August 2 In Jewish History
338 BCE: A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean. Phillip was the father of Alexander Great. His victory paved the way for Alexander’s conquests which had a major impact on the Jewish people of which we are reminded each year when we celebrate Chanukah.
1222: Raymond VI , Count of Toulouse and Marquis of Provence passed away. “He was so sympathetic to the Jews that Pope Innocent III caused him to take an oath ‘that he would deprive the Jews of their offices and that he would never appoint any Jews or in any way favor them.’”
1389: Catholic Archdeacon and Jew hater Ferran Martinez is denied the right to act as a judge or to preach after refusing to follow an order of the Pope. The Archbishop of Seville issued this strong punishment because Martinez refused to issue permits for Jews to build new synagogues, in accordance with the wishes of the Pope.
1492: According to some sources this day marked the beginning of the final expulsion of the Jews from Spain. According to tradition it was Tisha B’Av on the Jewish calendar.
1589: King Henry III of France passed away. Before he was King of France, as Henry of Anjou he was elected as the first King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He owed this victory to a Jew named Solomon Ashkenazi who was the principle adviser to the Emperor of the Ottoman Empire.
1675: The "Great Synagogue" was inaugurated in Amsterdam on Rapenburgerstraat. This was a Sephardic synagogue, home to K.K. Talmud Torah, which was a union of Congregations Neveh Shalom founded in 1608 and Bet Yisrael found in 1618.
1696: Birthdate of Mahmud I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. In 1739, Mahmud signed the Treaty of Belgrade that gave citizenship rights to the Ottoman Jews. Austrian Jews were so impressed with the grant of rights that many of them applied for citizenship in Mahmud’s empire.
1790: The United States conducts its first census. Out of a population of four million people, there are approximately 2,000 Jews.
1819: An anti-Semitic riot breaks out in the city of Wurzberg. It will be the first in string of such violent actions to plague the Jews of Germany
1866: The New York Times quotes the Aroostook Pioneer as saying that a religious movement is forming in Maine with the intent of immigrating to Jerusalem. A ship is being fitted out at Jonesport which should be ready to sail by the middle of next month. Land has already been purchased near Jaffa where the immigrants plan on making their home. [Ed. Note - the article does not mention if any Jews were involved or note.]
1879: In New York, Detectives Fogarty and Handy arrested a Jew named Louis Pollard because he had some shoes in his possession that matched the description of shoes stolen last September. Pollard first claimed that he had bought the shoes at an auction but later said he got the shoes from a woman named Lena Bezona. She was arrested and Pollard was released.
1892: Birthdate of movie mogul Jack Warner. Born in Canada, Warner and his four brothers founded Warner Brothers, which became a giant in the film industry. Among other claims to fame Warner Brothers produced "The Jazz Singer," the first "talking" motion picture. Some of his stars included Bette Davis, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. Warner was known fir his frugality and was not necessarily that well liked. At one point his son and namesake said of his dad, "At times he gloried in being a no-good sonofabitch. If his brothers hadn't hired him, he'd have been out of work."
1903: Opening of the Bank Leumi’s first branch in Turkish Jaffa.
1911: In Great Britain, Alderman Henry Hart completes his jubilee of service on the Canterbury Council.
1919: Birthdate of Nehmiah Persoff, the Jerusalem native who became famous as an American actor appearing in numerous films and television series.
1922: Birthdate of Eugene Hirsch Kummel, chairman and chief executive of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, McCann Erickson Worldwide. “Under Mr. Kummel’s leadership, McCann Erickson created memorable television commercials like Coca-Cola’s ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’ campaign in the 1970s and, several years later, the Miller Lite campaign, ‘Everything you always wanted in a beer, and less,’ with personalities like George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin arguing, ‘Tastes great, Less filling.’”
1922(8th of Av, 5682): Erev Tish'a B'Av
1922(8th of Av, 5682): Emil Ganz, a businessman and three-time mayor of Phoenix, Arizona., passed away. The son of German Jews, he was a self-professed atheist.
1923: After falling ill, Warren Harding the 29th President of the United States passes away. During his brief tenure, Harding’s record regarding Jews and Jewish issues was mixed. He signed an immigration bill that was based on national origin quotas which put greatly limited Jewish immigration to the United States. On the other hand, he appointed famous Chicago advertising man Albert Lasker as Chairman of the U.S. Shipping Board. Under his tenure, the U.S. Merchant Marine was reorganized and improved. In 1922, Harding signed a congressional Joint Resolution “favoring the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.”
1923 (20 Av, 5683): Birthdate of Shimon Peres.
1924: The first issue of the Saturday Review of Literature appeared. This famous literary publication was formed by Amy Lovemean and three colleagues who had worked together on The New York Evening Post. Loveman was listed as an associate editor. She remained at the Saturday Review for three decades, becoming the magazine's poetry editor in 1950. In the first two decades alone, she wrote close to 800 items for the Review. These included editorials, reviews, and answers to readers' questions. Born in 1881, Amy Loveman shaped the literary choices of generations of readers through her work with two important institutions: The Saturday Review and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Educated at Barnard College, where she earned a B.A. in 1901, Loveman's first literary work was as an assistant to an uncle who was revising The New International Encyclopedia. From that job, she moved to the New York Evening Post, where she became a book reviewer and then associate editor of the newspaper's literary review. In addition to her work at the Saturday Review, Loveman played an important role in the Book-of-the-Month Club, where she joined the reading committee soon after its founding in 1926. In 1939, she became head of the Club's editorial department, a job she balanced with her ongoing work at the Review. In this role, she helped to select books for the Club as well as writing frequent reviews herself. In 1951, she joined the Club's editorial board. Loveman's compelling writing style and devotion to literature were recognized by several awards. In 1946, she received both the Columbia University Medal for Excellence and the Constance Lindsay Skinner Achievement Award of the Women's National Book Association. Loveman died in 1955.
1926: The American Jewish Congress cabled a message of condolence to Mrs. Israel Zangwill over the death of her husband. The cablegram was signed by Carl Sherman, Acting Chairman and Bernard G. Richards, Executive Secretary. Dr. Stephen Wise, the President of the AJC is England and is expected to represent the organization at the funeral.
1926: Birthdate of Betsy Bloomingdale of department store fame. Her husband was part of President Regan’s kitchen cabinet and she was a close friend of Nancy.
1931: Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.
1932: “Lillian Copeland set new world and Olympic records in discus, with a throw of 133 feet, 1 5/8 inches, winning a gold medal. It was not the first time Copeland had set new records; as one of the earliest female athletes to excel in track and field events, she had established a name for herself at several earlier competitions. Born in New York City in 1904, Copeland moved with her mother and stepfather to Los Angeles, where she attended high school. A consummate athlete, she held National Amateur Athletic Union titles in shot put, discus, and javelin by 1926. While a student at the University of Southern California, she won every women's track event that she entered. By the 1928 U.S. Olympic trials, Copeland was a four-time national champion in the shot put. However, shot put was not yet an Olympic event, so she entered the trials in discus, and set a new world record. She was also a member of the world-record-setting 400-meter-relay team at the trials. At the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the first at which women were allowed to compete in track and field events, Copeland won a silver medal in discus.Returning to college after the Olympics, Copeland earned a B.A. in political science in 1930, and then entered the U.S.C. Law School. In 1931, she won two more national championships, in shot put and in javelin. At the 1932 Olympics, where shot put was still not among the events, Copeland won her gold medal in discus. It was a crowning achievement for the woman who between 1925 and 1932 had set six world records each in shot put, discus, and javelin. Though she won the discus, shot put, and javelin titles at the 1935 World Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv, Copeland did not compete in the 1936 Olympics. Like many others, Copeland boycotted that year's Games, held in Berlin, to protest Nazi Germany's exclusion of Jewish athletes from German Olympic teams. She never competed again. In 1936, Copeland joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, where she worked until her retirement in 1960. She spent sixteen of those years in the Juvenile Bureau, and the rest at other assignments. Copeland died on July 7, 1964. She was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1980 and the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994.
1933: In Vilna, Ministry of Education announces that the Yiddish secondary school and the Hebrew gymnasium have been granted equality with the governmental high schools, and
will therefore have the right to issue university admission certificates to their students.
1933. The Ministry of Justice announces that Jewish students engaged in the study of law or economics will not be permitted to take the final examinations in Prussia, if they intend to become lawyers or university teachers.
1933: In a public address to foreign diplomats and journalists Dr. Anzesoria, Bolivian minister to Germany, indicates that his Government is prepared to open its doors to German emigrants, provided the German Government is ready to negotiate the transfer.
1933: Der Angriff, a newspaper owned by Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment, carries a story that Jews are organizing themselves into military units to "attack Germany at the first opportunity."
1933 The Breslauer Judengemeindeblatt is closed down by the Nazi state president "in the interest of public security."
1938(5th of Av, 5698): Yakov Mikhaylovich Yurovsky, an old line Bolshevik best known as the man who organized the execution of Czar Nicholas II.
1939: Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program. Einstein’s support was critical to getting Roosevelt’s support for what would become "The Manhattan Project." (What a difference eight years can make.)
1941: The Jews were ordered expelled from Hungarian Ruthenia.
1941(9th of Av, 5701): Over 200 Jews were shot in Kovno on Shabbat.
1942: After twelve days, approximately 75,000 Jews had been deported to the death camp at Treblinka.
1942: A large group of Jews who were trapped under Spanish and German rule in Morocco sent an eloquent appeal for help to the AJDC in New York. "Gentlemen, please excuse our daring attitude in addressing this pathetical letter to you, in our distressful hour; but it is written in the Talmud, 'when trouble comes upon Israel like a rushing stream, look for someone to help you.'."
1943: Led by a small group of prisoners using primitive weapons and pistols, inmates at Treblinka attacked the guards and burned down the barracks. Between 300 and 500 prisoners escaped although most of them were either captured or turned over by Polish peasants. Though the revolt did not stop all activities, the German government decided to liquidate the camp, which it did in October. [Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, 87-year-old Israelis, are devoting their final years to trying to preserve the memory of those slaughtered at the camp.]
1944: A handful of Jewish survivors of the Kovno ghetto - including Rabbi Efrayim Oshri, author of Responsa from the Holocaust - emerged from hiding. Rabbi Oshri was one of several Rabbis who wrote answers to those with troubling ethical dilemmas growing out of life under the Nazis. To some, such behavior might seem ludicrous when you consider the conditions. To others, it is a tribute to the vitality of Judaism and even a form of resistance.
1945: The Potsdam Conference, the meeting of the leaders of the Big Three – U.S., U.K. and U.S.S.R. – comes to an end. Among other things the leaders agreed to the complete denazification of Germany and the prosecution of war criminals.
1951(29th of Tamuz, 5711): Heinrich Loewe a German born journalist, publicist, folklorist, linguist, philosopher, librarian and political figure passed away in Tel Aviv.
1945: Birthdate of Alan F. Segal, “a leading scholar known for his comparative studies of how religions view the afterlife.”
1948: Birthdate of Dennis Prager. While he is Jewish, this popular author and talk show host is a major proponent of a Judaeo- Christian culture and ethic.
1948: “The Israeli Government proclaimed the areas of Jerusalem under Israeli control to be Israeli-occupied territory and appointed Bernard Joseph as Military Governor.
1949: Under a plan of the new Israeli government, part of the old city of Beersheba will be flooded as a 500-acre water reservoir for the projected new Negev city on the heights overlooking Beersheba. The reservoir would be formed by damming the Wadi Saba, rocky watercourse through which 10,000,000 cubic meters of rainwater sweep into the Mediterranean every winter.
1951: Birthdate of Andrew Gold, a musical wizard who played backup with Linda Ronstadt before embarking on career of his own that included recording hits like “Lonely Boy” and “Thank You for Being a Friend.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1957: British oil interests were warned today that they might forfeit ownership of their refinery plants in Haifa if they suspended operations in Israel.
1967: Birthdate of professional tennis star Aaron Krickstein
1972: Catcher Bob Yeager made his major league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
1979: “Gilda Radner Live From New York” opens on Broadway.
1980: Egypt has asked for at least a temporary postponement of the talks with Israel and the United States on autonomy for the occupied areas to give the two countries time to respond to President Anwar el-Sadat's protest...
1986(26th of Tamuz, 5746): Roy Cohn passed away. Born in 1927, Cohn gained fame (or notoriety) as the counsel for the McCarthy Hearings. He portrayed himself as a rabid anti-Communist. Ironically, it was his high jinks with David Schine that helped to lead to McCarthy’s downfall and his loss of power.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to conflict with coalition forces in the Gulf War.
1990(11th of Av, 5750): Lucy Goldschmidt Moses, a philanthropist, died at her home in Manhattan. She was 103 years old. Mrs. Moses's philanthropic interests largely reflected the activities of her husband, Henry L. Moses, whom she married in 1914. A lawyer and financier, he was president of Montefiore Hospital for many years. After his death in 1961 she established the Henry L. Moses Research Institute at the hospital. Mrs. Moses was born in New York. As a child she was accompanied by a governess when she went skating in Central Park or took walks. Later, as a young woman beginning a 40-year career as a volunteer in settlement-house work, she cared for the children of poor families. Beginning in the 20's, she also worked as a volunteer at Montefiore, first in the wards and later in the epilepsy clinic. She donated tens of millions of dollars to philanthropy, a major part going to the medical field. In addition to gifts to Montefiore, she established the Lucy G. Moses Cardiothoracic Center, an advanced research and training institution, at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, She also contributed to health programs in Burma, Israel and South Korea. After her husband's death, she became president of the Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, which the couple established in 1942 to support education, music and the arts. Mrs. Moses contributed for projects like the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and providing a wheelchair lift and other equipment for the handicapped at Carnegie Hall. She donated to New York University for studies in Egyptian art. Columbia University also received gifts for its housing program and a study hall in the Law School. Mrs. Moses was a leading supporter of the opera and Lincoln Center. In 1983 she received the first Frederick Law Olmstead award for helping to restore the Bow Bridge over the Central Park Lake. ''They called me the Florence Nightingale of the trees,'' Mrs. Moses said at the time. ''I've also been called Mother of the Park. I've had such fun.''
1992: Birthdate of American actress Hallie Kate Eisenberg.
1992(3rd of Av, 5752): French singer and songwriter Michel Berger died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 44.
1998(10th of Av, 5758): Tish'a B'Av (The 9th of Av fell on Shabbat)
1998(10th of Av, 5758): Television puppeteer Shari Lewis passed away. Born Shari Hurwitz in 1933, Lewis is best remember for her creations – Hush Puppy, Charlie Horse, and the ever-popular Lamb chop.
1998: The New York Times featured a review of A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey From the Inner City to the Ivy League by Jewish author Ron Suskind
2005: The Jerusalem Post reported that an Israeli financial consortium announced that two Spanish companies were joining the group in preparing a bid for a massive desalinization project. The need for new supplies of fresh water is critical to the growth of the Israeli economy and the survival of the Jewish state.
2005: Haaretz reported that Tunisia is the new hotspot for Israeli tourists.
2006(8th of Av, 5766): Some 210 rockets and missiles were launched toward northern communities - the largest number since the beginning of the fighting. Dave Lalchuk, 52, of Kibbutz Sa'ar, was killed and 16 others were wounded, three moderately, in the attacks, as Jews begin to prepare for the observance of Tisha B’Av.
2007(18th of Av, 5767): Frank Rosenfelt, a top movie executive at studios including MGM passed away at the age of 85. One of his proudest moments was the acquisition of the movie rights for “Dr. Zhivago.” One of his biggest disappointments was the failure of the 1976 film “Network” to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
2008: In Cedar Rapids, at Temple Judah Triple Header Shabbat Morning Service
1. Rosh Chodesh Av
2. Completion of Bamidbar
3. Observance of Raoul Wallenberg Day (actual date is August 4, 2008 by proclamation of the Governor of the State of Iowa
2009: Cantor Jacob Chomsky of Tifereth Israel sings the National Anthem as part of Jewish Community Day during a Columbus Clippers’ home game.
2009: The Los Angeles Times features books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian-Jewish author, by Benjamin Moser
2009: Two Arab families were evicted from Jewish-owned homes in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem this morning. The evictions took place following a Supreme Court ruling in which the court found in favor of Jewish families who claimed ownership of homes in the area. The evictions took place without unusual disturbances; police said. The Arab families claimed that they owned the houses in which they lived. Jewish families argued that they were the legal owners of the homes, and that the Arabs had squatted there illegally in an attempt to wrest control of the property from its rightful owners. The Arab families presented documents that appeared to show Arab ownership of the homes dating back to the Ottoman period. However, the court found that the documents had been forged, and that the documents presented by the Jewish plaintiffs were legitimate. The neighborhood in question is located near the 2,000-year-old gravesite of the sage Shimon HaTzaddik. The neighborhood was founded in the first half of the 20th century by Jewish families, but fell under Jordanian rule following the 1948 War of Independence and was quickly populated by Jordanian Arabs. Since the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule in 1967, a number of Jewish families have moved back into the area. Their arrival has been greeted with hostility from local Arabs and from the Palestinian Authority, which has demanded control over the neighborhood as part of a future Arab capital city in Jerusalem. Jewish activists have fought several legal battles in recent years regarding properties in Jerusalem and in Shimon HaTzaddik in particular. Activists say they are undeterred by the difficulties of regaining control of Jewish property, and plan to continue their efforts to reestablish a Jewish presence in historic Jerusalem neighborhoods.
2009: The Times of London features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Judas by Susan Gubar.
