This Day, January 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

January 21 In Jewish History

1189: Philip II, Henry II and Richard Lion-Hearted initiated The Third Crusade. The Third Crusade took an exceptionally harsh toll on the Jews of England. Although the third crusade became famous in song and fable, it was a failure. Unfortunately, it did not end the crusading spirit. More crusades would follow which meant more misery for the Jews of Europe and the Middle East.

1306: Phillip the Fair of France issued secret orders today for his officials to prepare for the expulsion of his Jewish subjects and the confiscation of their property. Phillip found that his treasury had been depleted by his wars with the Flemish and he saw this as a way of replenishing his treasury. Under the terms of the expulsion any Jews found after the July 22, 1306 (10th of Av) were to be executed

1393: The Jews of Majorca were guaranteed protection by the governor who “issued an edict for their protection, providing that a citizen who should injure a Jew should be hanged, and that a knight for the same offense should be subjected to the strappado.”

1495: Isaac ben Judah Abravanel and King Alfonso sailed from Naples to Mazzara near Sicily. The city of Mazzazra was given as a gift from Ferdinand of Spain to Alfonso. While there, news reached both Abravanel and Alfonso that Charles VIII had taken Naples. The French rioted against and looted the Jewish community almost wiping it out. Many Jews were sold as slaves, and many were forced to convert to Christianity. Abravanel later wrote, "My entire enormous wealth was stolen."

1749: Birthdate of Chaim Volozhin, a disciple of the Valna Gaon. Also known as Reb Cahim he was the founder of the Volozhin Yeshiva, which provided the “template” for similar academies throughout much of what was at that time part of Poland and the Russian Empire.

1793: Prussia and Russia signed a treaty that portioned Poland. All of a sudden, Russia had a large Jewish population, something which her rulers had not bargained for and did not want.
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1812: Birthdate of Moses Hess, Born in Germany, Hess, was an author, socialist and forerunner of the Zionist movement. In his book Rome and Jerusalem published in 1862, he expressed the belief that German anti-Semitism was based on race and nationhood. He advised Jews to accept the fact and revive their own state in Eretz Israel. Hess, a socialist, had worked with Marx and Engels. He grew disillusioned with the idea that a "progressive society would eradicate anti-Semitism." He passed away in 1875.

1831 (7th of Shevat, 5591): Author Achim von Arnim passed away. Von Arnim was not Jewish but he incorporated the Golem into his works thus helping this Jewish myth to move into the general European culture.

1841: Birthdate of Edward Rosenwasser, the native of Bohemia, who gained fame as Edward Rosewater the Republican Party leader and editor of the Omaha (Nebraska) Bee. Rosewater played a minor role in one of the great moments of U.S. History – the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. While serving as the telegrapher at the White House, he was the one who actually sent President Lincoln’s words out over the wires to the world.

1847: Birthdate of Lionel Jonas Cohen, oldest brother of famed musician Frederic Hymen Cowen.

1860: Punch reported that a dispute has broken out between two Jewish businessmen – Lazarus Simon Magnus and Henry Guedalla – over control over the Great Eastern Steamship Company. In one exchange of letters, Mr. Magnus challenged Mr. Guedalla to a duel.

1861: David Levy Yulee, the first Jew elected to the United States Senate withdrew from that body when Florida seceded and joined the Confederacy. Yulee, who married a Christian and raised his children in the faith of his wife, then joined the Confederate cause as a Senator



1863: Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck wrote to Grant to explain the rescission of the order #11, stating that "The President has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which, I suppose was the object of your order; but as it in terms proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it." Captain Philip Trounstine of the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, being unable in good conscience to round up and expel his fellow Jews, resigned his army commission, saying he could "no longer bear the Taunts and malice of his fellow officers… brought on by … that order." The officials responsible for the United States government's most vicious anti-Jewish actions ever were never dismissed, admonished or, apparently, even officially criticized for the religious persecution they inflicted on innocent citizens.



1864: Birthdate of Israel Zangwill the noted Anglo-Jewish author and Zionist whose literary career in the United States was launched when he wrote “Children of the Ghetto." [His obituary in the New York Times

1864: Apparently Jews were a significant part of the population of Utah since in a report from Great Salt Lake City, it was noted that “there are two subjects…which Jew and Gentile..consider of more than ordinary importance” when it comes to legislative action – bills concerning mining claims and general corporation.

1871: It was reported today that a popular Jewish peddler named Frank who sold to customers throughout Queens County, New York, has died of wounds inflicted by an unknown assailant who shot him while traveling to his home in Flushing. Since nothing has been found missing, authorities assume that the motive was not robbery but no suspects are in custody at this time.



1871: Establishment of Emanuel Jewish Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa. The site is adjacent to the northwest corner of Woodland Cemetery at Woodland and Harding, just northwest of downtown Des Moines.

1874(3rd of Shevat, 5634): Daniel Joseph Jaffe died in Nice, France. Jaffe had settled in Belfast in 1852 where he had become a successful businessman. He was the father of Otto and Martin Jaffe. Martin bought a plot Belfast’s City Cemetery for his father’s internment. This plot was the origin of the city’s Jewish Cemetery.

1877: The 25th annual meeting of the B’nai Brit of the United states began in Cincinnati, Ohio with 100 delegates in attendance.

1878:Birthdate of Simon Glazer, the native of Lithuania who served as the Rabbi for Congregation Bnai Israel in Des Moines, Iowa from 1902 to 1905 before moving on to congregations in Toledo, Montreal, Seattle, Kansas City and New York City. He passed away in 1938.

