This Day, January 2, In Jewish History

January 2 In Jewish History

1012: Jewish mourners were attacked at a funeral in Egypt.

1481: An edict was handed down in Spain calling for all persons to aid in apprehending and accusing suspects who are guilty of heresy. This was said to be issued because persons of nobility in Andalusia were not true to the teachings of the Church.

1481: The officers of the Inquisition issued an edict to the governor of Cadiz and other officials to seize the possessions of the Marranos and to turn these conversos over to them or suffer excommunication, confiscation of their goods and deprivation of public office.

1492: The Reconquista was completed as the emirate of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrendered to the forces under the command of Ferdinand and Isabella. The fall of Granada added even more Jews to Catholic Spain. Under the terms of surrender, the Jewish inhabitants were promised protection by the King and Queen. Within a few months these most Catholic Monarchs would break their word when Ferdinand ordered “the razing of the Jewish quarter. Nine months from the fall of Granada, the Sephardim will be banned from their ancestral homeland.

1554: A mandate promulgated today ordered that the Jews should leave the territory of Lower Austria at the end of six months.

1642: Birthdate of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV. As proof of the role that Jews played in his government, we find the Sultan appointing Moses Beben as ambassador to Sweden. When Moses passed away, the Sultan appointed his son Yehuda to serve in his place. At the time, Sweden was a major European power. Mehmed is also the Sultan who dealt with Sabbait Zivi, giving him the choice of conversion or death.

1712: Clement XI issued “Salvatoris nostri vices,” a Papal Bull that transferred the work of catechumens to Pii Operai (Holy Works). [Pii Operai was an offshoot of The College of Neophytes, a Roman Catholic College founded for training Jewish converts]

1770: The Crown Prince of Brunswick "expressed his admiration" for the "great tact and high degree of humanitarianism" that Moses Mendelssohn had shown in responding to the writings of Charles Bonnett that had been sent to him by Johann Lavater.

1782: The Tolerance Edict (Toleranzpatent) guaranteeing existing rights and obligation of the Jewish population, was enacted by Joseph II of Austria, the son of Maria Theresa. Joseph II was influenced by Wilhelm von Dohn, a friend of Mendelssohn's and beginning with this edict, followed a generally enlightened attitude toward the Jews. The Edict (with the final edict less liberal then the original), received mixed reviews by Jewish leaders including Ezekiel Landau and Moss Mendelssohn. They realized that the real intention of the edict was not the emancipation of the Jews but their assimilation. As further proof the new freedoms being granted to the Jews of Austria, Emperor Joseph II "permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables and their sons to wear swords" and "insisted that Christians should behave in a friendly matter towards Jews."

1788: Georgia becomes the fourth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. A year later, Georgia became the third state to remove religious discrimination from the political process. According to one reliable source, Jews had “held public office in Georgia even before the revision of the oath which included the words ‘upon the faith of a Christian.’” Jews had been a part of Georgia from the earliest colonial settlement with the first families arriving in July of 1733. Two years before the ratification vote, the Jewish community of Savannah had stabilized enough to re-organize Congregation Mikve Israel, elect officers and rent a house from Ann Morgan to be used as a synagogue.

1801: Birthdate of Jonas Ennery a native of Nancy who was affiliated with the Jewish school at Strasbourg for twenty-six years.

1822: Birthdate of Bernhard Felsenthal, the German-born American Rabbi who was a leader in the Reform Movement and served as the leader of Zion Congregation in Chicago from 1864 to 1887.
(As reported by Adler & Stolz)

1830: Abraham Geiger preached his first sermon.

1836: Birthdate of Mendele Mocher Sforim (מענדעלע מוכר ספֿרים) "Mendele the bookseller," is the pseudonym of Sholem Yakov Abramovich, Jewish author and one of the founders of modern Yiddish and Modern Hebrew literature. He was born to a poor family in Kopyl near Minsk and lost his father, Chaim Moyshe Broyde, shortly after he was bar mitzvahed. He studied in yeshiva in Slucak and Vilna until he was 17; during this time he was a day-boarder under the system of Teg-Essen, barely scraping by, and often hungry. He next travelled extensively around Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania at the mercy of an abusive beggar named Avreml Khromoy (Avreml would later become the source for the title character of Fishke der Krumer, Fishke the Lame). In 1854 he settled in Kamenets-Podolskiy, where he got to know writer and poet Avrom Ber Gotlober, who helped him to learn secular culture, philosophy, literature, history, Russian and other languages. His first article, "Letter on Education", appeared in first Hebrew newspaper, Hamagid, in 1857. At Berdichev in the Ukraine, where he lived in 1858-1869, he began to publish fiction both in Hebrew and Yiddish. Having offended the local powers with his satire, he left Berdichev to train as a rabbi at the relatively theologically liberal, government-sponsored rabbinical school in Zhitomir, where he lived in 1869-1881, and became head of traditional school (Talmud Torah) in Odessa in 1881. He lived in Odessa until his death in 1917. He initially wrote in Hebrew, coining many words in that language, but ultimately switched to Yiddish in order to expand his audience. Like Sholom Aleichem, he used a pseudonym because of the perception at the time that as a ghetto vernacular, Yiddish was not suited to serious literary work — an idea he did much to dispel. His writing strongly bore the mark of the Haskalah. He is considered by many to be the "grandfather of Yiddish literature"; his style in both Hebrew and Yiddish has strongly influenced several generations of later writers. While the tradition of journalism in Yiddish had a bit more of a history than in Hebrew, Kol Mevasser, which he supported from the outset and where he published his first Yiddish story "Dos Kleine Menshele" ("The Little Man") in 1863, is generally seen as the first stable and important Yiddish newspaper. Sol Liptzin writes that in his early Yiddish narratives, Mendele "wanted to be useful to his people rather than gain literary laurels". [Liptzin, 1972, 42] "The Little Man" and the unstaged 1869 drama Die Takse ("The Tax") both condemned the corruption by which religious taxes (in the latter case, specifically the tax on kosher meat) were diverted to benefit community leaders rather than the poor. This satiric tendency continued in Die Klatshe (The Dobbin, 1873) about a prince, a stand-in for the Jewish people, who is bewitched and becomes a much put-upon beast of burden, but maintains his moral superiority throughout his sufferings. His later work became more humane and less satiric, starting with Fishke (written 1868-1888) and continuing with the unfinished Masoes Beniamin Hashlishi (The Wanderings of Benjamin III, 1878), something of a Jewish Don Quixote. As with Fishke, Mendele worked on and off for decades on his long novel Dos Vinshfingeril (The Wishing Ring, 1889); at least two versions preceded the final one. It is the story of a maskil—that is, a supporter of the Haskalah, like Mendele himself—who escapes a poor town, survives miserable to obtain a secular education much like Mendele's own, but is driven by the pogroms of the 1880sfrom his dreams of universal brotherhood to one of Jewish nationalism. His last major work was his autobiography, Shlome Reb Chaims, completed shortly before his death in 1917.

