This Day, June 24, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

JUNE 24 In Jewish History

586 BCE (9th of Tammuz, 3174): King Nebuchadnezzar’s army broke through the walls of Jerusalem and entered the City of David.

1298: Massacre of the Jews of Ifhauben, Austria.

1322: Charles IV of France expelled all the Jews from France without the promised one year's warning. This marked the second expulsion of the Jews from France.

1509:  Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon crowned King and Queen of England. There were no Jews living in England at this time.  Henry’s father (Henry VII) had promised Catherine’s parents (the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella) that Jews would never be allowed the realm of the English monarchs.  Thanks to the turmoil that Henry would create when he went to shed Catherine as his Queen and royal mate, small numbers of Marranos and crypto-Jews would be living in England by the end of the century.

1692: Founding of Kingston, Jamaica. By now, Jamaica was an English colony and Jews can only practice their religion as opposed to their secret observance that had been the norm during the Spanish rule. There were enough Jews living in Kingston that synagogues were reportedly opened in 1744 and 1787.

1441: King Henry VI founded Eton College.  While there were no Jews in the Eton’s first class (there were no Jews living in England, King Henry would be surprised to find out that by 2009 Mr. Jonathan Paull was Head of Jewish studies at Eton and that Jewish students were putting on tefillin under the guidance of local Chabad representatives.

1648: In Tulczyn, Poland, an agreement between the 2000 Jews and 600 Christians to defend the town at all costs succeeded in preventing the Cossacks from capturing the town. The Cossacks persuaded the Christians that they would let them go free if they would give them the Jews. The (furious) Jews were persuaded by the Rabbi that if they took revenge on the Poles other Jews would suffer. The gates were opened and most of the Jews killed. The Cossacks then turned on the Poles and killed most of them as well. For the most part, during the entire war the Poles and the Jews were uneasy allies against the Cossacks.

1699: A committee that had been formed to find a larger placed for the growing Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews “leased from Lady Ann Pointz (alias Littleton) and Sir Thomas Pointz (alias Littleton) a tract of land at Plough Yard, in Bevis Marks, for 61 years, with the option of renewal for a further 38 years, at £120 a year.” This would be the location for the famed Bevis Marks Synagogue which was more than a house of worship.  It was the center the center of the Anglo Jewish world when that world encompassed the British Empire.

1702: In Great Britain an “Act to oblige Jews to maintain and provide for their Protestant children” took effect. This act of Parliament grew out of case involving Jacob de Mendez Berta and his daughter Mary who became a Protestant.  According to one source, the father refused to continue to support his daughter after she converted and her newly adopted Protestant community did not want to shoulder the burden of her support.  Hence, this legislation was adopted and would stay in effect until the middle of the 19^th century.

1725: Over the next 12 months, starting from today, 26 of the entries for shipments from the port of New York involved Jewish merchants.  This was 6.7% of the total.  Of these entries, 6 were credited Moses Levy, one of the colony’s leading merchants.

1761(14th of Sivan): Rabbi Moses Brandeis Charif passed away

1794: Bowdoin College is founded in Brunswick, Maine. Today about ten percent of Bowdoin’s 1,650 students are Jewish. The school has ten Jewish Studies courses and a Hillel Chapter.

1806: Áron Chorin “a Hungarian rabbi and pioneer of religious reform” who had been censured and punished by an Orthodox tribunal appealed to the Imperial Government for relief. The government “annulled the judgment and condemned the leader of his adversaries at Arad to pay the expenses of the lawsuit…Chorin declared that he forgave his adversary, and declined his claims for compensation of the expenses. To avoid further trouble, he determined to give up writing.

1839: Birthdate of Solomon H. Sonnenschein, the Hungarian born American Rabbi who served Congregation Temple Israel in St. Louis and Temple B’nai Yeshurun in Des Moines, Iowa before his death in 1908.

1842: In Sidney, Australia, The Voice of Jacob reported that the Sultan of Turkey had called for an audience attended by all religious leaders which included the Hahambashi (Chief or Grand Rabbi) where he issued a firman protecting "all religious denominations" in Syria.

1843: The Inquisitor of Ancona, Italy decreed that Jews may not live in any municipality where there was no ghetto. .

1846: In Hungary, the residence tax was officially abolished. In order to have it cancelled the Jews had to pay a one-time fee of 1,200,000 florins.

1846(30th of Sivan, 5606): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz

1856: In Rome, a contingent of papal carabinieri “acting at the orders of the local Inquisitor, Father Pier Gaetan Feletti, took six year old Edgardo Mortara from his parent’s apartment because church officials discovered that Edgardo had been secretly baptized by a servant girls five years ago and that he could no longer “be raised in a Jewish household.”  Thus began the scandal known as the Mortara Affair.

1865: Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, was mustered out as a soldier in the Union Army. He had enlisted in the Union Army in 1862 and had participated in most of the major battles fought by the Army of the Potomac against Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. This meant he had spent three years at the epicenter of some of the worst fighting of that bloody war.

1873: In a sermon, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher gave the first public warning of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. Beecher was a fighter for social justice, an abolitionist and the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

1877: According to reports published today, Judge Hilton is receiving more letters, calls and telegrams approving of his action (banning Jews from the Grand Union Hotel) than he has time to answer.  Jewish leaders appear willing to let the matter die since they feel they have been supported in the court of public opinion.

1878: It was reported today that it appears as if there are no Jews spending the summer at the resort hotels in and around Longbeach, NJ.  According to one source, the absence of Jewish guests can be explained by the downtown in the New York real estate market which has caused great economic hardship.  Other sources attribute the absence to a desire on the part of the Jews to avoid being humiliated in an incident similar to that which had occurred last year at the Grand Union Hotel  in Saratoga Springs, NY.

1882: It was reported today that in Russia, Count Tolstoy, the Minister of the Interior published a circular stating that officers who do not “prevent outrages against Jews” will be dismissed immediately.

1882: M.A. Kursheedt, the Managing Secretary of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society sent a letter to Secretary Jackson of the Board of Emigration that “the society will not take charge of any Russian refugees or other Jewish immigrants who may hereafter arrive in this city.”

1882: “Aid Need For Hebrew Refugees” published today described the desperate conditions facing the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society which lacks the funds to meet the needs of the growing stream of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.  Presently, the society can only provide shelter for only 500 of the 3,000 immigrants that include men, woman and children.  To help meet the shortfall in funds, Jacob Schiff has contributed $10,000, Kuhn, Loeb & Co has given an additional $5,000 and Jess Seligman has also contributed $5,000.  But Secretary Kursheedt said that others much follow the example of these donors if the society is going to be able to provide assistance to these immigrants let alone the thousands who are on their way.

1883: Birthdate of Victor Francis Hess, Austrian-born American physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize.  Hess was not Jewish but his wife was.  When the Nazis came to Austria, Hess came to America to protect his wife from persecution. 

1884(1^st of Tammuz, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz

1885: It was reported today that the Pall Mall Gazette has printed “a hitherto unpublished proclamation of the Emir of Afghanistan” which he issued to his subjects in 1882. “It reviews the history of the Afghans, claiming that they are descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel.  It traces their descent from Adam though Jacob, their subjection in Egypt, their deliverance therefrom by Moses, their wanderings in the desert and their settlement in Syria under…Saul and Solomon, to their Babylonian captivity, their release, their wanderings on the hills of Ghour and their final settlement in Afghanistan.”  The proclamation includes with an exhortation for his subjects “trust in God, who will preserve them from their terrible enemy, Russia” [Editor’s Note – Read in light of what has happened in Afghanistan since 1980, this is a fascinating little item.]

1886: As a sign of how accepted Jews were in New York, Rabbi Weiss and J.H. Hoffman, President of the Hebrew Technical Institute were among the dignitaries seated on the platform at the graduation ceremonies for the Normal College of the City of New York, an institution of higher education for women.

1887: “Probable Case of Suicide” published today described the last days of Joseph Freedman a Russian Jewish peddler who died in New Haven, Conn. After marrying Rittie Polrovideh a month ago, he left his child from an earlier marriage with her and went to Montreal.  She refused to join him there, even when he came back to New Haven to plead his case.  The failure of his personal and financial lives may have led him to poison himself. [Editor’s note – This is consistent with reports in the 21^st century where there has been a major increase in suicides among the financially desperate in several southern European countries.]

1888: Youngsters under the charge of the Orphan Asylum of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society participated in a two hour long ceremony today that demonstrated their knowledge of Jewish history and Judaism.  The children go to public school starting at the age of 6 and receive their training in Judaica at the asylum.  PIncus Spiro received a box of tools for placing first in the exams and Samuel Levi received  drawing instrument’s for placing second.  Both boys have already passed the entrance exams for CCNY and will enter there in the fal..  Jennie Berdinger was the leading female student.

1900: In the village of Bezwodne, Joseph and Bella (Pomerantz) Lemkin gave birth to Raphael Lemkin a lawyer who fought against genocide, a word he coined in 1943 by coming the Greek “genos” (Family) and the Latin “cide” (Killing).

1901: Start of the Jewish National Fund. The JNF or Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael was established at the Fifth Zionist Congress, which declared that "the fund shall be the property of the Jewish people as a whole". The purpose of the Fund was to collect money from Jews throughout the world to buy land in Palestine. Because of the nature of the purchases, the land belonged collectively to all of the Jewish people. The JNF became famous for its "little blue boxes" and for its Tree Purchase Program. For more about this amazing organization see www.jnf.org/site

1903: Russia prohibited Zionist meetings.

1908: Rabbi Martin Zielonka of El Paso, Texas, helps the Jews of Mexico organize their community.

1908: President Grover Cleveland died of heart failure.  As President, Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Strauss envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Turkey in 1887.  In 1897 Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill that included a literacy test.  The literacy test was a thinly veiled attempt to close the doors to immigrants including the wave of Jews coming from Eastern Europe.  In 1903, Cleveland, who was by now former President, was the featured speaker at the New York City rally protesting the Kishinev Pogroms.

1910:  Birthdate of Judge Irving Kaufman.  Kaufman was the presiding judge in the Rosenberg Spy Case.  He was the one who sentenced them to death after they were both found guilty.  Of course the anti-Semites who used the involvement of the Rosenbergs in a Soviet spy ring to further their claims of Communism being a Jewish conspiracy conveniently overlook the fact that Jews were involved in the prosecution and sentencing of the Rosenbergs.  Kaufman passed away in 1992 at the age of 81.

1912(9th of Tamuz, 5672): Julia Richman the first Jewish woman to serve as principal in the New York Public School system and the first woman district superintendent of schools in the City of New York died in Paris as result of an infection that developed after an emergency operation.

1914: Birthdate of Jan Karski, “a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter who in 1942 and 1943 reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the secretive Nazi extermination camps.”

1918: Jacob Schiff of New York City protests against the Red Cross which has discriminated against Jews from Bulgaria and Turkey, as well as Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Red Cross has stated that Jews from these lands, or children who have fathers who were born in these lands cannot serve in the Red Cross.

1919: In the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski signed the Minorities Treaty that “awarded full civil, religious and political rights to all citizens of the new Poland, with the term ‘citizen’ applied broadly to all person either born or ‘habitually’ resident on Polish territory.”  This meant that the Jews of Poland were guaranteed full citizenship in the newly reconstituted Poland.  Louis Marshall, a prominent American Jew who had been part of Wilson’s delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, was responsible for this language; language would be incorporated in other treaties that grew out of the Versailles Conference which, on paper at least, opened the path to full citizenship for the Jews of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

1922(28th of Sivan, 5682:  An anti-Semitic nationalist assassinated Walter Rathenau, the Jewish German Foreign minister. Ironically, Rathenau was a German patriot who had been responsible for maintaining the German industrial might that enabled it to fight on for four years despite the Allied blockade.

1923: Birthdate of comedian and actor, Jack Carter.

1927: Birthdate of American Physicist, Martin Lewis Perl.  The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Perl won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1995.

1928: The New York Times reports on mass meetings held in Tel Aviv protesting the unwarranted deportation of Jewish immigrants from Palestine.  A cable protesting the deportations sent by the citizens of Tel Aviv to the Colonial Office in London stated that “every Jew who enters Palestine is returning to his home.  He cannot, therefore, be expelled under any law…The expulsions are an insult to the entire Jewish population…and…cause despair in the minds of the masses in the Diaspora, undermining every hope for entering Palestine.”

1933: On the day of her return from a three-month trip through Palestine, Russia and other countries Jewish theatrical star Molly Picon, said that a new culture, made up of elements of the cultures of many peoples, is being built up in Palestine by Jews.

1933: Rabbi and Mrs. Morris Ginsberg gave birth to Sir Ian Derek Gainsford who served as Dean of King’s College of Medicine and Dentistry, Vice Principal of King’s College London and President of the Maccabaeans, a leading Anglo-Jewish charitable organization dating back to the 19^th century.

1936: As Arab violence continued to escalate unabated, The Palestine Post reported that Arab snipers killed one Jew and wounded four others on a bus close to Rosh Pina. The Arab Strike Committee threatened and punished Arabs who refused to join the general strike or refused to contribute to their strike funds. Five Arab villagers were killed by the railway military patrol after trains were ambushed twice. Jewish damages since April 19, the day on which the Arab disturbances began, were estimated at some quarter of a million pounds.

1937: After visiting with Benito Mussolini, Generoso Pope, a prominent New York City Italian American contractor, returned to the United States with a message from the Italian leader intended to reassure Jews in the United States that they had no reason to be concerned about the conditions of Italian Jews.

1938: The outbreak of violence in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv area that began yesterday continued today with episodes of bomb-throwing and stabbing.  In one incident an as yet unidentified Jew from Tel Aviv who was out walking with his wife and brother-in-law was stabbed by a group of Arabs who fled before the authorities arrived.

1938: The mutilated body of Father Mario Rozzine, head of an Italian convent near Jerusalem was discovered by the side of the road.  While the Italian Consulate claimed the priest was killed by unidentified personal enemies, others believe that he had fallen victim to Arab terrorists.

1939: Brazil admits three thousand Jewish refugees from Germany.

1939: At the World’s Fair in New York City, The Café Tel Aviv at the Palestine Pavilion offers Kosher Cuisine including Palestinian specialties ranging in price from $.50 to $.85, lunch for $.65 and a complete dinner for $1.25.

1940: Margret and Hans Rey made telephone calls and wrote letters from Lisbon letting friends and family know that they were safe. 

1941: As it invaded Lithuania, the Wehrmacht occupied Kovno where 10,000 Jews will be murdered by the end of July and Vilna and killed the Jews of Gorzhdy. (Please note; with some of the military activity in WW II there is a variance of dates by one or two days according to different sources.  This can be accounted for in several ways including discrepancies between when an event may have begun and when it reached its height or the difference between the date an event happened and the date it appeared in the newspaper or other journals.)

 1942: Thousands Jews from of Lvov in the Ukraine, are killed at Janówska, Ukraine, and Piaski, Poland.

1944:  The United States Military Air Operations declares that bombing rail lines to Auschwitz is "impracticable" because it could be achieved only by diverting air support from "decisive operations" in progress; i.e., bombing German synthetic-oil plants. The fact is that many of these plants are located near Auschwitz.

1944:  Lovers Edward Galinski, a Polish gentile, and Mala Zimetbaum, a Jew, escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau in purloined SS uniforms and remain at liberty for two weeks.

1944: At Birkenau, a Pole and a Jewish girl escaped. The girl, Mala Zimetbaum, escaped through an airlock in the gas chamber waiting room. She became the camp interpreter and fell in love with a Polish man. They managed to escape only to be eventually caught and brought back to Auschwitz where they were tortured. They then were to be hung in public view by thousands of prisoners. Instead she produced a razor blade and slashed her wrists in front of the onlookers. Incensed, the SS shot her dead.

1944: Chaim Barlas sent a copy of the ‘Auschwitz Protocols’ to his friend Giuseppe Rocalli – the future Pope John XXIII- and Rocalli immediately sent a summary of the protocols by telegraph to the Vatican.  This undercuts the Vatican’s claim that it did not know about Auschwitz until October of 1944

1945: The U.S.S.R. captures the Free Republic of Schwarzenberg. The Free Republic of Schwarzenberg (German: Freie Republik Schwarzenberg) was a de facto independent entity that existed for several weeks after the German capitulation on May 8, 1945. The term Free Republic of Schwarzenberg actually derives from the 1984 novel Schwarzenberg by Stefan Heym. As the novel is based on actual events, the term has become used as a convenient short-hand for them. Stefan Heym was a German Jewish writer born in 1913 in Chemnitz. Heym’s works included The King David Report, The Wandering Jews and Schwarzenberg.  Stefan Heym was actually the pen name for Hellmuth Fleig who won the Jerusalem Prize in 1933.  He died in Jerusalem during the Heinrich Heine Conference.

1947: Judge Simon Rifkind of New York, who had served on Ike’s staff, sent General Eisenhower a memo contending that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine would be in America’s best political and military interests.  Ike sent copies of the memo to Secretary of State George Marshall and General Tom Handy who would take it to the Secretary of War.

1950: An Italian ship filled with 300 Torah scrolls, 2,000 prayer books and other religious items that had been left in Yemen by Jewish refugees docked at Elath after having sailed up the Gulf Aqaba, making it the first ship to use this route to reach the Jewish state. Up until now, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who controlled the east and west sides of the Gulf had not allowed passage of any ships bound for Israel.  Nobody knows why the two Arab states did not stop the vessel or if the waterway would remain open.

1950: Birthdate of Moshe Smilansky who as Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon served as Chief of Staff of the IDF before joining Likud and serving in the Knesset “as well as the country's Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs.”

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that despite all the recent Iraqi threats, six aircraft arrived from Baghdad with 574 immigrants, and the seventh was expected shortly. It was estimated that some 4,000 Jews waited in Baghdad for transportation to Israel.

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Council of Kibbutz Meuhad met at Givat Brenner with only Mapam members participating, following the Mapai members' decision to leave the movement.

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Ffunerals took place of four Israeli soldiers killed in a clash with the Arab Legion near Kiryat Anavim.

1952(1^st of Tammuz, 5711): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz

1952: Tel Aviv police were detaining two people suspected of stealing gold objects from the National Museum valued at $70,000 and then melting them down for sale as gold bullion.  The objects in question have been missing for over a month.

1957: In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Roth is Samuel Roth, the Polish born Jew who began a literary career after moving to the Lower East of New York

1968: Birthdate of Israeli chess grandmaster Boris Gelfand.

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli pound was devalued by another 2 percent to IL7.97 to the dollar. This was the 10th creeping devaluation, begun as a policy in June 1975.

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that Gush Emunim announced that it would resist moving out from Kaddum, unless the resettlement was part of an overall plan for establishing Jewish settlement throughout Judea and Samaria.

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had asked Israelis to consume less and work more, and to accustom themselves to the realization of the country's difficult economic situation.

1979(29th of Sivan, 5739): Eighty-eight year old Lessing J. Rosenwald, who succeeded his father as Julius as President and later Chairman of the Board of Sears, Roebuck and Company passed away today. (As reported by Eric Pace)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F70F17FA395D12728DDDAF0A94DE405B898BF1D3

1981: Moshe Dayan announced that Israel has the capacity to make an atomic bomb.

1983: Yasser Arafat was banned from Damascus. Arafat had more enemies among the Arabs than he did among the Israelis. He was thrown out of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

1983: The New York Times reported on Mathilde Krim's newly established AIDS Medical Foundation

 1993: Yale computer science professor Dr. David Hillel Gelernter loses the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand after receiving a mail-bomb from the Unabomber.  Gelernter is classified variously as a conservative in the true sense of the word and/or an iconoclast.  There was no apparent connection between his political beliefs and this evil deed.

1995(26th of Sivan, 5755): Esther Rome, creator of the “Women and Their Bodies” and author of Our Bodies, Ourselves passed away.

1995(26th of Sivan, 5755): Meir "Zarro" Zorea passed away. Born in Bessarabia in 1923, he made Aliyah in 1925.  During his service with the Jewish Brigade during World War II he received the Military Cross for bravery.  His service with the IDF included leading a battalion during the War of Independence, aiding in the capture of Eichmann and commanding a tank corps in the Sinai during the Six Day War. After retiring with the rank of Major General he served as a member of the Knesset.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Edward the Caresser: The Playboy Prince Who Became Edward VII by Stanley Weintraub and Frontiers of Legal Theory by Richard Posner.

2002:”President Bush demands that the Palestinian Authority’s first step to peace begins with democratic accountability, economic reforms, and immediate cooperation in ending terrorist acts.”

2005: Closing session of Security Israel - The 19^th annual International Homeland Security Exhibition.

2005(17th of Sivan, 5765): Paul Winchell passed away at the age of 82.  Born Paul Wilchin had a successful career as a ventriloquist and “voice actor.”  Television audiences from the 1950’s will remember him and his two wooden-headed sidekicks – Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smif.  Winchell never moved his lips.  One of his best comic bits was drinking a glass of water while Jerry Mahoney kept “talking.”

2006:  In an article entitled “Another Page from an Epic Chapter,” Danny Rubinstein reviewed   Mihutz laofek, mi'ever larehov (Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street) by Hanoch Bartov.
“In 1943, at the age of 17, Hanoch Bartov, a native of Petah Tikva, joined the Palestine Regiment of the British Army, which was fighting Nazi Germany and which features prominently in his novel "Pitzei Bagrut" ("The Brigade"). In the Jewish soldiers' barracks at the end of World War II, one heard tales of emotional encounters between a Jewish soldier and a member of his family who had survived the Holocaust. At the time, Bartov heard, but did not have a strong recollection of, one story. It was about a man named Amos who had immigrated to Palestine, joined the British Army's Jewish Brigade and found his parents and younger brother, who had been in a displaced persons camp in Italy and had miraculously survived. After the war, Bartov moved to Jerusalem, spending much of his time with a group of university students who were commanders in the Haganah (pre-state militia). One of them was Binyamin, nicknamed "Rabi," who was killed du ring the summer of 1948 in a battle in the Negev. Rabi was Amos' brother and he was also astounded to learn, after the war, that his parents and younger brother had survived the Nazi inferno after being thought dead for some time. Many years later, in May 1978, on the morning of Israel's 30th Independence Day, the telephone rang in Bartov's home. He was busy completing a biography of David "Dado" Elazar, chief of staff during the Yom Kippur War, whom many see as one of its victims. The older man on the other end of the line introduced himself: "I am Rabi's father." The reason for the call was the obituary Bartov had written about Rabi and the members of his generation - the "1948 generation," who fell in the War of Independence. Bartov recalls that he was surprised to hear from the bereaved father. "I was thunderstruck," he wrote. Following the telephone call, Bartov felt he must continue writing about and preserving the memory of his many comrades-in-arms who had died in that cruel year of 1948. That call thus led to a connection spanning many years, between Bartov and the two parents who were Holocaust survivors. He began visiting their North Tel Aviv home and heard about their experiences in their native city of Kovno in occupied Lithuania. He interviewed relatives and friends of this couple, and perused letters and memoirs. The result is "Mihutz laofek, mi'ever larehov" ("Beyond the Horizon, Across the Street"), which has appeared 25 years after the conversation with Rabi's father and presents one East European Jewish family's fascinating story. The family's life revolves around the destruction of Europe's Jews and Israel's establishment - namely, what is sometimes termed "Holocaust and rebirth." "Holocaust and rebirth" is an epic chapter in Jewish history, although many consider it to be an overused, anachronistic topic. Bartov relates the saga of an intriguing family that enjoyed considerable social status and whose history he finds moving. He has been able to convey some of that emotion to his readers. Although he avoids excessive emotionalism, some passages will cause the readers to feel goose bumps and a lump in their throat. The family is Rabinowitz-Elhanan. The father, Yitzhak Elhanan, was a descendant of Yitzhak Elhanan Spektor, a prominent 19th-century Jewish leader who was Kovno's chief rabbi under the Russian czarist regime. In 1924, in Berlin, Yitzhak married Shulamit Rosenblum, daughter of a wealthy Jew who was proud to be a descendant of the great Rashi, loved Zion and was related to Israel's third president, Zalman Shazar, and to Supreme Court chief justice Dr. Moshe Zmora. While Yitzhak and his wife remained in Kovno to manage their extensive family business, Shulamit's elderly parents moved to Palestine in 1933, investing in private property and orchards (for example, the Rosenblum orchard, site of the present-day Givat Shmuel, adjacent to the Geha Highway). Their three sons were born in Kovno: Amos (1925), Binyamin "Rabi" (1926) and Shmuel (1930). When World War II broke out, the parents sent the two older sons to Palestine, where they grew up with their maternal grandparents in a spacious apartment on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard. The parents and their youngest son remained in Kovno. Although Holocaust scholars are familiar with the story of the Kovno ghetto, readers will be stunned by the eyewitness reports on the insane cruelty of the Nazis and the masses of Lithuanian collaborators there. The book introduces us to a previously unknown document from the ghetto: a letter from the head of the Juderat, Dr. Elhanan Elkes, who considered it to be his last will and testament. He wrote it in Hebrew two days before his deportation to Dachau, where he later perished, and sent it to his children in London. Preserved by a Holocaust survivor, this letter describes the events leading to Elkes' appointment as Judenrat head and notes how, with "shaking, worried hands," he and the other Judenrat members tried to steer the "mad ghetto boat in the middle of the ocean" to save as many Jews as possible. Elkes addresses his son Yoel: "My beloved Yoel! Be a loyal son to your people! Concern yourself with the welfare of other Jews, not with the welfare of the gentiles. In our long exile, they have not given us even a fraction of what we have given them. Try to settle in Palestine." Elkes' children did not settle in Israel, but instead made their homes in the United States and England. Bartov believes this is the reason why they avoided publishing their father's last will and testament for so many years. Along with the letter, Bartov summarizes the debate in the Israeli public on the role of the Judenrats (many books and research studies exist on this topic). In addition, he presents not only the memoirs of Elhanan and Shulamit; he also describes the adolescence of their sons Amos and Binyamin. The drama's climax is the chance meeting between Amos, a soldier in the Jewish Brigade, and his survivor-brother Shmuel. Amos was looking for his parents (who were separated when the ghetto was liquidated and did not know the other's whereabouts) and arrived one day in Pontebba in northern Italy to meet a friend. That evening someone told him that a truck had just come in from Munich "and there might be somebody there who has heard something about your father." Amos approached the truck and that very moment Shmuel, his younger brother, jumped to the ground. Although in this passage Bartov tries to offer a simple description, without emotional cliches, there will almost certainly be a tear in the reader's eye. Rabi, Bartov's comrade, was killed in 1948. Amos died from a fatal illness at age 40. Shmuel, who immigrated with his parents, fought in the War of Independence, serving with the elite Palmach strike force and participating in the battle of Malkiya. He may have been one of the "last ones on the ridge," to use a term coined by Yitzhak Tischler, who describes the battle in a book and is also mentioned by Bartov. Shmuel accompanies Bartov on his meetings with Shmuel's parents. Certainly one of the most important of the "1948 generation" writers, Bartov has always been considered an excellent reporter. Few have perhaps read his superb reports for the Lamerhav newspaper, some of which appeared in books, which I enjoyed very much and made me laugh. In "Beyond the Horizon," the writing is somewhat heavy, perhaps due to a sense of awe for the book's contents. Sometimes Bartov burdens the reader with details that do not contribute to the protagonists' dramatic saga, which definitely deserves to have been written.”

2007: The opening game of the Israel Baseball League’s season takes place with the Modi’in Miracle facing the Petach Tikva Pioneers at Yarkon Sports Complex in Petah Tikva.  This is not just the first game of the season, it is the first professional baseball game played in Israel.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of Travis Holland’s first novel, The Archivist’s Story which revolves around the fate of the Russian-Jewish short-story master Isaac Babel, author of the inimitable Red Cavalry tales. The New York Times also reviewed The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer. This is the second volume of Friedlander’s two-volume history of “Nazi Germany and the Jews.” The first volume, published in 1997 was entitled The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. In these volumes, Friedländer convincingly challenges the view that the Holocaust was simply the result of bureaucrats doing what they were told.

2007: The Los Angeles Times reviewed Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger.

2008: In Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club Attorney Ted Sorensen, a trusted adviser to President John F. Kennedy, discusses and signs his new memoir, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. When asked about his religious, this native of Lincoln, Nebraska this son of a Unitarian lawyer of Danish lineage and a mother of Russian-Jewish descent responded that  “under Jewish law I am Jewish, but I consider myself Unitarian.”

2008: Sotheby's in Israel conducts an auction that is a fund-raiser for IsrALS, the local organization benefiting sufferers of the degenerative disease ALS. A selection of the 51 Israeli paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the 1920s until now are on exhibition prior to the auction. Curated by Nurit Tal-Tenne, works ranging from a Reuven Rubin watercolor to a Micha Baram Yom Kippur War photograph and many contemporary works, with low bid estimates from $500-$20,000, will sell in two separate lots. Artists Aliza Olmert, Zvi Lachman, Igael Tumarkin, Menashe Kadishman, David Reeb and Jan Rauchwerger, and galleries, collectors and businesses, including Bank Discount, fully or partially donated the works. The first 28 lots will sell at a private home by invitation, while 23 lots will sell in a silent auction.  This auction attests to the great strides that Israeli art is making in international markets as well as to the vitality of Israeli art as a new generation of artists takes their place alongside such local favorites as Menashe Kadishman.

2008: The Jewish Agency for Israel wrapped up a meeting of its boards of governors facing a shortfall of $20 million to $30 million in the current fiscal year and a gap of $45 million for next year’s budget caused by the steady decline of the value of the American dollar. 

2008: Three Kassam rockets hit the western Negev this afternoon, in a second violation of a cease-fire between Hamas and the Israeli government.  One of the rockets damaged a house in Sderot.

2009: Canadian born actress Neve Campbell returned to television in a starring role on NBC's The Philanthropist. The descendant of Sephardic Jews who converted to Catholicism, Campbell has said, "I am a practicing Catholic, but my lineage is Jewish, so if someone asks me if I'm Jewish, I say yes"

2009: David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, signs copies of his new book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East which was written with Ambassador Dennis Ross, special adviser to the secretary of state for the Gulf and Southwest Asia) at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

2009: Bernard-Henri Lévy posted “a video on Dailymotion in support of the Iranian protesters who were being repressed after the contested elections.”

2010: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present a book signing and discussion feature Eric Metaxes author of the newly released Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.” Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

2010: Seventy-three year old Ben Sonnenberg the founder of the literary quarterly Grand Street passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/books/26sonnenberg.html?scp=1&sq=Ben+Sonnenberg%2C+Jr.&st=nyt

2011: Downtown Shabbat featuring Robyn Helzner and Cantor Larry Paul is scheduled to take place at the Historic 6^th & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2011: The Hebrew Educational Alliance is scheduled to sponsor “Nashira! Let Us Sing”  followed by a community Shabbat Dinner.

2011: Congregation Shaarey Zedek and the Alliance for Jewish Education are scheduled to sponsor Shabbat in the Park in Birmingham, Michigan.

2011: The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on activists planning to challenge Israel's sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, warning that they will face action from Israeli authorities and that American participants may also be violating U.S. law. The U.S. State Department said today that attempts to break the blockade are "irresponsible and provocative" and that Israel has well-established means of delivering assistance to the Palestinian residents of Gaza. It noted that the territory is run by the militant Hamas group, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and that Americans providing support to it are subject to fines and jail. "Groups that seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions that risk the safety of their passengers. Established and efficient mechanisms exist to transfer humanitarian assistance to Gaza. For example, humanitarian assistance can be delivered at the Israeli port of Ashdod, where cargo can be offloaded, inspected, and transported to Gaza," a State Department press release said. "We urge all those seeking to provide such assistance to the people of Gaza to use these mechanisms, and not to participate in actions like the planned flotilla The warning is the third in as many days and follows the announcement by 36 Americans that they will sail aboard a U.S.-flagged vessel in a flotilla to Gaza. The statement also reiterated the U.S. stance on Hamas, calling the Islamic group "to play a constructive role by renouncing violence, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and accepting past agreements.

2012: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including HHhH, Laurent Binet’s novel about the Nazi monster Reinhard Heydrich and the two Czechoslovakian war heroes who set out to assassinate him – “Jozef Gab¿ík, a Slovak, and Jan Kubiš, a Czech, both soldiers who made their way to England after their nation was overrun by Hitler.”

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Mission to Paris by Alan Furst, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery by Witold Pilecki, Hitler by A. N. Wilson and As Consciousness Is Harnessed To Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 by Susan Sontag. 

2012: The American Conference of Cantors-Guild of Temple Musicians' Convention is scheduled to pen in Portland, OR.

2012: HAZAK is scheduled to sponsor a docent led tour of the Columbus Museum of Art which will include a visit to the Lod Mosaic Exhibit.  “The Lod Mosaic was unearthed in 1996 as a group of workmen were in the process of widening a road in Lod. An extraordinarily detailed and large mosaic and exceptionally well-preserved, it dates from around 300 CE and is believed to be from a large villa of a wealthy Roman family. The mosaic is in the United States for a limited time before it travels to the Louvre in Paris, the Altes Museum in Berlin and then return to Israel.”

2012: The League for Yiddish and YIVO Institute are scheduled to sponsor  a program in memory of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter Z"L. during which Dr. Kalman Weiser of York University, Toronto, will speak on "Max Weinreich's Attitude to American Jews and the Beginnings of Yiddish Studies at American Universities in the 1940s.".

2012: Israeli cellist Yoed Nir is scheduled to perform at solo recital in Teaneck, NJ as part of the Classical Sunday Concert series.

2012: Family and friends of Dr. Bob and Laurie Silber prepare to offer Mazel Tov as they celebrate their wedding anniversary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Copyright; June, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin, melech3@mchsi.com