This Day, October 1, In Jewish History

OCTOBER 1 In Jewish History

2016 B.C.E.: According to some the anniversary of the Origin of Era of Abraham on the secular calendar. The exactitude of this date is easily open to debate. There is a general agreement among those who accept the existence of Abraham that he appeared about 2000 B.C.E. This means that Jewish History spans a period of four thousand years. What makes Jewish History unique is that it covers such a great span of time, that it is not limited to a specific geographic area and that the most ancient events of that history are an active part of the descendants of the people who made that history.
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331B.C.E: Alexander the Great of Macedonia defeated the Persian army at Gaugamela. This victory cemented Greek domination over the Persian Empire. Alexander would be crowned “King of Asia” after the battle. Alexander’s armies were instrumental in bringing Greek culture to the lands of Asia Minor including the homeland of the Jewish people. This would mark the beginning of the uneasy and sometimes violent interaction between the world of Moses and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, et al.

1207: Birthdate of Henry III king of England. Henry III reigned from 1216 until his death in 1272. Like his father King John, Henry used the royal power to confiscate the wealth of the Jewish community through increasingly burdensome levies and taxes. He forced the Jews to pay for the restoration of Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. At the same time, he enacted decrees calling for the expulsion of Jews from the realm unless they were providing a service to the crown i.e. paying taxes and forgiving loans owed by the royal house. Additionally, Henry ended the construction of any new synagogues, a move that pleased the Church Fathers whose support he needed.

1404: Pope Boniface IX passed away. Unlike his predecessors and successors “he treated the Jews benevolently. He favored a succession of Jewish physicians and recognized the rights of Jews as citizens.”

1739: At an auto-de-fe in Lisbon, Antonio Jose de Silva, one of the most successful and popular playwrights of the period was burned at the stake. He was a member of a New Christian family, son of a mother who had been convicted twice of Judaizing. On the night he was burned, one of his comedies was produced in the local town theater.

1759(10th of Tishrei, 5520): Yom Kippur

1802: Simon Magruder Levy is one of two cadets in the first class to graduate from West Point

1800: Spain cedes Louisiana to France via the Treaty of San Ildefonso. Unbeknownst to the principles, this was the first act, in a “three act play” that would open the Mississippi River Valley and the Great Plains to Jewish settlers. Jews could not live in Spanish Louisiana. The French bought Louisiana was part of Napoleon’s grand dream of an American emprie. The dream fell apart and three years later the French sold Louisiana to the United States. This opened all of the most of the land west of the Missiissippi and east of the Rockies to Jewish settlers.

1811: The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orléans, Louisiana. The copper for the boilers in that steamboat was probably supplied by Henry Hendricks, a prominent New York Sephardic Jew who supplie the copper fo all of Robert Fulton’s steamboats as well as those of many others.

1814: Following the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna opens. The intent is to undue the effects of the French Revolution and return Europe to the days of the Ancien Régime. Among other measures, the victorious powers rolled back the concept that all citizens were equal before the law. This change had a particularly corrosive effect on the Jews of Europe whose emancipation had depended on this concept.

1831: Birthdate of Eugene Pereire, the member of mutli-generational prominent French Jewish family. Eugene was an engineer by training and who became a prominent fianancier and businessman He was the son of Emile Pereire who was one of the founders of the infamous Crédit Mobilier

1839(23rd of Tishrei, 5600): Simchat Torah

1849(15th of Tishrei, 5610): Sukkoth

1855: A column entitled "The Hebrews: A Feast of Tabernacles" published today in New York reported that "The Israelitish Festival of Tabernacles concluded on Saturday. The Levitcal law requires its continuance for seven days. During the whole of this period, the faithful of the city have thronged to the synagogues. The services have continued without intermission...The recurrence of these stated festivals of the Hebrews brings to mind the degree of persistency with which that ancient people adhere to their belief.

1860: In San Francisco, “a committee of Israelites, the topmost men of that persuasion in town, have issued an appeal to the public for material aid to enable Israel Joseph Benjamin 2d to visit Arabia, and look into the causes of the suffering of the Jews in that quarter. Mr. Benjamin is now in this city. He calls himself Benjamin 2d to distinguish himself from the Oriental traveler, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. He is from Foltitscheny on the Moldau, where, being ruined in the timber trade, he conceived the undertaking of visiting the oppressed of his race in the outskirts of the earth. His Eight Years in Asia and Africa was praised by Humboldt and Ritter, and the Jews hereabout affirm that it is replete with information valuable to historians and geographers. They credit to him the humane task of bringing the efficient protection of Victoria and Napoleon to the rescue of the grievously oppressed Hebrews in Persia. They went to see him searching in China for the Jews that are said to sprinkle that vast hive, to hear him report upon the condition of the sons of Jacob scattered through Afghanistan, and, most of all, to have him scouring the Arabian peninsula to learn what is the measure of ill-usage of the circumcised there, and pleading with civilized Europe and America for the relief which none ask now, though it is presumed to be sadly needed.”

1860: An article entitled “Emperor in Africa” described Louis Napoleon’s visit to Algeria during which saw a wide variety of his subjects including “Moors, Maltese and Jews.” [Jews had probably been living in Algeria since the destruction of the Temple. The community really grew after the expulsion from Spain. Jews gained full citizenship in 1870. Jews lost their right to citizenship in 1963 when the new Algerian government decreed that only Moslems could be citizens.]

1862: During the American Civil War, the Jewish Ladies of Syracuse (New York) present Colonel Henry Barnum with a regimental flag to be used by the 149th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry.

1863: An article entitled “Bread Riot In Mobile” published today described the outbreak of violence spearheaded by the women of this Southern port city who were demanding food for themselves and their starving children. In his description of the violence, the reporter wrote, “In coming down Dauphine-street, two women went into a Jew clothing store, in the performance of the work connected with their mission. The proprietor of the store forcibly ejected the intruders, and threw then violently down on the sidewalk. A policeman who happened to be near, thereupon set upon the Jew and gave him a severe beating.” [A mini-pogrom in the heart of Dixie; how ironic when you consider the number of Jews who actually took up arms on behalf of the Confederacy.]

1865: An article entitled “The Jewish Day of Atonement” published today in the New York Times reported that “The Jewish Day of Atonement -- Yom Kippur -- which ended at sunset on Saturday, is one of the most important and generally respected of the fasts prescribed for observance among the Israelites. The origin and institution of the fast is to be found in Leviticus XVI: "And it shall be unto you a statute forever; in the seventh month, on the 10th of the mouth, you shall afflict your souls and do no work at all; the denizen as well as the stranger that sojourneth amongst you for on that day shall ye be atoned for to purify you; from all your sins before the Lord shall ye be purified. The first amongst your Sabbaths shall this day be among you, and ye shall afflict your souls. And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for all the children of Israel from all their sins once a year." And again, in Leviticus XXIII: "And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, and say, also on the 10th day in this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls and offer a burnt-offering unto the Lord. And ye shall do no work in that same day, for it is a day of atonement, to atone for you before the Lord your God. And every one that shall not be afflicted on that same day he shall be cut off from among his people. And every soul that does any work on that same day, that soul will I destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work. This is a statute forever until all your generations and throughout all your dwellings. It shall be unto you the first amongst your Sabbaths, and ye shall afflict your souls; on the 9th day of the month (Visbri,) at even, shall ye afflict your souls; from even to even shall ye celebrate your Sabbath." When the Israelites were still a nation, this day was observed with the most imposing ceremonies. It was the only day throughout the year on which even the high priest presumed to enter the holy of holies, or to pronounce the name of the Deity, which at any other time it was unlawful even for him to utter. The glories of this day, while it was still celebrated in the place "which the Lord had chosen there to enthrone his name," are, in these modern times, commemorated in the afternoon service at the synagogue. At present the day is observed with no less fervor than of old, and the Jews throughout the world, however heedless of the precepts of their religion they may be occasionally, are all mindful of those which enjoin them to repent for the sins of the past on the Yom Kippur. At sunset the twenty-four hours' fast and continued prayers commenced, the service consisting chiefly of confessions of sin and utter unworthiness. It is customary in the evening for parents to bestow their benediction on their children. Whosoever meet on the day, be they previously acquainted or complete strangers, are commanded to salute each other with brotherly love and sincerity. If any quarrel exists between two Jews it is obligatory on them to become reconciled. He who is conscious of haying wronged his neighbor is bound to offer reparation. The law which ordains the observance of the day likewise commands the Jew to afflict his soul, which affliction, according to tradition, consists in abstaining from five indulgences -- eating and drinking, bathing, perfuming, wearing shoes and sharing the sensual pleasures. Yesterday the synagogues and many temporary places of worship were thronged with devout Israelites offering up their supplications, confessing their sins and imploring pardon.

1867(2nd of Tishrei, 5628): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

1870: As Italians prepare to vote on a plebiscite that will effectively create a modern kingdom of Italy under the constitutional rule of Victor Emmanuel, it was reported today that the Italian papers have published an address from the Jews of Rome to Victor Emmanuel expressing their joy at being released from Papal rule. The Jews had supported and fought for the unification of Italy. With the creation of the modern state of Italy, the Jews would go from some of the most oppressed people in Europe to being full citizens of a modern, liberal society.

1871(16th of Tishrei, 5632): Second Day of Sukkoth

1873(10th of Tishrei, 5634): Yom Kippur

1875(2nd of Tishrei, 5636): Rosh Hashanah

1876: “An Autumn Festival,” a article published today reported that “the Jewish festival of Sukkoth or tabernacles commences tomorrow evening at sunset and last for seven days. This detailed piece of reporting goes on to quote from the 23rd chapter of Leviticus so that the reader will understand the origin of the festival. The article gives a detailed description of the Lulav and Etrog as well as providing information about “the Azereth or concluding feast” and Simchat Torah which “is kept for the purpose of rejoicing over the conclusion of the reading of the Pentateuch, which is divided into weekly sections and gone through once every year.

