This Day, January 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

January 26 In Jewish History

1531: Three tremors shake Portugal and numerous houses are destroyed in Lisbon by an earthquake which the Pope and others believe confirm the prediction of suffering made by Solomon Molcho who was seeking relief for Jews and Marranos.

1654: MAJOR DATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. With the capture of Pernambuco (Recife) from the Dutch, Portugal retook Peru and Brazil. The Jews, (numbering approximately 5,000) having fought on the side of the Dutch, fled for the most part to Amsterdam. Hundreds also escaped to North America, with 23 eventually arriving in New Amsterdam

1689: Jean Racine's "Esther" premieres in Saint-Cyr. Racine's last plays, “Esther” (1689) and “Athalie” (1691), each of which were based on Biblical figures were commissioned by King Louis XIV's wife.

1736: As the Kingdom of Poland continues to unravel, Stanislaus I abdicated his throne during a period of increasing anti-Semitism. Twenty eight years after the abdication, the Austrians, Prussians and Russians would begin to partition Poland much to the detriment of the Jewish people who had originally been “invited” to settle in Poland.

1755 (14th of Shevat, 5515): Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua Falk Katz passed away. Born in 1680, he was the author of the Talmudic work "P'nei Yehoshua." He served as rabbi of Lemberg (Lvov) in 1718, Berlin in 1730, Metz in 1734 and Frankfurt in 1740.

1804: Birthdate of Eugane "Marie Joseph" Sue France, novelist and author of The Wandering Jew. It is a tale of good and evil. This time the villain was a Jesuit clerk, Rodin, who is after the Wandering Jew's treasure, which has been gathering interest over the centuries. The descendants of a man, who once aided the cursed wanderer, are summoned to Paris to receive the fortune. Rodin represents the oppression of Church, the Jew stands for dispossessed laborers and his female counterpart Herodias for downtrodden womankind.

1837: Michigan is admitted as the 26th state in the Union. By the time Michigan joined the union, Jews had been living there for at least three quarters of a century. The first known Jewish settler, Ezekiel Solomon arrived in what is now Mackinaw city in 1761. Chapman Abraham arrived in Detroit a year later. Abraham was a Loyalist who fought on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War. Other early Jewish residents of what would become the Wolverine state were Louis Benjamin who suffered a loss during Detroit’s great fire in 1805 and Frederick E. Cohen, the portrait painter, who had arrived in Michigan by 1837. In reality there were only a handful of Jews living in Michigan at the time of statehood. . The real growth of the Michigan Jewish community began in the 1840’s with the arrival of German Jews the most prominent group of which was the forty-eighters. The first synagogue would be formed in 1850, as Congregation Beth El. For more about the Michigan Jewish community you might consider reading Jews In Michigan by Judith Levin Cantor.

1851(23rd of Sh'vat, 5611): Leon Vita Saraval passed away. Born at Triest in 1771, he was a bibliophile and author whose “entire library” was purchased for the Breslau seminary in 1853.

1856: “Charitable Bequest of the Late Baron Rothschild” an article published today described the fortune of the Rothschild family, paying special attention to the spending habits and will of the late Amschel Mayer Rothschild, the second child and oldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founding father of the banking dynasty. While Rothschild’s personal habits “were extremely simple” he shared his wealth with Jews and Gentiles. During his life time he distributed at least 50,000 florins per year to 2,600 Christian families. While his mother was alive, he visited her daily in the original family home on “The Street of the Jews’; a home he was never able to convince her to leave so she could take up residence in a dwelling more fitting with her economic status . The Baron’s will which was written in 1849, was intended to dispose of a fortune calculated at sixty million florins when he passed away in 1855. Among other bequests, he left 1,200,000 florins for the establishment of a foundation for the poor of Frankfort intended “to keep up the weekly distribution of alms at the ‘Old Rothschild ‘ house in the Street of the Jews,” 25,000 florins for Jewish hospitals, 5,000 florins for Jewish schools and 20,000 florins “for various Christian charitable institutions.” Two of his bequests have special meaning for those aware of Jewish laws and customs. In an apparent attempt to follow the rules of Maimonides on charity he gave 10,000 florins “to the society for encouraging Jewish traders and workmen. And in an echo of the morning prayer which says that “participating in making a wedding” is one of the things to be done while waiting for the World-to-Come, he bequeathed the interest on 50,000 florins to be used as perpetual fund “to furnish dowers to Jewish maidens.” Baron Rothschild was not the only member of his family to know financial success. According to the article, Baron Charles left an estate of 17 million florins and Baron Solomon left an estate of 48 million florins.