1854(2nd of Tevet, 5614): 8th Day Chanukah

1856: An article entitled “What the Jews Think of New Year’s” published reported that “in the opinion of our Jewish fellow-citizens New Year’s day and its accompanying custom of giving presents is a blessed institution." According to the author, being able to give gifts to their children on New Year’s, makes it possible for Jewish parents to avoid gift giving at Christmas while still being able to bring joy to their youngsters. Oddly enough, the more recently arrived German Jews still cling to the habit they developed in Europe of gift giving on Christmas. “The Jewish families of long standing in” New York “universally” prefer the New Year’s gift giving celebration. The article concludes by reminding readers that ‘our New Year’s, of course, does not correspond with the commencement of the Hebrew year. That falls in the month of Tishrei, which comprises a part of our September and October, and is celebrated, besides religious ceremonies, by magnificent entertainments and a general wish of ‘Happy New Year.’”

1858: Towards midnight, Rachel Felix, who was dying awoke from her sleep and said she wanted to write a letter to her father. Since she did not have the strength to do so, she began dictating the letter "which contained her last wishes."

1862: Rabbi Arnold Fischel wrote a letter from Washington, DC to Henry Hart in New York updating him on the progress he was making in having the law changed so that Rabbis could serve as Chaplains in the Union Army. Fischel also asked Hart to send him the smallest sized prayer book and Tehillim for the use of the Jewish soldiers serving in the Union Army. He asked for an immediate shipment of 50, the smaller the better since they have to fit into the packs carried by the soldiers. Fischel said that Joseph Seligman had assured him that the members of Temple Emanu-El would contribute a large sum of money for such a project was would the Jews at the Stanton Street Synagogue. Finally, Fischel asked Hart to apologize on his behalf to Rabbi S.M. Isaacs for having not written but he, Fischel had been dealing with a bout of Cholera.

1873: It was reported today that an Imperial ukase or proclamation of the Czar has been issued today concerning the rules and regulations surrounding the recruiting program for the navy and army. Among other things, in that part of Poland ruled by Russia, Jews who have converted to Christianity will no longer be exempted from military service. These converts, like others who have lost their exemption, can purchase one by 800 silver rubles to the government. [Considering the treatment of Jews in the Russian Army, conversion may have seemed like the lesser of two evils, especially for those who were too poor to be able to leave the country.]

1874: David Stern, husband of Fanny and brother-in-law of Levi Strauss, passes away.


1879:It was reported today that The Hebrew Book Union has issued a prospectus for a new “Lexcicon to the Talmud, Targum and Midrash” compiled by Dr. F. De Sola Mendes. It will be issued in four parts and will be the first such work published with an English translation.

1886: Alice le Strange, the wife of English philo-semite Laurence Oliphant passed away today after having contracted a fever while traveling along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Oliphant, who had also contracted the fever, was too sick to attend her funeral. Oliphant was in Palestine to pursue his dream of helping large numbers of Jews to settle in their ancient homeland.

1886: Birthdate of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern one of “the most inovative and ironic of the modernist Yiddish poets.

1887: The Jewish Theological Seminary Association, the educational and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism opened under the leadership of Saba Morais. Morais, a Rabbi of Congregation Mikve Israel in Philadelphia, sought to train Rabbis who would help preserve Jewish traditions which he felt were being eroded by the “reformers” and their Pittsburgh platform. In 1902 Solomon Schechter reorganized the Seminary and changed the name to JTS or the Jewish Theological Seminary. it was at this point that it became the central foundation for the Conservative Movement, a role that it plays to this day.

1890(10th of Tevet, 5650):Asara B'Tevet

1894: Birthdate of Robert Gruntal Nathan an American novelist and poet whose works included The Bishop’s Wife which became a hit movie starring Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young.

