literary agent which would prove a boon to Churchill’s literary career and pocketbook.
1941: Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes to Colonial Secretary Lord Moyne expressing his displeasure with General Wavell who, “like most British officers is pro-Arab” and opposed to the Jews. This attitude extends to an unwillingness on the part of the British military to form additional Jewish military units to fight in the Imperial Army.
1941: Himmler inspected the Auschwitz concentration camp
1941: Bulgaria officially joins the Axis Powers - Germany, Italy and Japan
1942: On Purim Eve, the Germans ordered 5,000 Jews deported from Minsk.
1943: In Amsterdam, a Jewish old age home for the disabled was raided.
1943: In a speech given before a crowd of 70,000 people at Madison Square Garden, Chaim Weizmann states, “Two million Jews have already been exterminated. The world can no longer plead that the ghastly facts are unknown or unconfirmed. This rally had been planned by the American Jewish Congress in an attempt to mobilize American public opinion in support of efforts to rescue Jews trapped in Hitler’s Europe.
1947: Jews responded violently to British Foreign Minister Bevin’s latest pronouncements about Palestine by conducting multiple attacks that resulted in the death of at least sixteen British military personnel.
1947: David Remez, Chairman of The Jewish National Council, announced tonight that the “Jewish population of Palestine will observe a self-imposed curfew for four hours” tomorrow night to express their concern for the refugees from Europe recently seized by the British.
1950: It was revealed today that in the non-aggression pact being considered by Israel and Jordan included a promise that Haifa would become a free-port for Jordan thus giving the Arab state access to the Mediterranean.
1960(2nd of Adar): Hundreds of Jews, including some students of the local Chabad Yeshivah, were among the thousands of victims to perish in a devastating earthquake that struck Agadir, Morocco today
1972: Naomi Bronheim Levine was appointed Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress (A. J. Cong.), becoming the first woman to take the helm of a major American Jewish organization that included both men and women as members. Born in New York on April 15, 1923, Levine was educated at Hunter College and Columbia University and worked as a lawyer before joining the A. J. Cong.), in 1951. She would remain there for more than two decades. Levine began her work at the Congress as a lawyer for its Commission on Law and Social Action; from that position, Levine went on to become director of the A. J. Cong.), Women's Division. These positions foreshadowed her involvement with civil rights and women's issues as executive director of the organization. Although she was considered a pioneer for women, Levine saw herself as caught somewhere between an older ideal of domesticity and a newer feminism. She told the New York Times that "women's lib is probably correct, but it's not my style." Although a Times profile published when Levine was appointed to the top post at the A. J. Cong.), focused on her devotion to the traditional roles of wife and mother even as she built a path-breaking career, Levine had long been committed to progressive women's issues. From 1955 to 1971, she had owned and operated Camp Greylock, an all-girls summer camp that was later credited with contributing to the professional success of many of its alumnae. Levine stepped down from her post at the American Jewish Congress in 1978, when she was appointed head of public relations, government relations, and fundraising at New York University. She stayed at NYU for over two decades, eventually becoming senior vice president for external affairs and raising over $2 billion. Her fundraising success allowed the University to transform itself from a local commuter school to a strong university with a national presence. During her tenure at NYU, Levine created the Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising and the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life. After retiring in 2000, Levine continued to chair the boards of both of these organizations. Upon her retirement, NYU President L. Jay Oliva called Levine "quite simply a spectacular human being."
1978: Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery.
1985: Milwaukee businessman Herb Kohl purchased the Milwaukee Bucks. Kohl would go on to become one of Wisconsin’s two Jewish senators.
1987: In an article entitled “An Israeli Lawyer Dares Defend an Accused Nazi,” Francis X. Clines describes the challenges and criticism facing Yoram Sheftel, the Tel Aviv criminal lawyer serving as co-counsel in the defense of John Demjanjuk, the retired auto worker from the United States who is accused of being the infamous executioner of the Treblinka death camp.
1988(12th of Adar, 5748): Joe Besser one of the Three Stooges passed away.
1991(15th of Adar, 5751): Edwin H Land inventor of the Polaroid Camera passed away at the age of 81.
1991: Following the end of the Iraq War, Lufthansa plans to resume service to Tel Aviv today.
1993: In the following article entitled “Doubts Mar PBS Film of Black Army Unit,” Richard Bernstein describes the controversy surrounding a movie that is supposed to be a documentary about the 761st Tank Battalion’s role in the liberation of Jews held in concentration camps at the end of World War II. The tank battalion was an all-black unit and the film was supposed to be a tool to rejuvenate the alliance between Jews and African-American.
Former Capt. David Williams of the 761st Tank Battalion, one of the few black combat units to fight in World War II, was talking about distances, Sherman tanks and truth. "On April 29, 1945," he said, referring to the day the Dachau concentration camp was liberated, "the 761st was near Straubing, which is about 70 miles from Dachau as the crow flies. Bridges were down, the tanks were all beat up. There wasn't enough gas. Nobody could have just taken a Sherman tank on a 140-mile round trip and not have been noticed missing. He would have been court-martialed." Mr. Williams, who lives in retirement in Miami, was offering his comment on a controversy that has suddenly emerged to chill what was a brief moment of racial harmony. It began with a documentary film that was broadcast nationwide on PBS last November but has now been pulled from circulation pending an investigation by WNET, Channel 13, the public television station for New York City, which helped produce it. The film, "The Liberators," viewed by an audience of 3.7 million, portrayed the neglected history of the 761st Battalion, putting considerable stress on the involvement of some of its members at the liberations of two of the most notorious camps in Germany, Dachau and Buchenwald. 'PBS-Gate Follies,' Veteran Says Last month, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. Before that, black and Jewish leaders gathered at a special showing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and spoke of the two people's common history of oppression. The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged that it be distributed in all high schools. The problem is that Mr. Williams -- and journalists, researchers and many other war veterans -- contend that a central element of the film, the role of black soldiers from the 761st in the liberation of those particular camps, is simply not true. "It's the PBS-gate follies," said Mel Rappaport, a veteran of the Sixth Armored Division, which, he said, did liberate Buchenwald. Channel 13 has asked PBS affiliates not to broadcast the film while it looks into the questions that have been raised about what it calls "details of the liberation of specific camps." The station expressed confidence that the "overall point" of the film remains valid: that blacks fought racism and discrimination at home to be allowed to serve their country in the war and then witnessed the ultimate in racism and discrimination in the Holocaust. Military historians agree that the undisputed record of the 761st is outstanding. During 183 days of combat in 1944 and 1945, the 761st, wearing the Black Panther patch, captured or liberated more than 30 major towns and four airfields. It suffered a 50 percent casualty rate and lost 71 tanks. It pierced the Siegfried Line into Germany and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And it did liberate at least one concentration camp, the Gunskirchen camp in Austria. Many critics, however, argue that the film went seriously awry in its depiction of the liberations of Buchenwald and Dachau. They complain that the moral edifice embodied in remembrance can crumble if history is handled casually, or distorted to fit current needs -- and nothing having to do with the places whose names resonate with the century's worst crimes can be dismissed as a "detail." And so, despite evident good intentions all around, the focus of attention has shifted from the intermingled histories of blacks and Jews and to another question: Does "The Liberators" tell the truth? How could this have happened? In 1982, William Miles, a prize-winning documentary film maker, began hearing tales of the 761st and other black battalions during his work on another documentary, "The Different Drummer: Blacks in the Military," broadcast in 1983. In 1985 he saw a letter in The New York Times written by Benjamin Bender, a survivor of Buchenwald, who recalled seeing black soldiers at the liberation of the camp. In 1989 the presence of black soldiers was mentioned by Elie Wiesel, who was also an inmate there. Mr. Miles joined Nina Rosenblum, whose credits include "Through the Wire," an award-winning documentary about female prisoners in the United States. With backing from Channel 13, they produced "The Liberators," subtitled, "Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II." It is essentially a chronological account of the tank battalion and other black units, like the 183d Engineering Battalion, that fought in Europe in World War II. A major point is the role supposedly played by members of the 761st in the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. The film shows several survivors of the camps, including Mr. Bender and Israel Lau, now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, testifying to the presence of black troops. Several former enlisted men of the 761st Battalion and the 183d Engineers also describe their roles in liberating the two camps. William McBurney and Leonard Smith recount driving their tanks through the gates of Dachau and detail the horrors they saw there. Still, questions about the film's accuracy were raised even before it was nationally shown on Nov. 11. Mr. Williams recalled a phone conversation he said he had about six months ago with Mr. Miles in which he told Mr. Miles that "the stuff about Buchenwald and Dachau is a lie." Mr. Miles, he said, did not reply. Mr. Rappaport, the Sixth Division veteran, said: "I got in touch with Bill Miles, who was very polite. I told him our division was the Sixth Armored and that we liberated Buchenwald. I was there. I saw no black troops. 'Well, Mr. Rappaport,' he said, 'we have witnesses.' “The first public criticism seems to have been made on the radio station WBAI in New York by Jim Dingman, a program host who specializes in military history. Articles questioning the veracity of the film were also published in The New York Guardian, The Forward and The New Republic. Neither Mr. Miles nor Ms. Rosenblum agreed to be interviewed for this article, both arguing that they wanted to wait for Channel 13's review before making any further comment. In a written response to questions, they said they were "confident the vetting process currently under way will exonerate our film." In early February, Channel 13 released a five-page response, saying that it had "absolute confidence in the veracity of this outstanding film." The very next day, however, members of the station met with Kenneth S. Stern, a researcher for the American Jewish Committee, and a few days after that meeting the station decided to withdraw "The Liberators" and begin its review. Mr. Stern's 15-page "background report" for the Jewish Committee affirmed the conclusion that "black soldiers were among the liberators of concentration camps." His report, like many other records, finds that the 761st Tank Battalion was the first unit at the Gunskirchen camp in Austria, a sub-unit of the Mauthausen camp, where 15,000 Hungarian Jews were being held. But Mr. Stern accuses the film makers of carelessness regarding the two notorious camps in Germany. He concludes that the scant evidence placing men from the 761st at Buchenwald or Dachau is far outweighed by evidence placing them elsewhere. Some blacks did take part in the rescue of Jews from those camps, he said, but were from other Army units. Mr. Stern also says in his report that he interviewed the veterans of the 761st who say that they were in Buchenwald or Dachau. He found that they were far less certain than they appear to be in the film about the identities of the camps they saw. One veteran, Mr. McBurney, said in a telephone interview last week that he had been asked by Channel 13 not to comment until its review of the film is complete. The wife of another veteran, Preston McNeil, said the same thing for her husband. Three former officers in the battalion say that the reports written every day by each military unit -- called morning reports and after-action reports -- make no mention of Buchenwald or Dachau in connection with the 761st Battalion. The battalion's own history has no reference to the camps; neither does the Presidential citation the unit received in 1978 from President Jimmy Carter.
1993: Publication of E. M. Broner's The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality Through Community and Ceremony
1993(8th of Adar, 5753): “Two civilians in their twenties, Natan Azaria and Gregory Avramov, were stabbed to death in Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of Unto the Soul by Aharon Appelfeld in which “Gad and Amalia, brother and sister, have been given the sacred duty of tending an ancient cemetery of Jewish martyrs near their village in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe and Isaiah Berlin, John Gray’s study of the 20th century's premier Renaissance man that focuses on his liberalism, which was complex in that it acknowledged no one right path for human society.
2005: Completion of the Eleventh Daf Yomi Cycle begun in September, 1997. The next cycle begins on Wednesday, March 2, 2005.
2006: On the secular calendar Rosh Chodesh Adar, first day of the month of Adar.
2006: London Mayor Ken Livingstone began serving his four week suspension from office after being found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
2007(11th of Adar, 5767): Fast of Esther observed today since the 13th of Adar falls on Shabbat.
2007(11th of Adar, 5767): Meyer “Mike” Feldman, a White House advisor for President Kennedy, passed away at the age of 92.
2007: Celebration of the birthday of Muriel Rogers, doyen of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community
2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents The Path Of Our Fathers \ בדרכי אבות This is “an extraordinary and at times surrealistic road movie about a charismatic man named Menahem Goldberg. On the eve of Passover, Menahem took his donkey and two sons, one 12 years old and the second 8 years old, and set out to fulfill the mitzvah of going up to Jerusalem. The 170 km, 9-day trip by foot from their home in the north to the Western Wall, took them through the biblical landscapes of Judea and Samaria and brought them into contact with the present-day Israeli and Palestinian realities there.”
2008: Beth Hillel Congregation in Wilmette, Illinois, presents a screening of the Argentinean film Legado a documentary about the arrival of the first Russian Jews in 19th century Argentina. “In August 1889, the steamship Wesser docked in Argentina with the first group of Jewish escapees from the pogroms of Czarist Russia. After first finding work in order to survive first and to progress later, they grouped themselves in colonies, distributed in different provinces - Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, La Pampa, Santiago del Estero and Buenos Aires -, most of them thanks to the initiative of baron Mauricio de Hirsch who facilitated around one hundred hectares to each group.This, the first Jewish agricultural colonization gave birth to a new way of life that, beyond the questions related to the traditions and faith (or indeed by them), would leave a remarkable imprint on the country of Argentina. The film's Yiddish narrator is Esther, one of the many women who arrived in those very small boats and participated in the foundation of Moisésville, known as "the mother of all the colonies". Her account spans eighty years.”
2008(24th of Adar I, 5768): St. Sgt. Doron Asulin, 20 of Beersheba and St. Sgt. Eran Dan-Gur, 20, of Jerusalem, were killed early Saturday as their Givati Brigade units operated against terrorists. Asulin served in the brigade’s anti-tank company and Dan-Gur served in the Shaked Battalion.
2008: On the second day of Operation Hot Winter which was aimed at disrupting terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces “carried out airstrikes at ammo warehouses, rocket factories, rocket warehouses and launching cells, combined with small incursions close to the border. Despite the IAF presence in the whole Gaza Strip and the IDF presence in the border areas, the Palestinian militants managed to fire more than 200 rockets during the operation, most of them at Sderot, but at least 20 at Ashkelon and 1 at Netivot.”
2009: Jonathan Schanzer, director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center discusses and signs copies of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine at Politics and Prose Bookstore in
Washington, D.C.
2009: The 120th annual Central Conference American Rabbis being held in Jerusalem comes to an end.
2009: The annual Koach Kallah comes to an end.
2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War by Alexander Waugh, A Mad Desire to Dance by Elie Wiesel and recently released paperback editions of The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal, by Lily Koppel and Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir, by David Rieff.
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Future of Liberalism by Alan Wolfe
2009: Effective today the Glendale Uptown Home will become a nonkosher facility, leaving Philadelphia proper without a certified glatt-kosher nursing home. While the facility has not technically been a Jewish home since it was sold in 2006, a large number of its residents are Jewish, and it has long been associated with Philadelphia's Jewish community.
"I don't know what percentage of the residents keep kosher," admitted Rabbi Fred Davidow, the home's on-site Jewish leader. "I know that of the 220-odd residents we have here, approximately 165 are Jewish, but I don't know the percentage of those who would be insistent that we have kosher food." Davidow is a full-time staffer at the facility, acting as chaplain and holding regular services. Davidow's continued presence will insure that, regardless of changes in the kitchen, the spiritual and cultural needs of the Jewish residence will continue to be served in a "Kosher" manner. In addition to a rabbi on site, Jewish-themed art adorns the lobby, and a glassed-in space houses electric yahrzeit candles. Davidow said that despite the change in dietary policy, he still plans to hold two Passover seders and do the same programming he's done in past years. 2009: A revival of Rogers and Hart’s Pal Joey presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company had its last performance
2010 (15th of Adar, 57700: Shushan Purim
2010: “The 48 Ways to Wisdom,” a program cosponsored by The Jewish Renaissance is scheduled for this evening at Keter Torah Synagogue this evening in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
2010: In Jerusalem, The Kingdom of Alrov Mamilla Avenue is scheduled to celebrate Shushan Purim at its annual Purim carnival which will include a colorful parade with characters from the Megilla, clowns and jugglers, circus performances, circus workshops, magnet games, and whole lot more.