2009(12th of Av, 5769): Michael A. Wiener, a founder of the Infinity Broadcasting chain of radio stations who in retirement focused more on philanthropic work supporting the performing arts and research on heart disease, died today at the age of 71. Mr. Wiener and his business partner Gerald Carrus sold their 44 radio stations to the Westinghouse Corporation in 1996 for about $4 billion, but the path to that sale began decades earlier when Mr. Wiener, who had spent many years selling advertising time on radio, joined with Mr. Carrus to buy KOME in San Francisco. To raise money to buy his first station in 1972, Mr. Wiener sold his father’s stamp collection for $5,000 and got help from his wife and others. The company grew quickly, and in 1979, Mr. Wiener and Mr. Carrus quit their regular jobs to run their network of stations. At the time, Mr. Wiener was selling advertising time for the radio stations owned by Metromedia. In 1981, the partners hired Mel Karmazin to run the company as president. Mr. Karmazin would lead a recruiting and buying spree over the next 15 years that included the fiery radio personality Howard Stern.“He was a very innovative guy who took a big risk in life,” Mr. Stern said of Mr. Wiener on Sunday. “They started in medium markets and worked their way into larger markets. People may say that is no big deal, but you can’t believe the number of radio stations that go under.” He went on: “And they were smart enough to hire Mel and give him the freedom to do his thing. There were not a lot of people who would take a risk on me.” Mr. Wiener had his greatest business success in 1996 with the sale of his company, just a year later he suffered his greatest tragedy when his only son, Gabe, a producer of classical music, died of a brain aneurysm at age 26. Even before that loss, Mr. Wiener had been active in philanthropy. Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart, said Mr. Wiener had been an early supporter of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai. ,“The issue was to give patients access to cardiovascular care in an integrated way and to integrate the research on the different aspects of cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Fuster recalled. “He did not have a heart condition, but he really connected to the issue.” The Wieners became fascinated by the pervasiveness of heart disease and became supporters of Dr. Fuster’s work. mThe death of their son prompted the couple to make a series of contributions to artistic causes, including the dedication of a pipe organ to the Central Synagogue in Manhattan. The organ, with 4,345 pipes, bears their son’s name, as does the Gabe Wiener Music and Arts Library at Columbia University. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Mr. Wiener recalled that as a salesman, he had problems with some advertisers who “didn’t want any part of music that was associated with the drug culture and the peace movement,” he said. So he stopped using the term “rock ’n’ roll” to describe his stations’ music format, referring to it instead as “American music.” (As reported by Geraldine Fabrikant)
2010: “Ahead of Time,” a documentary about author, journalist and photographer Ruth Gerber is scheduled to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
2010: The “First Jewish Women's Music Festival” is scheduled to begin at Falls Village, CT.
2010: A huge explosion destroyed the home of a senior Hamas commander and injured 24, Palestinians reported today. Palestinians said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike, but this has been denied by the IDF. The explosion early today wrecked the house of Ala Adnaf, a commander of the Hamas military wing, Palestinian security officials said. At least 24 people were rushed to a hospital, and unconfirmed reports said two people were killed. Rescue teams were digging through the rubble.The security officials said a missile fired by an Israeli warplane hit the house. The Israeli military said there was no airstrike or any other Israeli activity in the area. The officials spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
2010: Palestinian militants fired five rockets into the Israeli port city of Eilat with one of them landing in nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba, flaring up tensions in the Middle East anew. Though there were no immediate reports of casualties from the beach resort of Eilat, five persons were injured, four of them seriously, when one of the rockets strayed off course and hit the Jordanian city of Aqaba. Israeli officials said that they were investigating where the rockets were fired from, Eilat police chief, Mr Moshe Cohen, said initial reports suggested that they had been fired from the South, an apparent reference to Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. "It's a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area," Cohen said. Two of the fired rockets apparently struck the Red Sea, another exploded in an open area near Eilat, and the other two hit the hotel district in Aqaba. There were no reports of injury or damage in Eilat, Cohen said. Jordanian authorities said a Grad rocket landed near vehicles parked at the entrance to the InterContinental Hotel in Aqaba. Security Sources here believe that the rockets were fired from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula by Global Jihad terrorists. Residents of Eilat reported hearing loud explosions on Monday morning. "There was a series of booms. The building shook a little. There is a lot of complacency in the city at the moment, but if rockets fired from Sinai start exploding here, this is liable to ruin the tourist economy during the best month of the year. We mustn't forget that the French are on their way," Eilat Resident, Mr Avi Cohen, told local media expressing concern that the development may badly hit the coastal city dependent on tourism. Eilat, the Jordanian port of Aqaba and nearby Egyptian Red Sea resorts have in the past seen violence perpetrated at the hands of militants. At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media spoke of the Egyptian Sinai as a possible launch point
2011: “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness,” “a riveting portrait of the man who transformed Yiddish from a vernacular language into a literary one” and “The Hangman,” a fascinating and complex portrait of Shalom Nagar, a Yemeni Jew, who as a young man worked as prison guard and was the execution of Adolf Eichmann.
2011: The 2011 Security Briefing for Jewish Institutions is scheduled to take place at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. Scheduled presenters included local police commanders and senior FBI security personnel.
Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; August, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
Sunday, July 31, 2011
This Day, August 1, In Jewish History
August 1 In Jewish History
30 BCE: Mark Antony died. Following the victory of Octavian and Antony over those who had murdered Julius Caesar, Antony became ruler of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. Antony did name Herod as ruler of Judaea. But when his lover Cleopatra let it be known that she wished to recreate the Ptolomey rule over the area, Antony patially reversed himself by giving the Queen Jericho and numerous other towns in Judaea. None of this had anything to do with Antony’s feelings about the Jews but rather reflected his passion for Cleopatra. In the end none of this matter since Octavian defeated Antony and control of the Jews passed to the man who became Caesar Augustus.
10 BCE: Birthdate of Claudius 4th Roman emperor. Claudius reigned from 41 through 54. Regardless of how the PBS television series portrayed, for a Roman Emperor, Claudius was a plus for the Jews of his time. He repealed the anti-Jewish edicts of his predecessors. He held the Samaritans responsible for the attacks on Jews in Judea and befriended the Jewish King, Agrippa. At one time he did exclude Jews from the city of Rome. But this appears to have been a matter of dealing with civil unrest sparked the early Christians living in the imperial city.
388: The synagogue located on the Euphrates in Callinicum was looted and burned by Church officials. St. Ambrose (one of the four Latin doctors of the Catholic Church) defended the action. He reprimanded Theodosius the Great for ordering the local Bishop to pay restitution, even though expropriation was illegal under Roman law. St. Ambrose offered to burn the synagogue in Milan on his own.
527: Justinian I also known as Justinian the Great becomes the Byzantine Emperor. For gentiles, Justinian might be considered “Great” but he was an enemy of the Jews. Justinian’s celebrated code contains the following about his policy towards his Jewish subjects. “They shall enjoy no honors. Their status shall reflect the baseness which in their souls they have elected and desired.” “The principle of servitus Judaeorum (‘servitude of the Jews’) was established, and the hitherto uneven pattern of persecution was systemized for a Christian civilization march towards its age of faith.” Justinian banned the recitation of the Shema because its declaration of the Oness of God was at odds with the Trinity. In response to demands of his Bishops, Justinian banned the public reading of the Torah. He also forbad the observance of Passover in the years when it preceded Easter on the calendar.
1137: King Louis VI passed away and is succeed by his Louis VII who will launch the Second Crusade. Louis VII’s reign was not “Jew friendly.” Following the logic of the time that it made no sense to go to Palestine to fight those holding on to the Christian Holy Sites and leave the defilers of Christianity at home alone, in 1144 Louis VII would expel all the Jews who had converted to Christianity and then returned to Judaism. In 1171 the first Blood Libel in France took place in Blois.
1291: The Swiss Confederation is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter. The original Jews settled in what is now Switzerland during the days of the Roman Empire. Records of the Jewish community officially date back to the 13th century, with Jews having settled in Basel in 1213, seventy years before the confederation was formed. Jews from France and Germany settled in Bern by 1259, St. Gall in 1268, Zurich in 1273, Schaffhausen, Diessenhofen, and Luzerne in 1299. But anti-Semitism is almost as old as the confederation itself since in1294 in when many Jews living in Berne of the city were executed and the survivors expelled under the pretext of the murder of a Christian boy.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/swiss.html
1298: Although assisted by humane Christian citizens, the Jews of Nuremberg were overpowered and butchered today. Among the victims was Mordecai ben Hillel, a pupil of Jehiel ben Asher, with his wife and children.
1626: Birthdate of Sabbatai Zevi, the most famous the False Messiahs.
1670: As a result of a proclamation by the Emperor, as of today, all the Jews had left Vienna.
1789: The British Fleet under Nelson defeats the French Fleet in the Battle of the Nile. Nelson’s victory left the British in control of the Mediterranean. Napoleon’s army had already landed before the battle. Although the French leader would score victories in Egypt and Syria, crossing through Eretz Israel, his victories would mean little since the French army could not be sustained. Among the lesser known consequences was the end of promises Napoleon had made during the siege at Acre to create a Jewish homeland.
1833: On a second reading a bill designed to free Jews from all civil disabilities which would open the world of politics to them, was defeated.
1852: This afternoon, "the new Jewish Synagogue in Eighth-street, between North First and North Second-streets, was dedicated by appropriate ceremonies of the Jewish religion. There were Hebrew chants" and lectures by Rabbi, Max Lilienthal, Rabbi Samuel M. Isaacs and Rabbi Morris Raphall. Dr. Barnard officiated as Rabbi to the congregation. The Synagogue is to be known as the "House of Israel." "There were many Gentiles present to view the ceremonies."
1859: The Report of Sir Moses Montefiore to the London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews on the subject of his mission to Rome in the Mortara Case was published today. While Sir Moses was thankful for those who assisted in him arranging meeting with Vatican officials, the Church refused to acknowledge any error in the case. The conversion stands and the Jewish child stolen from his parents will be raised as a Catholic.
1859: An editorial in the New York Times, expresses disappointment at Rome’s refusal to yield on the issues in the “Mortara Case” while expressing relief “that such an enormity as the abduction of the Mortara child cannot be repeated even by Rome.” The Times also points out the horrible conditions under which the Jews of Austria, a patron and protector of the Pope, are living. “The case of the Israelites…bad as it is in Rome, is still worse in Austria.” Jews are restricted in the vocations they may pursue and are banned from “many of the higher vocations of trade.” They are limited in their right to move to different parts of the empire and they need a special license if they want to leave the country altogether. In some parts of the empire, there is a limit on the number of Jewish marriages “so that a young man must await the death of his parent before he can enter the state of matrimony. This hideous and demoralizing law is but one of the many horrors which Austrian persecution has designed for the Israelites living in Austria, and who are kept by the brutal system, in a state of ignorance which the condition of Jewish populations in free countries proves to abnormal with that portion of the human family.” [All of this will change with a stroke of a pen after Austria loses its war with Prussia and is forced to reorganize as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.]
1865(9th of Av, 5625): Tisha B'Av
1865: The New York Times reported that “the Israelites in this city and throughout the world solemnized in sorrow and in sadness, in tears and in lamentation, in fasting and in prayer, the annual fast of Ab, founded on the destruction of the Temple, and the overthrow of the national government. Although nearly 2,300 years have elapsed since the first Temple was destroyed, and eighteen centuries since the construction of the second Temple, both occurrences taking place on the same day of the month, the fast is still continued from Monday evening to Tuesday night, in accordance with the Jewish ritual, and in consonance with Israelitish feeling. The fast is inaugurated with reciting the lamentations of Jeremiah, and, after the morning service, several hours are employed in the synagogues in chanting in plaintive tones the compositions of the saints of antiquity, and imploring the God of Israel to remove the rod of chastisement from Israel, and again to resume the light of other days, by the reestablishment of their Temple and restoration of their government to its original splendor.”
1870: Birthdate of Rabbi Tuvia Geffen who gained fame as “The Coca Cola Rabbi.”
1870: Benjamin Nathan, the prominent Jewish New York businessman who was murdered in his own home, was buried today at the Jewish Cemetery, Shearith Israel at Cypress Hill. His brother-in-law, Rabbi J.J. Lyons had officiated at funeral that was held at the deceased’s resident.
1873: It was reported today that the last person to see ten year old John Henry Lance was “a Jew peddler in Williamsburg.”
1875: “The Jews of Italy,” an article published today described the conditions of the Jews living in this newly reunited nation. It focused on the deplorable conditions of many of the Jews living in the old ghetto of Rome along the Tiber, the improved condition of Jews living outside of the capital and the annual ceremony at St. John the Lateran set aside to baptize any Jew who has converted during the past 12 months. However, no Jew has participated in the ceremony in the last twenty years, despite the best efforts of the Church to gain converts.
1876: Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state. The largest number of Jews began arriving in Colorado as part of the gold rush activities in 1859. Jews helped supply the miners in many of the camps that later became small towns throughout the state. Hyman and Fred Salomon, two Jewish brothers from Prussia, were leading members of the Denver community by the time statehood was declared. In addition to their business ventures, they helped organize the Colorado Pioneer Society, the Denver Public Library and the Denver B’nai Brit Lodge.
1879: As reported in the Jewish Messenger, "...About twenty, mostly young men, have formed themselves into a congregation under the name of 'Orach Chaim', Path of Life, their objective being to hold Divine service every day, morning and evening, as well as on Sabbath and holidays on strict orthodox principles, as it has been handed down to them by their fathers."
1885: A well attended memorial service in honor of the late Sir Moses Montefiore, who was buried on Friday in Ramsgate, England, was held today at the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, on the corner of Eighty-fourth-street and Avenue A in New York.
1891: Birthdate of Eliyahu Lulu, who would gain fame as a member of the First Knesset under the name of Eliyahu Hacarmeli.
1903: Birthdate of Helena Nordheim, one of five Jewish members of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928. Forty years later, Helena Kloot- Nordheim, her husband Abraham and her 10-year old daughter Rebecca were gassed at Sobibor.
1911: Jews in Peoria, Illinois contribute one thousand dollars to Jews in Turkey suffering from the aftermath of major fires in that country.
1914: Germany declared war on Russia in WW I. The Jews of German fought valiantly for the Kaiser in defense of the Fatherland. But the Iron Crosses they earned would not save them or their progeny from the "Austrian Corporal’s Final Solution." According to Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Rigg, “About 10,000 volunteered for duty, and over 100,000 out of a total German-Jewish population of 550,000 served during World War One. Some 78% saw front-line duty, 12,000 died in battle, over 30,000 received decorations, and 19,000 were promoted. Approximately 2,000 Jews became military officers and 1,200 became medical officers.”
1918: Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Abraham Epstein, President Workmen's Circle were among the leaders of a meeting of a Conference of Trade Unions, Branches of the Workmen's Circle, and other Progressive Labor Organizations of Greater New York scheduled to be held be held in Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street, for the purpose of organizing the workers into a permanent central body for aiding all persons prosecuted who are in need of help, and of arousing public opinion against the further suppression of constitutional rights and liberties. The Conference will be held under the auspices of the Liberty Defense Union, and has been endorsed by the United Hebrews Trades and the National Executive Committee of the Workmen's Circle.
1919: Hungary limited the number of Jews in commerce, law, medicine, and banking. The new definition of a Jew is someone who converted after August 1, 1919. An estimated 5,000 Jews converted to Christianity during the weeks before the law went into effect.
1919(5th of Av, 5679): Oscar Hammerstein I passed away. Born in 1847 he was a businessman, theater impresario and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was the grandfather of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
1924: Birthdate of Georges Charpak, Ukrainian-born French physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992.
1925: The (Turkish) Palestine Citizenship Ordinance went into effect. It said that any "Turkish subject" in Palestine as of August 1, 1925 shall become a Palestinian citizen, unless he opts for Turkish nationality, or nationality of another state.
1926: At Constantinople it was announced that the Jews of Turkey formally renounced their rights as minorities. They would for now on be considered full citizens with equal rights as all citizens have.
1926(21st of Av, 5686): Israel Zangwill passed away. The Russian born, Anglo-Jewish author, Zionist and champion of social justice is best known for two of his works - a novel entitled Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People a highly successful play entitled The Melting Pot. Among those who saw and enjoyed this was President Theodore Roosevelt.
1931: Birthdate of Elliott Charles Adnopoz, who became famous as Ramblin' Jack Elliott
1932: Birthdate of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League.
1933: The Deutsche Modeamt, a newly-formed Nazi fashion office, announces that Jewish firms will not be permitted to exhibit in the exhibition of men's and women's wear.
1933: Fritz Rosenfelder, leader and founder of the sports club at Saanstaat, Wurtenberg, commits suicide because he was expelled from the club; in a final letter to his former club colleagues, he wrote: "I am leaving with no hatred. My only wish is that Germany should be restored to reason . . . How more beautifully could I have given my life for my Fatherland."
1933: The Commissariat for Medical Associations issues a decree prohibiting non-Jewish physicians from having any professional contact with Jewish physicians; non-Jewish medical
men must not serve as consultants, and must not treat patients recommended to them by Jewish physicians.
1933: The Dutch Society of Sculptors and Artists responds to an appeal on behalf of Jewish refugees from Germany by donating many objects of art which will be used in a lottery sanctioned by the Government.
1936: The report of the Peel Commission was discussed today in Geneva, home of the League of Nations. Poland, Romania and other East European countries, debating the Peel Report on the proposed partition of Palestine, demanded that Great Britain continue to fulfill her obligations under the Mandate. The Arab leadership argued that the rights of the people of Palestine could not be contested and that any partition scheme was contrary to Articles 20 and 31 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. In a contradiction of facts the Arabs did not deny the rights of the Jewish minority in Palestine, and were even prepared to furnish guarantees in this respect, but they unanimously opposed the country's partition and demanded immediate, total independence. But part of the rights of the Jewish community under the terms of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate was to a Jewish Homeland, not citizenship in an Arab country. In South Africa General J.C. Smuts, vice premier and minister of justice, expressed his grave misgivings about the partition scheme in general, and the smallness of the proposed Jewish state in particular. A total rejection of the partition was also the subject of letters written by Colonel J.C. Wedgwood, MP (Member of Parliament), and addressed to the British and world press.
1936: Birthdate of Leonard Steinberg, Baron Steinberg of Belfast, founder of Stanley Leisure Ltd and found and first President of the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel
1940: The Nazis begin the expulsion of the Jewish population from Cracow, Poland. One-third would be sent to Warsaw and other Polish towns.1942: The first "reliable report" of the Nazi plan to murder all the Jews reached the West. The U.S. State Department suppressed the report for several weeks, until Jews living in the United States heard about the report from other sources.