1895: Birthdate of Count Folke Bernadotte. Bernadotte was a member of a prominent Swedish family and well-known diplomat. His negotiations with Himmler during World War II saved the lives of thousands of Jews. As a U.N. representative, Bernadotte negotiated the first truce between the Arabs and the Israelis in 1948. During the truce, Bernadotte visited Israel where he proposed a peace plan that would have been detrimental to Jewish interests. In one of the most dastardly deeds in Jewish History, members of the Stern Gang assassinated Bernadotte. Most Jews were so revolted by the act that the members of the gang were hunted down by authorities and the Stern Gang was forced to disband. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Stern Gang gained respectability after the war. Yitzchak Shamir, a prominent Sternist, would later serve as Prime Minister of Israel.

1903: Publication of the first edition of The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger.

1903: British minister Joseph Chamberlain “found” a wonderful piece of land in East Africa for Jewish settlement.

1905: Japanese General Nogi received from Russian General Stoessel at 9 p.m. a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian defeat led to an uprising against the Czar and Pogroms aimed at the Jews. In an attempt to gain support, Czar Nicholas II agreed to popular elections for the Duma (Russian Parliament). The reforms were short lived and produced limited results. Even more significantly, the Russians were unable to reform their military establishment. This meant that the Russians were ill-suited to fight the Germans in World War I which would break out five years later. Jews would suffer during World War I and would suffer even more when the Bolsheviks came to power at the end of World War I. As we have discovered in our studies in Cedar Rapids, Jewish History is entwined with the history of all of the civilizations in which they live and have lived. That is part of the challenge and half of the fun.

1905: Birthdate of Russian mathematician Lev Schnirelmann.

1909(9th of Tevet, 5669): Louis A. Heinsheimer passed away. He died as result as complications from recent operation for appendicitis. Born in 1859 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he worked for sixteen years at the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company before being made a partner in 1894 Heinsheimer was the nephew of one of the firm's founders, Solomon Loeb. He never married and was survived by his mother, brother and two sisters. A renowned philanthropist, Heinsheimer served as the Treasurer for the United Hebrew Charities. Shortly before his death he completed building a summer home called Breezy Point at Far Rockaway, New York. The estate would be used by by the Maimonides Institute for Exceptional Children until it burned down in 1987.

1906: The 9th Duke of Marlborough, a cousin of Winston Churchill, expressed his dissatisfaction with a review of Churchill’s newly published biography about his father Randolph by threatening “to administer a good and sound trouncing to that dirty little Hebrew,” Harry Levy-Lawson, the Jewish manager of the paper in which the review appeared. The two cousins had very different views of Jews and the Jewish people.

1915(16th of Tevet, 5675): Karl Goldmark Austria-Hungarian composer passes away at the age of 84.

1916: Birthdate of Edmund Leopold de Rothschild

1916: In Camden, NJ, : Rabbi Max Klein of Philadelphia's Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, Rabbi Bernard Levinthal, Philadelphia's renown Orthodox Jewish leader, Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen, Rabbi Samuel S. Grossman and Rabbi Abraham Nowak of New York City were scheduled to appear at a mass meeting at the North Broadway Theater at Broadway and Kaighn

1916: Birthdate of Zypora Tannenbaum who gained fame as Zypora Spaisman. Born in Lublin, she was a Polish-American actress and Yiddish theatre empresaria. She emigrated to the United States in 1954 where she helped keep the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre in NYC alive for 42 years (along with Morris Adler), before helping to found the Yiddish Public Theater following a dispute with the Folksbiene's new management

1920: Birthdate of Isaac Asimov. Born to middle class Jewish parents, Asimov’s family moved to the United States in 1923. Asimov became one of the 20th century’s greatest science fiction writers. He also wrote guides to the Bible and Shakespeare.

1920: Rabbis in Jerusalem arranged to have special prayers recited at the Western Wall for the Jews in Damascus who are threatened with violence.

1920: “In a speech in Sunderland…Churchill described Bolshevism as a ‘Jewish movement.’”

1922(2nd of Tevet, 5682): 8th Day of Chanukah

1927: According to published reports, two plans are being developed for the electrification of Palestine. One plan “contemplates pumping the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean over a low ridge of mountains between the Palestinian coast and the Jordan Valley, and then through turbines into Lake Tiberius and the Dead Sea.” The other, a more modest plan, calls for using the flow of the Jordan to create mechanical power which could then generate an affordable supply of electricity.

1928: The municipality of Tel Aviv is scheduled to start paying the principle on a 75,000 pound bond issue that was offered in December of 1922.

1932: Maurice J. Karpf was elected President of the American Association of Schools of Social Work.

1933(4th of Tevet, 5693): Belle Moskowitz the political advisor to New York Governor Al Smith who managed his 1928 presidential campaign died unexpectedly as a result of complications from a fall on the steps in front of her house.

1933: The death of Mrs. Henry (Belle) Moskowitz came as a great shock to those gathered in Albany for today’s inauguration ceremony. Both Governor Herbert Lehman and former Governor (1928 Presidential candidate) Al Smith were taken aback by the loss of their friend and political ally.

1933: Birthdate of author Leonard Michaels whose works included Sylvia and The Men’s Club.

1934: New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was among the many prominent civic, academic and religious leaders who attended today’s funeral for Dr. George Alexander Kohut which was held at the deceased’s Park Avenue Home. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue and a life-long friend of the Dr. Kohut conducted the service and delivered the eulogy. Internment followed the service at the Linden Hill Cemetery.