2010: Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was released from a German prison today after serving a five-year sentence. Zundel, 69, who was released from a prison in Mannheim, was found guilty in 2007 of inciting hatred against Jews and systematically denying the Nazi genocide against the Jews -- in 14 specific instances -- on his Web site and in a newsletter. His five-year sentence included two years in jail following his deportation from Canada in 2005. The trial began in November 2006.Zundel received the maximum sentence, according to reports. Born in Germany, Zundel left the country in 1958 allegedly to avoid military service. Considered among the most active Holocaust deniers in the world, he was arrested in Canada in February 2003. Zundel was among the first right-wing extremists to use the Internet to spread hate material. Canada expelled him after courts there found his Web site to be unconstitutional. He was one of several Holocaust deniers deported to Germany at about that time. During his trial in Mannheim, Zundel's attorney, Sylvia Stolz, denied the Holocaust herself and in 2008 was sentenced to three years, eight months in jail. Meanwhile, the German news agency DDP reported that the sentence of longtime Austrian Holocaust denier Gerd Honsik was reduced to four years from five. A Vienna court ruled today that the original sentence that was passed last April was too high. Honsik had been convicted of similar charges in 1992 but fled to Spain, where he continued disseminating his Holocaust denial theories in print. He was arrested there in 2007 and sent back to Austria to face further charges. Honsik repeatedly has questioned the existence of gas chambers.
2011: Israel LTD, film that records “a group of young Americans on their intensive bus journey across a strong and righteous Israel” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC in Manhattan.
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; March, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
286: Roman Emperor Diocletian raises Maximian to the rank of Caesar. Diocletian was determined to restore greatness and stability to the Roman Empire. He was far more concerned about the Christians whom he saw “as the sole cause of the dissolution of the Empire, on account of their persistent struggle against the Roman state religion and their zeal for conversion” than he was about the Jews. When he attempted to unify the empire by ordering all of those under his reign to accept his divinity and “bring sacrifices to his cult,” Diocletian exempted the Jews. The only negative note of import surrounding Diocletian and his Jewish subjects had to do with accusation that they had mocked him because of his early origins as a swineherd. Judah III, the Patriarch, actually had to appear before the Emperor while he was in Tiberias to answer the charge. Judah assured him that while some may of spoken disrespectfully of Diocletian the swineherd nobody had uttered any words of criticism against Diocletian, the emperor. The explanation assuaged Diocletian but it has been used an example of the dangers of speaking L’shon Hara.
293: Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesares, thus beginning the Tetrarchy. This move on the part of Diocletian was part of an attempt to ensure a smooth transition of power after Diocletian resigned as Emperor. The plan would fail and would result in 19 years of turmoil that would end only when Constantine took the throne. For the Jews, this would mean an end to great Yeshiva at Tiberias. Those who could would flee to Caesarea where they would a haven at the yeshiva begun by Abbahu.
317: Crispus and Constantine II, sons of Roman Emperor Constantine I, and Licinius Iunior, son of Emperor Licinius, are made Caesares. Lucinius and Crispus would be killed, the latter by his father Emperor Constantine I. Constantine II would continue the anti-Jewish policies of his father. Among other things, he decreed that any Christians who converted to Judaism would forfeit their property to the state.
1274: Gregory X issued Turbato Code, a Papal Bull that forbade Christians from “embracing Judaism.”
1349 (Adar 10): Riots broke out in Worms (Germany). Many Jews fled to Heidelberg. Others in desperation set fire to their homes or were murdered. An estimated 420 people died that day. Their property was seized by the town.
1655: The Magistrate of New Amsterdam wrote a ruling making an attempt to expel the Jews. It read, in part, "Resolved that the Jews, who came last year from the West Indies and now from the Fatherland, must prepare to depart forthwith."
1655: The Sheriff of New Amsterdam as plaintiff filed suit against the defendant Abram de la Sina, a Jew, for the crime of keeping his store open during the hour the church gave a sermon.
1565: Portuguese settlers founded the city of Rio de Janeiro. For the first two centuries of its existence, Jewish life in the city was hindered by the reality of the Portuguese laws against Judaism and the Inquisition. “New Christians” played an active role in the city’s commercial and social life but records show that at least 300 of these New Christians were found guilty by the Inquisition of secretly practicing Judaism. After Brazil gained its independence in 1822 and adopted a constitution in 1824 that allowed for religious toleration, more Jews began arriving in the city and played a more active role in its growth and prosperity. Today, Rio has the second largest Jewish community in Brazil.
1670: “A solemn proclamation was made in all public places that ‘for the glory of God’ all Jews should, on penalty of imprisonment and death, leave Vienna and Upper and Lower Austria before Corpus Christi Day, never to return. Hirz Koma and a physician named Leo Winkler, “made a last attempt to propitiate the emperor by offering him 100,000 florins and, in addition, 10,000 florins a year.”
1803: Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state. Under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance there was not to be any religious qualification for states formed in the region including Ohio. The first record of Jewish settlement in Ohio relates to the city of Cincinnati. By 1824, there were enough Jews living in the “Queen City,” that the Jews formed a congregation called the Sons of Israel. The twenty-four members of the congregation were not able to raise enough funds for a building until 1836. Max Lilienthal and Isaac Mayer were the first two rabbis in the state. By the time of the Civil War, the Jewish population was large enough that it sent almost 1,200 of its sons to fight in the Union cause.
1810: Georgetown College was chartered in Washington, D.C., making it the first Roman Catholic institution of higher learning established in the United States. Today Georgetown has approximately 1,600 Jewish students out of a student boy of 13,000 students. The school offers approximately 35 Jewish Studies Courses.
1823: In New York, Solomon Henry Jackson published “The Jew,” an anti-missionary journal. This is thought to be the first Jewish publication to be published in the United States. Jackson is also known for translating and publishing the first Sephardic Siddur in America. He published an English-Hebrew version in 1826.
1843: The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York passed a resolution prohibiting the performing of ceremonies at funerals of persons intermarried with Christians.
1851: Noting the appearance of Jews in Utah, Lorenzo Brown wrote in his diary today that he had seen “some Hungarian Jews living in the ward--emigrants bound for the [California] mines...forced to leave their native land because of the revolution.”
1852: The New York Times reported that a funding raising ball has raised $1,034 which will be donated to "The Hebrew Hospital" in New York City.
1858: The New York Times reported that in February of this year, Lord John Russell's bill that would modify the oath of office so that Jews could serve in Parliament had been "debated and read for a second time" in the House of Commons. [This was in the days before the transatlantic cable. Gaps between events and published reports are responsible for some of the inconsistencies in providing specific dates for events]
1858: Birthdate of German born philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel. Simmel’s family was Jewish, but when his father died, Simmel’s Catholic guardian converted him to the Church of Rome.
1860: “Gang of Rogues Started on a Traveling Tour,” an article published today, reported that “Five Polish and Prussian Jews, who have long been known to the police authorities of” New York City “as expert pickpockets and daring burglars… started on a Western traveling tour” yesterday evening. Information of their departure was given by two members of the gang, who have lately sundered relationship with their old associates.” According to these two, “the gang has for a long time gone by the name of the ‘Order of Vatabeds,’ a name till now kept private among the members.” Since it was impossible for the police to detain them in New York, “telegrams were sent to Albany, Buffalo and Dunkirk, stating the fact of their departure, and putting the public and Police on guard against their arrival. The names of the traveling troupe are Samuel Levy, alias "Old Levy"; Morris M. Goldstein, alias Goldever; L. Truebart; Michael Roberts, alias "Big Roberts," and Henry Wcyman. Most of them have served terms in foreign state prisons.”
1860: A column entitled "London Town Talk" published today provides a gossipy and negative view of William Ward’s elevation from Baron of Ward to Earl of Dudley. His elevation was attributed not to his virtue but to his wealth. According to the unnamed author the role of money should comes as no surprise since it was “Baron Rothschild’s millions” that made Lord John Russell an advocate of the bill to remove “Jewish disabilities” when it came to taking the oath to serve in Parliament.
1861: The New York Times reported that The Knoxville (Tenn.) Whig gave “a first rate” description of a “Jew” named Mordecai who distinguished himself a few weeks” ago since by presenting $10,000 to the Governor of South Carolina. The Whig stated that “Mordecai who is a druggist, visited New-York, Philadelphia and Boston, just before he did this act, and represented to his creditors that he was insolvent, and settled with them by paying 50 cents on the dollar.” [By this time, South Carolina had seceded from the Union so the money was going to support the Rebel government.]
1861: The Purim Ball, the last of the three great events of New York’s Winter Social Season was held this evening.
1866(14th of Adar, 5626): Purim
1867: Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the Union. The Jewish community in Nebraska pre-dates statehood. Services were conducted in Omaha in the 1860’s. The oldest congregation in the state, Temple Israel, was founded in 1871 along with a burial society. The town of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln at this time and Lincoln became the state capital. Lincoln, Nebraska’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, also known as the South Street Temple was Lincoln’s first Jewish congregation. The Temple was founded in 1884, principally by German immigrants. The year 1884 must have been an auspicious one for Cornhusker Jews, since that is the same year in which the first synagogue building in the state was dedicated at Omaha. It was the home of Congregation Israel now known as Temple Israel.
1870: J.K. Buchner published Di Yiddshe Zeitunge, the first Yiddish weekly to be published in the United States. The language itself was more of a German Yiddish than the eastern European variant of the patois. The politics were conservative rather then socialist in direction.
1876: In Savannah, GA, the cornerstone is laid for the new home of Mikveh Israel. The new structure was required because the congregation had outgrown the old building.
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1886: First organized Arab attack on a Jewish settlement in what would become Eretz Yisrael. The attack was waged against Petak Tikvah, the first all Jewish village to be built in Palestine during modern times. The early settlers had a difficult time of it facing not only Arab marauders but malaria as well. The land on which the village was built was purchased by English Jew named Hayyim Amzalak who had moved to Palestine in 1830. Money for draining the malarial swamps in the area was given by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Much of the labor was supplied by Russian Jewish immigrants.
1888: Rabbi Joseph Silverman begins serving as spiritual leader for Temple Emanu-El replacing the legendary Gustav Gottheil. Silverman is the first American born rabbi to serve a congregation in New York City.
1891: With less than two months until the start of Passover, The Passover Relief Association, which provides matzoth and items to New York’s less fortunate Jews, finds itself with only $173.45 in its treasury. Considering the fact that the association spent $675.24 and the fact that the population of needy Jews has greatly increased, the association is in need of donations which can be sent to its members including the chairman, Benjamin Saidel.
1896: Theodor Herzl and Nathan Birnbaum meet for the first time. Nathan Birnbaum was born in Vienna, and lived there from.1864-1908, and again from 1914-21. In 1882, together with two other students in the University of Vienna, he founded “Kadimah,” the first organization of Jewish nationalist students in the West. In 1884, he published his first pamphlet, Die Assimilationsucht (“The Assimilation Disease/Mania”). He founded, published and edited Selbst-Emancipation! (“Self-Emancipation!”) The periodical promoted “the idea of a Jewish renaissance and the resettlement of Palestine.” It incorporated and developed the ideas of Leon Pinsker. In 1890, Birnbaum coined the terms “Zionist” and “Zionism,” and, in 1892, “Political Zionism.” In 1893, he published a brochure entitled Die Nationale Wiedergeburt des Juedischen Volkes in seinem Lande als Mittel zur Loesung der Judenfrage (“The National Rebirth of the Jewish People in its Homeland as a Means of Solving the Jewish Question”), in which he expounded ideas similar to those that Herzl was to promote subsequently. Birnbaum played a prominent part in the First Zionist Congress (1897) and was elected Secretary General of the Zionist Organization. However, he and Herzl developed ideological differences. Birnbaum had begun to question the political aims of Zionism and to attach increasing importance to the national-cultural content of Judaism. Birnbaum eventually left the Zionist movement and later became a leading spokesman for Jewish cultural autonomy in the Diaspora. He stressed the Yiddish language as the basis of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and was chief convenor of the Conference on Yiddish held in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1908. This was attended by leading Yiddish writers, and proclaimed Yiddish as a national Jewish language. Birnbaum propagated his ideas in writing and by lecturing in many Jewish communities. In the years preceding World War I he gradually abandoned his materialistic and secular outlook, eventually embracing full traditional Judaism. He may be seen as the forerunner of the modern Baal Teshuvah movement. His most famous book of this period was Gottesvolk (“God’s People”) first published in German and Yiddish in 1917 (translated into English in a shortened form by J. Elias in 1947 titled "Confession"). In 1919, he became the first Secretary General of the new Agudath Yisrael Organization. Dissatisfied with the spiritual complacency of the religious masses, he initiated a movement, the Order of the Olim (“[Spiritual] Ascenders”), to consist of small groups of people dedicated by their way of living to raising spiritual awareness within the larger Jewish society, thus leading toward a Jewish spiritual renaissance. Disturbed by the urbanized focus of Jewish life, he promoted the establishment of agricultural communities and other groups living a style of Jewish life more in conformity with nature. Settlement in Eretz Israel was to be for the prime purpose of fulfilling the spiritual role of the Jewish people. He lived in Berlin from 1912-1914, and again from 1921-1933. After the rise of Nazism, he left Germany for Scheveningen, Netherlands, where he edited Der Ruf ("The Call"), a platform for his ideas. He died there in 1937.
1903: In an article entitled “Light on the Jewish Question in Romania,” the New York Times summarizes an article that first appeared in The Romanian Bulletin that defends King Charles (a.k.a. Carlos I) against accusations that he is the prime mover in the persecution of his Hebrew subjects. The article depicts him as being sympathetic to their plight, but as constitutional monarch, all but powerless to defend the Jews against “unscrupulous ministers” who do not share his enlightened views of Romanian Hebrews.
1914: Birthdate of Aaron Ruben the Chicago native who gained fame as a producer, writer and director for some of the most popular television comedies of the 1960s and ’70s, notably “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and “Sanford and Son
1911: Birthdate of chess grandmaster Harry Golombek
1917: The U.S. government released the plaintext of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public. Barbara Tuchman, the noted Jewish historian, wrote The Zimmerman Telegram a fascinating volume covering this little known event which had a major impact on America’s decision to enter World War I on the side of the Allies.
1919: Emir Feisal, the son of Emir Hussein, Grand Sharif of Mecca and the leader of the Arabs of Hejaz sent a letter to Felix Frankfurter. According to Martin Gilbert he wrote, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.” “I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and derived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is notional and not imperialist: our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success with the other. I look forward, and the people with me look forward to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once against take their place in the comity of the civilized peoples of the world.”
1920: Tel Hai, a Jewish village in the Galilee is attacked by Arabs. Joseph Trumpeldor, the one-armed Jewish military leader and one of the Zionist movement’s first military heroes was killed in the ensuing battled along with five men under his command. “Trumpeldor was born in 1880 in Russia. Originally in training as a dentist, he volunteered for the Russian army in 1902. During the Russo-Japanese War he participated in the siege of Port Arthur, where he lost his left arm and was captured. Subsequently, he received four decorations for bravery, which made him the most decorated Jewish soldier in Russia. In 1906 he became the first Jew in the army to receive an officer's commission. In 1911 he emigrated to Palestine then under the Ottoman Turks, living for a time at kibbutz Deganya. When World War I broke out, he went to Egypt, where together with Vladimir Jabotinsky he developed the idea of the Jewish legion to fight with the British against common enemies and as a result, the Zion Mule Corps was formed in 1917, considered to be the first all-Jewish military unit organized in close to two thousand years, and the ideological beginning of the Israel Defense Forces. He saw action in Gallipoli, where he was wounded in the shoulder. Upon his return to Russia in 1918, he established the He-Halutz, a youth organization that prepared immigrants for aliyah (moving to Palestine), and returned to Palestine himself, then under the British Mandate. He was one of the founders of the Zionist Socialist movement in pre-state Israel.. After his death Trumpeldor became the symbol of Jewish "self-defence", and his memorial day on the 11th day of Adar is officially noted in Israel every year. Supposedly, his last words were, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country". There is no proof whether this is true.”
1921: The Political committee of the Zionist Organization met in London to discuss Churchill’s forthcoming visit to Palestine.
1922: John Schuburgh a member of the Middle East Department (of the British Government) sent a visiting Arab delegation a letter reiterating British support for the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
1922: Birthdate of Yitzhak Rabin (יצחק רבין). A Sabra, Rabin was a soldier-statesman who served as Prime Minister from 1974 until 1977. The scandal which drove him from office would open the way for the Right-Wing Likud to take power for the first time since the founding of the Jewish State. Rabin would return as Prime Minister in 1992. He would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking attempts to end the violence in the Middle East. Sadly, the man who had avoided death at the hands of Israel’s Arab enemies, met death at the hands of a Jewish fanatic bent on derailing the Peace Process. Would events been different had Rabin lived? We will never know. Just as a killer at Dallas had thwarted the American electoral process, so a killer thwarted the democratic process in Israel in 1995.