1941: Heydrich informed Himmler, “that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed Eastern Territories." Every day in every village and town, Jews would be hunted down, molested, tortured, and executed.
1941(8th of Av, 5701): Another 1,000 Jews were shot in the city of Kishenev.
1941: The Nazis established The Bialystok Ghetto.
1942 (18th of Av, 5702) Rabbi Shlomo Chanoch Rabinowicz, last Rebbe of the Radomsk dynasty, educator, a director of the Kesser Torah organization, member of the religious council in the Warsaw ghetto was murdered with his family in the Warsaw ghetto
1942: Benjamin Sagalowitz, press secretary of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities phoned Gerhard Riegner with information from an unimpeachable source, a non-Jewish German industrialist, that Hitler had decided to have all European Jews exterminated by means of poison gas by the end of the year.
1944: Anne Frank writes the last entry in her diary.
1944: Fourteen months after the Warsaw Ghetto, the Polish underground rises against the Nazis in Warsaw. Jewish fighters came of hiding to participate in the fight. However, those who could not come to the aide of the Jews in 1943 would now find out what it felt like. The Soviet Army waited outside the city and did not come to their aid. Instead, they let the Nazis slaughter the Poles and then they entered the city as liberating heroes
1945: Birthdate of Douglas Dean Osheroff, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996. His father was Jewish and his mother was Lithuanian.
1946(4th of Av, 5706): In Miskol, Hungry industrial workers stage a pogrom. Two Jews are lynched. This is an example of the post-war anti-Semitic violence that led approximately 4,000 Jews to leave Hungary for Palestine during the next two years.
1956: The Salk Vaccine, created by Dr. Jonas Salk, becomes available to the American public.
1965: Birthdate of English stage and film director Sam Mendes. His father was from Trinidad and his mother was an English Jew.
1970: Ensio P.H. Siilasvuo of Finland assumes the role of Chief of Staff United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)
1979: Following her graduation from rabbinical college in Philadelphia, Linda Joy Holtzman was appointed spiritual leader of the Conservative Beth Israel congregation in Coatesville,
Pennsylvania, making her the first female rabbi to head a Jewish congregation in America.
1980: Egypt said today that it would not suspend the talks with Israel on autonomy for the occupied areas nor would it recall its Ambassador from Israel in response to the passage of an Israeli law formalizing the annexation of Jerusalem.
1980: Two days after the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law, an article entitled “Jerusalem Storm Just One More in a Tortured History” which traced the history of the city from ancient times to the period following the Six Days War was published. The article includes the following: “During the war that followed Israel’s independence in 1948, Jordan seized the eastern sector of Jerusalem…and the new state won control of the western sector. The Jordanians evicted all Jews from the Old City; from 1948 to 1967 was off limits to Jews and most of the old synagogues there were destroyed.” (Editor’s note – The author, working for The New York Times, writes about an eastern sector and a western sector of Jerusalem as well as the Old City. The term “East Jerusalem and, its concept as a separate city, is apparently a more recent creation.)
1981(1st of Av, 5741): Rosh Chodesh Av
1981(1st of Av, 5741): Paddy Chayefsky passed away. Born in 1923, Sydney "Paddy" Chayefsky began writing scripts for television during its golden age of drama in the 1950’s. He switched to films where he won three Oscar for writing "Marty", "Hospital" and "Network."
1989: Morton Abramowitz began serving as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey
1991: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir accepted a formula for peace talks in the Middle East.
2004: The New York Times book section features a review of 'Jerome Robbins': From Stravinsky to the Sharks by Nicholas Fox Weber.
2004: In Aspen, CO, Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, Inc. is the headline speaker at United Jewish Communities (UJC) eighth annual Jewish Leadership Forum (JLF)
2004(14th of Av, 5764): Sidney Morgenbesser passed away at the age of 82 from complications of ALS. Morgenbesser was the Emeritus John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. He attended JTS and earned a Ph.D. from Penn. He was known for his erudition and his wit. David Shatz of Yeshiva University recounted the story of Morgenbesser chastising a faculty member for hiding his Jewishness: “Oh, I see your model is Icognito, ergo sum.”
2005 (25th of Tammuz, 5765): George Forman, a longtime comptroller of the American Civil Liberties Union, who brought fiscal discipline to a ramshackle organization near bankruptcy in the late 1970s and later helped it develop into a powerful civil liberties conglomerate, died todau at the age of 88. The cause was congestive heart failure, Jamieson said. "During the years of crisis, he was more responsible than any other single person for keeping the program afloat," said Ira Glazer, the executive director of the ACLU from 1978 to 2001. Glazer explained how Mr. Forman juggled the bills and even earned interest on a deficit operational budget, and recalled visits from officials of Chemical Bank who complained that although the organization was moving around millions of dollars, its average balance was $3.79. "He was the chewing gum and rubber bands that held the organization together and made the high intellectual and strategic law possible," Glazer said. When Mr. Forman arrived at the ACLU in 1968, the organization had two lawyers, one part-time media person and no one in charge of administration and finances, fund-raising or development. By the time he retired in the late 1990s, the organization had a $50 million annual income, more than $100 million in assets, and staffed offices in every state. Before joining the ACLU, Mr. Forman was the comptroller of the Noma Corp., a large, diversified holding company. He became unemployed when Noma merged with a predecessor of Gulf and Western. George Forman was born in Manhattan on Feb. 15, 1917. He lived alone in his parents' apartment in the Bronx, where he had cared for them until they died. During World War II, he was an Army officer stationed in Washington, where he fell in love with a woman with whom he had his only daughter but felt he could not marry because she was not Jewish. He graduated magna cum laude from New York University in 1939 and earned a graduate degree in business administration there.
2005: President George W Bush nominated Roland Arnall to become the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
2005: A political essay written by Russian businessman and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his prison cell, titled "Left Turn", was published in Vedomosti, calling for a turn to more social responsible state.
2005 (25th of Tammuz, 5765): Al Aronowitz passed away at the age of 77. He was a pioneering journalist who covered the Beat literary scene and engineered a meeting between Bob Dylan and the Beatles that has passed into rock 'n' roll legend.
2006(7th of Av, 5766): Skirmishes with Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern Lebanese village of Ayta al-Shaab left three soldiers, including an officer, of a Paratrooper Brigade unit dead and at least another 25 wounded. The names of the fallen have been released: St.-Sgt. Yehunatan Einhorn, 22, of Moshav Gimzo; First Sergeant Michael Levine, 21, of Jerusalem; and Lieutenant Ilan Gabbai, 22, of Kiryat Tivon.
2006: A number of Jewish-owned stores in Italy had their doors sealed with glue and the shutters nailed down overnight as a response to Israel’s policies in Lebanon
2007: U.S. President George Bush imposed sanctions on Syria today because of the role the Damascus government has played in creating regional instability.
2007: U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice arrives in Jerusalem.
2008: Solomon "Momy" Levy completed his term as Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: Solomon Levy began serving as the Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: In Falls Church VA (suburban Washington, D.C.), Jewish author Benjamin Rosenbaum reads from and discusses his new collection of SF tales, The Ant King and Other Stories
2009: At Temple Judah, a Triple Header:
1. Shabbat Nachamu
2. Rabbi Todd Thalbum officially takes the pulpit at Temple Judah and reads the Torah portion at his first Cedar Rapids Shabbat Morning Service
3. Raoul Wallenberg Sabbath Annual Observance of Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Day (August 4, 2009) which has been proclaimed by the Governor of Iowa for three years in a row.
2009(11th of Av, 5769): A gunman shot dead two people and wounded at least thirteen others in an attack at a central Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center tonight before fleeing the scene. Israel Police said that the incident at the club on Nahmani Street did not have a terror motive. The two victims were initially identified as a young man and a young woman. Witnesses told Israeli television that the black-clad, masked gunman stormed into the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association building and opened fire in a basement room where gay teenagers were holding a weekly support group. Most of the casualties were minors, a police spokesman said, adding that the assailant was believed to have used an automatic weapon such as an M-16 rifle. Channel 10 television reported that a police manhunt for the gunman was underway in the city. The channel also said that police had closed all the gay clubs in the area following the attack. Witnesses said the gunman entered the center at around 11 P.M. and opened fire in all directions
2010: The Skirball Cultural Center show "Monsters and Miracles: A Journey through Jewish Picture Books," is scheduled to come to a close today.
2010: "Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb" is scheduled to have its final showing at the Jewish Museum,in New York.
2010: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to travel to Egypt today for a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two are expected to meet behind closed doors to discuss advancing diplomatic efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They are also expected to discuss cooperation between Israel and Egypt.
2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 by Nadine Gordimer, Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right by Benjamin Balint, Norman Podhoretz: A Biography by Thomas L. Jeffers, High Financer: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg by Niall Ferguson and Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman
2010: The Jewish Community Center in Omaha welcomed nearly 1,000 young Jewish athletes for an Olympic-style competition that will run through August 6. This will be the third time in 19 years that the Maccabi Games have been held at the Jewish Community Center.
2010(21 Av, 5770): Reginald Levy, who as captain of a hijacked Belgian airliner in 1972 was hailed as a hero for enabling Israeli commandos to storm the plane and rescue all 100 passengers and crew members, died at a hospital near his home in Dover, England. He was 88. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Linda Lipschitz said. Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Tel Aviv was 20 minutes out of Vienna on May 8, 1972, when four Arabs waving pistols rushed the cockpit. “As you can see,” Captain Levy calmly told the 90 passengers, “we have friends aboard.” The “friends” were members of Black September, a terrorist organization that grew out of the Palestinian defeat in the 1970 Jordanian civil war and was responsible for the killing of 11 members of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics four months after the hijacking. The hijackers — two men and two women — ordered Captain Levy to land at Lydda Airport (later Ben-Gurion International Airport), where they threatened to blow up the plane unless 317 Palestinian guerrillas were released from Israeli prisons. Within an hour of the radio message from Captain Levy reporting the hijacking, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, was at the airport to deal with the crisis. After dark, Israeli saboteurs crept under the parked plane, deflated the tires and disconnected hydraulic equipment. At the hijackers’ request, International Red Cross teams were summoned to carry messages between the plane and Mr. Dayan. After presenting their demands, the hijackers were alarmed to discover that they could not take off again. Captain Levy started a conversation to calm them down, and kept on chatting through the night. “I talked about everything under the sun,” he said later, “from navigation to sex.” The next morning, to demonstrate their intentions, the hijackers sent Captain Levy to the terminal with a sample of the explosives they had on board. He told the Israelis much more, describing the hijackers, their positions and the black bags in which they were carrying explosives. He also told them, significantly, that there were no seats blocking the emergency doors. Mr. Dayan promised to repair the plane and bring the Palestinian prisoners to the airport. Bogus prisoners were shown to the hijackers from a distance, and another plane was taken out to a runway, supposedly to fly them to Cairo. Twenty-one hours after Captain Levy’s plane had been hijacked, two trucks carrying 18 men in the white overalls of mechanics drove up to the jetliner. They milled about the plane, supposedly checking the tires and other equipment. Suddenly they tore open the emergency exits above the wings and opened fire inside the cabin. The fusillade from the men in overalls — in reality members of the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal — ended within 90 seconds. The commandos were led by Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defense minister, and among them was Benjamin Netanyahu, now the prime minister. The two male hijackers, who had returned fire, were killed. Another hijacker, a Jordanian woman, was not injured. The fourth, also a woman, was seriously wounded, as were several passengers. Tearful passengers and crew members slid off the wings and were bused to a terminal into the arms of ecstatic relatives. Several days later, Prime Minister Golda Meir held a dinner for those involved in the rescue. She kissed Captain Levy and cried, “We love you.” To criticism that the operation had endangered innocent people, she said, “When blackmail like this succeeds, it only leads to more blackmail.” Reginald Levy was born in Blackpool, England, on May 8, 1922, the son of Cyril and Ann Constant Levy. The hijacking took place on his 50th birthday. His wife, Dora Shawcross Levy, was on board; they were planning to celebrate in Tel Aviv. Captain Levy joined the Royal Air Force when he was 18, flew bombing missions over Germany and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944. After the war, he took part in the Berlin airlift and, in 1952, joined Sabena. He retired in 1982. In 2007, Eliezer Sacks, one of the Israeli commandos, arrived at the offices of The Jerusalem Post and handed Ms. Lipschitz — then an editorial assistant at the paper — the blue Sabena captain’s cap that her father had left on the plane. He gave her a letter he had written to Captain Levy. “I want to apologize for the long time — 35 years — that I forgot to give your hat back,” it said. “I hope the hat will find its way back to your head.” It did.
2011: A screening of “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” Liz Garbus’s documentary that takes us on Fischer’s journey from Jewish child prodigy to world chess master to virulent anti-Semite, is scheduled to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Festival.
2011(1st day of Av, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Av
Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; July, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
30 BCE: Mark Antony died. Following the victory of Octavian and Antony over those who had murdered Julius Caesar, Antony became ruler of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. Antony did name Herod as ruler of Judaea. But when his lover Cleopatra let it be known that she wished to recreate the Ptolomey rule over the area, Antony patially reversed himself by giving the Queen Jericho and numerous other towns in Judaea. None of this had anything to do with Antony’s feelings about the Jews but rather reflected his passion for Cleopatra. In the end none of this matter since Octavian defeated Antony and control of the Jews passed to the man who became Caesar Augustus.
10 BCE: Birthdate of Claudius 4th Roman emperor. Claudius reigned from 41 through 54. Regardless of how the PBS television series portrayed, for a Roman Emperor, Claudius was a plus for the Jews of his time. He repealed the anti-Jewish edicts of his predecessors. He held the Samaritans responsible for the attacks on Jews in Judea and befriended the Jewish King, Agrippa. At one time he did exclude Jews from the city of Rome. But this appears to have been a matter of dealing with civil unrest sparked the early Christians living in the imperial city.
388: The synagogue located on the Euphrates in Callinicum was looted and burned by Church officials. St. Ambrose (one of the four Latin doctors of the Catholic Church) defended the action. He reprimanded Theodosius the Great for ordering the local Bishop to pay restitution, even though expropriation was illegal under Roman law. St. Ambrose offered to burn the synagogue in Milan on his own.
527: Justinian I also known as Justinian the Great becomes the Byzantine Emperor. For gentiles, Justinian might be considered “Great” but he was an enemy of the Jews. Justinian’s celebrated code contains the following about his policy towards his Jewish subjects. “They shall enjoy no honors. Their status shall reflect the baseness which in their souls they have elected and desired.” “The principle of servitus Judaeorum (‘servitude of the Jews’) was established, and the hitherto uneven pattern of persecution was systemized for a Christian civilization march towards its age of faith.” Justinian banned the recitation of the Shema because its declaration of the Oness of God was at odds with the Trinity. In response to demands of his Bishops, Justinian banned the public reading of the Torah. He also forbad the observance of Passover in the years when it preceded Easter on the calendar.
1137: King Louis VI passed away and is succeed by his Louis VII who will launch the Second Crusade. Louis VII’s reign was not “Jew friendly.” Following the logic of the time that it made no sense to go to Palestine to fight those holding on to the Christian Holy Sites and leave the defilers of Christianity at home alone, in 1144 Louis VII would expel all the Jews who had converted to Christianity and then returned to Judaism. In 1171 the first Blood Libel in France took place in Blois.
1291: The Swiss Confederation is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter. The original Jews settled in what is now Switzerland during the days of the Roman Empire. Records of the Jewish community officially date back to the 13th century, with Jews having settled in Basel in 1213, seventy years before the confederation was formed. Jews from France and Germany settled in Bern by 1259, St. Gall in 1268, Zurich in 1273, Schaffhausen, Diessenhofen, and Luzerne in 1299. But anti-Semitism is almost as old as the confederation itself since in1294 in when many Jews living in Berne of the city were executed and the survivors expelled under the pretext of the murder of a Christian boy.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/swiss.html
1298: Although assisted by humane Christian citizens, the Jews of Nuremberg were overpowered and butchered today. Among the victims was Mordecai ben Hillel, a pupil of Jehiel ben Asher, with his wife and children.
1626: Birthdate of Sabbatai Zevi, the most famous the False Messiahs.
1670: As a result of a proclamation by the Emperor, as of today, all the Jews had left Vienna.
1789: The British Fleet under Nelson defeats the French Fleet in the Battle of the Nile. Nelson’s victory left the British in control of the Mediterranean. Napoleon’s army had already landed before the battle. Although the French leader would score victories in Egypt and Syria, crossing through Eretz Israel, his victories would mean little since the French army could not be sustained. Among the lesser known consequences was the end of promises Napoleon had made during the siege at Acre to create a Jewish homeland.
1833: On a second reading a bill designed to free Jews from all civil disabilities which would open the world of politics to them, was defeated.
1852: This afternoon, "the new Jewish Synagogue in Eighth-street, between North First and North Second-streets, was dedicated by appropriate ceremonies of the Jewish religion. There were Hebrew chants" and lectures by Rabbi, Max Lilienthal, Rabbi Samuel M. Isaacs and Rabbi Morris Raphall. Dr. Barnard officiated as Rabbi to the congregation. The Synagogue is to be known as the "House of Israel." "There were many Gentiles present to view the ceremonies."
1859: The Report of Sir Moses Montefiore to the London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews on the subject of his mission to Rome in the Mortara Case was published today. While Sir Moses was thankful for those who assisted in him arranging meeting with Vatican officials, the Church refused to acknowledge any error in the case. The conversion stands and the Jewish child stolen from his parents will be raised as a Catholic.