1876: An article published today entitled “Mr. Huxley and the Bible” attempts to find harmony between the Jewish story of creation and the view of modern science. The author finds the Jewish account to be immeasurably superior to any other version including the Persian and the Greeks. In their versions, creation is the produce of superstitious gods and struggling spirits. “The Hebrew narrative gives us the sublime truths of the whole present order of things have sprung from an intelligent and supreme will. The Jewish story of creation is about bringing order out of chaos which is consistent with the latest scientific thought. The “visions or pictures in the narrative of Moses are…not intended to be” taken “literally” but are to be viewed as a dramatic and poetic description of events.

1879(14th of Tishrei, 5640): Erev Sukkoth

1883(29th of Elul, 5643): Erev Rosh Hashanah

1883(29th of Elul, 5643): A small group of Sephardic Jews met today and decided that there was need for a second synagogue to meet the needs of New York’s Spanish-Portuguese community.

1884: A hearing was to be held today regarding charges that three Jews – Lawrence Braham, Hyam Friewald and Benjamin Levy - had assaulted a policeman named Samuel Murphy while they were walking in Central Park on the afternoon of Yom Kippur.

1885: Birthdate of poet and critic Louis Untermeyer. Untermeyer was one of the earliest American foes of Hitler. Just weeks after Hitler assumed power on January 30, 1933, a patchwork of competing Jewish forces, led by American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise, civil rights crusader Louis Untermeyer, and the combative Jewish War Veterans, initiated a highly effective boycott of German goods and services. Each advanced the boycott in its own way, but sought to build a united anti-Nazi coalition that could deliver an economic deathblow to the Nazi party, which had based its political ascent almost entirely on promises to rebuild the strapped German economy.

1891: Stanford University opened its doors for the first time. Currently, students at Stanford may major or minor in Jewish Studies. There are approximately 655 Jewish students among the 6555 undergraduates and 1,800 students among the 12,000 graduate students. Stanford is also home to the Rohr Chabad House and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

1892(10th of Tishrei, 5653): Yom Kippur

1895: In New York City, Paul Warburg married Nina J. Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb, found of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. The couple would have two children, James Paul Warburg and Dr. Bettina Warburg.

1898(15th of Tishrei, 5659): Sukkoth

1898: Czar Nicholas II expelled the Jews from several major Russian cities. Seven thousand Jews were forced to leave Kiev. This was part of the Russian policy to destroy the Jewish population through forced conversion, immigration and death.

1898: In Amsterdam, Herzl receives a call to the German consulate. Wilhelm II is inclined to take the migration of the Jews under his protection. He also wishes to receive Herzl at the head of a delegation in Jerusalem.

1901: Approximately 1,000,000 British Pounds are being transferred to the British Government in connection with the estate duty of the late Baron Hirsch.

1903(10th of Tishrei, 5664): Yom Kippur

1903: The National League Pennant winning Pittsburgh Pirates and the American League Pennant winning Boston Americans play the first game of the first World Series. The World Series was the brainchild of Barney Dreyfus, a German born Jew who came to the United States in 1881. Dreyfus settled in Kentucky where he became President of the Louisville Colonels of the National League. The Louisville team was dropped from the National League in 1899 and Dreyfus became part owner and President of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1900. Under his guidance the Pirates won three straight National League Championships. During the 1903 season, Dreyfus met with the owner of the American League leading Boston Americans and proposed that the two teams meet at the end of the season. The two shook hands and, despite opposition from National League owners, the two teams met in a best of nine series starting on October 1. The Boston team won the first series, five games to three. But the Pittsburgh players made more money. The Boston team received 75 percent of the AL revenues with the rest going to the team owner. But Dreyfus gave his team 100 percent of the NL revenues, keeping nothing for himself. Dreyfus is also the man who built Forbes Field, the Pirates historic baseball park and he helped create the office of the Commissioner of Baseball.

1903: Birthdate of "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom. Born in New York City, Rosenbloom was light-heavyweight box champ from 1932 to 1934. This was the Golden Age for Jewish prizefighters.

1904(22nd of Tishrei, 5665): Shemini Atzeretz

1904: Birthdate of Vladimir Horowitz. The Russian-born pianist was considered one of the most accomplished players of the 20th century. He is one in a long line of world-class Jewish pianists. He passed away in 1989.

1904: Birthdate of Austrian-born English physicist Otto Robert Frisch. In 1938 he and Lise Meitner were the first to describe fission of uranium after bombardment by neutrons. During World War II Frisch was part of the British delegation to the Manhattan Project, working as head of the Critical Assembly Group. He returned to England to direct the physics department at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He died in 1979, one of the many Jewish scientist who fled the Nazis and enriched the West.

1907(23rd of Tishrei, 5668) Simchat Torah

1910: “The season of the German stock company at the Irving Place Theatre” in New York opened tonight “with the performance for the first time on any stage of a melodramatic tragedy in three acts by Paule Heyse” the German-Jewish “novelist and poet, entitled “The Veiled Statue at Sais.” Heyse was the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature which he won in 1910.

1914: Birthdate of author Daniel Boorstin. Boorstin wrote The Americas: The Democratic Experience for which he won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize.

1917(15th of Tishrei, 5678): Sukkoth

1918: During World War I, Arab forces under T. E. Lawrence (a/k/a "Lawrence of Arabia") capture Damascus. The Arabs had the mistaken notion that capture of Damascus would result in the recreation of the Caliphate located in the Syrian city. The British and French had other plans – plans that would help to destabilize the region that reverberate into the 21st century with the violence in Iraq, Lebanon and, of course Syria. This is another example of regional confrontation that had, and has, nothing to with the Jews, Zionism or Israel.

1920: Birthdate of actor Walter Matthau. Born in New York City, Matthau gained fame in a variety of roles the most famous which was as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple.

1924: Birthdate of President Jimmy Carter. President Carter brokered the Camp David agreements that led to the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. In the 21st century he openly allied himself with the Palestinians in a book whose title equated Israel with the former white supremacist regime of South Africa.

1926(23rd of Tishrei, 5678): Simchat Torah

1930: The Passfield White Paper, dated as of today, recommended limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine following the Arab riots of 1929.

1936(15th of Tishrei, 5697): Sukkoth

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the festive opening of the new Haifa-Hadera-Tel Aviv-Jaffa highway, an achievement described as a "remarkable engineering feat" and "a grand step in the development of the country."

1937: The Palestine Post reported that according to some moderate Arab sources, it was the well-known band of Sheikh Izzadin Kassam which was responsible for the murder of Mr. L.Y. Andrews, the District Commissioner for Galilee, and of his driver, Constable Peter Robertson. This terrorist group, known as having committed many murders before, shot and killed Andrews and Robertson as they were about to enter the Anglican Church in Nazareth.

1938: The Polish government revoked the passports of all Jews who have lived outside of Poland for more than five years, rendering them stateless.

1938: According to Claretta Petacci, today Mussolini said that "Hitler is a big softy, deep down." Petacci was Il Duce’s mistress. Her comments coincided with the signing of the infamous Munich Agreement which paved the way to World War II.

1938: Civiltá Cattolica, the foremost Jesuit journal, which is published in Rome and controlled by the Vatican, calls Judaism sinister and accuses Jews of trying to control the world through money and secularism. The journal says that the devil is the Jews' master; Judaism is evil and "a standing menace to the world."

1939: In Vienna, Austria, Übersiedlungsaktion (Resettlement action) is instituted against able-bodied Jewish men. These Jews are deported to Poland for forced labor

1939: Nazis begin the internment of Polish "mental defectives" in the Polish village of Piasnica.

1940: The Nazis deport 6500 Jews from Germany's Palatinate, Baden, and Saar regions to internment camps at the foot of the French Pyrenees.

1940: Jews are forced to pay for and build a wall around the Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto

1940: Reich theoretician Alfred Rosenberg writes an article, "Jews to Madagascar," which suggests mass deportation of Jews to the island off the African coast.

1940: German authorities forbid Norwegian Jews to teach and participate in other professions.

1940: Young Jewish men return from the Belzec, Poland, camp to Szczebrzeszyn, Poland, after a ransom of 20,000 zlotys is paid to Nazi captors.

1941(10 Tishrei, 5702): Yom Kippur

1941: On this Jewish Day of Atonement, Jews are taken from the ghetto at Podborodz, Ukraine, and killed.

1941: Majdanek, a concentration outside of Lublin, Poland began operating today. During its 34 months of operation at least 59,000 Jews were murdered there.

1941(10 Tishrei, 5702): At Zalgar, the Nazis killed 633 men, 1,017 women, 496 children.

1941(10 Tishrei, 5702): At Butrimantz, Lithuania the Nazis murdered 976 Jews in front of Lithuanian crowds seated on benches for "a good view." For more on the destruction of this Lithuanian Shtetl see, If I Forget Thee: The Destruction of the Shtetl Butrimantz (Butrimonys, Lithuania.The Nazis sent 3,000 more Jews from Vilna to Ponar where they would all be shot.

1941: The German government prohibits further Jewish emigration from Germany

1941: At the Auschwitz camp, SS officer Arthur Johann Breitwieser takes note when a comrade is rendered unconscious after accidental exposure to a disinfectant called Zyklon B. A gaseous variant of the compound will eventually be used to kill millions of Jews.

1941(10 Tishrei, 5702): Einsatzgruppen members gather Jews of the Baltic port of Libau and machine-gun them at the local naval base.

1941(10 Tishrei, 5702): Germans drown 30 Jewish children in clay pits near Okopowa Street in the Warsaw Ghetto.

1941: Seventy children in the Warsaw Ghetto are found frozen to death outside destroyed houses following the season's first snowfall.

1941: From this date until 12/22/41, the German murder 33,500 Jews in Vilna, Lithuania.

1942: Jews are deported to Auschwitz from Holland and Belgium; to the Treblinka death camp from central Poland and the Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia camp/ghetto; and to the Belzec death camp from the Eastern Galicia region of Poland.

1942: The Nazis opened Chelmek as a labor camp. The Jews there and elsewhere were used as slave labor for the German war effort.

1942: Nazis deported 4000 Jews from Lukow, a town near Lublin in Poland.

1942: The Nazis deported 2,000 Jews from Czechoslovakia.