1882: The BILU Movement took root in Russia. The Russian students at the University of Khrakov formed their own Zionist group called BILU (initials for House of Jacob Let Us Rise and Go) which called for active settlement of the Eretz Israel by agricultural pioneers. The first group of 14 arrived July 6 the next year, hiring themselves out as agricultural laborers. They believed it was possible to start a worldwide movement to encourage settlement in Eretz Israel.

1887: Birthdate of Wolfgang Kohler. “Kohler was the only non Jewish psychologist who ever protested against Germany and the Nazis. He was not afraid to make his thoughts about them very public which could have cost him his life at a very early age. He was lucky that he was not thrown into a prison and killed off for the things he said about Germany and the Nazis”

1890(29th of Tevet, 5650): Rabbi Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler put on his tallit and t’fillin, aided by Joseph Vangelder, his faithful servant for twenty years. He said the Sh’ma with a clear and unhesitating voice and at 8.45 am breathed his last.Born in 1803, he was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1845 until his death and one of the most prominent 19th century rabbi in the English-speaking world. (As reported by Rabbi Raymond Apple)

1899: Reports are published that Leopold de Rothschild was hurt when a branch hit his face, breaking his nose and injuring an eye, while the newly elected Member of Parliament was taking part in a hunt.

1899: Opel manufactured its first automobile. In 1931, General Motors acquired 100% ownership of the German automobile company. In 1998 General Motors hired historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. to investigate the wartime activities of Opel, its German subsidiary, which a group of Holocaust survivors was suing. His research led to the book General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe’s Biggest Carmaker published in 2005. Mr. Turner concluded that although Opel had made the morally dubious decision to produce engines for the Luftwaffe in 1938, by the time the war began General Motors had lost control of the company and therefore had no say in its production of military vehicles or its use of slave labor.

1903: Harry Houdini escaped fromthe police station Halvemaansteeg in Amsterdam.

1903: Herzl traveled to Paris.



1910: The Angel Island Immigration Station opened today. Prior to the opening of the Immigration Station, immigrants landed directly in San Francisco. Jews immigrated through Angel Island primarily in two waves: in the 1920s from Russia to escape the Bolshevik revolution, and between 1938 and 1940, when German and Austrian Jews crossed Asia to flee the Nazis. In some ways, Angel Island was the Ellis Island of the West. But because of the politics and laws of its time, unlike Ellis Island, many immigrants were detained on Angel Island for weeks or months at a time, particularly Chinese and other Asian immigrants. According to Judy Yung, a retired professor at U.C. Santa Cruz and co-author of a new book about Angel Island’s history, Jewish immigrants had it better. The average stay for Russians and Jews on Angel Island was two to three days, and less than 2 percent were deported. “Overall, the Russian and Jewish experiences on Angel Island were very similar if not better than those of their counterparts on Ellis Island, where their rejection rate was almost twice as high,” she writes. “For the overwhelming majority who were coming to escape religious or political persecution, Angel Island was truly a gateway to the promised land of freedom and opportunity.” However, it wasn’t an easy gateway to pass through. Many immigrants — including Jews — were detained. In some instances, representatives from Jewish and Hebrew benevolent societies felt compelled to come to Angel Island to testify on behalf of Jewish detainees. In 1915, for example, one such representative spoke to immigration officials, telling them that “we always take steps to see that Jewish boys obtain work and do not become beggars.” After this, officials released eight Jewish detainees, according to Yung’s book. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society also stepped in to help, opening a Pacific Coast branch in San Francisco in May 1915 mainly to advocate for the increased number of Jews coming through Angel Island. In 1916, for example, when 17 Jews refused to eat the food served to them in the Angel Island dining hall during Passover, HIAS provided the immigrants with matzah and kosher-for-Passover food they could eat in their rooms. And in 1933, when a 54-year-old widower traveling with his two sons was detained on the island because officials thought he was “emaciated and frail looking,” HIAS offered a hand. HIAS helped round up $1,000 from other family members, and the father, who spent two months on Angel Island, was finally released. In another instance, a shoe-store owner from Vienna and his wife were held overnight because they were suspected of being an LPC, a “likely public charge,” meaning they would need government support to get by. They had come from Shanghai with just $22 to their name. But because they had the foresight to leave Germany with two fur coats worth over $2,000 — the Nazis allowed them to take goods but not money — they were able to convince the officials of their financial stability. “I was really struck by the resourcefulness of the Jewish immigrants,” Yung said during a phone interview.



1912: Birthdate of Konrad Bloch. The noted biochemist earned a Nobel Prize in 1964 for his studies of cholesterol

1912:
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1913: At the request of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 156 women from 52 congregations around the country met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to create the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). While local women's groups had been formed in individual synagogues in the 1890s, the NFTS was the first national body to bring these groups together. Though NFTS was initially envisioned as a federation of all synagogue sisterhoods, sisterhoods from Conservative and Orthodox synagogues formed their own national organizations within a decade, leaving the NFTS as a body of Reform Judaism. Differentiating itself from the National Council of Jewish Women and other social service groups, the NFTS focused from the beginning on women's roles in the synagogue. Early projects included sponsoring children's Chanukah and Purim parties in synagogues, beautifying synagogues for holidays, and supporting religious schools. The NFTS also raised money for rabbinical school scholarships, and played a leading role in creating the National Federation of Temple Youth. Though the NFTS usually sought to stay out of politics, sisterhood members were concerned from the beginning with the changing role of women in Reform Judaism. Leaders encouraged women to sit on synagogue boards, and instituted Sisterhood Sabbaths, when women could lead the service in some congregations. From an initial membership of 9,000 in 49 local chapters, the NFTS grew to 100,000 members in six hundred affiliates across the U.S., Canada, and twelve other countries by 1995. In recent decades, NFTS extended its earlier mandate beyond the domestic sphere to take a public role in such issues as civil rights, child labor legislation, capital punishment, and abortion rights. In 1993, NFTS was renamed Women of Reform Judaism, reflecting a desire to be seen not only as an auxiliary group, but as an organization that puts its members and their interests at the center of Reform Judaism.