1859: An editorial in the New York Times, expresses disappointment at Rome’s refusal to yield on the issues in the “Mortara Case” while expressing relief “that such an enormity as the abduction of the Mortara child cannot be repeated even by Rome.” The Times also points out the horrible conditions under which the Jews of Austria, a patron and protector of the Pope, are living. “The case of the Israelites…bad as it is in Rome, is still worse in Austria.” Jews are restricted in the vocations they may pursue and are banned from “many of the higher vocations of trade.” They are limited in their right to move to different parts of the empire and they need a special license if they want to leave the country altogether. In some parts of the empire, there is a limit on the number of Jewish marriages “so that a young man must await the death of his parent before he can enter the state of matrimony. This hideous and demoralizing law is but one of the many horrors which Austrian persecution has designed for the Israelites living in Austria, and who are kept by the brutal system, in a state of ignorance which the condition of Jewish populations in free countries proves to abnormal with that portion of the human family.” [All of this will change with a stroke of a pen after Austria loses its war with Prussia and is forced to reorganize as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.]
1865(9th of Av, 5625): Tisha B'Av
1865: The New York Times reported that “the Israelites in this city and throughout the world solemnized in sorrow and in sadness, in tears and in lamentation, in fasting and in prayer, the annual fast of Ab, founded on the destruction of the Temple, and the overthrow of the national government. Although nearly 2,300 years have elapsed since the first Temple was destroyed, and eighteen centuries since the construction of the second Temple, both occurrences taking place on the same day of the month, the fast is still continued from Monday evening to Tuesday night, in accordance with the Jewish ritual, and in consonance with Israelitish feeling. The fast is inaugurated with reciting the lamentations of Jeremiah, and, after the morning service, several hours are employed in the synagogues in chanting in plaintive tones the compositions of the saints of antiquity, and imploring the God of Israel to remove the rod of chastisement from Israel, and again to resume the light of other days, by the reestablishment of their Temple and restoration of their government to its original splendor.”
1870: Birthdate of Rabbi Tuvia Geffen who gained fame as “The Coca Cola Rabbi.”
1870: Benjamin Nathan, the prominent Jewish New York businessman who was murdered in his own home, was buried today at the Jewish Cemetery, Shearith Israel at Cypress Hill. His brother-in-law, Rabbi J.J. Lyons had officiated at funeral that was held at the deceased’s resident.
1873: It was reported today that the last person to see ten year old John Henry Lance was “a Jew peddler in Williamsburg.”
1875: “The Jews of Italy,” an article published today described the conditions of the Jews living in this newly reunited nation. It focused on the deplorable conditions of many of the Jews living in the old ghetto of Rome along the Tiber, the improved condition of Jews living outside of the capital and the annual ceremony at St. John the Lateran set aside to baptize any Jew who has converted during the past 12 months. However, no Jew has participated in the ceremony in the last twenty years, despite the best efforts of the Church to gain converts.
1876: Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state. The largest number of Jews began arriving in Colorado as part of the gold rush activities in 1859. Jews helped supply the miners in many of the camps that later became small towns throughout the state. Hyman and Fred Salomon, two Jewish brothers from Prussia, were leading members of the Denver community by the time statehood was declared. In addition to their business ventures, they helped organize the Colorado Pioneer Society, the Denver Public Library and the Denver B’nai Brit Lodge.
1879: As reported in the Jewish Messenger, "...About twenty, mostly young men, have formed themselves into a congregation under the name of 'Orach Chaim', Path of Life, their objective being to hold Divine service every day, morning and evening, as well as on Sabbath and holidays on strict orthodox principles, as it has been handed down to them by their fathers."
1885: A well attended memorial service in honor of the late Sir Moses Montefiore, who was buried on Friday in Ramsgate, England, was held today at the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, on the corner of Eighty-fourth-street and Avenue A in New York.
1891: Birthdate of Eliyahu Lulu, who would gain fame as a member of the First Knesset under the name of Eliyahu Hacarmeli.
1903: Birthdate of Helena Nordheim, one of five Jewish members of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928. Forty years later, Helena Kloot- Nordheim, her husband Abraham and her 10-year old daughter Rebecca were gassed at Sobibor.
1911: Jews in Peoria, Illinois contribute one thousand dollars to Jews in Turkey suffering from the aftermath of major fires in that country.
1914: Germany declared war on Russia in WW I. The Jews of German fought valiantly for the Kaiser in defense of the Fatherland. But the Iron Crosses they earned would not save them or their progeny from the "Austrian Corporal’s Final Solution." According to Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Rigg, “About 10,000 volunteered for duty, and over 100,000 out of a total German-Jewish population of 550,000 served during World War One. Some 78% saw front-line duty, 12,000 died in battle, over 30,000 received decorations, and 19,000 were promoted. Approximately 2,000 Jews became military officers and 1,200 became medical officers.”
1918: Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Abraham Epstein, President Workmen's Circle were among the leaders of a meeting of a Conference of Trade Unions, Branches of the Workmen's Circle, and other Progressive Labor Organizations of Greater New York scheduled to be held be held in Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street, for the purpose of organizing the workers into a permanent central body for aiding all persons prosecuted who are in need of help, and of arousing public opinion against the further suppression of constitutional rights and liberties. The Conference will be held under the auspices of the Liberty Defense Union, and has been endorsed by the United Hebrews Trades and the National Executive Committee of the Workmen's Circle.
1919: Hungary limited the number of Jews in commerce, law, medicine, and banking. The new definition of a Jew is someone who converted after August 1, 1919. An estimated 5,000 Jews converted to Christianity during the weeks before the law went into effect.
1919(5th of Av, 5679): Oscar Hammerstein I passed away. Born in 1847 he was a businessman, theater impresario and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was the grandfather of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
1924: Birthdate of Georges Charpak, Ukrainian-born French physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992.
1925: The (Turkish) Palestine Citizenship Ordinance went into effect. It said that any "Turkish subject" in Palestine as of August 1, 1925 shall become a Palestinian citizen, unless he opts for Turkish nationality, or nationality of another state.
1926: At Constantinople it was announced that the Jews of Turkey formally renounced their rights as minorities. They would for now on be considered full citizens with equal rights as all citizens have.
1926(21st of Av, 5686): Israel Zangwill passed away. The Russian born, Anglo-Jewish author, Zionist and champion of social justice is best known for two of his works - a novel entitled Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People a highly successful play entitled The Melting Pot. Among those who saw and enjoyed this was President Theodore Roosevelt.
1931: Birthdate of Elliott Charles Adnopoz, who became famous as Ramblin' Jack Elliott
1932: Birthdate of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League.
1933: The Deutsche Modeamt, a newly-formed Nazi fashion office, announces that Jewish firms will not be permitted to exhibit in the exhibition of men's and women's wear.
1933: Fritz Rosenfelder, leader and founder of the sports club at Saanstaat, Wurtenberg, commits suicide because he was expelled from the club; in a final letter to his former club colleagues, he wrote: "I am leaving with no hatred. My only wish is that Germany should be restored to reason . . . How more beautifully could I have given my life for my Fatherland."
1933: The Commissariat for Medical Associations issues a decree prohibiting non-Jewish physicians from having any professional contact with Jewish physicians; non-Jewish medical
men must not serve as consultants, and must not treat patients recommended to them by Jewish physicians.
1933: The Dutch Society of Sculptors and Artists responds to an appeal on behalf of Jewish refugees from Germany by donating many objects of art which will be used in a lottery sanctioned by the Government.
1936: The report of the Peel Commission was discussed today in Geneva, home of the League of Nations. Poland, Romania and other East European countries, debating the Peel Report on the proposed partition of Palestine, demanded that Great Britain continue to fulfill her obligations under the Mandate. The Arab leadership argued that the rights of the people of Palestine could not be contested and that any partition scheme was contrary to Articles 20 and 31 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. In a contradiction of facts the Arabs did not deny the rights of the Jewish minority in Palestine, and were even prepared to furnish guarantees in this respect, but they unanimously opposed the country's partition and demanded immediate, total independence. But part of the rights of the Jewish community under the terms of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate was to a Jewish Homeland, not citizenship in an Arab country. In South Africa General J.C. Smuts, vice premier and minister of justice, expressed his grave misgivings about the partition scheme in general, and the smallness of the proposed Jewish state in particular. A total rejection of the partition was also the subject of letters written by Colonel J.C. Wedgwood, MP (Member of Parliament), and addressed to the British and world press.
1936: Birthdate of Leonard Steinberg, Baron Steinberg of Belfast, founder of Stanley Leisure Ltd and found and first President of the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel
1940: The Nazis begin the expulsion of the Jewish population from Cracow, Poland. One-third would be sent to Warsaw and other Polish towns.1942: The first "reliable report" of the Nazi plan to murder all the Jews reached the West. The U.S. State Department suppressed the report for several weeks, until Jews living in the United States heard about the report from other sources.
1941: Heydrich informed Himmler, “that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed Eastern Territories." Every day in every village and town, Jews would be hunted down, molested, tortured, and executed.
1941(8th of Av, 5701): Another 1,000 Jews were shot in the city of Kishenev.
1941: The Nazis established The Bialystok Ghetto.
1942 (18th of Av, 5702) Rabbi Shlomo Chanoch Rabinowicz, last Rebbe of the Radomsk dynasty, educator, a director of the Kesser Torah organization, member of the religious council in the Warsaw ghetto was murdered with his family in the Warsaw ghetto
1942: Benjamin Sagalowitz, press secretary of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities phoned Gerhard Riegner with information from an unimpeachable source, a non-Jewish German industrialist, that Hitler had decided to have all European Jews exterminated by means of poison gas by the end of the year.
1944: Anne Frank writes the last entry in her diary.
1944: Fourteen months after the Warsaw Ghetto, the Polish underground rises against the Nazis in Warsaw. Jewish fighters came of hiding to participate in the fight. However, those who could not come to the aide of the Jews in 1943 would now find out what it felt like. The Soviet Army waited outside the city and did not come to their aid. Instead, they let the Nazis slaughter the Poles and then they entered the city as liberating heroes
1945: Birthdate of Douglas Dean Osheroff, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996. His father was Jewish and his mother was Lithuanian.
1946(4th of Av, 5706): In Miskol, Hungry industrial workers stage a pogrom. Two Jews are lynched. This is an example of the post-war anti-Semitic violence that led approximately 4,000 Jews to leave Hungary for Palestine during the next two years.
1956: The Salk Vaccine, created by Dr. Jonas Salk, becomes available to the American public.
1965: Birthdate of English stage and film director Sam Mendes. His father was from Trinidad and his mother was an English Jew.
1970: Ensio P.H. Siilasvuo of Finland assumes the role of Chief of Staff United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)
1979: Following her graduation from rabbinical college in Philadelphia, Linda Joy Holtzman was appointed spiritual leader of the Conservative Beth Israel congregation in Coatesville,
Pennsylvania, making her the first female rabbi to head a Jewish congregation in America.
1980: Egypt said today that it would not suspend the talks with Israel on autonomy for the occupied areas nor would it recall its Ambassador from Israel in response to the passage of an Israeli law formalizing the annexation of Jerusalem.
1980: Two days after the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law, an article entitled “Jerusalem Storm Just One More in a Tortured History” which traced the history of the city from ancient times to the period following the Six Days War was published. The article includes the following: “During the war that followed Israel’s independence in 1948, Jordan seized the eastern sector of Jerusalem…and the new state won control of the western sector. The Jordanians evicted all Jews from the Old City; from 1948 to 1967 was off limits to Jews and most of the old synagogues there were destroyed.” (Editor’s note – The author, working for The New York Times, writes about an eastern sector and a western sector of Jerusalem as well as the Old City. The term “East Jerusalem and, its concept as a separate city, is apparently a more recent creation.)
1981(1st of Av, 5741): Rosh Chodesh Av
1981(1st of Av, 5741): Paddy Chayefsky passed away. Born in 1923, Sydney "Paddy" Chayefsky began writing scripts for television during its golden age of drama in the 1950’s. He switched to films where he won three Oscar for writing "Marty", "Hospital" and "Network."
1989: Morton Abramowitz began serving as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey
1991: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir accepted a formula for peace talks in the Middle East.
2004: The New York Times book section features a review of 'Jerome Robbins': From Stravinsky to the Sharks by Nicholas Fox Weber.
2004: In Aspen, CO, Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, Inc. is the headline speaker at United Jewish Communities (UJC) eighth annual Jewish Leadership Forum (JLF)
2004(14th of Av, 5764): Sidney Morgenbesser passed away at the age of 82 from complications of ALS. Morgenbesser was the Emeritus John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. He attended JTS and earned a Ph.D. from Penn. He was known for his erudition and his wit. David Shatz of Yeshiva University recounted the story of Morgenbesser chastising a faculty member for hiding his Jewishness: “Oh, I see your model is Icognito, ergo sum.”
2005 (25th of Tammuz, 5765): George Forman, a longtime comptroller of the American Civil Liberties Union, who brought fiscal discipline to a ramshackle organization near bankruptcy in the late 1970s and later helped it develop into a powerful civil liberties conglomerate, died todau at the age of 88. The cause was congestive heart failure, Jamieson said. "During the years of crisis, he was more responsible than any other single person for keeping the program afloat," said Ira Glazer, the executive director of the ACLU from 1978 to 2001. Glazer explained how Mr. Forman juggled the bills and even earned interest on a deficit operational budget, and recalled visits from officials of Chemical Bank who complained that although the organization was moving around millions of dollars, its average balance was $3.79. "He was the chewing gum and rubber bands that held the organization together and made the high intellectual and strategic law possible," Glazer said. When Mr. Forman arrived at the ACLU in 1968, the organization had two lawyers, one part-time media person and no one in charge of administration and finances, fund-raising or development. By the time he retired in the late 1990s, the organization had a $50 million annual income, more than $100 million in assets, and staffed offices in every state. Before joining the ACLU, Mr. Forman was the comptroller of the Noma Corp., a large, diversified holding company. He became unemployed when Noma merged with a predecessor of Gulf and Western. George Forman was born in Manhattan on Feb. 15, 1917. He lived alone in his parents' apartment in the Bronx, where he had cared for them until they died. During World War II, he was an Army officer stationed in Washington, where he fell in love with a woman with whom he had his only daughter but felt he could not marry because she was not Jewish. He graduated magna cum laude from New York University in 1939 and earned a graduate degree in business administration there.
2005: President George W Bush nominated Roland Arnall to become the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
2005: A political essay written by Russian businessman and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his prison cell, titled "Left Turn", was published in Vedomosti, calling for a turn to more social responsible state.
2005 (25th of Tammuz, 5765): Al Aronowitz passed away at the age of 77. He was a pioneering journalist who covered the Beat literary scene and engineered a meeting between Bob Dylan and the Beatles that has passed into rock 'n' roll legend.
2006(7th of Av, 5766): Skirmishes with Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern Lebanese village of Ayta al-Shaab left three soldiers, including an officer, of a Paratrooper Brigade unit dead and at least another 25 wounded. The names of the fallen have been released: St.-Sgt. Yehunatan Einhorn, 22, of Moshav Gimzo; First Sergeant Michael Levine, 21, of Jerusalem; and Lieutenant Ilan Gabbai, 22, of Kiryat Tivon.
2006: A number of Jewish-owned stores in Italy had their doors sealed with glue and the shutters nailed down overnight as a response to Israel’s policies in Lebanon
2007: U.S. President George Bush imposed sanctions on Syria today because of the role the Damascus government has played in creating regional instability.
2007: U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice arrives in Jerusalem.
2008: Solomon "Momy" Levy completed his term as Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: Solomon Levy began serving as the Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: In Falls Church VA (suburban Washington, D.C.), Jewish author Benjamin Rosenbaum reads from and discusses his new collection of SF tales, The Ant King and Other Stories
2009: At Temple Judah, a Triple Header:
1. Shabbat Nachamu
2. Rabbi Todd Thalbum officially takes the pulpit at Temple Judah and reads the Torah portion at his first Cedar Rapids Shabbat Morning Service
3. Raoul Wallenberg Sabbath Annual Observance of Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Day (August 4, 2009) which has been proclaimed by the Governor of Iowa for three years in a row.
2009(11th of Av, 5769): A gunman shot dead two people and wounded at least thirteen others in an attack at a central Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center tonight before fleeing the scene. Israel Police said that the incident at the club on Nahmani Street did not have a terror motive. The two victims were initially identified as a young man and a young woman. Witnesses told Israeli television that the black-clad, masked gunman stormed into the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association building and opened fire in a basement room where gay teenagers were holding a weekly support group. Most of the casualties were minors, a police spokesman said, adding that the assailant was believed to have used an automatic weapon such as an M-16 rifle. Channel 10 television reported that a police manhunt for the gunman was underway in the city. The channel also said that police had closed all the gay clubs in the area following the attack. Witnesses said the gunman entered the center at around 11 P.M. and opened fire in all directions
2010: The Skirball Cultural Center show "Monsters and Miracles: A Journey through Jewish Picture Books," is scheduled to come to a close today.
2010: "Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb" is scheduled to have its final showing at the Jewish Museum,in New York.
2010: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to travel to Egypt today for a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two are expected to meet behind closed doors to discuss advancing diplomatic efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They are also expected to discuss cooperation between Israel and Egypt.
2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 by Nadine Gordimer, Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right by Benjamin Balint, Norman Podhoretz: A Biography by Thomas L. Jeffers, High Financer: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg by Niall Ferguson and Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman
2010: The Jewish Community Center in Omaha welcomed nearly 1,000 young Jewish athletes for an Olympic-style competition that will run through August 6. This will be the third time in 19 years that the Maccabi Games have been held at the Jewish Community Center.