1936: On his 75th birthday, Philadelphian Samuel Bloom announced that he was contributing 3000 pounds for the establishment of a home for “vagrant children” in Tel Aviv.

1938: The Palestine Post reported from London that the British Zionist Federation launched a movement, led by Lady Reading, Lord Melchett and Rabbi Perlzweig, for the inclusion of the Jewish National Home in Palestine within the British Empire. They stressed the common ideals and interests in Palestine of both Great Britain and the Jewish people. The High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, paid an official visit to Tel Aviv and assured Mayor Israel Rokach that the government would approve a £175,000 loan for the building of a new town hall and other essential developments.

1939: Time magazine names Adolf Hitler “Man of the Year, 1938.” (This was not a vote of approval; merely acknowledgement of his importance.)

1939: Solomon Levitan served his final day in office as state treasurer of Wisconsin

1940: In Poland, Jews were forbidden to post obituaries by the General Gouvernment

1941(3rd of Tevet, 5701): Forty-two year old pianist Mischa Levitzki died suddenly of a heart attack in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey.

1942: Truckloads of deportees were driven around Chelmo, gassed and then buried. The first of 5,000 Gypsies were brought to Chelmo and gassed.

1945: Abba Eban ended his tour of duty at the Ministry of State.

1945: Abba Eban is betrothed to his future wife Suzy.

1946: Holocaust survivors Ann Gilbert (Chana Zylberstajn) Fred Gilbert (Felek Gebotszrajber) were married in Scwabisch Hall, Germany.

1946: At a press conference, British General Frederick Morgan, the director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Europe, disclosed that "thousands of Polish Jews were coming into the U.S. Zone of Occupation assisted by an unknown secret Jewish organization." He further stated that Jewish Holocaust survivors were being forced by that organization to immigrate to Palestine. He clarified this accusation, intimating that most of the survivors preferred to emigrate elsewhere. The organization was Bricha. But the claim by the British general must be measured against the fact the British government was still committed to the White Paper which barred Jewish immigrants from entering Palestine.

1946: Ruth Seid, writing under the ethnically neutral and gender-ambiguous pen name Jo Sinclair, won the $10,000 Harper Prize for new writers. “Seid had supported her writing through the generosity of a local patron. She shared her $10 a week stipend with her parents, Russian immigrants living in Cleveland. Like most of Seid's later fiction, Wasteland puts questions of Jewish and gender identity at its core. The novel, whose main character is a Jewish photojournalist who passes as a gentile in order to gain social and professional acceptance, explores Seid's own mixed feelings about her Jewish identity and is partially based on her own family. The book's sympathetic portrayal of the photographer's apparently lesbian sister further explores central questions of identity and belonging that reflected Seid's own experience. When she won the Harper prize, Seid was already hard at work on a second novel. In this and her later works, she consistently focused on the theme of oppression in its many forms: anti-Semitism, racism, Jewish self-hatred, poverty, homophobia, and marginalization. Her most well-known novel, The Changelings, depicts a Jewish neighborhood in the process of becoming an African-American neighborhood. It takes the long history of Jewish oppression as a touchstone for exploring the prejudice faced by African Americans. Published in 1955, The Changelings won the 1956 Jewish Book Council of America annual fiction award, and was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Seid later published several more novels and a memoir, The Seasons: Death and Transfiguration (1992). Growing scholarly and popular interest in women's and ethnic literature in the 1980s and 1990s has revived interest in Seid's work. Ruth Seid died in 1995”

1946: The Women’s League for Palestine holds an open meeting and tea to plan a campaign for raising funds for enlarging and maintain the league’s other homes in Jerusalem and Haifa.

1946: Eleanor Florence Rathbone, a member of the British House of Commons and advocate for the rights of women passed away. In the House of Commons, the courageous Eleanor Rathbone attacked the British government for the defeatist attitudes expressed at the Bermuda Conference and noted that the Allies are responsible for the deaths of any Jews if they refuse to help.

1947(10th of Tevet, 5707): Asara B'Tevet

1948: Birthdate of Tony Robert Judt who went from being an ardent Zionist to one who was so critical of the Jewish state that he might classified as an anti-Zionist.

1949: In the aftermath of the War of Independence, the last Israeli troops left the Sinai Peninsula completing a withdrawal that had been worked out between Ben Gurion and Britain.

1949: In an example of what difference a year makes, two Israeli Spitfires attacked an Egyptian train traveling in violation of the withdrawal agreement.

1949: An Egyptian plan flew over Jerusalem injuring seven people when it dropped its bombs.

1949: As part of Bill Paley’s “great raid” the Jack Benny Program returned to CBS radio where it will remain until its last broadcast in 1955.

1951: The North American tour of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra sponsored by the American Fund for Israeli Institutions began with a concert in Washington, D.C. conducted by Dr. Serge Koussevitzky,

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that on the first day on which price control was lifted from poultry, prices rose from IL 2 to IL 6 a kilo. The Norwegian s.s. Rimfort passed through the Suez Canal, and arrived with a cargo of 150 tons of meat from Ethiopia, assuring the distribution of the monthly meat ration. The Ministry of Commerce started planning further substantial meat purchases from Brazil and Argentina

1953: Birthdate of Egyptian born American author Andre Aciman who wrote the autobiographical Out of Egypt.

1954: Herman Wouk’s "Caine Mutiny" premiered in New York City.

1956: Sydney Fine resigned from his position as member of the House of Representatives for New York’s 22nd congressional district so that he could join the New York Supreme Court.

