This Day, January 1, In Jewish History

January 1 In Jewish History

630: Prophet Muhammad sets out toward Mecca with the army that will capture it bloodlessly. At first Mohammed “had hoped to find is main supporters among the Jewish tribes” of Arabia. This can be seen in his early adoption of certain laws regarding fasting and facing Jerusalem during prayer. When the Jews refused to accept him as the final line of prophets that had included Abraham and Moses, he turned against the Jews “in a cruel war of extermination.” Mohammed would die two years after the conquest of Mecca but his legacy lives on to this very day.

1438: Albert II of Habsburg is crowned King of Hungary. Albert confirmed the privilegium of Béla IV. In 1251 Béla had granted a privilgium to his Jewish subjects which was essentially the same as that granted by Duke Frederick II the Quarrelsome to the Austrian Jews in 1244, but which Béla modified to suit the conditions of Hungary.

1430: The Jews of Sicily were no longer required to attend “conversionist services.”

1515: King Francis I succeeds to the French throne. Francis did not have any Jewish subjects since they had been expelled by Charles V at the end of the 14th century and they would not return until 1675 when Louis XIV would grant permission to the Jews living in Alsace and Lorraine, his two newly acquired provinces, to remain in their ancestral homes.

1515: Jews were expelled from Laibach, Austria.

1527: Croatian nobles elect Ferdinand I of Austria as king of Croatia in the Parliament on Cetin. There were no Croatian Jews in attendance since the Jews had been expelled and there was no record of any Jews living in Croatia after 1526.

1549(Sh'vat, 5309): Elia Levita also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Eliahu Bakhur ("Eliahu the Bachelor") a Renaissance-period Hebrew grammarian, poet and one of the first writers in the Yiddish language passed away. Born in 1469, he “was the author of the Bovo-Bukh the most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is ‘generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish.’”[

1577: Today, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services.

1578: Today, Pope Gregory XIII signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity.

1581: Today, Pope Gregory XIII ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

1594: Rodrigo Lopez, a Marrano who was serving as physician to Queen Elizabeth, was arrested on charges of trying to poison the English Monarch

1798: The first Jewish censor was appointed by the Russian government to censor all Hebrew books printed in Russia or imported from other countries. As you can see from the next comment about life under Communism, the Czars and the Commissars agreed on the need to censor Jewish books. However, some times, the outcome could be a bit on comical side. “Yosef Mendelovitch tells that when he was being transferred from one Russian prison to another, he was in temporary possession of his Chumash that had been confiscated when he was first imprisoned. He would have to give it up again upon arrival at the new prison. Also in his possession was a collection of selected speeches by Brezhnev translated into Yiddish. This book was officially passed by the censor (which is why I'm relating this story). He separated content from covers in both books, which happened to be of the same size, got rid of the speeches, and pasted (with well-chewed bread) the Chumash into the censor-approved cover. His Chumash passed cursory inspection at his new prison and was his unfailing companion during his incarceration.”

1802: In a letter written to the Danbury, CT Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson coined the metaphor, "a wall of separation between Church and State." Many think this term originated in 1947, when the "wall of separation" concept gained acceptance as a constitutional guideline. It obviously dates back to the Founding Fathers. Contrary to the nonsense being passed around by various demagogues today, separation of Church and State was a basic concept in the founding of the United States. The assault on Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” could be styled as an attempt by modern day radicals to undo the work of the American Revolution.

1804: As a result of the slave revolt of Toussaint L’Ouverture French rule ends in Haiti. Haiti becomes the first black republic and first country independent in the West Indies. “Unfortunately, “during the slave revolt, much of the Jewish community was murdered or expelled from Haiti. A few years later, many Polish Jews arrived in Haiti due to civil strife in Poland.”

1808: Several restrictions on Jewish ownership of land went into effect in Russia.

1811: Today Lübeck was annexed to France. This meant an end to all anti-Jewish discrimination including an abolition of the special taxes of the "Schutzjuden.” This change brought an influx of Jews who entered the town from surrounding areas including Moisling. All this would come to an end when the French left and the Germans again took control.

1834: Gustav Schwabe, a Jewish native of Hamburg whose family was forced to convert when he was 6 years old, became a partner at Boustead and Company was renamed Boustead, Schwabe and Company.

1834: Birthdate of Ludovic Halévy, a member of the famed Halevy clan whose artistic and social activities spanned at least three centuries starting in 1760. Halevy was prominent in the musical theatre of 19th century France. One of his most famous works was the libretto for the opera “Carmen.” Halevy is an example of the fate of European Jews. His father had converted in order to marry the daughter of the architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas and this enabled him in 1831 to become assistant professor of French literature at the Ecole Polytechnique, where there was some discrimination against Jews.

1837: Earthquake in the Tzfat-Tiberias area of Eretz Israel killed between two thousand and four thousand people, mostly Jews. Many monuments and archaeological sites were damaged. The quake is also called The Galilee Earthquake of 1937 and the Safed Earthquake.

1854: Solomon Nunes Carvalho, a South Carolina native of Portuguese and Sephardic Jewish descent, who had the good or bad fortune to join John C. Fremont's 1853-54 mapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains, served a dessert of blanc mange “to the ‘satisfaction and astonishment of the whole party,’ a fitting climax to a meal of horse soup and horse steaks fried in buffalo tallow.”

1854(1st of Tevet, 5614): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1858: French author Mario Uchard exchanges New Year's greetings with the famed Franco-Jewish actress Rachel Félix in which the latter seemed to be bidding Uchard "an eternal adiu. However, her doctor assured Uchard that "she would live some days longer.

[Editor’s Note: The following is not an error. There were two different letters.]

1859: The New York Times published a copy of the letter “The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York” had sent to President James Buchanan in November of 1858 concerning the Mortara Case. Their letter included a reference to the letter sent by The London Committee of Deputies of British Jews “to their brethren in the United States” seeking their support in having the boy who was kidnapped in Bologna returned to his family. The letter informed the President of the support being offered by several European nations and of plans to hold a public meeting to enlist public support in the United States. The committee reminded President Buchanan of the prompt action taken by President Van Buren in 1840 when he was asked to intervene to aid the persecuted Jews of Damascus and expressed the hope that he would do the same.

1859: The New York Times published a copy of the letter The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York had sent to President James Buchanan in December of 1858 which described a public meeting held on December 4 in which Jews and non-Jews gathered to demand the return of Edgardo Mortara to his parents. Those attending the meeting also petitioned the President to join with the several European nations who were protesting the kidnapping of the youngster by representatives of the Pope.

1863: Edward Rosewater, a member of the United States Telegraph Corps serving at the White House telegraph office, was responsible sending out President Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” today. Rosewater was born to a Jewish family in Bohemia and moved to the United States in 1854

1863: During the Civil War, Confederate forces recaptured Galveston, Texas with assistance from Rosanna Dyer Osterman. As recounted in Jewish Women in America: An Historical
Encyclopedia, Rosanna Dyer Osterman, a native of Germany, was living in Galveston, Texas, in 1862 when Union forces captured the city. She had come to Texas in 1838 to help her husband run his mercantile business. Eventually, she became a leading member of the Jewish community, helping to bring the first rabbi to Texas in 1852. When the Civil War broke out, Osterman, by then a widow, remained in Galveston. While many others left for the mainland, she stayed to nurse the sick and wounded, turning her home into a hospital. After the city was captured by Northern troops, she provided military information to Confederate officers in Houston. This information helped them to successfully recapture Galveston on January 1, 1863. Just three years later, Osterman was killed in a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi River. In her will, she left her considerable fortune, over $200,000, to a host of Jewish and benevolent institutions. Gifts went to Jewish hospitals in New York, New Orleans, and Cincinnati, and enabled the establishment of a Hebrew Benevolent Society in Galveston, which cared for poor and sick people of all faiths. Osterman's bequests also funded synagogues in Houston and Galveston, a Home for Widows and Orphans and a Sailors’ Home in Galveston, and a Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia. In an obituary, the Galveston News lauded Osterman for her "unselfish devotion to the suffering and the sick" and said that "the history of Rosanna Osterman is more eloquently written in the untold charities that have been dispensed by her liberal hands than any eulogy man can bestow."

1864: Birthdate of Alfred Stieglitz considered by some to be “the father of modern photography.”

1867: Birthdate of Lew Fields. This New York native was part of the Weber and Fields one of the most successful vaudeville acts of their time. When the act split up, Fields became one of the most influential producers in New York. He was the father of songwriter Dorothy Fields who enjoyed a successful Broadway career in her own right.

1867: Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, presided over the first Jewish wedding in Atlanta, which joined Emilie Baer to Abraham Rosenfeld in the holy bonds of matrimony. He used the occasion to encourage the creation of a congregation to replace the short-lived one begun in 1862. The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation received a charter four months later and began constructing a synagogue in 1875.

1869: Birthdate of Milton J. Rosenau. Rosenau played a crucial role in the long, contentious campaign to make milk supplies pure and safe in the United States. As researcher, health official, and educator, Rosenau put medical science to work in the service of preventive medicine and public health. The Philadelphia native received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1889. In 1890, he joined the United States Marine Hospital Service (MHS). He served as quarantine officer in San Francisco from 1895-1898 and in Cuba in 1898. During 1899-1909, he directed the MHS Hygienic Laboratory, transforming a one-person operation into a bustling institution with divisions in bacteriology, chemistry, pathology, pharmacology, zoology, and biology. Rosenau conducted his most important medical research during his 10 years at the Hygienic Laboratory, publishing many articles and books, including The Milk Question (1912) and Preventive Medicine and Hygiene (1913), which quickly became the most influential textbook on the subject. From early in his career, campaigns to reduce milkborne diseases occupied Rosenau's attention. As he stated in his textbook, "Next to water purification, pasteurization is the most important single preventive measure in the field of sanitation." A Public Health Service study in 1909 reported that 500 outbreaks of milkborne diseases had occurred during 1880-1907. By 1900, increasing numbers of children drank pasteurized milk, but raw milk remained the norm partly because the high-temperature process then in use imparted a "cooked milk" taste. In 1906, Rosenau established that low temperature, slow pasteurization (140 F [60 C] for 20 minutes) killed pathogens without spoiling the taste, thus eliminating a key obstacle to public acceptance of pasteurized milk. However, securing a safe milk supply nationwide took another generation. By 1936, pasteurized, certified milk was the standard in most large cities, although over half of all milk in the United States was still consumed raw. In 1913, Rosenau became a Harvard University Medical School professor and a co-founder of the Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology School for Health Officers. When Harvard established a school of public health in 1922, Rosenau directed its epidemiology program until 1935. In 1936, he moved to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to help establish its public health school (1940), where he served as dean until his death in 1946. Rosenau was a dedicated teacher and advocate for improved training in preventive medicine, but he is better remembered for his textbook than his pioneering epidemiologic work. This is as he expected: "We find monuments erected to heroes who have won wars, but we find none commemorating anyone's preventing a war. The same is true with epidemics." As can be seen from his membership on the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Committee, Rosenau was active in the affairs of the Jewish Community in the United States.

1874: Frederick de Sola Mendes assumed his duties as of Rabbi at Shaaray Tefillah congregation (later known as the West End Synagogue) in New York City.

1874: As part of the New Year’s Day celebration, 200 children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum partook of an excellent dinner. Afterwards, they marched to the homes of Meyer Stern and Mrs. Max Herzog, President of the Ladies’ Sewing Society, where they paid there respects.

1875: In New York, Hirsch & Mayer, a firm dealing in woolen goods, was reported “to have a stock of goods wholly paid for” and to be owed $30,000. [The report would turn out to be part of a fraud.]

1876: In New York, Hirsch & Mayer was found to be insolvent. The insolvency touched off 20 civil suits and criminal charges aimed at Benjamin Mayer, a young, well-connected man, from a prominent Jewish New York family.

1878: Birthdate of Edwin Franko Goldman. Goldman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of David Henry and Selma Franko Goldman. His father died when Goldman was only nine. Golman's mother was a professional pianist was was part of the famous Franko Family. At the age of nine, Goldman studied cornet with George Weigand at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York. In 1892, after winning a scholarship, he attended the National Conservatory of Music, where he studied music theory and played trumpet in the Conservatory orchestra.In 1893 he became a professional trumpet player, performing in such organizations as the Metropolitan Opera House orchestra and with his uncle Nahan Franko, a famous trumpet player. Goldman soon founded the New York Military Band, which is known today as the famous Goldman Band. The band played in many summer band concerts throughout New York, especially The Green at the Columbia University and then The Mall in Central Park. They were also heard on many radio broadcasts. Goldman was known for his very congenial personality and dedication to music. He was very close to city officials and earned three honorary doctorates. Eventually in 1929, he founded the American Bandmasters Association and served as Second Honorary Life President after John Philip Sousa. In his lifetime, Goldman composed over 150 works. He was also the composer of many cornet solos and other short works for piano and orchestra. Goldman's works are known for their pleasant and catchy tunes, as well as their fine trios and solos. He also encouraged audiences to whistle/hum along to his marches. This has become a tradition with his most famous march "On the Mall".

1880: David Joël, brother of Manuel Joël, assumed his duties as professor of the Talmudic branches, with the title of "Seminarrabbiner", The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau

1882: Leon Pinsker anonymously published “Auto-Emancipation,” a pamphlet whose subtitle was Mahnruf an seine Stammgenossen, von einem russischen Jude (Warning to His Fellow People, from a Russian Jew) in which he urged the Jewish people to strive for independence and national consciousness.

1886: Birthdate of Clara Lemlich Shavelson who was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909. Later blacklisted from the industry for her union work, she became a member of the Communist Party and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff. Clara Lemlich Shavelson was already a confirmed radical when she arrived in New York City in 1905. Raised in a religious household in Ukraine, she had defied her parents to learn Russian, traded folk songs for volumes of Tolstoy, and borrowed revolutionary tracts from a sympathetic neighbor. In New York, she found work in a Lower East Side garment shop, and soon began organizing the workers. She quickly became an influential member of the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), where she protested the virtually all-male leadership's habit of ignoring female union members. In 1909, Lemlich burst onto a larger political stage when her speech in New York's Cooper Union Hall galvanized young, predominantly Jewish, working girls and set off what became known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Though the strike was only partially successful, the speech marked the beginning of Lemlich Shavelson's long career in political activism. Her next project was women's suffrage; she helped to found the Wage Earners League for Women's Suffrage, a group distinguished by its working-class membership at a time when most suffrage organizations were composed of more moderate middle-class members. Although Lemlich Shavelson's radicalism eventually cost her a paid organizing position with the suffrage league, she remained an outspoken activist, leading the kosher meat boycotts of 1917 and the New York City rent strikes of 1919. After her 1913 marriage and a move to Brooklyn, some of Shavelson's colleagues in the trade union movement felt that she had sold out to middle-class ideals by raising children in the suburbs. However, Shavelson redirected her energies without moderating her radicalism, joining the Communist Party in 1926, and founding the United Council of Working-Class Housewives and then, in 1929, the United Council of Working-Class Women (UCWW). The UCWW argued that consumption was integrally tied to production and that housewives, as consumers, could be an integral part of the class struggle. The Council led meat, milk, and bread boycotts, marched on Washington, and staged rent strikes and sit-ins, winning periodic victories that addressed some of the most pernicious threats to the economic survival of many families during the depression. In addition, Shavelson's insistence on the importance of women's labor in the home laid the groundwork for the later feminist movement's emphasis on gender politics and personal power relations within the family. After the Second World War, Shavelson became a peace activist, working as an organizer for the American League Against War and Fascism, which opposed nuclear weapons. She also worked for a time in a garment shop, and renewed her activism in the ILGWU, from which she finally retired in 1954. Although she is still hailed as a founder of that union, she was never granted a union pension. At age 81, Shavelson moved into the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, where she spent her time convincing the administrators to honor grape and lettuce boycotts, and organizing a union among the orderlies.