2010(21 Av, 5770): Reginald Levy, who as captain of a hijacked Belgian airliner in 1972 was hailed as a hero for enabling Israeli commandos to storm the plane and rescue all 100 passengers and crew members, died at a hospital near his home in Dover, England. He was 88. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Linda Lipschitz said. Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Tel Aviv was 20 minutes out of Vienna on May 8, 1972, when four Arabs waving pistols rushed the cockpit. “As you can see,” Captain Levy calmly told the 90 passengers, “we have friends aboard.” The “friends” were members of Black September, a terrorist organization that grew out of the Palestinian defeat in the 1970 Jordanian civil war and was responsible for the killing of 11 members of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics four months after the hijacking. The hijackers — two men and two women — ordered Captain Levy to land at Lydda Airport (later Ben-Gurion International Airport), where they threatened to blow up the plane unless 317 Palestinian guerrillas were released from Israeli prisons. Within an hour of the radio message from Captain Levy reporting the hijacking, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, was at the airport to deal with the crisis. After dark, Israeli saboteurs crept under the parked plane, deflated the tires and disconnected hydraulic equipment. At the hijackers’ request, International Red Cross teams were summoned to carry messages between the plane and Mr. Dayan. After presenting their demands, the hijackers were alarmed to discover that they could not take off again. Captain Levy started a conversation to calm them down, and kept on chatting through the night. “I talked about everything under the sun,” he said later, “from navigation to sex.” The next morning, to demonstrate their intentions, the hijackers sent Captain Levy to the terminal with a sample of the explosives they had on board. He told the Israelis much more, describing the hijackers, their positions and the black bags in which they were carrying explosives. He also told them, significantly, that there were no seats blocking the emergency doors. Mr. Dayan promised to repair the plane and bring the Palestinian prisoners to the airport. Bogus prisoners were shown to the hijackers from a distance, and another plane was taken out to a runway, supposedly to fly them to Cairo. Twenty-one hours after Captain Levy’s plane had been hijacked, two trucks carrying 18 men in the white overalls of mechanics drove up to the jetliner. They milled about the plane, supposedly checking the tires and other equipment. Suddenly they tore open the emergency exits above the wings and opened fire inside the cabin. The fusillade from the men in overalls — in reality members of the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal — ended within 90 seconds. The commandos were led by Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defense minister, and among them was Benjamin Netanyahu, now the prime minister. The two male hijackers, who had returned fire, were killed. Another hijacker, a Jordanian woman, was not injured. The fourth, also a woman, was seriously wounded, as were several passengers. Tearful passengers and crew members slid off the wings and were bused to a terminal into the arms of ecstatic relatives. Several days later, Prime Minister Golda Meir held a dinner for those involved in the rescue. She kissed Captain Levy and cried, “We love you.” To criticism that the operation had endangered innocent people, she said, “When blackmail like this succeeds, it only leads to more blackmail.” Reginald Levy was born in Blackpool, England, on May 8, 1922, the son of Cyril and Ann Constant Levy. The hijacking took place on his 50th birthday. His wife, Dora Shawcross Levy, was on board; they were planning to celebrate in Tel Aviv. Captain Levy joined the Royal Air Force when he was 18, flew bombing missions over Germany and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944. After the war, he took part in the Berlin airlift and, in 1952, joined Sabena. He retired in 1982. In 2007, Eliezer Sacks, one of the Israeli commandos, arrived at the offices of The Jerusalem Post and handed Ms. Lipschitz — then an editorial assistant at the paper — the blue Sabena captain’s cap that her father had left on the plane. He gave her a letter he had written to Captain Levy. “I want to apologize for the long time — 35 years — that I forgot to give your hat back,” it said. “I hope the hat will find its way back to your head.” It did.
2011: A screening of “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” Liz Garbus’s documentary that takes us on Fischer’s journey from Jewish child prodigy to world chess master to virulent anti-Semite, is scheduled to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Festival.
2011(1st day of Av, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Av
Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; July, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
Friday, July 29, 2011
This Day, July 31, In Jewish History
JULY 31 In Jewish History
904: Thessaloniki, which is also known as Salonica, is sacked and looted by Saracens (an Arab group). The Jewish population of Thessaloniki dates back at least to the first century of the Common Era. By the time Benjamin of Tudela visited the city in the 11th century the Jewish population numbered a significant “hundred souls.” Salonica’s Jewish population would grow when the Ottomans made it a refuge for Sephardic Jews following their expulsion in 1492.
1009: Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII. During the Papacy of Sergius, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. There was a two-fold response in the West. Sergius issued a papal bull calling for Islam to be driven from the Holy Land and the Jews were attacked because rumors were circulated blaming them for inciting the Caliph to destroy the church.
1255: An English boy who would become known as Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln disappeared setting the stage for the one of the more notorious blood libels in English history.
1305: In Barcelona it is decreed that anybody who reads works of science and metaphysics before the age of 25 or who adheres to allegorical interpretations which rject the notion of revelation will be excommunicated.
1390: Solomon Halevi converts and takes the name of Pablo de Santa Maria. He became the Bishop of Burgos and Chancellor to the King of Castille.
1391: Joshua Loki wrote to Pablo de Santa Maria, known as Solomon Halevi befoe he converted, rejecting Pablo’s interpretation of the messianic role of Jesus. Lorki would convert ten years later and become a leading tormentor of the Joshua people.
1492: The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1527: Birthdate of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. “In his diary entries, Maximilien described the Jews as a quarrelsome and deceitful people who denounced one another, gave usurious loans to miners and artisans and traded in inferior medals. Between 1567 and 1573 the emperor repeatedly issued mandates to expel Jews” from Lower Austria.
1556: Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest and founder of the Jesuits passed away. When accused of being crypto-Jew or having Jewish ancestry he replied If only I did! What could be more glorious than to be of the same blood as the Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, and our Lord Himself?" Robert Maryks, “an expert on the history of early Jesuits details the significant role of “conversos’’ — Jews and their descendants who were pressured to convert to Catholicism before and during the Spanish Inquisition in his recently published book, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus
1571: The ghetto in Florence, Italy was established.
1743: In Jerusalem, Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar,Talmudist and Kabbalist passed away. He was buried on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. Born at Mequenez, Morocco in 1696 he was one of the most prominent rabbis in Morocco. In 1733 he decided to leave his native country and settle in the Land of Israel, then under the Ottoman Empire. En route he was detained in Livorno by the rich members of the Jewish community who established a yeshiva for him. Many of his pupils later became prominent and furnished him with funds to print his “Ohr ha-Chaim” or “The Light of Life,” a commentary on the Pentateuch. He was received with great honor wherever he traveled. This was due to his extensive knowledge, keen intellect and extraordinary piety. In the middle of 1742 he arrived in Jerusalem where he presided at the Beit Midrash Knesset Yisrael. One of his disciples there was Rabbi Chaim Joseph David Azulai, who wrote of his master's greatness: "Attar's heart pulsated with Talmud; he uprooted mountains like a resistless torrent; his holiness was that of an angel of the Lord ... having severed all connection with the affairs of this world. A prolific author, two of his other published works were “Hefetz Hashem or “God’s Desire,” consisting of dissertations on four Talmudic treatises and “Peri Toar” or “Beautiful Fruit,” a novella based on the Shulchan Aruch.
1776(15th of Av, 5536): Francis Salvador, one of the most prominent Jews of the American Revolutionary period, , was shot and scalped by Indians after riding 28 miles to raise a militia after attacks occurred on settlers. His father (also named Francis Salvador) was a wealthy London Jew who financed the earliest Jewish settlers of Savannah, Georgia
1821: Lazarus Magnus, the son of Simon Magnus and the husband of Sarah Moses, passed away today in Chatham, Kent, England.
1840(1st of Av, 5600): Rosh Chodesh Av
1840(1st of Av, 5600): Nachman Kohen Krochmal, one of “the first Jewish historians to treat Jewish history as an integral part of all human history” passed away. A native of Brody, Galicia, one of his most famous works was Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time).
1845: In Great Britain, Parliament passes the Act for the relief of Persons of the Jewish Religion elected to Municipal Offices.
1856: Christchurch New Zealand is chartered as a city. According to Robert Case, the first Jews settled in Christchurch during the 1850’s. By 1860, there were fewer than four hundred Jews living in all of New Zealand. Although the Jewish Community of Christchurch has always been a small one, it built a synagogue in 1890. Today the Christchurch’s Canterburgy Hebrew Congregation consists of a synagogue, Temple Beth-El that offers regular Shabbat services as well as cheder classes, Bar and Bat Mitzvah training, conversion support, holiday services and a variety of social activities. It is also home to the South Island chapter of Habonim Dror and the Christchurch Council of Jewish Women. The community also has a Chevra Kedisha and Chabad House.
1870: In the wake of the reported massacre of Jews in Romania, letters have been received in Washington, DC stating that Article 21 of the new constitution guarantees freedom of conscience to all. These letters claim that the 400,000 Jews in Romania have 176 synagogues in which they “worship in the manner prescribed by their religion.” The letters conclude by asking if religious persecution really existed why would the Jews be allowed to have so many synagogues which they are free to use
1878: Birthdate of philanthropist and child-welfare activist Madeleine Borg. Borg, who lived her whole life in New York City, was educated at Columbia University, where she studied the causes of juvenile delinquency. Subsequently, she held leadership positions in more than a dozen major child welfare organizations. Her roles included chair of the executive committee of the Jewish Board of Guardians of New York, director of the Child Welfare League, member of the executive committee of the Girls' Service League of America, and trustee of the Training School for Jewish Social Work. She also served on the executive boards of the American Jewish Committee and the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York. Borg's largest contribution to child welfare was probably her role in founding the Big Sister movement, beginning in 1912. Modeled on earlier Big Brother programs targeted at troubled boys, Big Sister programs provide young girls with role models and companions. In 1914, Borg was among the founders of the Jewish Big Sisters, which sought to help poor and troubled girls by providing them with role models from a similar ethnic and cultural background. Today, Jewish Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs also match adults with disabilities with non-disabled friends. Always interested in child welfare, Borg was also active in promoting psychiatric clinics as part of the study of child behavior. In 1954, the Jewish Board of Guardians renamed its Child Guidance Institute in Borg's honor. Borg's public roles also extended beyond child welfare and beyond the Jewish community. In 1929, then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the New York State Old Age Pensions Committee; she also served on the executive committee of the New York City Crime Prevention Bureau. In 1939, she became a trustee of the New York World's Fair. Also in 1939, she became president of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the first woman to hold that post. Borg died in 1956.
1882: Rishon Lezion or First For Zion was founded by a group of 10 families in Eretz Israel. The settlement marked the beginning of the first Aliyah (going up) to Eretz- Israel, and the beginning of Rothschild’s deep involvement with settlement activities. Later that year, Baron Edmund De Rothschild in response to the Russian pogroms and a plea by Rabbi Samuel Mohilever agreed to help the new Moshava
1898: Jewish labor leader and heade of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, arrived in Springfield, Illinois where he planned to attend the upcoming state convention of the American Federation of Labor. Mr. Gompers spoke out against the condition of workers in the territories recently annexed after the Spanish American War; specifically he demanded that slave labor be stamped out there in and in Hawaii.
1900: Herzl leaves Altaussee and travels to Luzern, Paris and London. The trip will take a toll on his health and he will be ill by the he gets to London on August 7.
1906(9th of Av, 5666):Tish'a B'Av
1912: Birthdate of newspaper and Chicago literary institution Irv Kupcinet.
1912: Birthdate of economist and Federal Reserve Chairman Milton Friedman. Friedman won the Nobel Prize in 1976.
1914: German Jewish industrialist Walter Rathenau published an article in the Berliner Tageblatt protesting Germany’s blind loyalty to Austria; a loyalty which he felt was leading to a great European war.
1918: Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Abraham Epstein, President Workmen's Circle were among the leaders of a meeting of a Conference of Trade Unions, Branches of the Workmen's Circle, and other Progressive Labor Organizations of Greater New York scheduled to be held be held in Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street, for the purpose of organizing the workers into a permanent central body for aiding all persons prosecuted who are in need of help, and of arousing public opinion against the further suppression of constitutional rights and liberties. The Conference will be held under the auspices of the Liberty Defense Union, and has been endorsed by the United Hebrews Trades and the National Executive Committee of the Workmen's Circle.
1919: Birthdate of the Italian-Jewish writer and chemist Primo Levi. Levi spent time fighting with Partisans during the war and survived Auschwitz. These experiences provided much of the material for his writings. He passed away in 1987. (We do not have the space to do his work justice and you are urged to read any of his several works which are available in English.)
1923: A Hebrew version of Verdi’s “Traviata” was performed in Jerusalem this evening. The performance was described as “brilliant.” The Hebrew version of the opera had previously been performed in Tel Aviv.
1926: Birthdate of Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, the self-described Jewish atheist who converted to Roman Catholicism. Nathanson was “a campaigner for abortion rights who, after experiencing a change of heart in the 1970s became a prominent opponent of abortion and the on-screen narrator of the anti-abortion film “The Silent Scream.” (As reported by William Grimes)
1928: When MGM introduces its first “talkie,” “White Shadows on the South Seas” the famed Lion Logo makes its first appearance. With so many Jews involved in MGM, including Harry Rapf, Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer and Nicholas Schenck one might wonder if the choice of the Lion was subtle reference to the Lion of Judah.
1928: Bobbie Rosenfeld won gold and silver medals in the 1928 Olympics. “Bobbie Rosenfeld was well known as a star of Canadian track and field. Born Fanny Rosenfeld in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia in 1904, she moved to Canada as an infant; she was later nicknamed "Bobbie" because of her bobbed hair. Growing up in Barrie, Ontario, and then in Toronto, Rosenfeld was an enthusiastic athlete from a young age, playing basketball, softball, hockey and tennis, as well as running. Despite widespread belief that strenuous exercise was damaging to women's bodies, Rosenfeld's family supported her athletic pursuits. In 1923, Rosenfeld burst onto the national scene when she entered the 100-yard dash at a picnic on a dare from a softball teammate. At the time, Rosenfeld was working in a Toronto chocolate factory. Rosenfeld not only won the race but also beat the Canadian national champion, Rosa Grosse. Two years later, Rosenfeld and Grosse would share the world record for the 100-yard dash, at eleven seconds. Later in 1923, she entered her first major race at the Canadian National Exhibition. In the 100-yard dash, she again beat Grosse and also beat American and world-record holder Helen Filkey. The same evening, after the race, Rosenfeld joined her softball team and helped lead them to the city championship. Over the next decade, Rosenfeld came to symbolize Canadian women's sport. She went from success to success, leading ice hockey, basketball, and softball teams to championships and winning the Toronto Ladies Grass Courts tennis tournament in 1924. She claimed victory in so many sports that one author later wrote that "the most efficient way to summarize Bobbie Rosenfeld's career ... is to say that she was not good at swimming." A consummate athlete, she was also applauded for her sportsmanship. Both these qualities would soon be evident on the world stage. In 1928, Rosenfeld was chosen as one of the "matchless six" on the Canadian women's Olympic track and field team. The Olympics of 1928 were the first in which women were allowed to compete in track and field, although only on a trial basis. On July 31, 1928, Rosenfeld won the silver medal in the 100-meter race, though many spectators thought she had actually finished first. A few days later, Rosenfeld competed in the 800-meters, a race in which she had been entered only to encourage teammate Jean Thompson, and for which she had not trained. Coming from the rear, Rosenfeld ran alongside Thompson through most of the race, allowing her teammate to finish fourth while she placed fifth; this was considered a great act of compassion and sportsmanship, as Rosenfeld could easily have pulled ahead and earned a medal in the race. Finally, on the last day of track and field events, Rosenfeld got her gold medal when she led her team to victory in the 400-meter relay. On the team's return to Toronto, 200,000 people lined the streets to cheer a celebratory parade. Rosenfeld had helped to show that women's competition could be a worthy part of the Olympics; after the Games closed, the delegates of the International Amateur Athletic Federation voted 16-6 to continue women's track and field events at future Olympics. The Canadian delegate voted against women's participation. Back at home, though Rosenfeld had received a hero's welcome, she went back to work at the chocolate factory to pay her bills. In 1928, no endorsement contracts or professional sports opportunities were available to women. Rosenfeld continued to play sports, even starring on championship ice hockey and softball teams, but recurrent attacks of severe arthritis ended her athletic career in 1933. She moved to coaching track and softball, and then, in 1937, to writing about sports. For nearly twenty years, she wrote the "Sports Reel" column for the Toronto Globe and Mail. She retired from the Globe and Mail in 1966 and died on November 14, 1969. Rosenfeld's legacy is one of breaking down barriers. First as an athlete, and then as the only woman on the sports staff of the Globe and Mail, she carved new paths for women in sports, making it clear to skeptics that, as she put it in a column, "girls are in sports for good." These contributions were recognized both during Rosenfeld's lifetime and after her death. In 1950, a press poll of sportswriters named her Canada's Female Athlete of the Half Century; in 1955, she was among the earliest inductees to Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Her portrait recently appeared on a Canadian postage stamp, and every year the Bobbie Rosenfeld trophy is awarded to Canada's Female Athlete of the Year.”
1932: National elections are held in Germany and the Nazi Party won 230 seats in the Reichstag.
1933: By now, approximately 30,000 people are interned in Nazi concentration camps.
1936(12th of Av, 5696): Rabbi Moses Simon Sivitz, renowned Jewish historian who wrote five books about Moses died in Montefiore Hospital
1936: The Palestine Post reported from London that the newly-appointed Royal Commission was expected to arrive in Palestine in October. Meanwhile a new wave of Arab rioting spread towards Tiberias where many Jews were compelled to leave the Old City. There were assaults, arson, and stone-throwing. The Arab police and the British authorities dealt with the rioters in a diffident and condoning manner.
1939: Isadore Breslau, the Zionist leadership's chief representative in Washington, writes a letter showing that former Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis actively supported Aliyah in defiance of British policy as outlined in the May 1939 White Paper that severely limited the immigration of Jews to then British-run Palestine. The letter reveals that the widely respected jurist, who had just retired after nearly a quarter century on the court, held views on Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel that were in direct opposition to those of the British government, the Roosevelt administration and mainstream American Jewish groups and leaders."Speaking on the question of the immigration he [Brandeis] said that Jews would continue to immigrate regardless of the White Paper," the letter written by Isadore Breslau reads. "When someone suggested that it was illegal, he said that the Jewish people considered it legal in view of the fact that any attempt to curtail immigration was in violation of the terms of the Mandate; that it may be considered illegal by Great Britain, but that we Jews considered it to be legal."