1942: At Novogrudok, Belorussia, 50 Jews escape from the Germans and join local resistance led by Tuvia Bielski

1942: As 3000 Jews are arrested at Pinczów, Poland, Jewish resistance is led by Michael Majtek and Zalman Fajnsztat

1942: Five thousand Jews are deported from Zawichost, Poland to Belzec
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1942: The British Vatican Ambassador Francis d'Arcy Osborne writes in his diary that Pope Pius XII only occasionally denounces moral crimes. But such rare and vague declarations "do not have...lasting force and validity." Osborne points out that the Pope's "policy of silence in regard to such offences against the conscience of the world must necessarily involve a renunciation of moral leadership."

1942(20th of Tishrei, 5703): At a small labor camp at Budy, Poland, female German non-Jewish prisoners beat, mutilate, and kill dozens of captive Jewish women. When the massacre is over, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss inspects the scene

1942: The Chelmek slave-labor camp, located in Poland near Auschwitz-Birkenau, opens to house Jews draining swamps to provide water to the nearby Bata shoe factory.

1942(20th of Tishrei, 5703):In Luków, Poland, Jewish Council member David Lieberman is told by German authorities that money he has collected to ransom Lublin's Jews is useless, and deportations will continue, whereupon Lieberman tears the money to pieces and slaps the German official in the face. Ukrainian guards kill Lieberman immediately, and 4000 of the Jews Lieberman had hoped to protect are deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they are gassed.

1942: Hundreds of Jews escape the Ukrainian town of Luboml but are quickly hunted down. In all, some 10,000 of the town's Jews are killed.

1943(2nd of Tishrei, 5704): Second day of Rosh Hashanah

1943: SS chief Heinrich Himmler delivers a speech at a "Final Solution" conference.

1943: The Jewish ghetto at Chernovtsy, Romania, is liquidated

1943(2nd of Tishrei, 5704): Just before their murders, several Jewish women use their bare hands to attack SS troops at Auschwitz.

1944(14th of Tishrei, 5705): Erev Sukkot

1944: The Germans initiate death marches of prisoners from Auschwitz to camps in Germany, including Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Sachsenhausen.

1944 About 15,000 Jews are deported from the Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, camp/ghetto to Auschwitz.

1944(14th of Tishrei, 5705): At the Stutthof, Germany, concentration camp, executions of Jewish prisoners begin. Initial killings are carried out by assembling inmates with their backs to an infirmary wall with the stated purpose of medical examinations. Slits in the wall behind the heads of each inmate allow a pistol shot to be fired into their brains from the adjoining room

1944: Some 150 twins, most of them children, remain in Dr. Mengele's medical block at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1944(14th of Tishrei, 5705): The Nazis gassed 1,000 more Jews from Theresinstadt at Birkenau.

1945(24th of Tishrei, 5706): At Boleslawiec, Poland, eight Jews are murdered by an anti-Semitic Polish underground group. Yes, this happened five months after the end of World War II.

1945: Birthdate of Rod Carew. The famed baseball player was thought to be Jewish because he wore a Chai. Carew was not Jewish but his wife was.

1946: Today, Mrs. Belle J. Goldstein, national president of the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America, described the conditions in Palestine following her four month visit to Eretz Israel where she took special pains to inspect the 45 child care facilities supported by Mizrachi. She compared conditions in Palestine to those in Ireland. She described the curfews which would come without warning leaving families without such basics as bread and milk. She reiterated the fact that Mizrach did not condone the actions of the Stern Gang or the Irgun, she reported that most of the Yishuv was actively or passively a supporter of the Haganah.

1947: “Six British destroyers raced out of Haifa today to intercept” two ships carrying over three thousand Jewish refuges that have passed through Dardanelles and according to RAF patrols are somewhere between Cyprus and northern Palestine. Just in case that a half dozen modern British warships were unable to cope with the threat posed by these two vessels, 3 more destroyers were standing by in Haifa should they be needed

1948: A National Palestinian Council meeting in Gaza elected the Mufti as its president and declared itself to be the provisional government of “All Palestine.” Trans-Jordan’s King Abdullah immediately denounced the All-Palestinian government which he declared would not be allowed jurisdiction of the areas under the control of the Arab Legion i.e. the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.

1950: During the Maccabiah, competition opens in Haifa for various aquatic events including swimming, diving and water polo.

1950: In an article entitled “Land of a Determined People,” famed correspondent and author Quentin Reynolds reviews Watch For the Morning by Thomas Sugrue. According to Reynolds, 24th of Tishrei, 5706is not only the latest book to be published describing Israel, “but well may be the best book yet published on the new state. It is certainly the most exciting and most interesting.”

1956(26th of Tishrei, 5717): Albert Von Tilzer passed away in Los Angeles. Born in 1878, he was an American songwriter, the younger brother of fellow songwriter Harry Von Tilzer. He wrote the music to many hit songs, including, most notably, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game".He was born Albert Gumm, in Indianapolis, Indiana; his last name had been shortened by his parents from Gumbinski, or possibly Guminski. As a young man he worked briefly at his older brother Harry Von Tilzer's publishing company, and Albert's earliest songs were published by Harry. Within a very few years Albert formed his own firm, The York Publishing Company, and there appears to have been no further collaboration between Albert and Harry Von Tilzer, although both of them wrote and published many hundreds of songs. Tilzer was Albert and Harry's mother's maiden name. When oldest brother Harry began his song writing career he assumed the professional name Von Tilzer, adding the honorific "Von" to his mother's maiden name. Albert followed suit, as did younger brothers Will and Jules Von Tilzer, both of whom were also active in the music industry. Von Tilzer was a top Tin Pan Alley tune writer, producing numerous popular music compositions from 1900 continuing through the early fifties. He collaborated with many lyricists, including Jack Norworth, Lew Brown, and Harry MacPherson. A number of his tunes were performed (and recorded) by jazz bands and continue to be played decades later. His songs included "The Alcoholic Blues", "Apple Blossom Time", "Chili Bean", "Dapper Dan", "Honey Boy", "I May Be Gone for a Long, Long Time", "I'm Glad I'm Married", "I'm the Lonesomest Gal in Town", "The Moon Has His Eye On You", "My Cutie's Due at Two-to-Two", "My Little Girl", "Oh By Jingo!", "Oh How She Could Yacki- Hacki, Wicki-Wacki, Woo", "Put on Your Slippers and Fill Up Your Pipe, You're Not Going Bye-Bye Tonight", "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey", "Roll Along, Prairie Moon", "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", "Wait Till You Get Them Up in the Air, Boys", and hundreds of others.
1956: The Israeli delegation returned from France following highly secret negotiations on how to deal with the threat posed by President Nasser of Egypt.

1957: Today marked the publication of the first of a 12 part series written by Alexander Bittlement for The Worker that described the liberalizing process that was taking place in the Communist Party in the wake of the exposure of Stalin’s excesses and the Hungarian Revolution.
1960(10th of Tishrei, 5721): Yom Kippur

1962: Barbra Streisand signs her 1st recording contract with Columbia Record Company

1962: Brian Epstein signs a contract to manage the Beatles through 1977.

1964: The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. Among the movement’s leaders were several Jews including Suzanne Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker and Jackie Goldberg

1966: Birthdate of actress and model Cindy Margolis. And you thought I only knew about dead rabbis, old authors and antique actors.

1967: In Toronto, the cornerstone was laid to the expansion project at Shaar Hashomayim. The synagogue, which had been designed to serve 300 families was now serving 1,750 families which necessitated the building project.

1972(23rd of Tishrei, 5733): Simchat Torah

1973: The Egyptian and Syrian armies when on full alert today. Israeli intelligence officers at the highest level ignored the potential significance of the move and did not respond with appropriate counter-measures. This decision would have near catastrophic consequences five days later.

1982(14th of Tishrei, 5743): Erev Sukkoth

1985: The Israeli air force bombs PLO Headquarters in Tunis.

1987: Their Majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain paid a visit to Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles in a secular event in their honor.

1989: General Colin Powell began serving as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During Operation Desert Storm, Powell sent Patriot Batteries to Israel to thwart the Scud attacks from Iraq. This was the first time that Israel had entrusted any part of her defense to another nation. Israel did so not because she was unable to protect herself, but because the United States asked Israel to stay on the sidelines so as not to upset the coalition the Bush Administration had gathered to fight Iraq. Powell would also impress Israeli leaders with his Yiddish language skills when they met.

1990: The UNESCO Courier publishes Manuel Osorio’s interview of Claude Levi-Strauss - French social anthropologist.

1991(23rd of Tishrei, 5752): Simchat Torah

1994: The City of Anchorage, Alaska honors Rabbi Harry L. Rosenfeld by proclaiming this “Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld Day.”

1997: The Red Tent by Anita Dimant is published. The novel examines Jewish history through feminist eyes, featuring Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter. In the Bible Dinah is portrayed as a rape victim who is avenged by her brothers.

1999(21st of Tishrei, 5760): Hoshana Raba

1999(21st of Tishrei, 5760): Ted Arison, an Israeli-American businessman who co-founded Norwegian Cruise Lines in 1966 with Knut Kloster and founded Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972, passed away. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1924, he fought in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army during World War II. He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and created Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972 in which he made his fortune. Later, he established the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts based in Miami. He brought professional basketball to South Florida with the forming of the Miami Heat in 1988, and established the philanthropic Arison Foundation in Israel and the United States. In 1990, he renounced his U.S. citizenship, in an effort to avoid U.S. Estate Taxes (and failed to meet the 10 years out of the United States rules on this matter, when he died in 1999) and returned to Israel and founded Arison Investments. In 1997 he headed a consortium that purchased the controlling share in Bank Hapoalim for more than $1 billion -- the largest privatization deal in Israel's history. His children include Micky Arison and Shari Arison.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Avengers by Richard Cohen and The Talmud and the Internet by Jonathan Rosen.

2000(2nd of Tishrei, 5761): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

2002(25th of Tishrei, 5763): Walter Annenberg, publisher and philanthropist, passed away.
2004(16th of Tishrei, 5765): Second Day of Sukkoth

2005(27th of Elul, 5765): A marvelous day for the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids. Temple Judah marked the last Shabbat of 5765 with Traditional Saturday morning services. The Cedar Rapids Gazette carried three articles featuring Jewish topics. First, the question in the “God Squad” column began with “I don’t see why synagogues force people to have tickets for services at the High Holidays.” Goldman and Hartman responded with a column about the need to provide financial support for religious institutions while assuring the questioner that nobody is turned away at the synagogue door because they cannot afford to pay. Second, there was a story about Rabbi Peter Schweitzer donating his ten thousand item collection of Jewish memorabilia to the National Museum of American Jewish History. Finally, there was a lengthy article about Kalman Feinberg winning the national Great Shofar Blast Off.