1960: Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy was quite popular with a significant segment of Jewish voters. Unlike others, Jews had no problem supporting a Catholic running for President. As President, Kennedy appointed Jews to his Cabinet and to the Supreme Court. He also supported the state of Israel when the survival of the Jewish state was still at risk

1961: Birthdate of Representative Rob Wexler, representing Florida’s 19th congressional district starting in 1997.

1966: First native Jewish child was born in Spain since the expulsion in 1492

1967: Eliyahu Sasson completed his term as Communications Minister

1967: Yisrael Yeshayahu began serving as Communications Ministers.

1967: An exhibition of the works of Gertrude Schaefler began today at the Bodley Gallery in New York City.

1970: In Operation Double Bass 10, The Golani Brigade took part in a retaliatory raid on Kfar Kila in response to the kidnapping of an elderly guard from Metula by Fatah two days earlier.

1971: A team of Israeli scholars announced the discovery in Jerusalem of a 2,000-year-old skeleton of a crucified male. Found in a cave-tomb, it was the first direct physical evidence of the well-documented Roman method of execution.

1972: Opening of “Fun City,” the first Broadway play by--and starring--Joan Rivers.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that during the current Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, Mustafa Amin, a well-known Egyptian journalist, described Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a "Shylock," determined to get his pound of flesh from his people. Residents of the Yamit area were "more disappointed than ever" by the government decision to allow Egyptian sovereignty over the entire Rafiah Approaches.

1987(1st of Tevet, 5747): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1987: During the Intifada, Israel stopped another Junieh-bound ferry, the Sunny Boat, and turned it back to Larnaca after the Cypriot captain refused an Israeli demand that he hand over Palestinian passengers suspected of being terrorists.

1989: In an article entitled “Israel, Hardly the Monaco of the Middle East,” Abba Eban explained why Israel must negotiate with the Arabs and why her “friends” must not be alarmed at this turn of events. Since Eban may be considered as “the dean of Israeli foreign policy and one of those who got it more right than most, the article is worth reading in its entirety.

The recent definitions of Palestinian attitudes will not ''solve'' the Middle Eastern crisis or bring a negotiation with Israel into early view. But all attempts in Israel and the United States to portray them as worthless or fraudulent have incurred total failure. Moreover, it is absurd to suggest, as many of Israel's friends have, that the American decision to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization theatens Israel's very survival. The evolution in Palestinian thinking toward ''realistic and pragmatic positions on the key issues,'' as President Reagan has said, is either real or illusory. If it is real it would be reckless not to probe it in its full scope and depth. If it is all a hoax and a fraud, it is important to expose it. In either case, it was absolutely right for Secretary of State George P. Shultz to inaugurate an exploratory dialogue. The reasons for believing that the Palestine leadership is on a new course are too strong for out-of-hand rejection. First, there is the impressive unanimity of belief among all the statesmen who have ever shown respect for Israel's rights. It would be absurd for Israelis to assume that Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterrand, American Jewish leaders and Israel's other supporters in Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world are gullible dupes. Perhaps more sensational even than this consensus was a recent survey revealing that 55 percent of Israel's Jewish population now supports negotiations with the P. L. O. if the promises of its chairman, Yasir Arafat, are kept. Nevertheless, when it was announced that an American ambassador would have a talk with a P.L.O. official in Tunis, friendly American columnists sounded all the alarms. A. M. Rosenthal of The New York Times reflected on ''a risk to Israel's existence.'' George Will saw the Reagan Administration and its officers, together with the ''gullible West,'' as the insidious enemies of Israel's future. Norman Podhoretz in The New York Post described a ''Palestine ministate on the West Bank and Gaza'' as part of a macabre scenario ''with battles raging 15 miles from Israel's population centers and with the Palestinians flanking Jerusalem on three sides and Tel Aviv on two, and attacking along a line nine miles from the sea . . . Israeli casualties could reach as high as 100,000.'' The dark vision of another New York Times columnist, William Safire, is not of mere peril but of ''extermination.'' He awards a gold medal for endangering Israel to Shimon Peres, with Yasir Arafat and the United States as candidates for a silver and a bronze. In his Christmas dream, John Tower, as Defense Secretary, and Moshe Arens, Israel's Defense Minister, roam the Middle East bombing Arab weapons systems. This alluring prospect is called ''surgical non-proliferation.'' It must be a long time since a responsible journalist published an incitement to two governments to initiate what could become a nuclear exchange. Common to all these views is the notion that Israel is a demilitarized land like Iceland or Monaco, Lichtenstein or Costa Rica. The P.L.O. forces, by contrast, are depicted as the lineal descendant of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and the Hitler and Stalin dictatorships, able to exterminate Israel. There is not a single word to indicate either that Israel has any military power or that the P.L.O. has any military limitations. This is drastically opposed to the reality. The Israeli defense system is one of the wonders of the world. Never in history has so small a community been able - and ready - to wield such vast capacity of defense, deterrence and reprisal. The ''Middle East Military Balance'' published by the Israeli Center of Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University shows Israel with a mobilizable manpower of 540,000, some 3,800 tanks, 682 aircraft with awesome bomb capacity, thousands of artillery pieces and missiles and an imposing electronic capacity. The P.L.O. has, according to the same survey, 8,000 men in scattered places, zero tanks and aircraft, a few guns and no missiles, but a variety of hand grenades, mortars, stones and bottles. It takes a great effort of imagination to envision this array of forces flanking our cities from five sides and the sea, while inflicting 100,000 casualties. If there were to be an Arab-ruled entity in a large part of the West Bank and Gaza, either as a separate state, or, preferably, as part of a confederation with Jordan, it would be the weakest military entity on earth. If there were a demilitarization as part of a settlement, it would be possible to enforce it owing to the vigilant proximity of Israel and Jordan. With the exception of a relatively minor rejectionist front (Libya, Syria and South Yemen), the Arab world is pressing the Palestinians for realism, not for adventurism. There would be security problems in an Arab sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza, as there are in greater intensity with Israeli occupation of those areas. But to call such an entity a threat to Israel's survival is preposterous. It is the survival of a Palestinian nation that could be threatened by irredentism. Finally, it is unlikely that the Arab states would accede to a request from the P.L.O. to make war against Israel on their behalf. The position now is that they are not even being invited to do so. Israelis and Americans should be celebrating a success, not bemoaning the dangers. The harm done to Israel by the rhetoric of weakness is far-reaching. The aim of our defense system is deterrence, with victory as the fall-back aim. If friends say that we are virtually impotent, this effect is lost. There is also damage to credibility. Talk of Israel's extermination is nowhere taken seriously by those who know the power balance; it is interpreted as justification for immobilism or pre-emptive aggression. The semantic of extermination is also a historic insult to Zionism. If, after a century of Zionist effort and 40 years of statehood, replete with victories in the battlefield and crowned by an alliance with a superpower, Israel's 3.5 million Jews were the only Jewish community anywhere faced with plausible danger of ''destruction,'' the Zionist enterprise, dedicated to Jewish security, would be seen to have failed. Friendship is to be judged by consequence, not by intention. The friends of Israel should avoid creating a false myth of Israeli weakness. Israel's return to Security Council Resolution 242 and the principle of ''territory for peace'' is now an indispensable condition for any further movement - a step that Israel is strong enough to take.