1914(23rd of Tevet, 5674): Adolph Krakauer, a pioneer Texas merchant died of a heart attack today in El Paso. Born in Fürth, Bavaria, in 1846, this son of Joel and Babette (Elsasser) Krakauer was educated in the Latin schools and graduated from the Royal Commercial College of Fürth in 1862. He immigrated to New York in 1865 and was employed as a clerk there. In 1869 he moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he went to work for Louis Zork, a leading merchant. He married Zork's daughter Ada and became a member of the firm. Though he was presumably well established, he chose to move to El Paso in 1875, at a time when the town's population was listed as seventy-five Mexicans and twenty-five Anglos. There he clerked in the firm of Sam Schutz and Son and became manager when the business was sold; later he became a partner. In 1885 he sold his interest in the firm and organized the firm of Krakauer, Zork, and Moye with his brother-in-law, Gustave Zork. The company became a leading wholesale hardware dealer in the Southwest, with a branch in Chihuahua, Mexico. Krakauer also became president of Two Republic Life Insurance Company, the Krakauer-Zork Investment Company, and the Mountainside Realty Company and director of the First National Bank and the Rio Grande Valley Banking and Trust Company. He also owned extensive real estate in El Paso. He served as county commissioner and alderman and was elected mayor as a Republican after a bitter election campaign in 1889. He never assumed the office, for it was discovered he had not taken out his final citizenship papers. Krakauer was a leader in Jewish community activities and served as president of Temple Mount Sinai. He spoke fluent Spanish.

1918: Following the lead of Reform Jewish sisterhoods, and at the behest of Solomon Schechter, Conservative synagogue sisterhoods joined together to form the National Women's League of the United Synagogue. The founding president of the League was Schechter's wife, Mathilde Roth Schechter. Mathilde Schechter, born in Silesia and educated in Breslau and London, had married Solomon Schechter in 1887 and came to the U.S. in 1902, when Solomon was appointed president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The Women's League was just one in a line of significant projects for Mathilde Schechter. Before establishing the League, she had helped to establish a Jewish vocational school for girls on the Lower East Side of New York, and had helped to publish a hymn book called Kol Rina — Hebrew Hymnal for School and Home.
The Women's League's mission was to promote traditional Judaism in homes, synagogues, and communities. In line with that goal, one early project was the establishment of a kosher boarding house for Jewish students in New York City. Other projects included publications providing guidance on domestic religious ritual as well as traditional recipes and music. In addition, the League became involved with social action from an early date, taking an especially active role in the Jewish Braille Institute. The League, now called the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, has grown from an original one hundred women in 26 sisterhoods to 150,000 members in 700 sisterhoods. As it has since the beginning, the League continues to be involved in public policy issues, including women's health, literacy, and foreign policy. Since 1972, the League has also helped to support sisterhoods in Masorti (Israeli Conservative) congregations.

1919: Submission of the Tentative Report of the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference

1921: King Constantine donates 10,000 Drachmae for the relief of Jewish sufferers of the fire in Salonica.

1921: Birthdate of Barney Clark. Clark was the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart, an operation that was performed at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

1923: Birthdate of Annemarie Dinah Gottliebova, the native of Brno, Czechoslovakia, who was shipped to Auschwitz with her mother where she bartered her services as a portrait painter for her life and her mother’s life. After the war, as Dina Babbit, she spent the past several decades trying to retrieve her paintings from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1924: Birthdate of comedian Benny Hill. “Roses are reddish, Violets are bluish If it weren't for Christmas, We’d all be Jewish.”

1924: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin Russian leader died of a stroke at the age of 54. Lenin’s death brought a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky to a boil. Stalin would triumph and anti-Semitism would become as much of a staple for the Commissars as it had been for the Czars.

1927: Two funeral services were held today for famed philanthropist Lee Kohns. Bishop Thomas F. Failer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Tennessee conducted the first service at the family’s Manhattan home. Dr. Samuel Schulman of Temple Beth-El presided over the grave side service in Beth-El Cemetery at Cypress Hills.

1927: Bernard Baruch is among the members of a delegation representing the Board of Directors of City College’s Alumni Association that is attending today’s funeral of Lee Kohns who graduated in 1884.

1927: At 10:30 this morning, classes were halted for five minutes at City College in memory of Lee Kohns.

1927: The will of Lee Kohns was filed for probate this afternoon after having been read at his funeral. The estate is worth about $3,000,000. While the will the leaves generous bequests to charity, the bulk of the estate will go to his wife and their children.

1928: While serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill receives a request from Chaim Weizmann for a loan intended to assist the Jewish population in Palestine in a manner consistent the aims of the Mandate. The loan would gain the support of Lord Balfour but would be rejected by the Cabinet in a move that had a whiff of anti-Semitism.

1931 (3rd of Shevat, 5691): Composer and pianist Felix Blumenfeld passed away at the age of 67 in the Soviet Union. Born in 1863 Blumenfeld taught Vladimir Horowitz. Blumenfeld’s work was primarily a product of pre-revolutionary Russia.