2006: The New York Times book section features reviews of two books about I.F. Stone – All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone by Myra MacPherson and The Best of I.F. Stone edited by Karl Weber.

2006: The Washington Post book section features reviews of Gonzo Judaism: A Bold Path for Renewing an Ancient Faith By Niles Elliot Goldstein and Holy Unexpected: My New Life as a Jew by Robin Chotzinoff

2006(9th of Tishrei, 5767): Yom Kippur observance begins with Kol Nidre

2006: Over 100,000 people participated in the seventh annual “Yom Kippur for Everyone,” an event which brings an open and educational Yom Kippur service to community centers and schools throughout Israel. The idea is to create a meaningful spiritual experience for those who avoid traditional religious services.

2007(19th of Tishrei, 5768): In Chevy Chase, Maryland, Israel Kugler, a leader of teachers’ and Jewish labor organizations, passed away at the age of 90. Kugler was president of the United Federation of College Teachers during the turbulent 1960s, and he won a reputation as an outspoken advocate for teachers’ rights. In 1965, the teachers’ union, under Kugler’s leadership, supported 31 professors who were dismissed from St. John’s University, a Catholic college in Queens, allegedly for demanding greater academic freedom. With Kugler’s encouragement, a number of St. John’s faculty members went on strike for a year and a half. In 1972, Kugler helped create the Professional Staff Congress, which today represents 20,000 faculty and staff members at the City University of New York. Kugler is survived by his wife, Helen; his sons, Philip of Silver Spring, Md., and Daniel of Washington; a sister, Frances Brill, who lives in Queens, and two grandsons. “He was a moral, spiritual and political compass,” said Philip Kugler in an interview with the Forward. “In addition to Little League and Boy Scouts, my father also brought me to march in New York City Labor Day parades, to picket lines, on a union bus to the historic 1963 March on Washington for civil rights.” Philip Kugler followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. Israel Kugler was born in Brooklyn on June 13, 1917, to Eastern European immigrant parents. He served in the Navy during World War II and was educated at City College and at New York University. In addition to his work as an organizer, he was a professor of social science in the CUNY system and author of the book “From Ladies to Women: The Organized Struggle for Women’s Rights in the Reconstruction Era.” Kugler’s parents were involved in the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, which is the national Jewish labor organization, and Kugler’s own children were sent to Workmen’s Circle shules (part-time Yiddish schools). After he retired from teaching and organizing in 1980, Kugler was elected president of the Workmen’s Circle. He held the office for two terms, until 1984. Kugler was also active in other progressive Jewish organizations, serving as an officer of the Jewish Labor Committee and of the Forward Association, the not-for-profit holding company of this newspaper. “His strength was his passion for social justice, for labor,” said Robert Kaplan, director emeritus of the Workmen’s Circle. “He was a persistent fighter in every place he was. He always wanted to make sure that we stepped forward for labor, for the ordinary person.”

2007: U.S. News & World Report Magazine features a report on Judge Michael Mukasey, the Orthodox Jew President Bush nominated to U.S. Attorney General as being “a respected law-and-order man with a compassionate streak.”

2007: In a reminder of the connection between Jews and humor, Time Magazine featured a review Robert Klein: The HBO specials 1975-2005, a DVD that features “the groundbreaking, brainy, improve-based style that has influenced every stand-up [comedian] who has followed” in Klein’s trail-blazing footsteps.

2007: Vacationers visiting Charles Clore Park in Tel Aviv expressed their disgust with the filth they encountered much of which was cause people barbecuing, a practice that the municipality had banned.

2007: Plaza Hotel owners Yitzhak Tshuva and the Elad Group paid $120,000 for the giant birthday cake that marked the 100th anniversary of the landmark New York hotel. New York celebrity baker Ron Ben-Israel created the 3.5-meter-high, two-ton cake. Ben-Israel calls the Soho studio where he works a "couture cake studio." The price tag is not exorbitant if one considers that more than two months of work went into preparing the cake. The cake, an exact replica of the hotel, was inspired by an enormous sketch of the Plaza that hangs in the entrance to Ben-Israel's studio. Ben-Israel says he devoted the first month of work to research and planning. He began to prepare the cake only during the second month. "It was an operation," he recalls. "We created the cake piece by piece, and delivered each part by truck. We made the walls out of rolled fondant. We made the roof twice. It was a very complicated structure. At first, we didn't know how it would hold together. I only understood how we had to build the cake after receiving an aerial shot of the [hotel] roof. Seventeen people worked on this project, and toward the end we worked around the clock. "The truth is, I was petrified until the last moment. I didn't know if the cake would make it through, or if we would finish in time." The cake even tasted good, and that is no small feat. The flavor of most oversized cakes is unremarkable. It is very difficult to inject subtle flavor into a cake - or any other dish - when the emphasis is on size. In a workshop Ben-Israel calls the "sugar room," 10 workers labor over sugary flowers and other embellishments. The master baker follows fashion codes: He releases a new collection every few months. The crowning stroke in the current collection is a vanilla cake with six different spices and an apple-buttercream filling. Ben-Israel usually designs cakes for weddings and other social events. His clients include Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Uma Thurman, Robert Downey Jr. and Ronald Perelman. "The cakes that I typically design feed 200 people and cost $3,000," he says. But, "I also made cakes that cost $25. New Yorkers invest a lot of money in their cakes. They just love to eat here. In Los Angeles, where I don't work, there's money, but Hollywood is afraid to eat. They're afraid that paparazzi will photograph one star or another with frosting on their lips or taking a big bite." The baker himself is a frequent star in the local media: Ben-Israel will soon appear in an issue of New York magazine, and he has been written up in the New York Times, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Vogue, which voted him the number-one baker in 2004. Martha Stewart took Ben-Israel under her wing and presented him on the "Oprah Winfrey Show," and he has appeared on ABC's "Good Morning, America," the "David Letterman Show," and other programs. He also teaches at the prestigious French Culinary Institute in New York. Ben-Israel, formerly of Tel Aviv, arrived in New York in the late 1980s. In Israel, he attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts in Tel Aviv, and danced with the Bat Sheva and Bat Dor companies. From there, he traveled to Canada and France, where he earned a living as a dancer. However, when he reached his 30s, he realized that he could not continue to dance much longer. He discovered his aptitude for baking cakes after trying a number of occupations, and studied cake baking in Canada and France. Ben-Israel admits that he is stubborn, obsessive, and pays relentless attention to detail. "I've been asked if I ever dropped a wedding cake. My response is no, but I have certainly thrown cakes at people who annoyed me," he says. "I've worked in a lot of kitchens, and I created a space here where I like to work. Cake bakers usually work in very small kitchens - I created an expansive workspace." He has yet to bake cakes in Israel, but when visiting, he goes to Levinsky Street in Tel Aviv, the Nahalat Binyamin market area, and the Jaffa flea market. "They have treasures in those shops that people brought with them from Europe in the 1940s. I bring them to New York to use in my cakes here."

2008: Amy Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize" — the first journalist to be so honored. The Right Livelihood Award Foundation cited her work in "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

2008(2nd of Tishrei, 5769): Second Day Rosh Hashanah

2008(2nd of Tishrei, 5769): Boris Yefimov, a Russian cartoonist despised by Hitler and beloved by Stalin who for 70 years and 70,000 drawings wielded his talent as a keen sword to advance the goals of his country, died in Moscow today. He was 109, old enough to have seen the last czar pass in a coach; become friends with Trotsky; have Stalin personally edit his cartoons; and vote for Vladimir V. Putin. In dispatches about his death, his age was first reported as 108, then corrected by his family. When Mr. Yefimov was just 107, several Israeli newspapers reported that he was very likely the oldest living Jew, though he began to practice his religion only when he was 100. The death of Mr. Yefimov, whose name is sometimes transliterated from the Cyrillic as Efimov, was widely reported by Russian news media. Some reporters could not resist leading with his oddly warm but necessarily precarious relationship with Stalin, that famous lover of cartoons. Others first mentioned Hitler, whom Mr. Yefimov depicted as a sinister mix of the crazy and creepy. Hitler vowed to shoot the cartoonist as soon as he captured Moscow. Over almost the entire history of the Soviet Union, Mr. Yefimov’s cartoons provided sharp commentary on subjects as varied as laziness on collective farms, bureaucratic inefficiency, the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, foreign policy trouble spots like Berlin and Yugoslavia, the Kennedy assassination and Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s attempt to reform and salvage communism. The most famous story about Stalin and Mr. Yefimov is about something that happened in 1947, when Mr. Yefimov drew a cartoon for Pravda that is sometimes described as an opening shot in the cold war. It showed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower arriving at the North Pole to find Eskimos and polar wildlife. Mr. Yefimov’s caption had the general exclaiming that the greatest threat to American freedom was right there. The pretext for the cartoon was a report that United States troops were penetrating the Arctic to counter a Russian threat. Stalin ordered the cartoon to illustrate how ludicrous he considered such an action. But it came at a time of mounting tension between the nations, and American media reported the cartoon as serious news. The tension Mr. Yefimov felt was at least as intense. In 1940, for political reasons, Stalin ordered the execution of Mr. Yefimov’s brother, Mikhail Koltsov, a leading Soviet journalist who had been the model for the character Karkov in Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” His brother’s death was very much in Boris Yefimov’s mind when Stalin summoned him to hear his idea for a cartoon. Mr. Yefimov told Stalin it was a great idea. The cartoonist did not know whether to rush to finish it quickly, or take more time to show how important he considered the project. He proceeded methodically, until Stalin called him at 3:30 the next afternoon. He wanted the cartoon by 6. In an interview with Russian Life in 1999, Mr. Yefimov said, “A cold shiver went down my spine.” Mr. Yefimov finished on time. For many years, the original cartoon, with Stalin’s personal editing marks in red pencil, hung on his wall. Mr. Yefimov was born as Boris Fridland in Kiev on Sept. 28, 1899, the second son of a Jewish shoemaker. Within three years, his family moved to Bialystok, which is now part of Poland. It was there that he began to draw, when he was 5, and saw Czar Nicholas II, when he was 11. He studied art and then law before going to Moscow to escape the chaos of the civil war in Ukraine. In the 1920s, he and his brother changed their last name, Fridland, partly because it sounded Jewish at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise. He got a job at Izvestia through his brother’s connections. Throughout his life, Mr. Yefimov was at the center of his country’s cultural elite. He and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky became friends, despite Mr. Mayakovsky’s remark upon first seeing Mr. Yefimov’s drawings. “Rather poor, aren’t they,” Mr. Mayakovsky said, according to The Morning Star, a London newspaper. “In fact, very poor.” Trotsky, however, liked Mr. Yefimov’s cartoons so much that he wrote the introduction to the first book collecting them, in 1924. Only reluctantly did the editor of Izvestia agree to print the words of Trotsky, who by then was on Stalin’s bad side. The editor was executed for this decision. But even after Mr. Yefimov’s brother fell into disfavor with Stalin, he himself remained one of Stalin’s favorites. Stalin criticized the buckteeth he gave Japanese characters as racist, but nothing happened to the man who drew them. Mr. Yefimov worked for many prestigious publications, and some of his cartoons in effect became national icons, like the one showing frozen German soldiers carrying a coffin labeled “the myth of the invincible German Army.” He received two Stalin prizes, among many honors. Mr. Yefimov — who said his longevity might or might not have been affected by his taste for vodka, cognac and beer — married twice and outlived both his wives. Obituaries in British newspapers said he had a son but did not specify whether he was still living. Mr. Yefimov said he hated Stalin for killing his brother but was proud of the Soviet Union’s successes and glad he propagandized about them. He told Russian Life, “When you are a political cartoonist, you have to keep pace with politics.” One of his potentially huge mistakes was putting a penguin at the North Pole in the famous 1947 drawing. But Stalin, who loved the cartoon, apparently did not notice that the Antarctic bird was out of place in the Arctic. Nobody said anything.