1892: Birthdate of Bertha Solomon, one of the first women’s rights activists in South Africa.

1892: The Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York opened. Millions of mostly eastern European Jews would pass through Ellis Island on their way to New York’s Lower East Side or other such urban locations.

1894: Birthdate of Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist for whom the hertz, the SI unit of frequency, is named. Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a Jewish family that had converted to Christianity.

1895: Birthdate of Nathaniel Shilkret, American composer and conductor. For many years he was "director of light music" for the Victor Talking Machine Company. His best-known popular composition was "The Lonesome Road", which has been recorded by more than one-hundred artists, including Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. He passed away in 1992.

1896: As of this date, there were 43, 658 Jews living in Minsk. There were forty synagogues along with numerous less formal “houses of prayer.” The city boasted a large number of Yeshivot including Blumke’s Yeshivah, the Little Yeshivah and the Yeshivah at the Synagogue of the Water Carriers. At this time Minsk was also home to a Jewish Trade School that offered training for locksmiths and carpenters as well as providing instruction in Hebrew and Religion. The Jewish hospital had accommodations for 70 patients and the Jewish poorhouse had beds for 80 indigent patrons.

1899: Birthdate of Elazar Menachem Man Shach, (Eliezer Schach) the Lithuanian born Haredi rabbi who became a leader in Bnei Brak.

1903: Herzl begins a trip to Elach, Austira, his home town.

1904: Birthdate of Louis Cohen a New York mobster who murdered labor racketeer "Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan and was an associate of labor racketeer Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.

1906: During the dispute about establishing a temporary Jewish homeland in a place other than Palestine, Winston Churchill wrote to his constituent Dr. Joseph Dulberg, leader of the Manchester Jewish community, describing the difficulties in establishing “a self-governing Jewish colony in British East Africa” not the least of which was the division between the Territorialists and the “Palestine or bust” faction.

1909(8th of Tevet, 5669): Louis A. Heinsheimer passed away. Born in 1859, he was a partner in the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. from 1894 to 1909. Heinsheimer was the nephew of one of the Firm's founders, Solomon Loeb. Heinsheimer's estate in Far Rockaway, New York, was called Breezy Point (not to be confused with the Breezy Point neighborhood on the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula) and stood until 1987. Heinsheimer's mansion was owned and used for several years by the Maimonides Institute for Exceptional Children until it burned down. The mansion site is now a part of Bayswater Point State Park.

1909: Birthdate of Barry Goldwater, Republican Senator from Arizona and godfather to what has become the dominate right wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater was not Jewish. His father was Jewish but he raised his son as an Episcopalian for the obvious advantages it brought to him. However, some of Goldwater’s critics did not let him forget his Jewish origins. When he ran for President, his running-mate was William Miller, a Catholic member of the House of Representatives. Bigots referred to the ticket as the Arizona Israelite and his fellow-traveler from the Vatican.

1909: As of today, agents of the Baron Hirsch Fund have purchased several hundred acres of farm land four miles west of Millville, New Jersey for the purpose of establishing a colony. Forty families are ready to move into the houses once they are built. Each family will receive 25 acres of cleared ground to work.

1911: The Sunday Magazine Section of the New York Times described the debate between Dr. Solomon Schechter of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Dr. G. Margoliouth of the British Museum over the interpretation of a document entitled “A Document on the Sectaries” which had been found in the Cairo Genizah.

1911: Birthdate of Hammering Hank Greenberg Hall-of-Fame first baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

1914: In an attempt to obliterate loan sharking and enable American wage earners to borrow money easily, cheaply, and under self-respecting conditions, Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, announced plans to create “industrial loan banks that could make small loans at a low rate of interest - loans so trifling in character that the ordinary bank would not consider them - to workingmen whose means are too insignificant to give them any standing with banks. These industrial loan banks “shall require no collateral but simply an endorsement from some fellow wage-earner.” Loans will be made only after the bank has ascertained that the money is to be used for legal activities. By making these loans, Rosenwald and his supporters plan to teach the working class the proper use of credit while keeping them out of the clutches of loan sharks and predatory lenders. “The inspiration for the idea came from one of Mr. Rosenwald’s eminent European co-religionist, Signor Jusotti, the Italian Minister of Finance, who is the founder of a system of banks in Italy which lend sums as low as $10 to workingmen, small tradesmen, farmers and other who have no credit at the banks.”

1915: Jews of Laibach Austria were expelled.

1919: Prince Faisal “submitted a formal memorandum to the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference outlining his vision for Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East. It was not monolithic or pan-Arab. It sought only one territory: Syria.”

1919: Birthdate of J.D. Salinger who is as famous for being a recluse as he is for being the author of Catcher in the Rye. “Salinger was born in 1919 in New York City. His mother was Irish Catholic and his father was Jewish. And because many people in the early half of the 20th century were often openly racist toward Jews, being half-Jewish was hard on Salinger’s psyche.
What also hurt Salinger’s relationship with his father was the fact that he wanted him to take over the family meat business. Salinger was initially unopposed to the proposition. However, after taking a trip to his father’s native land of Poland and seeing the slaughter houses, Salinger lost respect for his father and his profession. Salinger then became a devout vegetarian. What probably had the strongest effect on the mental makeup of Salinger was his experience in World War II. Salinger was in one of the most dangerous regiments of the entire war, as he saw as many as 200 of his fellow soldiers die in a day. Plus, he is also believed to be one of the first soldiers to see the Nazi concentration camps. This probably greatly affected him because of his Jewish ancestry.” Salinger, who passed away in 2010, became a Buddhist who only would eat organic foods.

1922(1st of Tevet, 5682): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1923: Birthdate of Daniel Gorenstein, American mathematician.

1925: Greece mandates a national day of rest, in disregard to the customs of any religion. Thus the Jews are forced to work on the Sabbath, and those who did not, lost profits. The Jews saw this as a move on the government's part to get rid of them.

1927: Birthdate of Canadian political leader Shelia Finestone.


1927 (28th of Tevet, 5687): “Asher Ginsberg, whose pen name was Achad Ha’am passed away 5 o’clock this morning at Tel Aviv.” Born in 1856 near Kiev, Ginsberg lived in England from 1906 until 1921 when he made Aliyah. While living in England, managed a tea shop owned by one his literary admirers and worked with Chaim Weizmann to create the document known as the Balfour Declaration. In 1889, Ginsberg caused a stir with “the publication in the Russian Jewish periodical Ha-Meliz of his frist article dealing with the Zionist movement and the future of the Jews.” Over time he would develop the concept of Cultural Zionism which espouses a belief “in the development of Palestine as intellectual and moral homeland for the Jewish people throughout the word, as well as a place of physical refuge.” His most famous literary work was a three-volume work called Al Parshat Derachim or The Parting of the Ways.

1929: The Labor Party has been defeated in the elections for the Municipal Council of Tel Aviv. Labor had controlled the council for the past three years but had only won five of the fifteen seats on the council in this year’s election. It would appear that the United Centre Party has captured a majority of the seats which means that Meir Dizengoff will return as Mayor of the Jewish metropolis since the council elects the mayor. Dizengoof had resigned three years ago in a dispute with the Laborites.

1930(1st of Tevet, 5690): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1933: A pastoral letter of Austrian Bishop Gfollner of Linz states that it is the duty of all Catholics to adopt a "moral form of anti-Semitism."

1934: The Nazis remove Jewish holidays from the official German calendar.

1934: German laws allowing sterilization of the "unfit," which were passed in July 1933, are promulgated.

1934: In a move that will upset the balance of power in Europe and therefore threaten the well-being of the Jewish people, Hitler orders the German government to undertake a building program that will produce 4000 aircraft by October 1935. (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)

1936: Birthdate of Actress Zelda Rubinstein.

1937: The New York Times describes the very successful performance in Tel Aviv of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. The site of an Italian maestro conducting a Jewish orchestra in front of a predominately Jewish orchestra is proof to the Times of “how completely forgiven and forgotten is the serious misunderstanding between the twopeoples that arose under Titus and Hadrian a couple of thousand years ago.”

1937: Georg Wertheim head of Wertheim’s one the four largest department store chains in Germany writes in his diary, “The store is declared to be ‘German.’” This marked the end to his involvement in the family business begun by his parents in 1875. Wertheim died in 1939.

1938: During January, the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, is enlarged.

1938: During January, a collaborationist organization, National-Socialistische Vrouwen
Organisatie (National Socialist Women's Organization), is established in Holland.

1939: The Palestine Post expressed world-wide Jewish disgust for Sir Horace Rumbold after he had publicly referred to the Jews of Palestine as an “alien race.”

1939: In an infamous prophecy delivered in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler threatened that if “international Jewry” started “another” world war, such a war would not end in the extermination of the Aryan race but rather in the extermination of the “Jewish race.”

1939: In Germany, The Decree for the Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life took effect. This was part of what was known as the compulsory Aryanization process in which all Jewish retail businesses were to be eliminated. All stock was forbidden to be traded on the free market, but it had to be "sold" to a German competitor or association. This edict was signed just a month earlier by the Economic and the Justice ministries.

1939: By the end of January "Illegal immigration" from Germany to Palestine has begun. 27,000 Jews will illegally immigrate by the end of 1940.

1939: As decreed on August 17, 1938, Jewish men in Germany must adopt the middle name of "Israel"; Jewish women must take the middle name "Sara."

1939: Jews are eliminated from the German economy; their capital is seized, though some Jews continue to work under Germans.

1939: At the Buchenwald, Germany, concentration camp, Deputy Commandant Arthur Rödl orders several thousand inmates to assemble for inspection shortly before midnight. He selects five men and has them whipped to the melody played by the inmate orchestra. The whipping continues all night.

1940(20th of Tevet, 5700): Hugo Herrmann a Zionist author and publisher passed away. He was one of the founders of the Jewish student organization Bar Kochba in Prague, worked for the Keren Hayesod . He settled in Jerusalem in 1934 where he published descriptions of his extensive travels in Palestine.

1940: The Nazis shot Dr. Cooperman in Warsaw for being out after eight o'clock.

1940: Nazis prohibited Jews from gathering in shuls or private homes for prayer.

1941(2nd of Tevet, 5701): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1942: By the end of January, at least 160,000 Jews were living in the Lodz ghetto.

1942: In the U.S., the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) is established to investigate and arrest suspected Nazi war criminals.

1942: Birthdate of Democratic politician Martin Frost who represented the 24th Congressional District in Texas from 1979 until 2004.

1943: Birthdate of American investor and businessman Ronald Perelman.

1943 (24th of Tevet, 5703): Arthur Ruppin passed away today in Jerusalem at the age of 67. “Born in Germany, Mr. Ruppin came to Palestine in 1908 to direct the first Palestine office of World Zionist Organization in Jaffa. He was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.” Dr. Ruppin was considered an authority on all facets of the economic situation in Palestine and was a strong fighter against those who claimed that limits must be placed on Jewish immigration because the country could not sustain anything more than a marginal growth in population.

1944: Operation Halyard, one of the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines of World War II in which Yugoslav Partisans (a multi-ethnic resistance force that included Bosnian Muslims and Jews) played a key role, began today.

1946: In Tel Aviv, police found a large arms cache today that contained a both heavy and light automatic weapons, various chemicals of the type used for detonating explosives and a number of military uniforms.

1947: A British Military Court sentenced Dov Bela Gruner to be hanged for his part in the attack on the police station at Ramt Gan. Gruner, a 33 year old veteran of the British Army, is a member of the Irgun and claimed that he should have been treated as a prisoner of war and not a criminal.

1948: Thousands of “illegal” Jewish refugees who had been trying to reach Palestine disembarked in Cyprus where the British interned them in DP camps.

1949: As promised by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Israeli troops began withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel continued to protest against the increased British, French and US arms sales to the belligerent Arab states, at least until they agreed to negotiate peace. While Britain, threatened by the Egyptian guerrilla war against its forces stationed at Suez, had temporarily suspended her arms shipments there, France and the US had no such problem and continued to arm Israel¹s neighbors without any restrictions.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the government presented the oil-importing companies with IL 3,800,000 financial guarantees, covered by funds earmarked under the German Reparations Agreement for this purpose.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the number of unemployed in 1952 was 16,500. This number, however, did not include Israeli Arabs, residents of immigrant transit camps, and others who had not registered with the Labor Exchange for employment.

1959: Caroline Klein Simon was sworn in as New York's Secretary of State as part of the administration of newly elected Governor Nelson Rockefeller. “Born in 1900, Simon earned a law degree at New York University in 1925. Unable to find a law firm willing to hire a woman, she worked for free for a year in order to prove that a woman could be a lawyer. At the end of the year, her law firm offered her a permanent job, but she chose to work for family planning groups and indigent clients instead. That choice marked the beginning of a lifelong dedication to public service. In addition to volunteer work with the League of Women Voters, the Women's City Club, and the National Council of Jewish Women, Simon held paid positions as the executive director of the New York State Council of Jewish Women and as editor of the Birth Control Review. Simon was also active in city and state politics. In 1937, she spearheaded a campaign to allow women to serve on juries and became among the first women called to serve. A registered Republican, she worked on the campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey, and Fiorella LaGuardia. Simon took up her first government post in 1943, when she became a member of the State War Council's Committee on Discrimination in Employment; later, she was the only woman member of the State Commission Against Discrimination, a position she held for more than ten years. In 1957, she became the first woman nominated for citywide office when the Republican party made her its candidate for president of the New York City Council. Although she lost the election, she ran some 100,000 votes ahead of the rest of the Republican ticket. Less than two years later, Nelson Rockefeller appointed her Secretary of State, a post she held until 1963; she then served on the New York Court of Claims until 1971. Simon continued to practice law into her nineties. Throughout her years on the Commission Against Discrimination and in other state government posts, Simon was a strong voice for strengthening laws against discrimination in jobs and housing. She helped draft the first U.S. state law barring employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or nationality. Later, she led the way in barring racial "block-busting," a practice in which real estate agents exploited fears of racial integration to incite sales. Living out her credo of being simply "against discrimination in any form," Simon spent a lifetime working to bring down barriers. She died in July 1993, at age 92.

1965: Formation of al-Fatah, the Palestinian terrorist organization.

1968: Louis Begley named partner in the law firm now known as Debevoise & Plimpton. Begley would eventually leave the law and become a successful, award winning author.

1967: A month-long exhibition of the paintings of Isser Arnovici, opened at the Elizabeth Street Gallery.

1966: Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" reaches #1.