1940: According to The Olkusz Memorial book “a German police unit arrived in Olkusz” today and gathered all the Jewish men in the main square. There the Jews were forced to lie on the ground while the policemen and members of the SD “registered them”. During this process, the Germans brutally beat the Jews, shooting one of them. In order to further humiliate them, Rabbi Moshe Yitzhak Hagerman was forced to don his tallith (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) that had been defiled, and to stand barefoot and pray next to the prostrate men of the Jewish community. At the end of the day, the Jews were permitted to return home, and the Germans left. Due to the beatings suffered by the Jews, the event was subsequently referred to as ‘Bloody Wednesday’”. (For a photo see http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/04.asp )
1941: The Nazis officially undertook The Final Solution. Hermann Goring instructs SS Reich Security Service chief Reinhardt Heydrich by letter "to carry out all the necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence." - That influence now covered a dozen countries. - "I further charge you with submitting to me promptly an overall plan... for the execution of the intended FINAL SOLUTION of the Jewish question."
1942: Governor Wilhelm Kube reports to Hinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar of the Baltic regions and Belorussia, that "Jewry has been completely eliminated" in the Minsk area. According to Kube ‘16,000 Jews were liquidated in Lida, 8,000 in Slonim.’ In the previous ten weeks, 55,000 Jews have been liquidated.
1942 (17th of Av, 5702): Bluma Rozenfeld, 19, leaps to her death from a fifth-floor window in the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.
1942: Israel Lichtenstein writes from the Warsaw Ghetto: "At present, together with me, both of us get ready to meet and receive death. I wish my little daughter to be remembered. Margalith, twenty months old today....I don't lament my own life nor that of my wife. I pity only the so little, nice and talented girl. She deserves to be remembered."
1942 (17th of Av, 5702): German SS troops gassed 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia
1942: In what was the first reference to Dan Schoor in FBI files, on this date FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover "asked the chief of the Special War Policies Unit for more information on Schoor's status as a 'representative of a foreign principal' because he was employed as a correspondent for the Netherland Indies News Agency. During the Red Scare of the 1950's "Hoover told the CIA director that the bureau had looked over Schoor's background and had kept information on this travels to 'Iron Curtain Countries.'" Is it possible that Hoover did not know that Schoor was the Moscow correspondent for CBS news which would have meant he traveled for Iron Curtain countries. Ironically, the Soviets expelled him because they did not approve of his news gathering work.
1944: The hull of the Liberty ship "Benjamin Peixotto" was laid down today. The ship is named for the 19th century Jewish leader.
1944(11th of Av, 5704): Eighteen year old Leendert Kleerekoper died at Auschwitz today. He was the son of Gerrit Kleerekoper, the coach of the of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928. The coach, his wife and his 14 year old daughter had already been gassed.
1944: Among 1300 Jews deported from Drancy, France (northwest of Paris), to Auschwitz are 258 Jewish orphans seized in and around Paris on July 24. Upon arrival at the camp, all 500 children and 300 adults are gassed. This is the last transport of Jews from the Drancy camp to Auschwitz. In total, 73,853 Jews have been shipped from Drancy to their deaths at Auschwitz and Sobibór.
1944: As Western troops moved forward to Paris, a last train departed with over 300 deported Jewish children.
1944: Three thousand Jews were transported from the labor camp at Blizyn to Birkenau where over 500 are gassed to death upon their arrival
1944: By the end of July, French Jew Maurice Löwenberg, founder of the National Liberation Movement resistance group, is tortured to death by the Gestapo.
1944: By the end of July 46,000 Jewish inmates are gassed and cremated at Auschwitz.
1944: By the end of July SS General Richard Baer had become the new Auschwitz commandant.
1945: French collaborationist politician Pierre Laval is arrested in Austria. Laval was the driving force behind the Vichy Government which was so supportive of the Final Solution that it often delivered Jews “ahead of schedule.”
1946: An Anglo-American committee jointly chaired by Henry Grady, an assistant secretary of state and Herbert Morrison, a British Labor Party leader published the Morrison-Grady plan which proposed a British dominated trusteeship that would “supervise separate Jewish and Arab provinces.” The British loved it because it kept them in power. The Arabs and the Jews rejected it for the same reason.
1947: In reprisal for the execution of Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weisss and Meir Nakar, the Irgun killed two British sergeants whom they were holding captive. “Following the death of the two sergeants and the publicity surrounding it, the British public demanded that the troops be brought home. In Palestine, several Jews were murdered by British soldiers as a counter-reprisal
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported on most orderly elections to the Second Knesset. According to this newspaper's fifth successive edition which appeared at 6 a.m. Mapai won 42.23 per cent of the vote, Mapam 19.18, General Zionists 13.47, Hapoel Hamizrahi 7.37, Progressives 5.33, Herut 4.22, Poalei Aguda 1.49, Communists 1.36, Mizrahi 1.11, Aguda 1.07. The rest was split among smaller parties, which couldn't get even 1 percent of the vote to be eligible for a Knesset seat. [Editor's note: The Israelis use a system of proportional representation which works a strong two-party electoral system. This system encourages all kinds of splintering, factionalism and gives disproportionate power to minor, but cohesive, groups. This concept was so entrenched the Israeli psyche that not even David Ben Gurion could overcome it.]
1954: Mary Clawson, an American living in Jerusalem, watches as Arabs began “shooting over to this (the Jewish) side and after waiting a brief time to investigate to be sure the shooting was not just a trigger-happy Legionnaire, the Jewish side returned the fire.”
1961: The one millionth Oleh since the establishment of the Jewish State arrived in Israel.
1970: Norwegian General Odd Bull completes his term as Chief of Staff United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). His thirteen year term included the Six Day War.
1981: The New York Times reported that Israelis were stunned and startled by U.S. anger following an Israeli air attack on Beirut. Government officials in Jerusalem are hoping that their adherence to the Lebanon cease-fire arrangement will be seen in Washington as a gesture of good will to American interests.
1983: Jewish golfer Corey Pavin won the Lufthansa German Open.
1987: ''Portraits of an Era: Photographs by Irv Kline,'' an exhibition that is part of the Jewish East End Celebration is scheduled to come to a close today.
1988: Dr. Joanna Lisa Fine, a child psychiatrist, and Stephen Michael Harnik, a lawyer, who graduated together from the Dalton School in 1971 were married today at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. Jerome Raik, the president of Ansche Chesed Congregation in Manhattan, officiated.
1990(9th of Av, 5750):Tish'a B'Av
1992(1st of Av, 5752): Rosh Chodesh Av
2002(22nd of Av, 5762): A bomb exploded inside a cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing nine people, including five Americans.
2003: The Israeli Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry Into Israel Law, prohibiting any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians who live in the territories and are married to Israeli citizens. The law was initiated in the midst of the second intifada by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as an anti-terrorist measure. The law would become the subject matter of 2008 documentary "Just Married."
2006: Funeral services are held at Temple B’nai Torah for Pamela Waechter, 58, who was killed in Friday's shooting at the Seattle offices of the Jewish Federation by an American Muslim.
2007: In Jerusalem, the Israeli Wine-Tasting Festival, a celebration of wine tasting from the best vineyards in Israel takes place at the Israel Museum.
2007: Today, Jack Lebewohl announced that the Second Avenue Deli would reopen at a new location in the fall of 2007. http://www.2ndavedeli.com/
2008: Solomon "Momy" Levy began serving as Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: At the Boston Public Library, the photographic exhibit, “Kids with Cameras: Beyond the Walls” sponsored by the Zionist House/Israel Cultural Central and the Consulate General of Israel to New England, comes to a close. Kidswithcameras-jerusalem.com
2009: Opening of The National Parks and Nature Authority’s fifth annual Outdoor Acoustic Music Festival in Ein Hemed, a beautiful nature reserve just 10 minutes from Jerusalem. Each performer at this year’s festival will dedicate at least one song to the Earth, in order to promote environmental awareness.
2009: In Jerusalem, Ohad Chitman takes the stage at Hama'abada, playing an acoustic show featuring the best hits from his two albums and from the third album on the way.
2009: In Brooklyn, as part of Bargemusic at Fulton’s Landing Yoed Nir is the featured performer in “World of Cello” The Six Bach Suites for Solo Cello and Beyond, Part 1
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to extend sanctions against Syria, despite positive signs of progress in the relationship between the two nations, a White House statement said today. The decision to maintain current sanctions against the Syrian government, the statement said, comes as a result of continuing attempts to maintain instability in neighboring Lebanon. "In the past six months, the United States has used dialogue with the Syrian government to address concerns and identify areas of mutual interest, including support for Lebanese sovereignty," the statement said. President Obama admitted that there have been "some positive developments in the past year, including the establishment of diplomatic relations and an exchange of ambassadors between Lebanon and Syria." However, the statement continued, ultimately "the actions of certain persons continue to contribute to political and economic instability in Lebanon and the region and constitute a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
2009: Two brothers were arrested early this morning in connection with the shooting attack on disgraced soccer star Felix Halfon, who was seriously wounded when he was shot outside a Tel Aviv night club hours earlier. The older of the two suspects, 33, is believed to have shot Halfon while driving a motorcycle. The other brother, aged 20, is suspected by police of having provided assistance. According to an initial police inquiry, the two perpetrated the attack following a previous quarrel with Halfon. Both suspects are known to police and have prior criminal records, but they denied during their interrogations the charges of their involvement in the shooting. The brothers appeared in court on Friday afternoon for a remand hearing. Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived on the scene found the former soccer player with wounds to the stomach and lower part of his body. He was rushed to Ichalov Hospital in the city, where he underwent surgery. Halfon, who was considered one of the best players for Hapoel Tel Aviv during the nineties, was arrested in 2003 for trying to smuggle drugs. He was sentenced to four and half years in prison, and was released after three. Last year, Halfon returned to the soccer league and played for Hapoel Bat-Yam.
2010: A screening of Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is scheduled to take place at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
2010: This morning the IDF confirmed that the Air Force hit several Hamas-linked targets in Gaza overnight on Friday, One of the targets hit was believed to be in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood; another was reportedly the site of smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border. The IAF's strike followed yesterday morning's Grad missile attack in Ashkelon, for which the Aza Din al-Kassem Gazan terror group claimed responsibility.
2010(20th of Av, 5770): Mitch Miller, an influential record producer who became a hugely popular recording artist and an unlikely television star a half century ago by leading a choral group in familiar old songs and inviting people to sing along, passed away today at the age of 99. Mr. Miller, a Rochester native who was born on the Fourth of July, had been an accomplished oboist and was still a force in the recording industry when he came up with the idea of recording old standards with a chorus of some two dozen male voices and printing the lyrics on album covers. The “Sing Along With Mitch” album series, which began in 1958, was an immense success, finding an eager audience among older listeners looking for an alternative to rock ’n’ roll. Mitch Miller and the Gang serenaded them with chestnuts like “Home on the Range,” “That Old Gang of Mine,” “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” When the concept was adapted for television in 1961, with the lyrics appearing at the bottom of the screen, Mr. Miller, with his beaming smile and neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, became a national celebrity. By then he had established himself as a hit maker for Columbia Records and a career shaper for singers like Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Patti Page and Frankie Laine. First at Mercury Records and then at Columbia, he helped define American popular music in the postwar, pre-rock era, carefully matching singers with songs and choosing often unorthodox but almost always catchy instrumental accompaniment. Mr. Bennett’s career took off after Mr. Miller persuaded him to record the ballad “Because of You,” backing him with a lush orchestral arrangement by Percy Faith. It reached No. 1 on the pop charts in 1951. Ms. Clooney was making a mere $50 a recording session when Mr. Miller asked her to record “Come On-a My House,” an oddity based on an Armenian folk melody written by the playwright and novelist William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, who later went on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ms. Clooney was dubious. “I damn near fell on the floor,” she recalled. They had a heated argument. But in the end Ms. Clooney agreed to record the song, and it became a giant hit, establishing her as a major artist. “Nothing happened to me until I met Mitch,” she later said. By the end of the 1950s Mr. Miller’s eye and ear for talent and songs had been critical in making Columbia the top-selling record company in the nation. Mr. Miller was the Midas of novelty music, storming the charts with records like Jimmy Boyd’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and providing singers with unusual instrumental backing: a harpsichord for Ms. Clooney, French horns for Guy Mitchell. One of his earliest hits, “Mule Train,” was recorded by the muscular-voiced Frankie Laine with three electric guitars, and Mr. Miller himself using a wood block to simulate the snapping of a whip. Mr. Miller was a studio innovator. Along with the guitarist Les Paul and a few others, he helped pioneer overdubbing, the technique by which different tracks are laid over one another to produce a richer effect; he employed it memorably with Ms. Page, whose close-harmony “duets” with herself became her signature. He also achieved what he called a sonic “halo” on numerous recordings by the use of what came to be called an echo chamber — actually an effect an engineer produced by placing a speaker and a microphone in a tiled restroom. One Miller specialty was developing crossovers from country to pop. He had particular success with Hank Williams’s songs: he transformed “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” into a hit for Mr. Laine and Jo Stafford and did the same for Mr. Bennett (“Cold, Cold Heart”), Ms. Clooney (“Half as Much”) and Ms. Stafford on her own (“Jambalaya”). His touch was not always sure. When he had bagpipes accompany Dinah Shore on a song called “Scottish Samba” the result was, in Mr. Miller’s own words, “a dog.” And probably the nadir of Frank Sinatra’s recording career came after Mr. Miller left Mercury and took over pop production at Columbia in 1950. Sinatra complained that Mr. Miller forced him to record inferior material like “Bim Bam Baby,” “Tennessee Newsboy” and, perhaps most notoriously, “Mama Will Bark,” a 1951 novelty duet with the television personality Dagmar that included dog imitations. Sinatra even sent a telegram to a Congressional subcommittee complaining that Mr. Miller had denied him “freedom of selection.” (Sinatra did sometimes veto Mr. Miller’s song choices. When he refused to record “The Roving Kind” and “My Heart Cries for You,” Mr. Miller replaced him in the studio with a young singer named Guy Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell’s versions of both those songs became hits and made him a star.) Interviewed by Time magazine in 1951, Mr. Miller was less than enthusiastic about the kind of gimmicky pop records that had become his specialty. “I wouldn’t buy that stuff for myself,” he said. “There’s no real artistic satisfaction in this job. I satisfy my musical ego elsewhere.” Mr. Miller came up with the idea for his singalong albums in 1958, drawing on a repertory that ordinary people had sung in churches and parlors for decades. By the time he recorded the first “Sing Along With Mitch” album, he had already had success with this approach on the singles chart, scoring a No. 1 hit in 1955 with an arrangement of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Mitch Miller and the Gang eventually recorded more than 20 long-playing discs, many of which made the Top 40. By 1966 they had sold about 17 million copies. In 1960 his singalong concept was given a one-time television test on NBC. The response was so favorable that “Sing Along With Mitch” became a mainstay of family television, running — every other week at first, then weekly — from 1961 to 1964, then returning in reruns in the summer of 1966. Viewers were encouraged to sing along and instructed to “follow the bouncing ball” — a large dot that bounced from word to word as the lyrics were superimposed on the screen. Among the singers featured, in addition to the male chorus, was a young Leslie Uggams. The ratings were good, but the critics were mostly unimpressed. Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, suggested in 1962 that “Sing Along With Mitch” might best be viewed with the sound turned off. Even at the singalongs’ height, many Americans considered them hopelessly corny. That sense only intensified as a younger generation came of age in the 1960s and musical tastes changed. There were news reports that shopping malls had begun piping Mitch Miller music on their sound systems as a way to discourage teenagers from congregating. Years later, in 1993, when David Koresh and members of his Branch Davidian cult were holed up in their compound in Waco, Tex., F.B.I. agents tried to flush them out by blasting “Sing Along With Mitch” Christmas carols. By the time Mr. Miller’s television show left the air, his era of popular music had largely ended with the emergence of rock. He was sympathetic to blues and folk music and had one of his biggest hits in 1951 with Johnnie Ray’s “Cry,” a histrionic performance often cited as a rock ’n’ roll precursor. He had also tried to sign Elvis Presley for Columbia before being outbid by RCA. But he turned down an opportunity to sign Buddy Holly, and he was outspoken in his dislike of rock ’n’ roll in general. “It’s not music,” he was quoted as saying, “it’s a disease.” When Bob Dylan, soon to become one of rock’s most influential artists, joined the Columbia roster in 1961, it was not Mr. Miller but another label executive, John Hammond, who signed him. Mr. Miller told Audio magazine in 1985 that his opposition to rock ’n’ roll had been based more on principle than on taste. The so-called payola scandal, in which record companies were found to have paid disc jockeys to play rock ’n’ roll records, had dismayed him, he said. He also complained about “British-accented youths ripping off black American artists and, because they’re white, being accepted by the American audience” — although that hardly explained his opposition to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, a decade before the advent of the Beatles and other British bands. Mitchell William Miller was born on July 4, 1911, in Rochester, one of five children of Abram Calmen Miller, an immigrant from Russia and a wrought-iron worker, and Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress. Mr. Miller’s own musical career began with the oboe. The composer Virgil Thomson called him “an absolutely first-rate oboist — one of the two or three great ones at that time in the world.” He took up the oboe almost by chance. Seeking to join the orchestra at Washington Junior High School in Rochester, he showed up late for the tryouts and found it was the only one of the instruments, offered free to students, that had not been claimed. By the age of 15 Mr. Miller was playing with the Syracuse Symphony. After high school he went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, graduating cum laude in 1932. He played with the Rochester Philharmonic and then made his way to New York City, where he played oboe for a season under David Mannes in concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He later got a job with the CBS Symphony, performing with it during the notorious Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938. He also played in orchestras under Andre Kostelanetz and Percy Faith and performed in another that accompanied George Gershwin on a concert tour as a pianist. When Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” opened on Broadway in 1935, Mr. Miller was in the pit orchestra. He continued to play the oboe after he became a record producer, most notably on the recordings the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker made with a string orchestra. Mr. Miller went to work for Mercury Records in the late ’40s, initially as a producer of classical music and then as head of artists and repertory in the pop division. In 1950, at the invitation of a former Eastman classmate, Goddard Lieberson, executive vice president of Columbia Records, he took the equivalent position there. In the early 1950s he was also musical director of Little Golden Records, which made widely popular recordings for children. After rock came to dominate the record business and the singalong craze ran its course, Mr. Miller left Columbia and ventured into the Broadway theater, with limited success. He produced “Here’s Where I Belong,” a 1968 musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” which closed after one performance. He was later involved in the production of several other Broadway shows, few of them hits. In the 1980s and ’90s he was a frequent guest conductor of symphony orchestras. “What pleased me the most,” he said in an interview with The Times in 1981, “was a fellow who came up to me after a concert in Chicago and said, ‘You know, there’s nobody in this whole country who hasn’t been touched by your music in some way.’ “That really made me feel good.” (As reported in the New York Times)
2011: Standing Silent and An Encounter with Simone Weil ,Julia Haslett’s documentary that looks at the life of French philosopher Simone Weil, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived during the rise of Fascism in Europe, are scheduled to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. “Standing Silent profiles the heroic efforts of Phil Jacobs, a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times, as he relentlessly pursues sexual predators, including prominent rabbis and community leaders, in Baltimore’s insular Orthodox Jewish community. However, rather than being celebrated for his efforts, Jacobs, an observant Jew, instead faces ostracism from a community more intent on shielding itself from external scrutiny than on protecting its young people from abuse.”