1926: Birthdate of Robert Clary. The French born actor gaineded fame playing the part of LeBeau on “Hogan’s Heroes.” The irony is that Clary was the only one of his immediate family members to survive imprisonment by the Nazis during World War II.
1928: Joseph Levy, writing in the described the ceremonies that marked “the recent inauguration of the plantation of the Balfour Forest at Ginegar, in the Valley of Jezreel, Palestine.” As part of the ceremony, Sir Alfred Mond delivered an address in which he “paid high tribute to Lord Plumer, the High Commissioner, for the devotion he has shown during his tenure in office and to the Jewish national fund. The entire cost of the Balfour Forest is being borne by the Jews of Great Britain. The project is part of the Zionist led reforestation project that is vital to the renewal of Palestine.
1932: On a radio broadcast on the day of Cardozo's confirmation, Clarence C. Dill, Democratic Senator for Washington, called Hoover's appointment of Cardozo "the finest act of his career as President"
1932: The Maccabee Association of the United States announced the members of the swimming and track and field teams that will be sent to compete in the Jewish Olympic Games that will take place at the end of March. The selection committee was chaired by Sol Goodstein.
1934: As of this date, according to a report prepared by Morris Rothenberg, President of the ZOA, there are a quarter of a million Jews living in Palestine which marks a significant increase from the total of 85,000 Jews living there in 1921.
1935: Birthdate of Judith Rossner, author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
1936: Birthdate of Richmond, VA native Shirley Bernice Politzer who would gain fame as “Dr. Shirley P. Glass, a psychologist who strove to redefine the nature of infidelity” and the mother of Ira Glass, producer of “This American Life.”
1937: Winston Churchill retains Hungarian born Jew Emery Reves as his literary agent which would prove a boon to Churchill’s literary career and pocketbook.
1941: Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes to Colonial Secretary Lord Moyne expressing his displeasure with General Wavell who, “like most British officers is pro-Arab” and opposed to the Jews. This attitude extends to an unwillingness on the part of the British military to form additional Jewish military units to fight in the Imperial Army.
1941: Himmler inspected the Auschwitz concentration camp
1941: Bulgaria officially joins the Axis Powers - Germany, Italy and Japan
1942: On Purim Eve, the Germans ordered 5,000 Jews deported from Minsk.
1943: In Amsterdam, a Jewish old age home for the disabled was raided.
1943: In a speech given before a crowd of 70,000 people at Madison Square Garden, Chaim Weizmann states, “Two million Jews have already been exterminated. The world can no longer plead that the ghastly facts are unknown or unconfirmed. This rally had been planned by the American Jewish Congress in an attempt to mobilize American public opinion in support of efforts to rescue Jews trapped in Hitler’s Europe.
1947: Jews responded violently to British Foreign Minister Bevin’s latest pronouncements about Palestine by conducting multiple attacks that resulted in the death of at least sixteen British military personnel.
1947: David Remez, Chairman of The Jewish National Council, announced tonight that the “Jewish population of Palestine will observe a self-imposed curfew for four hours” tomorrow night to express their concern for the refugees from Europe recently seized by the British.
1950: It was revealed today that in the non-aggression pact being considered by Israel and Jordan included a promise that Haifa would become a free-port for Jordan thus giving the Arab state access to the Mediterranean.
1960(2nd of Adar): Hundreds of Jews, including some students of the local Chabad Yeshivah, were among the thousands of victims to perish in a devastating earthquake that struck Agadir, Morocco today
1972: Naomi Bronheim Levine was appointed Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress (A. J. Cong.), becoming the first woman to take the helm of a major American Jewish organization that included both men and women as members. Born in New York on April 15, 1923, Levine was educated at Hunter College and Columbia University and worked as a lawyer before joining the A. J. Cong.), in 1951. She would remain there for more than two decades. Levine began her work at the Congress as a lawyer for its Commission on Law and Social Action; from that position, Levine went on to become director of the A. J. Cong.), Women's Division. These positions foreshadowed her involvement with civil rights and women's issues as executive director of the organization. Although she was considered a pioneer for women, Levine saw herself as caught somewhere between an older ideal of domesticity and a newer feminism. She told the New York Times that "women's lib is probably correct, but it's not my style." Although a Times profile published when Levine was appointed to the top post at the A. J. Cong.), focused on her devotion to the traditional roles of wife and mother even as she built a path-breaking career, Levine had long been committed to progressive women's issues. From 1955 to 1971, she had owned and operated Camp Greylock, an all-girls summer camp that was later credited with contributing to the professional success of many of its alumnae. Levine stepped down from her post at the American Jewish Congress in 1978, when she was appointed head of public relations, government relations, and fundraising at New York University. She stayed at NYU for over two decades, eventually becoming senior vice president for external affairs and raising over $2 billion. Her fundraising success allowed the University to transform itself from a local commuter school to a strong university with a national presence. During her tenure at NYU, Levine created the Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising and the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life. After retiring in 2000, Levine continued to chair the boards of both of these organizations. Upon her retirement, NYU President L. Jay Oliva called Levine "quite simply a spectacular human being."
1978: Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery.
1985: Milwaukee businessman Herb Kohl purchased the Milwaukee Bucks. Kohl would go on to become one of Wisconsin’s two Jewish senators.
1987: In an article entitled “An Israeli Lawyer Dares Defend an Accused Nazi,” Francis X. Clines describes the challenges and criticism facing Yoram Sheftel, the Tel Aviv criminal lawyer serving as co-counsel in the defense of John Demjanjuk, the retired auto worker from the United States who is accused of being the infamous executioner of the Treblinka death camp.
1988(12th of Adar, 5748): Joe Besser one of the Three Stooges passed away.
1991(15th of Adar, 5751): Edwin H Land inventor of the Polaroid Camera passed away at the age of 81.
1991: Following the end of the Iraq War, Lufthansa plans to resume service to Tel Aviv today.
1993: In the following article entitled “Doubts Mar PBS Film of Black Army Unit,” Richard Bernstein describes the controversy surrounding a movie that is supposed to be a documentary about the 761st Tank Battalion’s role in the liberation of Jews held in concentration camps at the end of World War II. The tank battalion was an all-black unit and the film was supposed to be a tool to rejuvenate the alliance between Jews and African-American.
Former Capt. David Williams of the 761st Tank Battalion, one of the few black combat units to fight in World War II, was talking about distances, Sherman tanks and truth. "On April 29, 1945," he said, referring to the day the Dachau concentration camp was liberated, "the 761st was near Straubing, which is about 70 miles from Dachau as the crow flies. Bridges were down, the tanks were all beat up. There wasn't enough gas. Nobody could have just taken a Sherman tank on a 140-mile round trip and not have been noticed missing. He would have been court-martialed." Mr. Williams, who lives in retirement in Miami, was offering his comment on a controversy that has suddenly emerged to chill what was a brief moment of racial harmony. It began with a documentary film that was broadcast nationwide on PBS last November but has now been pulled from circulation pending an investigation by WNET, Channel 13, the public television station for New York City, which helped produce it. The film, "The Liberators," viewed by an audience of 3.7 million, portrayed the neglected history of the 761st Battalion, putting considerable stress on the involvement of some of its members at the liberations of two of the most notorious camps in Germany, Dachau and Buchenwald. 'PBS-Gate Follies,' Veteran Says Last month, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. Before that, black and Jewish leaders gathered at a special showing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and spoke of the two people's common history of oppression. The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged that it be distributed in all high schools. The problem is that Mr. Williams -- and journalists, researchers and many other war veterans -- contend that a central element of the film, the role of black soldiers from the 761st in the liberation of those particular camps, is simply not true. "It's the PBS-gate follies," said Mel Rappaport, a veteran of the Sixth Armored Division, which, he said, did liberate Buchenwald. Channel 13 has asked PBS affiliates not to broadcast the film while it looks into the questions that have been raised about what it calls "details of the liberation of specific camps." The station expressed confidence that the "overall point" of the film remains valid: that blacks fought racism and discrimination at home to be allowed to serve their country in the war and then witnessed the ultimate in racism and discrimination in the Holocaust. Military historians agree that the undisputed record of the 761st is outstanding. During 183 days of combat in 1944 and 1945, the 761st, wearing the Black Panther patch, captured or liberated more than 30 major towns and four airfields. It suffered a 50 percent casualty rate and lost 71 tanks. It pierced the Siegfried Line into Germany and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And it did liberate at least one concentration camp, the Gunskirchen camp in Austria. Many critics, however, argue that the film went seriously awry in its depiction of the liberations of Buchenwald and Dachau. They complain that the moral edifice embodied in remembrance can crumble if history is handled casually, or distorted to fit current needs -- and nothing having to do with the places whose names resonate with the century's worst crimes can be dismissed as a "detail." And so, despite evident good intentions all around, the focus of attention has shifted from the intermingled histories of blacks and Jews and to another question: Does "The Liberators" tell the truth? How could this have happened? In 1982, William Miles, a prize-winning documentary film maker, began hearing tales of the 761st and other black battalions during his work on another documentary, "The Different Drummer: Blacks in the Military," broadcast in 1983. In 1985 he saw a letter in The New York Times written by Benjamin Bender, a survivor of Buchenwald, who recalled seeing black soldiers at the liberation of the camp. In 1989 the presence of black soldiers was mentioned by Elie Wiesel, who was also an inmate there. Mr. Miles joined Nina Rosenblum, whose credits include "Through the Wire," an award-winning documentary about female prisoners in the United States. With backing from Channel 13, they produced "The Liberators," subtitled, "Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II." It is essentially a chronological account of the tank battalion and other black units, like the 183d Engineering Battalion, that fought in Europe in World War II. A major point is the role supposedly played by members of the 761st in the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. The film shows several survivors of the camps, including Mr. Bender and Israel Lau, now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, testifying to the presence of black troops. Several former enlisted men of the 761st Battalion and the 183d Engineers also describe their roles in liberating the two camps. William McBurney and Leonard Smith recount driving their tanks through the gates of Dachau and detail the horrors they saw there. Still, questions about the film's accuracy were raised even before it was nationally shown on Nov. 11. Mr. Williams recalled a phone conversation he said he had about six months ago with Mr. Miles in which he told Mr. Miles that "the stuff about Buchenwald and Dachau is a lie." Mr. Miles, he said, did not reply. Mr. Rappaport, the Sixth Division veteran, said: "I got in touch with Bill Miles, who was very polite. I told him our division was the Sixth Armored and that we liberated Buchenwald. I was there. I saw no black troops. 'Well, Mr. Rappaport,' he said, 'we have witnesses.' “The first public criticism seems to have been made on the radio station WBAI in New York by Jim Dingman, a program host who specializes in military history. Articles questioning the veracity of the film were also published in The New York Guardian, The Forward and The New Republic. Neither Mr. Miles nor Ms. Rosenblum agreed to be interviewed for this article, both arguing that they wanted to wait for Channel 13's review before making any further comment. In a written response to questions, they said they were "confident the vetting process currently under way will exonerate our film." In early February, Channel 13 released a five-page response, saying that it had "absolute confidence in the veracity of this outstanding film." The very next day, however, members of the station met with Kenneth S. Stern, a researcher for the American Jewish Committee, and a few days after that meeting the station decided to withdraw "The Liberators" and begin its review. Mr. Stern's 15-page "background report" for the Jewish Committee affirmed the conclusion that "black soldiers were among the liberators of concentration camps." His report, like many other records, finds that the 761st Tank Battalion was the first unit at the Gunskirchen camp in Austria, a sub-unit of the Mauthausen camp, where 15,000 Hungarian Jews were being held. But Mr. Stern accuses the film makers of carelessness regarding the two notorious camps in Germany. He concludes that the scant evidence placing men from the 761st at Buchenwald or Dachau is far outweighed by evidence placing them elsewhere. Some blacks did take part in the rescue of Jews from those camps, he said, but were from other Army units. Mr. Stern also says in his report that he interviewed the veterans of the 761st who say that they were in Buchenwald or Dachau. He found that they were far less certain than they appear to be in the film about the identities of the camps they saw. One veteran, Mr. McBurney, said in a telephone interview last week that he had been asked by Channel 13 not to comment until its review of the film is complete. The wife of another veteran, Preston McNeil, said the same thing for her husband. Three former officers in the battalion say that the reports written every day by each military unit -- called morning reports and after-action reports -- make no mention of Buchenwald or Dachau in connection with the 761st Battalion. The battalion's own history has no reference to the camps; neither does the Presidential citation the unit received in 1978 from President Jimmy Carter.
1993: Publication of E. M. Broner's The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality Through Community and Ceremony
1993(8th of Adar, 5753): “Two civilians in their twenties, Natan Azaria and Gregory Avramov, were stabbed to death in Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of Unto the Soul by Aharon Appelfeld in which “Gad and Amalia, brother and sister, have been given the sacred duty of tending an ancient cemetery of Jewish martyrs near their village in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe and Isaiah Berlin, John Gray’s study of the 20th century's premier Renaissance man that focuses on his liberalism, which was complex in that it acknowledged no one right path for human society.
2005: Completion of the Eleventh Daf Yomi Cycle begun in September, 1997. The next cycle begins on Wednesday, March 2, 2005.
2006: On the secular calendar Rosh Chodesh Adar, first day of the month of Adar.
2006: London Mayor Ken Livingstone began serving his four week suspension from office after being found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
2007(11th of Adar, 5767): Fast of Esther observed today since the 13th of Adar falls on Shabbat.
2007(11th of Adar, 5767): Meyer “Mike” Feldman, a White House advisor for President Kennedy, passed away at the age of 92.
2007: Celebration of the birthday of Muriel Rogers, doyen of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community
2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents The Path Of Our Fathers \ בדרכי אבות This is “an extraordinary and at times surrealistic road movie about a charismatic man named Menahem Goldberg. On the eve of Passover, Menahem took his donkey and two sons, one 12 years old and the second 8 years old, and set out to fulfill the mitzvah of going up to Jerusalem. The 170 km, 9-day trip by foot from their home in the north to the Western Wall, took them through the biblical landscapes of Judea and Samaria and brought them into contact with the present-day Israeli and Palestinian realities there.”
2008: Beth Hillel Congregation in Wilmette, Illinois, presents a screening of the Argentinean film Legado a documentary about the arrival of the first Russian Jews in 19th century Argentina. “In August 1889, the steamship Wesser docked in Argentina with the first group of Jewish escapees from the pogroms of Czarist Russia. After first finding work in order to survive first and to progress later, they grouped themselves in colonies, distributed in different provinces - Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, La Pampa, Santiago del Estero and Buenos Aires -, most of them thanks to the initiative of baron Mauricio de Hirsch who facilitated around one hundred hectares to each group.This, the first Jewish agricultural colonization gave birth to a new way of life that, beyond the questions related to the traditions and faith (or indeed by them), would leave a remarkable imprint on the country of Argentina. The film's Yiddish narrator is Esther, one of the many women who arrived in those very small boats and participated in the foundation of Moisésville, known as "the mother of all the colonies". Her account spans eighty years.”
2008(24th of Adar I, 5768): St. Sgt. Doron Asulin, 20 of Beersheba and St. Sgt. Eran Dan-Gur, 20, of Jerusalem, were killed early Saturday as their Givati Brigade units operated against terrorists. Asulin served in the brigade’s anti-tank company and Dan-Gur served in the Shaked Battalion.
2008: On the second day of Operation Hot Winter which was aimed at disrupting terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces “carried out airstrikes at ammo warehouses, rocket factories, rocket warehouses and launching cells, combined with small incursions close to the border. Despite the IAF presence in the whole Gaza Strip and the IDF presence in the border areas, the Palestinian militants managed to fire more than 200 rockets during the operation, most of them at Sderot, but at least 20 at Ashkelon and 1 at Netivot.”
2009: Jonathan Schanzer, director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center discusses and signs copies of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine at Politics and Prose Bookstore in
Washington, D.C.
2009: The 120th annual Central Conference American Rabbis being held in Jerusalem comes to an end.
2009: The annual Koach Kallah comes to an end.
2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War by Alexander Waugh, A Mad Desire to Dance by Elie Wiesel and recently released paperback editions of The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal, by Lily Koppel and Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir, by David Rieff.
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Future of Liberalism by Alan Wolfe
2009: Effective today the Glendale Uptown Home will become a nonkosher facility, leaving Philadelphia proper without a certified glatt-kosher nursing home. While the facility has not technically been a Jewish home since it was sold in 2006, a large number of its residents are Jewish, and it has long been associated with Philadelphia's Jewish community.