1862: An Imperial ukase was published in St. Petersburg, Russia, “permitting Jews to enter every branch of the State service; permitting Jewish merchants to reside anywhere, and granting other concessions to the Jews.”

1868(2nd of Sh'vat, 5628): Jacob Raphael De Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer passed away. He was born in Spanish Town (near Kingston), Jamaica, in 1808, the youngest of three sons of Judith and Raphael De Cordova. Since his mother died at his birth, he was reared by an aunt in England. He was well educated and became proficient in English, French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. His father, a Jewish Jamaican coffee grower and exporter, moved to Philadelphia, where he became president of Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1820. Jacob joined his father in Philadelphia, and there he married Rebecca Sterling about 1826 and learned the printing trade. His ancestors had supported themselves as printers for generations, beginning in the sixteenth century, when a De Cordova in Spain published Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's explorations in Texas. In 1834 Jacob moved back to Kingston, where he and his brother Joshua started a newspaper, the Kingston Daily Gleaner that still exists today as The Gleaner. In early 1836 Jacob went to New Orleans, where he shipped cargoes of staples to Texas during its struggle for independence. At this time he served a term as Grand Master of the Odd Fellows. After the battle of San Jacinto he visited the Republic of Texas to install members in the Odd Fellows lodges, the first established outside the United States. He settled in Texas in 1839 and lived in Galveston and later Houston, where he was elected a state representative to the Second Texas Legislature in 1847. He served for one term but lost the election in 1849. De Cordova traveled extensively through Texas, including the frontier western areas. Through scrip and direct purchase he acquired large amounts of land to sell to settlers; at one time he had a million acres in scrip or title. To attract settlers to Texas, he made speeches on Texas in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, and even to the cotton-spinners association in Manchester, England. His lectures were published on both sides of the Atlantic and were widely read. His land agency, which he owned with his half-brother Phineas De Cordova, became one of the largest such agencies that ever operated in the Southwest. De Cordova and two other men laid out the town of Waco in 1848–49. Town lots of an acre sold for five dollars, and nearby farmland brought two to three dollars an acre. At the urging of his wife, De Cordova reserved free sites for schools, churches, and commons. De Cordova and Robert Creuzbaur compiled the Map of the State of Texas, first published in 1849. Much subsequent Texas cartography was based on this map, which was praised by Sam Houston on the floor of the United States Senate. Books De Cordova wrote that were influential in attracting settlers included The Texas Immigrant and Traveller's Guide Book (1856), and Texas, Her Resources and Her Public Men (1858), the first attempt at an encyclopedia of Texas. Jacob and Phineas De Cordova published two early Texas newspapers, the Texas Herald (also known as De Cordova's Herald and Immigrant's Guide) out of Houston and the Southwestern American out of Austin. The latter was at the solicitation of Governor Peter H. Bell and helped to pass the Compromise of 1850, which resulted in a $10 million payment to Texas for adjusted boundaries after annexation. In the 1850s De Cordova moved from Austin to Seguin, where five miles from town he built for his wife and five children a fine country home, which he called Wanderer's Retreat. In the 1860s he tried to develop a power project on the Brazos River in Bosque County for textile mills to spin Texas cotton. The Civil War brought financial reverses to De Cordova. When he died, he was buried in Kimball, but in 1935 his body and that of his wife were moved to the State Cemetery. He was survived by five children. The De Cordova Bend in the Brazos River south of Fort Worth, and the De Cordova Bend Dam which impounds Lake Granbury, were both named for him. Today the Kingston Gleaner founded by Jacob De Cordova is now known as the Jamaica Daily Gleaner and maintains offices in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

1884: Birthdate of Edward Sapir, German-born anthropologist and linguist. He was on the faculty of the University of Chicago and Yale until his death until 1939.