1990: The Likud and Labor parties averted a breakup of their governing coalition today with a compromise under which Ezer Weizmann, the independent-minded Labor Party Science Minister, would keep his post but be suspended from the Government's decision-making core.

1990: In an article entitled “From Letter Writer to Starting Forward,” Jack Cavanugh described the unique approach followed by Nadav Henefield as he transitioned from being one of the best basketball players in Israel to a scholarship and starting role with the University of Connecticut.
January 2, 1990

1992: Tonight, Israel announced that it would expel 12 Palestinians who were involved with known terrorists following the murder of a Jewish settler.

1992: Jerusalem struggled with its worst snowstorm in four decades. Across the Israeli capital, tree branches, and even entire trees, snapped with rifle-shot cracks under the heavy snow. Besides blocking roads, the fallen trees knocked out power lines, leaving large sections of the city without electricity and, in some instances, without telephones as well. As Jerusalem knows all too well, it is not equipped to deal with such calamities. For hours, there was no way for cars to move up or down the steep, winding main highway that connects Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and other coastal cities, and so this city had to carry on in uncertain isolation. Most people elected to remain indoors, thus turning normally bustling streets into milky canyons of quiet. The storm t dumped at least 18 inches on the city, the heaviest snowfall in 42 years. All of Israel was hit hard by rain and snow. In the Tel Aviv district of Ezra, where people had fled as Iraqi Scud missiles fell on them a year ago during the Persian Gulf war, hundreds of residents had to be evacuated once more today as heavy rains brought six-foot-high waters. Since this is a region where water is often scarcer than peace, it was hardly all bad news. The Middle East has been plagued for a long time by severe drought, but this fall and winter have been one of the wettest periods in years. As a result, many Arabs and Jews view the ordeal of the last day or two as a worthwhile price for the ultimate payoff in healthy river flows. In northern Israel, the Sea of Galilee, a primary water source for the country, is said to have risen by at least 30 inches over the last two months -- almost five inches in the last day alone.

1993: The New York Times published the following letter to the editor from David L. Gold; President of the Association of the Study of Jewish Languages disputing early claims that that the word “turkey” had a Hebrew root.

“Harold M. Kamsler's attempt to trace English "turkey" to Hebrew "tuki" (letter, Dec. 13) makes etymology seem as easy as finding like-sounding words in other languages.
To set the record straight: The English word is a shortening of "Turkey-cock" and "Turkey-hen," which were originally the names of the guinea fowl (so called because the guinea fowl was sometimes imported into Europe through Turkey). Because people misidentified the turkey with the guinea fowl or mistakenly considered it to be a species of that bird, these English names came to designate the turkey. Furthermore, the word "Turkey-cock" is not attested until 1541, that is, almost a half-century after Columbus's voyages. "Turkey-hen and "turkey" are not attested until even later. Rabbi Kamsler's explanation, not original with him, is an old yarn spun in uninformed Jewish circles. Along with countless other pseudoscientific claims about supposed Hebrew influence on English and other languages, the myth of the Hebrew origin of "turkey" was quietly exploded in volume 2 of Jewish Linguistic Studies (1990).”

1994: “A Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada” comes to a close today at the Jewish Museum in NYC>

1996(10th of Tevet, 5756): Asara B’Tevet

1998: In an article entitled “Are yeshiva students dumb?” author Jonathan Rosenblum quoted the following story in explaining why yeshivot are important to the survival of the Jewish people. “At the cornerstone-laying of Ponevezh Yeshiva, nearly 50 years ago, many were surprised by the presence of Mapai stalwart Pinhas Lavon. Asked what an avowed secularist was doing there, Lavon replied in all seriousness, 'The leaders of the Jewish people have always come from the yeshivas. If we have no yeshivas, where will the leaders come from?"

