Sunday, April 21, 2024

This Day, April 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

April 22

404: Emperors Arcadius and Honorius limit the opportunities of Jews to serve the Empire when they issue the following:  "We decree that the Jews and Samaritans who flatter themselves with the privilege of being in the secret service will be deprived of all employment with imperial service." [CTh 16.8.16]

1073: Pope Gregory VII begins his twelve-year reign.  While history may remember him for his role as a reformer and for his “battles” with the Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, others may also remember him as “The Jewish Pope” since he was reportedly “descended from an Italian Jew named Baruch” who started a bank in Rome and converted to Christianity in 1030

1213: Pope Innocent III issued the papal bull Quia maior, calling all of Christendom to join what became the Fifth Crusade. The Crusades were a period of intermittent disaster for the Jews of Europe and Palestine.

1391: King Wenceslaus issued an edict affording protection to the Jews of Worms.

1451: Birthdate of Isabella I of Castile, the queen who played a key role in the destruction of a seven century old civilization when she cruelly expelled the Jews from Spain 

1488(11th of Iyar, 5248): Almost a year after publishing Perush Rashi al ha-Torah (Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, Joshua Soncino finished printing “a complete Biblia Hebraica” (Hebrew Bible.

1490(1st of Iyar): Leo, Jewish court physician to Grand Duke Ivan II, was executed today.

1500: Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, accompanied by Gaspar da Gama, a Polish born Jew whose slave name had been Yusuf ‘Adil before being forcibly converted to Christianity, sighted the mainland of Brazil for the first time today.

1509: Henry VIII ascended the English throne following the death of his father, Henry VII.  While Jews were officially banned from living in England, evidence exists that a small congregation of Marranos had settled in London by 1540.  Henry’s contact with Jews and Judaism was indirect but somewhat pivotal in the events surrounding his various wives.  Henry’s older brother had married Catherine of Aragon in a state marriage designed to guarantee peaceful relations between England and Spain.  When Henry’s older brother died, the English sought to keep the amicable relations alive by arranging a marriage between Henry and Catherine.  The English got the Pope to approve of the marriage by invoking the Biblical law concerning the Levirate Marriage.  Years later, Henry sought to have the marriage annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.  He claimed that the marriage was a nullity because he had coveted his late brother’s wife and their marriage was a product of sin.  Henry sought support from those most learned in these matters, a group of Italian rabbis.  Regardless of the Halacha involved, the Italian rabbis were loath to anger the Pope who was their “neighbor” in a clash with a monarch living in a distant land in which Jews were forbidden to live.

1585(23rd of Nisan or 3rd of Iyar 5345): Rabbi Moses (Trani) of Safed, author of “Kiryat Sefer” passed away today.

1593:  The first group of Marranos led by Jacob Tirado arrived in Amsterdam, Holland. This group was the first Jews to settle in Amsterdam after the Spanish Expulsion. Moses Uri Halevi soon joined them and helped arrange for prayer services.

1610: Birthdate Alexander VIII.  During his papacy, Alexander was confronted with an unusual request.  Instead of demanding that Jews be banished from their town, the priors of Perugia appealed to Alexander to overrule Pope Innocent X and allow Jews to return to their city. The absence of Jews from the city’s fairs was a having a negative impact on the area’s economy.

1619: Oliver St. John who as Chief Justice of Common Pleas was part of the St. John Mission “was instructed to study the Jewish Question and in all probability entered to negotiations with the leading Jews of Amsterdam” was admitted at Lincoln’s Inn today.

1625: Urban VIII issued “Sedes apostolica,” a papal bull concerning “heretical Portuguese Jews.”

1710(3rd of Iyar, 5470): Amsterdam native Francisco Lopes Suasso, second Baron d'Avernas le Gras a banker and financier of the Dutch Republic”  “also known within the Sephardic Jewish community as Abraham Israel Suasso” the eldest son of “merchant banker Antonio Lopes Susasso, the husband of Leonora da Costa whom he married after the death of first wife Judit Francisco Teixeira of Hamburg and the father of ten children – Antonio, Alvaro, Manuel, Pedro, Jeronimo, David, Francisco, Leonora, Sara and Hannah – who provided financial support to William of Orange when he invaded England, passed away today after which “he was buried in the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery called Ets Haim at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel” and “ succeeded in his business and as Baron d'Avernas le Gras by his eldest son, Antonio Lopes Suasso the Younger, alias Isaac Lopes Suasso.”

1724:  Birthdate of German philosopher Immanuel Kant.  Kant may have been one of the giants of the Enlightenment, but from a Jewish point of view, he was an intellectual pygmy. As Michael Mack of Hebrew University wrote, “Kant consistently equated Jewish identity with a host of undesirable traits, including superstition, dishonesty, worldliness and even cowardliness. ‘Every coward is a liar; Jews for example, not only in business, but also in common life,’ Kant noted in a lecture on practical philosophy… All the positive traits of Kantian philosophy (freedom, autonomy, reason) are formed by being contrasted with a negative image of unenlightened humanity, usually taking the form of an anti-Semitic or some other racist caricature. For Kant, motives could only be good if they were not aimed at any material benefit. He saw Judaism as an inherently materialist religion, based upon a quid pro quo between God and His chosen people .In order to fully define the formal structures of his philosophy (autonomy, reason, morality and freedom), Kant almost unconsciously fantasized about the Jews as it’s opposite. He posited Judaism as an abstract principle that does nothing else but, paradoxically, desire the consumption of material goods."

1756(22nd of Nisan, 5516) Eighth Day of Pesach and Yizkor

1758(14th of Nisan, 5518): Parashat Achrei-Mot; erev Pesach

1761(18th of Nisan, 5521): Fourth Day of Pesach

1762(29th of Nisan, 5522): Johann Phillip, the director of the Prussia mints to whom Veitel Ephraim, the son of  Nathan Veitel Ephraim and senior elder of the Berlin Jewry “delivered silver in 1752 and 1754” passed away today.

1762: In Prague, Jonas Jeiteles and his wife gave birth to Talmudist Baruch Ben Jacob Benedict Jeitles, the father of Ignaz Jeiteles.

1764(20th of Nisan, 5524): Sixth Day of Pesach

1769(15th of Nisan, 5529): First Day of Pesach

1770(17th of Nisan): Israel Ben Moses Zamsoc of Brody, author of “Nezah Yisrael” passed away today.

1772(19th of Nisan, 5532): Fifth Day of Pesach

1775(22nd of Nisan, 5535): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat; Yizkor is recited as more American minuteman arrive in Boston to seal the city in what became the siege of Boston.

1777(15th of Nisan, 5537): Celebration begins of the first Pesach in the recently declared independent United States of America.

1783(20th of Nisan, 5543): Sixth Day of Pesach

1783: The Jews sent a petition to Emperor Joseph II which “expressed their gratitude…for his favors and reminding him of his principle that religion should not be interfered with, asked permission to wear beards.

1785: One day after he had passed away, Zvi ben Naphtali was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd.) Jewish Cemetery.

1786(24th of Nisan, 5546): Parashat Achrei Mot

1786: In New York, Reyna Ley and Isaac Moses gave birth to Lavinia Moses.

1787: Birthdate of German native Michael Seligman Dettelbacher, the son of Mendel Dettelbacher, the husband of Hindle Rothschild and the father of Marx Hirsch Dettelbacher.

1792: In Philadelphia, PA, Rachel Phillips a descendant from the Nunez family that arrived in Charleston in 1733 and Michael Levy gave birth to Uriah Phillips Levy, the husband of Jamaica native Virginia Lopes and  the first Jewish Commodore in the US. Navy who was instrumental in ending whipping of sailors in the U.S. Navy and who was the “savior of Monticello” the estate of founding father Thomas Jefferson.

https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/uriah-phillips-levy

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/uriah-phillips-levy

1794(22nd of Pesach, 5554): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor

1794: In Vilnius, a city with a large Jewish population that is home to the Vilna Gaon, Polish and Lithuanian forces rose up against the Russians in what became known as “The Vilnius Uprising of 1794)

1799(17th of Nisan, 5559): Third Day of Pesach; Chol Hamoed Pesach begins for the last time in the 18th century.

1796: In Charleston, SC, Kingston, Jamaica native Hannah de Pass, the daughter of Ralph de Pass married Benjamin, Milhado today.