1891: Birthdate of Ilya G Ehrenburg prolific Russian writer and journalist. Born into a middle class Jewish family living in Kiev, Ehrenburg was able to navigate the treacherous waters of the Soviet Union pursuing his career even during the days of Stalin’s anti-Semitic outbursts and dying peacefully in 1967.

1905: The New York Times publishes a letter from Henry S. Morias reminding readers of Benjamin Disraeli’s support for the Union during the Civil War. Rabbi Morias, the son of Sabato Morais was a well known Jewish journalist who served in the pulpits of numerous east coast congregations.

1907: A law establishing national quotas in the 515 seat Austrian Parliament would lead to five Jewish deputies (4 Zionist and 1 Jewish Democrat) being chosen in the next national elections.

1912: Aaron Hahn, a delegate from Cuyahoga County to Ohio Constitutional Convention, suggests a provision be made in the state constitution for prohibition of sectarian religious instruction. A Rabbi named Aaron Hahn had served as the spiritual leader of Cleveland’s Tifereth Israel but we can find no verifiable evidence that these are one and the same person.

1913: The New York Times reviews The Romance of the Rothschilds by Ignatius Balla a book which the great bankers whose name adorns its title-page allegedly are endeavoring to suppress in England and which shortly will be published in this country by G.P. Putnam's Sons. According to Balla, “A passion for old coins and skill as a chess player formed the basis for the most colossal fortune ever conceived in the brain of a romancer or recorded among the facts of history.”

1916: Jewish Socialist political leader Morris Hillquit was part of a three person delegation to President Wilson to advocate part of the Socialist Party's peace program, which proposed that "the President of the United States convoke a congress of neutral nations, which shall offer mediation to the belligerents and remain in permanent session until the termination of the war." [Editor’s note: For those of you not acquainted with U.S. history, at this point the United States was not a participant in the Great War and most of her citizens wanted it to stay that way. In the fall, Wilson would be re-elected on a platform of He Kept Us Out of War. It was only after America entered the war and during the Red Scare of 1919 that what Hillquit and others like him expounded would come to be consider ‘un-American’ or treasonous.)

1917: Seventy-five years after the opening of the Burton Street Synagogue, The Jewish Chronicle said today that “virtually all the bitterness of the Reform controversy has – Heaven be praised! – passed”, but added a sting in the tail that “Reform has made no important constructive contribution to the religious life of the community”.

1917: The Italian government sent twelve thousand Lire ($2,400) to the Governor of Tripoli for the Jewish poor.

1918: Birthdate of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Regardless of his other "shortcomings" from a Jewish point of Ceausescu is memorable for his refusal to break diplomatic relations with Israel after the June, 1967 War. Romania was the only Eastern European country to defy the Soviets which had ordered all of her client states to break relations with Israel.

1919: In Poland, Jewish parties receive about 10% of the votes during the election for the constituent assembly. But the under the electoral system in use, they get only 11 out of 394 seats

1920: Amadeo Modigliani's mistress jumps out of a window. He was Jewish. She was not.

1921: Austrian born violinist Erika Morini made her American debut in New York City.

1923: Final session of The Golden Jubilee Convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations was held at the Hotel Astor in New York City.

1924: Birthdate of Houston native Annette Strauss who would become the first Jewish female mayor of Dallas, Texas. She was the second woman elected to the position and the second Jew to serve in that capacity.