1994: Final day for showing "A Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada" at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969 by Elie Wiesel, Arthur Kosetler: The Homeless Mind by David Cesarani and The Multiple Identities of the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.

2001: Yasir Arafat was scheduled to meet with President Clinton this afternoon following Arafat’s emergency flight to Washington from Gaza coming in the wake of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day. Arafat is expected to discuss his “reservations” about the blue-print for peace that President Clinton had brokered during meetings with Arafat and Prime Minister Barak.

2003: Today Israeli soldiers found the charred body of a 73-year-old Israeli man near a West Bank village hours after his family had reported him missing. The grisly discovery came after the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, issued a statement declaring it had killed an Israeli in the Jordan Valley near Tubas.

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Catastrophe: Risk and Response by Richard A. Posner and the recently published paperback editions of Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder: A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s by Gerald Nachman, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Levy; translated by James X. Mitchell and A Mighty Heart The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl by Mariane Pearl with Sarah Crichton.

2005: In an article styled “Shalom, y’all a smile from South’s Jews” the Chicago Tribune reported on “an archive opening soon in South Carolina that salutes 300 years of immigrants’ history.” The archive located on the campus of the College of Charleston will shed light on Jewish Southern history and its role in society. The focus will be the Jews of Charleston which was once the leading port of entry for Jews coming to the United States.

2006: In an article entitled “Satire That Spares Nothing, Not Even God and Country” Dina Kraft described Israel's hit spoof news show, "A Wonderful Country" which drew inspiration in part from "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

2007: Police Inspector - General Karadi has decided to appoint a special national police task force to combat the attacks and threats against Israeli mayors.

2007(17 Shevat 5767): Teddy Kolleck, Jerusalem’s most famous mayor, passed away.

2008: In Buenos Aires, Argentina the 11th Annual Maccabiah Games came to an end.

2008: The Film Forum in Manhattan started a sixteen day showing of 23 of the films of producer-director Otto Preminger. The Viennese born refugee from Hitler’s Europe, Preminger’s accomplishments transcended those of a movie mogul. The crusading liberal challenged racism by directing “Porgy and Bess” and “Carmen Jones.” He challenged McCarthyism and the Red Baiting Right Wing by hiring Dalton Trumbo one of the jailed Hollywood 10 as the writer screenwriter for the film “Exodus.”

2008: The New York Times features a review of Richard Cook’s Alfred Kazin a biography of the literary critic who was “a proud Jew” and “a champion of writers like Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.”

2008: Representative Tom Lantos a California Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee announced that he will not seek re-election because he has cancer of the esophagus. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress.

2009: As the impact of Bernard L. Madoff’s con game spreads, the management of the Bank Medici, the small Austrian merchant bank that emerged as one of its largest victims resigned making room for a government appointed accountant to temporarily take over day-to-day management of the bank’s operations. The bank, based in Vienna, had invested $2.1 billion in client funds with Madoff.

2009: As Jews around the world prepared for Shabbat, the following names would be added to the Yahrzeit Lists read at more than one synagogue or temple:

December 27, 2008 (30 Kislev 5769): Beber Vaknin, aged 57, was killed by missile in his hometown Netivot when he went out of his house on Saturday morning.

December 29 2008 (2 Tevet 5769): Irit Shitrit, a 36 year old mother of four who had sought shelter in a bus station was killed by a rocket in downtown Ashdod

December 29, 2008 (2 Tevet 5769): First Staff Sgt. Lutfi Nasraldin, 38, from the Israeli Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel was killed when two mortar shells landed in the brigade headquarters near Nachal Oz.

December 29, 2008 (2 Tevet 5769) : Hani al Mahdi a 27-year-old construction worker, from the Bedouin village of Aroer was killed when a Palestinian Grad missile exploded near a construction site in the coastal town of Ashkelon.

2010: Jews around the world complete the reading of Bereshit (Genesis) – one down, four to go.

2010: Jerusalem native Dan Aran, leads the Dan Aran Trio, as it performs at The Bar Next Door in New York.

2010: In Cedar Rapids, The traditional Saturday Morning Minyan at Temple Judah entered its ninth year. Despite sub-zero temperatures and the New Year’s weekend, our small congregation produced a number in excess of the basic prayer quorum. Per the request of our youngest attendee, Gabriella Thalblum, Deb Levin saw to it that we had a Pizza as part of the Kiddush following services.

2010: A hacker attacked Jewish Web sites in Boulder, Colo., posting anti-Semitic messages.The Web sites of two Boulder synagogues, Bonai Shalom and Har HaShem, were defaced today. The messages compared the Jewish community to a terrorist organization, a company that maintains the Web sites told the Denver Post. According to the report, the Web site of the Boulder Rabbinic Council also was attacked.The hacker called himself Waja (Adi Noor). It took about five hours to restore the sites. "This is not all that different from painting a swastika on the wall of a building," Jeff Finkelstein, who maintains the sites, told the Denver Post. He said he is trying to trace the hacker.