"I don't know what percentage of the residents keep kosher," admitted Rabbi Fred Davidow, the home's on-site Jewish leader. "I know that of the 220-odd residents we have here, approximately 165 are Jewish, but I don't know the percentage of those who would be insistent that we have kosher food." Davidow is a full-time staffer at the facility, acting as chaplain and holding regular services. Davidow's continued presence will insure that, regardless of changes in the kitchen, the spiritual and cultural needs of the Jewish residence will continue to be served in a "Kosher" manner. In addition to a rabbi on site, Jewish-themed art adorns the lobby, and a glassed-in space houses electric yahrzeit candles. Davidow said that despite the change in dietary policy, he still plans to hold two Passover seders and do the same programming he's done in past years. 2009: A revival of Rogers and Hart’s Pal Joey presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company had its last performance
2010 (15th of Adar, 57700: Shushan Purim
2010: “The 48 Ways to Wisdom,” a program cosponsored by The Jewish Renaissance is scheduled for this evening at Keter Torah Synagogue this evening in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
2010: In Jerusalem, The Kingdom of Alrov Mamilla Avenue is scheduled to celebrate Shushan Purim at its annual Purim carnival which will include a colorful parade with characters from the Megilla, clowns and jugglers, circus performances, circus workshops, magnet games, and whole lot more.
2010: Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was released from a German prison today after serving a five-year sentence. Zundel, 69, who was released from a prison in Mannheim, was found guilty in 2007 of inciting hatred against Jews and systematically denying the Nazi genocide against the Jews -- in 14 specific instances -- on his Web site and in a newsletter. His five-year sentence included two years in jail following his deportation from Canada in 2005. The trial began in November 2006.Zundel received the maximum sentence, according to reports. Born in Germany, Zundel left the country in 1958 allegedly to avoid military service. Considered among the most active Holocaust deniers in the world, he was arrested in Canada in February 2003. Zundel was among the first right-wing extremists to use the Internet to spread hate material. Canada expelled him after courts there found his Web site to be unconstitutional. He was one of several Holocaust deniers deported to Germany at about that time. During his trial in Mannheim, Zundel's attorney, Sylvia Stolz, denied the Holocaust herself and in 2008 was sentenced to three years, eight months in jail. Meanwhile, the German news agency DDP reported that the sentence of longtime Austrian Holocaust denier Gerd Honsik was reduced to four years from five. A Vienna court ruled today that the original sentence that was passed last April was too high. Honsik had been convicted of similar charges in 1992 but fled to Spain, where he continued disseminating his Holocaust denial theories in print. He was arrested there in 2007 and sent back to Austria to face further charges. Honsik repeatedly has questioned the existence of gas chambers.
2011: Israel LTD, film that records “a group of young Americans on their intensive bus journey across a strong and righteous Israel” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC in Manhattan.
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; March, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
Sunday, February 27, 2011
This Day, February 29, In Jewish History
February 29 In Jewish History
1236: In Narbonne (France), an attack on the Jewish quarter occurred after a Jew accidentally killed a Gentile during an argument. The Governor of the city, Don Amyeric, forcibly reestablished order. The house and library of Rabbi Meir ben Isaac were pillaged, but no one was killed.
1860: Samuel Levy, alias "Old Levy"; Morris M. Goldstein, alias Goldever; L. Truebart; Michael Roberts, alias "Big Roberts," and Henry Wcyman, “five Polish and Prussian Jews known to the authorities of New York as expert pickpockets and daring burglars left town this evening on what was described as a “Western Tour” meaning they were heading for Albany, Buffalo and parts unknown.
1892: Incorporation of St. Petersburg, Florida which has become the site for the Florida Holocaust Museum.
1916: Birthdate of singer, actress and television variety show hostess, Dinah Shore. Born Frances Rose Shore was born to a Jewish family in Winchester, Tennessee. She overcame a childhood bout of polio to become a successful dancer. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she found early fame and fortune as a singer with bandleader Xavier Cougat (Charo’s husband). She took the name Dinah from the title of a popular song. During the 1950’s she hosted a Sunday Night variety show which she always ended by giving America a big sweeping kiss before singing the theme “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Most Americans did not know that this all-American blond girl-next door was Jewish.
1924: Birthdate of Cleveland third basemen Al Rosen. Rosen elected MVP of the American League in 1953. He was the first player to be elected unanimously. He led the Indians to the American League Pennant in 1954. He left baseball after 1956, his all-star career shortened by injuries.
1920: Birthdate of Pulitzer Prize Winning author Howard Nemerov.
1928: Birthday of Laszlo Berkowits “a Hungarian-born American Reform rabbi. From 1944-1945, he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. After his release in 1945, he studied briefly in Sweden before he moved to the United States, where he began studying to be a rabbi. He was ordained in 1962.”
In 1963, he was hired by Temple Rodef Shalom as its first senior rabbi. He held this title for 35 years, prior to his retirement in July, 1998. In 1988, he received his Doctor of Divinity from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He is currently the Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Rodef Shalom.[
1936: Baby Snooks, played by Jewish comedic actress Fanny Brice, debuts on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
1936: During a concert at the Carnegie Hall, Bronislaw Huberman, switched the Stradivarius "Gibson" he owned for over 40 years with his newly acquired Guarnerius violin in his dressing room during the intermission and went on to the second half of the concert. When he was playing Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata in A Major, his secretary, Miss Ida Ibbiken, noticed that the "Gibson" disappeared from the dressing room. It was snatched by a young New York nightclub musician, Julian Altman, who kept the violin for the next half century. After being convicted of child molestation in 1985, Altman made a deathbed confession to his wife, Marcelle Hall, that he had stolen the violin. The insurance company, Lloyd's of London, paid Huberman $US30,000 for the loss in 1936. Ironically, Julian Altman went on to become a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. and performed for Presidents and politicians with the stolen Stradivarius for many years. After Altman's death in 1985, Ms. Hall consulted experts who confirmed that the violin was indeed the Gibson Stradivarius. Two years later, she returned it to Lloyd's and collected a finder's fee of $US263,000. The instrument underwent a 9-month restoration by J&A Beare Ltd., in London. In 1988, Lloyd's sold it for $US1.2 million to British violinist Norbert Brainin. In October 2001, the American violinist, Joshua Bell, purchased it for $4,000,000. "Normally someone in my situation with my income could not afford to own a Strad like this, but I was very lucky in my purchases of violins", Bell said. "I kind of worked my way up and managed."
1940: "Gone with the Wind" won eight Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, including Best Picture of 1939. This American classic certainly had a Jewish touch. It had a Jewish producer, theme music written by a Jew and of course a Jew, Leslie Howard, played one of the leading characters – the soulful Ashley Wilkes
1940: In response to the adoption of the Land Transfer Regulatons, David Ben Gurion decalred that “The effect of these regulationsis that no Jew may acquire in Plaestine a plot of land, a building or a triee, or ay right in water, except in town and a very small part of the country. The regulations not only violate the terms of the Mandate but completely nullify its primary purpose.’
1947: Two Jews were killed and five other persons were wounded in a bomb explosion in Haifa today on the third floor of Barclays Bank building near the railway station in the harbor zone.
1948: The Stern Gang bombed the Cairo-Haifa train killing 27 British soldiers
1960: An earthquake in Agadir, Morocco killed 5000 people, including hundreds of Jews.
1980 (12th of Adar, 5740): Yigal Allon (יגאל אלון) passed away. Born on a kibbutz in 1918, this sabra played an active role in the creation of the Kibbutz movement and the IDF. He was a member of the Haganah and leader of the Palmach. After the War For Indepenence he became a leading general in the IDF. After leaving the army, Allon became active in politics and held several responsible government positions including acting prime minister between the death of Levi Eshkol and the installation of Golda Meir as head of the government.
1988: Nazi documents implicated former UN Secretary-General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in WWII deportations. Waldheim's claims that he was just an Austrian serving as an officer in the Nazi Army, proved to be false. His war time behavior would make him personna non grata in many countries and he did not run for re-election as President of Austria.
1996: Novelist Joan Collins, whose father was a South African Jew,,was awarded US $1 million from Random House for breach of contract.
2003: "Ten Years of Hope," a play by Elizabeth Swados about the experiences of women who fled El Salvador for new lives in New York City, opened.
2004: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Five Men Who Broke My Heart by Susan Shapiro and the recently published paperback edition of Michael Pye’s novel, The Pieces From Berlin. "A woman in wartime Berlin accepts objets d'art for safekeeping from cultivated Jews, most of whom are sent to their deaths in Nazi camps. Sixty years later a Holocaust survivor recognizes a table in the window of her shop in Switzerland, forcing both characters to confront their long-submerged pasts."
2004: Playwright Jerome Lawrence passed away. Born Jerome Schwartz in Cleveland, Ohio, Lawrence is best known for the hits “Auntie Mame” and “Inherit the Wind” both of which became hit films.
2004: In an article entitled “A Frenchman Or a Jew?” Fernanda Eberstadt uses a sketch of the life of a French Jewess named Brigitte Stora as a vehicle for describing the changing status of the Jews of France especially in light of the growing Moslem population in metropolitan France.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EEDE173CF93AA15751C0A9629C8B63
2008: At Temple Judah, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the second in a series of special Musical Shabbats.
2008: A Belgian writer has admitted that she made up her bestselling "memoir" depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, her lawyers said. Misha Defonseca's 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France, according the Associated Press.Her two Brussels-based lawyers, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II, the AP reported. Nor is she Jewish.
2008: Israel began Operation Hot Winter, also called Operation Warm Winter a “military campaign in the Gaza Strip, launched in response to Qassam rockets fired from the Strip by Hamas. Two days prior to the IDF mission, “Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out a rocket barrage, in which they fired for the first time 6 Grad missiles at the industrial city of Ashkelon.”
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; February, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
1236: In Narbonne (France), an attack on the Jewish quarter occurred after a Jew accidentally killed a Gentile during an argument. The Governor of the city, Don Amyeric, forcibly reestablished order. The house and library of Rabbi Meir ben Isaac were pillaged, but no one was killed.
1860: Samuel Levy, alias "Old Levy"; Morris M. Goldstein, alias Goldever; L. Truebart; Michael Roberts, alias "Big Roberts," and Henry Wcyman, “five Polish and Prussian Jews known to the authorities of New York as expert pickpockets and daring burglars left town this evening on what was described as a “Western Tour” meaning they were heading for Albany, Buffalo and parts unknown.
1892: Incorporation of St. Petersburg, Florida which has become the site for the Florida Holocaust Museum.
1916: Birthdate of singer, actress and television variety show hostess, Dinah Shore. Born Frances Rose Shore was born to a Jewish family in Winchester, Tennessee. She overcame a childhood bout of polio to become a successful dancer. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she found early fame and fortune as a singer with bandleader Xavier Cougat (Charo’s husband). She took the name Dinah from the title of a popular song. During the 1950’s she hosted a Sunday Night variety show which she always ended by giving America a big sweeping kiss before singing the theme “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Most Americans did not know that this all-American blond girl-next door was Jewish.
1924: Birthdate of Cleveland third basemen Al Rosen. Rosen elected MVP of the American League in 1953. He was the first player to be elected unanimously. He led the Indians to the American League Pennant in 1954. He left baseball after 1956, his all-star career shortened by injuries.
1920: Birthdate of Pulitzer Prize Winning author Howard Nemerov.
1928: Birthday of Laszlo Berkowits “a Hungarian-born American Reform rabbi. From 1944-1945, he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. After his release in 1945, he studied briefly in Sweden before he moved to the United States, where he began studying to be a rabbi. He was ordained in 1962.”
In 1963, he was hired by Temple Rodef Shalom as its first senior rabbi. He held this title for 35 years, prior to his retirement in July, 1998. In 1988, he received his Doctor of Divinity from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He is currently the Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Rodef Shalom.[
1936: Baby Snooks, played by Jewish comedic actress Fanny Brice, debuts on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
1936: During a concert at the Carnegie Hall, Bronislaw Huberman, switched the Stradivarius "Gibson" he owned for over 40 years with his newly acquired Guarnerius violin in his dressing room during the intermission and went on to the second half of the concert. When he was playing Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata in A Major, his secretary, Miss Ida Ibbiken, noticed that the "Gibson" disappeared from the dressing room. It was snatched by a young New York nightclub musician, Julian Altman, who kept the violin for the next half century. After being convicted of child molestation in 1985, Altman made a deathbed confession to his wife, Marcelle Hall, that he had stolen the violin. The insurance company, Lloyd's of London, paid Huberman $US30,000 for the loss in 1936. Ironically, Julian Altman went on to become a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. and performed for Presidents and politicians with the stolen Stradivarius for many years. After Altman's death in 1985, Ms. Hall consulted experts who confirmed that the violin was indeed the Gibson Stradivarius. Two years later, she returned it to Lloyd's and collected a finder's fee of $US263,000. The instrument underwent a 9-month restoration by J&A Beare Ltd., in London. In 1988, Lloyd's sold it for $US1.2 million to British violinist Norbert Brainin. In October 2001, the American violinist, Joshua Bell, purchased it for $4,000,000. "Normally someone in my situation with my income could not afford to own a Strad like this, but I was very lucky in my purchases of violins", Bell said. "I kind of worked my way up and managed."
1940: "Gone with the Wind" won eight Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, including Best Picture of 1939. This American classic certainly had a Jewish touch. It had a Jewish producer, theme music written by a Jew and of course a Jew, Leslie Howard, played one of the leading characters – the soulful Ashley Wilkes
1940: In response to the adoption of the Land Transfer Regulatons, David Ben Gurion decalred that “The effect of these regulationsis that no Jew may acquire in Plaestine a plot of land, a building or a triee, or ay right in water, except in town and a very small part of the country. The regulations not only violate the terms of the Mandate but completely nullify its primary purpose.’
1947: Two Jews were killed and five other persons were wounded in a bomb explosion in Haifa today on the third floor of Barclays Bank building near the railway station in the harbor zone.
1948: The Stern Gang bombed the Cairo-Haifa train killing 27 British soldiers
1960: An earthquake in Agadir, Morocco killed 5000 people, including hundreds of Jews.
1980 (12th of Adar, 5740): Yigal Allon (יגאל אלון) passed away. Born on a kibbutz in 1918, this sabra played an active role in the creation of the Kibbutz movement and the IDF. He was a member of the Haganah and leader of the Palmach. After the War For Indepenence he became a leading general in the IDF. After leaving the army, Allon became active in politics and held several responsible government positions including acting prime minister between the death of Levi Eshkol and the installation of Golda Meir as head of the government.
1988: Nazi documents implicated former UN Secretary-General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in WWII deportations. Waldheim's claims that he was just an Austrian serving as an officer in the Nazi Army, proved to be false. His war time behavior would make him personna non grata in many countries and he did not run for re-election as President of Austria.
1996: Novelist Joan Collins, whose father was a South African Jew,,was awarded US $1 million from Random House for breach of contract.
2003: "Ten Years of Hope," a play by Elizabeth Swados about the experiences of women who fled El Salvador for new lives in New York City, opened.
2004: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Five Men Who Broke My Heart by Susan Shapiro and the recently published paperback edition of Michael Pye’s novel, The Pieces From Berlin. "A woman in wartime Berlin accepts objets d'art for safekeeping from cultivated Jews, most of whom are sent to their deaths in Nazi camps. Sixty years later a Holocaust survivor recognizes a table in the window of her shop in Switzerland, forcing both characters to confront their long-submerged pasts."
2004: Playwright Jerome Lawrence passed away. Born Jerome Schwartz in Cleveland, Ohio, Lawrence is best known for the hits “Auntie Mame” and “Inherit the Wind” both of which became hit films.
2004: In an article entitled “A Frenchman Or a Jew?” Fernanda Eberstadt uses a sketch of the life of a French Jewess named Brigitte Stora as a vehicle for describing the changing status of the Jews of France especially in light of the growing Moslem population in metropolitan France.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EEDE173CF93AA15751C0A9629C8B63
2008: At Temple Judah, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the second in a series of special Musical Shabbats.
2008: A Belgian writer has admitted that she made up her bestselling "memoir" depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, her lawyers said. Misha Defonseca's 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France, according the Associated Press.Her two Brussels-based lawyers, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II, the AP reported. Nor is she Jewish.
2008: Israel began Operation Hot Winter, also called Operation Warm Winter a “military campaign in the Gaza Strip, launched in response to Qassam rockets fired from the Strip by Hamas. Two days prior to the IDF mission, “Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out a rocket barrage, in which they fired for the first time 6 Grad missiles at the industrial city of Ashkelon.”