1925: Birthdate of actor Paul Newman. Newman’s father was Jewish. His mother wasn’t

1926: Birthdate of Stuart Etz Hample, a humorist who entertained children (and adults) as an author, playwright, adman, performer and cartoonist

1928: In Trieste, Italy, an insurance executive named Ottocaro Weiss and the former Ortensia Schmitz, a violinist and a niece of the novelist Italo Svevo, gave birth to Piero Weiss. Weiss fled fascist Italy and came to America in 1940 where he gained fame as a concert pianist and recording artist before turning to musicology where he became an author and co-author of books in the field, including a widely used textbook, and founded the music history department at the Peabody Conservatory. (As reported by James R. Oestreich

1929: Birthdate of cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer. Jules Feiffer's cartoons ran in Playboy and The Village Voice for decades. Feiffer's work appeared often in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Nation, and was nationally syndicated. In 1986, Feiffer won a Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons, and from 1997-2000 he drew monthly op-ed comics in The New York Times.
As a young man, Feiffer studied with the Art Students League and attended the Pratt Institute from 1947-1951. He worked as an assistant to Will Eisner, creator of "The Spirit," a popular comic strip about a "middle class crime fighter." In 1949, Feiffer created his own comic strip, "Clifford," and later he briefly worked for Terrytoons. He was drafted into the U.S. Signal Corps during the Korean War, and worked on animated shorts for the military until 1953. He returned to civilian life with a profound distaste for bureaucracy and authority, and his cartooning quickly developed serious political bite. Feiffer wrote Passionella and Other Stories, which introduced Munro, a four-year-old boy who is mistakenly drafted into the Army. In 1960, Munro was made into a viciously funny anti-war cartoon. Several biographies report that Feiffer won an Oscar for Munro, but that's not quite correct. Feiffer deserved an Oscar, and Munro did win the award for best animated short, but the statue went to Bill Snyder, the film's producer, and it has his name engraved on it. Snyder had provided some of the film's funding, but his only creative contribution was arguing (unsuccessfully) to have this line of Feiffer's dialogue cut: "I want to welcome you men to the Army. This is a time of great struggle. I will explain the issues: Our side is in favor of God. The other side isn’t. Any questions?" Feiffer's first book-length collection of comic strips was published in 1958, titled Sick, Sick, Sick. Other collections include Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl, Feiffer on Civil Rights, and Feiffer on Nixon: The Cartoon Presidency. He wrote several children's books, including The Man in the Ceiling, Meanwhile, and A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. He wrote the novel Harry, the Rat with Women and the graphic novel Tantrum. Feiffer's plays include Knock Knock, Little Murders, and White House Murder Case (the latter two won Obies, the award for outstanding off-Broadway plays). Feiffer's screenplays include Carnal Knowledge and Robin Williams’ Popeye. Feiffer's comics are usually bleak, cynical, and funny. He retired at around the turn of the millennium, but admirers still refer to him as "the dean of American intellectual cartoonists." His work was widely considered the epitome of sophisticated humor, while still being accessible and often hilarious to those of us with no sophistication at all.

1930: Birthdate of A. N. Solomons chairman of Singer & Friedlander.

1933: The Jack Benny Program is broadcast for the last time on CBS Radio.

1934: Germany and Poland sign a ten-year nonaggression pact. This was one of the first steps of acceptance of the Hitler regime by the governments of Europe. Five years later, the Poles would find out that Germans did not really mean it.

1934 Josef Pilsudski signed a ten-year peace pact with Hitler. That same year the Warsaw authorities, observing the impotence of the League of Nations in dealing with the German problem, decided to repudiate the Minorities Treaty signed under duress at Versailles.

1935: In a speech before 3,800 people at the Mecca Temple, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Zionist Revisionist leader urged his listeners to put the development of a Jewish national state in Palestine ahead of all other issues related to economic and political development.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Mordecai Uhana, the sole Jewish resident of Ramallah, a cobbler who lived had there for 34 years, was shot while at work and badly wounded. The driver and a passenger of a Givat Shaul bus were shot and hit on their way to Jerusalem. Nissim Dorani, a lorry driver, was killed by a bomb, thrown at him at Km. 5 on the Jaffa-Jerusalem Road. Twenty children, eight women and two men, all of them Jewish, were arrested as illegal immigrants at Safed. Three Arab terrorists were executed at Acre.