2008: Professor Sarah Stroumsa replaces Professor Haim D. Rabinowitch, as rector at Hebrew University. He has served in the position for the last seven years.

2008: In the evening, at the New York film festival, a screening of “Waltz with Bashir” directed by Ari Folman According to critics, “many films have shown us that war is hell. ‘Waltz with Bashir’ reveals the mental infernos that can continue long after the guns have stopped firing. One of the boldest films in recent memory, ‘Waltz with Bashir’ can be described as an anime documentary, an ingenious and provocative blending of animated film techniques with sharp-edged, often unsettling personal testimony. The animation is used by Folman to illuminate what might be called his subjects’ historical imagination — that place in our minds in which actual lived experience combines with fears, fantasies and justifications. Intrigued by the recurring nightmare of a friend who’s chased in his dream by the ghosts of the dogs he shot in Lebanon during the ’82 war, director Ari Folman comes to realize how much he has suppressed of his memories as a soldier. Interviewing friends who served with him, Folman’s memories of the conflict gradually begin to emerge — often in unexpected ways.

2009: A.J. Jacobs discusses and signs his new book, "The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment," at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.

2009: The Columbus Jewish Federation holds its 2009 Annual Meeting and 2010 Annual Campaign Kickoff, an event that will feature the presentation of the Ben M. Mandelkorn Award for Distinguished Service & Therese Stern Kahn and William V. Kahn Young Leadership Award.

2010: Rick Sanchez, a daytime anchor at CNN, was fired today a day after telling a radio interviewer that Jon Stewart was a bigot and that “everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart.” The latter comment was made shortly after Mr. Stewart’s faith, Judaism, was invoked. CNN said in a statement this evening, “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.” Mr. Sanchez’s comments came yesterday during a contentious conversation with the comedian Pete Dominick on satellite radio. By this afternoon, a recording of the conversation had circulated widely on the Internet. He had appeared on the radio show as part of a tour to promote his book, “Conventional Idiocy.”In the conversation, Mr. Sanchez, who is Cuban American, repeatedly suggested that he had experienced subtle forms of racism in his television career. He said that “a lot of elite Northeast establishment liberals” view him as someone “who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier.” Among those establishment figures, he said, was Mr. Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and a friend of Mr. Dominick’s. At first, Mr. Sanchez called Mr. Stewart a “bigot,” but later took the word back, calling the comedian “prejudicial” instead. Prejudicial “against who?” Mr. Dominick asked Mr. Sanchez said, “Against anybody who doesn’t agree to his point of view, which is very much a white liberal establishment point of view. One of the co-hosts of the radio show brought up the fact that Mr. Stewart is a Jew, saying to Mr. Sanchez, he is a minority “as much as you are.” Mr. Sanchez answered sarcastically, “Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people.” He let out a high-pitched laugh. “Everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart,” Mr. Sanchez said. “And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.” Mr. Stewart has made jokes about Mr. Sanchez more than 20 times in the last five years, according to a search of the show’s Web site. Or as Mr. Sanchez put it, “You watch yourself on his show every day and all they ever do is call you stupid.” Mr. Stewart was far from the only person known to mock Mr. Sanchez, who was once tasered on camera for a segment. He was a polarizing figure within CNN, but under the channel’s former president, Jonathan Klein, he was rewarded with more air time, most recently a two-hour block in the afternoons. Mr. Klein was fired last week.

2010(23rd of Tishrei, 5771): Simchat Torah

2010: “The World of Jewtopia” is scheduled to open in Charlotte, NC.

2011: Under the new “summer clock” to be used in Israel, today should mark the end of daylight savings time. But since October 1 falls on Shabbat, the winter clock should have begun on the day before. But since that was Rosh Hashanah, Daylight Savings time should come to an end on October 2.

2011(3rd of Tishrei, 5772): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, guest chazzan Ilan Caplan is scheduled to lead Shabbat Shuvah services at the traditional minyan at Temple Judah

2011: Keren Ann Zeidel, an Israeli sound designer, singer, songwriter, is scheduled to perform at the City Winery in New York City.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

Copyright; September, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, September 30, In Jewish History

September 30 In Jewish History

132 C.E. (10 Tishrei): On the secular calendar, Akivah ben Joseph known as Rabbi Akiva passed away. He was born in 50 C.E., twenty years before the destruction of the Second Temple. According to tradition, he was an unlearned shepherd until the age of 40 who succeeded in becoming one of the greatest of all the Mishnaic authors (Tanaim). There are countless romantic stories regarding his life. He is one of the Rabbis mentioned in the Haggadah who gathered at B'Nai Brak. He decided to back Bar Kochbah in his revolt against Roman religious oppression and was then executed by the Romans. He is one of the Ten Martyrs memorialized on the High Holidays. It is said that while being tortured he began saying the Shema with his life ending as he reached the word "Achad"(one). Considering that he did not start studying until the age of forty, Akiva is "the hero" of Jewish Adult Education. As one educator said, none of us might be an Akiva, but thanks to Akiva, none of us can say that we are ever too old to start studying.

788: Abd Al-Rahman, the man who laid the foundation for an impressive Muslim dynasty in Cordoba (Spain) during what the Jews called the “Golden Age” passed away. The grand mosque he started building still stands today over 1,300 years later, right outside the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba. Apparently, this is a rather common name among Muslim leaders and he is not to confused with some of his less distinguished brethren whose nomenclature looks similar to unlettered Western eyes.

1199: Rambam (Maimonides) authorizes Samuel Ibn Tibbon to translate Guide of Perplexed from Arabic into Hebrew

1337: In Bavaria, a German knight named Hartmann von Deggenburg led his horseman through the gates of Deckendorf, where they joined the local citizenry, in slaughtering the local Jewish population and seizing their property. The Jews had been accused of desecrating the host or communion wafer and the slaughter was the punishment for the foul deed. In reality the councilors of the city of Deckendorff desired to free themselves and all the citizens from the debts owed to the Jews. Once again, the avarice of Christians is hidden in religious doctrine to despoil the Jews. The anti-Semitic violence spread to fifty-one communities, including Bohemia and Austria. To this day people reportedly come on pilgrimages to the church where paintings show Jews in Medieval dress desecrating the host "wafers".

1399: Henry IV of England begins his reign even though his coronation will not take place until October. Although the Jews had been expelled from England and were forbidden by law to return, as is often the case with monarchs, Henry saw himself above the law. In 1410, Henry brought Elias Ben Sabbetai from Bologna in 1410 to serve as his physician.

1452: The first printed book, the Johann Gutenberg Bible, appeared. For "The People of the Book" the advent of modern printing would have an incalculable benefit on its growth and survival.

1759(9th of Tishrei, 5520): Erev Yom Kippur

1777: When the Continental Congress, fearing capture by Howe's British army, left Philadelphia and held sessions in York, John Adams writes to his wife,: "I am comfortably situated here at the house of General Roberdeau, whose hospitality has taken in Mr. Samuel Adams and Mr. Elbridge Gerry.” General Roberdeau, who was a Jew, had, at his own expense, opened the lead mines in Sinking Valley to supply the Continental Army with bullets during the Revolutionary War.

1782(22nd of Tishrei, 5543): Shemini Atzeret

1782(22nd of Tishrei, 5543): Rabbi David Tebele Scheuer passed away in Mainz, Germany. Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1712, he was one of the outstanding students of the Shev Yaakov, Rabbi Jacob Cohen in Frankfurt. He served as Dayan of Frankfurt during the entire time that the Pnei Yehoshua, Rabbi Yehoshua Falk was Rabbi of Frankfurt (1741-1756). In 1759 he succeeded his father-in-law Rabbi Nathan Otiz as Rabbi of Bamberg. There during the Third Silesian War; its part of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), where Austria under the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria tried for the second time in vain to get back Silesia from Prussia; the Prussians under King Frederick the Great ravaged and plundered the region. In 1763 during the turmoil, Rabbi Tebele lost many of his writings including his writings on the tractate Niddah, which he greatly bemoaned. In 1767 he was appointed as Rabbi of Mainz where he led a Yeshiva.