1931: Isaacs Isaacs, the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia completed his term of office. He was the third person to fill this position.

1933: Birthdate Itzhak Fuks, the Israeli El Al captain who would die when his plane crashed in Amsterdam 1992.

1934: The New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem suggests that “the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab canton with each of these peoples living as a separate entity” would be “a solution to the Arab Jewish problem.” Based on reports from other sources, the Arab canton would include Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa while the Jewish canton would be limited to Tel Aviv, which virtually an all-Jewish city any way, and a narrow strip of land stretching from Betsian to Tiberias to the swamps around Lake Huleh.

1938: The Romanian government strips Romanian Jews of their citizenship.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that an Arab from Hebron, sentenced to death by the Military Court, confessed that he participated, 11 days earlier, in the murder of John Starkey, one of the most distinguished archaeologists working in Palestine.

1941: After observing a three-day anti-Semitic rampage in Bucharest by the SS-supported Iron guard in Romania, the Romanian Jewish writer Mihael Sebastian wrote, “The stunning thing about the Bucharest bloodbath is the quite bestial ferocity to its…the butchered Jews were hanged by the neck on hooks normally used for beef carcasses. A sheet of paper was stuck to each corpse with the notation “Kosher Meat.”

1941: In Rumania, the Iron Guard raided thousands of Jews, destroyed hundreds of shops, and looted or burned twenty five synagogues. In addition, 120 Jews were cruelly tortured and killed.

1941: Bulgaria enacted its first anti-Jewish measures.

1942: In the Vilna Ghetto, the Jews established the United Partisan Organization (Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO), the only organization in the ghettos that included all the Zionist youth movements.

1943: In Warsaw, the Germans opened fire in the ghetto. Resistance was given by Jews seizing weapons and firing from rooftops with only 10 pistols. The Germans retreated after twelve were killed.

1943: Over the next four days, two thousand Jews from Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, are deported to Auschwitz. Some 1760 are gassed on arrival, including patients from the Jewish mental hospital at Apeldoorn, Holland, as well as about 50 of the hospital's nurses who accompany the patients to lessen their terror.

1944: Birthdate of Professor Stefan Reif the distinguished academic from Edinburg who was the founding director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit

1945: Ninety-six Hungarian Jews interned at Auschwitz and working at a quarry at Golleschau, Germany, are sealed inside a pair of cattle cars labeled "Property of the SS." Half of the prisoners freeze to death as the train travels aimlessly for days. At Zwittau, Germany, the cattle cars are detached from the train and left at the station. Manufacturer Oskar Schindler alters the bill of lading to read "Final Destination--Schindler Factory, Brünnlitz." After unsealing the cars at his factory, Schindler frees the Jews;

1945: Birthdate of Andrew Stein, President of the New York City Council.

1948: Golda Meir's speech to the General Assembly of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds helped raise $50 million for the Haganah at a critical moment in Israel's fight for independence.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported on the worsening security situation along the country's borders, especially the Jordanian-Israeli no-man's-land dividing Jerusalem. This security deterioration, infiltration and frequent robberies may have been directly influenced by an intensified anti-Israeli activity of the Arab states at the UN General Assembly. Jordan prevented any cement or building materials from being transported to the Israeli enclave on Mount Scopus, urgently needed there to repair damaged buildings, claiming that Israel wished to fortify the enclave. The 9,000-ton British cruiser, HMS Kenya, steamed into Haifa Port for a three-day unofficial visit.

1954: Letters of administration were granted to Richard Samuel because his father Bernard Samuel, the former mayor of Philadelphia, passed away without leaving a will. The estate of the man who served as mayor from 1941 until 1952 is worth approximately $50,000.

1954: The U.S.S. Nautilus, America’s first nuclear powered submarine is launched at Groton, Conn. Admiral Hyman Rickover is considered to be the godfather of the nuclear Navy.

1954: During a cabinet debate over Egypt’s decision to bar ships going to Israel from using the Suez Canal, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden is able to make a case for the Arab state’s behavior.

1959 (12th of Shevat, 5719): Film pioneer Cecil B. DeMille passed away

1964(7th of Shevat, 5724): Austrian born American actor Joseph Schildkraut passes away at the age of 68. He won an Oscar in 1937 as Best Supporting Actor. Younger audiences may remember him as the father in “Diary of Anne Frank.”

1968: Simon & Garfunkel released the Original Soundtrack to “The Graduate,” which quickly went to #1 on the pop charts and which will bring Paul Simon a Grammy for Best Original Score.

1971(24th of Tevet, 5731): Polish born Jewish author Yuli Borisovich Margolin passed away at the age of 70.

1971: Twenty one year old Annie Leibovitz’s photograph of John Lennon appeared on today’s issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

1974(27th of Tevet, 5734): Lewis L Strauss passed away at the age of 78. Strauss was a Republican which was unusual at that time and he headed the US Atomic Energy Commission under President Eisenhower from 1953 until 1958.

1979: Final performance of “The Girl From Tel Aviv” starring Israeli singer Mary Soreanu took plakce at the Hotel Diplomat in New York. Surprisingly, this Israeli play is written Yiddish with only a few words of Hebrews. The show was written by Moshe Tamir, with music by Shaul Berzowski

1983: The Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Anthony E Hecht.

1985: Ronald Reagan is publicly inaugurated for his second term as U.S. President. January 20 was a Sunday, so the public ceremony was delayed for twenty-four hours. During his second term Reagan awarded Elie Weisel with a Medal of Freedom. Much to the dismay of Weisel and other Jews, during his second term he also visited Bittberg Cemetery where SS Soldiers were buried. Last but not least, the Iran-Contra Affair which involved Israel in some rather strange arms deals took placed during Dutch’s second term.