1939: In light of the news that German scientists in Berlin had split the uranium nucleus, Leo Szilard wired the British Admiralty, the keeper of his 1935 patent on chain reactions, to disregard his earlier letter telling them to cancel his patent.

1940: At a prison camp in Siberia, Isaac Babel is found guilty of belonging to an anti-Soviet Trotskyite organization and with spying for France and Austria after a twenty minute trial. He is condemned to death and will be shot tomorrow.

1940: Nazis denied Polish Jews the right to travel on trains. One cannot help but see a note of irony in this decree.

1942 (8th of Shevat, 5702): At Stari Becej, Hungary, 200 Jews and Serbs were slaughtered. At Titel, 35 Jews killed. At Teofipol, 300 Jews marched naked for three miles and then are shot.

1945: On this date the The Virgin Island Daily News reports that Peter de Hemmer Gudme, journalist, Oriental scholar and author of two philo-semtic tomes “From Nebuchadnessar to Hitler” and “A Sketch of the History of Zionism” died while in the hands of the Gestapo in Copehagen. Born in 1897, he was the brother of Sten Gudme who has been working in London on behalf of the Free Danish government. [Ed note: The Gudmes were not Jewish; they were just decent human beings.]

1945: One thousand Jewish women interned at the Neusalz, Poland, slave-labor camp are set on a month-and-a-half-long forced march to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, Germany, about 200 miles to the southwest. Along the way, 800 are beaten and shot.

1946: Birthdate of movie critic, Gene Siskel. He was part of the t.v. duo of Siskel and Ebert.

1947: Joseph B. Levin was assigned to the Office of Opinion Writing at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Levin had joined the SEC in 1942 while it was still located in Washington, DC. At the time of his appointment, the Commission had not returned to Washington from its wartime headquarters in Philadelphia, PA.

1948 (15th of Shevat, 5708): Composer, Ignaz Friedman passed away at the age of 65. Born in 1882, Ignaz Friedman (also spelled Ignace or Ignacy) was a Polish pianist and composer famous for his Chopin interpretations. The son of a musician in Krakow, Ignaz Friedman was one of the most highly regarded virtuoso pianists of his time. A child prodigy he studied with Theodor Leschetizky. His official début in Vienna in 1904 featured a program of three piano concertos and several encores, rivalling the similar programs of established titans like Busoni and Godowsky, and he remained a titan throughout his career. His style was quiet and effortless, imbued with a sense of rhythm and color, grounded in a sovereign technique, and much has been written about his peerless interpretations of Chopin in particular. He was also known for "Friedman moments" in his interpretations where he might double bass notes, fill in chords, extend passagework, and add ornamentation though always with an aristocratic sense of style. His recordings of Chopin Mazurkas are particularly admired, matched perhaps only by the Mazurka recordings of Moritz Rosenthl. During his lifetime his playing was admired, but considered secondary compared to the other virtuosos then playing the concert circuit and he often received lukewarm reviews, especially in the United States, where critics found his playing mannered. At the outbreak of the Second World War Freidman was on a concert tour in Australia and, unable to return to Europe, remained there until his death. Partial paralysis of his left hand forced him to retire from the concert platform in 1943. Friedman estimated that he had given over 2,800 concerts in his life. His many recordings are admired and loved. Like most of the great artists of his time who broadcast, much of his recorded material has been lost, including hours of radio recordings made in Australia and New Zealand. His place in the pantheon of great pianists of the twentieth century is assured. He composed more than ninety works, mainly piano miniatures, but also pieces for cello and a piano quintet. His compositions are superior to those of most other virtuoso pianists of his time, but have not found a niche in the repertory. He arranged many works, especially those of J. S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He also edited the complete works of Chopin and produced editions of Schumann and Liszt, as did his colleagues Harold Bauer and Alfred Cortot.

1949: Switzerland recognized Israel.

1951: Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Miss. became the first Jewish congregation to allow women to perform the functions of a rabbi.

1952: In Cairo, the main Cicurel Department Store was destroyed by a fire set either by the Muslim Brotherhood or militant nationalists. The store was part of chain started in 1909 by Moreno Cicurel an Egyptian Jew who was both active in Jewish and Egyptian community affairs.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the unexpected delay in the ratification of the Reparations Agreement with West Germany upset the Ministry of Finance budget calculations.