1969: Isidore Dollinger begins serving as a justice of New York Supreme Court, from the first judicial district.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Egyptian negotiators in Cairo demanded that Israel liquidate her settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza as a pre-condition for the Palestine Arabs self-determination. Israel suggested that under the proposed peace plan, the prospective Sinai settlers would pay taxes to Egypt.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter, who concluded his talks with the Shah of Iran and King Hussein of Jordan, was expected to arrive in Cairo for talks with President Anwar Sadat and a possible active participation in Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli population toward the end of 1977 stood at 3,650,000 ­ 3,076,000 Jews and 574,000 non-Jews.

1983: Moshe Levy was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and appointed IDF Chief of General Staff.

1985: Louis Silverstein, the long time Art Director of The New York Times, retired today.

1986: Jerry Abramson began serving as the 47th mayor of Louisville, KY.

1987(30th of Kislev, 5747): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1988(11th of Tevet, 5748): Leo Steiner owner of the famed Carnegie Deli's in New York passes away.

1989: As new measures, imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration in response to the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Scotland on December 21 take effect, Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, a West Virginia Democrat who was en route from Israel to the United States and was transferring to a Pan Am flight in Paris, said the security was tighter than usual, but not as heavy as that which he had experienced at Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv. ''They opened everything, and that's excellent,'' he said of his early-morning departure. Security officers gave every passenger ''a very diplomatic, but careful grilling,'' asking questions like: Do you have anything new? Are you carrying anything for anyone? One security officer, he said, told him bluntly: ''Get nothing between here and the airplane. Go straight to the plane.''

1989: Stephen Engelberg and Michael Gordon of The New York Times are the first to report in detail about West German participation in the design and construction of the vast chemical plant designed to produce poison gas at Rabta in Libya along with facts about French aid in refueling bombers that would make possible the quick delivery of poison-gas bombs to Tel Aviv residents who are descendants of those forced to breathe Cyclon-B at Auschwitz.

1992: A suspicious fire broke out in the basement of a synagogue in Brooklyn, severely damaging the building and forcing the removal of several torahs. . Flames rushed through the basement of Congregation Hisachbis Yirieim at 902 Avenue L, near East Ninth Street, at 4:02 P.M. It was under control at 4:47 P.M., Fire Marshal Glynn said. Fire department officials said that the fire “is being considered as suspicious” in origin.

1994: Alan Hevesi began serving as the 41st Comptroller of New York City

1995(29th of Tevet, 5755): Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 passed away.

1995: The full text of report compiled by the Agranat Commission, except for 48 pages, was made public today.

1998: Share prices on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange closed higher today, on optimism that the Government would pass its 1998 budget and that there would be a cut in interest rates as early as February. The TA-100 index of the shares with the highest market capitalization rose nine-tenths of 1 percent, to 293.74, an increase of 2.68 points. The Maof index of the 25 blue-chip shares gained seven-tenths of 1 percent, to 305.92, a jump of 2.11 points. The TACT index of continuously traded shares rose 1 percent, to 98.06, a gain of 0.92 points. Trading volume was 121 million shekels ($34.30 million). Stockbrokers said the relatively low volume was attributable to the closing of foreign markets for New Year's Day.

1999: After 13 years, Jerry Abramson completed his final term as mayor of Louisville, KY.

1999: The Times of London features a review of Athens In Jerusalem: Classical antiquity and Hellenism in the making of the modern secular Jew by Yaacov Shavi; translated from the Hebrew by Chaya Naor and Niki Werner.

2000: David Hurlbut moved into the Harmony Club in Selma, Alabama. It had originally been built as a social club by a group of prominent Jewish businessmen in 1909.

2000(23rd of Tevet, 5760): Jeshajahu Weinberg, the first director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here and one of the principal forces behind its creation, died today in Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. He was 81. Mr. Weinberg served as the museum's director from its beginning in 1989 until 1995, as it became one of Washington's leading tourist attractions. He also helped create museums in Israel and Europe. Walter Reich, who succeeded Mr. Weinberg as director of the Washington museum, said today that Mr. Weinberg's interests in it went from inducing a British television documentary maker to design the exhibitions to worrying about the impact that a museum depicting the Nazi horrors might have on children who visit it and curators who work there. Mr. Weinberg, whose first name was pronounced yuh-shah-YAH-who but who was known as Shaike (pronounced SHY-kuh), was born in Warsaw and educated in Germany until his family fled to Palestine in the 1930's with the rise of Hitler. Mr. Weinberg served from 1935 to 1948 in the Jewish underground army, the Haganah, and from 1942 to 1946 in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, although the Haganah and the British Army were frequently at odds. He fought in Italy while in the British Army and became a sergeant. Martin Smith, the documentary filmmaker who designed the exhibitions, said from his home in Bristol, England, that Albert Abramson, one of the museum's founders, had suggested to Mr. Weinberg that Mr. Smith would make the ideal designer of the museum. ''I wasn't Jewish, I wasn't museum inclined, and I wasn't American,'' Mr. Smith said, but Mr. Weinberg was persuasive. ''He encouraged me to look at how the techniques of documentary filmmaking could be used in a museum setting,'' Mr. Smith said. The museum's architect, James I. Freed, also described how Mr. Weinberg had driven the design and construction of the museum. After a section had been built, Mr. Freed said, ''Shaike was insistent -- he wanted a railroad freight car to be included. We had to change the building to accommodate it. He never accepted 'no.' '' Mr. Freed added that Mr. Weinberg worked to bring together competing constituencies that wanted to make sure their groups' sufferings were not ignored. The groups included European Jews, Gypsies and other ethnic groups as well as members of dissenting religions and political parties, homosexuals and the physically and mentally handicapped. Mr. Weinberg was also an official of the Israeli government and director of the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv. He helped create the Beth Hatefutsoth Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv, where he served as director, and the Museum of the History of the City of Jerusalem. At his death, even while slowed by vascular illness, Mr. Weinberg was working on the design of Jewish museums in Warsaw and Berlin.

2001: A car bomb rocked the commercial heart of the Israeli coastal city of Netanya today wounding more than 30 people, at least one seriously. The terror attack shattered store windows and draped central Netanya in black smoke, sending ripples of panic through a downtown area that was still twinkling with leftover Hanukkah lights. It came five days after a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. Jan. 1 is a routine working day in Israel, so there was no holiday spirit to dampen. But as the latest in a spate of terror attacks, the bombing hardened hearts.

2001: Yasir Arafat left Gaza shortly after midnight today for a hastily arranged meeting with President Clinton to discuss the Palestinian leader's reservations about an American blueprint for a final peace deal. The announcement of his trip to Washington, made by aides and confirmed by American officials, came several hours after a car bomb rocked the commercial heart of the Israeli coastal city of Netanya on Monday evening, wounding more than 30 people, at least one seriously.

2001: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu belatedly endorsed Ariel Sharon in his bid to become Prime Minister.

2003: Alan Hevesi began serving as the 53rd Comptroller of New York

2006: Jack Lebewohl, the new owner of the 2nd Avenue Deli which was located at its original location in the East Village, closed the famed eatery after a rent increase and a dispute over back rent that the landlord had said was due.

2006: Daniel C. Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, assumes the position of S. Daniel Abraham Visiting Professor in Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Kafka: The Decisive Years by Reiner Stach, Savage Shorthand The Life and Death of Isaac Babel by Jerome Charyn, Siegfried Sassoon: A Life by Max Egremont and Why She Married Him, Myriam Chapman’s first novel based on her grandmother's recently discovered manuscript describing a childhood in turn-of-the-century czarist Russia, close escapes from its brutal pogroms and life as a Jewish émigré in Paris.

2006(1st of Tevet, 5766): Henry Samuel Magdoff passed away. He was a prominent American social commentator who held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Monthly Review.

2007: Jane Doe Buys a Challah and Other Short Stories, the first publication of Ang-Lit Press, a newly established English publishing house based in Tel-Aviv goes on sale in Israel. The book is the first ever anthology of short stories by Israeli Anglo writers.

2008: Leiutanant General Moshe Levy, who had served at the 12th Chief of Staff of the IDF, suffered a massive stroke.

2008: At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, closing day of an exhibition entitled The Other Promised Land: Vacationing, Identity, and the Jewish-American Dream. “Set against the backdrop of the seashore, the mountains, or the countryside, vacations have always been a meaningful part of American Jewish life. American Jews chose their own distinctive destinations - Florida, the Catskills, Atlantic City, sites of Jewish heritage - to join with friends or in response to being excluded at other venues, creating temporary communities of like-minded people. Some vacations were pursuits of luxury and abundance, while others emphasized Jewish beliefs and traditions, but all expressed the excitement and promise of America. The history of Jewish vacationing provides a glimpse into Jewish values, past and present.”

2009: In a move that bodes well for Israel, The Czech Republic takes over the presidency of the European Union from France. While France has condemned Israel’s attacks on Hamas, the Czech Foreign Minister Karel Shwarzenberg has “insisted Israel had the right to defend itself…Schwarzenberg said Hamas has excluded itself from serious political debate due to its rocket attacks on Israel” and that Hamas “has put its bases in gun warehouses in densely populated areas” which “was the reason for the Palestinians’ growing death toll.

2009: Haaretz reported that according to a story published by the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure published earlier this week Jewish-French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy was listed by a Belgium-based Islamist group as a target for assassination alongside other leading Jewish personalities in Europe. The planned assassination was apparently thwarted after group leader Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian of Moroccan ascent, was arrested last February in Morocco, the newspaper reported. Belgian authorities found the list during a raid on homes of local Muslim community members last November, according to the report. The hit list mentioned the names of five other well-know Jewish figures in Belgium and France: Josy Eisenberg, producer of the A Bible ouverte (Open Bible) television program on FR2; Simone Susskind, a leader of Belgium's secular Jewish community; attorney Markus Pardes, president of the International Association of Jewish lawyers and jurists; Belgian writer Jean-Claude Bologne and La Derniere Heure reporter Edmond Blattche. Belliraj is scheduled for trial next week over charges of assassinating and orchestrating the murders of six people in Belgium during 1980s, as well as for charges of arms trafficking.

2009 (5 Tevet 5769): Helen Suzman, the internationally renowned anti-apartheid campaigner who befriended the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and offered an often lonely voice for change among South Africa’s white minority, died in Johannesburg at the age of 91. Her son-in-law, Jeffrey Jowell, a law professor in London, said she died peacefully at her home in the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg after a brief illness. For decades, Mrs. Suzman was among the most venerated of white campaigners urging an end to racial rule. As the liberal Progressive Party’s lone representative in the all-white Parliament for 13 years until the mid-1970s, a period when many of apartheid’s most repressive features were being devised, she used her parliamentary immunity to speak out when other avenues of protest were harshly suppressed. While she challenged apartheid at a time of violent protests among the black majority, she advocated peaceful change. More controversially, she differed sharply with more radical campaigners inside and outside South Africa who were supportive of economic sanctions to press the country’s white rulers toward reform, saying sanctions would hurt poor blacks more than whites. To Mrs. Suzman’s frustration, this led some of her critics to say she was unwittingly helping to prolong apartheid. This was a variation on a critique she had long endured, and to some extent accepted - that by engaging in what was largely a charade of parliamentary politics in apartheid South Africa, she became complicit, however unwillingly, in the larger deceits of apartheid, which would ultimately be ended not by a small band of white dissenters, but by the more powerful forces of the black freedom struggle and external political pressure. Among her friends, it was a reality Mrs. Suzman conceded, though she and many opponents of apartheid believed that it was important to keep the hopes of eventual democracy in the country alive and that she could help the victims of apartheid by her efforts to expose the evils of the system in and out of Parliament. In a 1966 profile in The New York Times Magazine, Joseph Lelyveld, the newspaper’s correspondent in South Africa at the time, recounted one of her favorite stories, about an overeager dinner host who gave a black man serving her a lecture on her parliamentary achievements. “Do you know who this is, John?” the host asked. “This is Helen Suzman, the champion of your cause - the champion of human rights in South Africa.” “She waste her time,” John replied, as Mrs. Suzman retold it later, laughing brightly as she repeated the line. “She wastes her time.” Diminutive, elegant and indefatigable, Mrs. Suzman confronted the forbidding Afrikaner prime ministers - Hendrik F. Verwoerd, John Vorster and P. W. Botha - who became synonymous with apartheid’s repression of the black and mixed-race populations. She was dismissive of the death threats she received by telephone and in the mail, and undaunted in her showdowns with the men she described as apartheid’s leading “bullies,” who in turn dismissed her as a “dangerous subversive” and a “sickly humanist.” Shouts of “Go back to Moscow!” greeted her when she rose in Parliament, and, on at least one occasion, “Go back to Israel!” - a reference to her antecedents as the daughter of early 20th-century Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. After the 1976 Soweto riots, Mr. Vorster mocked her for beating with what he called her “pretty little pink hands” against apartheid, while secure in the knowledge, as he claimed, that she and other white opponents could continue to enjoy the privileged lives apartheid guaranteed without fear that their demands for an end to the racial laws would succeed. “I am not frightened of you - I never have been, and I never will be,” she told Prime Minister Botha in a parliamentary exchange in the late 1970s. “I think nothing of you.” For his part, Mr. Botha called her “a vicious little cat.” When a government minister once accused her of embarrassing South Africa with her parliamentary questions, she replied, “It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa; it is your answers.” Her home and office telephones were constantly tapped, an intrusion she liked to counter by blowing an ear-splitting whistle into the mouthpiece. But perhaps because of her parliamentary immunity, a feature of their showpiece democracy that apartheid leaders guarded with care, she was never detained or subjected to one of the stifling “banning orders” that apartheid leaders used to curb dissent by prohibiting people from attending political meetings, speaking in public or even leaving their homes. Her opposition to economic sanctions made her a contentious figure among some apartheid opponents, including protesters on American college campuses, like Brandeis and Harvard, where she received honorary degrees. “I understand the moral abhorrence and pleasure it gives you when you demonstrate,” she told a New York audience in 1986. “But I don’t see how wrecking the economy of the country will ensure a more stable and just society.” She rarely faced such criticism from South Africa’s best-known black leaders. Mr. Mandela spoke with affection of her visits to the Robben Island prison in the chilly Atlantic waters off Cape Town, where he was serving a life sentence imposed in 1964 and where he remained until he was moved to a mainland prison nearly 20 years later. Using her parliamentary visiting rights, she made her first trip in 1967 and returned frequently. “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard,” Mr. Mandela recalled in an interview when he was released in 1990 after serving 27 years. “She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.” On Thursday, the governing African National Congress paid tribute by saying in a statement that Mrs. Suzman “became a thorn in the flesh of apartheid by openly criticizing segregation of Blacks by a Whites-only apartheid system.” Mr. Mandela’s foundation issued a statement from its Johannesburg headquarters saying that South Africa had lost “a great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, who forged a close friendship with Mrs. Suzman when they were leading proponents of peaceful change during the violent upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s, said in his statement that the country owed her an enormous debt. “She really was indomitable,” he said. By the early 1990s, when apartheid gave way to black majority rule, there was widespread affection for Mrs. Suzman in black townships like Soweto, where many people knew her simply as Miss Helen. But while no longer in Parliament in her final years, she remained an acerbic critic of what she viewed as official wrongdoing, now by the country’s new black rulers. Only recently, she joined other prominent South Africans in demanding a fresh inquiry into dubious government arms contracts in the 1990s, some involving the president of the African National Congress, Jacob Zuma. Mrs. Suzman was born Helen Gavronsky on Nov. 17, 1917, in Germiston, a gold-mining town on the outskirts of Johannesburg. She was educated at the Parktown convent school in Johannesburg, and studied economics at the city’s Witwatersrand University. At the age of 19, in 1937, she married Moses Meyer Suzman, known as Mosie, a cardiologist, with whom she had two daughters, before returning to the university in 1944. She is survived by her daughters, Frances, an art historian, and Patricia, a medical specialist. Universities around the world awarded Mrs. Suzman 27 honorary doctorates, and she received numerous other honors from the United Nations and an array of religious and human rights groups around the world. Queen Elizabeth II made her an honorary dame, customary for citizens of countries other than Britain. Mrs. Suzman traced her opposition to apartheid to her university years, when she studied South Africa’s racial laws and was incensed by what she learned, particularly by the so-called pass laws, which were fundamental to the apartheid system, restricting where blacks could live and work. She ran for Parliament in Johannesburg’s upscale Houghton district and remained the district’s legislator from 1953 to 1989. She began as a member of the United Party, which had been usurped in 1949, after decades as South Africa’s governing party, by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party. It was the Nationalists, under Mr. Verwoerd, who codified and extended the existing racial laws, creating apartheid. In 1959, impatient with the United Party’s tolerance of racial segregation, she became a founder of the liberal Progressive Party, later known as the Progressive Federal Party, which favored a more inclusive, nonracial franchise that would lead to black majority rule. Some of the most relentless enforcers of apartheid eventually developed a grudging respect for her, even a hint of affection. James T. Kruger, the justice minister under Mr. Vorster during the Soweto riots, was one of the “bullies” Mrs. Suzman frequently denounced. Years later, out of office, Mr. Kruger learned that Mrs. Suzman was planning a tourist visit to the Soviet Union with her husband. A keen amateur philatelist, he approached her in the parliamentary lobby and gave her a sheaf of self-addressed postcards and letters, each bearing new South African stamps, asking her to mail them back to him from Moscow. When she said that the Soviet postal authorities would not accept South African stamps, she recalled, Mr. Kruger was puzzled. For Mrs. Suzman, the incident demonstrated the occluded world inhabited by many apartheid leaders, who often acted, she said, as if they belonged to the 17th, not the 20th century. “Poor old Jimmy Kruger,” she said. “Like most of them, he knew very little of the world beyond South Africa.”