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; February, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
This Day, February 28, In Jewish History
February 28 In Jewish History
1348: At the Cortes of Alcala de Hebares King Alfonso XI issued a "startling" decree which forbad Jews and Moors from lending money “at interet.”
1533: Birthdate of French writer and philosopher Michael de Montaigne. His mother, Antoinette de Louppes, came from a rich Spanish Jewish family, but was herself raised as a Protestant. Should Montaigne be considered Jewish? It depends upon whose list you look at, so I will leave it up to others to investigate more fully and decide.
1574: The first official Auto da Fe in the New World was held in Mexico after the establishment of the Inquisition 5 years earlier. The first unofficial Auto da Fe was actually held in 1528 when the conquistador Hernando Alonso was executed.
1592: Clement VIII issued Cum saepe accidere, a Papal Bull that forbade the Jews of Avignon from selling new goods.
1593: Clement VIII issued Cum Haebraeorum militia, a Papal Bull that outlaws the reading of the Talmud.
1747: Benedict XIV issued Postremomens, a Papal Bull that deals with the baptism of Jews.
1787: The state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted Hugh Henry Breckenridge a charter for a school that is now known as the University of Pittsburgh. Today, there are approximately 1,800 Jewish students among the total undergrad population of 16,000 and 500 Jewish students among the 7,000 graduate students. The university offers a major in Jewish studies. Jewish students can avail themselves of programs offered by Hillel and Chabad as well as find kosher meals at the “Kosher Korner” at the University Center.
1799: Napoleon, the first European leader to meet with Jewish leaders in Palestine, led his army out of Gaza and headed for Ramallah.
1812: Birthdate of German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach. Born Moses (Moyses) Baruch, Auerbach published a novel entitled Spinoza: Ein Historischer Roman in 1837. He passed away in 1882 at the age of 70.
1838: Birthdate of French engineer Maurice Levy.
1850: The General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret established the University Desert which was the forerunner of the University of Utah located at Salt Lake City, Utah. Today the university has approximately 350 Jewish students out of a student population of 15,000. The school has ten courses in Jewish studies and offers a major degree in Jewish Studies. Not bad for a school founded deep the heart of the land of Brigham Young.
1854: The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. The party was formed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska act and was designed to stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda. Some of the Jews who were active in the early days of the party were Sabato Morais, rabbi of the Mikveh Israel Congregation, Moritz Pinner who edited a German language abolitionist paper in Kansas , Kentuckian Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, uncle of the Louis Brandeis and New Yorker Sigsmund Kaufman who was an a member of the electoral college that chose Abraham Lincoln to serve as President in 1860.
1855: In a demonstration of the extent to which Jewish concepts have penetrated the general cultural milieu, while giving a speech in New York on the habits of North American Indians, General Sam Houston tells the audience that until “the spirit of revenge had been conquered by civilization” the law of the Cherokee Nation “was the same as that practiced under the old dispensation by the Jews of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and blood for blood.”
1860: Birthdate of Victor L. Berger who would become the first member of the Socialist Party to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representative.
1862: A column entitled “Affairs In Utah” published today described the drive of those living in that territory to become a state in the Union. “As things go, it does seem apparent that Jews and Gentiles here are, more or less, under the conviction that the particular time ‘in the course of human events’ is at hand when a change is inevitable in the fashion of Government among "this people." Some may be surprised to hear of Jews connected with Utah which is almost synonymous with the Mormon Religion. The first Jews who settled in Utah were probably “dropouts” from the wagon trains heading to California during the California Gold Rush. By 1853, two Jews had established a millenary store in Salt Lake City. The first non-Mormon governor of Utah would be a Jew named Simon Bamberger. As to the issue of statehood, it would be another 34 years before that goal was reached. The price of admission would be a formal rejection by the Mormons of the practice of polygamy. To date, this is the only time that the federal government has “interfered” with the doctrines of a religious organization.
1863: The will of the late Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S. Navy, which has been admitted to probate, is now before the Supreme Court, at Special Term. Proceedings have been “instituted to break it, in respect to its bequests to the people of the United States, or the State of Virginia, and then to certain Hebrew congregations in New-York, Philadelphia and Richmond, for the purpose of founding an agricultural school at Monticello, in the State of Virginia.”
1887: Rumania excluded Jews from public service and the tobacco trade.
1887: Birthdate of William Zorach, “a Lithuanian-American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer” who won the Logan Medal of the arts.
1894: Birthdate of playwright and novelist Ben Hecht. His most famous work was “The Front Page” which he co-authored with Charles MacArthur. Hecht also won two Oscars for two of his screen plays. This comic drama about the newspaper business was a Broadway hit as well as a successful movie in the original and remakes. Hecht was also an ardent Zionist.
1898: Birthdate of Yiddish actress Molly Picon.
1900: During the Boer War the 118 day siege of Ladysmith came to an end. 1899: The Boers begin their 118 day siege of British held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Jewish soldiers were among those who fought at Ladysmith since there were at least 2,800 Jews fighting for the British and an untold number fighting for the Boers.
1903: Max Nordau meets Leopold Greenberg in Paris and sends a wire to Herzl: "Greenberg had obtained everything that can possibly be conceded in an official agreement."
1905: In New York, the initial meeting of a “Choral Society for Ancient Hebrew Meolodies” was held at the rooms Young Men’s Hebrew Association under the direction of Mr. Rosenblatt.
1906: Birthdate of mobster Bugsy Siegel
1915: Birthdate of actor Zero Mostel known for his roles in the original version of “The Producers” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
1916(24th of Adar I, 5676): Morris Lasker, aged 76, millionaire miller, pioneer, Indian fighter and philanthropist died in Galveston, Texas, this afternoon. Mr. Lasker won wide fame when he led the Jews of the South in a fight for the life and vindication of Leo Frank, who was convicted in Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan. Mr. Lasker came to America from Germany at the age of 16. He “was in the mercantile business in George for three years, and then came to Texas, settling at Weatherford, where he engaged in many expeditions against the Indians.” He settled in Galveston in 1867 and married Miss Nettie Davis of Albany, NY, the widow who survives him, along with six children including Albert Lasker of Chicago.
1916: Henry James, one of the literary giants of the 19th century, passed away. For more about how James viewed Jews including his review of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda see Milton Kerker’s Henry James on the Jewish scene/
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-112354673.html
1921: Fire destroys 120 homes and a large amount of shops in the Jewish quarter of Kouskoundjouk, Constantinople. Most of these belonged to poor Jews.
1921: Conference of rabbis in Jerusalem elects a court of Justice and chooses four Ashkenazi and four Sephardi rabbis with Rabbi Kook (Ashkenazi) & Jacob Meir (Sephardic).
1928: The Soviets decided to set up a Jewish district in Biro-bijanin Eastern Siberia. Most of its 14,200 square miles were uninhabitable due to floods. It was to be used as a buffer zone against China.
1929: Birthdate of Canadian born architect Frank Gehry.
1935(25th of Adar I, 5695): Jeannette Miriam Goldberg, who organized Texas chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Chautauqua Society, passed away.
1938: As the latest wave of Arab violence continued, The Palestine Post reported that the "representatives" of armed bands were regularly visiting Arab towns and villages, demanding money for their "activities" and issuing "receipts." A bridge on the Jenin-Afula road was damaged by an explosion and there were numerous shooting incidents throughout the country. A curfew was imposed on a number of villages after armed Arab terrorists stormed isolated police posts and stole arms and ammunition, intimidating the local Arab constables.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Union of Romanian Journalists expelled all Jews who became members after December 1919.
1939: The curfew that had been imposed on all of the Arab quarters starting on February 26 following the murder of 3 Jews by Arabs was scheduled to come to an end today at 6 A.M.
1940: The British adopted the MacDonald White Paper that included restriction of sale of Arab land to Jews in Eretz Yisrael. This document nearly voided the Balfour Declaration
1943: George Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" opened on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. The musical originally premiered in 1935 and survived for a mere 124 performances. The musical was revised after Gershwin's death and slowly gained popular and critical acclaim.
1943: In Kovono Ghetto, thousands of Jews attend the funeral of Rabbi Avraham Duber Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kovno despite an order from the Nazis forbidding them to do so.
1947: British naval forces seized 1,398 “illegal” Jewish immigrants today.
1947: Jacob and Niza Gabbai, a husband and wife couple who have just arrived in New York City from Palestine enrolled at Fordham University. The Gabbais are part of the Young Palestinian League which is working to develop a new cultural environment in their homeland. They chose Fordham “because it is a complete university and not just a drama or radio school, and also because it located in the world capital of the theatre.”
1950: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett presented the cabinet with the draft of five year non-aggression pact between Israel and Jordan. The pact is the product of several months of secret negotiations. It includes most of the terms of the armistice agreement without setting final boundaries. Some additional points include the opening of the Israeli held road to Bethlehem to Arab traffic, the opening of the road to Mt. Scopus to Israelis and an Israeli promise to supply electricity to the Arab held sections of Jerusalem. Israeli opposition to the agreement will be limited to a handful of leftists who oppose King Abdullah because they think he is a puppet of the British imperialists and the rightwing nationalists who believe that all of the land west of the Jordan should be part of a Jewish state. Jordanian approval is much more problematic since it will face serious opposition from numerous sources including those who want a second war with the Jews so that they can destroy the Zionist entity. [Abdullah would be assassinated in the following year for conducting these negotiations and it would take another four decades before Israel and Jordan finally concluded a peace agreement.]
1953: Birthdate of Paul Krugman, leading U.S. economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize Winner.
1953(13th of Adar, 5713): Israeli archeologist and Hebrew University professor, Eleazar Lipa Sukenik passed away. His life reads like an early history of the Zionist movement. Born in Bialystok in 1889, Sukenik made Aliyah in 1911. He served in the British army in World War I in the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers which became known as the Jewish Legion. He played a central role in the establishment of the Department of Archaeology of the Hebrew University. He recognized the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel and worked for the Israeli state to buy them. In 1948, he published an article tentatively linking the scrolls and their content to a community of Essenes, which became the standard interpretation of the origin of the scrolls, a theory that is still probably the consensus among scholars, but has also been widely questioned. He was the father of soldier, politician and archeologist Yigael Yadin, the actor Yossi Yadin, and Mati Yadin, who was killed in action during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
1961: Recently elected President Kennedy named Henry Kissinger as special advisor. Before being the first Jew to be named Secretary of State, Kissinger followed a path that took him from Kennedy, to Rockefeller, to Nixon.
1974: The United States and Egypt renew diplomatic relations. This was one of the steps from the Yom Kippur War to the Camp David Peace Accords.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the majority of the plenum of the 29th Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem, approved a resolution calling for a Jewish education program in the Diaspora, based on the principle of equality for all trends in Judaism, and specifically including the Conservative and Reform movements.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Liberal Faction of the Likud in the Knesset described the recent action taken by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon in the settlement of the Yamit (Rafiah) area as injurious to the national interest, "idiotic" and "crazy."
1986: Laura Z. Hobson who wrote Gentlemen’s Agreement, the novel about anti-Semitism that was turned into a 1947 film classic starring Gregory Peck, passed away.
1991: A twenty-five year old Jewish religious student, Elhanan Atali, was found in an abandoned storeroom in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. His throat had been slit and he had been stabbed in the back.
1993: Actor Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz, wed Lisa Deutsch. She was his fourth wife.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Amateur by Wendy Lesser and Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy by Edward Luttwak
2000(22nd of Adar I, 5760): Kariel Gardosh, the prominent Israeli political cartoonist known by the pen-name "Dosh," died in his home in Tel Aviv from a cardiac arrest. He was 79 years old. “Gardosh was best known for cartoons featuring his character Srulik. Srulik was a small boy in short, sandals and a traditional Tembel hat. Gardosh's character, always intended by the caricaturist to act a symbol for Israel, was a blank slate upon which to reflect the changing national mood and a perfect emblem for the emerging nation's view of itself in the 1960s and 1970s as a small nation surrounded by hostile aggressors. The small boy facing down representative from a hostile Arab world left an indelible impression upon several generations of Israelis allowing the character to remain popular through several changes in the political climate. The character is still a presence in various licensed formats such as posters and stickers.”
2003(26th of Adar I, 5763): “Alfred Bernstein, a New Deal lawyer who led the movement to unionize government workers and later helped desegregate the lunch counters, restaurants, public swimming pools and playgrounds of Jim Crow-era Washington, died today at his home in Washington. He was 92.Mr. Bernstein attended public schools in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School. Inspired by the social ferment of the New Deal, he moved to the capital in 1937 to work as an investigator for the Senate Commerce Committee's inquiry into the monopolistic railroad industry. ''What all of us were interested in was the transformation of the political process -- drafting regulations, establishing Social Security, making regulatory agencies work,'' he once told an interviewer. ''There was a lot of idealism at the time.'' After serving in the Army Air Transport Command in the South Pacific in World War II, Mr. Bernstein returned to Washington where he helped lead the successful effort against Jim Crow laws in the capital.”
2003: Ariel Sharon begins serving as Communications Minister.
2003. Reuven Rivlin completed serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Benjamin Netanyahu completed his service as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Silvan Shalom begins serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2004(6th of Adar, 5764): Daniel Boorstin passed away at the age of 89. He was one of America's most renowned historians and, between 1975 and 1987, the Librarian of Congress in the world's largest library in Washington. The son of Russian-Jewish im¬migrants, Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born on October 1, 1914, in Atlanta. He was educated at Tulsa Central High School and Harvard, from where he graduated with honors in Law. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. The Americans: The Democratic Experience, the final book in the first trilogy, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in history.
2006(30th 0f 5766): Rosh Chodesh Adar (first of a two day Rosh Chodesh).
2006: Johanna van Schagen, a woman who helped Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust and later was honored by Israel died at the age of 91. Johanna van Schagen, who had suffered a series of strokes, died at Friendship Village in nearby Trotwood, where she lived. Van Schagen and her husband, Cornelius, moved to the United States from the Netherlands in 1956. She told the Dayton Daily News in 1994 that she and her husband sheltered Jews out of anger toward Germans who were taking over their native Netherlands. "We were afraid many times ... there were lots of raids and if they had found them in your home, you would be taken to concentration camps, too," she said. Israel honored the couple in 1987 and a tree along the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem is named for Johanna van Schagen, the newspaper said. Her funeral was scheduled for Friday at Polk Grove United Church of Christ in Dayton, which sponsored the van Schagens when they moved to the United States, said Jacob van Schagen, a son. She is survived by four sons and a daughter.
2007: The second International Eilat Chamber Music Festival opens. Only in its second year, the International Eilat Chamber Music Festival features a program that even a well-established musical gathering would have been proud. All the participants in its 14 concerts are hot names in classical music; most are making their Israeli debut in Eilat, or are returning to the local stage after a long absence, while others are Israelis who enjoy a solid international career. The festival will host chamber orchestras such as the Concertgebouw from Amsterdam with Shlomo Mintz as conductor and soloist, and the renowned Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, as well as the Red Priest chamber ensemble (which won recognition at the local Felicja Blumenthal festival), the Jerusalem Trio, and an impressive list of soloists such as violinist Hagay Shaham, pianist Nikolai Demidenko, singers Ruth Ziesak and Elisabeth von Magnus, Russian cellist Leonid Gorokhov (who makes London his home), and trumpet virtuoso Sergei Nakariakov, who visited Israel as a child prodigy. The program features long-enjoyed works by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert and others, but also songs by Kurt Weil and even the melodic "Verklarte Nacht" by Schoenberg, which is rarely performed in Israel. The festival ends on March 3.
2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director of the Union for Reform Judaism, teaches an adult education class at Temple Judah on the Reform Movement's New Prayer book, Mishkan Tifillah.
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Witness to Nuremberg” featuring Richard W. Sonnenfeldt the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials who discusses startling new information about the Nazi war criminals and the origins and development of the Holocaust. At age 22, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt became chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials. He was later a principal developer of color television, computers and the technology for the first moon landing.
2008: “The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song To Life” opens in Madrid, Spain. This musical tells the story of Anne Frank's life in German-occupied Holland and her death in a concentration camp, using songs that sound like a combination of Fiddler On the Roof and Spanish tunes (complete with flamenco guitar).
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Israel Prize-winning author and translator Aharon Amir passed away at age 85. Amir, who was born in Lithuania, grew up in Tel Aviv and was a member of both the Irgun and the Lehi. He was one of the founders of the Canaanite movement, which saw geographical location rather than religious affiliation as the defining element of Hebrew or Israeli culture. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but translated works of literature mainly from English and French. Authors whose work he rendered into Hebrew include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Charles de Gaulle. Amir won the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation in 1951 and the Israel Prize for translation in 2003.