2011: Members of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community are scheduled to celebrate “Faith and Family Day At The Ballpark” as they watch the Cedar Rapids Kernels play the Beloit Snappers
2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Are You Serious? How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly by Lee Siegel and Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany by Frederick Taylor.
Created & Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; July, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
904: Thessaloniki, which is also known as Salonica, is sacked and looted by Saracens (an Arab group). The Jewish population of Thessaloniki dates back at least to the first century of the Common Era. By the time Benjamin of Tudela visited the city in the 11th century the Jewish population numbered a significant “hundred souls.” Salonica’s Jewish population would grow when the Ottomans made it a refuge for Sephardic Jews following their expulsion in 1492.
1009: Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII. During the Papacy of Sergius, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. There was a two-fold response in the West. Sergius issued a papal bull calling for Islam to be driven from the Holy Land and the Jews were attacked because rumors were circulated blaming them for inciting the Caliph to destroy the church.
1255: An English boy who would become known as Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln disappeared setting the stage for the one of the more notorious blood libels in English history.
1305: In Barcelona it is decreed that anybody who reads works of science and metaphysics before the age of 25 or who adheres to allegorical interpretations which rject the notion of revelation will be excommunicated.
1390: Solomon Halevi converts and takes the name of Pablo de Santa Maria. He became the Bishop of Burgos and Chancellor to the King of Castille.
1391: Joshua Loki wrote to Pablo de Santa Maria, known as Solomon Halevi befoe he converted, rejecting Pablo’s interpretation of the messianic role of Jesus. Lorki would convert ten years later and become a leading tormentor of the Joshua people.
1492: The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1527: Birthdate of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. “In his diary entries, Maximilien described the Jews as a quarrelsome and deceitful people who denounced one another, gave usurious loans to miners and artisans and traded in inferior medals. Between 1567 and 1573 the emperor repeatedly issued mandates to expel Jews” from Lower Austria.
1556: Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest and founder of the Jesuits passed away. When accused of being crypto-Jew or having Jewish ancestry he replied If only I did! What could be more glorious than to be of the same blood as the Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, and our Lord Himself?" Robert Maryks, “an expert on the history of early Jesuits details the significant role of “conversos’’ — Jews and their descendants who were pressured to convert to Catholicism before and during the Spanish Inquisition in his recently published book, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus
1571: The ghetto in Florence, Italy was established.
1743: In Jerusalem, Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar,Talmudist and Kabbalist passed away. He was buried on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. Born at Mequenez, Morocco in 1696 he was one of the most prominent rabbis in Morocco. In 1733 he decided to leave his native country and settle in the Land of Israel, then under the Ottoman Empire. En route he was detained in Livorno by the rich members of the Jewish community who established a yeshiva for him. Many of his pupils later became prominent and furnished him with funds to print his “Ohr ha-Chaim” or “The Light of Life,” a commentary on the Pentateuch. He was received with great honor wherever he traveled. This was due to his extensive knowledge, keen intellect and extraordinary piety. In the middle of 1742 he arrived in Jerusalem where he presided at the Beit Midrash Knesset Yisrael. One of his disciples there was Rabbi Chaim Joseph David Azulai, who wrote of his master's greatness: "Attar's heart pulsated with Talmud; he uprooted mountains like a resistless torrent; his holiness was that of an angel of the Lord ... having severed all connection with the affairs of this world. A prolific author, two of his other published works were “Hefetz Hashem or “God’s Desire,” consisting of dissertations on four Talmudic treatises and “Peri Toar” or “Beautiful Fruit,” a novella based on the Shulchan Aruch.
1776(15th of Av, 5536): Francis Salvador, one of the most prominent Jews of the American Revolutionary period, , was shot and scalped by Indians after riding 28 miles to raise a militia after attacks occurred on settlers. His father (also named Francis Salvador) was a wealthy London Jew who financed the earliest Jewish settlers of Savannah, Georgia
1821: Lazarus Magnus, the son of Simon Magnus and the husband of Sarah Moses, passed away today in Chatham, Kent, England.
1840(1st of Av, 5600): Rosh Chodesh Av
1840(1st of Av, 5600): Nachman Kohen Krochmal, one of “the first Jewish historians to treat Jewish history as an integral part of all human history” passed away. A native of Brody, Galicia, one of his most famous works was Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time).
1845: In Great Britain, Parliament passes the Act for the relief of Persons of the Jewish Religion elected to Municipal Offices.
1856: Christchurch New Zealand is chartered as a city. According to Robert Case, the first Jews settled in Christchurch during the 1850’s. By 1860, there were fewer than four hundred Jews living in all of New Zealand. Although the Jewish Community of Christchurch has always been a small one, it built a synagogue in 1890. Today the Christchurch’s Canterburgy Hebrew Congregation consists of a synagogue, Temple Beth-El that offers regular Shabbat services as well as cheder classes, Bar and Bat Mitzvah training, conversion support, holiday services and a variety of social activities. It is also home to the South Island chapter of Habonim Dror and the Christchurch Council of Jewish Women. The community also has a Chevra Kedisha and Chabad House.
1870: In the wake of the reported massacre of Jews in Romania, letters have been received in Washington, DC stating that Article 21 of the new constitution guarantees freedom of conscience to all. These letters claim that the 400,000 Jews in Romania have 176 synagogues in which they “worship in the manner prescribed by their religion.” The letters conclude by asking if religious persecution really existed why would the Jews be allowed to have so many synagogues which they are free to use
1878: Birthdate of philanthropist and child-welfare activist Madeleine Borg. Borg, who lived her whole life in New York City, was educated at Columbia University, where she studied the causes of juvenile delinquency. Subsequently, she held leadership positions in more than a dozen major child welfare organizations. Her roles included chair of the executive committee of the Jewish Board of Guardians of New York, director of the Child Welfare League, member of the executive committee of the Girls' Service League of America, and trustee of the Training School for Jewish Social Work. She also served on the executive boards of the American Jewish Committee and the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York. Borg's largest contribution to child welfare was probably her role in founding the Big Sister movement, beginning in 1912. Modeled on earlier Big Brother programs targeted at troubled boys, Big Sister programs provide young girls with role models and companions. In 1914, Borg was among the founders of the Jewish Big Sisters, which sought to help poor and troubled girls by providing them with role models from a similar ethnic and cultural background. Today, Jewish Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs also match adults with disabilities with non-disabled friends. Always interested in child welfare, Borg was also active in promoting psychiatric clinics as part of the study of child behavior. In 1954, the Jewish Board of Guardians renamed its Child Guidance Institute in Borg's honor. Borg's public roles also extended beyond child welfare and beyond the Jewish community. In 1929, then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the New York State Old Age Pensions Committee; she also served on the executive committee of the New York City Crime Prevention Bureau. In 1939, she became a trustee of the New York World's Fair. Also in 1939, she became president of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the first woman to hold that post. Borg died in 1956.
1882: Rishon Lezion or First For Zion was founded by a group of 10 families in Eretz Israel. The settlement marked the beginning of the first Aliyah (going up) to Eretz- Israel, and the beginning of Rothschild’s deep involvement with settlement activities. Later that year, Baron Edmund De Rothschild in response to the Russian pogroms and a plea by Rabbi Samuel Mohilever agreed to help the new Moshava
1898: Jewish labor leader and heade of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, arrived in Springfield, Illinois where he planned to attend the upcoming state convention of the American Federation of Labor. Mr. Gompers spoke out against the condition of workers in the territories recently annexed after the Spanish American War; specifically he demanded that slave labor be stamped out there in and in Hawaii.
1900: Herzl leaves Altaussee and travels to Luzern, Paris and London. The trip will take a toll on his health and he will be ill by the he gets to London on August 7.
1906(9th of Av, 5666):Tish'a B'Av
1912: Birthdate of newspaper and Chicago literary institution Irv Kupcinet.
1912: Birthdate of economist and Federal Reserve Chairman Milton Friedman. Friedman won the Nobel Prize in 1976.
1914: German Jewish industrialist Walter Rathenau published an article in the Berliner Tageblatt protesting Germany’s blind loyalty to Austria; a loyalty which he felt was leading to a great European war.
1918: Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Abraham Epstein, President Workmen's Circle were among the leaders of a meeting of a Conference of Trade Unions, Branches of the Workmen's Circle, and other Progressive Labor Organizations of Greater New York scheduled to be held be held in Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street, for the purpose of organizing the workers into a permanent central body for aiding all persons prosecuted who are in need of help, and of arousing public opinion against the further suppression of constitutional rights and liberties. The Conference will be held under the auspices of the Liberty Defense Union, and has been endorsed by the United Hebrews Trades and the National Executive Committee of the Workmen's Circle.
1919: Birthdate of the Italian-Jewish writer and chemist Primo Levi. Levi spent time fighting with Partisans during the war and survived Auschwitz. These experiences provided much of the material for his writings. He passed away in 1987. (We do not have the space to do his work justice and you are urged to read any of his several works which are available in English.)
1923: A Hebrew version of Verdi’s “Traviata” was performed in Jerusalem this evening. The performance was described as “brilliant.” The Hebrew version of the opera had previously been performed in Tel Aviv.
1926: Birthdate of Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, the self-described Jewish atheist who converted to Roman Catholicism. Nathanson was “a campaigner for abortion rights who, after experiencing a change of heart in the 1970s became a prominent opponent of abortion and the on-screen narrator of the anti-abortion film “The Silent Scream.” (As reported by William Grimes)
1928: When MGM introduces its first “talkie,” “White Shadows on the South Seas” the famed Lion Logo makes its first appearance. With so many Jews involved in MGM, including Harry Rapf, Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer and Nicholas Schenck one might wonder if the choice of the Lion was subtle reference to the Lion of Judah.
1928: Bobbie Rosenfeld won gold and silver medals in the 1928 Olympics. “Bobbie Rosenfeld was well known as a star of Canadian track and field. Born Fanny Rosenfeld in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia in 1904, she moved to Canada as an infant; she was later nicknamed "Bobbie" because of her bobbed hair. Growing up in Barrie, Ontario, and then in Toronto, Rosenfeld was an enthusiastic athlete from a young age, playing basketball, softball, hockey and tennis, as well as running. Despite widespread belief that strenuous exercise was damaging to women's bodies, Rosenfeld's family supported her athletic pursuits. In 1923, Rosenfeld burst onto the national scene when she entered the 100-yard dash at a picnic on a dare from a softball teammate. At the time, Rosenfeld was working in a Toronto chocolate factory. Rosenfeld not only won the race but also beat the Canadian national champion, Rosa Grosse. Two years later, Rosenfeld and Grosse would share the world record for the 100-yard dash, at eleven seconds. Later in 1923, she entered her first major race at the Canadian National Exhibition. In the 100-yard dash, she again beat Grosse and also beat American and world-record holder Helen Filkey. The same evening, after the race, Rosenfeld joined her softball team and helped lead them to the city championship. Over the next decade, Rosenfeld came to symbolize Canadian women's sport. She went from success to success, leading ice hockey, basketball, and softball teams to championships and winning the Toronto Ladies Grass Courts tennis tournament in 1924. She claimed victory in so many sports that one author later wrote that "the most efficient way to summarize Bobbie Rosenfeld's career ... is to say that she was not good at swimming." A consummate athlete, she was also applauded for her sportsmanship. Both these qualities would soon be evident on the world stage. In 1928, Rosenfeld was chosen as one of the "matchless six" on the Canadian women's Olympic track and field team. The Olympics of 1928 were the first in which women were allowed to compete in track and field, although only on a trial basis. On July 31, 1928, Rosenfeld won the silver medal in the 100-meter race, though many spectators thought she had actually finished first. A few days later, Rosenfeld competed in the 800-meters, a race in which she had been entered only to encourage teammate Jean Thompson, and for which she had not trained. Coming from the rear, Rosenfeld ran alongside Thompson through most of the race, allowing her teammate to finish fourth while she placed fifth; this was considered a great act of compassion and sportsmanship, as Rosenfeld could easily have pulled ahead and earned a medal in the race. Finally, on the last day of track and field events, Rosenfeld got her gold medal when she led her team to victory in the 400-meter relay. On the team's return to Toronto, 200,000 people lined the streets to cheer a celebratory parade. Rosenfeld had helped to show that women's competition could be a worthy part of the Olympics; after the Games closed, the delegates of the International Amateur Athletic Federation voted 16-6 to continue women's track and field events at future Olympics. The Canadian delegate voted against women's participation. Back at home, though Rosenfeld had received a hero's welcome, she went back to work at the chocolate factory to pay her bills. In 1928, no endorsement contracts or professional sports opportunities were available to women. Rosenfeld continued to play sports, even starring on championship ice hockey and softball teams, but recurrent attacks of severe arthritis ended her athletic career in 1933. She moved to coaching track and softball, and then, in 1937, to writing about sports. For nearly twenty years, she wrote the "Sports Reel" column for the Toronto Globe and Mail. She retired from the Globe and Mail in 1966 and died on November 14, 1969. Rosenfeld's legacy is one of breaking down barriers. First as an athlete, and then as the only woman on the sports staff of the Globe and Mail, she carved new paths for women in sports, making it clear to skeptics that, as she put it in a column, "girls are in sports for good." These contributions were recognized both during Rosenfeld's lifetime and after her death. In 1950, a press poll of sportswriters named her Canada's Female Athlete of the Half Century; in 1955, she was among the earliest inductees to Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Her portrait recently appeared on a Canadian postage stamp, and every year the Bobbie Rosenfeld trophy is awarded to Canada's Female Athlete of the Year.”
1932: National elections are held in Germany and the Nazi Party won 230 seats in the Reichstag.
1933: By now, approximately 30,000 people are interned in Nazi concentration camps.
1936(12th of Av, 5696): Rabbi Moses Simon Sivitz, renowned Jewish historian who wrote five books about Moses died in Montefiore Hospital
1936: The Palestine Post reported from London that the newly-appointed Royal Commission was expected to arrive in Palestine in October. Meanwhile a new wave of Arab rioting spread towards Tiberias where many Jews were compelled to leave the Old City. There were assaults, arson, and stone-throwing. The Arab police and the British authorities dealt with the rioters in a diffident and condoning manner.
1939: Isadore Breslau, the Zionist leadership's chief representative in Washington, writes a letter showing that former Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis actively supported Aliyah in defiance of British policy as outlined in the May 1939 White Paper that severely limited the immigration of Jews to then British-run Palestine. The letter reveals that the widely respected jurist, who had just retired after nearly a quarter century on the court, held views on Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel that were in direct opposition to those of the British government, the Roosevelt administration and mainstream American Jewish groups and leaders."Speaking on the question of the immigration he [Brandeis] said that Jews would continue to immigrate regardless of the White Paper," the letter written by Isadore Breslau reads. "When someone suggested that it was illegal, he said that the Jewish people considered it legal in view of the fact that any attempt to curtail immigration was in violation of the terms of the Mandate; that it may be considered illegal by Great Britain, but that we Jews considered it to be legal."
1940: According to The Olkusz Memorial book “a German police unit arrived in Olkusz” today and gathered all the Jewish men in the main square. There the Jews were forced to lie on the ground while the policemen and members of the SD “registered them”. During this process, the Germans brutally beat the Jews, shooting one of them. In order to further humiliate them, Rabbi Moshe Yitzhak Hagerman was forced to don his tallith (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) that had been defiled, and to stand barefoot and pray next to the prostrate men of the Jewish community. At the end of the day, the Jews were permitted to return home, and the Germans left. Due to the beatings suffered by the Jews, the event was subsequently referred to as ‘Bloody Wednesday’”. (For a photo see http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/july/04.asp )
1941: The Nazis officially undertook The Final Solution. Hermann Goring instructs SS Reich Security Service chief Reinhardt Heydrich by letter "to carry out all the necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence." - That influence now covered a dozen countries. - "I further charge you with submitting to me promptly an overall plan... for the execution of the intended FINAL SOLUTION of the Jewish question."
1942: Governor Wilhelm Kube reports to Hinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar of the Baltic regions and Belorussia, that "Jewry has been completely eliminated" in the Minsk area. According to Kube ‘16,000 Jews were liquidated in Lida, 8,000 in Slonim.’ In the previous ten weeks, 55,000 Jews have been liquidated.
1942 (17th of Av, 5702): Bluma Rozenfeld, 19, leaps to her death from a fifth-floor window in the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.
1942: Israel Lichtenstein writes from the Warsaw Ghetto: "At present, together with me, both of us get ready to meet and receive death. I wish my little daughter to be remembered. Margalith, twenty months old today....I don't lament my own life nor that of my wife. I pity only the so little, nice and talented girl. She deserves to be remembered."