2010(16th of Tevet, 5770): David Gerber, an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning television producer who brought forward-thinking series like “Police Story” and “Police Woman” to prime time in the 1970s and produced more than 50 television films and mini-series during a four-decade career, died today in Los Angeles at the age of 86. Mr. Gerber received a 1973 Emmy Award as an executive producer of “Police Story,” which was named outstanding drama series. That show, an anthology series created by the novelist and former Los Angeles police officer Joseph Wambaugh, ran on NBC from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Gerber made television history with “Police Woman” (NBC, 1974-78), starring Angie Dickinson, the first successful police series with a woman as the lead. His most honored work was “George Washington,” a three-night 1984 CBS mini-series starring Barry Bostwick in the title role. It won a Peabody Award and received six Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding limited series. David Gerber was born on July 25, 1923, in Brooklyn, the son of Louie Gerber, a German immigrant butcher, and his Russian-born wife, Mollie. He served as a radio gunner in World War II, was shot down over Germany and became a prisoner of war. After the war, with the help of the G.I. Bill of Rights, he received a bachelor’s degree from what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. After working in advertising and for talent agencies, he went into television. His earliest work as an executive producer, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, included “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” a supernatural romantic sitcom based on the 1947 film, and “Nanny and the Professor,” about a psychic housekeeper. Eventually he became a studio executive, handling television production at Columbia Pictures and MGM in addition to running his own production company. “Beulah Land,” his six-hour 1980 NBC mini-series about an antebellum Georgia plantation, made news when a group affiliated with the N.A.A.C.P. protested its portrayal of black slaves as demeaning. The broadcast was delayed, but when the show did run, some critics found it more laughable than dangerous. John J. O’Connor of The New York Times declared it “ludicrous — in a sense, memorably so.” Mr. Gerber, however, was something of a pioneer in multiracial television. Under his watch at Columbia, “That’s My Mama” — a 1974 ABC sitcom starring Clifton Davis as a hip, young Washington barber living with his mother — was one of the earliest prime-time series with an African-American cast, but it lasted little more than a season. While he was at MGM, “In the Heat of the Night,” a crime series inspired by the 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, began its six-season run in 1988 (first on NBC and later on CBS), with Howard E. Rollins Jr. and Carroll O’Connor in the leads. Mr. O’Connor, who played a bigoted Southern sheriff, won the Emmy for outstanding actor in a drama series after the show’s first season. Mr. Gerber’s high-profile television films included “The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case” (1976), with a young Anthony Hopkins, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of Bruno Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper; and “The Lost Battalion” (2001), about soldiers caught behind enemy lines in France in World War I. His last big project was “Flight 93,” a 2006 television film about the events aboard the United Airlines plane that was taken over by terrorists on Sept. 11 and crashed in Pennsylvania. The film received seven Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding made-for-television movie, Mr. Gerber’s last. Mr. Gerber had a reputation for friendliness, and for taking the time to talk to employees at every job level. As he told a writer for The Los Angeles Times in 2001, his behavior was just a matter of thinking ahead: “I don’t know him, but he could be the next network president.” (As reported by Anita Gates)
2011: A Judaica book sale -- the largest of its kind in the Greater Washington area -- with an estimated 1,600 titles is scheduled to take place at Congregation Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Md.

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt

2011: The funeral of Rabbi Yissachar Meir, who passed away on Shabbat, was held today at Netiviot, Israel

2011: Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh is one of two winners of Israel’s Media Watch’s 2011 award for media criticism, the organization announced today. The right-wing satirical news site Latma was a co-winner of the award. The Jerusalem Post's Senior Contributing Editor Caroline B. Glick is the founder and editor in chief of Latma, which achieved a great deal of publicity last year when a satirical video it released in the wake of the Gaza flotilla raid titled, "We Con the World," racked up over five million views. Both Latma and Abu Toameh will receive a $5,000 cash prize, which will be awarded at a ceremony to be held by IMW in February. According to IMW, “Abu Toameh publishes articles and gives lectures which are typified by a very critical stance on the Israeli and the foreign media, which, he says, does not understand its role or the Palestinian issues which it reports on.” The IMW added that Abu Toameh has “a refreshing approach to news” and “doesn’t hesitate to touch nerves” in the field he covers. According to IMW’s website, the organization’s goal is “strengthening and realizing Israel’s democracy by informing the Israeli public about various media outlets and the extent to which they abide by the media codes of ethics, decency and objectivity in reporting.” IMW says it does so through “systematic research and surveillance of the media and exposure of political and cultural media bias,” and by “deepening public and institutional involvement in upholding the media codes of ethics, and defending the private citizen against the increasing power of the media against him or her.” The award has been given out for the past 11 years, each time to two individuals or organizations that “made courageous, meaningful, and quality contributions to the criticism of the media in Israel.” Unlike previous years, it was decided that one winner would be decided by an online vote, in which 4,000 users voted. Of the candidates, Latma was far and away the largest vote-getter. Abu Toameh was chosen by a committee of judges appointed by IMW.

2011: As of today, Deborah Shapiro and Michael Rieber who have been friends, political allies, and fellow members of Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston for several years enjoy another distinction. Together, they form the Republican minority on the five-person Livingston Township Council.

2012: In Jerusalem, local talent is scheduled to have a chance to shine at Open Mic Night at Mike’s Place

2012: Rabbi Chaim Sabato and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein are scheduled to appear at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue in a program is in celebration of the recently published book "Mevakshay Panecha" by Rabbis Sabato and Lichtenstein. “Adjusting Sites” and “Aleppo Tales” by Chaim Sabato are available in English and are a must read for everybody.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin