Thursday, December 28, 2023

This Day, December 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

December 29

584 BCE (10 Tevet 3175): The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, began his siege of Jerusalem leading to the destruction of the first Temple. This day is commemorated as one of the "minor" fasts, lasting from sunrise to sunset.  Of course, the tenth of Tevet floats when it appears on the secular calendar.

1170: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II.  While the movie about Becket gives the Archbishop “all of the good lines” the reality was a bit different, especially for the Jews.  The reign of Henry II was a good period for the Jews of England.  His view that the King and not the Church was the ultimate authority for the realm would have appeared to be the better case for the Jews given the inimical view that the Church held of the Jewish people.  Death is always a tragedy, but we should understand the reality of those over whom we weep as opposed to an image created by later day dramatists and film makers.

1485: Joshua Solomon Soncino published Sefer ha-Ikkarim (Book of Principles) at Soncino, Italy. Sefer ha-Ikkarim ("Book of Principles") is a fifteenth century work by Rabbi Joseph Albo, a student of Crescas. It is an eclectic, popular work, whose central task is the exposition of the principles of Judaism. Rabbi Joseph Albo was probably born in Aragon in 1380 and reportedly took part in the religious debate held at Tortosa in 1413 and 1414.  His date of death is given variously as 1430 or 1444.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Albo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_ha-Ikkarim

1690: In Italy, “severe earthquakes” struck the town of Ancona. They are memorialized by the town’s Jews with the celebration of a “Purim of Ancona.”  A description of the event and the special prayers recited on that day were printed in “Or Boker” was which was published in 1709.

1709: Birthdate of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. The daughter of Peter the Great was an enemy of the Jews.  She reiterated and reinforced the decrees already in existence banning Jews from the Russian Empire.  Despite requests from some of her advisors that Jewish merchants be allowed to visit the kingdom since it would enrich Russia, Elizabeth held firm. This is yet another example of Religious zeal over-ruling all other considerations.  According to one account, at least 35,000 Jews were forced to leave Russia because of her.  Her legacy was a Jew Free Russia – something that would not last because of Russian greed for the land of others.

1758: Jacob and Thankful Pinto gave birth to Solomon Pinto, a patriot who fought in the Revolutionary War, the husband of Clarissa Pinto and the brother of Abraham and William Pinto.

1764(5th of Tevet, 5525) Parashat Vayigash

1769(1st of Tevet, 5530): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed on the same day that a committee of Boston merchants wrote to Benjamin Franklin, their agent in London concerning the decision to continue the boycott of goods from Great Britain.

1777(29th of Kislev, 5538): Fifth Day of Chanukah observed on the same day that George Washington wrote to the New Hampshire legislature asking for aid for his 9,000 man force suffering under deplorable conditions at Valley Forge.

1778(10th of Tevet, 5539) Asara B’Tevet

1778: During the American Revolutionary War, 3,500 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia without firing a shot. Among those taken prisoner by the British as they secured Savannah was the Jewish patriot from Georgia, Morcechai Sheftall.  In 1778, having proven his skill and selflessness as Commissary General of Georgia, Mordechai Sheftall had been appointed  to the post of Deputy Commissary General to the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina by General Robert Howe. Before the Continental Congress could confirm his role, however, he was captured in December 1778, along with his fifteen-year-old son, Sheftall Sheftall, in the battle to prevent Savannah from falling to British troops. Some of the outnumbered patriots escaped by swimming across the Savannah River, but the younger Sheftall could not swim. His father would not abandon him. With 185 other Americans, they were captured and imprisoned. The British interrogated the Sheftalls under great duress, depriving them of food for two days. At one point, they were almost bayoneted by a drunken British soldier. Still refusing to provide information about the American's sources of supplies and refusing to renounce the patriot cause, father and son were transferred to the dank prison ship Nancy where the British deliberately offered Mordecai no meat other than pork, which he refused. After several months, the elder Sheftall was paroled to the town of Sunbury, Georgia, where he was kept under close British surveillance; his son remained on the Nancy. At Mordecai's urging, Mrs. Sheftall took her other children to the relative safety of Charleston. Separation from family weighed heavily on Mordecai. Through the intervention of friends, he was finally able to arrange for his son's parole to Sunbury under the same restrictive conditions on his own freedom of movement. Things looked promising when American military pressure on Savannah forced the British garrison to withdraw from Sunbury, but freedom for the Sheftalls did not follow. Local Tories began to beat and even kill patriots in Sunbury, especially parolees like the Sheftalls. Father and son managed to flee on an American brig headed for Charleston and a hoped for reunion with their family, but were captured by a British frigate and transported to Antigua, where they remained prisoners until the Spring of 1780. In June, both Sheftalls were paroled once more. They headed for Philadelphia, to which Mrs. Sheftall and the children had fled, yet again, for safety. There, despite his own financial hardships, Mordecai helped fund a new synagogue for Congregation Mikve Israel. Mordecai spent the remainder of the war in Philadelphia, seeking to help both the American cause and his own financial condition by financing a privateer to capture and loot British vessels. His investment does not seem to have paid off; on its very first voyage, the ship ran aground. In1783, when the war ended, Mordecai returned with his wife and children to Savannah, where the family resumed its life for several generations. The state of Georgia granted him several hundred acres of land in recognition of his sacrifices on behalf of independence. When he died in 1797 at the age of 62, his beloved home city of Savannah buried him with full honors in the Jewish cemetery he created.”

1780: In Kingston, Jamaica, Abraham de Leon, the son of Ester and Abraham de Lyon and his wife gave birth to Leah Rachel Henriques, the wife of Abraham Quixano Henriqeus.

1780: Birthdate of Rachel De Leon, the daughter of Spanishtown, Jamaica native Abraham Rodrigues De Leon

1786(8th of Tevet, 5547): Seventy year old “British businessman” and descendant of “Portuguese Sephardic Jews” Joseph Salvador, a supporter of the “1753 Jew bill,’’ the sole Jewish “director of the British East India Company” and active supporter of the colonization of Georgia and South Carolina where a large number of Sephardim settled including his nephew Francis was reputed to have been “the first Jew to be elected public office” what became the United States and the first Jew to die during the American Revolution passed away today.

1788(30th of Kislev, 5549) Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah

1790: Birthdate of German native Lea Gutkin, the wife of Abraham Kaufmann and the mother of Adelhiet, Zibora, Amalia and Esther Kaufman.

1792(14th of Tevet, 5553): Parashat Vayechi

1796(29th of Kislev, 5557): Fifth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1798(29th of Tevet, 5559): Aaron Gomes Da Costa, the Portuguese born son of Abran Gomes da Costa and Abigail Gomes da Costa and the husband of Miriam De Solomon Gomes Da Costa passed away today in Londo.

1799(1st of Tevet, 5560): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1801: Based on a deed of conveyance of this date, Levi Solomon and Solomon Etting paid William McMechen and John Leggett for land to be used as a Jewish cemetery in Baltimore, MD

1802: Aron Isaacson married Mary Israel today at the Great Synagogue.

1802: In Charleston, SC, nineteen-year-old Rinah Cohen, the daughter of Moses Cohen and Judith de Lyon married David Mordecai.

1807(28th of Kislev, 5568): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1809(22nd of Tevet, 5570): Savannah, GA merchant, Levy Abrahams, the former secretary of Congregation Mikveh Israel passed away today.

1809: Birthdate of William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Gladstone is known primarily as the political rival of Benjamin Disraeli and this tends to color the view of him held by some Jews.  Gladstone was a complicated man.  He began his political career who opposed Jews sitting in the House of Commons.  At considerable political risk, he modified that position and voted in favor of removing the Christian religious qualification as long as the number of Jews in Parliament would never be so great as to lead Christians from their faith. Although Disraeli was raised as an Anglican, Gladstone was suspicious of what he described as his radical Jewish policies.  Considering the level of English anti-Semitism, Gladstone should go into the plus column.  

1810(2nd of Tevet, 5571) Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz

1812(26th of Tevet, 5573): Lucky Moses, the daughter of Sarah Abraham Elias and Henry Moses passed away today.

1819(2nd of Tevet, 5571): Eighth Day of Channukah

1814: Birthdate of French political leader and statesman Jules Simon, whose name indicates that he was of “Jewish origin.” Simon always thought he was born on December 30, until he took a “second look” at his birth certificate when he was being sworn in as a deputy and saw that it  was dated December 30 but said he was born “yesterday”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60D11FE3F5F1B738DDDA90B94D9405B8685F0D3

1815(27th of Kislev, 5576): Third Day of Chanukah

1816(10th of Tevet, 5577): Asara B’Tevet observed for a second time, on the civil calendar in 1816.

1817: In Karlskrona, Sweden, Aaron Abrahamson and his wife gave birth to Swedish businessman and patron of the arts August Abrahamson who was the grandson of Aaron Abraham who had been a member of the Berlin Academy of Art.

1823: In New York City, Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, the Dutch born of Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, Cantor and Judith van Samuel Peixotto, and his wife Rachel Lopes Mendes Peixotto gave birth to Judith Salzedo Hays, the wife of David Solis Hays who was the first Jewish woman to serve as a principle in the New York City public schools.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/peixotto-judith

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/peixotto-judith-salzedo

1824: John Meseena married Rachel Gomes today at the Hambro Synagogue.

1829(3rd of Tevet, 5590): Miriam Eugenia Phillips, the two-year-old daughter of Abigail Siexas and Benjamin Jonas Phillips passed away today in New York City.

1829(3rd of Tevet, 5590): Forty-nine-year-old Jacob da silva Solis, the long-born son of Bevendia de isaac henriques Valentine and Solomon da silva Solis and the husband of Charity Hays with whom he had seven children passed away today.

1829: Birthdate of the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, Washington, Bailey Gatzert, the native of Darmstadt, Germany who lived in Natchez, Mississippi before moving to Seattle where became a successful businessman and banker.

1829: The Director of the Paris Opera signed a contract today “specifying” Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Robert le diable as a "grand opera in five acts and seven scenes."

1831: Birthdate of Hanover native and University of Halle graduate Marcus (Meir) Lehmann, the prolific author who served as the rabbi of a “private religious society” in Mainz which was really a congregation until his death in 1890.

1832: John C. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State appointed philo-Semite Warder Cresson (and future convert to Judaism) to serve as U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, began serving as his first term as a U.S. Senator from South Carolina.

1832: Birthdate of Moravia native and Cincinnati, OH “author and pioneer nation merchant” Mortiz Loth who was instrumental in the establishment of Union of American Hebrew Congregation and the Hebrew Union College.

1833: In Finsbury, Esther and Joseph Moses Levy gave birth to Edward Levy who became Edward Lawson.

1837(1st of Tevet, 5598): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 7th day of Chanukah

1837: Caroline Davis and Levy Jacobs gave birth to Edward Jacobs.

1838: George D. and Elizabeth Bennett Rosengarten gave birth to Adolph G. Rosengarten who rose to the rank of Major in the 106th Regiment, a cavalry unit in the Union Army who died at the Battle of Stone River during the Civil War.

1838: In Denmarkd, Brigitte Simon and Hartvig Abraham Von Essen gave birth to Ida Frederikke Von Essen.

1845(30th of Kislev, 5606): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah.

1845: Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state. Considering their numbers, Jews played an active role in the affairs of Texas at this time.  Moses Albert Levy served as surgeon-general for Sam Houston’s forces at the Battle of San Jacinto – the victory that gave Texas her independence.  Isaac Lyons served as the surgeon –general for another Texas leader, Tom Green.  At least one Jew, Abraham Wolf, died at the Alamo.  David Kaufman fought at the Battle of Neches, served in the Republic of Texas legislature and was one of the state’s first Congressmen when she joined the Union.  Kaufman County is named for him.  With the support of Sam Houston, Henry Castro helped settle 5,000 Germans in Texas between 1843 and 1848.  Castro County and Castroville both bear witness to the successful effort of this Sephardic Jew. During the 1850’s Jewish congregations were established in Houston, Galveston and San Antonio. In each case, the building of the cemetery preceded the building of the house of worship.

1847: Seventy-two-year-old English composer William Crotch passed away. Among his students was the Jewish composer Charles Kensington Salman who created the musical setting for “Adonai Malakh” (Psalm 93). Crotch drew on Biblical related themes for some of his works including “The Captivity of Judah” and an oratorio entitled “Palestine.”

1848: One day after he had passed away, 72-year-old Joseph Emanuel was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1848: Birthdate of Calude Reigner, the an officer with the Corps of Royal Engineers who served two tours of duty with the Palestine Exploration Fund where he took part in some of the first modern surveys of Jerusalem and other parts of this part of the Ottoman Empire.

1848: In Hungary, Lena Kulka and Emanuel Shlesinger gave birth to Sigmund Shlesinger the husband of Fannie Fleshiem who served with “Colonel George A. Forsyth’s Company of Scouts” and fought at the Battle of Beecher’s Island (Colorado) in 1868.

1848: In Hungary, Emanuel Shlesinger and Lena Kulka gave birth to Sigmund Shlesinger, the husband of Fannie Fleisher, a member of Colonel Forsyth’s Scouts during the Indian Wars in Colorado in 1868 and active member of the Cleveland, Ohio, Jewish community who served on the Board of Directors of Tifereth Israel and was one of the incorporators of the Cleveland Federation of Jewish Charities.

1849: Birthdate of British economist William Cunningham the author of The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in which he described the role of Jewish moneylenders in Medieval England and the manner in which King John, among others, exploited them for his own gain.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0611FD3D5F15738DDDA00A94DA415B8884F0D3

1851: Philadelphia native Julia Levy and Joseph Moss who had been married in New York City gave birth to Helen Moss.

1853(28th of Kislev, 5614): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1853: Birthdate of mathematician Ferdinand Caspary, the son of a German Jewish businessman and the grandson of a rabbi who was raised in Glogau.

1854: In Manchester, England, Marcus and Martha Leipziger gave birth to Dr. Henry M. Leipzieger, the Supervisor of the Lectures of the Board of Education who founded the Hebrew Technical Institute in 1884.

1857: In Hungary, Ignatz Mandel and his wife gave birth to Mandel Jacob, the holder of an Master’s Degree and Ph.D from CCNY, the Rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City.

1857: “A Legal Decision” published today told the story of the son of a wealthy London Jewish banker who had fallen in love with a Christian girl whom he was going to marry despite the father’s threat to disinherit him.  Taking advantage of a little-known law that required Jewish fathers to support their Christian children, the boy told his father he would become a Christian which meant he would be “entitled to one-half of the father’s fortune.”  The father sought help from lawyer who said that for a fee of ten guineas he would tell him how to thwart the son’s plan.  Once the fee was paid, the lawyer told the father that he could become a Christian would leave him free to disinherit the son. The father left the lawyer without any further comment.

1860(16th of Tevet, 5621): Parashat Vayechi

1860(16th of Tevet, 5621): “Tamar (Terese) Ree, the Danish born daughter of Isac Hartvig Rée and Sara Wulff von Essen and wife of Hartvig Philip Ree, passed away today at Frederica, Denmark.

1860: The New York Times reported that one of the manifestations of excitement shown by the Poles following the Warsaw Conference was “a hatred of Jews and Germans that knew no bounds.”

1861: Birthdate of German mathematician Kurt Hensel whose paternal grandmother was Fanny Mendelsohn and whose paternal great-great grandfather was Moses Mendelsohn making him an example of the “disappearing Jews” – an all-too-common phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries.

1862(7th of Tevet, 5623): Seventy-year-old Samuel Israel Mulder who is best known for his translation of Pentateuch, Psalms and Proverbs from Hebrew into Dutch – the first such work of its kind.

1864(30th of Kislev, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah

1864: In San Francisco, founding of “Congregation Ohabai Shalome” at “1831 Bush near Laguna” whose members included Joseph Schmidt, Philip Stern, Bernard Reiss and M.L. Stern.

1867: In Kiev, Sophia and Jacob Pritzker gave birth Northwestern University trained gynecologist Dr. Louis J. Prtizker, who served as “a captain in the Army Medical Corps in charge of Surgery at Ft. Snelling” during WW I and who practiced for forty-five while also serving on the faculty of his alma mater and raising two children with his wife Sophia.

1868: Twenty-five-year-old Rabbi Mayer Messing, the German born son of “Rabbi Joseph Messing and Fogel Rothenstein married Ricca Naphtali today, a year after he began serving as the Rabbi of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation.

1868(25th of Tevet, 5630): Bavarian born Indiana resident Moses Amberg, the husband of Sophia Neumann Amberg with whom he had nine children passed away today after which he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Greater Lafayette, in Lafayette, Indiana.

1870: New York City authorities warned Jews about incompetent and unscrupulous mohalim who were causing the deaths of many Jewish infants.

1871: In Kalvarija, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), Efraim London and his wife gave birth to Meyer London, the Brooklyn Congressman who was one only two members of the Socialist Party elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1871: In Memphis, TN, Max Friedman and Tillie Marks gave birth to Lee M. Friedman, the Harvard educated lawyer, President of the Boston Branch of the Alliance, Israelite Universelle and treasurer of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association who also served as secretary of the Purim Association.

1872(29th of Kislev, 5633): Fifth day of Chanukah

1874: In Edinburgh, Scotland, Dora and Samule Glasstone gave birth to Agnes Glasstone who died before she reached the age of ten.

1874: Two days after she had passed away, Miriam (Lazarus) Israel, the wife of Morris Israel was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1874: A review of “The Travels of the Shah of Persia” by J.W. Redhouse which uses the Shah’s diary to recount the monarch’s 1873 tour of Europe by the Shah included a description of his meeting with Lord Rothschild.  After praising Rothschild for his wealth, the Shah told Rothschild that “the best thing to do would be that you should” use your money “and buy a territory in which you could collect all the Jews of the whole world, you becoming their chief and leading them on their way in peace, so that you should no longer thus scattered and dispersed.” (Compare this sentiment with the Iranian -modern day Persia- view on the Jewish state.)

1875(1st of Tevet, 5636) Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Seventh Day of Chanukah

1875: Birthdate of Camden, SC native Love Rosa Hirschmann who gained fame as Love Rosa Gann, the graduate of the Medical College of South Carolina, who went on to practice medicine in the fields of ophthalmology and otolaryngology.

1875: Birthdate of Mainz, Germany and New York Law School trained attorney Otto Godfrey Foelker, the member of the Republican party who served in the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate and the U.S. House Representatives before moving to California where he practiced law before his death.

https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=F000231

1877: Birthdate of Hyman Somers, the son of Rubin Myers.

1878: In Lexington, KY, Jenny Lind Goldsmith and Henry Lovenhart gave birth to Johns Hopkins trained physician Arthur Solomon Lovenhart, the husband of Minnie Rose Goldsmith and starting in 1908 the professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Wisconsin.

1878: In New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Union hosted a well-attended reception and ball in Irving Hall which was a celebration of Chanukah.

1879: Four days after she had passed away, 65 year old “Jessie Salmon” the daughter of John Salmon and Catherine Polack was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1880: Based on information provided by London Times’ correspondent in Berlin, “the persecution of the Jews in Prussia has led to “a Jewish traveling in a public canning a Professor, a Jewish student killing a Christian fellow-student in duel and a Jewish merchant boxing a Christian trader’s ears” --- “unfortunate incidents” that “were ‘preceded by some violent act on the part of the Christian antagonist.’”

1881: In Paris, antiques dealer Alexandre Rosenberg and his wife gave birth to Paul Rosenberg, a leading French art dealer who was able to regain parts of his collection that had been stolen by the Nazis.

1881: Birthdate of Indianapolis, IN native Louis J. Borinstein, a partner and executive manager of A. Borinstein and Company, which was founded by his father, and President of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation who while serving as president of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and as a member of the advisory committee of the National Rivers and Harbor Congress raised three children – Marcus, Lucille and Robert – with his wife Eva Borinstein

1882: Isaac Samuel, the French born son of Lyon Israel Samuel and Fleurette Baruch Weil and the husband of Fanny Heilbronner with whom he had had five children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1882: It was reported today that in Russia, “the senate has decided that no court can authorize the transfer of land to a Jew.”

1882: It was reported today that in Russia “the railway companies have ordered the discharge of their Jewish employees.”

1883(30th of Kislev, 5644): Shabbat shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz

1885: Amy and Daniel Cohen gave birth to Pauline Cohen who died at the age of seven months after which she was buried in the Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.

1885: In Russia, Frieda Hirshkowtich and Rav Pinehas Dove Goldenstein gave birth to University of Cincinnati graduate and HUC ordained rabbi, Raphael Goldenstein whose rabbinic career began at Temple Anshe Emeth in Pine Bluff and after several stops led him to serve Congregation Shaarai Shomayim in Lancaster PA.

1886(2nd of Tevet, 5647): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1886(2nd of Tevet, 5647): Sixty-two-year-old Levi Goldsmith, the German born Son of Seligmann Falcke Goldschmidt and Schönchen Hinka Alexander and husband of Henrietta Goldsmith passed away today in Philadelphia, PA

1886: Alice Suares was married today in Alexandria, Egypt.

1888: In Chicago, Dr. Joseph Zeisler, the Austrian born son of Isaac and Anna Zeisler and his wife Theresa Feuchtman gave birth to University of Chicago graduate and Northwestern University-trained dermatologist Erwin (Billy) Paul Ziesler, a WW I veteran who was the husband of Rose A Levy and Ruth Henrietta Spiro and the father of George William Zeisler; John Joseph Zeisler and Richard Spiro Zeisler.

1888: In New York, the Excise Commissioners heard the protest of the Pastor of St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church to the granting of a liquor license to Charles Goldstein, the owner of Webster Hall, an edifice designed to for Jewish weddings and other such social events.

1888: Santa Clause will distribute toys to the 600 children at the Christmas Party being held today at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City.

1888: The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City will the site of tonight’s theatrical and musical productions the proceeds of which will go to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1889: Six hundred youngsters attended an evening of entertainment in the chapel of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum sponsored by the Seligman Solomon Society.

1889(6th of Tevet, 5650): One day after his 78th birthday, Rabbi Ludwig Philippson whose works included “an annotated German translation of the TaNaCh” and who was the son of  Moses Philippson and the father of geologist Alfred Philippson passed away at Bonn

1889: The officers and managers of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society hosted a reception in honor of state Senator Jacob A. Cantor and Assemblyman Joseph Blumenthal.

1889: The Jaffa to Jerusalem Railway Company (Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements) was founded in Paris with Bernard Camille Collas, a French lighthouse inspector, as the first director.

1889: It was reported today the one of the highlights of this year’s New York theatrical season was Edwin Booth’s portrayal of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.”

1890: In San Rafael, CA, “a grocer” and his wife gave birth to Alfred C. Blumenthal who gained fame as “wealthy real estate operator A.C. Blumenthal who was known to his theatrical friends in Hollywood and New York as “Blumey.”

1890(18TH of Tevet, 5651): Sixty-five-year-old Henry S. Henry, a native of Ramsgate, England, who was the founder of H.S. Henry & Son, commission merchants who was active in several charitable Jewish organizations passed away today at his New York home.

1890: Sgt. Jack Trautman, who could have retired but chose to stay with his men, fought at Wounded Knee, SD today with such courage that he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

1891: According to Emmanuel Lehman, the Treasurer for the Transportation Fund for Russians, as of today the fund has raised $82, 842.73 to aid Jews trying to flee the Czar’s realm.

1891(28th of Kislev, 5652): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1891(28th od Kislev, 5652): Sixty-eight-year-old Abraham Hays, the husband of Fanny Hays and the father of Kokomo, IN native Emma Eckhouse, the wife of Moses Eckhouse. passed away today.

1891: Sixty-eight-year-old German mathematician Leopold Kronecker, who converted to Christianity in the last year of his life, passed away today.

1892(10th of Tevet, 5653): Asara B’Tevet

1892: A fire broke out at the four-story brick building at 3 Mechanic Alley the ground floor of which is occupied by tailor shop owned by three Jews, Samuel, Isaac and Harris Goldstein.

1893(20th of Tevet, 5654): Adolf Jellinek passed away. Born in 1821, he was an Austrian rabbi and scholar who became a preacher at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna in 1856.

1893: In Newark, NJ, Max Boxer made bail on charges of misusing the United States mail when he sent a postcard to Abraham Kursek, a Jewish poultry and fish merchant threatening to shoot him and his son-in-law if he did not vacate his stall on Prince Street.  The two men were business competitors.

1893: In New York, Judge McAdam granted an injunction prevent Joseph Jaffa from publishing  the picture of Rudolph Marks, a Jewish actor who is studying law at the University of the City of New York, as part of a contest that he is promoting without the plaintiff’s permission.

1894: In Vienna, Alfred Sachs, the son of Eduard Elkan Sachs and Babette Sachs, and his wife Therese Sachs gave birth to Marie Schmeichler, the wife of Dr. Robert Schmeichler.

1894: In Leicester, UK, Jacob Alfred Jacobs and Eleanor Sophia Jacobs gave birth to Montague Jacobs, the husband of Iris Annie Jacobs with whom he had two sons.

1894: A two-week revival of “Quite an Adventure,” a one-act comic opera by Edward Solomon, came to an at the Savoy Theatre in London.

1895: Based on statements of Samuel Schafer published today the Hebrew Fair which closed last week has raised $165,000 and that when all contributions are tallied the amount raised will reach approximately $175,000.  Approximately $100,000 will go to the Educational Alliance with the balance going the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1895: “Judaism And Its Spirit” published today provides a detailed review of The Spirit of Judaism by Josephine Lazarus one of the sisters of Emma Lazarus.

1895: Arthur Scholem and Betty Hirsch Scholem gave birth to Werner Scholem, German political leader, member of the Reichstag during the Weimer Republic and the brother of Gershom Scholem.  Werner would die in Buchenwald.

1895: An armed column “crossed into the Transvaal and headed for Johannesburg” which marked the start of the Jameson Raid whose participants included Solomon Barnato “Solly” Joel one of three sons of Joel Joel and Kate Isaacs who made “a fortune in diamond and gold mining in South Africa,

1896(24th of Tevet, 5657): Seventy-two-year-old Jacob ben Moses Bachrach, the son of R' Moses Bacharach and Sheina Bacharach and the husband of Reva Bachrach, the editor of Hebrew works including “the Turim of Jacob ben Asher” passed away today in Bialystok.

http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/brisman/item/8237

1897: The House Committee of the Home and Hospital for Jewish Incurables is scheduled to meet this afternoon in London.

1897: The “Russo-Jewish Conjoint Committee” of the Board of Guardians is scheduled to meet this afternoon.

1897: The Chovei Zion Association is scheduled to meet this evening at Bevis Marks.

1898: In Jerusalem, Esther Epstein and Simcha Mandelbaum gave birth to the University of Nebraska alum and Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary trained rabbi, Albert Naphttoli Mandelbaum, the husband of Leah Gordon and starting in 1922 the spiritual leader of Congregation of Sons of Abraham in Albany, NY who was a national director of Keren Hayesod and a director of the Albany Jewish Community Center.

1898: Richard J. H. Gottheil, a professor of languages at Columbia University and a leader in the early American Zionist movement gathered together a group of Jewish students from several New York City universities to form a Zionist youth society. The society was called Z.B.T., which most people know as Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.

1899(27th of Tevet, 5660): Sixty-six-year-old Hermann Rosenwald, the German born son of Bendix and Vogel Rosenwald and the husband of Jeanette David with whom he had three children – Bendix, Gustave and Ida – passed away today.

1900(7th of Tevet, 5661): Parashat Vayigash

1900:  In his review of Arabia: The Cradle of Islam by Samuel W. Zwemer , George Warner described Arabia as “a vast territory, little known and yet the cradle not Islam alone but of the Hebrew race” as well.

1900: “To-day is "Hospital Saturday," when the citizens of Jewish faith make contribution to the cause in the synagogues; while to-morrow is "Hospital Sunday," when it is the privilege of the Christian to do a similar service for the afflicted through the church offerings.”

1901: The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was founded. “The Jewish National Fund is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners - Jewish People everywhere.”  After several false starts, the delegates to the Fifth Zionist Congress passed a motion that a fund to be called Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael) should be established, and that "the fund shall be the property of the Jewish people as a whole".  The purpose of the fund would be to be purchase land in the land of Palestine that would belong to the Jewish people.  The JNF's first undertaking was the collection of £200,000.  One of the delegates immediately pledged £10 in memory of Zvi Hermann Schapira who had been one of the prime mover’s behind the creation of the JNF. Theodore Herzl made the second donation and his aide, the third. And with this, the dream of a national fund--and a Jewish Homeland--became a reality.

1902: Birthdate of New York City and St. Lawrence College trained labor lawyer Robert Abelow,
a partner in the firm of Weil, Gosthael and Magnes and the editor of “The Employee Relations Law Journal” who was the husband of “the former Miriam Steinbrink” and a son-in-law of New York State Supreme Court Justice Meyer Steinbrink.”

1903(10th of Tevet, 5664): Asara B’Tevet

1903: Plans were agreed on tonight by the “Grand Masters of six leading Jewish fraternities” to make the call of intervention to prevent the massacre of the Jews of Kishineff on Russian Christmas into a national, America, movement.

1903: “The London correspondent of The Jewish Daily News” today “cabled an interview with a Kishineef refugee” who passed through London on his way to America and described the situation in that city “as very serious” and “that a massacre is looked upon as inevitable, that the Jews of Kishineff are awaiting their faith with the stoic despair of convicts doomed to be executed…”

1904: Birthdate of Wooldridge, NY native and Union College graduate Samuel G. Engel the pharmacist and drug store owner turned “screenwriter and producer” who gave us such films as “My Darling Clementine,” the romanticized biopic about Wyatt Earp.

1905: The Jewish Chronicle reported that “the brothers Gomez de Costa in Hackney, West Indies, would not receive their sister in their house for a year because she had married an Ashkenazi Jew.

1905: The Jewish Chronical reported that a “Proselyte Board” has been formed in Johannesburg “consisting of congregational delegates and Rabbis and that no proselytes would be admitted to the community unless they received a vote of two-thirds of those present at the meeting.

1905: As of today, it was reported that the fund to help the Jews suffering from the Massacres in Russia had reach $1,217,000.

1906(12th of Tevet, 5667): Parashat Vayechi

1906: “Praises Schiff’s Scheme” published today described Lord Rothchild’s “scheme for a Jewish settlement near Galveston, TX because, among other things “if Jews are to be sent out of Russia” especially at a time like this, “it is much better to send them where work is available than to where their hands would remain idle.”

1907: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Wharton graduate Herbert K Baskin, the vice president in charge of the Bankers Trust Company “on Broadway near 24th Street and recipient of awards “from the American Jewish Community and the UJA who was the husband of “the former Betty Maxine Schwartz.”

1908: Louis A. Hensheimer, a member of the baking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company spent his last day “at his desk” prior to undergoing surgery for appendicitis.

1908: Birthdate of Magnus Alfred Pyke, the native of Paddington who was educated in Canada who returned to England, where among other things he served as the Chief Chemist at Vitamins Ltd in Hammersmith and Manager of Distiller Ltd’s yeast research laboratory in Scotland from 1949 to 1973.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-magnus-pyke-1558840.html

1909: Birthdate of Johtje (pronounced YO-tya) Vos, a Dutch woman who along with her husband hid three dozen Jews from the Nazis during World War II.  In addition to which they provided assistance to an unknown number of Jews escaping through part of the Netherlands from 1940 through 1945.  Mrs. Vos moved to Woodstock, NY in 1951 and passed away at the age of 97 in 2007.  She never saw herself as a Righteous Gentile or a particularly brave person.