1942 (17th of Av, 5702): German SS troops gassed 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia
1942: In what was the first reference to Dan Schoor in FBI files, on this date FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover "asked the chief of the Special War Policies Unit for more information on Schoor's status as a 'representative of a foreign principal' because he was employed as a correspondent for the Netherland Indies News Agency. During the Red Scare of the 1950's "Hoover told the CIA director that the bureau had looked over Schoor's background and had kept information on this travels to 'Iron Curtain Countries.'" Is it possible that Hoover did not know that Schoor was the Moscow correspondent for CBS news which would have meant he traveled for Iron Curtain countries. Ironically, the Soviets expelled him because they did not approve of his news gathering work.
1944: The hull of the Liberty ship "Benjamin Peixotto" was laid down today. The ship is named for the 19th century Jewish leader.
1944(11th of Av, 5704): Eighteen year old Leendert Kleerekoper died at Auschwitz today. He was the son of Gerrit Kleerekoper, the coach of the of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928. The coach, his wife and his 14 year old daughter had already been gassed.
1944: Among 1300 Jews deported from Drancy, France (northwest of Paris), to Auschwitz are 258 Jewish orphans seized in and around Paris on July 24. Upon arrival at the camp, all 500 children and 300 adults are gassed. This is the last transport of Jews from the Drancy camp to Auschwitz. In total, 73,853 Jews have been shipped from Drancy to their deaths at Auschwitz and Sobibór.
1944: As Western troops moved forward to Paris, a last train departed with over 300 deported Jewish children.
1944: Three thousand Jews were transported from the labor camp at Blizyn to Birkenau where over 500 are gassed to death upon their arrival
1944: By the end of July, French Jew Maurice Löwenberg, founder of the National Liberation Movement resistance group, is tortured to death by the Gestapo.
1944: By the end of July 46,000 Jewish inmates are gassed and cremated at Auschwitz.
1944: By the end of July SS General Richard Baer had become the new Auschwitz commandant.
1945: French collaborationist politician Pierre Laval is arrested in Austria. Laval was the driving force behind the Vichy Government which was so supportive of the Final Solution that it often delivered Jews “ahead of schedule.”
1946: An Anglo-American committee jointly chaired by Henry Grady, an assistant secretary of state and Herbert Morrison, a British Labor Party leader published the Morrison-Grady plan which proposed a British dominated trusteeship that would “supervise separate Jewish and Arab provinces.” The British loved it because it kept them in power. The Arabs and the Jews rejected it for the same reason.
1947: In reprisal for the execution of Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weisss and Meir Nakar, the Irgun killed two British sergeants whom they were holding captive. “Following the death of the two sergeants and the publicity surrounding it, the British public demanded that the troops be brought home. In Palestine, several Jews were murdered by British soldiers as a counter-reprisal
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported on most orderly elections to the Second Knesset. According to this newspaper's fifth successive edition which appeared at 6 a.m. Mapai won 42.23 per cent of the vote, Mapam 19.18, General Zionists 13.47, Hapoel Hamizrahi 7.37, Progressives 5.33, Herut 4.22, Poalei Aguda 1.49, Communists 1.36, Mizrahi 1.11, Aguda 1.07. The rest was split among smaller parties, which couldn't get even 1 percent of the vote to be eligible for a Knesset seat. [Editor's note: The Israelis use a system of proportional representation which works a strong two-party electoral system. This system encourages all kinds of splintering, factionalism and gives disproportionate power to minor, but cohesive, groups. This concept was so entrenched the Israeli psyche that not even David Ben Gurion could overcome it.]
1954: Mary Clawson, an American living in Jerusalem, watches as Arabs began “shooting over to this (the Jewish) side and after waiting a brief time to investigate to be sure the shooting was not just a trigger-happy Legionnaire, the Jewish side returned the fire.”
1961: The one millionth Oleh since the establishment of the Jewish State arrived in Israel.
1970: Norwegian General Odd Bull completes his term as Chief of Staff United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). His thirteen year term included the Six Day War.
1981: The New York Times reported that Israelis were stunned and startled by U.S. anger following an Israeli air attack on Beirut. Government officials in Jerusalem are hoping that their adherence to the Lebanon cease-fire arrangement will be seen in Washington as a gesture of good will to American interests.
1983: Jewish golfer Corey Pavin won the Lufthansa German Open.
1987: ''Portraits of an Era: Photographs by Irv Kline,'' an exhibition that is part of the Jewish East End Celebration is scheduled to come to a close today.
1988: Dr. Joanna Lisa Fine, a child psychiatrist, and Stephen Michael Harnik, a lawyer, who graduated together from the Dalton School in 1971 were married today at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. Jerome Raik, the president of Ansche Chesed Congregation in Manhattan, officiated.
1990(9th of Av, 5750):Tish'a B'Av
1992(1st of Av, 5752): Rosh Chodesh Av
2002(22nd of Av, 5762): A bomb exploded inside a cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing nine people, including five Americans.
2003: The Israeli Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry Into Israel Law, prohibiting any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians who live in the territories and are married to Israeli citizens. The law was initiated in the midst of the second intifada by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as an anti-terrorist measure. The law would become the subject matter of 2008 documentary "Just Married."
2006: Funeral services are held at Temple B’nai Torah for Pamela Waechter, 58, who was killed in Friday's shooting at the Seattle offices of the Jewish Federation by an American Muslim.
2007: In Jerusalem, the Israeli Wine-Tasting Festival, a celebration of wine tasting from the best vineyards in Israel takes place at the Israel Museum.
2007: Today, Jack Lebewohl announced that the Second Avenue Deli would reopen at a new location in the fall of 2007. http://www.2ndavedeli.com/
2008: Solomon "Momy" Levy began serving as Mayor of Gibraltar.
2008: At the Boston Public Library, the photographic exhibit, “Kids with Cameras: Beyond the Walls” sponsored by the Zionist House/Israel Cultural Central and the Consulate General of Israel to New England, comes to a close. Kidswithcameras-jerusalem.com
2009: Opening of The National Parks and Nature Authority’s fifth annual Outdoor Acoustic Music Festival in Ein Hemed, a beautiful nature reserve just 10 minutes from Jerusalem. Each performer at this year’s festival will dedicate at least one song to the Earth, in order to promote environmental awareness.
2009: In Jerusalem, Ohad Chitman takes the stage at Hama'abada, playing an acoustic show featuring the best hits from his two albums and from the third album on the way.
2009: In Brooklyn, as part of Bargemusic at Fulton’s Landing Yoed Nir is the featured performer in “World of Cello” The Six Bach Suites for Solo Cello and Beyond, Part 1
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to extend sanctions against Syria, despite positive signs of progress in the relationship between the two nations, a White House statement said today. The decision to maintain current sanctions against the Syrian government, the statement said, comes as a result of continuing attempts to maintain instability in neighboring Lebanon. "In the past six months, the United States has used dialogue with the Syrian government to address concerns and identify areas of mutual interest, including support for Lebanese sovereignty," the statement said. President Obama admitted that there have been "some positive developments in the past year, including the establishment of diplomatic relations and an exchange of ambassadors between Lebanon and Syria." However, the statement continued, ultimately "the actions of certain persons continue to contribute to political and economic instability in Lebanon and the region and constitute a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
2009: Two brothers were arrested early this morning in connection with the shooting attack on disgraced soccer star Felix Halfon, who was seriously wounded when he was shot outside a Tel Aviv night club hours earlier. The older of the two suspects, 33, is believed to have shot Halfon while driving a motorcycle. The other brother, aged 20, is suspected by police of having provided assistance. According to an initial police inquiry, the two perpetrated the attack following a previous quarrel with Halfon. Both suspects are known to police and have prior criminal records, but they denied during their interrogations the charges of their involvement in the shooting. The brothers appeared in court on Friday afternoon for a remand hearing. Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived on the scene found the former soccer player with wounds to the stomach and lower part of his body. He was rushed to Ichalov Hospital in the city, where he underwent surgery. Halfon, who was considered one of the best players for Hapoel Tel Aviv during the nineties, was arrested in 2003 for trying to smuggle drugs. He was sentenced to four and half years in prison, and was released after three. Last year, Halfon returned to the soccer league and played for Hapoel Bat-Yam.
2010: A screening of Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is scheduled to take place at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
2010: This morning the IDF confirmed that the Air Force hit several Hamas-linked targets in Gaza overnight on Friday, One of the targets hit was believed to be in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood; another was reportedly the site of smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border. The IAF's strike followed yesterday morning's Grad missile attack in Ashkelon, for which the Aza Din al-Kassem Gazan terror group claimed responsibility.
2010(20th of Av, 5770): Mitch Miller, an influential record producer who became a hugely popular recording artist and an unlikely television star a half century ago by leading a choral group in familiar old songs and inviting people to sing along, passed away today at the age of 99. Mr. Miller, a Rochester native who was born on the Fourth of July, had been an accomplished oboist and was still a force in the recording industry when he came up with the idea of recording old standards with a chorus of some two dozen male voices and printing the lyrics on album covers. The “Sing Along With Mitch” album series, which began in 1958, was an immense success, finding an eager audience among older listeners looking for an alternative to rock ’n’ roll. Mitch Miller and the Gang serenaded them with chestnuts like “Home on the Range,” “That Old Gang of Mine,” “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” When the concept was adapted for television in 1961, with the lyrics appearing at the bottom of the screen, Mr. Miller, with his beaming smile and neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, became a national celebrity. By then he had established himself as a hit maker for Columbia Records and a career shaper for singers like Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Patti Page and Frankie Laine. First at Mercury Records and then at Columbia, he helped define American popular music in the postwar, pre-rock era, carefully matching singers with songs and choosing often unorthodox but almost always catchy instrumental accompaniment. Mr. Bennett’s career took off after Mr. Miller persuaded him to record the ballad “Because of You,” backing him with a lush orchestral arrangement by Percy Faith. It reached No. 1 on the pop charts in 1951. Ms. Clooney was making a mere $50 a recording session when Mr. Miller asked her to record “Come On-a My House,” an oddity based on an Armenian folk melody written by the playwright and novelist William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, who later went on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ms. Clooney was dubious. “I damn near fell on the floor,” she recalled. They had a heated argument. But in the end Ms. Clooney agreed to record the song, and it became a giant hit, establishing her as a major artist. “Nothing happened to me until I met Mitch,” she later said. By the end of the 1950s Mr. Miller’s eye and ear for talent and songs had been critical in making Columbia the top-selling record company in the nation. Mr. Miller was the Midas of novelty music, storming the charts with records like Jimmy Boyd’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and providing singers with unusual instrumental backing: a harpsichord for Ms. Clooney, French horns for Guy Mitchell. One of his earliest hits, “Mule Train,” was recorded by the muscular-voiced Frankie Laine with three electric guitars, and Mr. Miller himself using a wood block to simulate the snapping of a whip. Mr. Miller was a studio innovator. Along with the guitarist Les Paul and a few others, he helped pioneer overdubbing, the technique by which different tracks are laid over one another to produce a richer effect; he employed it memorably with Ms. Page, whose close-harmony “duets” with herself became her signature. He also achieved what he called a sonic “halo” on numerous recordings by the use of what came to be called an echo chamber — actually an effect an engineer produced by placing a speaker and a microphone in a tiled restroom. One Miller specialty was developing crossovers from country to pop. He had particular success with Hank Williams’s songs: he transformed “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” into a hit for Mr. Laine and Jo Stafford and did the same for Mr. Bennett (“Cold, Cold Heart”), Ms. Clooney (“Half as Much”) and Ms. Stafford on her own (“Jambalaya”). His touch was not always sure. When he had bagpipes accompany Dinah Shore on a song called “Scottish Samba” the result was, in Mr. Miller’s own words, “a dog.” And probably the nadir of Frank Sinatra’s recording career came after Mr. Miller left Mercury and took over pop production at Columbia in 1950. Sinatra complained that Mr. Miller forced him to record inferior material like “Bim Bam Baby,” “Tennessee Newsboy” and, perhaps most notoriously, “Mama Will Bark,” a 1951 novelty duet with the television personality Dagmar that included dog imitations. Sinatra even sent a telegram to a Congressional subcommittee complaining that Mr. Miller had denied him “freedom of selection.” (Sinatra did sometimes veto Mr. Miller’s song choices. When he refused to record “The Roving Kind” and “My Heart Cries for You,” Mr. Miller replaced him in the studio with a young singer named Guy Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell’s versions of both those songs became hits and made him a star.) Interviewed by Time magazine in 1951, Mr. Miller was less than enthusiastic about the kind of gimmicky pop records that had become his specialty. “I wouldn’t buy that stuff for myself,” he said. “There’s no real artistic satisfaction in this job. I satisfy my musical ego elsewhere.” Mr. Miller came up with the idea for his singalong albums in 1958, drawing on a repertory that ordinary people had sung in churches and parlors for decades. By the time he recorded the first “Sing Along With Mitch” album, he had already had success with this approach on the singles chart, scoring a No. 1 hit in 1955 with an arrangement of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Mitch Miller and the Gang eventually recorded more than 20 long-playing discs, many of which made the Top 40. By 1966 they had sold about 17 million copies. In 1960 his singalong concept was given a one-time television test on NBC. The response was so favorable that “Sing Along With Mitch” became a mainstay of family television, running — every other week at first, then weekly — from 1961 to 1964, then returning in reruns in the summer of 1966. Viewers were encouraged to sing along and instructed to “follow the bouncing ball” — a large dot that bounced from word to word as the lyrics were superimposed on the screen. Among the singers featured, in addition to the male chorus, was a young Leslie Uggams. The ratings were good, but the critics were mostly unimpressed. Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, suggested in 1962 that “Sing Along With Mitch” might best be viewed with the sound turned off. Even at the singalongs’ height, many Americans considered them hopelessly corny. That sense only intensified as a younger generation came of age in the 1960s and musical tastes changed. There were news reports that shopping malls had begun piping Mitch Miller music on their sound systems as a way to discourage teenagers from congregating. Years later, in 1993, when David Koresh and members of his Branch Davidian cult were holed up in their compound in Waco, Tex., F.B.I. agents tried to flush them out by blasting “Sing Along With Mitch” Christmas carols. By the time Mr. Miller’s television show left the air, his era of popular music had largely ended with the emergence of rock. He was sympathetic to blues and folk music and had one of his biggest hits in 1951 with Johnnie Ray’s “Cry,” a histrionic performance often cited as a rock ’n’ roll precursor. He had also tried to sign Elvis Presley for Columbia before being outbid by RCA. But he turned down an opportunity to sign Buddy Holly, and he was outspoken in his dislike of rock ’n’ roll in general. “It’s not music,” he was quoted as saying, “it’s a disease.” When Bob Dylan, soon to become one of rock’s most influential artists, joined the Columbia roster in 1961, it was not Mr. Miller but another label executive, John Hammond, who signed him. Mr. Miller told Audio magazine in 1985 that his opposition to rock ’n’ roll had been based more on principle than on taste. The so-called payola scandal, in which record companies were found to have paid disc jockeys to play rock ’n’ roll records, had dismayed him, he said. He also complained about “British-accented youths ripping off black American artists and, because they’re white, being accepted by the American audience” — although that hardly explained his opposition to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, a decade before the advent of the Beatles and other British bands. Mitchell William Miller was born on July 4, 1911, in Rochester, one of five children of Abram Calmen Miller, an immigrant from Russia and a wrought-iron worker, and Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress. Mr. Miller’s own musical career began with the oboe. The composer Virgil Thomson called him “an absolutely first-rate oboist — one of the two or three great ones at that time in the world.” He took up the oboe almost by chance. Seeking to join the orchestra at Washington Junior High School in Rochester, he showed up late for the tryouts and found it was the only one of the instruments, offered free to students, that had not been claimed. By the age of 15 Mr. Miller was playing with the Syracuse Symphony. After high school he went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, graduating cum laude in 1932. He played with the Rochester Philharmonic and then made his way to New York City, where he played oboe for a season under David Mannes in concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He later got a job with the CBS Symphony, performing with it during the notorious Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938. He also played in orchestras under Andre Kostelanetz and Percy Faith and performed in another that accompanied George Gershwin on a concert tour as a pianist. When Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” opened on Broadway in 1935, Mr. Miller was in the pit orchestra. He continued to play the oboe after he became a record producer, most notably on the recordings the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker made with a string orchestra. Mr. Miller went to work for Mercury Records in the late ’40s, initially as a producer of classical music and then as head of artists and repertory in the pop division. In 1950, at the invitation of a former Eastman classmate, Goddard Lieberson, executive vice president of Columbia Records, he took the equivalent position there. In the early 1950s he was also musical director of Little Golden Records, which made widely popular recordings for children. After rock came to dominate the record business and the singalong craze ran its course, Mr. Miller left Columbia and ventured into the Broadway theater, with limited success. He produced “Here’s Where I Belong,” a 1968 musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” which closed after one performance. He was later involved in the production of several other Broadway shows, few of them hits. In the 1980s and ’90s he was a frequent guest conductor of symphony orchestras. “What pleased me the most,” he said in an interview with The Times in 1981, “was a fellow who came up to me after a concert in Chicago and said, ‘You know, there’s nobody in this whole country who hasn’t been touched by your music in some way.’ “That really made me feel good.” (As reported in the New York Times)
2011: Standing Silent and An Encounter with Simone Weil ,Julia Haslett’s documentary that looks at the life of French philosopher Simone Weil, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived during the rise of Fascism in Europe, are scheduled to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. “Standing Silent profiles the heroic efforts of Phil Jacobs, a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times, as he relentlessly pursues sexual predators, including prominent rabbis and community leaders, in Baltimore’s insular Orthodox Jewish community. However, rather than being celebrated for his efforts, Jacobs, an observant Jew, instead faces ostracism from a community more intent on shielding itself from external scrutiny than on protecting its young people from abuse.”
2011: Members of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community are scheduled to celebrate “Faith and Family Day At The Ballpark” as they watch the Cedar Rapids Kernels play the Beloit Snappers
2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Are You Serious? How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly by Lee Siegel and Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany by Frederick Taylor.
Created & Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; July, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin
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