This Day, January 5, In Jewish History

January 5 In Jewish History

1355: Charles I of Bohemia was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan. Charles I morphed into Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor who at the beginning of his reign made an effectual attempt to protect his Jewish subjects by issuing “letter after letter forbidding the person of the His Jews, his ‘servi camerae,’ to be touched.” His Christian subjects in Germany disregarded their Emperor and continued their persecution of the Jews.

1589: Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, the wife of King Henry II passed away. Along with several other French rulers and power brokers including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV, she had a penchant for collecting Hebrew Manuscripts.

1642: King Charles I of England sends soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, commencing England's slide into civil war. The Civil War would bring Oliver Cromwell to power. Cromwell would champion the return of the Jews to England, leading to the creation of the modern Jewish committee in Great Britain, and by extension throughout the British Empire including the United States.

1814: Today Chief Rabbi Lehmans of The Hague organized a special thanksgiving service and implored God's protection for the allied armies.

1826: Maryland put into effect the "Jew Bill", 1826, which allowed Jews to hold public office if they believed in Reward and Punishment in the Hereafter. Maryland had an interesting history when it came to questions of religious toleration. Unlike other colonies, it was founded by Catholics and the Act of Toleration was one of its landmark pieces of colonial legislation.

1856: Under the heading “We May Eat Pork Without Fear of the Tape Worm,” the New York Times published a letter to the editor written in response to a previously published article warning about the relationship between pork consumption and tape worm infestation. Citing the statement “that a Jew was never known to have a tape-worm,” the author warns any “hypochondriac” who “should be tempted to turn Jew from this statement and forswear pork” need not do so since it is a “rare occurrence in this country” for anybody to be infested by the worms “notwithstanding we are such universal pork-eaters.”

1868(10th of Tevet, 5628): Asara B’Tevet

1874: It was reported today that when the noted author Léon Gozlan passed away he was buried by a Catholic priest. “He had the features of a Jew and lived like a Jew…but it was positively declared that he had been so baptized so the Rabbi gave way” and Gozlan was interred using the rites of the Church.

1874: Birthdate of American physiologist Joseph Erlanger

1875: A meeting of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which included several Jewish members, was held at their new offices on Broadway and 34th Street. [This is yet another example of how Jews were involved in secular activities aimed at uplifting the conditions of the general society from the early days of the Republic.]

1876: Birthdate of Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer was the first post-war Chancellor of West Germany. He took office in 1949. Having been imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II, Adenauer sought to return Germany to the world community. He sought to make amends with the Jewish community by offering war reparations to the government of Israel. Under Adenauer, Germany recognized Israel and provided arms for her defense despite threats from the Arab governments.

1877: The Supreme Court of Massachusetts upheld a lower court decision that Jews must observe the laws of the state regulating the observance of the Sabbath. The case grew out of an attempt to keep a store open on Sunday.

1878(1st of Shevat, 5638): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1878: It was reported today that “a thrilling tale of a brave young Jew will appear in the New York Weekly on the morning of January 7.

1878: Rabbi Abram S. Isaacs will deliver lecture entitled “The Dance to Death” at tonight’s meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York’s Lyric Hall.

1879: The Board of Directors of the Home for Aged and Infirm Jews met this afternoon. The Board limited itself to routine business and did not take up the matter of accepting or rejecting Judge Hilton’s recent offer to contribute $250 to the Home. Judge Hilton is the New York businessman who banned Jews from his hotel at Saratoga Springs.

1879: An article profiling Otto von Bismarck published today reported that “mixed marriage in Germany” is “a source of horror to the orthodox Christians as well as to orthodox Jews.” Bismarck coarsely described mixed marriage as “the crossing of a Jewish mare with a Christian stallion.”

1886: Birthdate of Israeli scientist Markus Reiner.

1888(21st of Tevet, 5648): Henri Herz, the Austrian born French pianist and composer passed away. Hertz owned his own piano factory, built a concert hall in Paris and still found time to teach, write and perform.

1890: Birthdate of Sarah Aaronsohn, the native of the moshav Zikhron Ya’akov who became a leader of Nili during World War I. After being tortured by the Turks, she took her own life in 1917.

1892: Birthdate of Louis Waldman, a native of the Ukraine who became an American labor leader and a leader of the Socialist Party.

1895: Alfred Dreyfus was publicly degraded and sent to Devil's Island. Later, evidence was produced which proved that Major Esterhazy and Colonel Henry, Dreyfus' chief accusers, had forged the evidence. Yet, a new trial was not begun until 1899. The Dreyfus Affair brought on a torrent of anti-Semitism that spawned the modern Zionist movement. It tore at the fabric of French society and for decades later, there was still a political divide between those who supported Dreyfus and those who wanted to believe that he was a traitor.

1898: Herzl’s "The New Ghetto" was finally produced in the Carl-Theater in Vienna. The play was also performed in Berlin and Prague.

1904: Birthdate of Austrian violinist Erika Morini who began her studies under the guidance of her father, Oscar Morini, who directed his own school in Vienna.

1908: Adas Israel dedicated its new sanctuary at Sixth and I in Washington, DC

1912: State organization formed in Boston, Mass. to encourage naturalization of Jews living in the Bay State.

1912: The Philadelphia Jewish community requested leniency in the enforcement the Sunday Closing Law of 1794.

1912: The Boston Section withdrew from Council of Jewish Women.

1914: Birthdate of Heinz Berggruen a German art dealer and collector who founded the Berggruen Museum in Berlin Germany. Born in Berlin, he immigrated to the United States in 1936 and studied at Berkeley University. In 1939 he became an "Assistant director" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In preparing an exhibition about the Mexican painter Diego Rivera he met Frida Kahlo, too, and had a short love affair with her. After the Second World War he got acquainted with Pablo Picasso in Paris, who spontaneously had confidence in Berggruen and so he became Picasso's art dealer. In 1996, after 60 years in exile, he returned to Germany and opened an art museum in front of the Charlottenburg Palace. Berggruen left his precious art collection in a generous gesture of a low price to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. For this he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Berlin and the Federal Cross of Merit (Grand Cross 2nd Class) of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz, Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband). He died in Paris on February 23, 2007.

1919: The National Socialist Party (Nazi) formed as German Farmers Party. Hitler was not one of the party founders.

1923: Birthdate of Robert L Bernstein, chief executive of Random House.

1923: Birthdate of Israel Prize-winning author and translator Aharon Amir. Amir, who was born in Lithuania, grew up in Tel Aviv and was a member of both the Irgun and the Lehi. He was one of the founders of the Canaanite movement, which saw geographical location rather than religious affiliation as the defining element of Hebrew or Israeli culture. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but translated works of literature mainly from English and French. Authors whose work he rendered into Hebrew include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Charles de Gaulle. Amir won the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation in 1951 and the Israel Prize for translation in 2003. He passed away on February 28, 2008 at the age of 85.

1924: Leon and Henrietta Shershevsky gave birth to George Leon Sherry, a United Nations official who helped calm crises around the world — a role that evolved from his time as the leading rapid-fire translator of speeches by Russian diplomats in the organization’s early days…(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1928: Reports of a large number of unemployed workers in the non-agricultural sector of the economy are a cause of major concern for the Government and leaders of the Labor movement. While approximately 21,000 people are employed non-farm jobs, there may be as many as 10,000 unemployed workers. It is hope that the situation will be alleviated, in part, with the construction and operation of a variety of public works projects including the building of the Straus Health Clinic in Jerusalem.

1931: Elections were held today to choose members for the Asefat Hanivcharim (The Jewish Elected Assembly). Only 35 to 40 per cent of those eligible are expected cast their ballots. The sharpest contest is between the Labor Party and the Revisionists. Labor is expected to win 23 seats and the Revisionists will end up with 18 seats, the same number expected to be won by the Party representing “Oriental Jews.” There are a total of 71 seats at stake. There has been no prediction about how many seats will be won by the United Women’s ticket head by Henrietta Szold.

1936: Birthdate of Steven Cojocaru, Canadian born American television personality and fashion critic.

1937: Israel Rokach, Mayor of Tel Aviv, testified before the Peel Commission. Rokach said that he was not opposed to a certain amount of governmental involvement with municipal affairs but that the real dispute centered around underfunding of the city government. Members of the commission expressed positive interest in Rokach’s proposal to develop a port that would serve both Jaffa and Tel Aviv.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that the British government was about to send to Palestine a new, largely technical commission, essentially a fact-finding body, which would plan how to implement Partition, according to the terms of the agreement reached with the Mandatory Commission of the League of Nations. The government, however, indicated that it was in no way committed to the actual execution of such a plan. Three Arabs out of a band of 40, apparently arms smugglers, were killed close to the Syrian border. Haskiel Joseph and Nathan Yairoff were shot and badly wounded by an Arab terrorist inside the Jaffa Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.

1939: The gathering of a group of young Jews in Riga is captured in a photograph which will later become the property of Yad Vashem.

1939: Sir Horace Rumbold, a member of the Peel Commission, attempts to explain away his description of the Jews of Palestine as an “alien race” by saying that he merely meant that the Jews were a race with different characteristics from the Arab race.

1939: Germany declared Karaite Jews exempt from enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws.

1939: President Roosevelt nominated Felix Frankfurter to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was chosen for the position following the death of Benjamin N. Cardozo. When Frankfurter was confirmed two weeks later, he became the third Jew to serve on the High Court.

1940: Jews were forbidden by the General Gouvernment be in the streets between 9:00PM and 5:00AM.

1942: Birthdate of Elzbieta Ficowska, nee Koppel, one of the 2,500 children smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irena Sendler and her associate Stanislawa, a widowed Catholic mid-wife. (Shades of the story of the brave mid-wives found in the Book of Exodus.)

1942: The Jewish ghetto at Kharkov, Ukraine, is liquidated.

1943: The Vught, Holland, concentration camp is established

1943: In an orgy of killing that would last for the next two days the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews at Lvov, Ukraine.

1944: Birthdate of Ed Rendell, Democratic Mayor of Philadelphia in the 1990’s before being elected Governor of the State of Pennsylvania in 2002.

1945: In article entitled “American Boy’s Find Tel Aviv Like a Home Town” Anne O’Hare McCormick described conditions in Palestine’s major metropolis. According to her, “40% of the Jewish population of Palestine lives in Tel Aviv.” She describes Tel Aviv “as being one of the world’s youngest cities” and as being “better planned and more modernistic that the Florida boom towns it resembles.” This very cosmopolitan city is suffering from a housing shortage brought on by an influx of refugees from Europe and North Africa.

1946: "Show Boat" opened at Ziegfeld Theater in New York City for the first of 417 performances.

1947: In a broadcast from its secret transmitter, Haganah, the Jewish defense organization denounced Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang as extremist organizations and blamed them for the latest outburst of violence in Eretz Israel.

1948: Benjamin Rabin begins serving on the New York Supreme Court.

1948: Warner Brothers offered the first color newsreel, covering the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl Game. At that time, the company was still the property of the four brothers name Warner – Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack L. – Polish Jews who came to the United States via Canada.

1948: As the siege of Jerusalem continues, the Haganah launches an attack against Katamon, a suburb from which Arab gunmen have been firing non-stop into adjacent Jewish neighborhoods.

1949: As the War of Independence winds down, Israeli forces struggle to dislodge the Egyptians from Gaza. A sandstorm hinders and IDF column attacking the town of Rafa. At the same time the storm provides cover for an Egyptian armored column that launched a counter-attack aimed at keeping the Israelis from Rafa.

1950: Birthdate of guitarist Chris Stein, co-founder of “Blondie.”

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that East Germany had launched a Zionist witch-hunt, accusing two Jewish Communist leaders of being Zionists, American agents, Titoists and Trotskyites.

1959: In his introduction to A Matter of Taste: The Albert D. Lasker Collection: Renoir to Matisse that includes commentaries by Wallace Brockway, Alfred Frankfurter asks, “What was it that made an American business man * * * train his eye and his energies so spectacularly as to produce this extraordinary array of art ?"

1964: Pope Paul VI and President Zalman Shazar of Israel met today at Megiddo, the scene of ancient battles, and both voiced hope for a moral revival and for peace among men

1970(27th of Tevet, 5730): Max Born passed away at the age of 87. A native of Germany, the famous physicist was forced to take refuge in Britain in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. Max Born won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954.

1970: Nine Egyptians soldiers crossed the Suez Canal and under covering fire from the west bank attacked Israeli positions. All nine were killed.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that at Aswan US President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat declared jointly that any Middle East peace settlement required the recognition of the "legitimate rights of the Palestinians and their participation in deciding their own future." In Jerusalem Premier Menachem Begin declared his firm opposition to this self-determination principle.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Jewish National Fund started ground-breaking operations for eight new settlements in Sinai, between Yamit and El Arish.

1981: Yoram Aridor, a member of Likud, began serving as Communications Minister.

1985: Israel temporarily suspended the airlift of Ethiopian Jews, leaving one group stranded in the Sudan. With help from the CIA, Israel would organize Operation Sheba, the last of the airlifts which had secretly brought over 14,000 Jews from Ethiopia from 1972 through 1985.

1988: Richard Mathew Stallman starts developing GNU. GNU is a free software operating system.

1988: The New York Times reviews Operation Babylon by Shlomo Hillel (Translated from the Hebrew by Ina Friedman) which relates the fascinating tale of the rescue of the Iraqi Jewish community.

1989: Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the reported death threat by Mr. Arafat against other Palestinians ran counter to a P.L.O. pledge to refrain from terrorism and had created a ''real problem'' for the United States. Mr. Arafat was reported to have said in the radio broadcast on Monday that ''any Palestinian leader who proposes an end to the intifada exposes himself to the bullets of his own people.'' Speaking to reporters on his way here for a conference on chemical weapons, Mr. Shultz said that the United States did not have direct information about Mr. Arafat's reported statement. He said: ''What we have is reports of what Arafat is alleged to have said. We have not seen any statement as such.'' But the Secretary then assailed the reported remark. ''It represents a real problem and an equivocation,'' he said.

1993: Israel approved a $380 million grant today to support a major upgrading of the Jerusalem plant of the computer-chip manufacturer Intel Israel. The money, spread over seven years, was approved under a law authorizing state grants covering 38 percent of high-technology business ventures in the city. The cost of upgrading the silicon chip manufacturing plant is estimated at $1 billion. A Treasury spokeswoman said it was now up to Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., parent of Intel Israel, to give the plan final approval. Intel Israel, established in 1974, has operations in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

1996: Yahya Ayyash, chief bomb maker for Hamas, wass killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.

1997: A revival production of "Show Boat" the famed musical that owes its music, lyrics and book to three American Jews closed at Gershwin Theater New York City.

1997: The Sunday New York Times book section featured review of books by Jewish authors or of special interest to Jewish readers including My Teacher’s Secret Life by Stephen Krensky, A Journalist's Search for the Heart of His Country by Henry Grunwald which tells the story of how a Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany became editor in chief of all publications in the vast Time Inc. empire, before retiring at the end of 1987 and Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America by Ruth Gay which “is essentially a memoir of Jewish life in the West Bronx in the 1920's and 30's, including the author's discomfort with her Eastern European immigrant family and her ''ordeal of civility,'' to use John Murray Cuddihy's phrase, in moving from ghetto culture to gentility.”

1998: To commemorate her 30 years on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Muriel Siebert rang the closing bell to mark the end of the trading day. She was the first woman to own a seat on the NYSE “Known as the "First Woman of Finance," Muriel "Mickie" Siebert was a dentist's daughter from Cleveland, OH, Siebert never graduated from college. Still, by lying about her education, she was able to get a low-level job at a prominent Wall Street firm where she eventually became partner before striking out on her own. In 1967, after being rejected by nine of the first ten men she asked to sponsor her application, Siebert became the first woman to purchase a seat on the NYSE. A decade later, New York Governor Hugh Carey appointed Siebert the first woman New York State Superintendent of Banking, a post she held for five years. After an unsuccessful 1982 bid for a United States Senate seat, Siebert returned to Wall Street, where she became an outspoken critic of business and financial practices. Throughout her career, Siebert worked on behalf of women in business and politics, donating millions of dollars from her brokerage and securities underwriting business to help other women break into the world of business and high finance. She is a founding member and former president of the Women's Forum, an international women's leadership network, and a member of the Committee of 200, a group of over 445 leading American businesswomen. Siebert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.”

2002: In the wake of shoe-bomber Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up a plane last December, airlines and government officials are looking at additional security measures. As food service deliveries and food cars used on planes are coming under scrutiny the stringent procedures followed by El Al, the Israeli airline are considered the gold standard for aviation security. At its catering center, several miles from Tel Aviv's airport, security guards monitor every step of food packaging, from items being ladled onto trays and sealed with plastic wrap, said Isaac Zeffet, a former chief of El Al security who now runs a consulting concern in Cliffside Park, N.J. Mr. Zeffet, the former El Al security chief, said banning food carts would be only a patch on a security system that requires a complete overhaul, including tighter controls on everyone and everything that comes in contact with planes before takeoff.

2003(2nd of Sh'vat, 5763): In the deadliest attack against Israel in 10 months a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up just seconds apart today in the Neve Sha’anan neighborhood of Tel Aviv, an area crowded with foreign laborers, killing 23 other people and injuring 100 more. The attackers, only 500 feet away from each other, set off their bombs 30 seconds apart. The first attacker stood in front of a bus stop, the second next to a currency exchange kiosk in a pedestrian mall, both sites teeming with Sunday evening shoppers. The blasts blew out windows, burned awnings and scattered limbs and torsos across two wide swaths. A spokesman for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestinian militant organization, claimed responsibility. The death toll kept climbing into the night here, making the tandem bombing the worst attack since a suicide bomber killed 29 people at the Park Hotel in Netanya during the Passover Holiday last March. That assault sent Israeli forces wheeling into the West Bank in a fierce counterattack. In Tel Aviv, Israeli rescue teams rushing to the site tonight encountered a scene of horrific carnage. The injured, clutching wounds, staggered from the scene in search of help, marking their escapes with long trails of blood. One man, calling for help, lifted himself from the ground and ran 50 yards down Neveh Shaanan Street before finally falling down dead. All about the scene hung the grim evidence of the attackers' work -- nails and ball bearings and hunks of metal, evidently planted in the bombs to sharpen their effect. Rescue workers said the two bombs appeared to be unusually large. The evidence, they said, came in the number of body parts they found scattered over so wide a distance and the fact that so many people were killed even though they were in an open area.

2004: The Center Art Gallery at Calvin College presents “Talmud: in the Art of Ben-Zion and Marc Chagall,” an exhibit that brings together the Biblical work of two of the most important Jewish artists of the 20th Century. It features 18 intaglio prints by Ben-Zion and 25 color lithographs by Marc Chagall. The title, Talmud, is appropriate for this exhibit of images that help illustrate the collection of Biblical writings that constitute the Jewish civil and religious law (Talmud, n. {Heb. Talmud, instruction, from lamed, to learn}). Although Talmud traditionally deals with text and not image, these works act as aesthetic and insightful commentaries on the text of Scripture in the best of the Talmudic tradition. Viewed together, Zion’s blunt, powerful expressions of Biblical subjects and Chagall’s vibrant and dreamlike interpretations of religious narrative create an artistic dialogue that furthers understanding and enjoyment of their work and the Scripture they interpret.

2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was showered with catcalls on today from his own right-wing party during a speech in which he said he would take down some Jewish settlements and permit the formation of a Palestinian state if the two sides reached a peace agreement. But Mr. Sharon again warned that he was prepared to set a security line unilaterally that would separate Israelis and Palestinians if they could not make progress under the current peace plan, which is stalled.

2005 Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of 4 that included David L. Rabinowitz.

2005: The 10th Pan American Maccabi Games came to an end in Santiago, Chile.

2007: Haaretz reported that The Amsterdam house where Anne Frank wrote her diaries in hiding before dying in a Nazi concentration camp drew almost a million visitors during 2006. The total of 982,000 was 16,000 higher than in 2005. Most of the visitors were young tourists, primarily from the United States and Britain, the Anne Frank House said.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, The traditional Shabbat Morning minyan at Temple Judah enters into its seventh year.

2008: The Israeli Army wound up a large-scale, three-day operation in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Nineteen Palestinians had been detained during the operation that uncovered a major arms cache including rockets similar to the hundreds of projectiles that have been fired from Gaza into Israel.

2009: Rabbi Ari Solomont, a native of Boston, has been named director of the Yeshiva University S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program. The program enables hundreds of young men and women every year to incorporate their study at more than 45 participating yeshivot and other educational institutions in Israel into their college years, enhancing their academic experience. The program is supervised by the Israel Program staff at the YU campus in Jerusalem

2009: “For Women Only,” a drama, song and dance review showcasing the Jewish women and girls of Baltimore was presented at Goucher College.

2009: Lawmakers are scheduled to take their first close look at financier Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud and why the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to discover the scandal. Critics say the SEC missed warning signs and failed to uncover the scandal until Madoff's sons went to the authorities and told them he confessed to the fraud.

2009: The Washington Post reviewed Old Flame, a Jackson Steeg novel, by Ira Berkowitz.

2009: The Minnesota State Canvassing Board certified results today showing Al Franken, a Democrat, winning the Senate recount over Republican Norm Coleman, who is expected to challenge the result. Earlier today, the state Supreme Court rejected the Coleman campaign’s petition to count several hundred additional absentee ballots.

2009: The disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff tried to hide at least $1 million in watches and jewelry from government investigators and should have his bail revoked and sent to jail immediately, federal prosecutors told a judge this afternoon.The newly aggressive stance by prosecutors appeared to mark a serious deterioration in relations between the government and Mr. Madoff, who confessed to a large Ponzi scheme last month and had seemed to be cooperating with investigators trying to unravel the scheme. In an interview Monday evening, a lawyer for Mr. Madoff backed away from earlier statements that Mr. Madoff was helping investigators.At a hearing in federal court this afternoon, assistant United States attorney Marc O. Litt said in late December Mr. Madoff had mailed packages of valuables to his sons, his brother and his friends. By sending the packages, Mr. Madoff violated the terms of his bail agreement, which barred him from disposing of any assets, Mr. Litt said. The bail hearing in Manhattan came as lawmakers in Washington began discussions on whether the Securities and Exchange Commission was lax in following up warnings about Mr. Madoff. “This elaborate Ponzi scheme fell through the cracks of our regulatory system,’” said Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania. Since mid-December, Mr. Madoff has been confined to his luxury apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, guarded by private security guards paid for by his wife. A lawyer for Mr. Madoff, Ira Lee Sorkin, said at the bail hearing that Mr. Madoff had not intended to violate the agreement and should not be sent to jail. But speaking afterwards, Mr. Sorkin backed off his earlier statements that Mr. Madoff was cooperating with prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who are seeking to unravel the Ponzi scheme.“No one ever said he was cooperating with the government,” Mr. Sorkin said — though he had previously said that “we” are helping investigators from the F.B.I. and Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Sorkin said that he had meant that Mr. Madoff’s firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, was cooperating with investigators. Last month, Mr. Madoff told F.B.I. agents that he had overseen a financial fraud that had cost investors as much as $50 billion. A government-appointed receiver has now taken over his firm, and S.E.C. agents and F.B.I. investigators are conducting an investigation to see if Mr. Madoff had helped. Magistrate judge Ronald Ellis, who is overseeing the case, did not immediately rule on the government’s request to revoke Mr. Madoff’s bail. Prosecutors must submit a filing supporting the request by the end of the day Tuesday, and Mr. Madoff’s lawyers have until the end of the day Wednesday to respond. Last week, Mr. Madoff’s sons, Andrew and Mark, received three packages, containing valuable jewelry and watches, as well as inexpensive items like cufflinks and mittens, according to a person briefed on the contents of the packages. Within a few minutes of receiving the packages, Mr. Madoff’s sons called the law firm of Paul, Weiss, which is representing them, to tell them about the packages, this person said.
Lawyers for Paul, Weiss then informed prosecutors of the packages and offered to pass them to the government. Prosecutors accepted the offer. Mr. Madoff’s sons worked for many years at their father’s firm but have said they were unaware of any wrongdoing. So far, they have not been named as targets of the investigation into the firm’s collapse.In Washington, Democratic lawmakers charged that the Securities and Exchange Commission had “failed miserably” in following up on warnings that could have uncovered several years ago possible wrongdoing by Mr. Madoff. “We now know that our securities regulators have not only missed opportunities to protect investors against massive losses from the most complex financial instruments like derivatives, they have also missed the chance to protect them from the simplest of scams, the Ponzi scheme,” Mr. Kanjorski said. But the financial examiner Harry Markopolos, the star witness who had warned the S.E.C. for nearly a decade about Mr. Madoff, begged off at the last minute. In a letter sent by his lawyer, Mr. Markopolos said he was too ill to travel, that he needed more time to prepare and wanted “special dispensation” to have two lawyers, rather than one, with him at the witness table. The S.E.C.’s inspector general, meanwhile, told lawmakers on Monday that his investigation into the agency’s failure to uncover Mr. Madoff’s apparent Ponzi scheme will go further than its chairman, Christopher Cox, has proposed.“It is our opinion that the matters that must be analyzed regarding the S.E.C. and Bernard Madoff may go beyond the specific issues that S.E.C. chairman Cox has asked us to investigate,” H. David Kotz, the agency’s inspector general, told the House Financial Services Committee.“Our efforts must include an evaluation of the broader issues regarding the overall issues” of the agency’s enforcement operations,” he continued. Among the questions that Mr. Kotz said he would investigate were whether S.E.C. officials had “conflicts of interest” in their relationships with Mr. Madoff. Without naming names, he said he would look at the role of a former agency official who had “a personal relationship with a Madoff family member.” Mr. Kotz appeared to be referring to Eric Swanson, a former S.E.C. compliance lawyer who married Shana D. Madoff, Mr. Madoff’s niece. Mr. Swanson acknowledged that he worked occasionally on some issues involving Mr. Madoff, though no evidence has yet surfaced of any work he did at the time he became romantically involved with Ms. Madoff in the spring of 2006. Mr. Kotz said he would also be looking into whether enforcement officials might have been influenced by Mr. Madoff’s “reputation and status” as a result of participating on several advisory committees to the S.E.C. Despite the dry, formal language of Mr. Kotz’s prepared remarks, it was clear as the afternoon hearing unfolded that the crimes that Mr. Madoff is accused of, and the human suffering he is said to have caused, will be a driving force in the 111th Congress, which begins on Tuesday. Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, which received Mr. Kotz’s testimony, said “the country will not work” if everyone is afraid to invest, and that such a contagion of fear is not far-fetched, given the dimensions of the fraud that prosecutors say Mr. Madoff carried out over years. The panel’s ranking Republican, Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, said the Madoff affair demonstrated the need for “a statutory and regulatory structure for the 21st century,” a subject whose details are likely to be intensively debated in the new Congress. Moreover, he said, “there’s every reason to believe” that other fraud schemes are lurking in the markets, waiting to ensnare other investors. The question that dominated the hearing was the one that has been asked over and over in the weeks since, according to prosecutors, Mr. Madoff confided to his sons that his supposedly steady but safe investment operation was nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme: How could the S.E.C. have missed all the warning signs, given that the supposedly huge Madoff investment operation was overseen by a tiny storefront accounting firm?Perhaps, one lawmaker suggested, the term “Ponzi scheme,” named after the Italian immigrant who engineered the huge pyramid-investment scheme of the early 20th century, should be declared obsolete and replaced by “the Madoff scheme.” It may be a while before the courts determine if Mr. Madoff deserves to be branded a criminal. But there were signs that his actions have already ignited a collective anger that the lawmakers will feel from their constituents. “In the blink of any eye, savings that I had struggled my entire lifetime to earn have vanished,” one investor wrote the panel. He is 76 years old, and he and his wife had been living a retirement that was not only peaceful but seemingly prosperous — until Mr. Madoff’s empire collapsed, and with it the investor’s financial foundation.

2009: In France, a car containing Molotov cocktails rammed into the door of a French synagogue and burst into flames. A rabbi and about 10 of his adult students in the Toulouse synagogue during the attack tonight fled unharmed. A second car containing Molotov cocktails was found near the synagogue, according to police.

2009 (9 Tevet 5769): Four soldiers were killed in friendly-fire incidents that took place during fighting on Monday night. Three soldiers were killed when a tank mistakenly opened fire on a home in Saja'iya occupied by officers and soldiers from the Golani Brigade. Another tank accidentally fired on a home in al-Atatra, killing an officer in the 202nd Battalion of the Paratroop Brigade. The soldiers were Cpl. Yousef Moadi, 19, who lived recently in Haifa, but was originally from the Druse village of Yirka; Maj. Dagan Wertman, 32, from Ma'aleh Michmash in the Binyamin region; St.-Sgt. Nitai Stern, 21, from Jerusalem; and Capt. Yonatan Netanel, 27, from Kedumim.

2010: In Jerusalem, Hama'abada presents a Double Feature show featuring Uri Dror a Jerusalemite singer-songwriter gaining recognition in the Israeli rock music scene in advance of his upcoming debut album and missFlag, the four piece band from Jerusalem that will soon begin a tour in the United States.

2010: The Yellow Submarine's Zik Gallery presents Diyukan (Portrait), a group photography exhibit of the Third Year Students at the Musrara School of Photography and Media

2010: Defense Minister Ehud Barak held a phone conversation today with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and asked him to assist in renewing peace talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Barak also updated the UN chief regarding Israeli efforts meet the humanitarian needs of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

2010: Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated in New Zealand against Israel’s top-ranked women's tennis player amid a bomb scare in the arena. Shahar Pe'er, 22, was delayed from entering the arena for her opening match in the ASB Tennis Classic in Auckland for about 20 minutes today after an unattended bag in the ASB Tennis Centre prompted the bomb scare. Police said that clearing about 500 people from the arena and closing the surrounding streets were unrelated to the small band of protesters who had gathered outside to urge Pe'er to withdraw from the tournament, according to Reuters. Pe'er, ranked No. 30 in the world, eventually won her match in straight sets. The organization Global Peace and Justice Auckland said in a news release that it had written to Pe'er asking her to withdraw from the tournament “as a demonstration of your commitment to peace” with the Palestinians. Acknowledging it was asking Pe'er to make “a significant sacrifice,” the group added, “The sacrifices being forced onto Palestinians by Israel are far greater and she should be prepared to make the sacrifice.” Global Peace and Justice, which supports a sports boycott against Israel, staged a similar demonstration against Pe'er at the same event last year. “I have nothing to do with this,” Pe'er said at the time. “I’m Shahar Pe'er. I came here to play tennis. I know I’m from Israel and I’m proud of my country.”

2010(19th of Tevet, 5770): Murray Saltzman a Reform Rabbi and civil rights leader passed away. Born in 1929 to a Russian-immigrant family, he was the youngest of three sons. He led congregations in Maryland, Indianapolis, and Florida, among them Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation and Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. Saltzman was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, after marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and leading in various civil action projects.

2010: Rabbi Shira Stutman is scheduled to lead an interactive conversation about Rosh Chodesh, traditionally considered a “woman’s holiday” for reasons including perceived connections between the moon and the female cycles answering the question ‘How does the monthly reminder of womanhood shape our identity as women and as Jews?’ at the Historic 6th & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2011: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to feature a screening of “Coming to America: The History of the Syrian Jewish Community 1900-1919.” This documentary is envisioned as part of a series on Syrian Jewish History and includes interviews with Syrian Jews living in the New York metropolitan area talking about their own families' experiences, histories, customs and traditions.

2011: Terrorists from the Hamas-controlled Gaza region struck the western Negev with another mortar attack this morning. Two shells exploded in an open area of the Eshkol Regional Council district. No damage was reported, and no one was injured. The attack came hours after IAF warplanes bombed a Hamas training base in Gaza as a continuation of the government's policy of retaliating for every attack launched from Gaza. Gaza terrorists have escalated their rocket and mortar fire in recent weeks, launching dozens of missiles and shells at Israeli civilians and soldiers in the western Negev. Several Israelis have been wounded. Today's air strike was launched in retaliation for a terror rocket attack on Jewish farm near Ashkelon on Tuesday. Several greenhouses were damaged in the attack, although residents escaped injury. Just three days earlier, Gaza terrorists launched a rocket and mortar attack on Jewish communities in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council district. One woman suffered an anxiety attack during the barrage, but no physical damage or injuries was reported. The Color Red air raid siren, which generally gives a 15-second window of warning prior to an attack, was not heard before the explosion. Two weeks ago, a rocket exploded close to a kindergarten on a kibbutz in the Gaza Belt region.

2011: The following is a list of the 39 Jewish members — 12 senators and 27 representatives — who are expected to serve in the 112th U.S. Congress, which is set to convene today.

U.S. SENATE

Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)

Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.)

Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Al Franken (D-Minn.)

Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)

Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)

Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)

Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.)

Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)**

(Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) does not identify a religion, but notes that his mother is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.)

Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.)

Howard Berman (D-Calif.)

Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

David Cicilline (D-R.I.)*

Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.)

Susan Davis (D-Calif.)

Ted Deutch (D-Fla.)

Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)

Bob Filner (D-Calif.)

Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.)

Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Steve Israel (D-N.Y.)

Sander Levin (D-Mich.)

Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.)

Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

Jared Polis (D-Colo.)

Steve Rothman (D-N.J.)

Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)

Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.)

Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)

Brad Sherman (D-Calif.)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)

Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)

John Yarmuth (D-Ky.

2011: Relatives and friends of those killed in the devastating Carmel fire last month refused to let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak today as he stood at the podium of the official state memorial ceremony to deliver a eulogy to the victims. Those present at the ceremony mourning the 44 people killed in Israel's largest-ever wildfire let President Shimon Peres address the audience, but began heckling the premier and calling him a "liar" as he took his turn on the stage. Bodyguards briefly sheltered Netanyahu as a few dozen hecklers surged toward him and others stormed out of the event at Beit Oren, a kibbutz at the epicenter of last month's Carmel forest blaze in which the victims, mostly rescue personnel, died. Interior Minister Eli Yishai left the memorial soon after Danny Rosen, the partner of fallen Haifa Police Chief Ahuva Tomer, stood and told Netanyahu that he would not remain at the ceremony unless Yishai stepped out. In an attempt to calm the atmosphere as the chaos continued, Netanyahu told Rosen: "My heart is with you. I know your pain". But relatives of other victims joined Rosen's demand for Yishai to leave, and eventually Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar stepped on the stage and said that the interior minister had left. Netanyahu was unable to begin his address for a number of minutes, and stood surrounded on all sides by tight security. Even after he finally began to speak, the angry relatives continued to interrupt him, shouting that he was to blame for the fire that took their loved ones' lives. When he did get the chance to speak, Netanyahu told the mourners: "I know your pain and am aware of the great loss and hole that gapes in the lives of bereaved families." Prior to that unexpected incident, Peres was able to deliver his own eulogy to the victims, telling the mourners: "Forty-four pure souls fell during the heavy offensive against this fire… and we so wanted it to end differently." "The fire that did not rest for a moment turned dozens of our families into bereaved, grieving, pained families," said Peres. "No tribute and no memorial ceremony will ever return to their loved ones." "Today, as we conclude the 30 days of mourning, stands a shocked nation, one unprepared for such a tragedy. This is the truth, even if it is painful and stings. We were not prepared for the presence of such a big fire. We did not imagine it could happen." Some relatives have demanded that the state investigate Netanyahu, Yishai, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in particular over negligence during the fire, saying the discussion regarding their conduct does not belong in court but rather in the public domain. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said however, that he did not believe that there was a legal basis that justifies a criminal investigation into the matter. Headded that the discussion regarding the failures to control the fire due to lacking resources could be dealt with in the Knesset, in a parliamentary inquiry committee or a governmental investigation committee, and not in a court of law. Weinstein added that State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss was examining the various aspects of the disaster and if he found reason to suspect any criminal action in case, he would transfer the information to him for further examination. The State Control Committee last month decided not to set up an investigation commission to probe deficiencies in the fire services during the massive blaze. However, the committee's opposition members called for a re-vote at a later date and the committee unanimously issued a call to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss to probe the events. Such a commission would have been charged with dealing with the state comptroller's report released last week about problems with the fire services before the fire, rather than the deficiencies manifested during the Carmel disaster. Following the ceremony, the Prime Minister's Bureau issued a statement explaining that it had been "important" to Netanyahu to address the bereaved families. "He knows their pain and their loss, and all of this began of his desire to hold a state memorial ceremony. The Prime Minister's Bureau added that Netanyahu would continue to work determinedly to improve Israel's emergency services. Yishai said in response to the incident that he understood that pain was the source of these mourners' anger. "These bereaved families' loss is unbearable," he said. "From their pain, they say what is in their heart. My heart is with them and may God comfort them. Associates to the interior minister described the incident as an "injustice on live television. "[Yishai] chose to leave the auditorium when he realized that should he remain, it would affect the ceremony," they added.

2011: According to an email sent today from the West Coast branch of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Songwriter Debbie Friedman is sedated and on a respirator at a hospital in Orange County, Calif. The email asked that prayers be said on Friedman's behalf, as well as for her mother, sister and aunt. An immensely popular singer and songwriter, Friedman, who is in her late fifties, is widely credited with reinvigorating synagogue music by introducing a more folksy, sing-along style to American congregations. In 2007, she was appointed to the faculty of the Reform movement's cantorial school in a sign that her style had gained mainstream acceptance. She is best known for her composition "Mi Shebeirach," a prayer for healing that is sung in many North American congregations.

2011(29th of Tevet, 5771): David G. Trager, a federal judge in Brooklyn whose rulings were pivotal in a racially charged case in Crown Heights and in the first civil suit to challenge the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to countries that employ torture, died today at his home in Brooklyn. He was 73. After three decades as a lawyer, state investigation commissioner, federal prosecutor and law school professor and dean, Mr. Trager was named to the United States District Court for the Eastern District by President Bill Clinton in 1993. After assuming senior status in 2006, Judge Trager worked full time until recently. The district encompasses Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. In a wide-ranging career, Judge Trager, a Republican known for political independence, was United States attorney for the Eastern District from 1974 to 1978. He was also a professor at Brooklyn Law School for 17 years and, for a decade, its dean. From 1983 to 1990, he headed the State Commission of Investigation, and in the 1980s he advised New York mayors on judicial appointments and helped to revise the City Charter. But he was perhaps best known as the judge in the trial of two black men, Lemrick Nelson Jr. and Charles Price, who were convicted in 1997 of civil rights violations for their roles in the killing of a Hasidic scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, in 1991 on a night of mob violence in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The verdict appeared to close a wrenching case that had exemplified troubled race relations in New York. But an appeals court overturned it in 2002, saying that Judge Trager, in trying to seat a racially and religiously balanced jury, had improperly manipulated the panel’s composition. The court said he had erred in a well-intended desire to be fair and to avoid a polarizing verdict, violating constitutional trial guarantees. Mr. Nelson was retried and again convicted; Mr. Price entered a guilty plea. Another ruling by Judge Trager figured prominently in a civil suit against the government by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was suspected of being a Qaeda terrorist and was detained at Kennedy International Airport in 2002 on his way home from a vacation. Mr. Arar was held in solitary confinement in Brooklyn, interrogated without access to legal counsel and, under the Bush administration’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” sent without charges or a trial to Syria, where he was imprisoned for 10 months in a rat-infested dungeon and tortured repeatedly. Syria found no evidence that Mr. Arar was a terrorist, and released him. In 2006, Judge Trager dismissed Mr. Arar’s suit for damages, upholding the government’s contention that torture in rendition cases was a foreign-policy issue not appropriate for judicial review and that the case might disclose state secrets. The decision was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case. David Gershon Trager was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Dec. 23, 1937, the son of Sol and Clara Trager, who had emigrated from Austria. He graduated from Columbia University in 1959 and received his law degree from Harvard in 1962. Mr. Trager practiced law in New York from 1963 to 1967, and after a year as an assistant city corporation counsel, he was a law clerk in 1968 for Judge Kenneth B. Keating and in 1969 for Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, both of the New York Court of Appeals. In the early 1970s, Mr. Trager was an assistant federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and an associate professor at Brooklyn Law School. He taught constitutional law at the school, where he was a full professor from 1978 to 1993 and the dean from 1983 to 1993. As the United States attorney in Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, Mr. Trager was known for vigorously pursuing organized crime. While he had no prosecutorial powers as chairman of the State Commission of Investigation in the 1980s, he exposed numerous cases of official corruption, notably on Long Island. In 1987, after a 14-month inquiry, he disclosed what he called a “startling lack of professionalism” in the Suffolk County Police Department, with instances of perjury, fabrication and illegal wiretapping that he said were “shamefully tolerated” by the district attorney’s office. A wave of retirements, resignations, transfers and reforms ensued. Mr. Trager was a member of panels that advised Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins on judicial appointments and that revised the New York City Charter, eliminating the Board of Estimate, which had been the center of civic affairs for a century, and redistributing the board’s powers to an expanded City Council, the mayor and a reconstituted Planning Commission. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

2012: The Red Sea Classical Music Festival is scheduled to open this evening at Eilat.

2012(10th of Tevet, 5772): Asara B’Tevet

2012(10th of Tevet, 5772): Yahrzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin), a true woman of valor who will always be missed.

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