2008: ‘Eyes Wide Open,” a documentary film that chronicles the preconceptions and revelations of American Jews as they visit Israel, is held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The film was directed by veteran filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman and written by award-winning journalist Stuart Schoffman
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Esra Shereshevsky, 92, noted Hebrew-language scholar and educator, died in Jerusalem. As founder and former chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Temple University, Shereshevsky was one of the first professors to establish Hebrew as a full course of study at an American university. His classes were exciting events. Whether discussing Bible, medieval manuscripts or 20th-century poets, his teaching was seasoned by his love of the Hebrew language
2009: In Chicago, the Harris Theatre presents “Pinchas Zukerman in Recital” along “with his long time collaborator, pianist Mark Neikruug.”
2009: Rabbi Ellen Weomberg Dreyfus is installed in Jerusalem during the CCAR's 120th Annual Convention. She is the second female Rabbi to be elected to this position and the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel. She succeeds Rabbi Peter S. Knobel, 66, Rabbi of Beth Emet in Evanston, IL, who will complete his two-year term as CCAR President.
2009: From January 1 through today, there were 64 terrorist attacks that took place in the West Bank or were carried out by terrorists from the West Bank
2009: In an article entitled “His Story Told, Koch Makes His Peace and Dares to Look Ahead,” former New York May Ed Koch ruminates on his concerns as he reaches the twilight years and describes his plans for a funeral that will leave no question as to his profound attachment to his Jewish faith. He’s already installed and inscribed his tombstone. He’s recruited a rabbi to preside over his funeral. He’s been saying some goodbyes. He insists he no longer carries any grudges; well, maybe just a few. He’s issued an apology or two and even confesses to a few regrets as mayor. But the former mayor — still looming though stooped from stenosis, a spinal degeneration — is philosophically confronting his own mortality. His is a life that has played out mostly in the public eye, and now, perhaps appropriately, so are many of his preparations for the beyond. “We all die,” he said over lunch in Midtown the other day, his words unequivocal but his voice raspy. “Whenever he or she wants me, I go.” Not surprisingly, though, Edward I. Koch, New York’s 105th mayor, proposed several conditions for whenever the time comes. Having survived a stroke in 1987 and a heart attack in 1999, he said he has no desire to linger: “I had a conversation with God: ‘Take me totally or don’t take me. No salami tactics.’ He’s been very good about it.” “I want to die at my desk,” Mr. Koch added. The former mayor is at his desk daily (he is a partner at the Manhattan offices of Bryan Cave, a law firm). He begrudgingly exercises at a gym several days a week and goes for rehabilitation for the spinal condition. He lunches every Saturday with a regular group of about 10 alumni of his administration. He doesn’t march in parades any more, except for St. Patrick’s Day, and says he is through writing books. “After eight autobiographies and two children’s books,” he said, “I don’t think I have anything left in me.” Mr. Koch also insists that while the fight hasn’t gone out of him — he is particularly concerned about anti-Semitism and wants to bring Jews and Catholics closer together — he picks his fights more carefully. He says he is sorry for having started some and has unilaterally declared a cease-fire for others. “I’m not settling any scores,” he said. “I absolutely have no grudges. That’s over with. It’s not that I love those people. I don’t, but it takes too much energy if you think about who injured you.” Of all the grudges he has held, the one that people who know Mr. Koch figured he would carry to his grave was with Mario M. Cuomo, whom he defeated for mayor in 1977 and who was later elected governor. But there is evidence of rapprochement. Yes, it’s true, the former mayor said, he did pointedly refer to Mr. Cuomo by a very disparaging epithet several years ago in a recorded interview with The New York Times that is not to be made public until after Mr. Koch’s death. Reminded of the remark, he laughed heartily, and did not take it back. “I told the truth as I felt it then,” he said. “But it all worked out.” Mr. Koch’s anger was originally triggered by placards that sprouted in the 1977 mayoral campaign that said “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” The Koch camp blamed Cuomo operatives. Mr. Cuomo has always disclaimed any responsibility. “If anything, I thought it was done by someone who wanted to see me lose,” Mr. Cuomo recalled last week. “I never did anything like that and it was a wrong thing to do, whoever did it; it was ugly and unfair. If he believed I did it and forgave me for it, that was kind of him. I always liked him and respected him however he felt about me.” In December, Mr. Cuomo invited himself to a birthday party for the mayor at Gracie Mansion and offered a gracious tribue. Mr. Koch was moved. He recalled: “Mario always told people, ‘I like Ed a lot more than he likes me.’ The first time he said that, I replied, ‘You’re right, Mario.’ But that’s over with. He said he was sorry.” (For the record, Mr. Koch, a lifelong bachelor, declines to say whether he is gay. “I do not want to add to the acceptability of asking every candidate, ‘Are you straight or gay or lesbian?’ and make it a legitimate question, so I don’t submit to that question. I don’t care if people think I’m gay because I don’t answer it. I’m flattered that at 84 people are interested in my sex life — and, it’s quite limited.”) Mr. Koch said he also no longer holds a grudge against Bernard Rome, a former campaign treasurer, whom he fired as head of the Off-Track Betting Corporation for publicly opposing casino gambling. “Bernie Rome called me years later and wanted to meet,” Mr. Koch recalled. “I said to my secretary, ‘Tell him I have no desire to.’ I don’t hold a grudge, but I don’t have to become his buddy.” Mr. Koch is certain of his legacy — restoring New Yorkers’ self-confidence after the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, balancing the budget, rebuilding the Bronx and instituting a merit selection for the appointment of judges. (He was feted last year by some of the 140 he appointed: “They wanted to say goodbye,” Mr. Koch said.) Mr. Koch does not typically second-guess himself, but feels guilty over one nagging regret: his decision to shutter Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, both to save money and because of complaints about the quality of health care there. “I fought,” he said. “We closed it. We did the right thing. But, in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do. The total amount saved was $9 million, but there was such a psychological attachment to Sydenham because black doctors couldn’t get into other hospitals. It was the psychological attachment that I violated. That was uncaring of me. They helped elect me and then in my zeal to do the right thing I did something now that I regret.” Mr. Koch says he has few other major misgivings. “I’m sure there are things we could have done better, but in terms of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of mistakes, no,” he said. “I’ve had a wonderful ride. I’ve done what I wanted to do.” “I’m not morbid,” he added. “How many 84-year-olds do you know who are as active as I am? Not many. And how many 84-year-olds do you see in obituaries? A lot. But I believe I have another five years.” Whenever the ride is over, his funeral service will be held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. He has given his sister the names of several potential speakers, but has not made any other arrangements, including the music (“I love the Catholic hymns,” he said, “but they can’t be sung even in Temple Emanu-El”). He will be buried in the nondenominational Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan under a tombstone that quotes the last words of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in 2002 by Islamic terrorists (“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”) and includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”) and the epitaph the former mayor wrote after his stroke: “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II” “That’s it,” Mr. Koch said. “It takes up the whole stone.” He recalled the funeral for a much-loved mayor of Madrid: “Eight hundred thousand people turned out. That won’t happen with me,” he predicted, “but I hope a lot of people do go to the cemetery — which, by the way, is conveniently located at 155th and Broadway on the subway.” New York has not lavished monuments on former mayors. The most famous memorial is La Guardia Airport. Mr. Koch, who was raised for 10 years in Newark, would not mind one of his own. “I have said — and it won’t happen — that I would like Newark Airport changed to E.I.K.,” he said. [It] “Kind of rhymes with J.F.K.”
2010(14th of Adar, 5770): Purim
2010: An exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in New York entitled “In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis” is scheduled to come to a close.
2010: Final performance of Rinne Groff’s “Compulsion” is scheduled to take place at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ask, a novel by Sam Lipsyte
2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapir.
2010(14th of Adar, 5710): Jose Mindlin, a Jewish bibliophile who owned the largest private library in Latin America has died today in Brazil. He was 95. Born to Ukrainian parents, Jose Mindlin owned over 38,000 books and was a member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2006, he donated about half of his collection to the University of Sao Paulo, mostly on topics related to Brazilian studies. A building will be built in the university's campus specifically to maintain this massive library, and will be named after the Guita and Jose Mindlin Foundation. After retiring from the business world, Mindlin was able to dedicate his time to a passion he had since he was 13 years old: collecting and preserving rare books. The first rare edition in his collection was "Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle," by Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, published in 1740. Mindlin had occupied several public positions in the cultural field in Sao Paulo, including that of secretary of culture.
"He was a giant of the Brazilian culture. His legacy is the library he left, the result of a life dedicated to the books. Today it's an asset of all Brazilians," said Sao Paulo Mayor Gilbero Kassab. Henry Sobel, emeritus rabbi of Latin America's largest Jewish congregation, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, declared that Mindlin's life was book itself. "He was a righteous man who could see ethics in politics and culture. I felt so little when I was in his library. His greatest book was called Jose Mindlin," Sobel said.
2010: Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound today after Palestinians began throwing stones during rioting in Jerusalem's Old City. Police entered the Temple Mount compound this morning to remove Palestinians youths who had barricaded themselves in the Al-Aksa Mosque on Saturday night and on Sunday began throwing rocks at police and non-Muslim visitors to the site. The police reportedly surrounded the mosque but did not enter it. At least eight Palestinians in the mosque reportedly were hurt by tear gas. Two police and two border guards were injured in the streets of the Old City by stones thrown by Palestinian youth. Seven protesters were arrested. Since Saturday night, police have restricted entry to the mosque to men with Israeli identity cards over the age of 50 and to women of all ages. Visits to the Temple Mount by Jews and non-Jews continued Sunday. The Wakf and Islamic organizations called on Muslims to gather at the Temple Mount, saying that "radical Jewish organizations" have called on followers to lay a cornerstone for a temple on the site, Ynet reported. The rioting comes after several days of Palestinian protests in Hebron over the naming by the Israeli government of the Cave of the Patriarchs as a national heritage site. The site is also significant to Muslims and is home to the Ibrahami Mosque. The Israeli army imposed a closure on the West Bank for the Purim holiday through Monday evening. Troops have been reinforced in areas where Palestinians and Jewish settlers are likely to clash, according to reports.
2010: Two Jewish athletes took home medals at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver which ended today. Steve Meisler won a gold medal for the United States in the four-man bobsled, pushing his team to a combined time of 3:24:46 in the four-heat race. Jewish ice dancer Charlie White claimed a silver medal in ice dancing along with partner Meryl Davis. White's victory edged a fellow ice dancer and American Jew, Ben Agosto, off the medal podium. Agosto and his partner, Tanith Belbin, finished fourth. The pair won a silver medal at the 2006 games.
Other Jewish competitors in ice dancing, the Israeli brother-sister duo Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky, finished 10th. Their routines included music from "Schindler's List" and "Hava Nagila," and in one performance, Roman wore a yarmulke. Israel's third Olympic athlete, skier Mikail Renzhin, finished 35th in the slalom and 55th in the giant slalom. Laura Spector, a Jewish biathlete from Massachusetts, finished 65th and 77th in the two races in which she competed.
2010: Ethan Bronner wrote the following obituary describing the life of Holocaust scholar David Bankier. “David Bankier, who helped expand the contours of Holocaust research by examining the participation of ordinary Europeans in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors, died over the weekend after a long illness, Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust center, announced. He was 63. Mr. Bankier, who was head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, focused his scholarly work on anti-Semitism, especially its use by the Nazis to promote and sustain a broader ideology. He was the author of “Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism” as well as a collection of essays, “Hitler, the Holocaust and German Society: Cooperation and Awareness.” Born in Germany just before the state of Israel was created, Mr. Bankier grew up and was educated here, earning his doctorate in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He held a professorship at Hebrew University and had served as a visiting professor in Britain, the United States, South Africa and South America. He spoke excellent English and Spanish, in addition to German and Hebrew. A rumpled, somber man who sought to understand the most bewildering aspects of genocide — how someone could play soccer with an acquaintance one day and assist in his murder the next — Mr. Bankier insisted both on the uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews and on its applicability to other cases of mass murder. For anti-Semites, ‘Jews represent mysterious, mythic and evil forces,” he said at a recent lecture, “an omnipotence playing a sinister role in world history.’ At another lecture he noted that for Hitler, “Nazism was a doctrine of world salvation to redeem humanity from the Jewish-Christian-Marxist doctrine. The acquisition and maintenance of total suppression of the German race, Hitler believed, must be through total war of Germans against the Jews.” At the same time, Mr. Bankier said last year in an interview with The New York Times that the work he was overseeing at Yad Vashem on the role of bystanders and neighbors in numerous smaller mass killings across the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s had important implications for contemporary genocide in Africa and other places. He argued that the world was a different place as a result of what the Nazis had done, that if genocide in far-off places shocked average people today it was partly because of their knowledge of the details of the Holocaust. In other words, Holocaust deniers aside, Holocaust awareness was central to contemporary sensibility. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said that with Mr. Bankier’s death, the world had lost one of its most important scholars in the field. He noted that Mr. Bankier, who had fought his illness over a long period, kept a regular schedule until his last day.”
2011: “Korach: The Biblical Anarchist” is scheduled to have its final performance tonight at the Living Theater on New York’s Lower East Side.
2011: Theodore Bikel and Jim Brochu are scheduled to do a concert reading of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon at a fundraiser for Theatre J in Washington, DC.
2011: “A host of charities and social action organizations from across the Jewish world” are scheduled to meet at the Nalaga’at Theater in Jaffa ttoday “to discuss the future of their field and hear from a wide range of professionals who will guide them on improving their services. FONSI – Future of Non Profit Summit-Israel is a follow up to a similar event held recently in New York and is an initiative of REACH3K, a company that consults non-profits on their development and fundraising strategies and CAUSIL, a New York-based organization that helps brands, organizations and individuals engage in the best practices of communications, marketing and technology. ‘The goal is to bring together some of the best professionals, innovators, lay leaders, organizations, brands and other passionate people to explore tools and ideas for improving individual nonprofits as well as the entire third sector as a whole,’ said Shoshana Jaskoll, REACH3K’s founder and CEO.”
2011: The New York Times featured a review of Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jewish author and political pundit Jeff Greenfield.
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Prolific writer, editor and popular radio broadcaster Netiva Ben Yehuda passed away in the early hours of this morning. She was 82. A feisty personality, for whom diplomacy was a word more than it was a trait, Ben Yehuda spent a great deal of her time correcting the mistaken impression that she was related to Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the modern Hebrew language. They were not related at all. Her father was Baruch Ben Yehuda, a maths teacher who became the first director-general of Israel's fledgling Ministry of Education. The spirited and multi-talented Netiva joined the Palmach and was trained as a demolitions and bomb disposal expert. She also accompanied convoys, commanded a sapper unit and trained new recruits. She fought in the War of Independence and in 1949 left the army to study at Bezalel. In addition to her talent as an artist, she was also a promising athlete whose main forte was discus throwing. She had been considered a possible candidate for an Israeli Olympic team, but her career as an athlete was stopped by a bullet in the arm, that caused her permanent injury. After completing her studies at Bezalel, she spent a long period in London, and later studied philosophy at the Hebrew University. Of the many books that she wrote, one of the best known is the World Dictionary of Hebrew Slang, which she co-authored with the charismatic iconoclast Dahn Ben Amotz. More recently, she wrote her Autobiography in Poem and Song. She was particularly fond of old Israeli folk songs and collected them obsessively. On her late night radio program, listeners in her own age group and older, would frequently sing snatches of songs that have by and large faded from public memory, and she would often join in the chorus. No-one called her Geveret Ben Yehuda. She was Netiva to one and all. Her wee small-hours program, "Netiva talks and listens," which she broadcast for 14 years on Israel Radio, had an enormous following, despite her raspy voice which was at all radiophonic. It was amazing how many people were willing to do without sleep in order to listen in and to occasionally phone in. The program almost always included songs written before the establishment of the state. They were part of her regular appointment with history and nostalgia. Three years ago, when the Israel Broadcasting Authority sought to introduce severe cutbacks, her program was designated among those to be sacrificed. There was such a public outcry of protest, that the IBA had to rethink its priorities and she was transferred to Reshet Gimmel. Jerusalemites often saw her as some kind of eccentric tourist attraction, and would come from all over the city to her favorite coffee shop in the capital's Hapalmach Street – where else? – to be photographed with her and exchange a few words. She held court in the coffee shop on an almost daily basis and conducted her own parliament there.