2009(5th of Tevet, 5769): Polish writer Henryk Halkowski, one of Poland's most notable contemporary Jewish personalities, died suddenly today just days after celebrating his 57th birthday. Friends said the cause of his death was a heart attack. He wrote and translated several books and essays on Jewish culture, history and thought. An expert on the Jewish history and heritage of Krakow, Halkowski also was an acute observer of the transformation of Jewish life after the fall of communism. With his thick glasses, gray beard and zest for conversation, Halkowski was a familiar figure in this city's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz. "Kazimierz will never be the same without him and all his craziness," said Malgosia Ornat of the Austeria Jewish publishing house. "We will miss him a lot. He was so important for Jewish life in Krakow and a certain period of its revival is gone forever." Joachim Russek, the director of Krakow's Centrum Judaicum Jewish Center here, called Halkowski "a guardian of Krakow's Jewish legacy" and said "the Kazimierz quarter without him will not be the same."

2010: Starting at noon, Congregation Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Md., is hosting a sale of used books about Judaism.

2010: In Israel the Water Authority is supposed to be implementing a price hike. If the price increase does not go through, several water corporations - including those servicing the Galilee - will not have the funds to buy water from Mekorot, the national water company.

2010: In Jerusalem Hama'abada and The Visual Theatre present a unique collaboration: "Snow Will Fall Tonight" including the following three shows: "Pollyamoria" by Ma'ayan Moses, Pets" by Anat Arbel--tragi-comic dance theatre and "To Raise You Wild"--by Shai Persil.

2010: The Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility today for firing two Grad-type rockets at the Netivot area from Gaza on last night.

2010: Two mortar shells hit open areas in southern Israel this evening. There were no reports of casualties or damage in both attacks. One of the projectiles landed near the Kerem Shalom border crossing at the southeastern end of the Gaza Strip and the other hit an open area in the Sdot Negev region, and has not yet been located.

2010: Michael Bloomberg is sworn in for this third term as Mayor of New York.

2010: Birthdate of Nathan Zachary Silber son of David and Rebecca Silber and grandson of Dr. Robert “Bob” and Laurie Silber, pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community and all around great guys.

2011: Frederick Lawrence, 54, is scheduled to become Brandeis University’s eighth president today succeeding President Jehuda Reinharz

2011: With snow falling and temperatures well below freezing, the Traditional Minyan at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ushered in the New Year. In keeping with the bowl games that dominate the day, Deb Levin and Amy Barnum provided a football themed Kiddush complete with pizza, munchies and a whole lot more.

2011: Arab terrorists launched a mortar attack near Sderot this evening. One woman was treated for shock. The IDF noted that 6,500 residents live in the immediate area, which includes several kibbutzim. The IDF retaliated by bombing a terrorist base and a weapons factory in northern and central Gaza later that night.

2011: Two female soldiers managed to escape a would-be attacker tonight. The two were attacked by a Palestinian Authority man with a knife as they left their base in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. The two reported the incident immediately, and Border Police began searching the area. They found the PA man nearby, and he admitted to having attempted to stab soldiers at the base. He was arrested and taken in for questioning.

2011: An earthquake hit northern Israel on this evening, being felt most strongly in the region of Beit Shean and Afula; residents of Tzfat reported feeling motion as well. The quake was measured at 3.6 on the Richter scale. No injuries were reported following the quake. One residential building sustained damage, and the families living there were evacuated by Homefront Command workers. Residents of Beit Shean live along the Syrian-African fault line, and are accustomed to occasional earthquakes. However, many said that Saturday night's earthquake was unusually strong. Some residents fled their homes during the quake, fearing the buildings would collapse. An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale hit the northern Galilee in late November, but did not cause injury. Scientists have warned that Israel is likely to experience a strong earthquake, measuring at least 7.5 on the Richter scale, in the near future. The epicenter will be near Beit Shean, they say. A governmental committee found in November that a strong earthquake could kill 16,000 people, injure 6,000 more and leave up to 377,000 homeless if old buildings are not reinforced to prevent collapse.

2011(25th of Tevet, 5771): Abdallah Simon, called one of America's "most powerful" wine executives for decades and a philanthropist, died today at the age of 88. Simon, a Baghdad native, was the developer of the Seagram's Chateau & Estate Wines Company and helped craft America's taste for fine French wines. In a 1988 article, The New York Times described Simon as a "superpower" in the world of fine French wines and said his yearly visits to Bordeaux were "probably more important than those of the president of France." Simon, who was known as "Ab" to both the American and Bordeaux wine industries, attended private school in England and American University in Beirut, but left Iraq for New York after a pro-Nazi regime came to power there in 1941. Simon's wine career began in 1952 when he tasted a 1929 Chateau Latour Bordeaux, a prominent First Growth wine, on the Queen Mary while sailing to Europe. He joined Seagram in 1974. With $2 million staked by Seagram, Simon turned the division into a leading force in the wine industry. Simon bypassed the middlemen, called negociants, and struck deals with chateau owners that allowed him to influence prices and deliver large quantities of fine wine to the U.S. market. In 1980, France made Simon a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for service to that nation’s wine industry. Simon's philanthropy in retirement included the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Foundation, which said upon his death that his "generosity and friendship will be missed but his contributions to Tel Aviv's future generations will live on for all time."

2011: As a result of the 2010 Congressional Elections, the following is a list of the 39 Jewish members — 12 senators and 27 representatives — who are expected to serve in the 112th U.S. Congress, which is set to convene in January:
U.S. SENATE
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)*
Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)**
Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.)
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Al Franken (D-Minn.)
Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)
Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)
Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.)
Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)**
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)**
(Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is projected to win his re-election bid, does not identify a religion, but notes that his mother is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.)
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.)
Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.)
Howard Berman (D-Calif.)
Eric Cantor (R-Va.)
David Cicilline (D-R.I.)*
Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.)
Susan Davis (D-Calif.)
Ted Deutch (D-Fla.)
Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)
Bob Filner (D-Calif.)
Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.)
Jane Harman (D-Calif.)
Steve Israel (D-N.Y.)
Sander Levin (D-Mich.)
Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.)
Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)
Jared Polis (D-Colo.)
Steve Rothman (D-N.J.)
Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)
Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.)
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
Brad Sherman (D-Calif.)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)
Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)
John Yarmuth (D-Ky.)
*Elected to House or Senate for the first time in 2010 midterms
**Senators who were re-elected in 2010 midterms (As reported by JTA)

2012: Simon Greer will become the president and CEO at the Nathan Cummings Foundation after serving in the same roles at Jewish Funds for Justice. He succeeds Lance Lindblom.

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit” by Joseph Epstein and “Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir” by Rosamond Bernier whose mother was English and whose father was an American Jew.

2012: Friends and family of gather in Milwaukee to celebrate the birthday of Nathan Zachary Silber son of David and Rebecca Silber and grandson of Dr. Robert “Bob” and Laurie Silber, pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community and all around great guys.

Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. LevinCedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

This Day, December 31, In Jewish History

December 31 In Jewish History

535: Byzantine General Belisarius took the city of Syracuse which mark the completion of the conquest of Sicily. In 536 he would march into Rome itself. This military action was part of Emperor Justinian’s plan to take back what had been the Western Roman Empire and recreate the Roman Empire of the Caesar’s with the capital at Constantinople. Belisarius’ victory probably did not over-joy the Jews living in the "Giudecche" or Jewish Quarters of Sicily since it brought with it Justinian’s Code. Amongst other things the code “prohibited Jews from building synagogues, reading the Bible in Hebrew, assemble in public, celebrate Passover before Easter, and testify against Christians in court.”

1229: James I of Aragon the Conqueror enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma, Spain) thus consummating the Christian conquest of the island of Majorca. Following his victory, James “gave the Jews a quarter in the neighborhood of his palace for their dwellings, granted protection to all Hebrews who wished to settle on the island, guaranteed them the rights of citizens, permitted them to adjudicate their own civil disputes, to kill cattle according to their ritual, and to draw up their wills and marriage contracts in Hebrew. Christians and Moors were forbidden, under severe penalties, to insult the Jews or to take earth and stones from their cemeteries; and the Jews were ordered to complain directly to the king of any act of injustice toward them on the part of the royal officials. They were allowed to charge 20 per cent interest on loans, but the amount of interest was not to exceed the capital. In case a Jew practiced usury, the community was not held responsible. The penalty for lending money on the wages of slaves hired out by their masters was loss of the capital. Jews could buy and hold houses, vineyards, and other property in Majorca as well as in any other part of the kingdom. They could not be compelled to lodge Christians in their homes: in fact, Christians were forbidden to dwell with Jews; and Jewish convicts were given separate cells in the prisons. If the slave of a Jew or Moor adopted Judaism or Mohammedanism, he had to be set free and was required to leave the island.”

1378: Birthdate of Callixtus III the Pope who issued “Si ad reprimendos” the Bull that confirmed “Dudum ad nostram audientiam” which forbade Jews to live with Christians or to hold public office.

1492: One hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Sicily.

1599: The British East India Company is chartered. Joseph Salvador was the first Jewish director of the British East India Company. The Salvador family would become involved with the settlement of Georgia. Francis Salvador, Joseph’s great-grandson would become one of the heroes in the American War for Independence, a rebellion against King George III. Ironically, when King George III ascended the British throne, Joseph had arranged an audience for the seven-man delegation that officially congratulated the king on behalf of the Jewish community. (Ed. Note – some sources give the date as 1600, not 1599)

1780: The French Consulate in Salonica signed a document stating that Abraham Samuel Covo, Chief Rabbi of Salonica is under his protection.

1791: Empress Catherine issued a decree that restricted the right of residence of Russian Jews.

1830: Birthdate of Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt whose career was closely linked to the building of the Suez Canal. After the canal was opened in 1869, Ismail’s efforts “to encourage outsiders to settle in the country as a way of developing its economy” included setting aside “the age old restrictions and humiliations of the dhimmi status…Those Jews who responded to the Khedive’s call were granted special privileges in return for their skills and expertise.”

1841(18th of Tevet, 5602): Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dynov passed away. Born in 1783, he was the author of the Chassidic work B'nei Yissachar.

1844: The right to collect a tax ("basket tax") on all traditional Jewish clothing, including head coverings as well as a tax on kosher meat and other Jewish necessities was auctioned to the highest bidder in Poland-Lithuania. It was still in force until the 20th century.

1848: In New York City, the constitution of Ahawath Chesed, a congregation primarily made up of Ashkenazi Jews, was adopted and signed by 31 members.

1848: Dov Beresh Meisels was elected to the Austrian Parliament. He was also elected to the Municipality of Cracow in the same year. A vociferous supporter of Jewish rights, he aligned himself with radicals because "Juden haben keine rechte" (Jews have no rights)

1853: The partnership of Gustav Christian Schwabe, his father-in-law, Benjamin Rutter, and Adam Sykes which was known as the merchant company Sykes, Schwabe & Co, was dissolved today. Schwabe was born Jewish in 1813. However, his family was forced to convert to Lutheranism and Gustav was baptized in 1819.

1862: President Abraham Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union. “The first official Jewish settlement in West Virginia was at Wheeling where a Jewish cemetery and informal congregation was established in 1849. At the time it was still the state of Virginia as West Virginia did not become a state until 1863. Jews lived and traded in West Virginia prior to 1849, and as early as the late 18th century, but the official community did not get its start until Congregation L'Shem Shomayim was established in Wheeling in 1849. An earlier Jewish cemetery was established in Charleston in 1836, but the B'nai Israel Congregation in Charleston was only informally organized in 1856 and legally chartered as the "Hebrew Educational Society" in 1873.” This quote is from the website of West Virginia Jewish History & Genealogy
Jews- they are everywhere and darn proud of it. www.westvirginiajewishhistory.com.

1864(2nd of Tevet, 5625): For the last time during the Civil War, Jews finish celebrating Chanukah

1876: It was reported today that “the American churches have been showing their patriotism during the year by joining in the celebration of the nation’s Centennial anniversary including the Jews who have contributed a statue commemorating religious liberty.

1866: Birthdate of Adolph Schwartz, a native of Germany who found fame and fortune as a merchant and civic leader in El Paso, TX

1880: Birthdate of George C. Marshall one of America’s unsung heroes. As U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Marshall deserves much of the credit for the Allied victory in World War II. United States. As Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State under President Truman, he was a leading architect of the American policy that checked Stalin’s imperial designs. He did oppose the partition plan in 1947 and 1948. His fear was that American troops would end up having to intervene to save any newly created Jewish state and he knew that America did not have the men to match the mission. Although he disagreed with Truman on this issue, much to his credit, he did not resign his post.

1881: Birthdate of Jacob Israel de Haan, Dutch poet and writer. Israel de Haan was an “ultra-Orthodox leader who was working to establish the Orthodox community as a separate entity distinct from the Zionists.” He was willing to enlist the support of non-Jews hostile to Zionism in to advance the cause of ultra-Orthodoxy. In one of the most regrettable episodes in modern Jewish history, de Haan was assassinated in 1924 before he could continue his meetings with British authorities.