1990: Shimon Peres, the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, arrived in Prague today on the first visit to Czechoslovakia by an Israeli minister since ties between the two countries were cut in 1967. During the two-day visit Mr. Peres will hold talks with President Vaclav Havel, Prime Minister Marian Calfa and Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus, with the aim of re-establishing contacts between the two countries. Mr. Peres was greeted at the Prague airport by Foreign Trade Minister Andrei Barcak. A Czechoslovak delegation visited Israel earlier this month for talks with the Foreign Ministry on the resumption of ties, which is expected soon. All East European countries except Rumania, which was then headed by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, broke off relations with Israel during the 1967 Middle East war. Mr. Peres, the head of the Labor Party, is scheduled to go to Egypt after this trip. Before his departure from Tel Aviv, Mr. Peres said he would try to narrow differences with Egypt on the makeup of a Palestinian delegation for proposed peace talks with Israel. ''For a long time we have had no meeting with the upper level of Egyptian leadership and my visit to Cairo is to examine the situation and see how we can advance the peace process,'' he said.

1991: Orders to stay home from work were canceled for the rest of Israel today, but not for Tel Aviv, which appears to be the main Iraqi target. Scud missiles came down here Friday and Saturday with miraculously little effect and no deaths thus far; one hit the only vacant lot for blocks, another an empty bomb shelter.

1991: Topol, who left his starring role as Tevye the milkman in the Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof," to return to Israel explained the reasons for his decision today. “Speaking by telephone from his home in Tel Aviv, where his son and daughter were visiting, said: ‘I really felt I should be where my heart is, with my friends and family and all the people I grew up with. I hope I can contribute something to the Israeli morale.’"
192: Yuval Ne’eman, a Likud MK, completed his terms as Minister of Science and Technology.

1994: The future of the New England Patriots was settled in New England's favor when Robert Kraft, a Jewish Boston businessman who bought the team's Foxboro Stadium six years ago, won a bidding war that included a nominally higher bid from a group that hoped to move the team to St. Louis.

1999 (4th of Shevat, 5759): Actress and author Susan Strasberg passed away at the age of 60.

2000: Maria Paasche, who helped Jews escape from Nazi Germany on the back of her motorcycle and whose father and brothers conspired to kill Hitler, died today in a San Francisco nursing home. She was 90. Mrs. Paasche was the daughter of General Kurt von Hammerstein, who was commander in chief of the German Army from 1930 to the winter of 1934. He was known as the ''Red General'' for his friendliness with trade unions and Russian generals during the years Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. The general plotted unsuccessfully in 1939 to lure Hitler to his headquarters on the Western front and kill him. Chancellor Heinrich Brening called the general ''the only man who could remove Hitler -- a man without nerves.'' Two of Mrs. Paasche's brothers, Ludwig and Kunrat, were part of another conspiracy to kill Hitler, in 1944. Unlike many plotters, both escaped. From growing up in military headquarters, they knew a secret passage to reach the subway in Berlin. Ludwig died two years ago, and Kunrat lives near Bonn. Maria Therese von Hammerstein was born in Magdeburg, just outside of Berlin, and grew up in an Army family. Her grandfather, General Walther von Luttwitz, was involved in the 1920 putsch against the Weimar Republic. But young Maria and her six brothers and sisters were allowed freedom to prowl a broader intellectual and political landscape. They made many Jewish friends, and though a Christian, Maria planned to join her Zionist friends in Palestine, said her son, Gottfried Paasche, a sociology professor at York University in Toronto. She left the convent where she began her education to attend a public school, where she studied agriculture to prepare for life in the Middle East. She attended the University of Berlin. Dr. Paasche only learned about his mother's past in recent years when he applied to have her admitted to the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco. She had previously talked little about her past, and now memory loss was setting in. Still, he was able to compile compelling evidence of her wartime aid to Jews. In the process, he realized that his mother represented part of a largely missing history. ''The work of women in the early years of Nazi power had been forgotten'' he said. Some of that history is contained in a documentary about Mrs. Paasche completed last year. The still unreleased film, ''Silent Courage: Maria Therese von Hammerstein and her Battle Against Nazism,'' was sponsored by B'nai B'rith and the German government. Last week, Mr. Paasche returned to Germany to continue research about his mother. Mr. Paasche spoke of great political activism of the three older von Hammerstein sisters, of which Maria was the middle one. In the 1930's, after the meaning of Hitler's rise was becoming clear, she began riding her motorcycle to Prague, still a free city not under Nazi domination. She would transport Jews and intellectuals out of Germany into Prague and also bring newspapers and other materials to the anti-Nazi community there. She would also warn Jews they were in danger, on the basis of intelligence information from her father. The von Hammersteins lived in military housing under constant supervision, as Hitler tightened his grip on Germany. This meant that when Maria married married in 1935, the ceremony was held in a rented apartment. Her father did not attend. Her new husband was John H. Paasche, who was of Jewish ancestry. He did not at first seem a perfect fit for a German military family: his father, Hans, a Navy captain who became a pacifist and was a pallbearer at the funeral for Rosa Luxemborg, the socialist leader, was assassinated by right-wing German naval officers in the 1920's. But Maria's father, General von Hammerstein, only wanted one answer: did his future son-in-law's father have an honorable discharge from the Navy? The answer was yes, and so the general blessed the union. The newlyweds moved to Palestine to join Zionist friends there, but a typhoid epidemic forced them to return to Germany. Mr. Paasche, as a Jew, was not allowed to study law, and studied oriental languages instead. They decided to emigrate to Japan after being interrogated several times by the Gestapo about the activities of friends and relatives. General von Hammerstein died of cancer in 1943, and after his sons' participation in the failed coup attempt, Maria's mother and her youngest siblings, a brother and sister, were placed in concentration camps in an attempt to force them to disclose their brothers' whereabouts. They never did. The three were freed by Allies at the end of the war. In Japan, Gottfried Paasche said, his parents lived in fear their politics would become known by the heavily Nazi German exile community. His mother tried to prepare the family for being taken away to camps, urging them to memorize poems. ''You've got to learn things by heart,'' she said. ''You may need it when you go to prison.'' Mr. Paasche said the Japanese police would sit in front of the house spying on the family, but the children were never told why. ''We were brought up to be loyal Japanese,'' Mr. Paasche said. ''My parents never told me as a child what side we were on.'' After the war, the elder Mr. Paasche worked as a translator for the American occupiers until 1948, when the family emigrated by ship, to San Francisco. At first, he worked in a tomato canning factory and his wife cleaned houses. After the father earned his master's degree from Berkeley, he worked for the Library of Congress in the Chinese section. Mrs. Paasche read avidly in German, Russian, French and English. She worked as a literary researcher. Mr. Paasche died in 1994. In addition to her son Gottfried, Mrs. Paasche, is survived by three daughters, Joan Briegleb of Hannoverisch-Munden, Germany, Michaela Grudin of Portland, Ore. and Virginia Dakin of San Francisco, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Family members regret that they may never know her complete story. ''She never lost her fear of naming names,'' Gottfried Paasche said.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Black, White and Jewish Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker.