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; February, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
1348: At the Cortes of Alcala de Hebares King Alfonso XI issued a "startling" decree which forbad Jews and Moors from lending money “at interet.”
1533: Birthdate of French writer and philosopher Michael de Montaigne. His mother, Antoinette de Louppes, came from a rich Spanish Jewish family, but was herself raised as a Protestant. Should Montaigne be considered Jewish? It depends upon whose list you look at, so I will leave it up to others to investigate more fully and decide.
1574: The first official Auto da Fe in the New World was held in Mexico after the establishment of the Inquisition 5 years earlier. The first unofficial Auto da Fe was actually held in 1528 when the conquistador Hernando Alonso was executed.
1592: Clement VIII issued Cum saepe accidere, a Papal Bull that forbade the Jews of Avignon from selling new goods.
1593: Clement VIII issued Cum Haebraeorum militia, a Papal Bull that outlaws the reading of the Talmud.
1747: Benedict XIV issued Postremomens, a Papal Bull that deals with the baptism of Jews.
1787: The state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted Hugh Henry Breckenridge a charter for a school that is now known as the University of Pittsburgh. Today, there are approximately 1,800 Jewish students among the total undergrad population of 16,000 and 500 Jewish students among the 7,000 graduate students. The university offers a major in Jewish studies. Jewish students can avail themselves of programs offered by Hillel and Chabad as well as find kosher meals at the “Kosher Korner” at the University Center.
1799: Napoleon, the first European leader to meet with Jewish leaders in Palestine, led his army out of Gaza and headed for Ramallah.
1812: Birthdate of German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach. Born Moses (Moyses) Baruch, Auerbach published a novel entitled Spinoza: Ein Historischer Roman in 1837. He passed away in 1882 at the age of 70.
1838: Birthdate of French engineer Maurice Levy.
1850: The General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret established the University Desert which was the forerunner of the University of Utah located at Salt Lake City, Utah. Today the university has approximately 350 Jewish students out of a student population of 15,000. The school has ten courses in Jewish studies and offers a major degree in Jewish Studies. Not bad for a school founded deep the heart of the land of Brigham Young.
1854: The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. The party was formed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska act and was designed to stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda. Some of the Jews who were active in the early days of the party were Sabato Morais, rabbi of the Mikveh Israel Congregation, Moritz Pinner who edited a German language abolitionist paper in Kansas , Kentuckian Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, uncle of the Louis Brandeis and New Yorker Sigsmund Kaufman who was an a member of the electoral college that chose Abraham Lincoln to serve as President in 1860.
1855: In a demonstration of the extent to which Jewish concepts have penetrated the general cultural milieu, while giving a speech in New York on the habits of North American Indians, General Sam Houston tells the audience that until “the spirit of revenge had been conquered by civilization” the law of the Cherokee Nation “was the same as that practiced under the old dispensation by the Jews of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and blood for blood.”
1860: Birthdate of Victor L. Berger who would become the first member of the Socialist Party to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representative.
1862: A column entitled “Affairs In Utah” published today described the drive of those living in that territory to become a state in the Union. “As things go, it does seem apparent that Jews and Gentiles here are, more or less, under the conviction that the particular time ‘in the course of human events’ is at hand when a change is inevitable in the fashion of Government among "this people." Some may be surprised to hear of Jews connected with Utah which is almost synonymous with the Mormon Religion. The first Jews who settled in Utah were probably “dropouts” from the wagon trains heading to California during the California Gold Rush. By 1853, two Jews had established a millenary store in Salt Lake City. The first non-Mormon governor of Utah would be a Jew named Simon Bamberger. As to the issue of statehood, it would be another 34 years before that goal was reached. The price of admission would be a formal rejection by the Mormons of the practice of polygamy. To date, this is the only time that the federal government has “interfered” with the doctrines of a religious organization.
1863: The will of the late Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S. Navy, which has been admitted to probate, is now before the Supreme Court, at Special Term. Proceedings have been “instituted to break it, in respect to its bequests to the people of the United States, or the State of Virginia, and then to certain Hebrew congregations in New-York, Philadelphia and Richmond, for the purpose of founding an agricultural school at Monticello, in the State of Virginia.”
1887: Rumania excluded Jews from public service and the tobacco trade.
1887: Birthdate of William Zorach, “a Lithuanian-American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer” who won the Logan Medal of the arts.
1894: Birthdate of playwright and novelist Ben Hecht. His most famous work was “The Front Page” which he co-authored with Charles MacArthur. Hecht also won two Oscars for two of his screen plays. This comic drama about the newspaper business was a Broadway hit as well as a successful movie in the original and remakes. Hecht was also an ardent Zionist.
1898: Birthdate of Yiddish actress Molly Picon.
1900: During the Boer War the 118 day siege of Ladysmith came to an end. 1899: The Boers begin their 118 day siege of British held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Jewish soldiers were among those who fought at Ladysmith since there were at least 2,800 Jews fighting for the British and an untold number fighting for the Boers.
1903: Max Nordau meets Leopold Greenberg in Paris and sends a wire to Herzl: "Greenberg had obtained everything that can possibly be conceded in an official agreement."
1905: In New York, the initial meeting of a “Choral Society for Ancient Hebrew Meolodies” was held at the rooms Young Men’s Hebrew Association under the direction of Mr. Rosenblatt.
1906: Birthdate of mobster Bugsy Siegel
1915: Birthdate of actor Zero Mostel known for his roles in the original version of “The Producers” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
1916(24th of Adar I, 5676): Morris Lasker, aged 76, millionaire miller, pioneer, Indian fighter and philanthropist died in Galveston, Texas, this afternoon. Mr. Lasker won wide fame when he led the Jews of the South in a fight for the life and vindication of Leo Frank, who was convicted in Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan. Mr. Lasker came to America from Germany at the age of 16. He “was in the mercantile business in George for three years, and then came to Texas, settling at Weatherford, where he engaged in many expeditions against the Indians.” He settled in Galveston in 1867 and married Miss Nettie Davis of Albany, NY, the widow who survives him, along with six children including Albert Lasker of Chicago.
1916: Henry James, one of the literary giants of the 19th century, passed away. For more about how James viewed Jews including his review of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda see Milton Kerker’s Henry James on the Jewish scene/
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-112354673.html
1921: Fire destroys 120 homes and a large amount of shops in the Jewish quarter of Kouskoundjouk, Constantinople. Most of these belonged to poor Jews.
1921: Conference of rabbis in Jerusalem elects a court of Justice and chooses four Ashkenazi and four Sephardi rabbis with Rabbi Kook (Ashkenazi) & Jacob Meir (Sephardic).
1928: The Soviets decided to set up a Jewish district in Biro-bijanin Eastern Siberia. Most of its 14,200 square miles were uninhabitable due to floods. It was to be used as a buffer zone against China.
1929: Birthdate of Canadian born architect Frank Gehry.
1935(25th of Adar I, 5695): Jeannette Miriam Goldberg, who organized Texas chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Chautauqua Society, passed away.
1938: As the latest wave of Arab violence continued, The Palestine Post reported that the "representatives" of armed bands were regularly visiting Arab towns and villages, demanding money for their "activities" and issuing "receipts." A bridge on the Jenin-Afula road was damaged by an explosion and there were numerous shooting incidents throughout the country. A curfew was imposed on a number of villages after armed Arab terrorists stormed isolated police posts and stole arms and ammunition, intimidating the local Arab constables.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Union of Romanian Journalists expelled all Jews who became members after December 1919.
1939: The curfew that had been imposed on all of the Arab quarters starting on February 26 following the murder of 3 Jews by Arabs was scheduled to come to an end today at 6 A.M.
1940: The British adopted the MacDonald White Paper that included restriction of sale of Arab land to Jews in Eretz Yisrael. This document nearly voided the Balfour Declaration
1943: George Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" opened on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. The musical originally premiered in 1935 and survived for a mere 124 performances. The musical was revised after Gershwin's death and slowly gained popular and critical acclaim.
1943: In Kovono Ghetto, thousands of Jews attend the funeral of Rabbi Avraham Duber Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kovno despite an order from the Nazis forbidding them to do so.
1947: British naval forces seized 1,398 “illegal” Jewish immigrants today.
1947: Jacob and Niza Gabbai, a husband and wife couple who have just arrived in New York City from Palestine enrolled at Fordham University. The Gabbais are part of the Young Palestinian League which is working to develop a new cultural environment in their homeland. They chose Fordham “because it is a complete university and not just a drama or radio school, and also because it located in the world capital of the theatre.”
1950: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett presented the cabinet with the draft of five year non-aggression pact between Israel and Jordan. The pact is the product of several months of secret negotiations. It includes most of the terms of the armistice agreement without setting final boundaries. Some additional points include the opening of the Israeli held road to Bethlehem to Arab traffic, the opening of the road to Mt. Scopus to Israelis and an Israeli promise to supply electricity to the Arab held sections of Jerusalem. Israeli opposition to the agreement will be limited to a handful of leftists who oppose King Abdullah because they think he is a puppet of the British imperialists and the rightwing nationalists who believe that all of the land west of the Jordan should be part of a Jewish state. Jordanian approval is much more problematic since it will face serious opposition from numerous sources including those who want a second war with the Jews so that they can destroy the Zionist entity. [Abdullah would be assassinated in the following year for conducting these negotiations and it would take another four decades before Israel and Jordan finally concluded a peace agreement.]
1953: Birthdate of Paul Krugman, leading U.S. economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize Winner.
1953(13th of Adar, 5713): Israeli archeologist and Hebrew University professor, Eleazar Lipa Sukenik passed away. His life reads like an early history of the Zionist movement. Born in Bialystok in 1889, Sukenik made Aliyah in 1911. He served in the British army in World War I in the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers which became known as the Jewish Legion. He played a central role in the establishment of the Department of Archaeology of the Hebrew University. He recognized the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel and worked for the Israeli state to buy them. In 1948, he published an article tentatively linking the scrolls and their content to a community of Essenes, which became the standard interpretation of the origin of the scrolls, a theory that is still probably the consensus among scholars, but has also been widely questioned. He was the father of soldier, politician and archeologist Yigael Yadin, the actor Yossi Yadin, and Mati Yadin, who was killed in action during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
1961: Recently elected President Kennedy named Henry Kissinger as special advisor. Before being the first Jew to be named Secretary of State, Kissinger followed a path that took him from Kennedy, to Rockefeller, to Nixon.
1974: The United States and Egypt renew diplomatic relations. This was one of the steps from the Yom Kippur War to the Camp David Peace Accords.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the majority of the plenum of the 29th Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem, approved a resolution calling for a Jewish education program in the Diaspora, based on the principle of equality for all trends in Judaism, and specifically including the Conservative and Reform movements.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Liberal Faction of the Likud in the Knesset described the recent action taken by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon in the settlement of the Yamit (Rafiah) area as injurious to the national interest, "idiotic" and "crazy."
1986: Laura Z. Hobson who wrote Gentlemen’s Agreement, the novel about anti-Semitism that was turned into a 1947 film classic starring Gregory Peck, passed away.
1991: A twenty-five year old Jewish religious student, Elhanan Atali, was found in an abandoned storeroom in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. His throat had been slit and he had been stabbed in the back.
1993: Actor Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz, wed Lisa Deutsch. She was his fourth wife.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Amateur by Wendy Lesser and Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy by Edward Luttwak
2000(22nd of Adar I, 5760): Kariel Gardosh, the prominent Israeli political cartoonist known by the pen-name "Dosh," died in his home in Tel Aviv from a cardiac arrest. He was 79 years old. “Gardosh was best known for cartoons featuring his character Srulik. Srulik was a small boy in short, sandals and a traditional Tembel hat. Gardosh's character, always intended by the caricaturist to act a symbol for Israel, was a blank slate upon which to reflect the changing national mood and a perfect emblem for the emerging nation's view of itself in the 1960s and 1970s as a small nation surrounded by hostile aggressors. The small boy facing down representative from a hostile Arab world left an indelible impression upon several generations of Israelis allowing the character to remain popular through several changes in the political climate. The character is still a presence in various licensed formats such as posters and stickers.”
2003(26th of Adar I, 5763): “Alfred Bernstein, a New Deal lawyer who led the movement to unionize government workers and later helped desegregate the lunch counters, restaurants, public swimming pools and playgrounds of Jim Crow-era Washington, died today at his home in Washington. He was 92.Mr. Bernstein attended public schools in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School. Inspired by the social ferment of the New Deal, he moved to the capital in 1937 to work as an investigator for the Senate Commerce Committee's inquiry into the monopolistic railroad industry. ''What all of us were interested in was the transformation of the political process -- drafting regulations, establishing Social Security, making regulatory agencies work,'' he once told an interviewer. ''There was a lot of idealism at the time.'' After serving in the Army Air Transport Command in the South Pacific in World War II, Mr. Bernstein returned to Washington where he helped lead the successful effort against Jim Crow laws in the capital.”
2003: Ariel Sharon begins serving as Communications Minister.
2003. Reuven Rivlin completed serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Benjamin Netanyahu completed his service as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Silvan Shalom begins serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2004(6th of Adar, 5764): Daniel Boorstin passed away at the age of 89. He was one of America's most renowned historians and, between 1975 and 1987, the Librarian of Congress in the world's largest library in Washington. The son of Russian-Jewish im¬migrants, Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born on October 1, 1914, in Atlanta. He was educated at Tulsa Central High School and Harvard, from where he graduated with honors in Law. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. The Americans: The Democratic Experience, the final book in the first trilogy, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in history.
2006(30th 0f 5766): Rosh Chodesh Adar (first of a two day Rosh Chodesh).
2006: Johanna van Schagen, a woman who helped Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust and later was honored by Israel died at the age of 91. Johanna van Schagen, who had suffered a series of strokes, died at Friendship Village in nearby Trotwood, where she lived. Van Schagen and her husband, Cornelius, moved to the United States from the Netherlands in 1956. She told the Dayton Daily News in 1994 that she and her husband sheltered Jews out of anger toward Germans who were taking over their native Netherlands. "We were afraid many times ... there were lots of raids and if they had found them in your home, you would be taken to concentration camps, too," she said. Israel honored the couple in 1987 and a tree along the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem is named for Johanna van Schagen, the newspaper said. Her funeral was scheduled for Friday at Polk Grove United Church of Christ in Dayton, which sponsored the van Schagens when they moved to the United States, said Jacob van Schagen, a son. She is survived by four sons and a daughter.
2007: The second International Eilat Chamber Music Festival opens. Only in its second year, the International Eilat Chamber Music Festival features a program that even a well-established musical gathering would have been proud. All the participants in its 14 concerts are hot names in classical music; most are making their Israeli debut in Eilat, or are returning to the local stage after a long absence, while others are Israelis who enjoy a solid international career. The festival will host chamber orchestras such as the Concertgebouw from Amsterdam with Shlomo Mintz as conductor and soloist, and the renowned Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, as well as the Red Priest chamber ensemble (which won recognition at the local Felicja Blumenthal festival), the Jerusalem Trio, and an impressive list of soloists such as violinist Hagay Shaham, pianist Nikolai Demidenko, singers Ruth Ziesak and Elisabeth von Magnus, Russian cellist Leonid Gorokhov (who makes London his home), and trumpet virtuoso Sergei Nakariakov, who visited Israel as a child prodigy. The program features long-enjoyed works by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert and others, but also songs by Kurt Weil and even the melodic "Verklarte Nacht" by Schoenberg, which is rarely performed in Israel. The festival ends on March 3.
2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director of the Union for Reform Judaism, teaches an adult education class at Temple Judah on the Reform Movement's New Prayer book, Mishkan Tifillah.
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Witness to Nuremberg” featuring Richard W. Sonnenfeldt the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials who discusses startling new information about the Nazi war criminals and the origins and development of the Holocaust. At age 22, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt became chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials. He was later a principal developer of color television, computers and the technology for the first moon landing.
2008: “The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song To Life” opens in Madrid, Spain. This musical tells the story of Anne Frank's life in German-occupied Holland and her death in a concentration camp, using songs that sound like a combination of Fiddler On the Roof and Spanish tunes (complete with flamenco guitar).
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Israel Prize-winning author and translator Aharon Amir passed away at age 85. Amir, who was born in Lithuania, grew up in Tel Aviv and was a member of both the Irgun and the Lehi. He was one of the founders of the Canaanite movement, which saw geographical location rather than religious affiliation as the defining element of Hebrew or Israeli culture. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but translated works of literature mainly from English and French. Authors whose work he rendered into Hebrew include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Charles de Gaulle. Amir won the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation in 1951 and the Israel Prize for translation in 2003.