1882: Birthdate of David Cohen, Dutch historian and Chairman of the Jewish Council.

1886: Israel Rokach, the future mayor of Tel Aviv was born in Neve Tzedek, which, at the time, was part of Jaffa.

1888(27th of Tevet, 5649): Samson Raphael Hirsch passed away. Born in 1808, he was a “German rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah Im Derech Eretz School of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed neo-Orthodoxy, his philosophy, together with that of Azriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism. Hirsch was rabbi in Oldenburg, Emden, was subsequently appointed chief rabbi of Moravia, and from 1851 until his death led the secessionist Orthodox community in Frankfurt am Main. He wrote a number of influential books, and for a number of years published the monthly journal Jeschurun, in which he outlined his philosophy of Judaism. He was a vocal opponent of Reform Judaism and similarly opposed early forms of Conservative Judaism.”

1891(30th of Kislev, 5652): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1892: A new structure built from Georgia Pine opened today on Ellis Island to serve as an immigration depot. Hundreds of thousands of Jews would pass through Ellis Island including approximately 140,000 in 1914 which was the year that saw the largest influx of Eastern European Jews arriving in the United States.

1894: A French court rejects Dreyfus’ appeal of his conviction.

1894(4th of Tevet, 5655): David Rosin a German Jewish theologian born at Rosenberg, Silesia, in 1823, passed away.Having received his early instruction from his father, who was a teacher in his native town, he attended the yeshibah of Kempen, of Myslowitz (under David Deutsch), and of Prague (under Rapoport); but, wishing to receive a regular school education, he went to Breslau, where he entered the gymnasium, and graduated in 1846. He continued his studies at the universities of Berlin and Halle (Ph.D. 1851) and passed his examination as teacher for the gymnasium. Returning to Berlin, he taught in various private schools, until Michael Sachs, with whom he was always on terms of intimate friendship, appointed him principal of the religious school which had been opened in that city in 1854. At the same time Rosin gave religious instruction to the students of the Jewish normal school. In 1866 he was appointed Manuel Joël's successor as professor of homiletics, exegetical literature, and Midrash at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau, which position he held till his death.

1900: The New York Times reported that city authorities have decided to locate the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch memorial at the eastern edge of Central Park at the Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street Gate.

1901: The Fifth Zionist Congress ends its meeting at Basil, Switzerland.

1903(OS): Birthdate of Russian-born American violinist Nathan Milstein.

1905: Birthdate of American song writer Jules Styne.

1906(14th of Tevet, 5667): Julia Goodman née Salaman a British portrait painter, passed away.

1908: Birthdate of Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

1908: Louis A. Hensheimer, a member of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company was operated on today for appendicitis.

1912: A Russo-U.S. trade treaty, originally ratified in 1832, was abrogated by President Taft because of Russian discrimination against Jews who were American citizens.

1915: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee had received a telegram from Isidor Herschfield, who was traveling in war torn eastern Europe on behalf of the committee and HIAS that described the need for shoes, food, clothing, fuel and “enormous sums” in Bialystock, Peski, Ross and Vilna.

1916: Birthdate of Leo Kahn, whose success in pioneering big-box, warehouse-style supermarkets led him to join with another entrepreneur in 1986 to start Staples, the retail chain that calls itself the “office superstore…” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1916: In Constantinople, Arthur Ruppin, a German born Zionist wrote in his diary, “Apparently the war is gradually coming to a close. Probably, it will still take some time, but 1917 will bring us peace.”

1917: Today, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that Mitchell Mark “had the sold right to use the ‘The Strand’ for a movie theater.” Starting in the 1890’s Mark became one of the first entrepreneurs to dominate the field of movie distribution. In 1914, Mitchell and Moe Mark opened the million dollar Mark Strand Theatre in New York City, which “may have been first real movie palace, specifically built only to show motion pictures…The New York Times favorably reviewed the opening of this theater, helping to establish its importance.” Having spent that kind of money (a million dollar was big money in the second decade of the 20th century), it is understandable that Mark would take steps to keep others from encroaching on the fame of his new theatre.

1917: Colonel Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor of Jerusalem “received New Year’s greeting from all the city’s communities – Muslim, Christian and Jewish.” The Jewish community sent two greetings, one from the Ashkenazi Community Council and one from the City Council of Jerusalem Jews.

1922: A delicatessen dinner and reception are scheduled to be held at the Brooklyn Jewish Center on Eastern Parkway.

1922: The Alumni Association of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society hosted a bazzar at the Central Jewish Institute in NYC from noon until midnight.

1922: Birthdate of Marek Edelman, Jewish-Polish political and social activist, cardiologist, and one of the last living leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1924: Deadline set by Governor General Primo de Rivera of Spain offering all Sephardim the possibility of reacquiring Spanish nationality. Very few Jews took him up on this offer.

1931: Jewish author Emil Ludwig interviews Joseph Stalin. The interviews will provide material for his biography on the Soviet dictator.

1933: According to reports published today, Erika Morini, the Jewish violinist from Vienna, will be coming to the United States during the Fall of 1934 for her fifth tour in this country. Morini is considered a real child prodigy. Born in 1904,she made her concert debut in 1917.

1933(13th of Tevet, 5694): George Alexander Kohut passed away. Born at Stuhlweissenburg, Hungary, in 1874, he was educated at the gymnasium in Grosswardein, at the public schools in New York, at Columbia University (1893–1895), Berlin University, and the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1895–97). In the year 1897 he became rabbi of the Congregation Emanu-El, Dallas, Texas, a post which he occupied for three years. In 1902 he became superintendent of the religious school of Temple Emanu-El in New York, and is was assistant librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Kohut was the author of: The Index to the Italian words in the "Aruch," published in A. Kohut's "Aruch Completum," vol. viii. (1892); "Early Jewish Literature in America" ("Publications Am. Jew. Hist. Soc." No. 3, 1895, pp. 103–147); "Sketches of Jewish Loyalty, Bravery, and Patriotism in the South American Colonies and the West Indies," in Simon Wolf's "The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier, and Citizen" (1895); "Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America" (1895); "A Memoir of Dr. Alexander Kohut's Literary Activity," in "Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Assoc."; "Bibliography of the Writings of Prof. M. Steinschneider," in the "Steinschneider Festschrift" (Leipsic, 1896); "Simon de Caceres and His Project to Conquer Chili" (New York, 1897); "Ezra Stiles and the Jews" (ib. 1902), and many other monographs on historical subjects and on folklore. He also edited "Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut" (Berlin, 1897), and, since 1902, has edited Helpful Thoughts, now the Jewish Home, a monthly periodical published in New York. Kohut established a library of Judaica at Yale in 1915, an important collection made by his father, Alexander Kohut, and the "Kohut Endowment" to maintain and improve the "Alexander Kohut Memorial Collection".

1935: The last Jews remaining in Germany's civil service are dismissed by the government.

1937: Birthdate of Avram Hershko (אברהם הרשקו) Israeli biologist who won 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that a number of influential British Cabinet members recommended an entirely new policy in Palestine. They demanded the abandoning of the Lord Peel Partition plan, and the overthrow of the idea of the Jewish National Home as conceived in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and offered an alternative of a permanent Jewish minority in an all-Arab Palestine state; so much for the concept of British honor.

1937: Birthdate of German journalist and businessman Paul Spiegel

1937(27th of Tevet, 5698): Yehiel Ephroni, 33, was fatally wounded by shots fired by an Arab terrorist gang at an Egged bus at Km. 16 of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road.

1937: The Bucharest Stock Exchange crashed when Romanian Jews started to liquidate their assets, fearing the new government’s anti-Semitic policy.

1938: Five hundred Jews attended a New Year’s Eve dance at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. According to John Martin, the Secretary of the Peel Commission, a female reveler broke into the room of Sir Horace Humboldt, the official who called the Jews of Palestine an “alien race’, blew a small trumpet to awaken him and then proceeded to tell him the ‘he was the ugliest member of the commission and various other home truths while he cowered helpless beneath the counterpane.”

1939: As World War II began 1,210 Jews board the river boat Uranus, looking to be transported to Palestine.

1941: Hitler approved Alfred Rosenbeg’s request to plunder the French Jews and distribute their property to Nazi party members and members of the Werhmacht staff. The fact that the Werhmacht profited from this should be an indicator that the German General Staff was aware of what the fate of the Jews from the early days of the war.

1941: In the dark days of the European Night, this was an attempt to strike a match and bring a flicker of hope to the desperate. On this night, Abba Kovner uttered some of the most meaningful lines of the 20th century. On New Year’s Eve, Abba Kovner spoke out at a meeting of Zionist Youth hiding in a convent outside of Vilna. He asserted that Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and called for armed resistance with his famous words. "Let us not go as sheep to the slaughter." As a result of the meeting and his stirring call to action, the Jews formed the United Partisan Organization. Kovner’s revolt failed and he became part of a partisan unit. Later, he was active in smuggling Jews into Palestine. After fighting in the War for Independence, he settled down on a kibbutz with his wife and pursued a career as a poet. He was one of the witnesses against Eichmann when the Nazi butcher was brought to trial in Jerusalem

1942: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was delivered to her publisher. Although it was not her first novel, it was the first to win a wide following for the philosophy she called Objectivism. She explained that: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” The Fountainhead illustrated this philosophy for the public through the tale of an architect who sticks to his artistic convictions against massive social opposition. Though critics failed to praise the book, it eventually became a best-seller, and was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper in 1949. Together with Atlas Shrugged (1957), The Fountainhead has become one of the central texts of an Objectivist movement that emphasizes capitalism, individualism, and the pursuit of individual ambition. Although her idea that altruism is bad and selfishness good contradicts traditional Jewish values, Rand's promotion of individual ambition was typical of Russian Jewish emigrants of her generation. Rand herself came from Russia to the United States at age 21, drawn by the conditions depicted in American movies, and eager to leave Stalinist Russia. Jobs as a screenwriter and script reader in Hollywood supported her writing, and also introduced her to husband Frank O'Connor. Literary critics and philosophers have never taken Rand seriously, but her works have garnered popular acclaim. Despite mostly negative reviews, her four novels have together sold over twenty-five million copies, and Objectivist discussion groups and internet sites abound.

1942: By this date, the German Reich has deported more than two million Jews to death camps. Hundreds of thousands more Jews have been murdered by Einsatzgruppen and police battalions.

1942: At a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Churchill asked if would be possible for the RAF to undertake two or three heavy raids on Berlin in January. In addition to dropping bombs on the German capital, the planes would drop leaflets warning them of the fate that awaited them at the end of the war and that the attacks were reprisals for Nazi persecution of Poles and Jews. Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff “warned that any such raids avowedly conducted on account of the Jews would be an asset to enemy propaganda.” The RAF and the USAAF had at least one thing in common. Neither military unit was going to exert any effort to slow down the impact of the Final Solution.

1944: Hungarian Arrow Cross members storm a Swiss-sponsored "safe house" in Budapest and attack residents with machine guns and hand grenades. Three Jews are killed but the rest are saved by a Hungarian military

1944(15th of Tevet, 5705): Josephine Sarah Marcus passed away. Born to German immigrant parents in Brooklyn, NY, in 1861, Marcus grew up in San Francisco. Enchanted by a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, she ran away from home at age 18 to join the theatre. On tour in Tombstone, Arizona, she met and married Wyatt Earp, then a deputy U.S. Marshall for the Arizona Territory. In 1881, Wyatt Earp won lasting fame when he and his brothers fought a gun battle with their political rivals the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral. Fleeing indictment for murder in the aftermath of the shootings, Wyatt and Josephine moved to Colorado. Wyatt's and Josephine's marriage lasted another forty-eight years, until his death in 1929. During these years, they moved frequently around the American west, following gold, silver, and copper mining, until they settled in Southern California. There, they invested in real estate and racehorses, wrote Wyatt's autobiography, and drafted a screenplay based on his exploits. After Wyatt's death, Josephine contributed to published and film portrayals of his life, helping to establish an enduring American legend. Josephine Marcus-Earp was buried beside her husband in a Jewish cemetery in Northern California, where their graves are today the primary local tourist attraction.

1945: Birthdate of Leonard Max Adleman a theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. He is known for being a co-inventor of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptosystem in 1977, and of DNA computing. RSA is in widespread use in security applications, including digital signatures. He won the ACM Turing Award in 2002.

1945: In Pittsburgh a gang of seven Italian American robbers killed a Jewish restaurant owner. The Pittsburgh Jewish Community Relations Council “made a point of downplaying the role of group antagonism as a motivation for this tragic event in order not to harm Jewish-Italian relations.”

1946: Another combined military and police search for the terrorists responsible for Thursday night's explosions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Jaffa was carried out in the slum area of Jerusalem this morning. More than 400 persons were detained for interrogation.

1946: Birthdate of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

1947: Because of constant attacks from Arabs and the siege of Jerusalem, Hebrew University was forced to end all courses and close its doors.

1948: In response to a British ultimatum, Ben-Gurion dispatched the order for Israeli forces to evacuate the Sinai and return to the Negev. A Jewish brigade was on the brink of capturing the Egyptian city of El Arish. Despite pleas from Yigal Allon, who was in command of the forces, Ben-Gurion refused to change his mind. Ever the realist, Ben Gurion knew he needed a successful conclusion to fighting with the Arabs; not a widening war with the British.

1948: U.S. President Harry Truman cabled Ben-Gurion demanding that Israeli forces evacuate the Sinai or face the possible loss of U.S. support. Truman did not know that Ben-Gurion had already issued orders for such an evacuation. There are those who think Truman was moving to shore up the British whose support he needed in dealing with the threat of Soviet Imperialism.

1949: Birthdate of American author Susan Schwartz.

1950(22nd of Tevet, 5711): Jacob Billikopf, Ph.B., L.L.D, passed away. Born in 1882 in Wilna Jacob Billikopf, Ph.B., L.L.D., (June 1, 1882, Wilna, Russia – December 31, 1950) was a nationally known figure in social work, Jewish philanthropy and labor arbitration. Billikopf had a long and distinguished career in public service work. He served as superintendent of the United Jewish Charities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Kansas City, Missouri, before becoming the executive director of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, chairman of the National Labor Board for the Philadelphia region during the first years of the New Deal. He served as impartial chairman of both the Ladies' Garment industry and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in [Philadelphia]. He later represented the department stores of Philadelphia in their labor relations. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the New School for Social Research, and president of the board of trustees of Howard University. In 1937 and 1938 he dedicated himself fulltime to bringing European Jewish refugees into the United States. Following World War II he served on the Clemency Board in Washington which was established to review court martial sentences.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the first reading of the War Invalids Bill, submitted by the Minister of Labor, Mrs. Golda Meyerson (Meir).(This is the same Golda Meir who would become Foreign Minister and Prime Minister in the 1970's in time for the Yom Kippur War.) The bill assured veteran rights, the same as provided to the casualties of the Israel Defense Forces, to the invalids of the World War II Palestinian units of the British Army, and to the invalids of the Haganah. Pensions were also granted to partisans who fought Hitler. The bill was attacked sharply by Herut Knesset members on the grounds that it discriminated against the fighters of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi). (The Labor Zionists did not the Irgun or the Stern Gang as legitimate parts of the IDF and this was their way of rejecting them and their behavior once and for all.)