1801: Eleanor Moses Hart and Solomon Cohen were married in Charleston in 1797 gave birth to Isaac S Cohen, the husband of Virginia Jane Davis whom he married a Petersburg, VA in 1840 and with whom he had eleven children all of whom were born in South Carolina.

1809(6th of Iyar, 5569): Parashat Tazria-Metzoria

1809(6th of Iyar, 5569: Breslau born “Talmudist and Rabbi,” Aryeh Lob Ben Hayyim who was living in Rotterdam when the French army invaded Holland passed away today.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3684-breslau-aryeh-lob-ben-hayyim

1813(22nd of Pesach, 5573) Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor

1813: As Jews munched matzah, during the War of 1812, the American naval squadron that was to take part on the attack on York, Ontario was preparing to leave Sackets Harbor.

1818(16th of Nisan, 5578): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of Omer

1818: In Livermore, Martha Benjamin and Israel Washburn burn gave birth to Cadwallader Colden Washburn, the Wisconsin political leader and businessman who founded what became General Mills, one of the companies operating in Judea-Samaria and the brother of Elihu B. Wasburne, the Illinois Congressman who defended U.S. Grant against charges of anti-Semitism.

1821(20th of Nisan, 5581): Sixth Day of Pesach

1822(1st of Iyar, 5582): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1822: Shmuel ben Azreal married Fegele bat Yehuda at the Great Synagogue today.

1826(15th of Nisan, 5586): First Day of Pesach

1833: One day after she had passed away, Sarah (Abrahams) Leigh, the husband of Joseph Leigh was buried today in the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1834: Dr. Albert Moses Levy and his wife moved back to Virginia after he had completed his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania. After his wife’s death. Levy would make his way to Texas where he participate in the rebellion against Mexico and become a leading member of the new republic

1837: On Staten Island, Henry Benjamin Nones, the Philadlephia born son of Miriam and Abraham Nones,  and his wife Anna M. Nones gave birth to Samuel Smith Nones

1839(8th of Iyar, 5599): Hannah Montefiore Anconca, the mother of Moses Montefiore Aconca and the wife of Judah Moses Ancona whom she had married in 1887 passed away today after she was buried in the Exeter Jewish Cemetery.

1840(19th of Nisan, 5600) Fifth Day of Pesach

1841: Birthdate of Versailles native and French jurist Edgar Demange, who served as co-counsel during the two trials of Alfred Dreyfus.

1842: Birthdate of Alexander Kohut the Hungarian born American rabbi and orientalist.

1843(22nd of Nisan, 5603): Eighth Day of Pesach and Yizkor

1845(15th of Nisan, 5606): Pesach

1845(15th of Nisan, 5606): Nine-year old Ezra Bierman, the son of David and Catherine Pick Bierman passed away today.

1845: Birthdate of Rabbi Jakob Guttmann the native of Beuthen who became the Chief Rabbi at Hildesheim who was the father of Rabbi Julius Guttmann.

1847: “Charles Vi,” a grand opera with music composed by Fromental Halevy was performed in New Orleans for the first time.

1848(19th of Nisan, 5608) Shabbat Shel Pesach

1850: Birthdate of anatomist and embryologist Gustav Born who was the father of Max Born.

1851(20th of Nisan, 5611): Sixth day of Pesach

1851: Birthdate of Gustav Jacob Born “the German histologist and author whose first wife was Gretchen Kauffman, with whom he had one son – Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Born.

1853(14th of Nisan, 5613): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1853: In the House of Commons, following a third reading, the bill removing Jewish disabilities was carried by a majority of 58.

1854: In Maitland, Australia, Julia Solomon and Lewis W. Levy gave birth so Samuel Eleazer Lewis who was also known as Eliot S Levy.

1856: In New York, Jacob Levy Seixas, the New York born son of Judith and Moses Benjamin Seixas and his wife Hortensia Seixaz gave birth to Katherine Seixas.

1859: Three days before his own birthday, Mortimer M. Hendricks, the son of Montague M. Hendricks and Rachel Seixas Nathan and his wife Jessie Justina Brandly Hendricks gave birth to Walter Hendricks who tragically passed away at the age of nine.

1860: Dr. George B. Cheever delivered an anti-slavery speech tonight at The Church of the Puritans in which he compared slaveholders to the anti-Semitic King John of England who “who, to extort money from a Jew, pulled a tooth every day from out the Hebrew's head until he complied with his demands.”

1861: Philadelphian Abraham who would rise to the rank of Corporal began serving in Company H of the 35th Regiment.

1862(22nd of Nisan, 5622): Eighth Day of Pesach observed as General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac slowly makes its way up the peninsula in what would be an aborted attempt to take Richmond while Union Forces future Admiral David Farragut prepare to successfully take the forts that will lead to the surrender of New Orleans.

1863(3rd of Iyar, 5623): Fifty-seven-year-old Gabriel Riesser the first Jewish judge in Germany and an advocate of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gabriel-riesser

http://jhom.com/personalities/riesser/index.htm

1863(3rd of Iyar, 5623: Soro Chano Szatan, the mother of Chanokh Heynekh Lewin (Rebbe Reb Heynekh of Aleksander) passed away.  Born in 1779, her husband was Pinchas Lewin who passed away in 1837.

1864(16th of Nisan, 5624): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1864: Captain Ezekiel Levy, his brother Isaac J. Levy and other Jews serving with the 46th Virginia Infantry observed Pesach at their camp in Adams Run, South Carolina, outside of Charleston. On the first day of the holiday, they feasted on a “fine vegetable soup” which contained “new onions, parsley, carrots turnips and a young cauliflower … a pound and a half of fresh [kosher] beef, the latter article sells for four dollars per pound in Charleston.”

1865: In Philadelphia, 16 German boys reportedly beat a Jewish named Bernadotte Glischman.  Following the beating, the boys took Glischman to his room where they stuck him with pins.  Glischman said the boys did this to him because he was Jewish, and they said that the Jews had killed Christ.

1867: Eve Lipman was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1868: Birthdate of Friedrich Münzer the “German classical scholar” known “for his demonstrations of how family relationships in ancient Rome connected to political struggles.”

1868: Birthdate of Miles Poindexter, the Senator from Tennessee who was one of only three Republicans to vote for the confirmation of Louis Brandeis as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Coutr.

1868: Woolf Elias of Camden, SC, married Emily Weinberg of Charleston, SC.

1869: Birthdate of Brest -Litovsk native Rabbi Julius T. Loeb who retired from the rabbinate in 1939 after 40 years after which he “had been appointed executive secretary of a new council to co-ordinate financial activities of Jewish institutions” in the District of Columbia.

1869: Josef Kahn, the Czech born son Jacob Kohn and Franziska Kahn and his wife Julie Kahn gave birth to Mathilde Kahn, who became Mathilda Fanta which he married Doctor of Jursiprudence Emil Fanta

1870: Birthdate of Vladimir Lenin, who led the Bolshevik Revolution.  Contrary to popular misconception, Lenin was not Jewish. Also, Lenin and the Communists did bring down the Czar.  They overthrew the Kerensky government, the democratic socialists, who had actually ended the three hundred years of Romanov rule. Many people who were born Jews were followers of Lenin.  The most famous was Trotsky.  But Lenin’s impact on the Jewish people far transcended the presence of these individuals. History would prove that Communist Russia was no more hospitable for those who wanted to practice their Judaism than Czarist Russia had been. 

1871(1st of Iyar, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1871: Bavaria grants equal rights to its Jewish citizens completing the process of emancipation in the German Empire.

1871: Clara Levine, the New York born daughter of Elizabeth a Moses S. Cohn and her husband Julius Levine gave birth to Manhattan resident Rebecca E. Guggenheimer, the wife of Alfred S. Guggenheimer and the mother of Claire Guggenheimer Schlesinger Friend and Robert A. Guggenheimer

1872:  Jews of Bavaria were granted equality

1872(14th of Nisan, 5632): Ta'anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1872(14th of Nisan, 5632): An article entitled “The Feast of Passover: Celebration of Israel’s Delivery From Bondage – Jewish Traditions and Observances” states that “At sundown today the people of Israel, wheresoever dispersed over the fact of the earth will begin the celebration of the feast of Pesach or the Passover, one of the most important festivals in the Jewish Calendar.”

1875(17th of Nisan, 5635): Third Day of Pesach

1876 In Vienna, “Maria (née Hock), the daughter of a scientist, and Ignác Bárány” a banker who was the son of a Hungarian Jew gave birth to Robert Bárány, who won the Noble Prize for Medicine in 1914.

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

1878(19th of Nisan, 5638): Fifth Day of Pesach

1880: In Leadville, CO, the Bush-Trimble Building collapsed.  The building Kaskel & Co, clothing business co-owned by Caesar J. Kaskel and Jacob Michaelis of New York City and managed by Julius W. Kaskel one of the first Jews to settle in Leadville.

1881: It was reported today that an anonymous Jewish donor had sent a basket of flowers to Reverend William A. Barltett of Indianapolis’ Second Presbyterian Church as a token of appreciation for the speech he gave on “the Jewish question.”

1881: Birthdate of Alexander Kerensky, the most prominent leader of the Provisional Government that replaced the government of the Czars.  Kerensky was not Jewish but the failure of the democratic forces that he led certainly had a major impact on the Jews of what would become the Soviet Union.  This short guide does not provide the space for further comment on this major episode in Jewish History.

1881: Visitors at the Hebrew Cemetery at Cypress Hills on Long Island heard shots emanating from the house of the groundskeeper, Max Blecker.  Further investigation led to the discovery of Blocker’s body which had a large wound on the right side of his head and a revolver grasped tightly in his hand.  Reportedly, he had been in ill health and he “told his friends that he would be better off dead.”

1881: It was reported today that Tunisia with a population of about 2 million is of little financial value to the French who seem determined to annex the territory.  The little commercial activity that does exist is primarily in the hands of the 25,000 Jews who make up about a fifth of the population of Tunis.

1882: Birthdate of Jaques Hanak who was deported from Prague to the death camps where he was murdered at the age of 60.

1882: It was reported today, that in Berlin, a committee composed of leading citizens belonging to all religious denominations has raised 100,000 marks to provided assistance for Jews seeking to leave Russia.

1882: It was reported today that reports have reached Vienna confirming the attacks on Jews in towns near Odessa.  In Balta, the riots lasted for two days leaving at least 2,000 Jewish families in ruin.  “The riots almost assumed the character of a struggle for the annihilation of the Jews…”

1883(15th of Nisan, 5643): On the first day of Pesach an article entitled “The Feast of the Passover” reported that “the morning services at” the Jewish “places of worship…will be peculiarly interesting.”

1884: In Nashville, TN, John Schoffner made a full confession to police concerning the murder of Meyer Friedman, a Jew living in Nashville.  According to Schoffner, Meyer Morris organized the killing, and that Mrs. Friedman wanted her husband dead because “she did not love him” and he “treated her badly.”

1884: Birthdate of Vienna native Otto Rosenfeld who gained fame as psychoanalyst, Otto Rank who wrote the first psychoanalytic book by a disciple of Freud and moved to the United States in the 1930’s where died at the age of 55, one month after Freud passed away.

1884: New York dentist and founding member of B’nai Israel Dr. Lyon Berhard was laid to rest at Cypress Hill this morning.

1885: Birthdate of “Lumzer, Russia native and Holyoke, MA businessman Charles Belsky, a partner in the wholesale junk company of Belsky and Goldberg and the husband of Esther Cohen with whom he had three children.

1885:  Ninety-six-year-old Reverend Leonard Withington, the oldest Congregational Clergyman in the United States passed away today.  Withington was a scholar well versed in Hebrew who had written a book entitled “Solomon Songs.”  He was a prime example of the reality that in 19th century America some of the people who were the most knowledgeable about Hebrew as a language were Protestant ministers.

1886: Jess Seligman presided over tonight’s celebration of the second anniversary of the Hebrew Technical Institute which was held at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.  Among the dignitaries attending the event was Carl Schurz, the famous German-American journalist and social reformer who gave the evening’s main address. (The school would remain open until 1939)

1887: It was reported today that two Englishman carrying an American flag recently imprisoned a Jewish merchant from Alcazar Morocco on charges of not paying a debt.  The prisoner was paraded through various towns in chains as hje was taken to Tangier.  The event, which took place during Passover, has been condemned by the leading Jews of Tangier who have sought the aid of the local British, French and Portuguese Consuls

1888: In Chicago, Iowa native Fannie Jacobson and realtor Morris Jacobson gave birth to Dr. Edmund Jacobson, a specialist in tension control, died last Friday at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/14/obituaries/dr-edmund-jacobson-dead-specialist-in-tension-control.html

1889: In Terre Haute, Indiana, “Max and Theresa (Ravitch) Blumberg gave birth to DePauw University graduate and University of Chicago trained attorney gave birth to Benjamin Blumberg the husband of Fannie Louise Burgheimer who served as an officer realty and investment companies while being a member of Temple Israel and the Temple Israel Men’s Cub.

1889: The Literary Notes column reported that “The Jew in English Fiction” by Rabbi David Philipson will soon be issued by Robert Clarke & Co of Cincinnati, Ohio.  Among the characters discussed are Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Shylock, Cumberland’s Jew, Scott’s Jew in “Ivanhoe”, Dickens’ Jew in “Oliver Twist’ and “Our Mutual Friend”, Disraeli’s in “Coningsby” and “Tancred and George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda”.  (At the time, Philipson was a young Reform rabbi from Wabash, Indiana)

1889: At high noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Run of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000. ‘Jewish settlers began coming to Oklahoma and Indian Territory as early as 1875. The Jewish population grew as Oklahoma blossomed into a boom area, after the famous Land Run of 1889 and statehood in 1907. The early settlers came as peddlers and salesmen and later became shopkeepers and retail merchants. According to the American Jewish Year Book, there were 1,000 Jews in Oklahoma Territory in 1901.” (Courtesy of the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City)

1890: In the UK, Sir Marcus Samuel, the future Sheriff of the City of London and Lord Mayor of London and the former Fanny Elizabeth Benjamin gave birth to their fourth child and second daughter Ida Marie.

1891(14th of Nisan, 5651): “The Festival of Pesach: It will begin at Sunset To-Night and Last For A Week” published today reported that “all the reform temples and orthodox synagogues will be open for services this evening…and appropriate sermons will be delivered by the spiritual heads of the communities.

1891: Birthdate of Nettie Yaniger who became Nettie Panitz when she married Ezekiel Panitz and who was the David H. Panitz who served as the rabbi at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. during the late 1950’s.

1892: In Brooklyn, Adolph and Deborah (Spaine) Dannenberg gave birth to Oscar Asahel Halevy Dannenberg, the Yale alum and lawyer who served as a Sheriff in Bridgeport, CT.

1893(6th of Iyar, 5653): Marx Mordechai Pfaelzer, the son of Feis Moses or Uri Pfaelzer; Fanny Pfaelzer and Hanna (Pfaelzer) Marx, the husband of Karoline / Gitel Pfaelzer and the father of Fannie Kind; Simon Pfaelzer; Sarah Schweizer; Morris Moses Pfaelzer; Lina Strouss; Clara Pfaelzer; Emilie Pfaelzer; Regina Pfaelzer; Fred Pfaelzer; Fredricke Pfaelzer and Adelheld Pfaelzer passed away today after which he was buried at Hemsbach, Germany.

1893(6th of Iyar, 5653): Chaim Aronson passed away at the age of 77. Born in Lithuania in 1825 when it was part of Russia, Aaronson was a gifted linguist (Hebrew, German, and Russian) with a penchant for invention who went from being a clockmaker to developing a variety of machines including one for making cigarettes and one that was a prototype for a movie camera.  Aronson was a better scholar and engineer than he was a businessman since none of his work brought him commercial success.  His most long-lasting contribution was a literary work entitled A Jewish Life under the Tsars: The Autobiography of Chaim Aronson, 1825-1888 that provides a picture of life in the final century of Czarist Russia.

1893: Rabbi Raphael Benjamin delivered a sermon this morning on the subject of the recent blackballing of Theodore Seligman by the Union League.

1893: “Max Judd Objected To” published today described the reasons that the government of Austria provided for refusing to recognize the appointment of Max Judd as Consul General for the United States at Vienna.  The Austrians claim that the refusal is based on that fact the Judd had been born in Austria and “is engaged in the emigration business.” The Austrians claim that the objection has nothing to do with Judd’s religion which is just as well because the U.S. government has said that Mr. Judd’s replacement will not be of Austrian descent, but he will be Jewish.

1894(16th of Nisan, 5654): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1894: Hyman Blumenthal was arrested on charges that he had deliberately tried to burn down the tenement at 28 East Broadway.

1894(16th of Nisan, 5654): Brooklyn born Jacob Hamburger, the father  the successful manufacturer of robes and dresses Benjamin Hamburger and had he lived long enough, the father-in-law of Ray Marks and the grandfather of Sideny Hamburger passed away today.

1894: Birthdate of Max Weinreich, the Russian born American linguist and a founder of the Yiddish Institue (YIVO) and author who was “the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who edited the Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary.”

1894: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a lecture at Temple Emanu-El in New York entitled “The Jewish Passover and Its Modern Message to Jews and Christians” in which he described that observing Passover was “the celebration of the anniversary of the Jewish Independence Day.”

1894: “The Babylonian Element” published today included Professor Archibald Sayce’s comparison of the narratives found on Babylonian Tablets and those found in Genesis which “assume an entirely different complexion in the hands of the Biblical writers” who strip them of their polytheism, accommodate them to the Hebrew point of view and “make them the vehicle of profound religious truths.

1895: It was reported today that the Hebrew Orphan Asylum is providing housing for 700 children at its building at 137th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.  Trustees Theodore Seligman, Edward Lauterbach and Emanuel Leyman are considering a proposal to raise $250,000 to expand the facility in order to meet increased demand for its services.

1895: “Object To The McCall Bill” published today described the “vigorous protest” of “the American Anti-Semite Association” to the passage of the McCall Educational Test bill and “recommends the passage of the Stone Consular Certificate bill” that “considers as desirable immigrants only those who for five years previous have been actively engaged in agricultural pursuits with their own manual labor.”

1896 (9th of Iyar, 5656): Gustave May passed away today in New York City.  Born in Paris in 1845, he served as Quartermaster General with the forces fighting to protect the Commune at the end of the Fanco-Prussian War.  When the Commune forces were defeated, he fled to America with his brother where they started May Brothers, a firm of commission merchants that “was the first to import cigarette papers into the United States. Although born Jewish May saw himself as a “Freethinker” and was active in the French Exile community.  His brother Elie had served as a General in the forces of the Commune.

1896: Cassie Ritter Weil and Adolphus Weil gave birth to Adolphus Leo Weil, Jr who lived at Pennsylvania at the time of his death.

1896: Herzl began a two-day journey to Karlsruhe where he was received in audience by Grossherzog (Grand Duke) Friedrich of Baden.  Herzl was heartened by the meeting saying ("Jedenfalls nahm der Grossherzog meine Staatbildung von Anfang an vollkommen ernst." - "In any case, the Grand Duke took my proposed formation of a state quite seriously from the beginning.")

1896: Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, cut short his state visit to Russia and left St. Petersburg for Paris so he could attend the funeral of his friend Baron Hirsch.

1896: “Strong Tribute To His Memory” published today provided reminiscences by Oscar S. Straus about the late Baron de Hirsh saying that “it was my good fortune to enjoy the personal acquaintance of Baron de Hirsch” whom he said gave away $25,000,000 to provide relief for Russian Jews which the Baron considered to be the most oppressed people in the world.

1897(20th of Nisan, 5657): Sixth Day of Pesach

1897(20th of Nisan, 5657): Sixty-seven-year-old Simon Alexander passed away today having lost his 9 month long battle with asthma and heart sickness.  He was an editorial writer for The Hebrew Journal and member of Temple Emanu-El
1897:  In New York City, the world's largest Jewish daily newspaper, "The Forward," was first published. Abraham Cahan, 43, one of its founders, became editor of the paper in 1903, remaining until his death in 1951.  The Forward began as a Yiddish paper.  By the 1930's it was one of the nation's leading dailies with a readership of 275,000 supplemented by a radio audience listening to WVED.  One of its most famous features was the Bintel Briefs, a Yiddish Dear Abby.  The paper shifted its formant and became English weekly in the 1980's.  Later it added a Russian language edition for the new wave of Jewish immigrants.  For more information see http://www.forward.com/.

1898(30th of Nisan, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1898(30th of Nisan, 5658): Simon Kayserling passed away. Kayserling was a German born teacher and author.  He was the brother of Meyer Kayserling.  Both brothers were historians.  But Meyer also pursued career in the Rabbinate while Simon followed a more secular career serving on the faculty of the Jewish Free School while writing or translating books about the history of Poland and the history of the Jews living in Spain and Portugal.

1898: N.S. Roenau of the United Hebrew Charities was one of the speakers who addressed a group Yale University students studying Sociology under the direction of Professor William T. Blackman who visited New York City today.

1899: The sixth annual reunion banquet of the Hebrew Technical Institute Alumni Association was held this evening at the Broadway Central Hotel.

1899: Minnie Jacobs and her lawyer Joseph Moss appeared before William J. Youngs, Secretary to the Governor of New York to plead for a pardon for her father, Saul Jacobs.

1900(23rd of Nisan): Author Louis Bein passed away.

1900: District Grand Lodge No. 7 of B’nai Birth which includes the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas with over 1,700 members opened its 27 convention today in New Orleans.

1900: “Mysterious Murder Leads to Jew Baiting in Prussia” published today described how “the anti-Semites have succeeded in provoking an outbreak of Jew-baiting by exploiting the mysterious murder of Ernst Winter at Konitz as a so-called ritual crime” because as one Berlin newspaper said “the crime is the work Jews who require Christian blood.”

1900: Twenty-four-year-old Jacob Mack married 22 year old Bertha “Birdie” Ronsheim, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio.

1900: “In Memory of Dr. Wise” published today described plans for a public service that will be held in memory of Dr. I. M. Wise on April 29 under the directions of New York Board of Jewish Ministers.

1901: “Assemblyman Charles Adler of New York City called on Governor Odell today and appealed to him to have the law closing the butcher shops on Sundays so amended as to permit Jewish butchers who close on the Sabbath to open for a few hours on Sundays.

1901: Twenty-five-year-old Cornell trained physician Jacob Gutman, the Riga born son of Abraham and Sarah (Gator) Gutman and member of Temple Israel married Rebecca Dogin today in New York City.

1902(15th of Nisan, 5662): On the first day of Passover The New York Times took exception to a letter that Mayor Seth Low had sent to Police Commissioner John N. Partridge advising him not to enforce “blue laws” on Sunday April 20 because Jews needed to shop and conduct such activities as killing chickens as they prepared for their holiday which would begin on Monday evening, April 21.  The Times said that the Mayor’s ruling “was uncalled for” and “was wrong in principle and conclusion. [Editor’s Note: Those of us living in the 21st century with its 24/7 schedule probably have difficulty that power of Sunday closing laws; laws that were enforced well into the closing decades of the 20th century.”

1902: Birthdate of Madeline Samuel, the daughter of Julius Juda Dukas and the wife of Jacob A. Samuel.

1903: Herzl meets Lord Rothschild who tells him that Edmond de Rothschild is delighted with his plan.

1903: Birthdate of Marcus Polak, the native of Goor who would be murdered at Bergen Belsen.

1904: Birthdate of Robert J. Oppenheimer.  Born in New York, Oppenheimer was the son of a prosperous German-Jewish textile importer and an artistic Baltimore Jewess who died when Oppenheimer was a child.  A renowned physicist, Oppenheimer bordered on the brilliant and enjoyed a wide range of intellectual pursuits.  His claim to fame is the Manhattan Project.  He was the scientific overlord of the American race to develop and build the Atomic Bomb.  After the war, Oppenheimer had reservations about additional military uses of science.  He opposed the building of the Hydrogen Bomb, a project that was brought to a successful conclusion by yet another Jewish scientist, Edward Teller.  Oppenheimer fell victim to the post-War Red Scare and lost his security clearance. Oppenheimer's security clearance was regained during the Kennedy years and his reputation was publicly rehabilitated.  He passed away in 1967 at the age of 62.  As to the Jewish influence in his life, consider the following. Prior to the 1930's, Oppenheimer had led the cloistered life of the privileged and the scientist in his ivory tower.  During the 1930's Oppenheimer became involved in liberal and social justice causes.  According to him, the change came about, in part became, "I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany, I had relatives there, and was later to help in extricating them and bringing them to this country...I began to participate more fully in the life of the community." 

1905(17th of Nisan, 5665): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1905: “The Doukala, Chiadma and M’touga tribes are in full revolt near Mogador,” also known as Suira which “is a seaport on the west coast of Morocco” that “has a population of 19,000, 8,000 of whom are Jews.”

1906: In Montreal, Shlomo Chaim Caplan and Chaya Bluma Routtenberg gave birth to Jonah Ephraim Caplan the Yeshiva University graduate who had come to the United States in 1924 served as the rabbi at several congregations including one Astoria, NY and was “active in the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.

1907: Abram Biju did not marry Angelita Wertheim today as planned because the groom’s father Isaac Bijur had passed away on the previous Saturday.

1907: A bill introduced tonight in the New York State Legislature designed to regulate pushcart peddlers in New York City that allow for “special temporary licenses to be issued for Jewish and Italian holidays” for a fee less than the standard charge of $10.

1907: It was reported today that Ida Highwood, driven by Nathan Strauss “was almost invincible” when she faced competitors as the Speedway. (Editor’s note – Ida Highwood was a trotter.

1908: Birthdate of Leonard Schapiro, the native of Glasgow, Scotland “who spend in his childhood in Riga and St. Petersburg but returned to Britain with his parents in 1920 where he carved out a career in economics and political studies that led to his being named Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics.

1908: Birthdate of New York native and award-winning authority on providing health care of the aged and chronically ill, William Adelman the long-time executive director of Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx and husband of the former Doris Mensch with whom he had three sons – Richard, Mark and Robert.

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/14/archives/william-adelman-69-an-authority-in-healthcare-services-for-aged.html?searchResultPosition=1

1909(1st of Iyar, 5669): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1909: Twenty-eight-year-old Benjamin Winter, Sr., the Lodz born son of Michael and Beatrice Oshner Winter, who in 1901 came to the United States where he went from painting apartment buildings to becoming a real estate mogul who lost forty million dollars while going bankrupt during the Depression and then making it all back and more just before his death, today married Dora Nissel with whom he had

four children – Marvin, Beatrice, Ethel and Natalie.

1909: In Turin, Italy, Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire gave birth to Rita Levi-Montalcini, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. (As reported by Benedict Carey)

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0891/0192/products/b95034f8f6ef4ed632eaff7044c41e91_2048x2048.gif?v=1448135295

1910: Today Rabbi Haim (Henry) Pereira Méndez, President of the Union of Orthodox Congregations wrote a letter to New York Mayor William Gaynor on behalf of the Orthodox congregations in the United States and Canada thanking him for his letter rejecting the request of Rev. Thomas M Chalmers for a license to “preach for the conversion Jews” on street corners in some of the city’s most heavily “Jewish” communities.  Mendez expressed his appreciation for the tone of the letter which was sympathetic to the Jewish people and said that he would work with the Christian ministers to lift the level of modern society to a level closer to that expressed by Judaism and Christianity.

1910: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow completed his service as The Temple “Louisville, Kentucky Jewish weekly that firs appeared in July of 1909.

1911(24th of Nisan, 5671): Parashat Shimini

1911: The Jewish World to-day published an interview with Herman Bernstein, the author and translator, who passed through London on his way to Russia during which he said “that since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem the Jes have not had a better home than they have in the United and that Jewish immigrants become Americanized more rapidly than the immigrants of other creeds and languages” but “there seems to be a policy for the restriction of immigration which sometimes goes byon the law and which turns the misery of the immigrant into tragedy.”

1912: The Wage Earner's League for Woman Suffrage held a major rally at New York's Cooper Union. Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and three others founded the League which sought to encourage working women to join the political process as well as to agitate for the right to vote. Lemlich, a shirtwaist maker, became the League's vice president. Drawing on their background in the Socialist movement, the founders of the Wage Earners' League emphasized the special concerns of working women. They argued in speeches and pamphlets that women needed the vote in order to secure basic human rights like safe working conditions. In doing so, League leaders came into conflict with both Socialist men and middle-class women. The men who counted on female allies in Socialist causes bluntly suggested that suffrage activists return to their kitchens. Middle-class women showed their class bias in suggesting that their wealth and education made them more capable activists than these working women. Wary of having their specific concerns sidestepped, League members agreed that any woman could join their group, but that only workers could vote, ensuring that working women would remain in control of the League's agenda and tactics. Today’s rally at Cooper Union brought together thousands of cheering women to listen to arguments for women's suffrage. The location was symbolic; Cooper Union was the site of the rally that had kicked off the "Uprising of the 20,000," one of the first and most influential strikes of industrial garment workers, just three years before. Despite a large and enthusiastic turnout at the rally, the League dissolved soon afterward. Lacking a full-time organizer and a steady source of funding, the League ceased to be active. Schneiderman went on a speaking tour for another suffrage organization; her colleagues likewise turned their energies to other groups. Ultimately, the fight for suffrage would depend on alliances across class and gender lines.

1912: In London, those attending a “meeting of the East End Jewish shopkeepers” passed a “resolution petitioning the local Borough Council to grant Jewish East End traders an exemption under the Shops Act.”

1912: The Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis, whose purpose was “to offer a reaffirmation of the member’s faith in the permanent character and value to Israel and to the world of Liberal or Reform Judaism” was organized today.

1913(15th of Nisan, 5673): Pesach

1913(15th of Nisan, 5673): Seventy-four-year-old “manufacturer” Gabriel Hirsch passed away today in Philadelphia.

1913: Rabbi Tobias Schanfarber is scheduled to lead Passover services this morning at K.A.M. Temple in Chicago, Illinois

1913: Founding of Beth Aaron Synagogue in Minneapolis, MN.

1913: Jacob Adler and Sara Adler are scheduled to begin a weeklong run at the Haymarket Theatre where he will perform “Style” by Abraham Shomer.

1914: In the Netherlands, Professor Arnold Hendrik and Lucretia de Hartog gave birth to author Jan de Hartog who wrote “Skipper Next to God” in which Wolfe Barzell’s performance provided the inspiration for his nephew Emanuel “Manny” Azenberg to become interested in theatre; an interest that would lead to a thirty-three relationship with playwright Neil Simon.

1915:” An application for a commutation of Leo Frank's death sentence was submitted to a three-person Prison Commission in Georgia.”

1915: During WW I, at Ypres, the Germans used gas for the first time on the battlefield.

1915(8th of Iyar, 5675): David S. Lehman, the native of Portsmouth, Ohio, the husband of the former Alma Schlesinger, the son-in-law or Rabbi Max Schlesinger of Albany, NY and the Vice President of the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives died in Denver today “form intestinal trouble after several months’ of illness.

1915: “Seventy Jews” who are seeking to emigrate to America or Australia arrived in Alexandria today from Jerusalem and described the “terrible economic situation” with flour costing fifteen dollars a sack, potatoes being sold for “six times the ordinary cost” and the appearance of huge swarms of locusts.

1916(19th of Nisan, 5676): Fifth day of Pesach; Shabbat

1916: It was reported today that Dr. Straus a native of Germany now living in New York provided the $25,000 to start the Alpha and Omega Publishing Company which will publish The American Jewish Chronicle, a weekly publication that will serve as an advocate for the rights of European Jews after the World War comes to an end.

1916:  In New York, Marutha Sher and Moshe Menhuin gave birth to Yehudi Menuhin famed violin virtuoso and conductor. 

https://www.menuhin.org/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yehudi-Menuhin

1917(30th of Nisan, 5677) Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1917: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled deliver a talk on “The War and Religion” at Temple Beth-El.

1917: At Carnegie Hall, the Free Synagogue is scheduled to host “Tenth Anniversary Exercise” that will include a sermon by Rabbi Wise on “Is the Free Synagogue Worthwhile?”

1917: Dr. Silverman is scheduled to deliver a talk on “What the Jews Have Done for the World” at Temple Emanu-El.

1917: “Students from Adelphi College, College of the City of New York, Columbia Univesity, Hunter College and New York University” attended “the second annual dinner of the Menorah Society in Greater New York” which was held this evening at the Hotel Netherland in New York City

1917: In Cardiff, Wales, “solicitor and cinema owner” Rudolf Abse gave birth to Leo Abse, the husband of Marjorie Davis with whom he had two children – Tobias and Bathsheba – who was a lawyer and a 30 Welsh Labour Member of Parliament who promoted laws to liberalize divorce and decriminalize homosexual behavior.

1917: Professor Philip Boas of Whitman University delivered a speech entitled “Youth and Judaism” at the Spring Assembly of the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis at Temple Emanu-El this evening in which he “said that he did not believe that Jewish youths were deserting the synagogue.”  “He asserted there signs of greater consciousness of Judaism among the young than there were ten years ago, but the youth wanted to see resulted and wanted to see how religion was benefiting the world.”

1917: “The American Jewish Historical Society began its 25th convention today at the Hotel Ansonia.

1917: Max J. Kohler, the son of the President the Hebrew Union College, presented a paper on “Jewish Rights at the Congress of Vienna” today.

1917: Dr. Cyrus Adler, Oscar S. Straus, Dr. Jacob H. Hollander and Daniel P. Hayes spoke at this evening’s reception hosted by the Judean Society under the leadership of its President, Dr. Henry M. Leipziger for members of the American Jewish Historical Society.

1917: Jacob H. Schiff, a long-time opponent of creating a “Jewish nation in Palestine” delivered a speech at a meeting of the League of the Jewish Youth of America at the Century Theatre in which expressed his support for the creation of a “center for Jewish culture” in Palestine because he believed “in the Jewish people, in the mission of the Jewish people” and in the need for a place where “Jewish culture might be further and developed, unhampered by the materialism of the world.”

1918: Austrian native Nettie Kinsbruner, the daughter of Shmuel Meyer Stettner and Rachel Stettner and her husband David (Aubie) Kinsbruner gave birth to Beatrice, the sister of American college basketball star Mac Kinsbrunner.

1918: Birthdate of Solomon Aaron Berson, the New York born physician who worked with Rosalyn Yallow on “major advances in clinical biochemistry.”

1919(22nd of Nisan, 5679): Eighth Day of Pesach

1919: In one of those great calendar coincidences, today in New York, Frederick and Margareten, part of the matzah empire, gave birth to Muriel V. Margareten who became Muriel V. Nusbaum which she married Goodwin Nusbaum

1919: I. Edwin Goldwasser, the executive director of the Federation for the support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies is scheduled to lecture on “Co-ordination in Jewish Philanthropy” at this evening’s meeting of the Council of Jewish Women at the Sinai Center in Chicago.

1919: Jacob H. Schiff, Abram I.Elkus and Dr. Stephen S. are scheduled to speak at the reception for the Earl of Reading sponsored by the Judaeans which will be presided over by President Samson Lachman

1920: During the San Remo Conference, Chaim Weizmann has a private meeting with Lloyd George and Lord Balfour during which he presses the British leaders “for a civil administration in Palestine, run by the British under a League of Nations mandate.  This stood in stark contrast with the French leaders who did not want the Balfour Declaration to be part of the peace treaty with the Ottomans. 

1920: In Washington, the Tacoma News Tribune reported that Leach Cross (born Louis Charles Wallach” whose boxing nickname was “The Fighting Dentist” “had signed with Universal Pictures in Los Angeles to appear in an 18-episode serial entitle “The Vanishing Dagger.”

1921(14th of Nisan, 5681):Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1921: Today, an Englishman who “believed in the Jewish origin of the British Royal Family” considered Saeki Yoshiro’s theory of the Jewish origins of the Japanese people, Israel’s Messenger carried a letter from former lady-in-waiting Elizabeth A. Gordon.

1921: In Manhattan, Minna (Harlib) Koenig and Judge Morris Koenig gave birth to Dartmouth undergraduate and Columbia Law School trained attorney Julian Norman Koenig the WW II Army veteran and creative advertising man credit with coming up with the campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle and Earth Day, which was first celebrated for the first time on his 49th birthday. (As reported by William Yardley)

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/business/julian-koenig-who-sold-americans-on-beetles-and-earth-day-dies-at-93.html

1922: Birthdate of American microbiologist Wolf Vladimir Vishniac, the Berlin born son of photographer Roman Vishniac, husband of Helen Vishniac and the father of astronomer Ethan Vishniac.

1923: In Nuremberg Jewish businessman Gustav Kahn and the former Beatrice Freudenthal (both of whom were murdered in the Holocaust gave birth to Robert Ludwig Kahn, who survived the Holocaust because of the Kindertransport and went on to became a Professor of German at Rice University in Houston while raised two children, Peter and Beatrice, with his wife, poet Lieselotte Maragrete Kupfer.

1922: The national board of Hadassah voted "no confidence" in the leadership of ZOA President Louis Lipsky.

1923: In Manhattan, novelist Paul Hervey Fox and “the former Elsie de Sola” gave birth to novelist Paula Fox.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/books/paula-fox-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1923(6th of Iyar, 5683): Fifty-seven-year-old Charleston SC born Baltimore attorney Louis H. Levin the “Executive Secretary of the Association of Jewish Charities,” “the second editor of Jewish Comment,” the husband of Bertha Szold with whom he had five children – Benjamin, Marcus, Harriet, Sarah and Eva – and the brother-in-law of Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, passed away today in Baltimore.

1924: “Arguing that this Government and others had made costly mistakes in dealing with Oriental peoples because they did not know enough about them, and intimating his belief that the United States was on the verge of committing another similar blunder with relation to the Japanese for the same reason, Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of Dropsie College, appealed today for a change in the viewpoint with which the Western nations looked at those in the East,”

1925: In Sosnowiec, Poland, Herschel Krysztal, an accountant and the former Dora Grossman gave birth to Henyek Krysztal who gained famed as psychiatrist Dr. Henry Krystal. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/science/henry-krystal-holocaust-trauma-expert-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1926: In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Russian Jewish immigrants Esther (née Ottenstein), who was a childhood friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Meyer Lubotsky, a retail tire business owner gave birth to Charlotte Rae Lubotsky who gained fame as Emmy nominated actress Charlotte Rae and the mother of Larry Straus who co-authored her autobiography The Facts of My Life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/obituaries/charlotte-rae-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1927(20th of Nisan, 5687):Sixth Day of Pesach

1928:  In Dallas Texas, David Sperling, “a tailor who had changed his surname from Spurling to Spelling” and his wife Pearl Wald, both of whom were Russian Jewish immigrants gave birth to SMU graduate “Aaron Spelling, the TV executive producer who gave us “Charlie's Angels.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/arts/television/24spelling.html

1928: In the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York  Polish Jewish immigrants Anna and Isaac “Ira” Nussbaum” gave birth to Estelle Nussbaum who gained fame as Estelle Harris the actress best known for her role “as Estelle Costanza the mother Seinfeld sidekick George Costanza” who raised three children – Eric, Glen and Taryn – with her husband Sy Harris.

1928: Banker Jacques Stern who had run “on the Left Republic List” began serving as a deputy for the Dinge “district of Bassess-Alpes” today.

1928: Following Hadassah President Irma Levy Lindheim’s recent declaration that the administration of the ZOA was "not an effective instrument for the achievement of world Zionist aims for the up-building of Palestine" today the National Board of Hadassah registered a vote of no confidence in the leadership of ZOA President Louis Lipsky.

1929(12th of Nisan, 5689): Sixty-nine-year-old Cleveland clothing manufacturer John Ainsfeld, the Vienna born son of Israel and Amelia (Geldwerth) Ainsfeld who married Edith Karolyn after his first wife, Daniela Guttenberg had passed away and who was President of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Jewish Infant Orphan’s Home as well as a member of the Hebrew Free Loan Association and the treasurer of the of Federation for Jewish Charities, passed away.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/a/anisfield-john

1930: In Brooklyn, Jacob Goetz who “lost his men’s clothing store during the Great Depression and then sold ties on street corners until his death in 1943” and Rose Feldman who “worked at the store and, after her husband’s death, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II” gave birth to WW II Army veteran and CCNY graduate Martin Alvin Goetz “who joined the computer industry in its infancy in the mid-1950s as a programmer working on Univac mainframes and who later received the first U.S. patent for software…” (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/technology/martin-goetz-dead.html

1930: Release date for the all-star revue “Paramount on Parade” written by Joseph Mankiewicz and co-produced by Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zucker, Albert S. Kaufman and B.P. Schulberg.

1930: In Manhattan, The Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre, which was later re-named The Mark Hellinger Theatre, opened today.

1931: A charity dinner is scheduled to be held at the Hotel Biltmore today “under the auspices of the New York Campaign for the Relief of Jews in Eastern Europe” which is trying to raise one million dollars.

1931: JBI International was founded as the Jewish Braille Institute of America

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

1932(16th of Nisan, 5692): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover, who without fanfare or controversy, appointed the second Jewish Supreme Court Associate Justice.

1933(26th of Nisan, 5693): Parashat Shmini

1933(26th of Nisan, 5693):  A Jewish merchant, Salomon Rosenstrauch was shot dead in Wiesbaden, Germany.

1933: In Nazi Germany, the government adopted measures excluding Jewish students from school.

1933: “A conference of executive directors of Y.M.H.A.’s, Y.W H.A’s and Jewish Community Centers” is scheduled to begin this evening at the 92nd Street Y.

1933(26th of Nisan, 5693): Fifty-nine year old Sándor Ferenczi, the “son of Baruch - Bernát Ferenczi and Róza Frenkel” and “husband of Gizella Palos – Propper” passed away today.

1934: Cleveland E. Dodge, President of the of the Greater New York Y.M.C.A. and Judge Irving Lehman, President of the Jewish Welfare Board are scheduled to two of the speakers at the is evening’s dinner at the Hotel Commodore at the anniversary dinner of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association of the Bronx.

1935: In Los Angeles, the premier of “Bride of Frankenstein,” the sci-fi thriller” produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr and filmed by cinematographer Franz Waxman.

1936(30th of Nisan, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1936: “As the racial rioting stormed in its third week, a communique issued by the (British) police declared that masses of Arabs were still attacking Jewish settlements” including at “Hatikvah Settlemet” and “Shechunath Areyh, midway between Tel Aviv and Petach Tikvah” were “Jews successfully defended the settlement until police arrived and beat off the invaders.”

1936: “At Jenin, on the main highway to Jerusalem, a large crowd of Arab villagers help up and stone Jewish buses, wounding two passengers.”

1936: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal announced today that the Palestine Foundation Fund and the Jewish National Fund had sent $100,000 to Palestine” from funds that were being collecting in the United States for the settlement of Jews from German, Poland and countries in Palestine.

1936: “At 5 o’clock this morning a Jewish-owned cardboard factory near Tel Aviv was burned by Arabs.”

1936: “A Jewish merchant in the old city of Jerusalem who tried to open his shop was beaten by young Arab agitators and forced to close.”

1937(11th of Iyar, 5697): Ninety-four-year-old Albany, NY native Simon Wolfe Rosendale the New York State Attorney General who was the first Jew elected to a state-wide office in “the Empire State” and who was active in Jewish communal affairs even though he was an anti-Zionist passed away today.

http://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/10075964

1937(11th of Iyar, 5697): Sixty-seven-year-old Mrs. Marcus M. Marks (Esther Friedman), the “widow of the Borough President of Manhattan” who was also called by some “the father of day-light saving plans” passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9502E7D6133AE23ABC4B51DFB266838C629EDE

1938(21st of Nisan, 5698): Seventh Day of Pesach.

1938: “Nazis prohibit Aryan 'front-ownership' of Jewish businesses.”

1938: It was reported today that a “lawyer’s group” to raise funds for the American Ort Foundation “was formed at meeting in the office former Judge Grossman” and a “dentists group” was formed at offices on offices at 212 Fifth Avenue where “Dr. John L. Kaufman was elected chairman.”

1939: Birthdate of Uri Orr, the native of Kfar Haim who rose to the rank of general in the IDF before pursuing a political career that included serving as an MK and Deputy Minister of Defense.

1939: “Dark Victory,” a melodrama produced by David Lewis, with music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1939: “The Greek cattleboat Assimi which attempted to land 263 illegal Jewish immigrants” in Palestine “twelve days ago was ordered to leave Haifa tonight.”    When the police announced the decision, “the passengers tore off their clothing and screamed that they would rather be killed than be sent back to sea. Some prayed and recited psalms. When the Jewish residents of Haifa heard the screams and prayers aboard the Assimi” they spontaneously proclaimed a strike that took hold throughout the city.  Protesters carried signs reading ‘Open the gates to the Jewish illegals’ and ‘Down with the barbaric attitude toward illegals. The captain had been fined and imprisoned for his role in bringing the Jews to Palestine. To add insult to injury the captain had been fined and imprisoned for his role in bringing the Jews to Palestine.

1940(14th of Nisan, 5700): The Sommer family sits down to their first Seder in Liechtenstein.  How this family of German Jewish refugees from Munich came to be there was chronicled by Susi Pugatsch-Sommer in an article entitled “A Pesach Miracle in Nazi Germany.”

 

My family - my parents Binyamin and Friedl Sommer, myself (13) my sister Ella (10), my brother Alfred (7), and my grandmother, Rachel - lived in temporary quarters in Munich, after our home had been confiscated by the Nazi daily newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter in 1939. My father had been arrested and incarcerated in the Dachau Camp in 1938 for a short time. Once he was released, he realized that he and the family had to leave Germany as quickly as possible, but he could not find a way to get out. In November 1939, my father left home for a few days, and hid the forest near Munich, since he was informed that the Nazis would arrest all male Jews again and send them to a concentration camp. By chance, he met a man in the forest who identified himself only as an engineer. This man told him that he could arrange an entry permit into neutral Liechtenstein only if he had enough money to open a building materials factory and pay salaries to 100 workers, since unemployment was high in Liechtenstein. My father agreed immediately, since he had no other option to save our lives. Miraculously, we received visas for Liechtenstein in the beginning of April 1940, in the middle of World War II, our passes to relative safety. We had 14 days to leave Germany, and each person was allowed to take one suitcase and 10 reichmarks. We boarded the train in Munich three days before Pessah. We were frisked at the German border and after the Nazis didn't find anything forbidden, were allowed to cross the border to Liechtenstein on foot. We were completely exhausted when we arrived in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and went to sleep in a simple hotel. We did not know if there were any Jewish families in Liechtenstein, and we had no idea how we would keep Pessah properly and buy matzot. Then our next miracle happened. The following morning, as we wandered around town, a young girl stopped us and asked if we were Jewish and if she could help us. Immediately, she introduced us to her parents and some other Jewish families. The Schönwalder family invited us into their home, to their Seder and we continued to have all our meals and prayers there during the week of Pessah. We continued to reside in Liechtenstein for 10 years. At this time, only 40 to 50 Jews lived there. I met with the Schönwalders' daughter, Edith, almost every day, and she is still a very good friend of mine. Today, we both live in Israel. I'll never forget the miracle that happened to us - my father's chance meeting with the engineer, an emigration visa in the midst of the war, and the wonderful families who helped us celebrate Pessah as religious Jews.

 

1940:  SS official Odilo Globocnik announced a plan to increase the use of Jewish forced labor and to establish separate work camps for Jewish men and women.

1940: Detroit Tigers Pitcher Dick Conger appeared in his first major league baseball game.

1940: Ten members of the staff of Ben Shemen Youth village, including the director are sentenced to serve prison terms of up to seven years. The British had raided Ben Shemen in January and found weapons belonging to the Haganah. The prison sentences were for their role in hiding the weapons.

1941(25th of Nisan, 5701): Fifty-nine-year-old Struchin, Russia native and social worker Elias Trotzkey who in 1912 came to the United States where he served as supervisor at the Marks Nathan Jewish Orphan Home and wrote several books passed away today.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Trotzkey%2C%20Elias%20L%2E

1941: Birthdate of Israeli Amir Pnueli an Israeli scientist who developed a “critical technique for verifying the reliability of computers.”

1941: “The Lady from Louisiana,” produced and directed by Bernard Vorhaus son of an American “lawyer of Jewish-Austrian extraction” was released today in the United States.

1942(5th of Iyar, 5702): Fifty-nine-year-old Romanian born Isadore Wexler, the thirty-year resident of Toledo, HO where he owned the Wexler Ice company and the husband of Yetta Leffner Wexler with whom he had eight children -- Louis, Joseph, Ralph, David, Morris, Oscar, Max and William A. Wexler – passed away today.

1942: U.S. premiere of “Saboteur,” a WW II spy thriller with a screenplay co-authored by Peter Viertel and Dorothy Parker.