2008: ‘Eyes Wide Open,” a documentary film that chronicles the preconceptions and revelations of American Jews as they visit Israel, is held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The film was directed by veteran filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman and written by award-winning journalist Stuart Schoffman
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Esra Shereshevsky, 92, noted Hebrew-language scholar and educator, died in Jerusalem. As founder and former chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Temple University, Shereshevsky was one of the first professors to establish Hebrew as a full course of study at an American university. His classes were exciting events. Whether discussing Bible, medieval manuscripts or 20th-century poets, his teaching was seasoned by his love of the Hebrew language
2009: In Chicago, the Harris Theatre presents “Pinchas Zukerman in Recital” along “with his long time collaborator, pianist Mark Neikruug.”
2009: Rabbi Ellen Weomberg Dreyfus is installed in Jerusalem during the CCAR's 120th Annual Convention. She is the second female Rabbi to be elected to this position and the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel. She succeeds Rabbi Peter S. Knobel, 66, Rabbi of Beth Emet in Evanston, IL, who will complete his two-year term as CCAR President.
2009: From January 1 through today, there were 64 terrorist attacks that took place in the West Bank or were carried out by terrorists from the West Bank
2009: In an article entitled “His Story Told, Koch Makes His Peace and Dares to Look Ahead,” former New York May Ed Koch ruminates on his concerns as he reaches the twilight years and describes his plans for a funeral that will leave no question as to his profound attachment to his Jewish faith. He’s already installed and inscribed his tombstone. He’s recruited a rabbi to preside over his funeral. He’s been saying some goodbyes. He insists he no longer carries any grudges; well, maybe just a few. He’s issued an apology or two and even confesses to a few regrets as mayor. But the former mayor — still looming though stooped from stenosis, a spinal degeneration — is philosophically confronting his own mortality. His is a life that has played out mostly in the public eye, and now, perhaps appropriately, so are many of his preparations for the beyond. “We all die,” he said over lunch in Midtown the other day, his words unequivocal but his voice raspy. “Whenever he or she wants me, I go.” Not surprisingly, though, Edward I. Koch, New York’s 105th mayor, proposed several conditions for whenever the time comes. Having survived a stroke in 1987 and a heart attack in 1999, he said he has no desire to linger: “I had a conversation with God: ‘Take me totally or don’t take me. No salami tactics.’ He’s been very good about it.” “I want to die at my desk,” Mr. Koch added. The former mayor is at his desk daily (he is a partner at the Manhattan offices of Bryan Cave, a law firm). He begrudgingly exercises at a gym several days a week and goes for rehabilitation for the spinal condition. He lunches every Saturday with a regular group of about 10 alumni of his administration. He doesn’t march in parades any more, except for St. Patrick’s Day, and says he is through writing books. “After eight autobiographies and two children’s books,” he said, “I don’t think I have anything left in me.” Mr. Koch also insists that while the fight hasn’t gone out of him — he is particularly concerned about anti-Semitism and wants to bring Jews and Catholics closer together — he picks his fights more carefully. He says he is sorry for having started some and has unilaterally declared a cease-fire for others. “I’m not settling any scores,” he said. “I absolutely have no grudges. That’s over with. It’s not that I love those people. I don’t, but it takes too much energy if you think about who injured you.” Of all the grudges he has held, the one that people who know Mr. Koch figured he would carry to his grave was with Mario M. Cuomo, whom he defeated for mayor in 1977 and who was later elected governor. But there is evidence of rapprochement. Yes, it’s true, the former mayor said, he did pointedly refer to Mr. Cuomo by a very disparaging epithet several years ago in a recorded interview with The New York Times that is not to be made public until after Mr. Koch’s death. Reminded of the remark, he laughed heartily, and did not take it back. “I told the truth as I felt it then,” he said. “But it all worked out.” Mr. Koch’s anger was originally triggered by placards that sprouted in the 1977 mayoral campaign that said “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” The Koch camp blamed Cuomo operatives. Mr. Cuomo has always disclaimed any responsibility. “If anything, I thought it was done by someone who wanted to see me lose,” Mr. Cuomo recalled last week. “I never did anything like that and it was a wrong thing to do, whoever did it; it was ugly and unfair. If he believed I did it and forgave me for it, that was kind of him. I always liked him and respected him however he felt about me.” In December, Mr. Cuomo invited himself to a birthday party for the mayor at Gracie Mansion and offered a gracious tribue. Mr. Koch was moved. He recalled: “Mario always told people, ‘I like Ed a lot more than he likes me.’ The first time he said that, I replied, ‘You’re right, Mario.’ But that’s over with. He said he was sorry.” (For the record, Mr. Koch, a lifelong bachelor, declines to say whether he is gay. “I do not want to add to the acceptability of asking every candidate, ‘Are you straight or gay or lesbian?’ and make it a legitimate question, so I don’t submit to that question. I don’t care if people think I’m gay because I don’t answer it. I’m flattered that at 84 people are interested in my sex life — and, it’s quite limited.”) Mr. Koch said he also no longer holds a grudge against Bernard Rome, a former campaign treasurer, whom he fired as head of the Off-Track Betting Corporation for publicly opposing casino gambling. “Bernie Rome called me years later and wanted to meet,” Mr. Koch recalled. “I said to my secretary, ‘Tell him I have no desire to.’ I don’t hold a grudge, but I don’t have to become his buddy.” Mr. Koch is certain of his legacy — restoring New Yorkers’ self-confidence after the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, balancing the budget, rebuilding the Bronx and instituting a merit selection for the appointment of judges. (He was feted last year by some of the 140 he appointed: “They wanted to say goodbye,” Mr. Koch said.) Mr. Koch does not typically second-guess himself, but feels guilty over one nagging regret: his decision to shutter Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, both to save money and because of complaints about the quality of health care there. “I fought,” he said. “We closed it. We did the right thing. But, in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do. The total amount saved was $9 million, but there was such a psychological attachment to Sydenham because black doctors couldn’t get into other hospitals. It was the psychological attachment that I violated. That was uncaring of me. They helped elect me and then in my zeal to do the right thing I did something now that I regret.” Mr. Koch says he has few other major misgivings. “I’m sure there are things we could have done better, but in terms of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of mistakes, no,” he said. “I’ve had a wonderful ride. I’ve done what I wanted to do.” “I’m not morbid,” he added. “How many 84-year-olds do you know who are as active as I am? Not many. And how many 84-year-olds do you see in obituaries? A lot. But I believe I have another five years.” Whenever the ride is over, his funeral service will be held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. He has given his sister the names of several potential speakers, but has not made any other arrangements, including the music (“I love the Catholic hymns,” he said, “but they can’t be sung even in Temple Emanu-El”). He will be buried in the nondenominational Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan under a tombstone that quotes the last words of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in 2002 by Islamic terrorists (“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”) and includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”) and the epitaph the former mayor wrote after his stroke: “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II” “That’s it,” Mr. Koch said. “It takes up the whole stone.” He recalled the funeral for a much-loved mayor of Madrid: “Eight hundred thousand people turned out. That won’t happen with me,” he predicted, “but I hope a lot of people do go to the cemetery — which, by the way, is conveniently located at 155th and Broadway on the subway.” New York has not lavished monuments on former mayors. The most famous memorial is La Guardia Airport. Mr. Koch, who was raised for 10 years in Newark, would not mind one of his own. “I have said — and it won’t happen — that I would like Newark Airport changed to E.I.K.,” he said. [It] “Kind of rhymes with J.F.K.”
2010(14th of Adar, 5770): Purim
2010: An exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in New York entitled “In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis” is scheduled to come to a close.
2010: Final performance of Rinne Groff’s “Compulsion” is scheduled to take place at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ask, a novel by Sam Lipsyte
2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapir.
2010(14th of Adar, 5710): Jose Mindlin, a Jewish bibliophile who owned the largest private library in Latin America has died today in Brazil. He was 95. Born to Ukrainian parents, Jose Mindlin owned over 38,000 books and was a member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2006, he donated about half of his collection to the University of Sao Paulo, mostly on topics related to Brazilian studies. A building will be built in the university's campus specifically to maintain this massive library, and will be named after the Guita and Jose Mindlin Foundation. After retiring from the business world, Mindlin was able to dedicate his time to a passion he had since he was 13 years old: collecting and preserving rare books. The first rare edition in his collection was "Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle," by Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, published in 1740. Mindlin had occupied several public positions in the cultural field in Sao Paulo, including that of secretary of culture.
"He was a giant of the Brazilian culture. His legacy is the library he left, the result of a life dedicated to the books. Today it's an asset of all Brazilians," said Sao Paulo Mayor Gilbero Kassab. Henry Sobel, emeritus rabbi of Latin America's largest Jewish congregation, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, declared that Mindlin's life was book itself. "He was a righteous man who could see ethics in politics and culture. I felt so little when I was in his library. His greatest book was called Jose Mindlin," Sobel said.
2010: Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound today after Palestinians began throwing stones during rioting in Jerusalem's Old City. Police entered the Temple Mount compound this morning to remove Palestinians youths who had barricaded themselves in the Al-Aksa Mosque on Saturday night and on Sunday began throwing rocks at police and non-Muslim visitors to the site. The police reportedly surrounded the mosque but did not enter it. At least eight Palestinians in the mosque reportedly were hurt by tear gas. Two police and two border guards were injured in the streets of the Old City by stones thrown by Palestinian youth. Seven protesters were arrested. Since Saturday night, police have restricted entry to the mosque to men with Israeli identity cards over the age of 50 and to women of all ages. Visits to the Temple Mount by Jews and non-Jews continued Sunday. The Wakf and Islamic organizations called on Muslims to gather at the Temple Mount, saying that "radical Jewish organizations" have called on followers to lay a cornerstone for a temple on the site, Ynet reported. The rioting comes after several days of Palestinian protests in Hebron over the naming by the Israeli government of the Cave of the Patriarchs as a national heritage site. The site is also significant to Muslims and is home to the Ibrahami Mosque. The Israeli army imposed a closure on the West Bank for the Purim holiday through Monday evening. Troops have been reinforced in areas where Palestinians and Jewish settlers are likely to clash, according to reports.
2010: Two Jewish athletes took home medals at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver which ended today. Steve Meisler won a gold medal for the United States in the four-man bobsled, pushing his team to a combined time of 3:24:46 in the four-heat race. Jewish ice dancer Charlie White claimed a silver medal in ice dancing along with partner Meryl Davis. White's victory edged a fellow ice dancer and American Jew, Ben Agosto, off the medal podium. Agosto and his partner, Tanith Belbin, finished fourth. The pair won a silver medal at the 2006 games.
Other Jewish competitors in ice dancing, the Israeli brother-sister duo Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky, finished 10th. Their routines included music from "Schindler's List" and "Hava Nagila," and in one performance, Roman wore a yarmulke. Israel's third Olympic athlete, skier Mikail Renzhin, finished 35th in the slalom and 55th in the giant slalom. Laura Spector, a Jewish biathlete from Massachusetts, finished 65th and 77th in the two races in which she competed.
2010: Ethan Bronner wrote the following obituary describing the life of Holocaust scholar David Bankier. “David Bankier, who helped expand the contours of Holocaust research by examining the participation of ordinary Europeans in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors, died over the weekend after a long illness, Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust center, announced. He was 63. Mr. Bankier, who was head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, focused his scholarly work on anti-Semitism, especially its use by the Nazis to promote and sustain a broader ideology. He was the author of “Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism” as well as a collection of essays, “Hitler, the Holocaust and German Society: Cooperation and Awareness.” Born in Germany just before the state of Israel was created, Mr. Bankier grew up and was educated here, earning his doctorate in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He held a professorship at Hebrew University and had served as a visiting professor in Britain, the United States, South Africa and South America. He spoke excellent English and Spanish, in addition to German and Hebrew. A rumpled, somber man who sought to understand the most bewildering aspects of genocide — how someone could play soccer with an acquaintance one day and assist in his murder the next — Mr. Bankier insisted both on the uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews and on its applicability to other cases of mass murder. For anti-Semites, ‘Jews represent mysterious, mythic and evil forces,” he said at a recent lecture, “an omnipotence playing a sinister role in world history.’ At another lecture he noted that for Hitler, “Nazism was a doctrine of world salvation to redeem humanity from the Jewish-Christian-Marxist doctrine. The acquisition and maintenance of total suppression of the German race, Hitler believed, must be through total war of Germans against the Jews.” At the same time, Mr. Bankier said last year in an interview with The New York Times that the work he was overseeing at Yad Vashem on the role of bystanders and neighbors in numerous smaller mass killings across the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s had important implications for contemporary genocide in Africa and other places. He argued that the world was a different place as a result of what the Nazis had done, that if genocide in far-off places shocked average people today it was partly because of their knowledge of the details of the Holocaust. In other words, Holocaust deniers aside, Holocaust awareness was central to contemporary sensibility. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said that with Mr. Bankier’s death, the world had lost one of its most important scholars in the field. He noted that Mr. Bankier, who had fought his illness over a long period, kept a regular schedule until his last day.”
2011: “Korach: The Biblical Anarchist” is scheduled to have its final performance tonight at the Living Theater on New York’s Lower East Side.
2011: Theodore Bikel and Jim Brochu are scheduled to do a concert reading of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon at a fundraiser for Theatre J in Washington, DC.
2011: “A host of charities and social action organizations from across the Jewish world” are scheduled to meet at the Nalaga’at Theater in Jaffa ttoday “to discuss the future of their field and hear from a wide range of professionals who will guide them on improving their services. FONSI – Future of Non Profit Summit-Israel is a follow up to a similar event held recently in New York and is an initiative of REACH3K, a company that consults non-profits on their development and fundraising strategies and CAUSIL, a New York-based organization that helps brands, organizations and individuals engage in the best practices of communications, marketing and technology. ‘The goal is to bring together some of the best professionals, innovators, lay leaders, organizations, brands and other passionate people to explore tools and ideas for improving individual nonprofits as well as the entire third sector as a whole,’ said Shoshana Jaskoll, REACH3K’s founder and CEO.”
2011: The New York Times featured a review of Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jewish author and political pundit Jeff Greenfield.
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Prolific writer, editor and popular radio broadcaster Netiva Ben Yehuda passed away in the early hours of this morning. She was 82. A feisty personality, for whom diplomacy was a word more than it was a trait, Ben Yehuda spent a great deal of her time correcting the mistaken impression that she was related to Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the modern Hebrew language. They were not related at all. Her father was Baruch Ben Yehuda, a maths teacher who became the first director-general of Israel's fledgling Ministry of Education. The spirited and multi-talented Netiva joined the Palmach and was trained as a demolitions and bomb disposal expert. She also accompanied convoys, commanded a sapper unit and trained new recruits. She fought in the War of Independence and in 1949 left the army to study at Bezalel. In addition to her talent as an artist, she was also a promising athlete whose main forte was discus throwing. She had been considered a possible candidate for an Israeli Olympic team, but her career as an athlete was stopped by a bullet in the arm, that caused her permanent injury. After completing her studies at Bezalel, she spent a long period in London, and later studied philosophy at the Hebrew University. Of the many books that she wrote, one of the best known is the World Dictionary of Hebrew Slang, which she co-authored with the charismatic iconoclast Dahn Ben Amotz. More recently, she wrote her Autobiography in Poem and Song. She was particularly fond of old Israeli folk songs and collected them obsessively. On her late night radio program, listeners in her own age group and older, would frequently sing snatches of songs that have by and large faded from public memory, and she would often join in the chorus. No-one called her Geveret Ben Yehuda. She was Netiva to one and all. Her wee small-hours program, "Netiva talks and listens," which she broadcast for 14 years on Israel Radio, had an enormous following, despite her raspy voice which was at all radiophonic. It was amazing how many people were willing to do without sleep in order to listen in and to occasionally phone in. The program almost always included songs written before the establishment of the state. They were part of her regular appointment with history and nostalgia. Three years ago, when the Israel Broadcasting Authority sought to introduce severe cutbacks, her program was designated among those to be sacrificed. There was such a public outcry of protest, that the IBA had to rethink its priorities and she was transferred to Reshet Gimmel. Jerusalemites often saw her as some kind of eccentric tourist attraction, and would come from all over the city to her favorite coffee shop in the capital's Hapalmach Street – where else? – to be photographed with her and exchange a few words. She held court in the coffee shop on an almost daily basis and conducted her own parliament there.
Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; February, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
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