1956: Birthdate of Dr. Martin Joseph Fettman. An astronaut, Fettman was a Payload Specialist

1958: Birthdate of actress Bebe Neuwirth.

1959: Isidore Dollinger resigns as a member of the House of Representatives from New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

1963: Israel's first desalination plant opened at the port of Eilat.

1963: Birthdate of Scott Ian. Born Scott Rosenfeld, Ian is known as a guitarist for Anthrax.

1968(10th of Tevet, 5729): Asara B’Tevet

1969: Five unarmed Israeli gunboats arrived in Haifa tonight ending a 3,000-mile journey from Cherbourg, France. Their arrival did little to unravel the mystery of their departure, which when the story became public, sounded like something out of an Ian Fleming novel.

1970(3rd of Tevet, 5731): Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant who founded Rebuen’s Restaurant and Delicatessen, one of the delis that claimed to be the home of The Reuben (sandwich), passed away in Palm Beach at the age of 87.

1971: “A group of people who wanted to create a warmer, more intimate, and more democratic Reform temple” founded Temple B’Nai Sholom in Albany, NY which held its first service on this date. Within a month the congregation was incorporated. The congregation met in a church until its present building on 5 ½ acres of Whitehall Road was dedicated in 1979. In 1998, an educational wing was added and existing space was reconfigured to beautify the sanctuary and add a library, lounge and meeting room.

1973: Elections which had been scheduled to be held in October and were delayed by the Yom Kippur War took place. Likud a new political party won 39 seats in the Knesset..

1975: Isidore Dollinger completes his career as a Justice on the New York Supreme Court.

1975: Cornell student Sue Fishkoff landed in Leningrad today. Within hours of her arrival she found herself “in a Jewish apartment within hours” of her arrival, plucked out of the crowd by a young Jewish member of the Komsomol group sent to greet” those arriving at the airport. “The table was spread with a lavish repast -- mushrooms in cream sauce, pickled vegetables, carrot salad, all kinds of smoked fish.” She “learned later how long the family had scrimped to put together that holiday meal. People crowded around her, eager to ask questions about America. Was there really so much street crime? What did people think of the pullout from Vietnam? Had she ever been to Israel? Then two young men dragged out a book and thrust it into her lap. It was an English-language edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica they had opened to the page on Chanukah. One of them pointed to a drawing of the nine-branched Chanukiyah and asked her to explain its use.Thinking he was joking, she smiled. These were university educated people. This was the 20th century. He had to be pulling her leg. He wasn’t. And she’ll always remember her shock and sadness as she realized it.”

1980: A Jewish owned hotel in Nairobi Kenya was bombed killing 18.

1980: A department store that had been built on the site of the Praška Street synagogue burned to the ground. The synagogue had been demolished without the consent of the Jews in 1941. After the war, the communist regime confiscated all religious property including the land of the synagogue.

1981: Iraq said today that two Israeli fighter planes had penetrated 30 miles into southwestern Iraqi airspace near the Saudi Arabian border but had been intercepted by Iraqi planes and forced to withdraw. The Israeli military command in Tel Aviv refused comment on the statement.

1987(10th of Tevet, 5748): Asara B’Tevet

1987: The police said today that 10 identical letter bombs had been mailed from Turkey to several locations in Israel. Two residents of Or Yehuda, near Tel Aviv, were slightly wounded by one of the bombs, but the others were defused, the police said.

1987: ''A People in Print: Jewish Journalism in America.'' a major exhibit celebrating the freedoms of speech and religion at the National Museum of Jewish History comes to an end. In the follwoing article entitled History of “Jewish Journalism On Display in Philadelphia” the author provides interesting highlights into this little studied topic.

Since the late 18th century, Jewish journalists have ''hammered out the idea, the identity, of the American Jew,'' said Dr. Kenneth Libo, the curator who organized the exhibition. Jewish newspapers, he said, published in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, German and Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish dialect, have provided a special forum for Jewish concerns and have served as advocates for these concerns in wider society. In the earliest American newspapers, Jews participated in letters, notices and advertisements. A 1790 issue of The Providence Gazette and Country Journal printed letters between George Washington and the Jewish community of Newport, R.I. Washington wrote that the new American Government ''gives to bigotry no sanction.'' As the Jewish population grew in the first half of the 19th century, newspapers were founded to serve Jewish communities. The first, The Jew, published in New York City, lasted only from 1823 until 1825. The most successful of the early papers was The Occident, founded in 1843 in Philadelphia by Isaac Leeser, who championed traditional Judaism at a time of growing interest in Reform Judaism. Through the second half of the 19th century, Jewish papers flourished around the country: The Israelite in Cincinnati, The Jewish Voice in St. Louis, The Jewish Spectator in Memphis, The Occident in Chicago. Most carried local news and editorials, but news concerning Jews from around the world was also included: ''The Judaic Museum has been opened as a separate department of the Louvre,'' reported The Hebrew in 1891. ''The German Antisemitenbund has issued the programme of the anti-Semite party in the form of a flysheet, and invites membership. The only original feature about the programme is that the list of members will be kept secret.'' By the turn of the 20th century, some Jewish publishers were focusing on specialized audiences, with fraternal society papers for men, school publications for children, women's magazines for homemakers and The Jewish Farmer for rural Jews. The exhibition also offers video presentations, including Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger recalling her life as the daughter of Adolph Ochs, who became publisher of The New York Times in 1896 when she was nearly 4 years old, and of Zero Mostel reading letters from the ''Bintel Brief'' column of The Jewish Forward, which is still published in Manhattan weekly in Yiddish.

1989: Today, Prime Minister Shamir said he had dismissed Ezer Weizman from the cabinet for violating Israeli law by maintaining contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Shamir accused Mr. Weizman of giving advice to the P.L.O. on how to respond to Mr. Shamir's plan for elections in the occupied territories.

1990: Garry Kasparov retains holds his title by winning the World Chess Championship.

1990: According to reports published in today’s New York Times, “Israeli military experts are virtually unanimous that in the event of war, Iraq would launch at least 20 missiles against Israel armed with conventional or chemical warheads, and that some of those missiles would be certain to penetrate Israeli defenses. The military experts and Government officials say they think that Israel would survive an Iraqi missile assault without catastrophic damage or loss of life. But the experts are divided on what Israel's response to an Iraqi attack should be. In the military establishment, some advocate a limited response, using Israeli surface-to-surface Jericho missiles and the nation's powerful air force. Others see an opportunity for a massive retaliatory strike to wipe out the Iraqi Army's war potential, including its nuclear and chemical weapons centers. The debate in the Israeli military and governing establishment focuses on three new strategic realities for the Middle East in the 1990's. They include the apparent end of Jordan's traditional role as a buffer between Israel and Iraq; the settlement of the Iran-Iraq war, which has freed Iraqi troops to look westward toward Israel, and the new constraints on Israel's retaliatory ability because of the presence of allied forces in the Middle East and the emergence of missiles and chemical weapons in the region.”

1991(24th of Tevet, 5752): Felicja Blumental, a Polish-born Brazilian pianist who was known for her performances of 19th-century rarities and music by contemporary composers, died today in Tel Aviv, where she was attending a recital by her daughter, Annette Celine Blumental, a soprano. She was 80 years old and lived in Monte Carlo. She died of heart failure, said her husband, Markus Mizne. Miss Blumental was born in Warsaw on Dec. 28, 1911, and studied composition with Karol Szymanowski and piano with Zbigniew Drzewiecki and Joseph Goldberg at the Warsaw Conservatory. During the early years of World War II, she hid in France and Luxembourg but was able to leave in 1942 when her husband, who had escaped to Brazil, obtained a performer's visa for her. She became a Brazilian citizen and lived in Rio de Janeiro until 1962, when she moved to Milan, Italy, and in 1973 to Monte Carlo. Her early performances in Brazil impressed that country's best-known composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, who composed his Piano Concerto No. 5 for her in 1954. The Polish composers Witold Lutoslawski and Kzysztof Penderecki also wrote for her. Miss Blumental was well known in the 1960's for her adventurous approach to the 19th-century repertory. Although she performed and recorded much of the standard repertory, she also revived neglected works by Hummel, Czerny and Clementi. Her daughter lives in New York.

1991(24th of Tevet, 5752): Benjamin Joseph Buttenwieser passed away. Born in 1900 he was an American banker, philanthropist and civic leader in New York. Buttenwieser entered Columbia College at age 15 and graduated in 1919. He eventually became a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and director of many companies, including Revlon; Benrus Watch; Tischman Realty and others. Buttenwieser married Helen Lehman Buttenwieser in 1929. She was the niece of Governor Herbert Lehman and an attorney for Alger Hiss. Their activism landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents. The Buttenwieser Professorship at Columbia University was established in 1958 with a gift to the University from Buttenweiser, a longtime University Trustee and clerk of the Trustees, in honor of his father, Joseph. He was also a trustee of Lenox Hill Hospital and the New York Philharmonic. He was also a president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

1991: An Arab woman from Bethlehem was preparing an explosive charge in a toilet in the Mahane Yehuda market, the main Jewish market of West Jerusalem, when the charge exploded killing her and no one else.

1991: All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved. There is so much that is positive about this for the world in general and Jews in particular. The demise of the Soviet Union open the flood gates and made it possible for the long-suffering Jews living in the various Soviet republics to make Aliyah

1992: Amnon Rubinstein, a member of Meretz, completed his service as Science and Technology Minister.

1992: Czechoslovakia is dissolved, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Jews will always have a warm spot in their hearts for Czechoslovaki. In 1948, when faced with an arms embargo and the invasion by well armed Arab armies, the Czechs sold the Israelis their first combat aircraft. Ironically, these were surplus ME-109’s – the fighter plane that had been the pride of the Nazi Air Force. These fighter planes, one of which was flown by Ezer Weizmann played a key role in halting the Egyptian drive to seize Tel Aviv.

1993: Entertainer Barbra Streisand performed her first paid concert in 22 years, singing to a sellout crowd at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas.

1993: Formally recognizing each other after decades of diplomatic aloofness and centuries of frequent Jewish-Catholic rancor, Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement today to establish diplomatic relations. “But at the dawn of a new epoch of reconciliation, many Israelis were unable to shed their memories of pain and bloodshed that they associate with the church. The past, dank and deep, clasped the signing ceremony in a starkly modern room of the Foreign Ministry, where Israel and the Holy See set the course for an exchange of ambassadors and possibly the first visit to the Holy Land by Pope John Paul II. But even as it recognized Israel, the Vatican sought to defend its position in the Arab world and to register its demand for international guarantees of Jerusalem's status as a holy place for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. "Behind the agreement there are thousands of years of history, full of hatred, fear and ignorance, with a few islands of understanding, of cooperation and of dialogue," said Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, who signed for Israel. "Behind the agreement there are very few years of light and many more years of darkness."Even talk of reconciliation between Jews and Catholics may be premature, Mr. Beilin said."Do we have the right to reconciliate?" he asked. "It is not for us to say. Can we ignore the memories of so many years? No. It is wrong to ignore memories, much as it is wrong to let memories tie our hands and determine our fates." Mr. Beilin's Vatican counterpart at the ceremony, Msgr. Claudio Celli, did not utter the word reconciliation or say anything that could remotely be construed as contrition, as some Israelis had demanded. But Monsignor Celli, too, acknowledged that the moment was historic, with "a fundamental religious and spiritual significance, not only for the Holy See and the State of Israel, but for millions of people throughout the world." "The Holy See," said Monsignor Celli, the Vatican Undersecretary of State, "is convinced that a dialogue and respectful cooperation between Catholics and Jews will now be given new impetus and energy both in Israel and throughout the world." The ceremony today capped 17 months of negotiations, which produced an agreement with loose ends that still need to be tied. Among the more important are tax policies and other economic matters that affect church property in Israel and are expected to require two years of talks. Israel and the Vatican will now exchange "special representatives," to be raised to the status of full ambassador in what Israeli officials say should be no more than four months. Following the example set by all but two countries, Costa Rica and El Salvador, the Holy See said it would establish its Embassy not in Jerusalem but in Tel Aviv -- actually in Jaffa, a mixed town of Jews and Arabs that is officially part of municipal Tel Aviv but has a separate history and character. In the agreement, the Vatican commits itself to combat anti-Semitism while Israel affirms the church's right to freedom of expression and to carry out social programs here. But while retaining "the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching office," the Holy See also agrees to stay out of temporal struggles. This pledge "applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders," that is, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As for the difficult question of Jerusalem, which Israel considers a unified city and its capital for all time, there is no mention of it in the 15-point accord. But Monsignor Celli said problems remained on the question of access to holy places in Jerusalem, and he spoke of wanting "an international warranty in order to protect, to save, to recognize the particularity of the city for the three monotheistic religions." By coming to terms with Israel, the Vatican hopes to have a say in the final status of Jerusalem. That matter is supposed to be settled by 1999 under another epochal agreement signed by Israel this year, the one with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel has gains of its own, regarding the ceremony today as another step along the path of the diplomatic acceptance it has long craved and has begun to receive broadly in recent years. Despite its significance, the ceremony today was carried out with just a modicum of fanfare -- not an area of conspicuous Israeli strength to begin with. The fact that the signing was by officials at the rank of deputy foreign minister reflected not a lack of high-level interest, Israeli officials said, but a recognition that Mr. Beilin and Monsignor Celli had directed the talks. It may well be the only diplomatic event for both states in which delegates on both sides wore skullcaps. When it was over, they toasted one another with champagne, Mr. Beilin raising his glass and saying, "L'Chaim!" -- "To life!" in Hebrew. But beyond protocol and ceremony, each side recognized the agreement as an attempt to break with a past of frequent hatred and mistrust -- rooted, many Jews believe, in a traditional belief held by many Catholics that the Jews bear collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. The Jews' pain became more intense than ever with the Nazi Holocaust. To this day many Jews are convinced, despite Vatican denials, that Pope Pius XII did not speak out with enough force or raise his hand with enough vigor to save some of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. The last three decades have witnessed attempts at healing the wounds, including a document issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council that repudiated the idea of collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus and called for a dialogue between Jews and Catholics. In 1986 John Paul II became the first Pope to visit a synagogue -- the main one in Rome -- where he called Jews "our beloved elder brothers" and condemned anti-Semitism. Still, for many Jews, all this was too little too late, and the residual anger at the church has burst forth in the last few days. It was on display among several dozen protesters who stood across the street from the Foreign Ministry today, some carrying signs that said "The Holocaust" and "Blood Libel." It was also shown in newspaper editorials like one in the respected daily Haaretz, which accused the church of long persecution of the Jews and said it "should not be forgiven for this." A commentary this week in Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest selling newspaper in Israel, said in part: "The Catholic Church is one of the most conservative, oppressive and corrupt organizations in all human history. Israel has no reason to court the Vatican. The reconciliation can be done only if the Catholic Church and the one who heads it fall on their knees and ask for forgiveness from the souls of millions of tortured who went to Heaven in black smoke, under the blessing of the Holy See." The Vatican's rejection of relations for so many years also rankles many Israelis, and some suggest Israel should not have bothered now. But Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, chief rabbi for the Ashkenazim in Israel, said this week, "There are Jews in some parts of the world who still fear the preachings of the priests on Sunday, and now will be able to stand erect." Rabbi David Rosen, a member of the Israeli commission that negotiated with the Vatican, said: "It's much more in our interest to strengthen the hands of those who are our friends in any conflict with those who are against us, rather than turn our back on them."