1789(10th of Tishrei, 5550): Yom Kippur

1791(2nd of Tishrei, 5552): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

1801: Birthdate of Zacharias Frankel, “the founder, in Germany, of Historical Judaism, the forerunner of Conservative Judaism in America. A member of the first generation of modern rabbis, Frankel fashioned a multifaceted career as pulpit rabbi, spokesman for political emancipation, critic of radical religious reform, editor, head of the first modern rabbinical seminary, and historian of Jewish law. Frankel was born in Prague, then still the largest Jewish community in Europe, into a financially comfortable family with a distinguished lineage of rabbinic and communal leaders. His education combined traditional immersion in Jewish texts with systematic exposure to secular studies in a manner that was still far from typical. In 1830 he received his doctorate from the University of Pest and in 1831 acquired the post of district rabbi of Litoměřice, becoming the first Bohemian rabbi to hold a doctorate. His advocacy of changes in the synagogue service, the education of the young, and the training and role of the rabbi brought him, in 1836, an invitation from the government of Saxony to occupy the pulpit in Dresden as chief rabbi of the realm. Despite several subsequent offers from the much larger and rapidly growing Jewish community of Berlin, Frankel stayed in Dresden until 1854, when he was called to become the first director of the new rabbinical and teachers' seminary in Breslau. By 1879, four years after his death, the seminary had instructed some 272 students and had placed nearly 120 teachers, preachers, and rabbis in the most important Jewish communities in Europe. A self-styled moderate reformer in matters of religion, Frankel formulated his program of "positive, historical Judaism" in the 1840s to stem the rising tide of radical religious reform. Against the Reform movement's unbounded rationalism, Frankel defended Judaism's legal character, the sanctity of historical experience, and the authority of current practice. The term positive pointed to prescribed ritual behavior (halakhah) as the dominant means for the expression of religious sentiment in Judaism, while the term historical designated its nonlegal realm, sanctified by time and suffering. What gives Frankel's definition its dynamic quality is the role of the people. Genuine reform evolves organically from below and not by fiat from above. It is for this reason that Frankel repudiated the innovations of the three rabbinical conferences of the 1840s; whether dictated by political considerations or the canons of reason, their measures did violence to prevailing sentiment and practice.On a popular level Frankel tried, as author and editor, to deepen Jews' loyalty to the past by offering them a brand of heroic history that stressed cultural achievement. As a scholar Frankel was the preeminent modern rabbinist of his generation, and he devoted a prolific career to introducing the concept of the development of Jewish law over time. Using the method as well as the ideology of Friedrich C. Savigny's geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Frankel tried to recover and analyze the stages of legal evolution, from Alexandrian exegeses of scripture to medieval rabbinic responsa. In the process he left enduring contributions to the modern study of the Mishnah and the Palestinian Talmud. Frankel's undogmatic research on the Mishnah challenged the traditional image of the ancient rabbis as transmitters rather than creators of the oral law and provoked a bitter assault in 1861 from the Neo-Orthodox camp of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Growing religious polarization served to clarify denominational lines and forced Frankel to occupy the middle ground.Two institutions created by Frankel embodied, amplified, and disseminated his vision of Historical Judaism. Die Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, which he edited for eighteen taxing years (1851–1868), provided its readers with a balance of high-level popularization and critical scholarship, setting the standard for all later nineteenth-century journals of Jewish studies. Similarly, the Breslau seminary, which he led for twenty-one years, transformed rabbinic education by integrating modern scholarship with traditional piety and requiring its graduates to be both spiritual leaders and practitioners of Wissenschaft.”

1839(22nd of Tishrei, 5600): Shemini Atzeret

1856(1st of Tishrei, 5617): Rosh Hashanah 5617

1856: Birthdate of Joseph Reinach, the French author and politician who championed the cause of Alfred Dreyfus. He called for a public hearing when Dreyfus was first charged and publicly denounced the documents used to convict him as a forgery.

1856: The New York City column published today reported that last evening at sunset began the new Jewish year. The New Year, this opening, set down on the calendar as 5617. In conformity with the usual custom, religious observances were held last evening in all the synagogues in the city. Today and tomorrow public religious exercises will continued, during which time all labor and business will be suspended. There are at present over twenty Jewish synagogues in the city and almost 30,000 Jews. Thirty-six years ago, there was but one synagogue in New York and only a few families of Jews.”

1859: An article published today entitled “The Jewish New Year: Its Observance in this City” report that “Yesterday being the Jewish New-Year's Day--a festival of immemorial observance among all the Hebrew race--the occasion was appropriately observed in the several synagogues of this City, and doubtless in all other parts of the country. It is called the Rosh Hashanah, or New-Year, the months being counted from the season of the Passover, according to Exodus xii., 2” It described the services that were held in the different synagogues and ancient origin of the rituals that were being followed.

1862: Union troops under the command of Brigadier General Frederick Salomon failed to capture Newtonia, Missouri during the First Battle of Newtonia. It was the first real setback for Salomon who had risen from the rank of Captain when he joined the Army in 1861. Whatever blot this may have placed on his record was removed with the victory at the Battle of Helena (Arkansas) as can be seen by the fact that Salomon rose to the rank of Major General by the end of the war.

1862: This afternoon, the corner-stone of the new Orphan Asylum, which is supported by the Hebrew Benevolent Society of New York City was laid at the corner of Seventy-seventh-street and Third-avenue. Benjamin J. Hart, the President of the Society, addressed the crowd as did Rabbis Raphall and Adler.

1865(10th of Tishrei, 5626): Yom Kippur

1865(10th of Tishrei, 5626): Samuel David Luzzatto an Italian Jewish scholar, poet, and a member of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement passed away Born in 1800 at Trieste, he was also known by his Hebrew acronym, Shadal. While still a boy he entered the Talmud Torah of his native city, where besides Talmud, in which he was taught by Abraham Eliezer ha-Levi, chief rabbi of Trieste and a distinguished pilpulist, he studied ancient and modern languages and science under Mordechai de Cologna, Leon Vita Saraval, and Raphael Baruch Segré, whose son-in-law he later became. He studied the Hebrew language also at home, with his father, who, though a turner by trade, was an eminent Talmudist.

1867(1st of Tishrei, 5628): Rosh Hashanah

1873(9th of Tishrei, 5634): Erev Yom Kippur

1873: An article published today entitled “The Jewish Fast of Yom Kippur” reported that “at sundown this evening the Jewish nation enters upon the celebration of the solemn fast known as Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement, the most important of the numerous religious observances of the ancient faith.” According to the article “the Israelitish community” has become lax in its observance of other rituals but all are united in observing this holiday including the twenty-four fast when they abstain from “all manner of food and drink.”

1875(1st of Tishrei, 5636): Rosh Hashanah

1877(23rd of Tishrei, 5638): Simchat Torah

1877: It was reported today that Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli) had convinced Queen Victoria to break her promised to inaugurate the Town Hall at Manchester because he was angry at the voters of Manchester for having rejected his candidate for Parliament and voting for Jacob Bright instead. The World, an English paper described this are part of the “unholy influence of a Hebrew minster.” Others have risen to Beaconsfield’s defense contending that the decision was a symptom of the Queen’s desire to remain in seclusion and point to the fact that she only agreed to open “the season” in London because Disraeli urged her to do so. Disraeli may be a Jew by birth, but he “is English to the roots of his hair” - English in training, in habits in sentiment in ambition.” To his defenders, “Lord Beaconsfield is the greatest state man of his age. He is a triton among minnows, and every man who has ever wielded a pen for bread ought to be proud of this chief of the Brotherhood of Literature.

1878(3rd of Tishrei, 5639):Tzom Gedaliah

1882: Birthdate of Hans Geiger. The world knows him as the man who invented the Geiger counter. Jews remember as the German scientist who joined the Nazi party and betrayed Jewish colleagues who had worked with him.

1883: The “first Jewish house of worship…a brick structure that served as both Hebrew school and synagogue” was dedicated today in Salt Lake City, Utah.

1892(9th of Tishrei, 5653): Erev Yom Kippur

1892(9th of Tishrei, 5653): Hector-Jonathan Crémieux passed away. Born in 1828, he was a French librettist and playwright. His best-known work is his collaboration with Ludovic Halévy for Jacques Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers, known in English as Orpheus in the Underworld

1903(9th of Tishrei, 5664): Erev Yom Kippur

1904(21st of Tishrei, 5665): Hoshanah Rabah

1908: Birthdate of violinist David Oistrakh. David Fiodorovich Oistrakh was a Jewish Soviet violinist who made many recordings, and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works. He passed away in 1974

1909: Both Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis in Jerusalem pledge to work hand in hand in the interest of the entire Jewish community. Together they found a relief committee to benefit Jewish families whose heads will be called to military service.

1911: Birthdate of writer and humanitarian Ruth Gruber, who led a 1944 American mission to save 1,000 WWII refugees.

1911: In Berlin, a group of Jewish students visit the Turkish Ambassador and volunteer for service in the Turkish Army, while a group of Zionist doctors consider the advisability of organizing a Jewish Sanitary Corps for Turkish field forces.

1914(10th of Tishrei, 5675): Yom Kippur

1914: An article published today in the Evening Public Ledger entitled “Day of Atonement the World Over” reported that the holy day was being observed in the synagogues of Philadelphia, PA as well as on the European battlefield. According to the Ledger, there are over 400,000 Jewish soldiers fighting in the armies of the various belligerents and the commanders of the various armies have given the Jews permission to set aside their guns to observe “Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement also” known as Yom Hadin.

1917: Birthdate of famed big band drummer Buddy Rich.

1917: Birthdate of Irving B. Kahn. Kahn is the inventor of the teleprompter and headed the
TelePrompTer Company. In the mid 50's, Kahn designed and built what was perhaps the first remotely controlled, multi-image, rear projection system in the world for the U.S. Army’s facility in Huntsville, Ala., to make persuasive presentations to visiting Congressmen. With five images (one large, 3¼ by 4 slide or film image in the center flanked smaller slides at each side) and random access it could search and select among 500 slides. TelePrompTer also made many technological contributions to the early cable TV industry. In 1961, Kahn and Hub Schlafley demonstrated Key TV, an early pay TV concept, by showing the second Patterson vs. Johansson heavyweight fight, essentially giving birth to pay-per-view.