2001: One day after leaving the White House, former President Bill Clinton said that Jack Quinn, a former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and a former counsel to President Clinton, had persuaded him to grant pardons to Marc Rich and Pincus Green, but he did not elaborate and he referred questions to Mr. Quinn. Mr. Quinn referred calls to Robert F. Fink, a partner in the Manhattan law firm Piper, Marbury, Rudnick & Wolfe who said he believed the president had been convinced that the criminal charges against the men had not been justified.

2002: As Arab violence continued the Associated Press reported that the governor of the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Izzedine Sharif, said today that about 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers took part in a raid on his town making it the largest raid on a Palestinian town in 16 months of fighting. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

2003: Today at Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Philharmonic played with its namesake from Israel for the first time in more than 20 years, and Lorin Maazel conducted Mahler's First Symphony, with the New York and Tel Aviv musicians sharing desks.

2003: Edward Gene "Ed" Rendell began his first term as Governor of Pennsylvania.

2004: David Appel, a prominent real estate developer with ties to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was indicted today. He is charged with having tried to bribe Mr. Sharon starting in the 1990’s when Sharon was the Foreign Minister. Specifically, the Israeli court indicted the real estate developer on charges of paying roughly $700,000 to Mr. Sharon's son, Gilad, in the hope of bribing Mr. Sharon.The indictment raises potentially serious legal and political issues for Mr. Sharon and prompted political opponents to call for his resignation.

2006: Hundreds of Venezuelan intellectuals expressed "shock and consternation" in a public condemnation of allegedly anti-Semitic remarks made recently by President Hugo Chavez. "These dangerous tendencies must be denounced and combated before our society loses its humanity," the group of 250 intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists and others said in a full-page letter published in the major Venezuelan daily El Nacional. Chavez in a Christmas Eve speech last month said: "The world has enough for all. But it turned out that some minorities, descendants of those who crucified Christ, descendants of those who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way in Santa Marta, there in Colombia, a minority took the world's riches for themselves." Chavez did not specifically mention Jews. Simon Bolivar led the 19th century fight to liberate Latin American nations from Spanish rule. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center shortly afterward accused Chavez of anti-Semitic remarks and demanded a public apology. Chavez rejected the criticism as a misinterpretation of his comments and accused the center of representing the "imperialist" policies of the U.S. government with which he often clashes. Historian Manuel Caballero, one of the promoters of Saturday's condemnation, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he was worried about a possible "radicalization" of Chavez's government. He called the remarks a "fairly clear allusion" against Jews and said the same tendency was seen in Chavez's former adviser, Argentine Norberto Ceresole, who was known for his openly anti-Semitic views. Chavez maintained close ties with Ceresole before his election to the presidency in 1998 but later distanced himself. Simon Bolivar University professor Maruja Tarre, who signed the letter, said Chavez's remarks were part of his continuous discourse of "very strong anti-Semitic comments." National Assembly President Nicolas Maduro called the condemnation "garbage," calling it part of a U.S. campaign against Chavez. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the group have said that Chavez's comments were classic characterizations leveled against the Jews regarding the accumulation of wealth and the crucifixion of Christ. Venezuela's local Jewish community, however, has backed Chavez's claims, saying he was misinterpreted by people who don't understand Venezuela. The Information Ministry responded sharply to the condemnation, accusing those behind it of "a lack of intellectual honesty" and being part of a "privileged caste without authority." Some of those who signed are frequent, outspoken critics of the Chavez administration. The advertisement was paid for by the signatories and anonymous donors, Caballero said. Chavez, who frequently expresses his devotion to Christ but has battled with Catholic clergymen here critical of his policies, says he wants to have good relations with all religious groups.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section opened with a review of Power, Faith And Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren. Oren is a prolific author who received a Ph.D. from Princeton. He served as Director of Inter-Religious Affairs under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. The Sunday edition of the Washington Post book section also featured “a conversation” with Norman Mailer discussing The Castle in The Forest, excerpts from the late Art Buchwald’s Too Soon To Say Goodbye, the last literary work of the humorist “dictated from his hospice chair” and the latest excerpt from the novel Jezebel’s Tomb by David Hilzenrath.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of Norman Mailer’s The Castle In The Forest “a remarkable novel about a young Adolph Hitler and his family.”