1993: Chaim Weizman and David Bizi were found after being murdered by terrorists in a Ramle apartment. ID cards of two Gaza residents were found in the apartment, together with a leaflet of the Popular Front 'Red Eagle' group, claiming responsibility for the murder.

1994: Leo Fuchs Polish born U.S. Yiddish actor passed away at the age of 83.

1995: In writing about the “Emotional Overload and Emotional Lift” captured by television in 1995, Walter Goodman cites the tragic events that occurred in Israel. “The shock at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Prime Minister was to some extent alleviated by the immediate surge of revulsion, expressed on television both in the United States and in Israel, over violent political language as well as acts of violence. At the widely covered funeral, the tributes of so many heads of state were heartening, with the pictures of an obviously moved King Hussein of Jordan carrying special force. Even amid the anxiety over the future, it was a historic and consoling moment: an Arab leader showing personal sorrow for the death of an Israeli leader.”

1997: Marv Levy retired as coach of Buffalo Bills.

1997: Despite American calls for a ''timeout'' in settlement building, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai of Israel shoveled cement into a hole today for a new extension of this Jewish settlement in the hills north of the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah.

1998: The United States Ambassador to Israel ordered the American Embassy in Tel Aviv closed today after what embassy officials called a ''direct and credible'' threat of a terrorist attack against the building. American officials said the threat was received last night, but they would not reveal its source or content, or how it was communicated. They denied Israeli radio reports that the threats were directed specifically against the Ambassador, Edward S. Walker. It was the first time in memory that the American Embassy in Israel had closed its doors for security reasons, officials said. ''This was a threatened attack against an American embassy,'' said the embassy spokesman, Larry Schwartz. He said that while he could not confirm reports that the threatened action was a car bombing by opponents of American air strikes on Iraq, such a threat would be ''consistent'' with security measures undertaken by the embassy in response. ''We received a credible threat,'' Mr. Schwartz said. ''It was a direct threat. The Ambassador, thinking it the prudent thing to do, decided to close the embassy for the day.'' Children and other dependents of United States Embassy and consular personnel in Israel were ordered out of the country by the State Department during the four-day bombing campaign against Iraq earlier this month. The evacuation order has been lifted, but many families remain abroad. The embassy in Tel Aviv had planned to close early today for the New Year's Eve holiday and is expected to reopen Monday.

1999: Under terms of the Croatian denationalization law that had been passed in 1996, the parcel of land that had been occupied by the Praška Street Synagogue was returned to the Jewish community.

1999: The last commercial flight out of Kennedy International Airport for 1999 took off at 10:17 p.m. for the 10-hour nonstop flight to Tel Aviv with a mere 12 paying passengers on board.
2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture by Ruth R. Wisse and Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture by Robert Alter.

2001: Alan Hevesi completed his term as New York City’s 41st Comptroller.

2002: Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, stepped down after 15 years at the helm of the Carnegie Institution. After earning degrees from Swarthmore (1952) and Yale (1957), Singer joined the National Institutes of Health as a postdoctoral fellow, later becoming a staff member. She was appointed chief of the National Cancer Institute's Biochemistry Lab in 1980, a position she held until 1987. In 1988, she became president of the Carnegie Institution, a major national scientific research center based in Washington, DC. At the Carnegie Institution, Singer created the Carnegie Academy for Science Education, which trains elementary school teachers in science. Reflecting her concern about the lack of women and members of racial minorities in scientific fields, she also created a weekend science school for elementary-age students. Among her other accomplishments at Carnegie was a $50 million capital campaign that financed Carnegie's participation in the building of two giant optical telescopes at the Institution's campus in Chile, as well as other capital improvement projects. Singer's own research interests have ranged widely within biochemistry, but have included significant work on recombinant DNA. Partly as a result of her interest in mammalian DNA, Singer has long taken an active interest in issues of science policy and ethics. Beginning in 1973, she helped to organize a series of conferences that addressed both the promises and the perils of human DNA research. She has also spoken out about U.S. public policy, advocating national investment in the human genome project but cautioning against overspending on biomedical research in space. Singer has served on the boards of the Whitehead Institute, Johnson & Johnson, Yale, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Singer was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1979 and to the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1986. In 1992, she was awarded the National Medal of Science in recognition of her illustrious career in biochemistry. The award citation noted "her outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist."

2003: In the following article entitled “Was Life Better When Bagels Were Smaller,” Ed Levine traces the evolution of this donut shaped piece of dough that has grown from an ethnic oddity to a common commercial commodity. (It is well worth the read. Your mouth will water while his tongue is stuck firmly in his cheek.)

Paris has its baguettes and Dublin its soda bread. San Francisco trades heavily in sourdough, while New Orleans greets each morning with beignets. It wouldn't be Philadelphia without soft pretzels and it couldn't be Bonn without pumpernickel. But no city, perhaps in the history of the world, is so closely identified with a breadstuff as New York is with the bagel. The bagel is to a Sunday in Manhattan as the mint julep is to Louisville, Ky., on the first Saturday in May -- an indispensable accompaniment to ritual, whether that be a brunch on the Upper West Side or the Kentucky Derby itself. Whether eaten plain or with a ''schmear'' of cream cheese, with whitefish salad or a slice of Nova, with sesame seeds or salt, toasted or untoasted, by Jew, gentile, Muslim, Buddhist or agnostic, the bagel has, for more than a century, helped define breakfast in New York. But what is a bagel, really? What makes it more than simply, as an article in The New York Times declared in 1960, ''an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis''? And, most important to anyone with even a passing interest in the subject, where can you find the best bagel in New York City? It was with these questions and more in mind that I set out, scarcely a month ago, to eat bagels in all five boroughs and to determine, to the best of my palate's ability, what makes a great and authentic New York bagel. I visited more than 50 establishments. I ate more than three times that number of bagels. In the process, I both horrified practitioners of the carbohydrate-phobic Atkins diet and discovered no less than half a dozen varieties of bagel so good they need no cheese, butter or smoked fish to accompany them. Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side, I salute you! Terrace Bagels, in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, huzzah! Cheers to Bagel Oasis, in Fresh Meadows, Queens, and to Murray's Bagels in Chelsea. Hot Bialys in Jamaica, Queens? Bagelry in Murray Hill? They are all superb. But I also had bagels so despicably bad the people responsible for baking them should be incarcerated. New York may be the nation's bagel capital, but street vendors selling rubbery steamed bagels abound, not to mention local McDonald's franchises selling bagels topped with egg, cheese and bacon. Even such Midwestern depredations as blueberry bagels have gained a stronghold in certain precincts of New York City. The bagel as concept is ubiquitous in New York. But not all bagels are the same. Some are to be derided. A definition of terms, then; a bagel is a round bread made of simple, elegant ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed. All else is not a bagel. A few more stipulations: Bagels do not need six ounces of cream cheese on them. They only need a schmear. Cream cheese made without guar gum is optimal, but it is hard to find. (You can still find fine natural cream cheese at the Fairway markets and Russ & Daughters in New York, and Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Mich., makes a great, larger curd cream cheese that is available by mail.) On the subject of salmon, it should be Nova, and it should be sliced to order. A good bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon does not have to be toasted, as contrast with the fat and salt will be provided by the crunchy crust of a properly made bagel exterior. But a buttered bagel should almost always be toasted, so that you get that great, rich melted butter taste. Better yet, you can achieve the same effect if you buy your bagels fresh, still warm from the oven. No toasting needed! The derivation of the word bagel is unclear. Joan Nathan, the author of ''Jewish Cooking in America'' (Knopf, 1998), says it comes from the German verb ''biegen,'' ''to bend.'' The late Alan Davidson wrote in his ''Oxford Companion to Food'' that the word arose from the Yiddish ''beygel,'' itself taken from the German ''beugel,'' meaning ring or bracelet. One bit of bagel lore has it that the bagel was invented in 1683, when a Jewish baker in Vienna baked a hard roll in the shape of a stirrup -- ''bügel'' in German -- as a thank-you gesture to the cavalry-leading King John III Sobieski of Poland, who had saved the city from Turkish invaders. But no matter the etymology, it is indisputable that Eastern European immigrants arriving in the United States at the turn of the 20th century brought the bagel with them to the streets of the Lower East Side, where they were baked and sold on the street stacked on sticks. And it is likewise indisputable that in the manner of so many great American movements, the rise of the bagel is inextricably tied to that of a trade union, specifically Bagel Bakers Local 338, a federation of nearly 300 bagel craftsmen formed in Manhattan in the early 1900's. Local 338 was by all accounts a tough and unswerving union, set up according to strict rules that limited new membership to the sons of current members. By 1915 it controlled 36 bagel bakeries in New York and New Jersey. These produced the original New York bagels, the standard against which all others are still, in some manner, judged. What did they look like? At a mere three ounces, about half the size of the bagel you'll find at a corner coffee cart in Midtown Manhattan, union bagels were smaller and denser than their modern descendants, with a crustier crust and a chewier interior. They were made entirely by hand, of high-gluten flour, water, yeast, salt and malt syrup, mixed together in a hopper. Rollers would then take two-inch strips of dough and shape them. A designated bagel boiler would boil the bagels in an industrial kettle for less than a minute, which gave the bagel its tight skin and eventual shine. Finally, a third bagel man would put the bagels on thick redwood slats covered with burlap and place them in a brick or stone-lined oven. The finished bagels were put on strings five dozen at a time and left on the doorknobs of retail accounts. Local 338 held its ironclad grip on the bagel market for nearly half a century, until industrial bagel-making machines were introduced to the market in the early 1960's. According to Mike Edelstein, who is an owner of Bagel Oasis, and a bagel maker for more than 40 years, ''A machine could roll 300 dozen bagels an hour with one man operating it, while two experienced hand rollers could only produce 125 dozen in the same amount of time.'' The introduction of industrial bagel machines meant any retailer or retail-bakery owner could make bagels with nonunion help. Local 338 was essentially broken. Only a few bagel bakers -- the best bagel bakers, is how I think of them -- would uphold its ideals. Sam Thongkrieng of Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side is one of those bagel makers -- a member of a large group of Thai bagel makers spread throughout New York's most prominent bagel shops. Mr. Thongkrieng came to New York in 1980 via Bangkok and college in London, and immediately, he said, started working in bagel shops. ''The moment I ate a bagel,'' he remembered, ''I said to myself 'This is something different.' '' After apprenticing at a chain bagel restaurant called Bagel Nosh, then at Zaro's and Ess-a-Bagel, he opened Absolute in 1990. If you ask for a dark, well-baked bagel there, you'll taste something near perfection: a bagel that is crunchy, not too dense or sweet, and just chewy enough. But still quite large. For a real retro taste, it is necessary to order Mr. Thongkrieng's minibagel -- a perfect simulacrum of the 1950's New York bagel. Also in Manhattan, there is Murray's Bagels, Adam Pomerantz's minichain of excellent and beautifully appointed bagelries, named for his bagel-loving father. Mr. Pomerantz left a successful career on Wall Street to open Murray's, but he surely has his dad's soul. His hand-rolled bagels are crisp and chewy and dark, with a terrific shine. They would be even better, I think, if he used malt to sweeten them, not sugar. The Bagelry is the third of Manhattan's triumvirate of bagel gems, owned by Bobby Madorski, whose grandfather was also a bagel man, and who won the family's first bagel bakery in a poker game 60 years ago. The younger Mr. Madorski seems to be a bit of a gambler himself. He is the first serious bagel baker in New York to make his regular-size bagels exclusively by machine (he still hand rolls his minibagels, which must be special ordered). The gamble has paid off. Mr. Madorski's bagels are about the smallest regular-size bagels available in New York, and they are absolutely delicious; crusty, chewy and just salty enough. (Not to speak heresy, but his flat bagels, perfect for vertical toasting, are also fantastic, crunchy and just barely pliant.) Terrace Bagels, which sits regally near a corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, across from the storied Farrell's bar, is a wonderful example of New York food purveyors at their maddening best: it is lamb dressed as mutton. The bagel bins are small. There is no evidence anywhere that bagels have been boiled, much less baked. Most of the other food on display is Italian, rather than Jewish. But the bagels that miraculously materialize from Louis Thompson's hidden ovens are extremely flavorful; yeasty, with just a hint of sourness. Mr. Thompson's principal bagel roller is Vicharn Tangchitsumran (also known as Boone), who has been hand rolling bagels for more than 30 years. As the Michelin guides put it, he is worth a detour. As is a trip up to Fresh Meadows, Queens, where Mike Edelstein and Abe Moskowitz run the incomparable Bagel Oasis, overlooking the nearby Long Island Expressway (heading east, you take Exit 25). Mr. Edelstein and Mr. Moskowitz are former members of Local 338, and together they have more than 100 years of experience baking bagels. The result is a bagel that is fairly petite by today's standards, that has decent chew, excellent flavor, and manages to be dense without being leaden. Marvelous. They also make a fine bagel twist and a terrific pretzel made of bagel dough. If you like that sort of thing, that is. I don't much like the eponymous bialys at Hot Bialys, Kitti Phongtankuel's little shop on Queens Boulevard, a stone's throw from the Queens County Courthouse, but I sure do admire the bagels. Mr. Phongtankuel, another alumnus of Bagel Nosh, bought the place in 1983 from Nettie Berkowitz -- and promptly set about making fabulous bagels, including a newfangled flat bagel he calls a Bagel Delite. Some malt in the recipe would improve things, but these are still terrific bagels, far superior to the large doughy orbs that many New Yorkers have come to think of, incorrectly, as ''good bagels.'' How and why did bagels get so big? The bagel sold at the excellent Ess-a-Bagel on First Avenue is a whopping seven ounces now, or more than twice the size of the traditional union bagel of yore. (It's a pretty good bagel, truth to tell, though sweetened with honey.) The ones at H&H Bagels on the Upper West Side (and at the unrelated H&H Midtown East) aren't much smaller than that, and are baked with so much sugar that they almost qualify as a dessert. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor of performance studies at New York University who is working on a social history of the bagel, said, ''The increase in size was an attempt to make a more competitive and more profitable product consistent with the supersized trend'' of the 1980's. Bagel cafes, she explained, were a trendy, quick-service franchise concept that spread the gospel of fresh bagels across the country. The bagels served by chains like Bagel Nosh, Einstein Brothers and Bruegger's gradually became bigger and bigger as the notion of supersizing spread, and as the businesses morphed from breakfast and coffee operations into full-fledged sandwich-making restaurants. The bagels needed to be bigger to hold the fillings. New York's independent bagelries soon followed suit. Chain bagel shops also popularized the seemingly inexhaustible array of bagel flavors. Mr. Edelstein of Bagel Oasis said that when he began baking bagels, there were only plain, salt, poppy and sesame bagels, and that he made 10 plain bagels for every salted, poppy or sesame bagel. Now, there are bagels flavored with blueberry, cranberry-orange and pesto, even curry. I'm begrudgingly willing to let cinnamon-raisin into the bagel pantheon, and certainly pumpernickel, even ''everything.'' But if God had wanted sun-dried tomatoes put into bagels, he would have put more bagel bakers in Italy. Here are six sources for traditional, and excellent, bagels in New York City: Absolute Bagels, Bagelry, Murray’s Bagels, Terrace Bagels, Bagel Oasis and Hot Bialys.