1923: Outfielder Moses Solomon made his major league debut with New York Giants.

1924(2nd of Tishrei, 5685): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

1926(22nd of Tishrei, 5687): Shemini Atzeret

1928: Birthdate of Elie Wiesel. This author and Nobel Prize winner is too well known to require any further comment.

1933(10th of Tishrei, 5694): Yom Kippur

1933: The German government submitted a letter to the Council of the League of Nations claiming that the rights of the Jews living in Upper Silesia had been restored. The letter had been written after the League had responded to the Bernheim Petition which claimed that the Jews were being discriminated against in violation of the German-Polish Convention of 1922. The American Jewish Congress and the Comité des Délégations Juives had vigorously supported Franz Bernheim in his claim and at this juncture the newly empowered Nazi government was not ready to thumb its nose at the League of Nations.

1935(3rd of Tishrei, 5696): Tzom Gedaliah

1935: George Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" premiered in Boston.

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the death in London of Earl Peel, the Chairman of the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine, at the age of 71. Earl Peel properly appreciated the Jewish part and effort in the development of Palestine. The entire Hebrew press, paid a warm tribute to Lord Peel, who frequently expressed his appreciation of the excellent development work the Jewish community was performing in Palestine

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Arab press accused the Post and other Jewish organizations of exploiting the murder by of Lewis Andrews, the much-respected district commissioner for Galilee and of his driver, on the steps of the Anglican Church in Nazareth, for the strong criticism of Arab terror and the society which condones such crimes.

1938: Hitler convinced Chamberlain and Daladier that he wanted to protect German rights in the Sudetenland by annexing it, (hence, the Munich Agreement) and that he had no further demands. Chamberlain gave in, claiming that by doing so he had achieved peace "in our time".

1938: As the Detroit Tigers play their last home game of the season, Hank Greenberg fails to hit a home run and his hopes for breaking Ruth’s record of sixty for the season begin to fade.

1938, Eleanor Rathbone denounced the just-publicized Munich Accords. She pressured the parliament to aid the Czechs and grant entry for dissident Germans, Austrians and Jews. In late 1938 she set up the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees to take up individual cases from Spain, Czechoslovakia and Germany. During World War II she regularly chastised Osbert Peake, undersecretary at the Home Office, and in 1942 pressured the government to publicize the evidence of Holocaust.

1941(9th of Tishrei, 5702): Erev Yom Kippur

1941: The two day massacre of the Jews of Kiev at Babi Yar came to an end. “The killing rate, almost 35,000 in two days, was unequaled even by the death factories of Treblinka and Auschwitz.” The intent was to wipe out the entire Jewish community in Kiev in what has been described as “the largest single massacre” during the Holocaust. The victims were as varied as little Velvele Valentin Pinkert and 70 year old Yakov-Pinhas Zindelivich, who was dragged out of his apartment by one of his Ukrainian neighbors and turned over to Nazis. According to Sir Martin Gilbert, the old man, wrapped in his prayer shawl was driven to BabiYar, ‘praying all the way’. After the slaughter, the Nazis and their collaborators collapsed the walls of the ravine, turning it into a mass grave. The Jews who had not died from gunfire were buried alive.[There is no way that this brief entry can do justice to evil of the crime]

1941: Opening of the Battle of Moscow. This clash of the Nazi and Red armies would last for five months. If the Nazis had been successful, and in the opening stages it looked as if they would the Soviet capital, it might well have meant the end of meaningful Soviet resistance in Europe. As the two armies slammed against each other through the Russian Winter, the fate of European Jewry hung in the balance. Even if the Soviets had remained in the war, the total victims of the Holocaust would have been closer to nine or twelve million and not the six million who actually perished.

1942: SS exterminates 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz Poland in 6 week period

1942: New construction at the Treblinka death camp greatly increases its gas-chamber capacity.
1942: Polish Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto begin the construction of bunkers for a military defense. By January of 1943, they will have constructed more than 600 fortified bunkers.

1943: Franz Oppenheimer passes away in Los Angeles at the age of 79. He was a German sociologist and political economist, who also studied in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state. From 1934 to 1935, Oppenheimer taught in Palestine. In 1936 he was appointed an honorary member of the American Sociological Association. From 1938 onwards, he taught at the University of Kobe in Japan. After he emigrated to the United States (1942), he became a founding member of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

1943: The Krupp arms factory at Mariupol, Ukraine, is dismantled and relocated west to Fünfteichen, Silesia, Poland, where it is staffed by Jewish slave laborers.

1943: Between now and April of 1944, Jewish slave laborers exhume at least 68,000 corpses of murdered Jews and Soviet POWs at the Ponary, Lithuania, killing ground, near Vilna.

1944: Jewish deportations from Slovakia resume. Between now and March 31, 13,500 were deported and another 5,000 were imprisoned locally.

1945(23rd of Tishrei, 5706): Simchat Torah

1945: Hank Greenberg's final day home run won the pennant for the Tigers.

1946: Twenty-two top Nazi leaders were found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg.

1947(16th of Tishrei, 5708): Second Day of Sukkoth

1947: The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time. Both teams had large followings among the Jewish population. How did those who were not supposed to use electricity cope with the temptation on the second day of yontiff? How many Reform Jews decided to stay home and observe a second of Sukkoth? So far, these questions remain unanswered which means there is at least one topic left for a doctorial thesis in Jewish studies.

1947: Several Arab leaders included Mohammad Nima Hawari, a lawyer who founded the firs and largest of the paramilitary Arab youth organizations in Palestine, expressed their opposition to the UNSCOP plan and the creation of a Jewish state. They said that any such move would result in a violent reaction on the part of the Arabs in Palestine. They said that any attempt to create a Jewish state would be met a Pan-Arab Army led by a modern day Saladin who lead them to victory as had happened in the days of the Crusaders.

1951(29th of Elul, 5711): Erev Rosh Hashanah

1951(29th of Elul, 5711): As day gives way to night, and Jews begin to usher in 5712, President Chaim Weizmann and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion each issued New Year’s messages expressing their hopes for peace for the world in general and for the Jewish people and Israel in particular. Both also cited the burden Israel faced as it moved to accept an ever growing tide of immigrants. Ben Gurion clearly stated the challenge when he said, “Great and hard are the problems of integration…we shall support this burden fully aware that it is for our generation to discharge this primary task.” He expressed the hope that “the Jewish people throughout the world will devotedly join in this historic enterprise.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from Moscow that Minister Samuel Eliashiv handed a note to the Soviet Government on the possibility of obtaining reparations from East Germany.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that a guard, Shimon Badini, was killed and a farmer badly wounded by infiltrators from Jordan who stole from Jewish villages in the Jerusalem Corridor, during the Yom Kippur fast.

1954: The U.S.S. Nautilus, an atomic submarine, was launched by the United States Navy. The Nautilus was the first atomic powered vessel launched by the United States. It was also the progenitor of what would become America's major "ace-in-the-hole" during the Cold War - the fleet of atomic powered submarines armed with ballistic missiles. Admiral Hyman Rickover was the father and driving force behind the sub fleet.

1956: French and Israeli officials met in Paris where the French seek to induce the Israelis in being part of the Anglo-French plans to take control of the Suez Canal away from Egypt’s Nasser.

1960(9th of Tishrei, 5721): Erev Yom Kippur

1972(22nd of Tishrei, 5733): Shemini Atzeret

1972(22nd of Tishrei, 5733): Samuel Norton “Sam” Gerson passed away in Philadelphia. Gerson won the Silver Medal for freestyle wrestling as a member of the United States 1920 Summer Olympic Team. He was one of the founder of the Philadelphia Maccabi Sports Club.

1985(15th of Tishrei, 5746): Sukkoth

1986: Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician, disappeared before his revelations about Israel’s atomic program at Dimona were published in the Sunday Times of London.

1988 (19th of Tishrei, 5749): Rabbi Joachim Prinz passed away. Born in Germany, Prinz was a rabbi in Berlin from 1926 through 1937. He was an early opponent of the Nazis and urged the Jews to leave the country. He left in 1937 for the United States where he became a leader of the Reform Movement and a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was a speaker at the 1963 March on Washington. He was 86 at the time of his death.

1989(1st of Tishrei, 5750): Rosh Hashanah, 5750

1991(22nd of Tishrei, 5752): Shemini Atzeret

1991(22nd of Tishrei, 5752): Heavy-weight boxer King Levinsky passed away. Levinksky, who was born in Chicago in 1910 was known by his given name – Harris Krakow – and another nickname – “Kingfish” Levinksy. Although he never fought for the heavyweight championship, he fought a number of noted heavyweights including his co-religionist, Max Baer, Jack Dempsy, Joe Louis and Primo Carnera.

1994(25th of Tishrei, 5755): French microbiologist Andre Micael Lwoff passed away. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1965.

1998(10th of Tishrei, 5759): Yom Kippur

1998: On Yom Kippur, Salem Rajab al-Sarsour, 29 year old Palestinian terrorist made a grenade attack on an army post in Hebron, wounding 14 Israeli soldiers and 8 Palestinian passers-by.

2000(1st of Tishrei, 5761): Rosh Hashanah

2001: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including War In A Time Of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals by David Halberstam, Family Business::Selected Letters Between a Father and Son by Allen Ginsberg and Louis Ginsberg and Long Time No See by Susan Isaacs.

2002: France 2, the French television channel, broadcasts coverage of the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura, a Palestinian boy whose televised death would become an iconic image of Israeli brutality and a rallying cry across the Middle East. The story consisted of 55 seconds of edit footage taken at the Netzarim Junction. The footage was filmed by a local Palestinian cameraman. The voice over describing this example of Israeli brutality was provided Charles Enderlin. Unfortunately, Enderlin was not present when the film was shot and just repeated what he had been told by the Arabs. A subsequent Israeli military probe concluded that it was quite possible that the youngster was killed by Palestinian gunmen. This was followed by a German television documentary that reported the child had died from Palestinian bullets and a June, 2003 Atlantic Monthly story that reached the same conclusion. Despite calls that Enderlin be dismissed for perpetrating a journalistic hoax, Arab propagandist still use the video clip despite all evidence that that al-Dura was killed by his own people.