2007: The London Sunday Times book section featured a review of Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman in which the author asks “Was there anything intrinsic in Jewish and Roman society,” he asks, “that made it impossible for Jerusalem and Rome to coexist?”

2007: The Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times featured reviews of Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest and Daniel Hurwitz’s Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics.

2008: In Manhattan, screenings of “His Wife’s Lover” which was billed as the “first Jewish musical comedy talking picture,” staring popular stage comedian Ludwig Satz in his only screen performance; “Santa Fe” a film depicting the plight of exhausted Jewish immigrants desperate to begin a new life who arrive on a ship in New York harbor in 1940.This absorbing picture examines the hopes, doubts, and memories of exiles; “Jerusalem is Proud to be Present” which explores the struggle of those who in the summer of 2006 hosted World Pride, an international celebration of tolerance for all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity in Jerusalem. It describes how the event’s organizers were forced to make significant compromises due to the war in Lebanon and fierce opposition from the Holy City’s religious communities.

2008: As part of plans to celebrate the efforts of Sir Nicholas Winton to save Jewish children from Czechoslovakia at the outbreak of WW II, plans for the “Train Prague-London Project” were announced today.

2009(25th of Tevet, 5769): Charles Hirsh Schneer, a noted film producer who for a quarter-century helped the Oscar-winning special-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen lay waste to Washington, San Francisco, Rome and many other places, passed away today in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 88. “When the two joined forces in the early 1950s, Mr. Schneer was a young producer who badly wanted to make a picture in the giant-octopus-rips-down-the-Golden-Gate-Bridge tradition. In Mr. Harryhausen, an innovative but still little-known animator, he found his man. Together, they made a dozen science-fiction and fantasy films that endure as cult classics, notable for combining live action with Mr. Harryhausen’s distinctive stop-motion animation. They include “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (1956); the Sinbad trilogy, comprising “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1958), “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974) and “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977); and “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960). Their last film together was “Clash of the Titans” (1981), which, despite a cast of titans including Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress, had a lukewarm reception. Their most famous collaboration was “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), a retelling of the Greek myth that featured an army of walking, swashbuckling skeletons, memorably animated by Mr. Harryhausen. Mr. Harryhausen received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, a special Academy Award for lifetime technical achievement, in 1991. Mr. Schneer was at Columbia Pictures when he met Mr. Harryhausen. At the time, Mr. Harryhausen was an unheralded animator whose most recent film, “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” (1953), had been made on a shoestring budget of $200,000, just $10 a fathom. But Mr. Schneer loved the picture, and the two men joined forces with “It Came From Beneath the Sea,” released in 1955. The movie was Mr. Schneer’s octopus dream film come to life — almost. Because of financial constraints, the octopus was really a hexapus, with six arms where eight should have been. “The rumor got around that sometimes there were less,” Mr. Harryhausen said Monday by telephone from his London home. “If the budget was cut any more, we would have had a tripod.”The length of time Mr. Harryhausen’s painstaking animation required (a single picture could take several years) freed Mr. Schneer to produce other films. Among them was “Hellcats of the Navy” (1957), the only movie in which Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Davis appear together. Mr. Schneer also produced a biopic about the Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, released in the United States in 1960 as “I Aim at the Stars.” (The comedian Mort Sahl made short work of the title, amending it to read: “I Aim at the Stars — but Sometimes Hit London.") A hands-on producer, Mr. Schneer contributed enthusiastically to the story lines of his films, Mr. Harryhausen said on Monday. He scoured the papers for accounts of the paranormal, of which there was no shortage in the 1950s. He accompanied his crews on location, and at least once helped stave off an embarrassing anachronism. The film was “Jason and the Argonauts,” shot on the Italian coast. In one scene, the script called for Jason’s ship, the Argo, to sail around a bluff and into view. But as the cameras rolled, to everyone’s astonishment, Sir Francis Drake’s galleon the Golden Hind sailed by instead. It had been launched by a British film crew also shooting in the area. As Mr. Harryhausen recalled in an article he wrote for The Guardian in 2003, Mr. Schneer rose to the occasion at once. “Get that ship out of here!” he cried. “You’re in the wrong century.”

2009 The Jewish community will be represented in the Prayer Service at National Cathedral by Reform Rabbi David Saperstein, Conservative Rabbi Jerome Epstein and Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