1954: Prime Minister Churchill urges the members of his cabinet to support a policy of open navigation through the Suez Canal, which is another way of saying he was calling on the British government to support all measures to force the Egyptian government to open the waterway to ships traveling to and from Israel.

1954: David Ben-Gurion steps down as Minister of Defense, a position he had held since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

1954: Pinchas Lavon becomes the second person to hold the position of Minister of Defense

1968 (25th of Tevet, 5728): The British Admiralty reported the Dakar, an Israeli submarine, was missing and gave the last known position as 100 miles (160 km) west of Cyprus

1973 (23rd of Shevat, 5733): Famed actor Edward G. Robinson, born Emanuel Goldenberg, passed away.

1976: Israel opened the "Good Fence" to Lebanon.

1976: David Mamet's "American Buffalo" premiered in New York City.

1976: Birthdate of William “Willie” Adler, guitarist who played with the Lamb of God.

1978: In Cairo, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced that serious negotiations were going on behind the scenes on the stalled peace talks and that the US officials expressed hope that the current rift with Israel will soon be over.

1980: Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relations

1981: Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz and two other Likud members of the Knesset broke away from the Likud to form Rafi - National List.

1991: Flaws are becoming apparent in the Patriot air defense system deployed against Iraqi Scud missiles, with some warheads exploding and wreaking damage even though the missiles themselves are shot down. Those flaws were evident today, after Iraq fired four more Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Israeli military said that Patriot defense missiles destroyed the four Scuds, but that at least one Scud warhead survived the midair collisions and exploded on the ground, causing some damage and slightly wounding two Israelis.

1992: Final performance of in Rina Yerushalmi's adaptation of "Hamlet" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People by Gary Greenberg, The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim by Richard Pollak and Girls Only by Alex Witchel.

1997: The New York Times published “The Antagonist as Liberator” by Amos Elon
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/specials/goldhagen-elon.html?_r=2


1998: During what will become known as the Monica Lewinsky ScandalU.S. President Bill Clinton appeared on national and denied having had "sexual relations" with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

2001: ''Voyages'', Emmanuel Finkiel's film that deals with the Holocaust opens today at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center.

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush by David Frum, AMERIKA (The Man Who Disappeared) by Franz Kafka; translated by Michael Hofmann. An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign by Joe Lieberman and Hadassah Lieberman with Sarah Crichton and newly released in paperback Einstein’s’ Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time, by Marcia Bartusiak. The author, a freelance science writer with a breezy yet careful style, tells of the efforts by scientists to detect and measure gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted would ripple through the fabric of space-time. Her account is ''informative and easy to read,'' David Goodstein wrote here in 2000. ''When a gravity wave is first detected, the reader of this book will feel like a participant in the great event.''

2006: As part of events leading up to Holocaust Memorial Day observances in Poland, Holocaust survivors mixed with the young at the memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto.

2006: The Fifteenth Annual Jewish Film Festival comes to an end in New York.

2006: Hamas, an organization committed to the creation of a Palestinian state in all of the territory stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean won 76 of the 132 seats in the first parliamentary elections held in the PA in ten years. The Hamas victory means that the terrorist organization can form a government without any coalition partners. For many Israelis who had continued to look for an Arab partner for peace, the election results seemed to doom any hopes of peace.

2006: The board of directors of Hudson’s Bay Co., Canada’s largest chain of department stores, agreed to sell the venerable institution to Jerry Zucker. Born in Israel, Zucker graduated with a triple major from the University of Florida. He is a resident of Charleston, South Carolina and ranks #346 on the Forbes Four Hundred List of Richest Americans.

2007: In a sign of growing acceptance of an expanded role for Israelis in international organization, The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Margaret Chan, the new director-general of the World Health Organization, has invited Israeli health professionals to contribute their experience and skills to the UN organization. The Chinese born, Canadian educated Chan told the Post that she welcomes from any member country including Israel.

2008: Shabbat Yitro – The Giving of the Ten Commandments

2008: In New York City, the 92nd St Y hosts Israeli Folk Dance: Winter Marathon, an “all-night dancing, guaranteed to chase your winter chills away” as part of the Israel at 60 Celebration.

2009: The American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History present: “Stella in the Bois de Boulogne” a dramatic reading of a new play by Jane Wood and Tara Prem that brings alive the historic conflict between Stella Adler of the influential Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty and the controversial artistic director Lee Strasberg, and her subsequent meetings in Paris with Russian director Constantine Stanislavsky in 1934.
2009: Rosh Chodesh Shevat, 5769.

2009: Sports Illustrated reports that Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 for what the NBA called “improper interactions with Denver Nuggets players” during and a game on January 13. Cuban has been fined 14 times by the league for fines totaling almost $1.5 million.
The name is Cuban; the religion is Jewish.

2009: Faced with a decline in their operating budget and a shrinking endowment, the trustees of Brandeis University voted unanimously today to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection to help shore up the university’s finances. The museum, founded in 1961, holds more than 8,000 pieces. It is best known for its collection of modern art, including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. “These are extraordinary times,” Jehuda Reinharz, the president of Brandeis, said in a statement. “We cannot control or fix the nation’s economic problems. We can only do what we have been entrusted to do: act responsibly with the best interests of our students and their futures foremost in mind.” The plan calls for the museum to be closed in late summer and turned into a fine arts teaching center and exhibition gallery. It is unclear how much the collection is worth. The university plans to take all proceeds from the sale and invest them back into the university. Brandeis faces a budget shortfall that could reach $10 million, and the sale of the art is a step to help combat the deficit. The university has already announced a hiring freeze and is considering revamping academic programs to help save money.

2009: Brazilian Jack Terpins was unanimously re-elected president of the Latin American Jewish Congress. A longtime activist in Brazil, Terpins, 61, recently finished his term as president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, Brazil's Jewish umbrella organization.

2009: In an Agriprocessor Doubleheader Leah Rubashkin, 36, wife of former Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin, testified in a bail appeal hearing Monday that cash found in their home during a search was used for living expenses, not to escape the country while Soglowek Nahariya Ltd an Israeli food company has made a $40 million offer for the Postville kosher meatpacking company, which became mired in legal and financial troubles after an immigration raid in May snared about one-third of its work force.

2010: The 92nd Street Y in New York is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Future of Islam” featuring John L. Esposito and Mahmoud Mamdani.

2011: The U.S. Premiere of “Inventory,” a film that tells the story three explorers, who painstakingly deciphered inscriptions on gravestones in the lushly overgrown Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, is scheduled to take place at The New York Jewish Film Festival.

2011: In Columbus, Ohio the Cultural Arts Committee Meeting of Tifereth Israel is scheduled to meet at the home of Cantor Chomsky.

2011: Today, the Jerusalem District Police released details regarding its investigation into a cell of Palestinian militants suspected in two murders and 19 other security incidents since 1997. The cell is alleged to be behind the recent stabbing of an American tourist and her friend in the Jerusalem hills five weeks ago; the tourist, Kristine Luken, was killed, while her friend, Kaye Wilson, managed to flee the attackers with serious wounds. Police believe that the same cell carried out the murder of 53-year-old Netta Blatt-Sorek, a resident of Zichron Ya'akov, whose body was found a year ago near the Jerusalem-area monastery of Beit Jamal last year. The militants are suspected in two cases of attempted murder, one count of rape, another of attempted rape, seven incidents of robbery, seven cases of breaking-and-entering, and for shooting at an Israeli military jeep. Jerusalem District Police chief Aharon Franco said that the cell started off as a group of petty criminals and turned into a nationalist threat when it began carrying out attacks to avenge the January 2010 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, an incident which has been widely blamed on Israel's Mossad.

2012: “Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort” is scheduled to have its world premiere on the closing night of the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Comedian Jeff Applebaum and Ari Hoptman are scheduled to appear at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

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