1910(28th of Kislev, 5761): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1910: “The subject of “Immigration” is scheduled to be discussed today in what is the first of twelve lectures arranged by The Committee on Education of the Jewish Community to be delivered on alternating Thursday evenings, four of which will with deal with “Communal Jewish Problems” and eight of which will deal with “Jews in Many Lands.”

1910: Constantin C. Arion, who as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs would say that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” began serving his first term as Minister of Religion and Public Instruction today.. (Editor’s Note – Going back to the Congress of Berlin, Rumanian government were always promising to emancipate the Jews living in the country and always failing to do so.)

1911: Camille Erlanger’s L’aube rouge premiered at Rouen, France.

1911(8th of Tevet, 5672): Seventy-one-year-old Arnold Tanzer, the associate editor of the Nation passed away today in New York City.

1911: The Chamber of Commerce of Salonica rendered a decision that Jewish porters do not need to work on Shabbat.

1911: At its meeting today, “the Board of Trustees of B’nai Jeshurun” “decided to recommend” to the congregation that the hire Rabbi Joel Blau who is now leading Congregation Shaari Zedek in Brooklyn.

1911 Mrs. Leopold de Rothschild was among those receiving the “Award of the Order of Mercy” today.

1912(19th of Tevet, 5673): Sixty-six-year-old grain merchant Emanuel Steinhardt passed away today in New Orleans.

1912: In Newark, NJ, Esther Taubenhaus and her husband gave birth to Tulane Medical School graduate Dr. Leon Taubenhuas, “the director of community of health services at Beekman Downtown Hospital and a specialist in emergency medicine” who with his wife Barbara raised two daughters.

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/06/archives/dr-tauenhaus-health-director-emergencies-specialist-at-beekman.html

1912: A Hebrew School was founded today in Schenectady New York.

1912: U.K. premiere of “The Miracle” a British silent film based on a play by Max Reinhardt.

1913(30th of Kislev, 5674): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1913(30th of Kislev, 5674): Rabbi Louis A. Alexander passed away today in Dorchester, MA.

1913: In Australia first showing of “The Miracle” a British silent film based on a play by Max Reinhardt who helped write the script for the film.

1914: In Rochester, NY, Oliver Bachrach of Baltimore delivered a lecture on the prophet Jeremiah at The Jewish Chautauqua Society Convention.

1914: “Looking to the War’s End” published today described the views of Bernard Baruch’s father, Dr Simon Baruch on what a post-war world would look like including that “perhaps in a decade or fifty years” the United States and Germany, joined by other countries now at war” will join “together to subdue the Tartar and the yellow man and then we shall have a real peace.”

1915: “The People’s Relief Committee, which is also co-operating with the American Jewish Relief Committee, expects to raise $100,000 today.”

1915: Today in New York, “at the monthly meeting of the Hebrew Congregation of the Deaf and Dumb mutes” Sephardic Rabbi Albert J. Amateau used sign language to make an appeal to the 140 members for contributions to the $5,000,000 fund which the American Jewish Relief Committee is attempting to raise for Jews suffering through the war” which met with an immediate contribution of $250 dollars and a small box filled with jewels.

1915: Today, Dr. J.L. Magnes addressed a crowd of jewelry industry employees and persuaded them to subscribe to a contribution of $10,000 and to create a committee under the Chairmanship of Leopold Stern which will raise $100,000 from among Jewish jewelry workers.

1915: “Today is tag day for the benefit of Jewish sufferers through the war and by night the committee” in charge “expects to have distributed one million tags and to have collected $50,000.”

1915: “A special feature” of today, which is Tag Day, “will be sight-seeing cars filled with actors and actresses from the Yiddish theatres which will tour the city stopping a various tagging pints to entertain the crowds.”

1915: It was reported that M. Maldwin Fertig, the president of The Young Men’s Hebrew Association, has said the campaign to raise funds for a new facility in the would continue until it has reached its goal of $85,000.

1916: The piano duo of Rose and Ottilie Sutro played their version of Max Bruch’s Concerto for Two Pianos in A-flat minor for the first time with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

1916: It was reported today that the survivors of Baltimore lawyer Moses R. Walter are his wife, the former Bertha Ulman, and his children Clementine Walter, Valerie Walter, Raphael Walter, Albert Walter and Mrs. Robert Walkingshaw of Seattle, WA>

1917(14th of Tevet, 5678): Parashat Vayehci

1917: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El on 5th Avenue.

1917: It was reported at The Hague today “that leading Jewish financiers of Germany refused to support the German war loan unless the German Government” refrained “from all opposition to the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine independent of any Turkish control.”

1917: When Representative Julius Kahn of California spoke tonight at the dinner session of the Fifth Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association meeting at Columbia he “was applauded when he urged that universal compulsory military service be enacted in law” because “there was no prospect that wars would cease at the end of this war, and every reason to fear that wars would continue in the future as they had in the past.’ (Editor’s Note- the Jewish Congressman did not see WW I as the “war to end all wars” and was calling for peace time conscription – something that would not come to fruition until the year prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor.)

1917: Tonight, “speaking at a benefit at Cooper Union for the needy Jewish journalists and writers fo the warring countries, Dr. J. L. Magnes predicted that the Jewish people would survive their present sufferings stronger than ever and assert a stronger influence on the religious and political life of the nations.”

1917: Tonight, at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory more than $6,000 was raised at the Zionist Ball which was held to raise funds “to be used in re-establishing the Jews in Palestine.”

1917: Today “Famous Players, Feature Play, Oliver Morosco Photoplay, Bosworth, Cardinal, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Artcraft, and The George M. Cohan Film Corporation” “were incorporated into one entity called the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation” with Adolph Zukor as President and Jesse L. Lasky as Vice President.”

1918: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow, who was in France serving as representative of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board wrote today that for three weeks he has been visiting various military camps using an automobile lent him by a Colonel in the Army and while he has found the experience to be “a great privilege” if also feels that “if he Jewish work here does not improve much in point of organization, I may go in as an army chaplain.”

1918: During the Freedom Wars, Lithuania's government called for volunteers to defend the Lithuanian state. Of the 10,000 volunteers who responded more than 500 of them were Jews. Altogether more than 3000 Jews served in the Lithuanian army between 1918 and 1923.

1918: The Zionist Organization of America held a reception tonight at the Hotel McAlpin for Judge Julian W. Mack, Jacob de Haas and Colonel Harry Cutler “on the eve of their departure for Paris as representatives of the Zionist Congress recently held in Philadelphia” where 300 attendees hear a message that the delegates hope to come back “with the message that Zion (a Jewish homeland in Palestine) had become a fact.”

1918: Solomon Sufrin is scheduled to speak at “a special convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America” being held at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street.

1919: According to a cable received in Washington, D.C. today, “Dr. Carfinas, the Jewish Zionist Deputy of the Greek Parliament protested to the Greek Senate in the name of Universal Brotherhood against the crimes committed on Jews in certain countries of Eastern Europe and requested the Minister of Foreign Affairs to voice the protest to the civilized world.”

1919(7th of Tevet, 5680): In Boston, MA, Ralph and Tillie Gotenberg Kublin gave birth to professor of history Dr. Hyman Kublin, the WW II Navy veteran and the wife of Pearl Baru Kublin.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/kublin-hyman

1920: One of two dates in FSB archives for the death of Alexander Dubrovin, the founder of the anti-Semitic journal Russkoye Znamya who helped organized “the pogroms of the Black Hundreds.”

1921(28th of Kislev, 5682): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1921: In Tulsa, OK, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Friedman gave birth to Staley Friedman the author of Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue which “marked the first effort to explain and popularize the humanistic and religious concepts Martin Buber.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

Maurice S. Friedman, Biographer of Martin Buber, Dies at 90 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

1922(10th of Tevet, 5683): Asara B'Tevet

1922(10th of Tevet, 5683): The Chief Rabbi of Alexandria, Rodolfo Compagnano, passed away

1923(21st of Tevet, 5684): Parashat Shemot

1923: Birthdate of Shlomo Venezia, the native of Thessaloniki, Greece who survived Auschwitz and wrote Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz

1923: According to an announcement made today by Dr. Nathan Ratnoff, the President of the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, “a modern medical college and hospital will soon look down on Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives” on eight acres of land purchased for $50,000.

1924(2nd of Tevet, 5685): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1924: It was reported today that that Rabbi Nathan Krass has taken issued with a speech given y Dr. Charles W. Eliot saying that the catch phrase “the melting post,” “like all catch phrases has been superficially conceived or erroneously interpreted.”

1924: In Boston, real estate agent “Frederick Yankelovich and the former Sadie Mostow” gave birth to pollster Daniel Yankelovich. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/business/daniel-yankelovich-master-of-public-opinion-research-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=region&region=region&WT.nav=region&_r=0

1925: Thirty-two-year-old University of Chicago trained attorney Susan Brandeis, the Boston born daughter of Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Alice Goldmark Brandeis married Jacob H. Gilber today.

1925: “A $10,000 trust fund to provide scholarships for young men and women of the United States to study at the Hebrew University” was “established by Louis Gollin, the manager of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in St. Louis.”

1926: It was reported today that the percentage of school children suffering from trachoma has been reduced from 70% to 12%.

1927: Following its premiere performance last night Alexander Tansman’s “Second Concerto for piano and orchestra was performed again tonight in Boston.

1927(5th of Tevet, 5688): Seventy-five-year-old University of Virginia alum and Episcopal convert  Samuel Fox II, the Richmond, VA born son of Ellen and Samuel Fox Mordecai, the  great-great-grandson of German born Jewish merchant Moses Mordecai and the great-grandson of Jacob Mordecai who was an assistant professor of law at Wake Forest College before being name senior profess at Trinity College Law School which became Duke University passed away today.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/mordecai-samuel-fox-ii

1928: Der Oytser (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem directed by Aleksei Dikiy premiered today.

1928(16th of Tevet, 5689): Eight-year-old German born Leopold Stern, a philanthropist and Republican Party activist “known as the dean of diamond importers in America” passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9D07EFDC1031E33ABC4850DFB4678383639EDE

https://www.jta.org/1929/01/02/archive/leopold-stern-pioneer-jeweler-and-bnai-brith-leader-dies-at-age-of-80

1928: “The fourth national labor convention for Palestine held under the auspices of the national labor committee for the Organized Jewish Workers in Palestine opened tonight in New York.  Abraham Shiplacoff, chairman of the national committee gave the welcoming address to the five hundred delegates.  Among the visitors was David Bloch, Mayor of Tel Aviv and Israel Merminsky general secretary of the Palestine Federation both of whom have been visiting the United States for the last ten days.

1929(27th of Kislev, 5690): Third Day of Chanukah

1929: Birthdate of Feigele Peltel who as Vladka Meed used her flawless Polish and Aryan good looks to smuggle pistols, gasoline for firebombs and even dynamite to the Jewish fighters inside the Warsaw Ghetto, and who after the war became an impassioned leader in the national effort to educate children about the Holocaust (As reported by Joseph Berger)

1929: In Warsaw, Rabbi Brachya Lieberman, a notable Gerrer Hasid and wife gave birth of Rabbi Simcha Binem Lieberman who survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as well as Treblinka, Dachau and Theresienstadt.

1929: Roger W. Straus addressed the Chicago Conference of Temple Brotherhoods at their Chanukah Dinner which was being held at the Palmer House Hotel.  Mr. Straus, a New Yorker, is the son of the late Oscar S. Straus and President of the National Federal of Temple Brotherhoods which, has 22,000 members.  In his speech, Mr. Straus connected the meritorious service of many members in the World War with the valor of the Maccabees in issuing a call to show the same kind of dedication in combating “the corrosive, brutal theory of materialism and thereby to serve again our religion, our country and humanity.”

1929: Lt. Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson of Pittsburgh, Joshua Kantrowitz, Ben Altenheimer and Jean Wise will address the Third Annual Chanukah Dinner sponsored by the Metropolitan Conference of Temple Brotherhoods which is being held at the Astor Hotel in New York City.

1930: In Cleveland, Ohio, Bernard Gottesman, an insurgent agent born in Hungary and his wife the former Virginia Weitzner gave birth to Irving Isadore Gottesman “a pioneer in the field of behavioral genetics whose work on the role of heredity in schizophrenia helped transform the way people thought about the origins of serious mental illness.” (As reported by Erica Goode)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/science/irving-gottesman-pioneering-psychologist-on-schizophrenia-dies-at-85.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1931: The first Hebrew-language feature-film "Oded Hanoded" - "Oded the Wanderer", directed by Chaim Halahmi, premiered in Tel Aviv.

1931: Funeral services are scheduled to be held at the Riverside Memorial Chapel for Amson e. Hacker, the husband of the former Flora Livingston.

1932: It was reported today that by eliminating the military parade at the inauguration of Governor Lehman, the State of New York will save $22,000…”

1932: It was reported today that Associate Judge Irving Lehman of the Court of Appeals, brother of the Governor-elect Herber H. Lehman will administer the oath of office as Mayor to Surrogate John P. O’Brien in his court room at noon on December 31. (Editor’s note - Lehman was Jewish. O’Brien was not)

1932: Eighty-year-old “Reverend Samuel Walter Gamble internationally known for his reproduction of the lost Hebrew calendar” and who “lectured and wrote on religious subjects, especially on arguments based on the Hebrew called to prove Sunday and not Saturday was the ancient and true Sabbath” passed away today in Long Beach, CA.

1932: “S. Howard Cohen, president of the Board of Elections, testified for an hour and a half today before the Federal grand jury, which is investigating charges of frauds alleged to have been committed in this city in the November election.”

1933: “Flying Down to Rio,” featuring a score by Max Steiner and songs by Gus Kahn was released in the United States.

1934: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Phi Beta Kappa graduate Roberta Karpel who after marrying Robert Silman gained fame as award winning author Roberta Silman.

http://www.robertasilman.com/

https://books.google.com/books?id=X3HN2tYhR0cC&pg=PA371&lpg=PA371&dq=robert+silman,+jewish&source=bl&ots=0SnAlhtjS0&sig=Kz9su1bat1ha1ije-5oOKjvvWXs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwipr6Chz93cAhVJLKwKHToPCXYQ6AEwB3oECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=robert%20silman%2C%20jewish&f=false

1934: Today, in Chicago, at “joint session of the American Economic Association and the American Sociological Society” “Professor Karl Pribram of the Brookings institute described ‘a unified program of unemployment’ which included a national scheme of unemployment insurance that would deal with normal, season and technological unemployment…”

1935(3rd of Tevet, 5696): The widow of Barond Edmond James de Rothschild, Adelheid (known as Adélaïde) passed away today, 12 months after the Baron had died.

1936: At a dinner at the Hotel Astor, the national service award of the Phi Epsilon Fraternity “consisting of a scroll and a check for $100” was given to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise for being the man “who has made during the year the most distinctive contribution to the creative life of the Jewish people.”

1936: While testifying today before the Peel Commission Moshe Shetrok cited a well-known letter from Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Dr. Chaim Weizmann promising Jews “a proportionate share of employment on public work in Palestine” in connection “with his allegation that the Palestine government does discriminate against Jews in public works including the railways, ports and civil services where a virtual Arab monopoly has been created.

1937: William Dodd completed his term as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.  Dodd was the first U.S. Ambassador appointed to serve as after Hitler came to power. (For more see, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson)

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the General Council for Palestine Jews (Va'ad Leumi) decreed that in view of certain developments, the council was the sole body authorized to reach an agreement with the Arabs.

1937: The British press reported that the Foreign Office had become increasingly alarmed at the extent of Arab and Moslem opposition to Palestine's partition. It had not yet decided whether to appoint a new Palestine Commission, expected to implement the plan, as agreed upon with the Mandatory Commission of the League of Nations.

1937: Heavy fines and prison sentences were imposed on German Jews, accused of illegal ritual slaughtering practices.

1938: “In Hell’s Kitchen,” Irving Sperling, “a jewelry salesman” and “Cecile (Shavitz) Sperling gave birth to “convicted drug dealer” Herbert Sperling.  (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/obituaries/herbert-sperling-drug-boss-tied-to-french-connection-case-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1938: In Berlin, “officials at the Ministry of Finance would neither confirm nor deny the report” “that the 20 per cent capital levy” imposed on the Jews “as a fine for the assassination of Ernest von Rath…is to be increased to 30 per cent.”

1939: “Destry Rides Again” produced by Joe Pasternak and featuring Mischa Auer “as Boris Callahan, the henpecked Russian” was released in the United States today.

1939: U.S. premiere of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame produced by Pandro S. Berman with a script by Sonya Levien and Bruno Frank and music by Alfred Newman.

1939: “Balalaika” a movie version of the English musical directed by Reinhold Schunzel and produced by Lawrence Weingarten was released in the United States today.

1940(29th of Kislev, 5701): Fifth day of Chanukah

1940(29th of Kislev, 5701): Forty-six-year-old Dov Hoz the native of Orsha who was one of the founders of the Haganah and the “founder and CEO of Aviron was killed in an automobile accident today.

https://streetsofisrael.wordpress.com/2014/06/

1940(29th of Kislev, 5701): Seventy-eight year old Sallie Lasker Epstein, the Pine Bluff born daughter of Samuel and Augusta Lasker and the wife of Ephraim Epstein whom she married in 1882 and with whom she had four children – Arnold, Clarence, S.Lasker and Harold – passed away today in Little Rock.

1941(9th of Tevet, 5702): Tullio Levi-Civita passed away.  Born in 1873, Levin-Civita was an Italian mathematician who was one of the founders of absolute differential calculus (tensor analysis) which had applications to the theory of relativity. In 1887, he published a famous paper in which he developed the calculus of tensors. In 1900 he published, jointly with Ricci, the theory of tensors Méthodes de calcul differential absolu et leures applications in a form which was used by Einstein 15 years later. Weyl also used Levi-Civita's ideas to produce a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism. In addition to the important contributions his work made in the theory of relativity, Levi-Civita produced a series of papers treating elegantly the problem of a static gravitational field.  On September 5, 1938 the Racial Laws were passed in Italy which excluded all those of Jewish background from universities, schools, academies and other institutions. Levi-Civita was dismissed from his professorship, forced to leave the editorial board of Zentralblatt für Mathematik, and prevented from attending the Fifth International Congress of Applied Mechanics in the United States. He wrote to a former student in May 1939 “I live as a retired person and I do not move; except in summer, however, if my personal conditions allow me to move. As you maybe know, Jews have been completely expelled from Italian cultural life; in particular, I will not participate in the "Volta Congress" and will not be in Rome in September”. In the last years of his life, in spite of his moral and physical depression, Levi-Civita remained faithful to the ideal of scientific internationalism and helped colleagues and students who were victims of anti-Semitism; thanks to him, many of them found positions in South America or in the United States.

1941(9th of Tevet, 5702): A Jewish physician from Prague, Czechoslovakia, Dr. Karol Boetim dies of spotted typhus while treating patients at a Gypsy camp near the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.

1942: “The Russian People” co-starring Luther Adler is scheduled to open at the Guild today.

1942: “Sweet Charity,” co-authored by Irving Brecher and co-starring Philip Loeb is scheduled to open at the Mansfield Theatre.

1942: Today Jan Komski and three comrades, Mieczyslaw Januszewski, Boleslaw Kuczbara, and Otto Küsel, participated in one of the most famous escapes in the history of Auschwitz. This escape was significant because it was among the first to be organized by the illegal camp resistance movement, and with the help of the local population. “In the morning of Dec 29, 1942, a two-wheel cart drawn by two horses passed the gate at Auschwitz in the afternoon. It carried Kuczbara, dressed in a stolen SS uniform. Alongside walked three inmates, seemingly being escorted by the SS-man. They aroused no suspicion as Otto Küsel was known to all the Blockführers (SS Block Commanders). When they reached the check point at the border of the big sentry chain, Kuczbara showed the guards a cleverly forged pass. His uniform and the pass convinced them to allow the cart and the prisoners through. The men simply walked out of the camp. They made it to the village of Broszkowice where they met a resistance woman who gave them civilian clothes. They spent the night at the home of Andrzej Harat, who actually rented the apartment above them to an SS officer.  Mr. Komski eventually reached the city of Krakow, where he was arrested in a routine roundup as he was sitting on a train awaiting departure for Warsaw. Any escaped prisoner would have been hanged very soon after his return to Auschwitz. But, Komski was not recognized and his identity papers now bore a different name.”

http://www.remember.org/komski/jan-komski.html

1943(2nd of Tevet, 5704): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1943: “A series of statements and affidavits detailing numerous acts of Anti-Semitism and desecration of Protestant churches and Jewish Synagogues in Washington Heights, was issued today by the Eastern regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.”

1944: As he attempted to negotiate a life-saving deal with the Nazis, Rudolf Kastner found himself trapped in Vienna and unable to return to Budapest – a situation that would not change until March of 1945.

1944(13th of Tevet, 5705): Seventy-six year old Bird Stein, the Allegheny, PA, born daughter Pauline (Bernhard) Stein and Solomon Stein, who “received her education at Columbia, the New School for Social Research and NYU and became Bird Stein Gans when she married her second husband Howard Gans with whom she had two children Marian and Robert and who worked to advance the cause of women as can be seen by her leadership role in the National Council of Jewish Women passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bird-stein-gans

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gans-bird-stein

1945(25th of Tevet, 5706): Parashat Shemot

1945 (25th of Tevet, 5706): Seventy-three-year-old University of Pennsylvania trained lawyer Samuel W. Salus, the member of both houses of the state legislature and Republican Party leader who was the husband of Ada R. Salus, the father of Arthurs S. Salus and the grandfather of Samuel W. Salus II passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/12/30/109349549.pdf

http://www.house.state.pa.us/BMC/Bios/PDF/2242.PDF

1945: Just before dawn today British Sixth Airborne Division troops threw a cordon around Ramat Gan a town of 10,000 and searched every part of it, looking for terrorists who blew up police and military installations in near-by Tel Aviv and Jaffa Thursday night.  Authorities arrested more than 800 men between the ages of 16 and 40 making this the largest action of its kind in Palestine.

1946: In Palestine, Major Paddy Brett and three non-commissioned officers serving in the British Army were flogged by attackers alleged to have been members of the Irgun.

1947: Five Jewish doctors driving back to Jerusalem from Hadassah Hospital came under attack from Arab gunman. The doctors found sanctuary with a nearby Jewish family while their attackers burned their car. 

1947: "The 29th of November", a ship filled with "illegal" Jewish immigrants, was driven off the coast of Eretz Israel by the British.  The ship was named in honor of the date when the U.N. approved the partition resolution that effectively created the Jewish state of Israel.

1947: Two ships with 7,000 immigrants are boarded by British forces before they can reach the coast of Palestine. The Jewish Agency wants to avoid confrontation with the British, knowing that immigration will open on 1 February 1948. Ben Gurion gives orders that there has to be no resistance.

1947(16th of Tevet, 5708): Moshe Rembach, a Jew who had been working for Barclays Bank since it opened in 1918, was shot and killed by Arab gunman at the entrance to bank.

1948(27th of Kislev, 5709) Third day of Chanukah

1948(27th of Kislev, 5709): Seventy-year-old British composer Harry Farjeon whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not passed away today.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/farjeon.htm

1948: It was reported today that Dr. Edwin J. Cohn of the Harvard Medical School has been chosen to deliver the 1949 Julius Stieglitz Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago.

1948: Israeli troops pushed deep into the Sinai and established a base at Abu Ageila, 20 miles west of the border between Egypt and Israel.

1948: As Israeli forces finally were driving out the Egyptian invaders, the United Nations called for a cease fire between the Jewish state and the Arab aggressor in the Negev.

1948: Israel responded to the UN call for a ceasefire in the Negev by saying it will continue fighting until Egypt agrees to peace talks while the British government, in a move that shows its pro-Arab and anti-Jewish bias, insists that Israel accept the UN call for an immediate ceasefire.

1948: Ralph Bunche urges the Palestine Conciliation Committee to begin its work.

1949: After premiering in October, “The Reckless Moment” directed by Max Ophüls, produced by Walter Wanger and music by Hans J. Salter was released throughout the United States today.

1950: In New York Melanie (Shroder) and Polish-born violinist Roman Totenberg gave birth to Judge Amy Totenberg.

1952(11th of Tevet, 5713):  Beryl Rubinstein composer and piano virtuoso passed away at the age of 54.  A native of Athens, Georgia, Rubinstein was the son of a rabbi.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel protested to the West on its intensified supply of arms to the Arab states. Britain offered to sell jet planes to Israel, and in an equal number to each separate Arab state, and this would obviously give the combined Arab forces great superiority.

1952(11th of Tevet, 5713): “Yiddishist” Smuel Leshtsinski passed away today after being in an automobile accident in New York.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/06/shmuel-leshtsinski.html

1953: Today, Lawrence Ottinger, Chairman of the Board of the United States Plywood Corporation wrote to the NYT questioning the forecast of a recession by “top economists” published in the Times because, as he said “the prognostications of this group, with once exception were unanimously wrong in 1929” the year of that marked the start of the Great Depression.

1953: Yosef Serflin replaced Yosef Sapir as Minister of Health

1953: Yosef Sapir replaced Yosef Serline as Minister of Transportation

1954: In New York, premiere of “Animal Farm” with music by Mátyás Seiber.

1955: Barbra Streisand makes her first recording, "You'll Never Know" at age 13

1955: In a speech to the Supreme Soviet, Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev condemns Israel as a tool of imperialist states used to threaten its Arab neighbors.

1956: North Philadelphia born University of Pennsylvania trained attorney completed his service as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

1956: Birthdate of Yehudit Ravitz, the native of Beersheba who “is one of the most successful and famous Israeli rock musicians, with a career spanning over thirty years.”

1957: Singer Steve Lawrence, born Sydney Liebowitz in Brooklyn, married fellow entertainer Eydie Gormé. He was Jewish.  She was not.

1957: In Piscataway, NJ, physicist Norman Rudnick and his wife Selma gave birth to multi-talented writer Paul M. Rucnick whose first play was “Poor Little Lambs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/16/theater/theater-rudnick-s-poor-little-lambs-of-yale.html

1958(18th of Tevet, 5719): Seventy-five-year-old Helen Ranshoff Iglauer, the daughter of Joseph and Minnie Frieberg Ranshoff, the wife of Arnold Iglauer gave birth to University of Cincinnati graduate of and Medical College of Ohio trained physician Samuel Iglauer, whom she married in 1906 and with whom she had two children – Charles and Helen – passed away today after which she was buried in the Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery in Evanston, OH

1959(28th of Kislev, 5720): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1959: Stanley M. Isaacs, the minority leader of the City Council tonight “demanded the abolition of New York City’s Slum Clearance Committee” and “as an alternative called for the removal of Robert Moses as its chairman.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/12/30/80569416.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1959: Bari-Ilan University Holds First Commencement Services published today describes the baccalaureate activities at one of Israel’s newest institutions of higher education.

1960: The Israeli cabinet appointed a full committee “to examine the possibility of settlement in the northeastern Negev desert and the Arad area.”

1961(22nd of Tevet, 5722): Sixty-six-year-old Adelaide Cohen, Baroness Cohen, the London born daughter of Sir Isidore Spielmann and Emily Sebag- Montefiore, the wife of Lionel Cohen, Baron Cohen and mother of Elizabeth Adelaide Samuel; Hon. Leonard Harold Cohen and Hon. Hugh Lionel Cohen passed away today.

1961: Having divorced her in 1959, today Billy Rose remarried Joyce Mathews.

1961: Jerry Herman’s off-Broadway musical “Madame Aphrodite” opened at the Orpheum Theatre.

1962(2nd of Tevet, 5723): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah

1962(2nd of Tevet, 5723): Eighty-one-year-old Eva Leo Fox, the New York born daughter of Max and Caroline Seelig Leo and wife William Fox who “founded the Fox Film corporation in 1915” whose name lives on as the “Fox” in Fox Network News.

1964(24th of Tevet, 5725): Seventy-two-year-old Samuel P. Halpern, the Romanian born son of Jacob and Clara Sarah Halpern and the husband of Etta Halpern passed away today in Minneapolis, MN.

1965: After premiering in Tokyo, “Thunderball,” four film in the James Bond series featuring Leonard Sachs was released today in the United Kingdom.

1965(6th of Tevet, 5726): Ninety-five-year-old Avraham Shapira, the husband of Liba Rochel Shapira passed away today in Petah Tikva,

1965(6th of Tevet, 5726): Seventy-two-year-old German born biographer and novelist Dr. Manford George who arrived in New York as penniless refugee and resuscitated his career as the editor of Aufbau, a German weekly, passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9804EEDD103BEF34BC4953DFB766838D679EDE

1966: Elliot Gould and Barbra Streisand gave birth to actor Jason Gould.

1966(16th of Tevet, 5727): Centenarian and more, Bessie Abelson, the wife of Abraham Abelson passed away today after which she was buried in the Talmud Torah Plot of the Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles.

1967: Birthdate of Evan Seinfeld actor, director and heavy metal bassist in the bands Biohazard and Damnocracy

1968: Israeli commandos destroyed 13 Lebanese airplanes.

1969: NBC broadcast the 16th episode of Melville Shavelson’s “My World…and Welcome to it.”

1971: After premiering in the UK in November, “Straw Dogs” starring Dustin Hoffman, produced by Daniel Melncik, with a screenplay by David Zelag Goodman and music by Jerry Fielding was released in the United States today.

1971:  Birthdate of Jay Fiedler, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

1972(24th of Tevet, 5733): Fifty-two-year-old “Milton L. Kaplan, president and general manager of King Features Syndicate since 1968,” the husband of “the former Doris Willens” and the father of Jeffrey, Daniel and Andrew Kaplan” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/30/archives/-milton-l-kaplan52-led-king-features.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

1973: In New York City, novelist Leslie Epstein, the head of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University and the former Irene Goldman baseball executive Theo Epstein who broke the World Series draughts at Boston and at Chicago for the Cubs and whose grandfather Philip and great-uncle Julius won the Oscar for writing the screenplay for “Casablanca.”

1973: An apparent terrorist plot was foiled when authorities detained two Arabs at the airport in London.

1973: While Prime Minister Golda Meir was not averse to some form of territorial compromise to gain peace with the Arabs, she said today that Israel would not descend from the Golan, will not partition Jerusalem and will not allow the distance from Natanya to the border be a mere 18 kilometers.

1974: “Soviet Jewish physicist and activist Alexander Voronel arrived in Israel.”

1975: Today’s TIME magazine cover story name Schwester, who had been named a “Worthy of Jerusalem” in 1974 by Mayor Teddy Kollek, as one of the world’s “living saints” which came as no surprise since “numerous publications had already called her the “Jewish Florence Nightingale” because of “her decades of selfless devotion to patient welfare.”

1975(25th of Tevet, 5736): Eighty-eight year old Julius Borentstein “a native of  Rachov in Russian Poland, who  fled Tsarist military service and came to the United States where went from working in the garment industry to becoming a builder in the Bronx and worked to ensure “the survival of Jewish cultural life by helping to bring the YIVO Institute to New York from Vilna at the outbreak of WW II while raising two daughters – Esther and Sonya – with “his wife, the former Sarah Saltzman” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/30/archives/julius-borenstein-yivo-institute-head.html

1976: Howard Metzenbaum began serving his second, non-consecutive term of office a U.S. Senator from Ohio.

 1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset endorsed the peace plan, as drafted by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and presented to the US and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, by 64 to eight votes with 40 abstentions. More than 1,000 settlers from the administered territories protested against the plan outside the Knesset's gates.

1977: Poland was reported to be seeking to renew relations with Israel that had been severed during the 1967 war.

1979(9th of Tevet, 5740): Parashat Vayigash

1979(9th of Tevet, 5740): Eighty-five-year-old Siegfried Isak Wolff, the Aurich, Germany born son of Regina ad Isaac Wolff and the husband of Kaethe Kate Wolff passed away today in New York City.

1980: Refusnik Yona Kolchinsky was scheduled to be called up for service in the Soviet army.

1980(22nd of Tevet, 5741): Eighty-one-year-old Nadezhda Mandelstam the Russian writer and widow of Osip Mandelstam passed away today.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1981/mar/05/nadezhda-mandelstam-18991980/

1981(3rd of Tevet, 5742): Seventy-one-year-old Milton H. Mostel, the brother of Zero Mostel passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/31/obituaries/milton-h-mostel.html

1981: A Committee to Safeguard Jewish Culture in the USSR was established today “in Paris by the writers Raymond Aron, Simone de Beavoir, Samuel Beckett, Edmond Jacobs, Pierre Emmanuel, Michelle Leiris and Elie Wiesel, the philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch, the jurists, Daniel Jacoby and Louis Pettiti, the journalist Jean Cathala and Professor Jean-Oierre Vernant.”

1982(13th of Tevet, 5743):  Movie producer Sol. C. Siegel passed away.  His cinematic productions included “High Society,” “No Way to Treat A Lady” and “Alvarez Kelly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/31/obituaries/sol-c-siegel-dead-headed-production-of-films-at-m-g-m.html

1983(23rd of Tevet, 5744): Seventy-three-year-old Morris N. Kertzer who had served as a rabbi at congregations in the Bronx and Larchmont passed away today. (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/31/obituaries/rabbi-morris-kertzer-dies-improved-interreligious-ties.html

1985: “The Jew Who Spied for the Nazis” published today provided a review of Arrows of the Almighty: The Most Extraordinary True Spy Story of World War II by Michael Bar-Zohar which tells “the tragic true story of Paul Ernst Fackenheim

1985: HBO’S “Head Office,” a comedy directed and written by Ken Finkelman and co-starring Rick Moranis was released today in the United States.

1986: Eighty-one-year-old actress Grete Moseheim who went to England after the rise of Hitler because her father, Markus Mosheim was Jewish passed away today in New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/30/obituaries/greta-mosheim-81-a-german-leading-lady-of-the-theater.html

1987: Tonight police arrested financial consultant and retired Marine Corps Colonel, Jonathan de Sola Mendes the husband of “the former Mary Ellen Rosenbulth and the grandnephew of Rabbi H. Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Frederic de Sola Mendes,and “charged him with first-degree manslaughter” for  having bludgeoned his father-in-law to death this evening in the victim’s Park Avenue apartment after they allegedly had quarreled over a collection one hundred rare books.

1988: William Andreas Brown, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, presented his credentials today.

1989(1st of Tevet, 5750): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1992: The Southwestern Bell Corporation and Clal Industries of Israel will jointly bid for control of Israel's national telephone company, Clal said today. Clal and Southwestern Bell International Development will bid for a controlling interest in Bezeq, the Israeli telecommunications concern. The Israeli Finance Minister, Abraham Shohat, recommended this month that the Government sell its 75 percent stake in Bezeq but no deadline was set. The five-month-old Labor Government has vowed to speed privatization but has yet to sell any of the big Government-owned enterprises. The former Likud Government sold 25 percent of Bezeq shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 1990.

1993: Yuval Goldan was stabbed today by a terrorist near Adarim in the Hebron area.

1993: “Ghost in the Machine” a sci-fi horror film produced by Wesleyan University grad Paul Schiff, the Bethesda born son of Charlotte and Edward Schiff was released today in the United States.

1993: The last edition of Hadashot was published today.

1995(6th of Tevet, 5756): Composer Shlomo Yoffe died in Beit-Alpha.

1995: The family of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Prime Minister Rabin celebrated the wedding of Vardit Amir and Yithak Cohen in Tel Aviv.

1996(19th of Tevet, 5757): Seventy-five-year-old Leonard “Lenny” Rader, who played basketball at LIU with his “twin brother Howard before going on to play professionally passed away today.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderle01n.html

1997(30th of Kislev, 5758) Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1998(10th of Tevet, 5759): Asara B'Tevet

1999: “The Hurricane” boxing biopic co-starring Live Schreiber was released today in the United States.

1999: In an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, Ira Stoll criticized a speech Rabbi Yitz Greenberg gave last November at the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly in Chicago.

2000(3rd of Tevet, 5761): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2000: “Israelis and Palestinians wrangled today over an 11th-hour compromise peace proposal by the Clinton administration as new violence broke out.”

2001(14th of Tevet, 5762): Parashat Vayechi

2001(14th of Tevet, 5762): Eighty-five-year-old San Francisco born physician and president of the Jewish Home, Julian Davis, the husband of Audrey Davis and the father of James and Keith Davis passed away today.

https://www.jweekly.com/2002/01/04/dr-julian-davis-dies-jewish-home-president/

2002: The New York Times featured books reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including the paperback edition of Middle Age: A Romance, by Joyce Carol Oates

2003: Russian Interior Ministry and FSB units seized 4,376 copies of Blowing up Russia: Terror from within printed in Latvia and purchased by Alexander Podrabinek's Prima information agency, which had passed customs control and were being trucked from Latvia to Moscow for retail delivery

2004(17th of Tevet, 5765): Chemist Julius Axelrod passed away.  Axelrod was a co-winner of the Noble Prize for Chemistry in 1970.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/axelrod.html

2004: In “Putting a Still-Vexed Play in a Historical Context” published today A.O. Scott examines “The Merchant of Venice” and its most famous character, Shylock.

2004: “The Merchant of Venice” directed by Michael Radford who “believed that Shylock was Shakespeare's first great tragic hero” and which “begins with text and a montage of how the Jewish community is abused by the Christian population” was released today in the United States 3 weeks after opening in the United Kingdom.

2005: A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at an IDF checkpoint on the West Bank. An IDF soldier and two Palestinians were killed in addition to the bomber.

2005: Alice Loeb, daughter of Ernst Loeb and wife of John Strugnell passed away today in Grasse, France, two days after celebrating her 85th birthday.

2005(28th of Kislev, 5766): Day 4 of Chanukah

2005(28th of Kislev, 5766): Ninety-five-year-old architect Armand P Bartos passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/arts/10bartos.html?_r=0

2006: The Jewish Daily Forward, featured a review of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic History by Cormac Ó. Gráda.  “Gráda’s new economic chronicle, “traces the history of the Jews in Ireland from 1079, when they first arrived, up until the present day. The book’s main focus is the Jewish community from the 1870s through the 1940s, roughly during the Ulysses author’s lifetime. While much has been written about the Jewishness of James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, one of the most famous characters in all of literature, few know anything about the remarkable community in Ireland that inspired Joyce to create him.”

2007: The Chicago Tribune features a review of People of the Book, Geraldine Brook’s new novel that follows the tortuous path of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

2007: The Chicago Tribune reported that the 47,000 square foot property housing Streit’s, the last matzo factory on  New York’s Lower East Side, is going on the marked for $25 million in part of the city that is becoming increasingly gentrified.  The factory will keep producing matzo until the owners build a new one in about a year, probably in New Jersey.

2008: In “Anatomy of a Scam,” Time magazine offers a pictograph description of a Ponzi scheme as it reports that “…Bernard Madoff was arrested for allegedly bilking investors out of up to $50 billion in a Ponzi scheme described as one of history’s largest swindles.”

2008: “The U.S. Treasury gave GMAC of which Jacob Ezra Merkin served as the Non-executive Chairman of GMAC $5 billion from its $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).”

2008: The stars of the hit Broadway musical “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” – Stephen Bogardus, Kerry O’Malley, Jeffry Denman & Meredith Patterson ring The Closing Bell at the NYSE in celebration of the holiday season.  “Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas,’” a new musical stage reinvention of the classic film, is now playing a limited engagement on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre.

2008(2nd of Tevet, 5769): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2008: A bottle of flammable liquid was hurled at Temple Sholom one of Chicago's oldest synagogues. The building caught fire but did not suffer “major damage.”

2008 (2 Tevet 5769): Irit Shitrit, a 36-year-old mother of four who had sought shelter in a bus station was killed by a rocket in downtown Ashdod.  Her sister was one of eight other civilians injured in the attack.

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

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

2009: In Jerusalem, Yellow Submarine (Tzolelet Tzehubah) hosts Elan Bar Lavi, the Mexican/Jerusalemite guitarist, back in Israel after an American and Mexican tour.

2009: Opening session of International Conference on Conservative Judaism: Halakhah, Culture and Sociology at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

2009: Israel’s Supreme Court ruled today that a major access highway to Jerusalem running through the occupied West Bank could no longer be closed to most Palestinian traffic.

2009: “The New Israeli Foundation for Cinema & TV announced today special funding to devlop scripts based on the stories of Shalom Aleichem.”

2009(12th of Tevet. 5770): Eighty-three-year-old journalist Janina (née Lewinson) Bauman, the wife of “socialist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman” passed away toay.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jan/26/janina-bauman-obituary

2009: Mathieu “Schneider was waived by the Vancouver Canucks” today.

2009(12th of Tevet, 5770): Eighty-three-year-old “David Levine, whose macro-headed, somberly expressive, astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes, politicians and potentates were the visual trademark of The New York Review of Books for nearly half a century, died today in Manhattan.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/arts/design/30levine.html

2010(22 Tevet): In the yearbook of the Meisel Synagogue in Prague, the 22nd of Tevet is designated as the date on which to commemorate the escape of Yosef Thein from the gallows in the Hebrew year 5383 (1622).

2010: “Judaism and Social Justice: What Can We Contribute to the Discourse in the Age of Globalization?” and “Brotherly Love: Joseph Revisited,” a session that will use close reading techniques to explore the opening of Vayeshev (Genesis 37) and gain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of the text and its surprising insights into the story of Joseph and his brothers, are two of the programs scheduled to be presented at today’s meeting of the Limmud Conference.

2010: Perez Hilton broke the news earlier today that not only is Natalie Portman who starred in “Black Swan” along with three other Jewish actresses all playing ballerinas (Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey), now engaged to marry her choreographer from “Black Swan,” but that she is also pregnant. For those wondering about Millepied's ethnic origins, he is French, but not Jewish.

2010(22nd of Tevet, 5771): Rabbi Menachem Zeev “Wolf” Greenglass, a Chabad kabbalist and educator who exchanged hundreds of letters over the years with the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, died in Montreal today at the age of 94. Greenglass was a founder of the Rabbinical College of Canada in Montreal after escaping Europe during the Holocaust and taught there for decades. He gave his final lecture on the Chabad philosophical treatise Tanya in 2007. Greenglass was born in Lodz, Poland, to parents who followed the Alexander Chasidic dynasty. In Poland, Greenglass became close to Rabbi Zalman Schneersohn, a descendant of the first Lubavitcher rebbe, and then enrolled in the Otwock Lubavitch yeshiva, where he met Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the son-in-law of the then current Lubavitcher rebbe. When World War II broke out, Greenglass headed for Vilna and was among those who received later transit visas from the Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara, who saved thousands of Jews. Greenglass crossed Russia by rail, went by boat to Japan from Vladivostok and then to Shanghai before reaching Canada. Once there, Chabad tasked him to open schools, including Montreal's Beth Rivkah Girls School, and work with Jewish children in the Montreal public schools. During that time, Greenglass continued a correspondence with Schneersohn, who had become Chabad's rebbe, and who wrote to him in 1954 that "without an intellectual appreciation for the truth … one cannot expect a student to always be in total acceptance." Greenglass also maintained a lengthy correspondence with the Jerusalem mystic Rabbi Yeshaya Asher Zelig Margaliot.

2010: Liverpool marked the death of Avi Cohen with a period of applause before their Premier League match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Cohen had been declared legally dead the day before after being involved in fatal motorcycle accident.

2010: Leah Berkenwald published her “Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2010”

http://jwa.org/blog/top-10-moments-for-jewish-women-in-2010

2011: Those viewing tonight’s scheduled screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi creation, 2001: A Space Odyssey at the San Francisco MOMA will find their viewing experience enhanced if they wear the Dreidel Vision Goggles available at the Jewish Museum for a mere $3.00

2011: Rav Gav is scheduled to appear at Greek Themed International night sponsored by HipJLM (Heneni International Programs: Jerusalem).

2011: Mrs. Raize Guttman is scheduled to present “Challah for a Kallah,” an interactive Challah class which will cover everything from the hashkafa to the halacha of baking challah as well as learning how to make new and interesting challah shapes.

2011: An 8-year-old girl who became the symbol of a recent public struggle against gender segregation and religious extremism returned to school today, for the first time since a violent incident that sparked a nation-wide protest movement. Na'ama Margolese turned into a household name last week after Channel 2 broadcasted a segment in which the young girl's described being spat on and accosted by ultra-Orthodox men over what they deemed to be her indecent apparel.

2011: Israel's population stands at 7.836 million, the Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) indicated today as part of its year-end survey.

2012: The Rishonim String Quartet is scheduled to perform at the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

 

2012: “I Wish” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The Millinery Center Synagogue is scheduled to host a Kumzitz Melaveh Malka featuring Singer Songwriter Dov Shurin along with Kabalistic Insights in Judaism with Reb Yitzchak Ring

2012(16th of Tevet, 5773): On the final Shabbat of 2012, Jews read Vayehi, the final parsha of Bereshit.

2012: After reports were made public today by the PA that there had been nine deaths due to the swine flu, “a spokesman for the Israeli health ministry said officials were monitoring the situation in the West Bank, but so far are not taking any action.”

2012: It was reported today that “Ron Dermer, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is set to replace Michael Oren as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, an Israeli newspaper reported.”

2013(26th of Tevet, 5774): Ninety-two-year-old “Rabbi Mordecai Chertoff, a former foreign news editor of The Palestine Post and survivor of the February 1948 bombing of the paper’s Jerusalem office” passed away today.

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom and Correspondences: A Poem and Portraits by Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein.

2013: In the Bronx, the Sholem-Aleichem Cultural Center is schedule to host a “Yiddish Event.”

2013: “Like Father, Like Son” and “Brokeback Mountain” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: At least five Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel. Two of the rockets fired this morning exploded near the northern town of Kiryat Shemona; others reportedly landed in Lebanese territory. No injuries or damage were reported in Israel. The Israeli military returned fire in the direction of the rocket launches. (As reported by JTA and Forwards)

2013: “In Week 17 of the 2013 NFL season, Julian Edelman became the third Patriots player in team history to catch over 100 passes in a season today in the Patriots' 34–20 win over the Buffalo Bills

2013: Immigration from France and other Western European countries was up dramatically in 2013, but immigration from the US was down, according to figures released today by the Jewish Agency for Israel. (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2014: The Palestinians are scheduled to submit their UN Security Council statehood resolution to a vote today.

2014: “The Farewell Party” and “Boyhood” are scheduled to shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Marc Trestman, the only Jewish head coach in the NFL was fired today after two seaons.

2014: “Aryeh Deri of the Shas party offered his resignation to the ultra-Orthodox party’s steering council of rabbis today, a day after the publication of footage of the party’s late former spiritual leader criticizing Deri and praising his arch-rival Eli Yishai, the former leader of the party.” (As reported by Stuart Winer and Tamar Pileggi

2014: An Egyptian court today ban an annual festival in honor of Yaakov Abu Hatzira a Moroccan rabbi whose tomb is in the Nile Delta province of Beheira, south of Alexandria.”

2014: Yuri Kissin, “who immigrated to Israel from Russia in 1990 and is a graduate of Tel Aviv University” is scheduled to sing the title role when the Jerusalem Opera performs “Figaro” today.

2015(17th of Tevet, 5776): Forty-two-year-old Neil Gandler, “a Jewish tech entrepreneur who lived out of rental cars’ was shot and killed today by two burglars “while sleeping in a rented car in a gym parking lot during a failed robbery attept.

2015: The Israel Air Force Flight Academy Air Show/Graduation and Airshow/Misdar Knafaim (Wings Ceremony) is scheduled to take place today at the Chatzeirim Air Force Base near Beer Sheva. 

2015: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld is scheduled to speak on “Wherefore Art Thou Modern Orthodoxy?”

2016(29th of Kislev, 5777): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2016: YNY is scheduled to come to an end with an “amazing Student Concert.”

2016: In Little Rock, AR, Governor Hutchinson is scheduled to “deliver Chanukah greetings a the Public Menorah Lighting sponsored by Chabad Lubavitch.

2016: “Operation Wedding” is scheduled to be screened with “The Chop,” the winner of the Pears Short Film Fund at UKJF at JW3, the Jewish Community Centre London.

2016: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host its New Year’s Klezmer Concert this evening.

2016: Citing “high prices as one reason for the lack of success in Israel,” “Gottex Brands, also known as Zara Group Israel, which holds the GAP franchise in Israel” announced today that it “will shut down its seven stores in Israel in 2017.”

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host Shabbat Chanukah services followed by a special congregational dinner.

2017: The Exhibition “1917: How One Year Changed The World” which has opened in New York at the American Jewish Historical Society on September 1 is scheduled to come to a close today. (As reported by Julia Klein)

2017:  Today, in a game against the Arizona Coyotes, Zach Hyman scored the fifth shorthanded goal of his career, which is the third most by a Leaf’s player in their first three NHL seasons.”

2017: In Jerusalem, Jodi and Gavin Samuels are scheduled to host a Shabbat Dinner that will include a presentation by “guest speaker, Michael Bassin.”

2018: In Rochester, NY, the JCC CenterStage Theatre is scheduled to present a performance of “Big Wigs.”

2018: After having arrived yesterday on his first ever official to the country, Prime Minister is scheduled to spend Shabbat in Brazil today.

2018: In Washington, DC, Theatre J is scheduled to present “Talley’s Folly,” a “Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy” about Matt Friedman, a “middle-aged Jewish accountant.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to a “Survivor Talk” by George Levy Mueller.

2018(21st of Tevet, 5779): Parashat Shemot - As the secular world prepares to celebrate a New Year, Jews begin reading “a new” book of the Torah as they start with Shemot.

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 by Norman Lebrecht and the recently released paperback edition of The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 by Zachary Leader.

2019: JCC and Chabad of Contra Costa are scheduled to host the public menorah lighting at Alamo Plaza.

2019: Final performance of “The Sorceress” Avrom Goldfaden’s 1870’s operetta which is produced by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene is scheduled to take place at he Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2019: In the evening, in Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled host their annual Chanukah Party complete with latkes, sour cream, apple sauce and whole lot more fun.

2019: In Brookline, MA, New England Yachad is scheduled to host the “Teen and Adult Chanukah Party.

2019: In London, JW 3 is scheduled to host the first screening of “Spider in the Web.”

2019(1st of Tevet, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

2020: Hadar is scheduled to present “Rising Song Intensive,” a one-day virtual seminar for people    of all musical backgrounds…”

2020: The 3-day long December Institute presented by NFTY Northeast is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: Judaism Your Way in Colorado is schedule to continue its virtual cooking classes with instructions in how to make Mandelbrot

2020: YNY is scheduled to host a Lunchtime concert with London’s Fran & Flora (Francesca Ter-Berg and Flora Curzon) \ one of the British capital’s most sought-after bands followed by an evening concert with “The Nigunim Trio (Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg & Rob Schwimmer).”

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host the Head of the Lebanon Department in the IDF Intelligence Corps lecturing on “The Northern Border: Exposed.”

2020: Today “Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai is scheduled to announce his entry into national politics and the formation of a new party ahead of Israel's upcoming elections for parliament, Hebrew media outlets reported yesterday.”

2021: Israel’s first shipment of Pfizer’s anti-COVID pill is scheduled to arrive today.

2021: In Columbus, OH, Congregation Tiferith Israel is scheduled to host the final session of the year of Judaism 101 with Rabbi Braver.

2021: The EcoMotion and PLANETech communities are scheduled to to present Sustain the Chain - Supply Chains and logistics in a Climate Senstine World at the Herzog Tower in Tel Aviv.

2021: Iowa State is scheduled to play today in the Cheez It Bowl which arguably may be the only Kosher game of the bowl season, since its namesake snack cracker is officially Kosher Dairy.

2022: The Center for Jewish history and the Polish Cultural Institute of New York are scheduled to host  one of three spoken word performances by Artistic resident Zunna Hertzberg, the creator of the installation “Mechitza: Individual and collective Resistance of Women During the Shoah.”

2022: Yiddish New York is scheduled to come to an end today with a symposium on “Klezmer: Musical Fusion and Allusion.”

2022: The Award Ceremony and Gala Concert with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra conducted by Noam Zur is scheduled to take place at the Jerusalem Theatre’s Henry Crown Auditorium.

2023: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast a “Special Concert Recital for Viola and Piano” featuring violist Leikie Glick and pianist Michell Buskova.

2023: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a d’var Torah by Rabbi Shippel on the Parsha of the Week.

2023: As December 29 begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 84 in captivity.  (Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time

 

 

 

 

 

 

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