Saturday, February 24, 2024

This Day, February 25, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

February 25

161 BCE: Jewish soldiers led by Judah Maccabee defeated Nicanor, the Syrian general who had boasted that he would destroy the Temple and mount Judah’s head on the gates of Jerusalem.

138: The Emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor. For Jews Hadrian stands out as one of the cruelest of the Roman emperors.  He is the one who defeated Bar Kochba.  It is said that Hadrain was more evil than Titus because he did not just make war against the Jewish people.  He made war against Judaism by banning its practice.  In one of those many ironic twists of fates, Antionious Pious, his hand-picked successor reversed the decrees of Hadrain. He allowed the Torah to be studied and is laws obeyed.  He reinstituted the ban on imperial statues in synagogues and he allowed the Jews to practice the rite of circumcision.

628: The reign Persian Shah Khosrau II who “conquered Jerusalem after a brief siege in 614 during the Byzantine – Sasanian War” came to an end today.

1308: Coronation of King Edward II.  One of this uniquely incompetent monarch’s claim to fame is that he was the first King of England to reign over a realm without any Jews since the Norman Conquest in 1066.  Edward’s father, Edward I, had expelled the Jews in 1290.

1304: Birthdate of Ibn Battuta, the Moslem Moroccan explorer who visit large segments of Asia and Africa where he chronicled meetings with various groups including Jews in India and China.

1333: Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveler, visited Jewish communities in India

1336: Alfonso X of Castile was persuaded by the apostate Alfonso of Valladolid to ban the prayer Aleinu. Alfonso alleged that the prayer was anti-Christian. As a result, many Jewish communities excised a sentence from the prayer which has only been printed in recent years in only some prayer books.  The offending line which was taken out comes just before the time when everybody bows and recites “Va-ananchnu Kor’im – But we bend our knees…” The line that was taken out reads “For they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god which helps not.”  If you read the entire prayer and insert this line, the following line makes a lot more sense.  According to several commentators the offending line had nothing to do with the Christians but had been placed there to refer to all heretics and that its origins were found in Isaiah (30:7 and 45:20). Further evidence refuting the claim that it was anti-Christian can be found in the fact that it was composed in the third century by Rav Abba Arucha head of the Academy of Sura (Persia) which was not a Christian country.  Ashkenazi prayer books dropped the line but Sephardic prayer books i.e. those in the land of Islam, retained the line.  Today it can be found in some Ashkenazi prayer books including those in the Artscroll Series.

 1451: Nicholas V issued a papal bull banning all social intercourse between Christians and Jews probably caused by a fear of Christians being attracted to Judaism. A Christian who converted to Judaism and the Jews who helped him were usually subject to the death penalty in most Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries.  It is amazing that with the Church's attitude towards Judaism, and with the contempt that Jews in which Jews were held, that there should be such a fear of "Jewish missionizing".

1570:  Pope Pious V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.  This was one of the steps on the road to loosening the stranglehold that doctrinal Christianity had on Western Europe.  As the Church’s grip on Europe weakened it opened up the way to a religious toleration that was highly beneficial to the Jewish people.

1593: Pope Clement VIII issued “Caeca et Obdurata Hebraeorum perfidia” (the blind and obdurate perfidy of the Hebrews) a papal bull which expelled the Jews from the Papal States, effectively revoking the bull Christiana pietas issued in 1586 by his predecessor Pope Sixtus V.The bull was a culmination of Clement VII's tightening of the anti-Jewish measures of his predecessors which began with his elevation to the papacy in 1592. The bull gave Jews three months to leave the Papal States (with the exception of Rome, Ancona, and the Comtat Venaissin of Avignon). The main effect of the bull was to evict Jews who had returned to areas of the Papal States (mainly Umbria) after 1586 (following their expulsion in 1569) and to expel Jewish communities from cities like Bologna (which had been incorporated under papal dominion since 1569). For the Jews remaining within Rome, Ancona, or the Comtat Venaissin, the bull re-established mandatory weekly sermons. The bull also resulted in the relocation of Jewish cemeteries to Ferrara and Mantua. The bull alleged that Jews in the Papal States had engaged in usury and exploited the hospitality of Clement VIII's predecessors "who, in order to lead them from their darkness to knowledge of the true faith, deemed it opportune to use the clemency of Christian piety towards them" (alluding to Christiana pietas).

1634: Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian military leader during the Thirty Years War who permitted a variety of non-Catholic sects, including Jews, to worship freely, refused to enforce” the Edict of Restitution which “essentially turned back the religious clock to pre-reformation days,” passed away today.

1713: The reign of Frederick I, who in 1709 appointed Aaron ben Benjamin Wolf “to the office of chief rabbi of Berlin with jurisdicition over all the Jews living in the mark” came to an end today.

1742: Birthdate of Nachum the son of David who died before reaching the age of five.

1774(14th of Adar, 5534): Purim celebrated as the Parliament in London prepares to enact measures punishing the colony of Massachusetts for the act of rebellion known as “The Boston Tea Party.

1775: In Kingston, Jamaica, Moses Israel Henriques and Abigail Henriques gave birth to Abraham Quixano Henriques, Esq the thrice married husband of Leah Rachel Henriques; Rebecca Henriques and Ann Henriques

1790(11th of Adar, 5550): Ta’anit Esther on the same day that Eldridge Gerry addressed the United States House of Representatives on the issue of the national government assuming responsibility for debts incurred by the various States of the Union.

https://www.consource.org/document/elbridge-gerry-in-the-house-of-representatives-1790-2-25/

1795: First New York City performance of “Sheva, The Benevolent” by English playwright Richard Cumberland which features, Sheva, “the Jewish moneylender as the benevolent hero.”

1799: Napoleon defeated the army led by Al Jazzar as he made his way from Khan Younis to Gaza.

1799: Napoleon captured Gaza. (Yes, the same place in the news today). This was his first encounter with "Palestinian" Jews.” It is said that he offered “the reestablishment of ancient Jerusalem” as a Jewish homeland in return for Jewish loyalty.

1803: A major redistribution of territorial sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire is enacted, via an act known as the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss.

1806: Birthdate of Rabbi Salomon Ulmann the French rabbi who among other things organized the Central Conference of the Chief Rabbis of France

1806: Baptism of German theologian Johann August Wilhelm Neander who had been born David Mendel, the son of a Jewish peddler Emmanuel Mendel.

1808: Eighteen-year-old Caroline Lazarus, the daughter of Marks Lazarus married Aaron Phillips today.

1809(8th of Adar, 5569): Parashat Tetzvaeh; Shabbat Zachor observed for the last time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, a strong proponent of religious freedom and according to some, the person who popularized the expression “separation of Church and State.”

1810: Simcha De Lara Cohen and London native Isaac Crawcour gave birth to Solomon Crawcour.

1824: Moritz Bertram married Sophia Boss at the Hambro Synagogue.

1825(7th of Adar I, 5585): Thirty-one-year-old Hannah Aarons (Hannah bat Aharon be Jacob ZL) passed away today.

1826: In Charleston, SC, Rebecca Phillips and Isaiah Moses gave birth to Adeline Moses, the wife of Adolph J. Brady with whom she had five children – Matilda, Isaiah, Illiee, Edwin and Rosa.

1830: In Charleston, SC Moses and Isabel Mordecai gave birth to future Baltimore resident Hortensia Mordecai.

1832: Kitty Etting and Richmond born Benjamin I. Cohen who were married in 1819 gave birth to Kate Frances Cohen today.

1834: The “wife of Shmuel bar Shlomeh” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1840: Birthdate of German philosopher, the Kantian, Otto Liebmann

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_12511.html

1841: Birthdate of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French artist who painted “Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers” (most commonly referred to as Pink and Blue).The painting portrayed the 2 daughters of the banker Louis Raphael Cahen d'Anvers, the blonde, Elisabeth, born in December 1874, and the younger, Alice, in February 1876, when they were respectively six and five years old. The artist produced many portraits for the families of the Parisian Jewish community at the time. Renoir was commissioned to paint many portraits for this family, which he had met through the collector Charles Ephrussi, proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_and_Blue_(Renoir)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Renoir_Mlles_Cahen_d_Anvers.jpg

1842: Birthdate of Elias Landauer who with “his spouse, Bertha Bodenheimer Landauer, immigrated from Germany in 1866 settled in Harrisonburg, Louisiana where he operated a retail supply business for 22 years before coming to New Orleans and opening Landauer & Meyer, a wholesale hat store’

1844: Birthdate of Leó Frankel, the Hungarian born revolution who active in the First International and a member of the Paris Commune that was formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War.

1846: Henry Hyman Defries married Dinah Samson in Liverpool today.

1847: State University of Iowa was approved.  What is now called the University of Iowa has certainly provided employment and educational opportunities for a fair number of Jews from the land of the Hawks as well a number of other places. The 28,000-student body includes approximately 600 Jewish undergrads and 200 Jewish grad students.  The school offers ten Jewish studies courses and the campus offers students a choice of Hillel or Chabad.  They also have access to Agudas Achim and its Rabbi, Jeff Portman, a mensch in the truest sense of the word. Several distinguished Jewish scholars have taught at the university including the late Dr. Jonathan A. Goldstein who provided the introduction and commentary for The Anchor Bible's Book of Maccabees and Dr. David Schoenbaum who has authored numerous works about German history as well as The United States and the State of Israel, a diplomatic history of relations between the United States and Israel from 1948 to 1993.

1848: Birthdate of Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé the French diplomat and archaeologist who provided “much of the earliest documentation about the Temple Mount. Because his work was done with the “full consent of the Muslim Counsel” he “work included the most complete and detailed mongraphs on how the mosques looked and their relationships to ancient Temple of Jerusalem.”  De Vogue “was also known for his architectural studies of Jerusalem and its surroundings.” (For more on this Digging Through the Bible by Richard A. Freund

1848: Birthdate of Hungary native Josef Schiff, the “Austrian stenographer” who was “appointed teacher of stenography at the Vienna Academy of Agriculture in 1874” and “lecturer on Gabelsberg’s system of stenographer at the University of Vienna in 1898” which led to him receiving “the title of professor from the Emperor of Austria.”

1850(13th of Adar, 5610): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim

1850: In South Carolina, Alexander Abrams, the son of Elias and Catherine Abrahams, and his wife Elizabeth Abrams gave birth to Isabella (Belle) Brady who became Isabella Brad when she married Isaiah Abram Brady.

1851: Elias Landauer, the German born son of Raphael Löb Landauer and Lucia Pessel Landauerm and his wife Karoline Kehle Landauer gave birth to Raphael Landauer

1855: The Jewish residents of Lancaster PA organized Congregation Shaarai Shomayim which then took possession of the old Jewish cemetery.

1856(19th of Adar I, 5616): Eighty-three-year-old Anglo-Jewish poet Isaac Gompertz, the Middlesex born son of Solomon Gompertz and Lydia Cohen whose works include "The Modern Antique", "Time, or Light and Shade" and "Devon,” the husband of Charlotte Florence Wattier with whom he had three children and the brother of Barnet Gompertz and animal rights activist Lewis Gompertz passed away today after which he as interred at the Exeter Jewish Cemetery.

https://books.google.com/books?id=J6v3p_cYpYEC

https://books.google.com/books?id=Jkg_AQAAMAAJ

https://archive.org/details/devonapoem00gompgoog/page/n9/mode/2up

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6797-gompertz-isaac

1856: Professor O.M. Mitchell is scheduled deliver a lecture tonight entitled "Critical Examination of the Astronomical Allusions and Illustrations Employed by the Writers of the Sacred Books of the Hebrews" at the Brooklyn Athenaeum. 

1858: Sir Anthony de Rothschild, Louis Nathan, Ephraim Alex and Marcus Samuel, the father of the first Lord Bearsted were among those who attended a conference designed to deal with the problems of “the strange and foreign poor” held in the chambers of the Great Synagogue in London.

1859: The first formal meeting was held at 31 New Bridge Street of the Board of Guardians which consisted of delegates from the London’s three leading congregations.

1860: Birthdate of Professor Hirsch Loeb Sabsovich, the native Berdiansk, Russia who came to the United States in 1888 to serve as an agricultural chemist at Colorado State Agricultural College before becoming the “General Agent of the Baron De Hirsch Fund and the first mayor of the Jewish Agricultural Colony at Woodbine, NJ.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/03/24/100147007.pdf

1861(15th of Adar, 5621): Shushan Purim

1861: Judah P. Benjamin began serving as Attorney General in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis.

1862(25th of Adar I, 5622): German educator Emanuel Hecht passed away.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7469-hecht-emanuel

1862: Birthdate of Stanisław Głąbiński Polish attorney and political leader who shared a cell in Lubyanka Prison with Rabbi Moses Schorr with whom he formed a close friendship before the Jew and Gentile met the same fate – murder by the NKVD in 1941.

1862: A fire broke at 6 o'clock this morning in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, on Lamartine-place.  Damages which are valued at three hundred dollars, should be fully covered by insurance.

1862: During the American Civil War commissioning of the USS Monitor, the U.S. Navy ironclad with the revolving turret that revolutionized naval war and whose crew included William Durst, the Austrian born “coal heaver” who was the last surviving member of the ship’s crew.

1865(29th of Shevat, 5625): Shabbat Shekalim observed as Union calvary included General George Armstrong Custer prepared to move up the Shenandoah Valley in the closing months of the Civil War.

1867: Ralph Disraeli and his wife gave birth to British political leader Coningsby Disraeli, the nephew of Benjamin Disraeli.

1868: In Portsmouth, Isaac Phillips, the rabbi of the Portsmouth Hebrew Congregation and his wife gave birth to Jacob Phillips, the author of A Peep Into the Talmud and Jewish Rites and Ceremonies who served as the rabbi of congregations at Tredegar, Swansea, Sunderland and Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony and was “Justice of the Peace for the Division of Port Elizabeth’

1869(14th of Adar, 5629): Purim observed for the last time during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson.

1869: “In Sagor, Russia, Etta and Solom Etta Levene” gave birth to Dr. Phoebus Aaron Levene, “the internationally recognized authority in biochemistry and husband of Anna Erickson Levene who in 1892 came to the United States where he began practicing medicine in New York City.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phoebus-Levene

1870(24th of Adar I, 5630): Seventy-two-year-old Danish poet Henrik Hertz passed away today.

1870: As a reminder that the battle over the separation of church and state which has been a cornerstone of Jewish success in the United States is on-going, a meeting was held at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in New York in which the attendees called for a national convention that would promote “constitutional recognition of Almighty God and the Christian religion in the United States.”

1871(4th of Adar, 5631): Parashat Terumah

1871: London native Dinah Abrahams and William Benjamin Collins gave birth to Alexander Solomon Collins.

1871(4th of Adar, 5631): Seventy-two-year-old Maurice Schlesinger (born Moritz Adolf Slesinger)
“a German music editor” who followed in the footsteps of his father Adolf Martin Schlesinger and founding a music publishing house passed away today in Baden-Baden.

1871: Rabbi Stephen Wise of Cincinnati delivered a lecture on the Apostle Paul, the third and final in a series of addresses on the Origin of Christianity. The well attended event took place at Steinway Hall in New York City.

1874: Jonas Hart married Amelia Cohen in Dublin today.

1875: Today eleven-year-old pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler made her debut “at a concert of the Wolfsohn’s Beethoven Society.”

1876(30th of Shevat, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Adar observed during the U.S. Centennial Celebration.

1876: In Birmingham, England, 30-year-old Bernhard Hast and 28 year old Fanny Nelken gave birth to Walter Hast, the husband of Margaret Lennie.

1877: It was reported that the Purim Association will host a masked ball at Delmonico’s on March 1st in celebration of this minor Jewish festival.

1877: A reception celebrating Purim was held today at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews.  The event was hosted by the lady managers of the well-maintained facility located at 87th Street and Avenue A in New York City.

1877: Professor Felix Adler delivered a detailed laudatory address to a mostly Jewish audience at Standard Hall on the life and teachings of Baruch Spinoza.  The 200th anniversary of the death of the famous Jewish Dutch philosopher provided the impetus for the “panegyric.”

1879” Birthdate of German silent film actor and director Julius Falkenstein who passed away the same year the Nazis came to power.

1880(13th of Adar, 5640) Ta'anit Esther observed as James A Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock prepare their Presidential campaigns.

1881: It was reported today that the will of Louis Strauss of San Francisco includes bequests to the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society of San Francisco ($10,000), and the Jewish Orphan Asylum of New York ($5,000) as well as three other non-Jewish institutions.

1881: It was reported today that Marion Calisch, young Jewess kindergarten teacher who disappeared mysteriously, has been re-united with her parents and taken home.  The police are still investigating the matter since they do not find Ms Calisch’s explanation of events creditable.

1882: A mass meeting is scheduled to be held at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia during which the attendees will express their outrage at the treatment of Russian Jews by the Czarist government.  The multi-denominational array of speakers will be expressing their sympathy with the plight of the refugees, some of whom have just arrived in the City of Brotherly Love.

1882: It was reported today that John W. Foster will be deliver a lecture on “The Czar and His People” before the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Chickering Hall.  The New York event will be a benefit for Jewish refugees who have fled persecution in Russia.

1882: A Purim celebration for the Temple Beth-El Sunday School students was held at the Terrace Garden this afternoon in New York City.

1882: The Young Men’s Association of Temple Beth-El sponsored a grand ball in Terrace Garden.  This Purim celebration was organized by Nathan Ullman, Louis Lowenfels and Samuel Eiseman.

1883: At Frank-fort-on Main, Germany, Joseph H. and Ida (Kopp) Rossbach gave birth University of Munich Ph.D. Max J.H. Rossbach, the husband of Mabel Limburg, who went to work in New York in 1905 for J.H. Rossbach and Brothers which he became President of in 1919 while also serving as President of the Hide and Leather Association of New York and the the President of the National Association of Importers of Hides and Skins.

1884: Birthdate of Else Feldman, the native of Leopoldstadt (Austria) who overcame poverty to become a leading socialist author and writer which did not keep the Nazis from murdering her Sobibor.

1884: Birthdate of Chicago native and University of Michigan educated advertising executive Louis H. Hartman, the husband of Ann Hoffman Hartman and the father of Robert H. Hartman who had begun his career with Sears, Roebuck and Company and was known for his activities as beekeeper.

1885: Birthdate of Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, who personally saved Rachel Cohen and two of her children from the Nazi death camps.

1886: In San Francisco, Louis I and Deborah (Wise) Ostroski gave birth Houston College and Stanford University alum Herbert M. Ostroski, the Major in the United States Cavalry and an associate in the law firm of Turner and Geraghty who was the husband of Helen D. Pupkin.

1887: In Sheffield, England, David and Jochebed (Chaim) Benedict gave birth George Benedict, an alum of Jew’s College and the University of London and husband of Pauline Lewin with whom he had two children – Harold and David Jr – who organized and served s the first Rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Philadelphia, before moving on to Shaari Zedek in Tampa before settling in at Congregation Emanu-El in Roanoke, VA.

1887: Relief expedition to rescue the apostate Jew turned Ottoman official Emin Pasha, under the command of Henry M. Stanley, left Zanzibar for its next stop, Banana at the mouth of the Congo River.

1888(13th of Adar, 5648): Parahat Tetzaveh; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim

1888(13th of Adar, 5648): Prague born Austrian journalist Michael Klapp, a special correspondent in Italy and Spain for the Neue Freie Presse and co-founder of Montagrsrevue with Jacob Herzog, passed away today.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9363-klapp-michael

1888: Birthdate of John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953 through 1959.  No, Dulles was not Jewish. But this patrician Cold Warrior did play a major role in American Israeli relations and his effect was less than positive.  He sided with the Soviets in their support of Nasser during the Suez crisis of 1956.  He led the forces that put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Sinai and Gaza leaving the terrorist bases in tact while propping up the Egyptian dictator.  Dulles and Eisenhower’s misguided action led to the development of the independent French nuclear capability and to the Six Day War in 1967.

1889: Birthdate of Warsaw native and University of London alum Aaron Glanz-Leyeless the Yiddish journalist, poet, playwright and author whose works included the play “Shlomo Molcho and the award-wining A Jew at Sea and who had married “the former Sophia Kupfer” after his first wife “the former Fannie Wolynsky.”

1890: Birthdate of Kilburn, London, native Julia Myra Hess the accomplished concert pianist remembered by many as the artist who “gave almost 2,000 lunchtime concert” during the six years of WW II – a performance time brought about by the wartime blackout and the need for moral building activities.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/myra-hess-concerts/myra-remembered

1891: Charles W. Foster began serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, a position which gave him considerable control over the increasing influx of Jews from Russia and Poland; a fact that would be duly noted later in appeals made to him by leaders of the American Jewish Committee.

1892: “No Mercy For the Jews” published today provided a detailed account of the report prepared by Colonel John B. Weber who had represented the 33rd District of New York in the 49th and 50th Congresses and Dr. Walter Kempster on the “conditions and treatment of the Jewish subjects of the Czar.  The report which was prepared for the House Committee on Immigration, “sets forth calmly, dispassionately and with a careful regard to accuracy...a state of things unheard of in modern times.” 

1893(9th of Adar, 5653): Parashat Tetzaveh; Shabbat Zachor

1893: In Newark, NJ, “Max Bornestien, a Polish Jews…has retained counsel in a suit for damages alleging that the defendants, three constables “brought pork sausage into his house and ate them therein” defiling his property in such a manner “that he can no longer make use of it.”

1894: In Philadelphia, PA, a non-sectarian memorial service in memory of the late George W. Childs was held at Keneseth Israel.

1894: It was reported today that a member of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore has contributed a paper on the “The Booth” the famous family of 19th century thespians.  According to the paper, they were originally a Jewish family from Spain named “Cabana.”  When one of the ancestors settled in England, he translated the family name into English and that back the family name – Booth.

1895: “Once Famous, Now Forgotten” published today described the life of Bernard Bauer, the Hungarian Jew who converted to Catholicism, where, as Father Maria Berhnard he became a popular preacher in France and the confessor of Empress.  This meant that he was following in the footsteps of Hermann Cohen, the Jewish pianist who converted and gained fame as Father Hermann.

1896: In Abterode, Germany, Isaak Rothschild, the son of Perez and Jettchen Rothschild and his wife Malchen Amalie Rothschild gave birth to Hilde Hoflich, the wife of Nathan Hoflich and the mother of Gerda Hoflich each of whom would be murdered in the Holocaust.

1897: Birthdate of Irving Maidman, “the New York real estate investor who offered $1,000 to each of the 200 passengers who rode the New York Susquehanna and Western Railroad which he had purchased so that he could develop the division passenger stations “as small business concerns.”

1897(23rd of Adar I, 5657): Sixty-two-year-old author and historian Michael Bernays passed away today.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3120-bernays-michael

1898: A social event is scheduled to be held today to raise funds for Jewish hospital to be built in Brooklyn.  Currently there are no Jewish hospitals in Brooklyn and Robert Strahl, Sigmund Wechsler and Charles Levy are among those leading the drive to remedy this deficiency.

1898(3rd of Adar, 5658): Before reaching his second birthday, Albert Weil, the son of Abraham and Berta Weil pass away today in Oppau.

1898: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Chaim and Yetta Faige (Wieder) Kohn gave birth to Rabbi Hersch Kohn , the husband of Leah Sternberg who in 1921 came to the United States where he organized “Congregation and Talmud Torah Degel Jerusalem and Congregation Tifereth Israel and Talmud Torah of Riverside, NY.

1899: It was reported today that the Junior Association of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews had participated in the annual Purim reception that had been held at the home on 106th Street.

1899: Paul Julius von Reuter founder of the news agency Reuters passed away.  Reuter was born in 1816 and his name was Israel Beer Josaphat.  He left his uncle's bank in the German town of Gottingeng and established what would become the world's greatest wire service in 1848. No Kaddish was said since he had converted and became a Lutheran in 1845 after having moved to London.

1900: It was reported today that Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire “has been elected a member of the Athenaeum Club, after having been proposed for membership by Reverend Mandell Creighton, the Bishop of London.

1900: Job Harriman, a former Baptist minister now running for President as the Socialist Labor’s Party candidate spoke to 1,500 Jewish Socialists today in the Windsor Theatre.

1901: Ten days after his 24th birthday, University of Cincinnati graduate and HUC trained rabbi, Martin Zielonka the Berlin born son of David and Bertha Zielonka married Dora Schatzkey today in San Antonio, TX while serving as the spiritual leader of Temple Mt. Sinai in El Paso, TX.

1901: In New York, Samuel and Minnie Schoenberg Marx gave birth to Herbert Manrfed Marx known as Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the Marx Brothers.

https://www.biography.com/people/zeppo-marx-21181001

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/zeppo.htm

1902: Abraham Abraham, Felix Adler, Jacob Schiff, Isaac N. Seligman, Adolph Ochs and Oscar Straus are members of the committee that has planned the festivities for the launching the yacht owned by Prince Henry of Prussia.

1902: In South Carolina Rabbi B.A. Elzas officiated at the marriage of James Dundas and Rebecca Bowman

1902: In Sweden, Albert and Alma Mallin gave birth to Ivar Mallin.

1902: On Broadway, final performance of “Frocks and Frills” starring Rose Eytinge.

1903: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the senior Rabbi at New York’s Temple Beth-El has been asked to serve as President of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the first and until recently, when a conservative seminary was established in New York, the only college in America designed for the education of Rabbis.

1903: “Zionist committees set out today to investigate the feasibility of a British proposal to have Jews colonize El-Arish” which is located on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai Peninsula.  

1903: Herzl receives a telegram from the commission in El Arish: "Vicinity has made a favorable impression."

1904: Two days after she had passed away, Flora Goldsmid, the daughter of Frederick David Goldsmid and the former Caroline Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1905(20th of Adar I, 5665): Parashat Ki Tisa

1905(20th of Adar I, 5665): Sevent-eight-year-old Pauline “Barbara” Victor Barth the wife of Gottlied “Leopold” Barth and the mother of Victor, Simon, Gustav, Moses, Alexander and Solomon Barth passed away today after which she was buried at the Illingen Jewish Cemetery in the Saarland.

1905: “The Jewish Church” was one of the many buildings destroyed tonight as fire swept through downtown Hot Springs, AR. (Editor’s note: This would be a reference to the Jewish congregation known as The House of Israel which had purchased land for a cemetery in 1876 and “constructed” it first congregational home in 1885)

1906: In New York, today’s annual meeting of the Independent Order of Free Sons Israel included a business meeting followed by a dinner at the Harlem Casino where School Commissioner M.S. Stern and Coroner Julius Harburger were the principal speakers.

1906: In “Why France Sought Separation of Church and State” published today Yvest Guyot traced attempts by the Catholic Church to gain unique total power from the Napoleonic era, including the importation “of anti-Semitism from Austria” which was intended to purge Army of non-Catholics starting with the Jews, followed by Protestants and Freemasons.”

1907: Birthdate of actor Shimen Rushkin, the native of Poland who gained famed in America in televisions and a variety of films including Fiddler on the Roof and the original version of The Producers.  He passed away in 1967.

1907: “In the Bishop’s Carriage” starring Rose Eytinge opened on Broadway.

1908: Continued massacres in Setatt drive Jews to Casablanca for safety. During this period the Jewish population of all Morocco is somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000.

1909: Birthdate of Chicago native and Northwestern trained surgeon, Dr. Leon Judah Aries, the husband of Marie L. Aries with whom he had three daughters – Jane, Elizabeth and Nancy.

1909: In Washington, D.C., Myer Solomon Cohn the Russian born son of Leo and Sarah Cohn and his wife Sadie Cohn gave birth to Robert Cohn.

1910: In London, “under the auspices of the Jewish Religious Union, Dr. Stephen S. Wise the rabbi of the Free Synagogue” delivered the first of a series of addresses which is expected to bring to a head the controversy between the liberal and orthodox sections of the Anglo-Jewish Union,” “which was founded by C.G. Montefiore, L.S. Montague and other well-known members of the Jewish Community.

1911(27th of Shevat, 5671): Parshat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim

1911: “Important Meeting of Jews” published today described plans for an upcoming meeting of “representatives of widely different Jewish interests in New York from small and scarcely organized Jewish gatherings on the east side to such important bodies as the United Hebrew Charities, the American Jewish Committee, and the Congregation Temple Emanu-El.”

1912(7th of Adar I, 5672): Eighty-one year old Rabbi Nachum Paltiel Bromson passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1913: “Reciprocity Day” Echoes of the Bicentennial Meeting of the Union of America is scheduled to be the topic at today’s regular meeting of the K.A.M. Auxiliary in Chicago.

1913: Birthdate of Herman L. “Reds” Bassman, the native of Philadelphia who ran track, wrestled and played football for Ursinus before playing professionally for the Philadelphia Eagles.

http://www.profootballarchives.com/bass02000.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20150430215549/http://articles.philly.com/2010-08-05/sports/24971315_1_ursinus-virginia-75th-anniversary

1913(18th of Adar I, 5673): Forty-nine year old Boston merchant Maurice Newman passed away today.

1914: Birthdate Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, whose donation of artworks by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Alexander Calder greatly bolstered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s standing as an exhibitor of modern art. Muriel Kallis was on the only child of Maurice and Ada Nudelman Kallis. Her father was an engineer. As a child she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; she later took art courses at the University of Chicago. Mrs. Newman did not turn her back on her hometown; according to The Chicago Tribune, she donated more than 170 works to the School of the Art Institute. As an aspiring artist in her early years, Mrs. Newman became a denizen of New York’s artistic haunts, befriending noted Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning, Pollock, Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. By the late 1940s, while married to a successful businessman, Jay Z. Steinberg, she began acquiring works by those rising stars, paying, for example, $2,700 for a de Kooning canvas and $3,000 for a Pollock. Mr. Steinberg died in 1954, and a year later Mrs. Newman married Albert Hardy Newman, another successful businessman. The walls of their Chicago apartment were resplendent with her growing collection. In 1980, to the consternation of art institutions in her native Chicago, Mrs. Newman bequeathed her collection to the Metropolitan in New York.

Asked why, she said at the time: “I’m so involved with New York, and besides, the artists I knew loved the Met, particularly Franz Kline, who used to go there and study Ingres by the hour. I find the idea that their work should hang there now rather touching.” Eventually Mrs. Newman decided not to complete the gift before her death. In 2004 Gary Tinterow, the Met’s curator of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art, received a surprise call from Mrs. Newman, asking that he start planning the transfer. “I’m about to turn 93,” she told The New York Times last year, “and I think now is a great time to do it.” Mr. Tinterow said that Mrs. Newman’s donation “created, with one fell swoop, an extraordinary representation of postwar American Abstract Expressionism.”

The collection of more than 70 works includes the 5-foot-by-9-foot “Number 28,” one of the great canvases of Pollock’s classic period; de Kooning’s “Attic”; Motherwell’s “Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 35”; a Calder mobile, “Four Directions”; “Mecca,” a painting by Hans Hofmann; and an abstract version of Kline’s portrait of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. It also includes 30 examples of primitive art from Oceania, the Americas and Africa, among them a phallic house post from the Dogon people of Mali. Estimated to be worth $12 million to $15 million when first bequeathed in 1980, the collection is now valued in the hundreds of millions. “Mrs. Newman’s collection remains paramount in its quality, having been acquired by her soon after most of the works were made,” Mr. Tinterow said. “She had this extraordinary insight into the importance of this radical new style of art, and she acted upon it, seeking out the best examples of the best artists.” Mrs. Newman’s second husband died in 1988. Her son from her first marriage, Glenn Steinberg, died in 2004. Besides her grandson Peter, of Manhattan, she is survived by four other grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Speaking of her kinship with the great Abstract Expressionists, she told The Times in 1980, “I knew them well and loved their work.” She added: “At first I began to hang my own things next to them, but I soon realized I wasn’t making much of a statement. I really am not at heart a collector. I’m a failed artist — there’s no other way to describe it.” She died in Chicago, her hometown at the age of 94.

1915(11th of Adar, 5675): Ta’anit Esther

1915: “The Supreme Court of the United States today heard” Louis Marshall “head counsel for Leo Frank…on his appeal from the denial by the Federal District Court of Georgia of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.”

1915: Birthdate Philadelphia native and Temple University and MIT trained physicist Samuel Silver , a professor of Engineering Science at UC, Berkley.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1141576

https://www.nae.edu/189499/SAMUEL-SILVER-19151976

1916: “Tales of Hoffman” a silent film directed by Richard Oswald was released in Germany today.

1916: Simon Wolf wrote to Rabb C.H. Rubenstein of Baltimore, MD, expressing his appreciation for the role he has played in opposing measures to allow the reading of the Bible in Maryland public schools and asking to be kept informed of the next steps he plans on taking.

1916: Based on reports published today, that 35,000 Jews living in Palestine including those at settlement started by Wolf Gluskin, are “in dire straits” because, among other things, “the wine industry which” had been developed “before Turkey entered” the World War “had been destroyed.”

1917: A list of the accomplishments of Rabbi Henry Pereira Menes published today included helping to found The American Hebrew, initiating the movement to found the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids and the School for Crippled Jewish Children and helping to found the Jewish Theological Seminary.

1917: Among the contributions acknowledged today by the American Jewish Relief Committee included $200 from the Jewish Women of East Chicago, $100 from the United Hebrew Organization of South Bend, Indiana and $500 from the Committee in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

1917: Dr. Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver an address on “The Jew’s Service to the World” at Temple Beth-El.

1917: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Silverman is scheduled to speak on “What the Hew Jews Should Know about Jews and Judaism: the Patriotism of the Jews.”

1917: At Carnegie Hall, Dr. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon to the Free Synagogue entitled “Marriage Ideals, True and False.”

1918: Today “a dispatch appeared in the daily newspapers to the effect that the Italian Government had notified its Ambassadors that it approved of the stand on Palestine taken by the Allies” making this “the first authorized announcement by the Italian Government to the Zionist organization.”

1919: The funeral for the Abraham Jesse Dittenhoefer, the native South Carolinian who was the last living elector to have voted for Lincoln in 1864, will be held at his home this morning at ten o’clock.

1919: Birthdate of Brooklyn born cellist Fred Katz.

1920: In Germany, the Nazi party endorsed its own platform consisting of twenty-five points. Seven of these points concerned the Jews.

1920: Twenty-one-year-old Parisian native Benny Valgar “won the Featherweight Boxing Championship of the World today.

1921(17th of Adar I, 5681): Twenty-six-year-old Harold Frederick Epstein, the son of Ephraim and Sallie Lasker Epstein passed away today in Pulaski Country after which he was buried in Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park in Little Rock

1921: Greek authorities expropriate the old Jewish cemetery in Smyrna.

1922: In New York, “the city committee in direction of the work of gathering $5,000,000 for the relief fund for Jewish war sufferers reported today that the campaign was progressing favorably and that in a few days a large part of the quota would be raised.”

1923: Birthdate of Viennese native Jacob Taubes who taught Jewish studies at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and the Free University of Berlin who was the husband of author Susan Tabes with whom he had two children - Ethan and Tania.

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2672/i-am-impossible-an-exchange-between-jacob-taubes-and-arthur-a-cohen/

1923: In Los Angeles, Mildred Rosenkranz, the “daughter of Emil and Benvenida Solis Firth” and her husband Elias Victor Rosenkranz gave birth to Marjorie Ruth Rosenkranz

1923: The price of bread rose to 2,000 marks in Berlin.  This hyper-inflation wiped people’s life savings and destroyed the basic faith of the middle class in many of the existing political and social institutions.  It laid the groundwork for the rise of political extremism that would make the Communists and the Nazis the dominant political forces in the 1930’s.

1923: In New York City, Louis Glazer, “a garment worker” and his wife Tilly, “a homemaker” gave birth to sociologist Nathan Glazer. (As reported by Barry Gewen)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/obituaries/nathan-glazer-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1923: In “Palestine Relief Work Extended,” published today Doctor Isaac M. Rubinow, the director of the Hadassah Medical Organization describes the positive changes that the work of the Hadassah doctors and nurses has had on the citizens of Palestine including Jews, Arabs, Moslems and Christians.  When Dr. Rubinow went to Israel in 1919 the unit consisted of 43 nurses and doctors.  Today four hundred medical personnel sponsored by Hadassah support five major hospitals and several field hospitals.  As a sign as of its commitment to “heal the wounds of prejudice” all Hadassah hospitals and clinics are open to Moslems and Christians as well as Jews.  To ensure equality of treatment, the staff members do not maintain a private practice and there are no private rooms in the medical facilities.  Everybody is treated in a democratic fashion on modern hospital wards.  The Hadassah Medical Organization has established a modern infant welfare plan under the management of pediatricians at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem and a department of school hygiene “which has saved thousands of children from blindness and other ailments by regular examination for and treatment of trachoma and various forms of skin diseases.”

1924: It was reported today that Rabbi Stephen S. Wise had delivered a sermon at Carnegie Hall in which he said that “the Balfour declaration in support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would never have been issued except for the support of President Woodrow Wilson.

1925: In Camden, NJ, Congregation Beth-El and the Council of Jewish Women hosted its Fourth Annual Ball.

1926: New York Mayor James J. Walker received the advance delegates of Europe’s champion soccer team whose creation “was the direct result of the formation of the Hakoah organization in Austria fourteen years ago and that Hakoah had been created because of a realization of the need for building up the physical health of the Jews in Europe.”

1926: The Student’s Union gave as the reason for its strike which began today as being “the authorities’ refusal to meet its repeated demand for limiting the number of Jewish students admitted to the university.

1926: Three hundred guests attended “the Hundred-Dollar-Dinner of the Washington Heights United Palestine Appeal held tonight at the Hotel Astor” in New York City.

1926: “The country home of Milton F. Untermeyer, a member of the brokerage firm of Henry Henck and Company situated on the top of a mountain about five miles from Butler, NJ, was struck by lightning tonight and destroyed by fire.”

1926: Henry Hurwitz, the editor of The Menorah Journal was the principal speaker at “the third of a series of ‘plain-talk’ dinners tonight at the Aldine Club.

1926: Among those reported today to have recently met with President Coolidge are Jacob Rosenheim, the President of Agudath Israel, Dr. Leo Jung, the rabbi of the Jewish Centre in New York and New York state legislator Samuel H. Hofstadter.

1925: In Philadelphia, Wharton graduate Milton Rabinowitz and his wife gave birth to WWII Army Air Forces veteran, Syracuse undergrad and Harvard Law School trained attorney, Jay Andrew Rabinowitz, the husband of Anne Rabinowitz with whom he had four children including cross-country skier Judy Rabinowitz, who rose to become Chief Just of the Alaska Supreme Court.

1927: “Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Hapoel-Allenby in the first Soccer Derby in Tel Aviv” today. (As reported by Al Wechsler)

1928: In New York City, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Stern gave birth to Richard Gustave Stern, the best American author of whom you have never heard…” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1928: In Chicago, Harry Gelbart, a Latvian born barber and Frieda Sturner gave birth to Larry Gelbart, television producer responsible for the hit show “MASH.”

1928: Birthdate of Shlomo Kalo, a native of Bulgaria who survived the Holocaust and made Aliyah in 1949.  He gained fame as a microbiologist as well as a poet and an author of works of fictions and non-fiction.

1929(15th of Adar I, 5689): Shushan Purim Katan

1929: In Newark, NJ “Joseph and Myrtle (Lieberman) Kagan who ran a shoe store in Rahway, NJ gave birth to “Prof. Jerome Kagan, a Harvard psychologist whose research into temperament found that shy infants often grow up to be anxious and fearful adults because of their biological nature as well as the way they were nurtured.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/science/jerome-kagan-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1929: “Urges Bible As Guide” published today quoted Louis Marshall as saying that “It is the duty of Jewish parents to educate themselves so they may…discuss things Jewish them” because if they do not, “all that our ancestors and our glorious tradition have too for will have been for nothing and we as Jews will become a degenerate people.”

1930: “Declaring that at least three million Jews will remain in Russia to become producers under the Russian law and system James N. Rosenberg, president of the American Society for Jewish Farm Settlements in Russia, Inc., protested” today “against what he called ‘dragging problems of Jewish reconstruction and relief in Russia in to politics and controversies.’”

1931: Today, the violent ant-Semitic attacks were renewed at Pecs University in Budapest which resulted in the rector suspending lectures for two days

1932: Adolf Hitler who had been born in Austria and whose Germanic connection was ethnic rather than political until he joined the Kaiser’s army in 1914 officially became a German citizen.

1932: Premiere of “Behind the Mask” produced by Harry Cohn.

1932: In Brooklyn, Harold Spitzer and the former Gertrude Schwartz gave birth to Lincoln High graduate and Army veteran Elton Leopold Spitzer who created the “broadcasting phenomenon at WLIR.”

1933: The Literary Digest, the magazine that would go out of business after picking Alf Landon to win the election in 1936, published “Israel’s Alarm at Hitler’s Rise.”

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/Jewish_reaction_to_the_rise_of_ADOLF_Hon ITLER_pdf

1933: After 31 performances, the curtain came down at the 44th Street Theatre “Face The Music,” the Irving Berlin musical with a “book” by Moss Hart.

1934: Birthdate of Meir Har-Zion a sabra who “was an Israeli military commando” and “a key member of Unit 101.”

1934: Today the “Tel Hey Memorial,” known as the “Roaring Lion” which had been fashioned from a 22-ton block of stone by Abraham Melnikov which took the form of a “lion facing eastward and roaring to the heavens” was officially dedicated today.

1934: In London, two second-generation Jewish immigrants from Poland gave birth to 6’7” British actor Bernard Bresslaw.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-bernard-bresslaw-1491593.html

http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/bernard_bresslaw.htm

1935:  Birthdate of Sally Lowenthal, better known to most Americans as talk show hostess Sally Jesse Raphael.

1936: In Brooklyn, Max and Marion (Smith) Reinsdorf gave birth tax attorney turned sports mogul (Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox) Jerry M. Reinsdorf.

1936: Messages from David Lloyd George, the former British Prime Minister, English philanthropist Simon Marks and Leopold Amery, the former British Secretary of State for the Colonies, “congratulating the Palestine Foundation Fund on its fifteenth anniversary were made public” in New York today.

1936: In Magdeburg, Germany, “three Jewish employees of the Barasch Department Store were sentenced to four years, one year and give months imprisonment, respectively, on charges of immorality” that had been brought salesgirls or members of their families.

1936: Rose Pesotta joined the Goodyear Rubber workers' sit-in as an organizer of the strike which temporarily closed the largest tire factory in the world.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/25/1936/rose-pesotta

1937(14th of Adar, 5697): Purim

1937: Children in Herrlingen, Germany dressed in Bedouin costumes as part of the Purim celebration.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/march/02.asp

1937: In London, Winston Churchill met Emery Reves for the first time. Reeves was a Hungarian born Jew whose birth name was Imre Rvesz who had become a leading literary agent for European democratic leaders, a role he would soon assume for Churchill.

 1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Times of London criticized, in its leading article, the delay shown by the Colonial Office in appointing a new technical commission which would advise how to implement the proposed by the Royal (Peel) Commission and the League of Nations partition of Palestine. 

1939(6th of Adar, 5699): Parashat Terumah

1939: “I Married An Angel,” a Rogers and Hart musical closed today at the Schubert after 338 performances.

1939: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Is There Anything Sacred to the Modern Mind” today at Temple Emanuel.

1939: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Gift of Faith” at the Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue.

1939: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “We Are All Semites Spiritually” this morning at Temple Rodeph Sholom.

1939: Rabbi William F Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon on American Jews Have a Right to Be Proud” this morning at Temple Israel.

1939: Rabbi Nathan Stern is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Facing Life’s Sanctuaries” at West End Synagogue today.

1939: Rabbi Alexander Segel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Treasures in the Sanctuary” at Fort Washington Synagogue today.

1939: Rabbi Harold Mashioff is scheduled to deliver a sermon “If This Be Freedom of Speech” at the Temple of the Covenant.

1939: Heinrich Himmler reportedly issued a secret decree designed to get of Germany’s Jews by encouraging emigration. This report would seem to lack credibility given the impediments that the German government placed in the way of Jews leaving Nazi control.

1939: U.S. premiere of “Wife, Husband and Friend’ a comedy directed by Gregory Ratoff, co-starring Binnie Barnes with music by Alfred Newman.

1939: In Britain, the Picture Post published the first of two photo-journalist presentations that supported the call for Winston Churchill’s return to an active role in the Government.  Stefan Lorant was the editor and designer for the Picture Post was the moving force behind the article.  Lorant was a Hungarian born Jew who had worked in Germany before being imprisoned at Dachau in 1933.

1940: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held for seventy-seven year old businessman and philanthropist Henry Frederick Samstag, the Washington, DC born son of Samuel and August Samstag who moved to New York in 1895 where founded Samstag and Hilder, co-founded the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies” and raised three children – Henry, Katherine and Matilda – with his wife Belle Samstag.

1940: Bertha Aaronson is scheduled to marry Dr. A.H. Green is scheduled to take place in the Hotel St. Moritz in New York City.

1941(28th of Shevat, 5701): Fifty-seven-year-old New York Eton educated real estate manager and insurance agent Theodore Badman, the son of Herman and Rosa Frandenfelder Badman, the husband of Hortense Goldsmith and mother of Carl and Adolph Badman who had been a member of the Washington Lodge of B’nai B’rith and Free Sons of Israel passed away today.

1941: The 1941 February Strike (aka The Strike of February 1941) which was organized in the Netherlands as protest following pogroms that had taken place in Amsterdam’s Jewish neighborhoods began today

1941: One thousand, six hundred Jews were deported from Gora Kalwaria to the Warsaw Ghetto.

1942: In Toronto, Ontario, Herbert Dick "Hyman" Sherman a business partner for a zipper company and Sara "Sarah" Sherman (née Winter) an occupational therapist gave birth to billionaire Bernard Charles “Barry” Sherman the holder of a Ph.D from MIT, the chairman and CEO of Apotex, Inc, the pharmaceutical corporation and the husband of Honey Reich, who was found alongside his dead body and with whom he had four children – Jonathon, Lauren, Alexandra and Kaelen.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2017/12/15/canadian-pharmaceuticals-billionaire-and-wife-found-dead-in-toronto-mansion/#31b2588f7fe2

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/two-legacies-one-dark-mystery-toronto-elite-reeling-after-violent-deaths-of-barry-and-honey-sherman

1942: For the second time this month, Reverend Chait of the Army Chaplaincy visited Isidore Newman who was in the hospital after having broken his leg while going through parachute training for SOE agents

1943: Birthdate of Detroit native and Wayne State alum Barry David Kramer, the owner Full Circle, a Detroit record shop and Mixed Media, “a head shop” who founded the music magazine Creem.

1943(20th of Adar I, 5703): Sixty-three-year-old New York native Dr. Lawrence Satenstein, the College of Physicians and Surgeons trained dermatologist and husband of Victoria Satenstein passed away today.

1944: Robert F. Wagner, the U.S. Senator from New York said today that “The American Palestine Committee will sponsor a national conference here on March 9 to promote "American Christian" support for the opening of Jewish immigration into Palestine.”

1945: The Faith of a Liberal by Morris R. Cohen and The House Near Paris “written by M.R. Werner that tells the personal adventures of an American woman in German-occupied France” were published today.

1945: Birthdate of Amram Mitzna “an Israeli politician and former general. He is the acting mayor of Yeruham, the former mayor of Haifa (1993–2003) and lead the Labour Party from 2002 to 2003.”

1946(24th of Adar I, 5706): Thirty-nine-year-old Beaver Falls, PA native and U. of Cincinnati and HUC graduate Rabbi Abraham Feinberg who in 1942 succeeded Rabbi I. Edmund Philo as the leader of Rodef Sholom Temple in Youngstown, OH, passed away today.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dQtODgAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=Rabbi+Abraham+Haskel+Feinberg&source=bl&ots=GsuwER66dD&sig=ACfU3U1rzklXXtFJfUiGnY_1FNpYEM10xA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWvOqg4tXgAhVFc98KHQ-0AdoQ6AEwCnoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=Rabbi%20Abraham%20Haskel%20Feinberg&f=false

http://www.vindy.com/news/2017/mar/21/today-is-tuesday-march--the-th-day-of--t/

1946: Three RAF installations were attacked in Palestine tonight resulting in damage valued at $2,000,000,000.  Fourteen planes were destroyed outright and another 8 planes were damaged so badly that they were beyond repair.

1947: Birthdate of Gary Rosenblatt who has served as editor for the Baltimore Jewish Times, The Jewish News of Detroit, The Atlanta Jewish Times and The Jewish Week of New York

1947: British Foreign Minister Bevin continues his anti-Semitic rhetoric attacking Zionism and defending the Arabs who have been in Palestine “for 2,000 years.”

1947: Birthdate of Buffalo native Anne Beatts, the comedy writer who converted to Judaism while a McGill University and “was the first female editor of National Lampoon magazine.

1947: The SS President Warfield set sail from Baltimore, MD on a voyage which would sail her into the history books as The Exodus.

1948: The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes control of the government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.  The Communist seizure of power was a major step in the hardening of positions during the early days of the Cold War.  It galvanized pro-western forces in Europe to participate in what would become NATO.  It also helped internationalists (many of whom were Jewish) in the United States to overcome isolationist opposition America taking the lead in opposing Soviet imperialism.  For the Jews of Palestine who were already facing Arab attacks prior to the pending departure of the British, this turn of events was beneficial.  With the approval of their Soviet masters, the new Czech government would allow the shipment of surplus ME-109 aircraft that was stored in Czechoslovakia to Israel at the moment of the creation of the Jewish state.  In one of the great ironies of history, the first combat aircraft flown by Israeli pilots were former German fighter planes shipped from Communist Czechoslovakia.

1949(26th of Shevat, 5709): Noted portrait painter Alfred Joseph Praga, a native of Liverpool born in 1861 and the husband of journalist Teresa Prager, “who revitalized the art of miniature painting in Britain” and “was one of the founders in 1895 of the Society of Miniaturists” passed away today.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Alfred+Praga&biw=974&bih=590&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGtrO_wI_LAhXJsIMKHZDWALIQsAQIJQ#imgrc=32_z3AbTQJRr9M%3A

1950(8th of Adar,5710): Parashat Terumah; Shabbat Zachor

1950: "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca premiered on NBC. Writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. This was an early hour-long variety - primarily comedy - show that dominated the airwaves in its weekend time slot.  And it was live, when live meant live.  Yes, three of those mentioned above were Jewish.  But by now you have come to expect a connection between Jewish and Humor.

1951(19th of Adar I, 5711): Eighty-one-year-old Tuini, Russia native and Yiddish author and paper bag and packaging manufacturer Pincus Puchkoff, the husband of Braian Puchkoff with whom he had five children – Abraham, Louis, Theodore, Morris and Rose – whose autobiography was entitled My Four Homes passed away today.  (Some sources show February 26)

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2018/07/pinkhes-pushkof-pincus-puchkoff.html

1951: Pan American Games, during which Byron “Krieger won gold medals in team foil and team sabre and the team silver in épée” opened today in Buenos Aires.”

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that after Jordan asked Britain to intervene against what he called Israeli "aggression" and invoked the Jordanian-British pact of mutual assistance, the British government officially disclosed that it considered the possibility of stationing its armed forces on Jordanian territory.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Hevrat Ovdim (the Histadrut's General Cooperative Society), together with the Histadrut's pension funds and other organizations, mobilized funds for the construction of the first huge hotel and rest house in Eilat. Eilat is Israel's southern port.  Early on, the Israelis sought to make it a tourist haven as well as a port that would be a gateway to Africa and Asia.  The blockade of Eilat by the Egyptians in 1967 was the official act of war that provided the justification under international law for what would become the Six Days War.

1954: Nasser became Egyptian premier. The “man behind the throne” who had masterminded the downfall of the Egyptian monarchy now took center stage and took his country down a road to repeated war with Israel as well as doom and disgrace.

1955(3rd of Adar I, 5715): Sixty-year-old Cornell and Brooklyn Law School alum Solomon Abelow the husband of Anna Abelow and father of Sanford Abelow who served as a field artillery officer during WW I and who served as state commander of the Jewish War Veterans passed away today after which he was buried at Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Queens.

1955: “The End of the Affair,” a film version of the novel produced by David Lewis was released today in the United States.

1955(3rd of Adar I, 5715): Arab terrorists, one of whom “was found to be in possession of documents linking him to Egyptian military intelligence” murdered an Israeli civilian in Rehovot.

1956: Nikita Khrushchev delivered a “secret speech” at the Twentieth Communist Party in which he denounced Stalin and his “cult of personality” – a denunciation that would lead to the posthumous rehabilitation of the victims of past purges many of whom were Jewish.

1957(24th of Adar I, 5717): Mark Aldanov, aka Mark A Landau, Russian born author and chemist passed away at the age of 70.

1957(24th of Adar I, 5717): B. P. Schulberg passed away. Born Percival Schulberg in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1892, he took the name Benjamin from the boy in front of him when registering for school to avoid mockery for his British name. He worked in the fledgling film industry in New York City until 1919 when he moved to Hollywood, California where he operated "Preferred Pictures" and was responsible for making Clara Bow a star. He joined Louis B. Mayer to form "Mayer-Schulberg Studio" but after Mayer became part of MGM, Schulberg would join with Adolph Zukor and became the head of Paramount Pictures. In an era when the film industry was filled with conservative studio executives, B.P. Schulberg was a "New Deal" liberal, described by Moving Pictures magazine as "a political liberal in the reactionary world of Mayer and Hearst." His wife Adeline Jaffe-Schulberg founded a talent agency taken over by her brother, producer/talent agent Sam Jaffe. She spent little time with Hollywood society women, instead working for charities that aided the poor and promoting socialism. She subsequently had a literary agency in New York. They were the parents of renowned novelist and screenwriter, Budd Schulberg, producer Stuart Schulberg, and writer Sonya Schulberg O'Sullivan.In a power struggle at Paramount, Schulberg left the studio in 1937 and remained out of the business until 1940 when he began producing for Columbia Pictures. He produced six films for Columbia in three years until he retired in 1943.

1958(5th of Adar, 5718): Just seventeen days after celebrating her 87th birthday Lillian Burkhart Goldsmith, the Pittsburgh born daughter of Adolph and Rosalia Burkhart, and Curry Institute and University of Southern California alum who married George Goldsmith and gained fame as Lillian Goldsmith, the vaudeville performer turned social reformer who was member of the national board of the Council of Jewish Women and President of the Los Angles Section of the National Council of Jewish Women passed away today.

1960: Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic" premiered in New York City.

1963: “The Barbra Streisand Album,” “the debut album by Barbra Streisand was released today on Columbia Records.

1963(1st of Adar, 5723): Melville J. Heskovits passed away. The American born anthropologist established African and African American studies in American academia. Herskovits's controversial classic The Myth of the Negro Past is about African cultural influences on American blacks. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works.

1965:  On New York’s Upper East Side, Jane and Gerald Finerman gave birth to Karen Lisa Finerman, the sister of Wendy, Leslie, Stacey and Mark Finerman and the wife of private equity manager Lawrence Golub, who was the “co-founder and President of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, INC as well as a panelist on “Fast Money.”

1965: During the height of the Civil Rights struggle, Rabbi Max Nussbaum and his wife Ruth welcome the Reverend Martha King Jr. to the pulpit of Temple Israel in Hollywood.

1966(5th of Adar, 5726): Seventy-five-year-old University of Maryland Medical School graduate and WW I Army Medical Corps veteran Dr. Herbert L Langer, “the president of the medical board of Peninsula General Hospital” and the husband of “the former Helen Stein” with whom he had “two sons, Howard and Irwin” passed away today.

1967(15th of Adar I, 5727): Parashat Ki Tisa

1967: Today, the former Anne Elfenbein and Dr. Murray B. Pincus gave birth to the daughter Beth Susan Pincus.

1967: Birthdate of Jonathan Saul Freedland “a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. Freedland has previously written for The Daily Mirror and as of September 2005, he writes each Thursday for the London Evening Standard. He is the son of Michael Freedland, the biographer and journalist.

1967: “Enter Laughing” a comedy directed and co-produced by Carl Reiner “based on his autobiographical novel and the stage play of the same name” with a screenplay by Carl Reiner and Joseph Stein and co-starring Shelley Winter, Elaine May, Jack Gilford, Janet Margolin, David Opatoshu and Don Rickles was released in the United States today.

1969: One person was injured during a bombing at the British consulate in East Jerusalem.

1969: “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” produced by Philip Rose opened at the Belasco Theatre.

1970(19th of Adar I, 5730): Latvian born American painter and print maker Mark Rothko born Marcus Rothkowitz passed away whose unusual work. includes the 1961 painting “Blue, Orange, Red.”

1971: Part One of a two-part production of Clifford Odette’s “Paradise Lost,” co-starring Eli Wallach was broadcast for the first time on American Public Television.

1972: Birthdate of Argentine attorney and activist Myriam Bregam who was elected as a national deputy in 2015 as a member of the Workers’ Left Front.

1973: Steven Sondheim's musical "Little Night Music" premiered at the Shubert Theater in New York NY for the first of its 601 performances.

1974(3rd of Adar, 5734): Seventy-nine-year-old Lothar Mendes “the German born screenwriter and film director who moved to the Hollywood in 1926 and is best known as the director of Jew Süss, the British film adaptation of the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger which is not to be confused with the viciously anti-Semitic film made by the Nazis.

1975(14th of Purim, 5735): Purim

1975: In Livingston, NJ, the former Rita Stoecker, a Mormon housewife and Seymour Handler an Ashkenazi Jewish used car dealer gave birth to multi-talented Chelsea Joy Handler who, in 2012, Time magazine named as “one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

https://pagesix.com/2019/04/07/chelsea-handler-not-embarrassed-by-her-feelings-for-robert-mueller/?_ga=2.109297991.370971077.1554560444-1684604245.1537203133

1976: BBC2 broadcast the last episode of “The Glittering Prizes” a drama series written by Frederic Raphael.

1977(7th of Adar, 5737): Eighty-year-old producer Joseph Hyman, who collaborated with Moss Hart to create several successful Broadway plays passed away today.

1980: The first episode of the British sitcom “Yes Minister” created by Jonathan Lynn was broadcast today.

1982: Today “Labor Party chairman Shimon Peres today rejected Premier Menachem Begin’s latest offer to form a national unity government.”

1983: Birthdate of “French-Israeli journalist” Jonathan-Simon Sellem.

1986:  Birthdate of actor Justin Berfeld who plays Reese on “Malcolm in the Middle.”

1987(26th of Shevat, 5747): Seventy-nine-year-old Alfred Plaut, the German born son of Isaac and Sophie Plaut and the “husband of Fanny K. Kasper” passed away today in El Paso, TX.

1988(7th of Adar, 5748): Eighty-year-old William G. Braude who has served as a rabbi for 40 years at Congregation Sons of Israel and David, Temple Beth-El in Providence, R.I., passed away today. A native of Lithuania, he came to the United States in 1920 where he earned degrees from the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College. He also taught at Yale, Brown, Hebrew University and Leo Baeck College in London.

http://www.fold3.com/page/3884072_william_g_braude/

1988: Eighty-four-year-old Kurt Mahler, the German Mathematician who met Kurt Hirsch while in a British internment camp for “enemy aliens” (a strange appellation for somebody who had fled the Nazis) and eventually settled in Australia where he passed away today.

1988: Secretary of State George Schultz arrived in Israel today on the first of four day mission to the Middle East designed to explore reaction to recent American peace proposal. Shultz called on Israel to make ''decisions of historic proportions'' to help change the status quo in the Middle East when greeted by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres who responded by saying that this is ''a most demanding period of our life, facing probably the most complicated issue of the day.''

1990: In “Cafritz v. Cafritz” published today, Marjorie Williams described the attempt of two sons of the late Gwendolyn Cafritz to have her will overturned.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1990/02/25/cafritz-v-cafritz/9f486a14-9672-4802-802e-0e470a9f1507/?utm_term=.edf7eee05775

1991: The barrage of Iraqi scud attacks that began on January 18th came to an end today.  During that period 39 missiles were fired into Israel.

1992: In Scottsdale, AZ, Mindy Aaron, “a nurse” and pediatrician Neil Aaron gave birth to figure skating champion Maxwell Theodore “Max” Aaron, brother of Molly Aaron and ice skater Madeline Aaron.

1994(14th of Adar, 5754): Purim

1994 (14th of Adar, 5754): Eighty-year-old Sam Eisenstadt was assaulted with an axe while walking in the center of Kfar Saba. Sam died of his wounds shortly afterwards.

1994: In one of the most shameful acts committed by a Jew, American-born Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers. 

1995(25th of Adar I, 5755): Parashat Vayakhel; Shabbat Shekalim

1996(5th of Adar I, 5756): One person died in the bombing of the Ashkelon bus station for which Hamas claimed responsibility.

1996: Today, “45 Los Angeles Jews, all at a stage of life when cemeteries seem like distant destinations, set out to clean up Mount Zion Cemetery.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/26/us/at-overgrown-cemetery-some-jews-find-ancestors-others-themselves.html?searchResultPosition=1

1996(5th of Adar I, 5756): Seventeen civilians and nine soldiers were murdered and forty-eight people were injured when a Palestinian terrorist set off a bomb “on a No.18 bus traveling down Jaffa Road near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.”

1999: The Reuters News Agency commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of its founder, Paul Julius Reuter, by launching a university award in Germany.

1999: Eighty-eight-year-old Margaret Meagher, who when was appointed to be Canada’s ambassador to Israel in 1958 became the first Canadian woman to reach that diplomatic rank.

1999: Disney named Bob Iger president of Walt Disney International, the business unit that oversees Disney's international operations, as well as chairman of the ABC Group. Disney called the change a promotion for Iger. But the company's insistence was initially viewed with skepticism, as some thought Iger was merely being removed from day-to-day authority at ABC since ABC had been struggling.

2000: The European Indoor Championships during which Aleksandr Averbukh placed first in the Pole vault opened today in Ghent, Belgium.

2000: Hilary Koprowski, a Polish Jew, was honored with a reception at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first administration of his oral polio vaccine. At the reception, he received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Tom Ridge.

2001(2nd of Adar, 5761): Ninety-five year old Lithuanian born and education American philanthropist Jacob “Jack” Hiatt, the son of Joshua and Leah Hiatt who died in the Holocuast, the husband of Francis Hiatt with whom he had two children Myra and Janice and the father-in-law of Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft passed away today.

https://www.holycross.edu/departments/publicaffairs/hcm/spring01/in_memoriam/mem-spr01-hiatt.html

2002(13th of Adar I, 5762): Sixty-five-year-old Avraham Fish and forty-six year old Aharon Gorov were murdered by members of Fatah outside of Tekoa.

2003: “The new government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took shape today as a three-party coalition that is expected to take a tough line on the Palestinian uprising and on restarting peace negotiations.”

2003: “A wide-ranging Middle East storm dumped almost a foot of slushy snow on Jerusalem today, shutting schools, closing roads and temporarily infusing a tense city with the feel of a tranquil alpine village.”

2004: “Israeli security forces raided four branches of Palestinian banks, seizing $6.7 million they said was sent by Iran, Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to fund Palestinian militants.”

2005(16th of Adar I, 5765): Yael Orbach, 28, of Rehovot, Yitzhak (Itzik) Buzaglo, 40, of Mishmar HaYarden, Aryeh (Arik) Nagar, 37, of Kfar Saba,Ronen Reuvenov, 30, of Tel Aviv and Odelia Hubara, 26, of Jerusalem were murdered today and fifty more people were injured when a Palestinian terrorist detonated a bomb “at the entrance to "Stage", a popular Tel Aviv nightclub, on the corner of Herbert Samuel and Yonah Hanavi streets, opposite the Israeli beachfront.”

2006(27th of Shevat, 5766): Parashat Mishaptim and Shabbat Shekalim

2006(27th of Shevat, 5766): Graphic artist Sally Fox passed away today.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/26/2006/this-week-in-history-death-of-artist-and-photograph-editor-sally-fox

http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01175

2006: Tens of thousands of people marched through Paris in memory of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed two weeks ago in an attack that authorities say was partly motivated by anti-Semitism.

2006: American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a group of four journalists and a pair of U.S. cancer researchers have each won $1 million Dan David awards

2007: In Amsterdam, an exhibition styled “Looted, But from Whom?,” an exhibition about art objects which were either acquired by forced sale or stolen from their Jewish owners by the Nazis during the Second World War, closed.

2007: Yaakov Edri “was appointed be responsible for Israel’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations. 

2007: Yaakov Edri “was questioned under caution on suspicion of having tried to receive personal benefits in return for promoting a police commander, Ya'akov Zigdon, whilst he was Deputy Minister of Internal Security” and denied the charges.

2007: The Sunday New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Bambi vs. Godzilla On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business by David Mamet, George Gershwin His Life and Work by Howard Pollack and Overture by Yael Goldstein.

2007: Corresponds to the 7th day of Adar which “traditionally marks the birth and the death of Moses.  This is a minor fast date “observed by members of Jewish burial societies to atone for any acts of disrespect which they may unwittingly have committed toward the dead.”

2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Life is a Cabaret: A Tribute to Fred Ebb” highlighting the decades long collaboration between Jewish lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander that produced such works as Cabaret, Zorba, Chicago, Woman of the Year, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Curtains

2008: Newsweek reported on the financial loss suffered by the New England Patriots owner, Jewish businessman Robert Kraft, as a result of the Pats failure to have a perfect 19-0 season.  Anticipating a Super Bowl victory, Kraft had applied for trademarks to use phrases such as “19-0” and Perfect Season” on a litany of gear including greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, kites and temporary tattoos.  The trademarks are worthless and sale of the merchandize never materialized.

2008: Time reported on the recent death of 14 term California Congressman Tom Lantos the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress.  Lantos was sixteen when the Nazis occupied his native Hungary where he escaped the death camps and fought against the Nazis.

2009: In New York, famed Italian performer Moni Ovadiahis presents a performance “Kavanah” (intention and participation through a chant), a reflection on the Hebraic liturgical tradition and its complex maze of meanings and sources.

2009: Another stage of “Le Bœuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (English title, The Ox on the Roof: The Nothing-Doing Bar) a surrealist ballet made on a score composed by Darius Milhaud” took place today “as part of the Montreal Highlights Festival.

2009: A fresh exhibition in New York that has put a spotlight on postcards used during and after the turn of the 20th century meant to depict important aspects of Jewish life comes to a close

2009: Rosh Chodesh Adar 5769

2009: Two Kassam rockets were fired across the Gaza border into Israel today. One of the rockets fired from Gaza hit an agricultural area near a kibbutz in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, and rescue services were yet to find the second rocket.

2009: A British bishop whose denial of the Holocaust led Argentina to order him out of that country returned to England today. Richard Williamson, a bishop with the conservative Society of St. Pius X, was told to leave Argentina or face expulsion amid criticism over a television interview in which he said no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust. The controversial bishop had been excommunicated 20 years ago, but Pope Benedict XVI last month lifted the excommunication decree on Williamson and three other bishops.

2010: During a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee held today, Illinois Rep. Don Manzullo, a Republican, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to intervene on behalf of a gefilte fish factory in his district. The factory, Schafer Fishery is located in Thomson, Illinois. Manzullo is concerned about several hundred jobs at the fishery in his district and he said Israel had imposed a 120-percent tax on nine containers of Asian carp that had been made into gefilte fish patties. Drawing laughs, Clinton said she was up to a job that “sounds to me like one of those issues that should rise to the highest levels of our government.” “If not, we’re going to have to figure out what to do with nine containers of it,” she said, prompting Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House committee, to quip that perhaps the fish would end up at the next state dinner. Fresh and processed foods are subject to tariffs under the trade agreement between the US and Israel. “Carp is not exempt from customs in the framework of the free trade agreement between Israel and the United States,” said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “Having said that, we are obviously looking into the request by Congressman Manzullo and are trying to see whether something can be done.” Peled said two containers of gefilte had already arrived at the port in Haifa.“I don’t think there’s a lack of gefilte fish either in Israel or in the United States regarding Pessah,” Peled said. Nonetheless, he said, “we’re seriously looking at this request by a member of Congress.”

2010: As he arrived at Jerusalem District Court for the opening of his trial today Ehud Olmert became the first former prime minister in Israel's history to stand trial for alleged corruption.

2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Fast of Esther

 2010(11th of Adar, 5770): “David Bankier, Professor of Holocaust History at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and holder of the John Najmann Chair at Yad Vashem passed away” today.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issues/38-1/michman.pdf

2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Eighty-one year old Irish jurist Henry Barron who served as a justice on the Irish Supreme Court from 1997 until 2000 passed away today.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/respected-judge-who-led-bomb-inquiries-1.633921

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/former-supreme-court-judge-dies-1.853881

2010: “Andy Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century: In Retrospect” is scheduled to open at the Washington DCJCC.

2010: Novelist, critic and broadcaster Howard Jacobson is scheduled to appear at the Washington DCJCC.

2010: Just one day after his 87th birthday, David Soyer, “the founding cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet” who raised two sons – Daniel and Jeffery – with his wife Janet passed away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/arts/music/27soyer.html

2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Ninety-two-year-old Eugene L. Moore, a past commander of the Department of Florida Jewish War Veterans, passed in Boynton Beach, Florida.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/palmbeachpost/obituary.aspx?n=eugene-l-moore&pid=148892651&fhid=5124

2010(11th of Adar, 5770): Herta Herzog-Massing, “Austrian-American social scientist specializing in communication studies,” passed away

2011(21st of Adar I, 5771): Ninety-two-year-old Eugene Moore, a past commander of the Department of Florida Jewish War Veterans passed away in Boynton Beach, FL.

2011: Ahead of Time, “graceful portrait of the extraordinary life of 99-year-old American journalist and humanitarian Ruth Gruber whose efforts led to the rescue of 1,000 Jewish Holocaust refugees” and The Judge, a documentary featuring the former Chief Justice of Israel's Supreme Court, are scheduled to shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Today, the IDF instructed teachers to keep children from going outside to play in kindergartens located in towns near Gaza after two Grad rockets landed in Beersheba

2012: “The Death of Klinghoffer” an American opera, that critics including the two daughters of the late Leon Klinghoffer have described as anti-Semitic and as glorifying terrorism was performed in London for the first time.

2012: In London, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jeffery Goldberg and Maureen Kendler are scheduled to a new Haggadah edited by Foer and translated by Englander as part of Jewish Book Week.

2012; “Jewish solders in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at Young Israel of Woodmere in Woodmere, NY.

2012: “Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women” is scheduled to be shown at B'nai Sholom Reform Congregation in Albany, NY.

2012: HaOlam II, at the end of which the second official National Collegiate Jewish A Cappella will named, is scheduled to take place at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.

2012: Indian intelligence services have considerable evidence that Iran was behind this month's New Delhi terrorist attack but are not releasing it in a bid to avoid public confrontation with the Islamic republic, an Israeli security source says.

2012: Hundreds gathered in front of Ministry of Interior offices in Tel Aviv today to protest the deportation of families whose petitions for residency permits were rejected.

2013: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to co-host “Arnold Bernstein and Gerd Bucerius,” a lecture and discussion on the relationship between shipping pioneer Arnold Bernstein and Gerd Bucerius, the lawyer and published who defended him against the Nazis.

2013: Burglars broke into the home of an employee at the Prime Minister's Office today. Initial reports indicate a computer was taken from the house, which is located in Moshav Beit Yitzhak in the Sharon.. (As reported by Yaniv Kubovich)

2013: Israel carried out a successful test of its upgraded Arrow III missile interceptor today. Defense sources said it was the first flight test of the advanced interceptor. (As reported by Gil Cohen)

2014: Graham Spanier who was president of Penn St. during the “child sex scandal” “was granted a stay in his defamation lawsuit until his criminal case is resolved.”

2014: Dr. Daniel Rynhold is scheduled to deliver a lecture “Rav Kook and the Heroism of the Holy” at the Skirball Center.

2014: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to complete her two day trip to Israel.

 2014: Kay Menchel is scheduled to lecture on “The Short Stories of Bernard Malmud” at the JCC of Northern Virginia.

2014: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would neither confirm nor deny reports that the IAF had destroyed a shipment of weapons being sent from Syria to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

2014: “Participants in programs that bring young Diaspora Jews to visit Israel should be allowed to extend their stay without proving they are Jewish enough to make aliyah, a Knesset committee recommended. (As reported by JTA)

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “YIVO, Freud, and American Jewry: Discourse on Eastern Europe as a Talking Cure” for American Jewish Ambivalence” in which Marcus Krah explores how American Jews in the 1940s-50s used competing narratives of aspects of the East European Jewish past - from the shtetl, to pogroms, to Hasidism and Socialism - to find meaning in their American present.

2015: On the heels of the terrorist attacks in Paris, The UK Jewish Film festival is scheduled to host a showing of “Cartoonists: Foot Soldiers of Democracy.”

2015: Rosenwald is a 2015 documentary film directed by Aviva Kempner about the career of American businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald debuted today at the Washington Jewish Film Festival

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Argentina and the Nisman Case: Why is it so Hard to Understand What Really Happened?”

2015: Jewish Disability Advocacy Day

http://blogs.rj.org/rac/2015/01/13/join-us-in-washington-for-jewish-disability-advocacy-day/

2016: The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Footnote” followed by a discussion with director/screenwriter Joseph Cedar moderated by historian Eric Goldman.

2016(16th of Adar I, 5776): Seventy-five-year-old “radical lawyer” William H. Schaap and the brother of sports broadcaster Dick Schaap passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/nyregion/william-h-schaap-radical-lawyer-author-and-publisher-dies-at-75.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2016(16th of Adar I, 5776): Ninety-year-old U.C.L.A. grad and developer of medical devices Alfred E. Mann passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/business/alfred-e-mann-pioneer-in-medical-devices-dies-at-90.html

2016: “Yona” and “On the Banks of the Tigris: The Hidden Story of Iraqi Music” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2017(29th of Shevat, 5777): Parashat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim

2017: “The Eagle, a news site covering the Bryan-College Station area reported today that US authorities came close to deporting Henry Rousso, “an Egyptian-born French Jewish Holocaust-era scholar on his way to speak at a symposium at Texas A & M University” because he appeared to fit the profile of those who had been banned by President Trump’s executive order banning entry to refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.”

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a “Survivor Talk” featuring Frankfurt native Frank Stern who survived Kristallnacht at the age of ten, following which lived in Switzerland and England before leaving from Southampton aboard an armed merchant bound for the United States in 1940.

2017: “Broadway actress Ruthie Ann Blumstein, whose stage name is Ruthie Ann Miles,” attended FX’s
“The Americans” season five premiere at the DGA Theatre today. (As reported by Andy Kropa)

2017: Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat are some of the speakers scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of J Street opening today at the Washington Convention Center.

2018: The Exhibition: Semi(te) Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate is scheduled to come to a close today.

2018: A final closing reception celebrating Yiddish New York’s 2017 Visual Arts Exhibition is scheduled to take place today.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a production of “We Are the White Rose” written and directed by “local teens” that tells the story of the German resistance movement.

2018: In New Orleans, the JCC is scheduled to the community’s annual Purim Carnival.

2018: In Iowa, Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Purim Carnival

2018: The 2018 Winter Olympics in which figure skater Aimee Buchanan competed with the Israeli team ended today in Korea.

2018: Eighty-six-year-old Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, who died in the night, is scheduled to be buried today.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/shmuel-auerbach-leader-of-anti-draft-ultra-orthodox-group-dies-aged-86/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=9f7b4774fb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-9f7b4774fb-53921877

2018: In Memphis, TN, Ti Chai and MEFTY are scheduled to present the Purim Carnival at Temple Israel.

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, Emmy winning “writer-produced Mike Reiss” is scheduled to the Jewish themes and characters in the television show “The Simpons” while also signing copies his book Springfield Confidential.

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “How To Fight Anti-Semitism” in which Bari Wess of the New York Times discuss its appearance at places including at “the Tree of Life Synagogue, in her native Pittsburgh, on the streets of Paris, in the Labor Party in England, or in the leadership of the Women's March.”

2019: In San Francisco, CA, the Commonwealth Club is scheduled to host Hungarian-American Jewish Holocaust Dr. Edith Eva Eger, the clinical psychologist who will discuss her memoir The Choice: Embrace the Possible.

2019: In Highland Park, IL, North Suburban Synagogue Beth El is scheduled to host survivor Paul Beller filmmaker Steve Pressman and USHMM Acquisition Curator Fred Wasserman discuss issues related the documentary “50 Children” The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus.”

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/mwrescevidhgpk0219

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “On the Basis of Sex,” a biopic about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

2019: In Washington, Adas Israel is scheduled to host “a Ruderman Foundation-sponsored conversation about how different institutions in the Conservative Movement (the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Camp Ramah network, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Ziegler School) can be more inclusive” which stands in stark contrast to the moves being by Prime Minister Netanyahu as he “boosts Otzma Yehudit.”

2019: The American Sephardi Federation and the Muslim American Leadership Alliance are scheduled to present “Looking In, Speaking Out: Commemorating the Khojaly Tragedy.”

https://programs.cjh.org/event/looking-in-2019-02-25?bblinkid=142070325&bbemailid=12236208&bbejrid=948019291

2020(30th of Shevat, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Adar First Day;

2020: Celebration of Mardi Gras. For more about Fat Tuesday and the Jewish people see https://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/ the authoritative and informative source of information for all things Jewish in New Orleans and the land of the bayou as well as https://forward.com/culture/214736/the-secret-jewish-history-of-mardi-gras/and https://www.myjewishlearning.com/southern-and-jewish/is-mardi-gras-more-jewish-than-you-think/

2020: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Chinese Dinner followed by a discussion of “Jewish practice, theology, pluralism and more!”

2020: In Berkeley, CA, “Urban Adamah’s Becca Heisler is scheduled to lead a rosh chodesh ritual in the Hebrew month of Adar.

2020: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Shalom Italia,”
“The Hug of Destiny” and “The Last Jew in the Village.”

2020: As Israelis awake today, they will be looking to see if yesterday’s fifty rocket barrage from the terrorists was the last of it, or if this will be another day of terror attacks which tragically are not considered newsworthy by any major news outlets in the United States.

2020: Rutgers University’s Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life are scheduled to screen “The Adventures of Saul Bellow,” the first documentary about the life of 20th-century novelist and Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Saul Bellow this evening at Rutgers Cinema, 105 Joyce Kilmer Ave., Piscataway (Livingston campus).

2021: In Florida, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a morning minyan with Abbie Strauss followed by an afternoon Hamantashen Contest.

2021: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present online “Purim with Klezmer Music” provided with the Klezmer duo “Mamaliga.”

2021: In addition to the traditional reading of the megillah and a Virtual Hamantaschen Bake Off, in London, the Highgate Synagogue is scheduled to host an interactive, live Megillah reading on zoom this evening.

2021: The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin a virtual screening of “The Chosen,” a film based on the Chaim Potok novel of the same name.

2021: The Friends of Bezalel are scheduled to present a discussion with Elie Shamir and Ben Shani of “A Lullaby for the Valley, a documentary that “focuses on the story of acclaimed artist Elie Shamir, as an unforeseen danger threatens to rob him of his talent.”

2021: As part of the Atlanta Jewish History Talks series, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host biographer David Lower “as he discusses the life and career of one of Atlanta’s most prominent and trailblazing Jewish politicians, Morris Abram, the civil rights lawyer who worked to end segregation in Georgia and played a key role in the Supreme Court’s “one man, one vote” ruling.

2021: In Columbus, OH, Tefireth Israel is scheduled to a reading of the Book of Esther via Zoom during which there will be a showing of photos from clergy, staff, and congregants acting out scenes from the narrative.

2021: San Francisco Bay Area instructor James Sokol is scheduled to lead a journey through a diverse array of music as part “Songs of Victory and Triumph: A Multi-Genre Musical Celebration of Purim.”

2021: In Coralville, IA. Agudas Achim congregants are scheduled to “grab their groggers, round up the kids and join the wonderful spielers for a Pandemic in Persia, a Zoom Purim Spiel.”

2021: “In honor of the recently launched Association of Jewish Communities of the Gulf, the Diarna Geo-Museum proudly presented a preliminary exhibit of Jewish historical sites in GCC countries.”

https://diarna.org/exhibits/gulf-jewish-heritage-sites/

 

2021: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss Sacred and Profane by Fay Kellerman.

2021: As part of the “Who Inspires the Women Who Inspire Us” series the Streicker Center is scheduled to an evening Mayim Bialik, the holder of a PhD in neuroscience best known for her role on as a neurobologist married to a narcissist in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

2021(13th of Adar, 7801): Fast of Easter; in the evening reading the Megillah

2022: The Combined Jewish Philanthropies are scheduled to present a “Key Security Concepts Webinar” which provides training for those who welcome people to Jewish institutions with strategies and tools to foster a welcoming atmosphere while maintaining security.

2022: As part of the Young Artists in Concert series, the Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast “Three Award Winning Pianist” – Dani Dvorkin, Yoav Sened and Amir Ron

2022: The Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Center is scheduled to present a lecture by  Shirli Gilbert, Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London on “Wandering Jews: Migration in Modern Jewish History.”

2022: Today, before Shabbat, The Case Western Reserve University Chabad is scheduled to  present a talk by Lily Brasch, a Orthodox woman from Chicago about how she is overcoming a rare form of muscular dystrophy and the diagnosis that she would never walk again.

2023: Temple Judea is scheduled to host a Zoom Torah study with Rabbi Feivel Strauss.

2023: The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin in-theatre screenings.

2023: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present “La Commedia Performance” its first ever multi-media Visual and Performing Arts Benefit Concert!

2023: The Eden Tamir Center is scheduled to host a chamber music concert with Ilya Schwartz, clarinet; Kirill Mihanovsky, cello and Julia Gurvitch, piano.

2023: In Georgia, the Henry County Performing Arts Center is scheduled to host a screening of Rosenwald.

2023: “White supremacist hate groups” have declared today a “a national day of hate targeting Jews.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/nypd-to-up-security-at-religious-sites-after-white-supremacists-declare-antisemitic-day-of-hate/

2023(4th of Adar, 5783): Parashat Terumah

2024: The Jewish Gun Violence Prevention Roundtable is scheduled to sponsor a panel discussion during which “individuals, families and communities” will find out what they “need to know when considering gun ownership.

2024: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the first in series of chapter-by-chapter review of Communities of Meaning: Conversations on Modern Jewish Life Inspired by Rabbi Larry Hoffman

2024: YIVO is scheduled to present an informational program for those interested in participating in the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.

2024: In Atlanta, the Breman is scheduled to host “an incredible afternoon of Jazz as the Oran Etkin Quartet takes the stage with their captivating Open Hands Project.”

2024: The Alliance for Jewish Theatre and Theatremachers are scheduled to have an opportunity to network and discuss potential collaborative opportunities online.

2024: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York by Barbara Weisberg, the Philadelphia born daughter furrier Samuel Wiesberg and the artist Miriam Weisberg who is the wife of writer David Black

2024: St. John’s Wood Synagogue and Saatchi Synagogue are scheduled to present “In Support of Israel: Music or the Soul” featuring “your favourite Israeli medleys from Broadway to the bima” with guest Chazanim Simo Cohen, Netanel Hershtik and Avraham Kirshenbaum.

2024: JHMOC’s exhibition “If These Barn Walls Could Talk: An 18-Year Journey at the Jewish Heritage Museum” is

2024: The Chazak Meetup “Brunch at the Trolly” sponsored by Tifereth Israel is scheduled to take place today in Columbus, OH.

2024: As February 25th begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 142 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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