2010(6th of Shevat, 5770): Lawrence Garfinkel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society who helped design landmark studies that linked smoking to lung cancer, died today in Seattle. He was 88. Mr. Garfinkel became a leader in cancer epidemiology despite having no formal education in the field. His college degrees were in statistics: a bachelor’s from the City College of New York and a master’s from Columbia. “He started as a statistical clerk at the cancer society,” his son said. “He was a recent veteran, just looking for work. It was a temporary job, and he stayed for 43 years.” Hired in 1947, Mr. Garfinkel learned epidemiology on the job. His mentor was Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, an epidemiologist and the director of the statistical research section. Scientists had begun to suspect that smoking might cause lung cancer, but large studies were needed to find out for sure. Mr. Garfinkel helped Dr. Hammond and Dr. Daniel Horn conduct a study in the 1950s that tracked nearly 188,000 men for 44 months. Its conclusion became a milestone in epidemiology: Smokers had a marked increase in lung cancer risk. The grim evidence began to turn the medical profession against tobacco and inspired public health campaigns against smoking. The tobacco industry fought back, picking over studies for flaws and questioning the researchers’ objectivity. But the epidemiologists had just begun to work. Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Hammond started an even bigger project in 1959, the Cancer Prevention Study I, which enrolled a million men and women. A study begun in 1982, by Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Steven D. Stellman, had 1.2 million participants. This research confirmed the earlier indictment of tobacco, and captured the steep rise in lung cancer among women who had taken up smoking. “Those studies have been extraordinarily valuable in that they were a major impetus for tobacco control in the United States,” said Dr. Michael Thun, the vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the cancer society. The studies also gathered data on obesity, alcohol, medications, hormones, occupational exposures, reproductive issues, other cancers and chronic diseases. Researchers are still using that information, said Dr. Stellman, a clinical professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Hammond also worked with Dr. Oscar Auerbach, a pathologist who studied tissue from deceased smokers and showed that the degree of precancerous change depended on how much and how long they had smoked. The pathology findings bolstered the statistical correlations from the earlier studies by providing physical evidence of what smoke could do to the lungs. Mr. Garfinkel became head of epidemiology at the cancer society in 1979, retired in 1990 and worked as a volunteer until 2003. When Mr. Garfinkel retired, Dr. Richard D. Klausner, who was then the director of the National Cancer Institute, said, “Few individuals have contributed as much to our present-day knowledge about the disease consequences of smoking.” Although Mr. Garfinkel contributed to 147 articles in scientific journals, colleagues say he never flaunted his achievements. “He carried with him the fact that he was the product of two poor immigrants, one of whom never learned to read,” his son said. Lawrence Garfinkel was born on Jan. 11, 1922, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and grew up in the South Bronx. His parents were from Galicia, now in southeast Poland. Mr. Garfinkel finished high school at 15 and went to college at night while working days in the garment district. He studied while riding the subway. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Garfinkel joined the Army and was wounded by shrapnel in France. After months in a hospital, he received a medical discharge. He went back to school, but because he had to work, it took him 10 years to earn his bachelor’s degree. Mr. Garfinkel “indoctrinated his family” on the dangers of smoking, Martin Garfinkel said, recalling that when he was 10 his father gave him a deceased smoker’s blackened, cancerous lung in a jar of formaldehyde. “I put it in my room on a shelf with my baseball glove,” he said. “It did the trick. I never smoked.” (As reported by Denise Grady)

2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the New York Premiere of “Human Failure,” a documentary directed by Michael Verhoeven “that reveals the expropriation and sale of Jewish assets that benefited innumerable citizens of the Third Reich. Using documentation from recently opened German archives and riveting interviews with archivists, historians, and descendants of Jewish families who lost apartments, bank accounts and property, Verhoeven uncovers involvement at all levels, from tax officials to merchants to the next-door neighbors.”

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “Ultimatum,” “a tense melodrama adopted from Valérie Zenatti's 2006 novel” that “authentically recreates the eerie wartime mood that consumed Israeli society in January 1991.” “Handheld cameras track terrified Israeli citizens as they don gas masks and seal themselves in special safe rooms.” The film also reminds us of the paradox of living in Israel. Faced the threat of a chemical and biological attack those living in Jerusalem demonstrate the desire of all Israeli citizens “to laugh, love, live and face reality.”

2010: Authorities say a misunderstanding about a Jewish prayer ritual led to the diversion of a US Airways flight to Philadelphia today. City police Lt. Frank Vanore said a 17-year-old boy on the plane was using tefillin. Tefillin is a set of small black boxes attached to leather straps and containing biblical passages. One box is strapped to the arm; the other box is placed on the head. Vanore said the crew on US Airways Flight 3079 questioned the teen, who explained the ritual. Still, the pilot decided to land in Philadelphia. The flight had left La Guardia airport in New York this morning bound for Louisville, Kentucky. It landed without incident in Philadelphia around 9 a.m. Vanore said the teen has been very cooperative with law enforcement.

2010: The Washington Post features a review of Koeslter: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic by Michael Scammel, a biography of Arthur Kosetler.

2011: At Bloomfield, Michigan, The Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host a concert performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

2011: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a Tu B'Shevat Seder Dinner with Karina where attendees can celebrate the birthday of the trees while welcoming Shabbat.

2011: In Washington, DC, Theater J Middle East Festival is scheduled to present “Argentina Reading.” Argentina is a new work by Boaz Gaon in which “the Israeli daughter of a ‘disappeared’ Argentinean Jew visits the former Ambassador to Argentina hoping to discover what became of her father 20 years earlier during the junta’s rise to power.”

2011: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was moved from the University Medical Center in Tucson to TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, Texas where she can continue her rehabilitation following her nearly fatal shooting two weeks ago.

2011: The funeral for Sonia Peres is scheduled to be held on today at 11:00 am at the Ben Shemen Youth Village cemetery.

2012: “Daas” – a period drama that explore the influence Jacob Frank, the false messiah -- is scheduled to have its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Comedian Dave Goldstein is scheduled to appear at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Baton Rouge (LA) Film Festival and the Polo Grill and Bar/ The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee in Lakewood Ranch, FL.

2012: “Mahler on the Couch” is scheduled to be shown at the Las Vegas (NV) Jewish Film Festival.

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