2003: German-born American physicist Arthur R. von Hippel passed away. Von Hippel was not Jewish but his wife was. Von Hippel was an opposed to the Nazis. For these two reasons, Von Hippel left Germany and eventually made his as to the United States where he spent the rest of his life.

2004(19th of Tevet, 5765): Israeli Poet and playwright Elisheva Greenbaum passed away. In June of 2003, at the Metulla Festival of Poetry, Elli was awarded the prestigious "Tevah" prize in poetry. Earlier, in 2002, Elisheva was awarded The Prime Minister's prize for poetry.

2005: Premier of “Six Actors in Search of a Plot" a new bilingual Arabic-Hebrew written by the Palestinian playwright Mohammad el-Thaher.

2005(30th of Kislev, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2005: In the evening, Havdalah and New Year’s coincide. How ironic that "2005" separates itself from our lives on the evening when the Jew separates the day of rest from the week of work

2005: Neil Diamond appeared on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2006.

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767):Asara B'Tevet

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767): Yahrzeit of Judith “Judy” Sharon Rosenstein (nee Levin).

2006: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World by Kati Marton.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World by Kati Marton, Emma Lazarus by Esther Schor and Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins by Amanda Vaill.

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767): Seymour Martin “Marty” Lipset “the most revered analyst of American society and democracy since Alexis de Tocqueville” passed away at the age of 84

2006: At the Jewish Museum in New York an exhibition styled “Ours to Fight For: American Jews During the Second World War” comes to an end.

2007: The New Republic magazine featured a review of The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan.

2007: Rabbi, Naftali Tzi Weisz, 59, and his assistant, or gabbai, Moshe E. Zigelman, 60 spent some of the time studying Hebrew books and reciting psalms while waiting to appear in court having been charged in an indictment that alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud U.S. government agencies, to operate a underground money transfer system and to launder money through an Israeli bank.

2007(22 Tevet 5768): Rabbi Arnold G. Kaiman, 74, rabbi at Congregation Kol Ami on the Near North Side for 21 years, died of lung problems, in a West Bloomfield, Mich., hospital. He moved to West Bloomfield after his retirement from Congregation Kol Ami in 1994. Rabbi Kaiman was known for denying and conformity. The longtime Congregation Kol Ami rabbi liked incorporating popular music into his services and conducted many interfaith marriages. Believing that love and commitment trumped religious background, Rabbi Kaiman presided over many interfaith marriages during 36 years as a Reform rabbi. Born in 1933, Rabbi Kaiman grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Omaha. He remained Orthodox through his undergraduate years at Yale University and at the University of Cincinnati, where he did his graduate work. It was as a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati that he shifted to Reform Judaism, attracted by the movement's modern ideas and lack of reliance on ancient ritual, his daughter said. Rabbi Kaiman served congregations in Philadelphia, Larchmont, N.Y., and Los Angeles. Rabbi Kaiman came to Chicago in 1973 and maintained a high profile for much of his two decades in the city. He hosted the "Ask the Rabbi" radio show and, in the late 1980s, the TV show "Of Cabbages and Kings.” He volunteered as a chaplain for inmates in Illinois prison and for the Chicago Police Department, and he was a member of the city's Interfaith Council under the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. For Jews seeking a spouse outside the faith, Rabbi Kaiman was the go-to guy. He was one of only a handful of rabbis who would administer interfaith marriages, and he traveled throughout the Midwest to perform such nuptials in addition to the many he conducted in Chicago. "He just felt really strongly it was about love, it wasn't about religion," his daughter said. "He just felt it shouldn't be so limiting. For many Jewish parents, Rabbi Kaiman's actions kept the door open for their children to maintain ties to the faith, said Shom Klaff, executive director of Congregation Kol Ami. "I had so many families come to me and say, 'He saved our kids for Judaism,' " Klaff said. Rabbi Kaiman's services at Kol Ami, held in Water Tower Place since 1976, were spiced with popular music, an attention-getting device he started using while an Air Force chaplain. Selections included everything from "Wind Beneath My Wings" to "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow." In a 1990 Tribune story, Rabbi Kaiman acknowledged his methods were alienating to some. "Let me put it in my bluntest way. You either love me or you hate me," he said. "That's OK. I don't want to be a rabbi who is so conformist that he's accepted."

2008: An exhibition entitled "From Distant Places to Dubuque's Shores: 175 Years of Jewish Life" at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa comes to a close.
2008: The Maltz Museum offers museum guests an opportunity to toast in the New Year at a 7 p.m. function before moving on to other holiday parties. A brief snapshot of this treasure trove of Judaica provides a valuable reminder that Jewish culture thrives in places outside of New York and Los Angeles. The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, in the eastern Cleveland suburb of Beachwood, opened in late 2005. It is a beautiful, 24,000-square foot building made of Jerusalem limestone that tells the story of the Jewish community in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio -- from the 18th century to the present -- with exhibits, interactive computer displays, and video oral histories. The Maltz Museum is the brain-child of Cleveland media mogul, Milton Maltz and his wife Tamar. They conceived the project after seeing a similar museum in Amsterdam and contributed well over half of the funds as well as the ideas for its creation. The results are spectacular. The 24,000-square foot, elegant building, made from Jerusalem limestone and glass is a stunning tribute to Cleveland's Jewish citizens, past and present -- as well as to the Maltzes. The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is divided into three sections -- the permanent collection, a large exhibition hall for visiting exhibits, and the Temple-Tifereth Israel Gallery. The permanent collection includes eight galleries, with exhibits such as "They've Arrived" about NE Ohio's Jewish immigrants and "Wonderland" - a tribute to Ohio's Jewish entertainers from Vaudeville to the present, narrated by native NE Ohioan, Joel Grey. Also featured in the permanent exhibits are "To Serve," a look at Jewish Ohioans contributions during wartime and "The World Remade," a look at rebuilding the Jewish trust and community after the fascism and loss of the mid-20th century. The Temple-Tifereth Israel Gallery showcases 170 periodically changing treasures from the University Circle Temple's extensive collection of textiles, paintings, sculpture, and lithographs, dating from the 18th century to the present. Among the objects displayed are a series of Marc Chagall paintings depicting the Exodus and elaborately embroidered Torah coverings.

2008: Haaretz reported that Katyusha rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip exploded in Be'er Sheva region, 37 kilometers from the coastal territory, which was the furthest point eastward which a Palestinian projectile has managed to reach.

2008: Two Israelis were lightly wounded when they were shot by a group of men in a mall in Odense, Denmark this afternoon. The Israelis were selling Dead Sea cosmetics at a stand in the mall - a job many young Israelis pursue, usually following military service, in order to save money for their future and to continue their travels. The shooting took place at the Rosengaard mall in Odense, 170 kilometers west of Copenhagen. It took place around 3:30 p.m., when the mall was filled with people doing last-minute shopping before the New Year's break. One of the Israelis was hit in the hand and the other in the leg, police said, adding that their wounds were not life-threatening. The men, who were selling hair care products, had been harassed by a group of youths in recent days, Denmark's Ritzau news agency said. The nature of the harassment was not immediately known. According to the B.T. newspaper's Web site, a man shouted something in a Middle Eastern language and opened fire. Another Israeli inside the hairdressing shop threw a chair at the gunman, the newspaper said. The shooter escaped in a dark vehicle which later was found nearby by police.

2008: The New Republic magazine featured a review of “Adam Resurrected,” a film based on the novel by Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk starring Jeff Goldblum as the protagonist, Holocaust survivor Adam Stein.

2009: Final session of Limmud in the United Kingdom.

2009: At the Center for Jewish History an exhibition entitled “Stars, Strikes, and the Yiddish Stage: The Story of the Hebrew Actors' Union, 1899-2005” comes to an end. “Founded in 1899, the Hebrew Actors' Union (HAU) was the first union for actors in America. Its membership included the most famous actors and actresses of the Yiddish stage. Throughout its existence, the HAU championed actors' rights to fair wages and decent working conditions.”

2009: “Publishing in Exile: German-Language Literature in the U.S. in the 1940s” a joint exhibition of The Goethe-Institute New York and Leo Baeck Institute, sponsored in part by the New York Council for the Humanities comes to an end. Authors who fled Germany and France following the rise of National Socialism often found themselves stranded abroad without publishers, and writing in a language foreign to their host countries. Though several exile presses were established in the early 1930s,Querido Verlag and Allert de Lange in Amsterdam, for example, fascism's advance made it necessary during the war years for exile presses to flee to more distant shores, including those of the United States and Mexico.Publishing in Exile brings together for the first time literary works published by these German-speaking exile publishers in the United States during the Third Reich. Displayed along with the original books, rare photos, letters, and archival material are several unique manuscripts that characterize the writing done during this dark time, such as Thomas Mann's, Joseph der Ern?hrer [Joseph the Provider] and Franz Werfel's, Die wahre Geschichte vom wiederhergestellten Kreuz [The True Story of the Restored Cross], as well as materials from collections in Germany and across the United States. Many of the titles published by the exile presses in the U.S. were written by authors banned by the Nazis: Jewish writers, Marxists, pacifists, internationalists, and other undesirables, but some were classics that were out of line with Nazi dogma, such as Grimm's M?rchen. The exhibit features the seven most prominent publishers who issued German-language literary texts in the United States between 1940 and 1950. Gottfried Bermann-Fischer, editor-in-chief of Fischer Verlag in Berlin, after attempting to work in Vienna and Stockholm, finally fled to New York. There he founded L.B. Fischer Corporation with Fritz Landshoff, who had published many exiled authors in his Querido Verlag in Amsterdam before he too was forced to leave Europe. Wieland Herzfelde introduced socialism into publishing in the U.S., forming the only author-run press among the exiles, Aurora Verlag. Art dealer and publisher Otto Kallir reestablished his small Viennese house, Johannespresse, in Manhattan, mainly to publish the work of his friend and fellow exile, the poet Richard Beer-Hofmann. On the West Coast, Ernst Gottlieb and Felix Guggenheim joined together as Pazifische Presse to produce deluxe editions of German fiction. Master of international modernism, Kurt Wolff, together with his French partner, Jacques Schiffrin, started Pantheon Books, which went on to have an illustrious history in American publishing. Against the odds, these ?migr?s brought out new books by Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Broch, Alfred D?blin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Oskar Maria Graf, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers, Franz Werfel, and Arnold Zweig, among others, as well as reissuing classics by H?lderlin, Goethe, Hauptmann, and Rilke-all in the original language.

2009: On New Year’s Eve, Off The Wall Comedy Empire presents David Kilimnick, Israel's ‘Father of Anglo Comedy,' whose monologue “brings on new complaints” as he “addresses the issues of what really makes the right resolution” for the New Year. Israelis know him as the “creator of the 'The Aliyah Monologues,' 'Find Me A Wife,' 'HaOleh HaChadash' and 'Frum From Birth'”.

2009: Two rockets launched from the Gaza Strip exploded in a southern Israeli town.The two Grad type rockets, which have a range of about 13 miles, hit the Israeli town of Netivot late today. No one was hurt.

2009: The last H&H bagel of the year was sold at the company's 80th Street store was a poppy seed bagel purchased moments before midnight by Ezra Millstein, of West 73rd Street.

2009: Hamas activist, Ibrahim Za’arah, 44, was arrested with two bombs on his person weighing 6-7 kilograms, as well as detonation devices as he tried to enter Israel.

2010: In New York, The Peridance Capezio Center is scheduled to host the first in a series of GAGA Master Classes with Ohad Naharin. “Gaga is a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin in Israel to help dancers (and non dancers alike) reconnect to the way they move. Already a renowned choreographer, Ohad Naharin was appointed Artistic Director of Batsheva Dance Company in 1990.

2010: Jehuda Reinharz is scheduled to end his 16 years as President of Brandeis University today. He will be succeeded by Frederick Lawrence who will become President on January 1st.

2010: Bezalel Fair, the largest arts & crafts fair of its kind in Israel where all work displayed in handmade Israeli art, is scheduled to open in Jerusalem at 9 a.m.

2010: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to host “A Champagne New Year's Eve with Sharon Isbin the world famous guitarist who is a native of St. Louis Park, MN.

2010(24th of Tevet): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. The founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of died on the eve of the 24th of Tebet, at approximately 10:30 pm, shortly after reciting the Havdalah prayer, which marks the end of Shabbat.

2010(24 Tevet): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit for the four thousand Jews of Safed and the one thousand Jews of Tiberias who were killed in the 1837 Galilee Earthquake.

2010: Kathe Goldstein is scheduled to lead Friday night services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA. Since Shabbat and New Year’s Eve coincide, Jews and non-Jews will be celebrating in the same manner. Both will be wearing hats, consuming alcohol, singing festive songs and enjoying special treats. Regardless of how or what you celebrate, may everybody enjoy themselves and return safely to their homes.

2010: The winner of “Jerusalem in 2111” competition, featuring science fiction clips depicting the city in 100 years, was announced today. The winning video, Secular Quarter #3, directed by David Gidali along with cameraman Itay Gross, two Israeli students studying at the prestigious AFI Film school in Lost Angeles, was chosen among dozens of videos entries from all over the world. The video was sent two weeks ago, along with nine other finalists to a panel of senior judges from around the world. The panel consisted of top film industry executives in science fiction and animation from Germany, France, Venezuela, England, US and others. The winning movie was preferred by producer of Avatar and Titanic, Jon Landau and renowned director Wim Wenders. Gidali and Gross were jointly awarded a $10,000 grand prize, however the real prize is the world wide exposure of their film to leading film executives. In addition,the Jerusalem Development Authority is looking into the possibility of turning the video into a full length feature movie. The ceremony held at the Cinematheque in Jerusalem was attended by Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Naomi Tsur, Mrs. Lia van Leer, the founder of the Cinematheque, Mr. Yigal Molad Hayo, Cinematheque director, Mr. Yoram Honig, manager of the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund,, initiator and producer of the competition, architect Daniel Varnik, and many senior film industry executives. The film, Secular Quarter #3, presents a bleak vision of Jerusalem in 2111, as a city where different populations are separated by futuristic steel walls, and over head by steel domes protecting the citizens from missile attacks. By night, spacecrafts hover over the city and breakdown the walls; as a result secular and ultra-Orthodox youths meet, perhaps for the first time. The film tries to send the message that the more we continue to build walls, the less we will understand about the other side.

2010: Palestinian Authority terrorists attempted to murder a Jewish shepherd this morning, according to a report from the Samaria Regional Council. The terrorists opened fire on the shepherd as he tended his flock near Maaleh Shomron. The intended victim managed to take shelter and call for help. The attackers fled before IDF forces reached the scene.

2010: KlezKlamp, proof of the revitalization of Klezmer, the Yiddish language, comes to an end.

2011: The riotous Sandra Bernhard is scheduled to perform on New Year’s Eve at Joe’s Pub

2011: Party diva Lori Brizzi and DJ Nelson “Paradise” Roman are scheduled to host the New Year's Eve Millennium Dance Party at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

And to all of you who read this, may you and yours enjoy the happiest and healthiest of New Years!

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