2003: A closely watched legal dispute over the ownership of works of art once looted by the Nazis reached the Supreme Court as the justices accepted an appeal by Austria and one of its state art museums on whether American courts have jurisdiction to resolve such cases. An 87-year-old California woman, the niece and heir of a prominent art collector, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled Vienna in 1938 and died shortly after the end of World War II, has spent decades trying to get back the remains of the collection he left behind. At issue are six paintings by Gustav Klimt, including two portraits of Mr. Bloch-Bauer's wife, Adele. The six paintings, now in the Austrian Gallery in Vienna, are worth more than $100 million. Austria maintains that the paintings were left to the state and its museums under the will of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925, and that the Nazis had illegitimate possession of them during the war does not change the fact that they properly belong to Austria now. The niece, Maria V. Altmann, disputes that interpretation, maintaining that her aunt's preferences about the eventual disposition of the paintings never achieved the status of a formal bequest to the government. Ms. Altmann filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Los Angeles three years ago. There has not yet been a trial to sort out the competing interpretations, and the Supreme Court will not decide the merits of the case. Rather, the question for the justices is whether the case can proceed at all under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 27-year-old federal law that defines the terms for suing foreign governments in the federal courts. Although the issue is a technical one, it could be decisive in resolving a variety of cases involving the behavior of foreign governments and their agencies in World War II. Such cases have been proliferating. In June, for example, the federal appeals court in New York reinstated a suit by Holocaust survivors and their heirs against the French national railroad, which transported tens of thousands of Jews and others to the Nazi death camps. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court last month. Also in June, the federal appeals court here dismissed a suit against Japan, brought on behalf of 15 women from other Asian countries who had been subjected to torture and sexual slavery in World War II. The status of two paintings by another Austrian painter, Egon Schiele, remains in dispute in New York, where they were claimed by two American families after they were lent by an Austrian foundation to the Museum of Modern Art in 1997. The Nazis are believed to have seized 600,000 important works of art, with 100,000 still missing. The location of the Klimt paintings has not been in doubt. Only their ownership has been disputed since the late 1940's, when Ms. Altmann and the other heirs tried and failed to get export permits to take them out of Austria. Several years ago, the Austrian government returned $1 million worth of porcelain and Klimt drawings to the family, but refused to yield on the paintings. Ms. Altmann, an Austrian native who settled in California after the war and became an American citizen, turned to the federal courts after learning that a suit in the Austrian courts, where filing fees are based on a percentage of the amount in controversy, would cost nearly $2 million. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides exceptions to the general rule that foreign governments are immune from suit. One exception authorizes suits ''in which rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue'' in connection with ''commercial activity.'' The question for the Supreme Court is whether that exception, which became official United States policy in 1952 and was not codified until 1976, can be applied retroactively to conduct that took place before 1952. So the issue in this case, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, No. 03-13, obviously encompasses foreign governments' immunity from suit for the entire World War II era. Both the Federal District Court in Los Angeles and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, refused Austria's request to dismiss the suit, both on retroactivity grounds and on other grounds that the justices chose not to review. The federal government entered the case late in the lower court proceedings, unsuccessfully urging the Ninth Circuit to reconsider letting the case proceed. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson has not yet filed a brief presenting the government's views to the Supreme Court, but undoubtedly will do so now that the justices have accepted the case. The federal government's general position is that diplomacy, not litigation, should be used to resolve disputes growing out of the Holocaust.

2004: Ross Mark Kagan a former director of independent motion pictures and the son of “a close knit Jewish family” from Highland Park, Illinois, was arrested and charged with multiple felonies connected with a counterfeit jewelry ring.

2005: Haaretz reported that “the Vatican library has loaned the Israel Museum four illuminated Jewish manuscripts from the 13th and 15th centuries, which will be on exhibit to the public for the next four months. The manuscripts include a 15th-century manuscript of Maimonides' Mishne Torah, a 15th-century manuscript of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher's Arba'ah Turim, a 13th-century manuscript of the Bible, and a 13th-century book of Psalms. The most famous of the manuscripts on loan is the copy of Maimonides' famous legal composition, the Mishne Torah. The manuscript is not complete and contains only the prolegomenon and the first five books of the 14-part composition, also known as Ha-Yad Ha-Hazaka (the Strong Hand). The second manuscript, of the Arba'ah Turim (Four Rows), is a well-known codex of Jewish Law composed by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, which is divided into four parts, each dealing with a different aspect of the daily life of a devout Jew. The third item is a13th-century Biblical manuscript which is among the earliest to be found in Italy, and it survived almost in its entirety. The scribe and the vocalizer (nakdan) of the manuscript were members of the famous Anav family of Rome's ancient Jewish community, which produced a line of authors, poets and rabbis. The fourth item in the exhibit is a Psalter from the 13th century. The book has two other parts to it, which are in the Vatican's collection in Rome.” The Vatican’s willingness to share these treasures as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the fouding of the Israel Museum is further evidence of the long term improvement in relations between Papal Heirarchy and the Jewish state.

2005: USA Today listed the Brenham kehilla as one of "10 great places to share history of the Jewish faith."

2005: The Washington Post reported that Leo Sternbach, the inventor of a revolutionary new class of tranquilizers that included Valium, one of the first blockbuster "lifestyle" drugs, has died at his home in North Carolina. He was 97. Named one of the 25 most influential Americans of the 20th century by U.S. News & World Report, Sternbach's credits include 241 patents, 122 publications, honorary degrees and other awards.

2006(8th of Tishrei, 5767): The Sabbath of the Return – Shabbat Shuvah.

2007: As part of Chol Hamoed Sukkoth, Temple Judah sponsors a Sukkah Hop.

2007: An exhibition celebrating 100th anniversary of the birth of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo comes to an end in Cayoacan.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured reviews of the following books about Jewish topics or by Jewish authors: Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm which asks the question, “How did two elderly Jewish writers living in occupied France survive the Nazis?” and Exit Ghost by Phillip Roth, featuring Roth’s alter ego, the 71 old Nathan Zuckerman

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of the following books about Jewish topics or by Jewish authors: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naimoi Klein in which the Jewish reporter “tracks 50 years of global capitalism, spotting ruthless opportunism at every turn.” The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? in which author Francisco Goldman whose father is Jewish and mother is from Guatemala “investigates the real life killing of a Roman Catholic bishop.” Ike: An American Hero by Michael Korda, part of the famous Hungarian born, British film making family. Stanley The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Jim Teal that includes the story of the “rescue of Emin Pasha a.k.a. Eduard Schnitzer, the Silesian born German Jew whose roguish life reads more like a novel than anything else.

2007: Israeli chess player Boris Gelfand tied former chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia for second place with a masterful display of cunning in the world chess championship in Mexico. Indian national Vishwanathan Anand emerged the victor of the grueling competition.

2007: New York Met Shawn Green plays his last game.

2008(1 Tishrei, 5769): First Day Rosh Hashanah.

2008(1st of Tishrei) 5769): Sephardic Jews living in northern Brazil's Amazon region have additional reason to celebrate the New Year because of the publication of the first Rosh Hashanah Machzor (New Year prayer-book) which incorporates their unique liturgy and customs. The Machzor will benefit other Portuguese-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities as well as Bnai Anousim (people whose ancestors were compelled to convert to Catholicism at the time of the Inquisition, whom historians refer to as "Marranos") throughout Brazil and Portugal. The Machzor, called Ner Rosh Hashanah, was prepared and edited by Rabbi Moyses Elmescany and Cantor David Salgado, and includes the traditional Hebrew text of the Jewish New Year prayer services, together with both a transliteration and translation into Portuguese. It was published with the support and assistance of Shavei Israel a Jerusalem-based group that assists small Jewish communities, as well as "lost Jews," those with Jewish roots seeking to return to the Jewish people."This Machzor is really the first of its kind," said Salgado, who moved to Israel from northern Brazil together with his wife and children. "It will enable Portuguese-speaking Jews who use Nusach Sepharadi (the Sephardic rite) to better recite and understand the meaning and significance of the New Year prayers." Salgado noted that the Machzor reflects the texts and customs used by Moroccan Jewish communities, but with a special twist. Until today, Brazil's Jews of the Amazon are still using the same Nusach from Morocco in the 19th century."This Nusach is the one that was brought to Brazil's Amazon region by the first Moroccan Jewish immigrants, who arrived there nearly two centuries ago," he said. "And until today, Brazil's Jews of the Amazon are still using the same rite and following the same customs as they were practiced in Morocco in the 19th century." "We are happy to partner with Rabbi Elmescany and Chazan Salgado to facilitate the publication of this special Machzor for Rosh Hashanah," said Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund, adding, "We hope that it will help to preserve the unique Jewish practices and rituals of Brazil's Amazon area, as well as strengthen Portuguese-speaking Jewish communities worldwide." In its initial run, the Machzor was published primarily for the use of the Jewish communities of Belem and Manaus in Brazil, which are home to 450 families and 220 families respectively. But both Freund and Salgado say they hope that other Portuguese-speaking Sephardic communities will benefit from it as well.

2009: The Center for Jewish History presents Nostalgia by Headless Horse Dance, a dance performance choreographed by Robin Rapoport.

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Hadassah book club discusses Sotah by Naomi Ragan.

2009: Final day for making submissions to The D.C. Jewish Community Center’s annual writing contest being held in conjunction with the upcoming Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, being held in October. . As in years past, the contest's theme is keyed to the festival's Opening Night, which this year will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Philip Roth's coming-of-age classic, Goodbye, Columbus. Jewish tradition states that 13 is the age at which young people come of age, but the question being posed by the contest is what age do you believe to be your true turning point, that one transformative moment?

2009: Stuart E. Weisberg discusses and signs his new biography, Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, at Lambda Rising Bookstore, in Washington, D.C.

2010(22nd of Tishrei, 5771): Shemini Atzeret

2011: On the secular calendar, today marks the 70th anniversary of the second and final day of the two day slaughter at Babi Yar which ended on September 30., 1941.

2011(2nd of Tishrei, 5772): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
שנה טובה, כתיבה וחתימה טובה.


Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

Copyright; September, 2011; Mitchell A. Levin