1943(17th of Nisan, 5703) Third Day of Pesach

1943: “We Will Never Die” was performed in Philadelphia's Convention Hall, with guest stars Claude Rains and Edward G. Arnold in the lead roles. More than 15,000 people attended--it was the largest Jewish public event in the city in many years — and it received extensive coverage in the local press.

(As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)

1943:  The Nazis deported the Jews of Amersfoort, Holland.

1943: Day four of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

1943:  In New York City, Daniel Gluck, the inventor, along with his brother-in-law Sundel Doniger, of the X-Acto Knife and his wife gave birth to Louise Elisabeth Gluck the American Pulitzer Prize winning poet who “was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000.”

1944: It was reported today that Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. has announced that “principles on which a program for world currency stabilization can be based have been agreed on by most of the experts of some thirty Allied and associated nations” marking a major step forward in creating a stable economic for a post-war world which will be critical to “winning the peace.”

 1945: The Big Red One, whose members included Samuel Fuller, “finished clearing the Harz Mountains” before turning south to join up with the U.S. Third Army.

1945: Sidney Bernstein, a cinema entrepreneur, had been an advisor to the Ministry of Information since 1940 who producing “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” “the official British documentary film on the Nazi Concentration Camps”visited the Bergen Belsen concentration camp today a week after it was liberated by British forces.”

1945:  Six hundred of the remaining inmates at Jasenovac Concentration Camp rose up against their Croatian killers.  The Croatians killed over five hundred of them.  This camp was located in a breakaway republic from Yugoslavia called Coratia.  The Croatians ran the camp for their Axis allies and were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews.  For those of you who remember the fighting in the 1990's in Yugoslavia, you will now understand that genocide is no stranger to the Balkans. Only a thousand Jews and Serbs remained. Tens of thousands of them were killed over the past five years. Six hundred rose in revolt. The Germans killed 520 of them.

1945:  The Soviet Army liberated the Concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen in Germany.  The camp was about 35 kilometers from Berlin and was established in 1938.  Approximately thirty to thirty-five thousands people including Jews perished in the camp.

1945: Birthdate of Donald E. Graham, the grandson of Eugene Meyer and the son of Katherine Graham

1946(21st of Nisan, 5706) Seventh Day of Pesach

1946: Opening of Kibbutz Beitar in Bruna.

1946: Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter joined the Chief Justice and another Associate Justice in dissenting in Girouard v. United States – a case involving a the application of a pacifist for naturalization.

1946:  Composer Ezra Laderman was discharged from the U.S. Army today. He then studied composition under Stefan Wolpe of New York and Miriam Gideon of Brooklyn College where he earned his B.A.in 1950. He then went on to study under Otto Luening of Columbia University where he earned his M.A. in 1952.

1947: Another 769 illegal Jewish immigrants arriving on board the Galata in Eretz Israel were trans-shipped to Cyprus.

1948(13th of Nisan, 5708): Sixty-six-year-old San Luis Obispo, CA native and Harvard Ph.D. Barry Cerf, the husband of Emily Cerf with whom he raised three children including “Edward Owen Cerf, an editor of Time magazine” and who has been a Professor of Literature at Reed College since 1921 where he wrote “his best known work, Anatole France,” passed away today in Portland.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/04/24/84536103.html?pageNumber=15

1948: Operation Misparayim (scissors) was launched by the Haganah as part of the Yishuv’s attempt to assume control of Haifa after British withdrawal and attacks had been made by Arab forces to control this port city.  By the end of the day, Haifa was in the hands of the mainline Zionist forces.

1949: Writing in Haaretz, Arye Gelblum described immigrants from North Africa as dirty, disease ridden and prone to drunkenness and prostitution.

1949: It was reported that Berta Gersten will be starring in the title role of “The Silent Woman,” a dramatization of Louis Frieman’s new Jewish radio play of the same which will open on April 25 at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn.

1949: The NBC Television Network broadcast the final episode of the panel show “Stop Me If You’ve Hear this One” on which Morey Amsterdam, Lew Lehr and Benny Rubin appeared as regular panelists.

1949: Hebrew University reopened in temporary quarters in west Jerusalem

1950: Tonight, after the end of Shabbat, Israel began the celebration of her second year of independence.  In his address to the nation, President Weizmann called upon Israelis “to celebrate in joy and happiness the great salvation wrought to our people after centuries of exile and affliction.”  In Jerusalem, Joseph Sprinzak, Speaker of the Knesset, lit a torch on Mt. Herzl which lit from fire provided by veterans of the Masada Battalion which had defended Jerusalem from attacks by Egyptians and Arab Irregulars during the dark days of the siege of the City of David. Similar festivities took place throughout the country including open air performances, torch light parades and the sounding of sirens by ships of many nations docked in Israel’s major ports.

1950: In Germany, Holocaust survivors Joseph and Elizabeth Wilf gave birth to real estate developer Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf who bought the Minnesota Vikings football team in 2005

1951(16th of Nisan, 5711): Second Day of Pesach

1951: Philadelphia Athletics first baseman Lou Limmer played in his first major league baseball game.

1952(27th of Nisan, 5712): Yom HaShoah

1952(27th of Nisan, 5712): Forty-nine-year-old Jakob Rosenfeld the Lemberg born Jewish doctor who survived Dachau and Buchenwald and gained fame as General Luo, the Minister of Health under Chairman Mao, passed away today. (Editor’s note – an exciting life like is certainly worthy of a biography and a NETFLIX series)

https://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=302

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3330950,00.html

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the "past seven days was the bloodiest week along Israeli borders for a long time." Two Israelis were murdered at Mevuot Betar, the marauders were active in the South, in Galilee and Jerusalem. There was a general outcry when General Bennet L. de Ridder, the U.N. Chairman of the Israel-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission refused to comply with the Israeli request to call an emergency meeting of the Commission to discuss the latest developments and, in particular, the murder of Zvi Genauer and his niece, Dvora, in Jerusalem. This incomprehensible U.N. decision was taken despite the fact that the tracks of the three marauders, responsible for this murder, were discovered by an U.N. observer and an Israeli officer who noted that they led to the Jordanian-occupied village of Beit Iksa. The General claimed that it was not the duty of his Commission to deal with incidents "of this type."

1953: In New York, Sylvia and John Katzman gave birth to Columbia and Harvard alum and Yale Law School trained attorney and jurist Robert Allen Katzman who was Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at the time of his death in 2021.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel's three-years-long land survey, conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture, had almost been completed.

1953: Herman Pekarsky, the director of the Jewish Community Council of Essex County, NJ, was among the speakers at the 25th birthday celebration held at the Park Sheraton, honoring The Welcome Wagon organization.

1953: Birthdate of Steve Bond, the native of Haifa who gained fame while appearing in the soap opera General Hospital.

1953: “It Happens Every Thursday” a comedy directed by Joseph Pevney, produced by Leonard Goldstein and with music by Herman Stein was released today in the United States.

1954(19th of Nisan, 5714): Fifth Day of Pesach

1954(19th of Nisan, 5714: Sixty-nine-year-old Congressman, NY State Supreme Court Justice and accused Soviet Spy, Samuel Dickstein, the Vilna born son “Rabbi Israel Dickstein and Slata B. Gordon” passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/samuel-dickstein

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0008/ms0008.html

https://spartacus-educational.com/Samuel_Dickstein.htm

1954: Leo Lerman, the Jewish editor and writer for such glossy fashion magazines as Vogue, Mademoiselle and Vanity Fair met famed American author William Faulkner for the first time.

1954:  The so-called Army-McCarthy Hearings began. These hearings, which helped bring an end to McCarthy’s abuse of power was triggered by two of his Jewish supporters.  One was the powerful Roy Cohn, the McCarthy Committee’s chief counsel.  The other was Cohn’s close friend, G. David Schine. 

1955(30th of Nisan, 5715): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1955(30th of Nisan, 5715): Sixty-five-year-old Columbia alum and Rochester School of Optometry Dr. Joseph Irving Pascal, the son of Lithuanian rabbi Chaim Hochstein and Celia Rubinson passed away today.

https://www.ajo.com/article/0002-9394(55)92142-5/pdf

1955: ABC broadcast the final episode of “Where’s Raymond,” the sit-com produced by Stanley Shapiro.

1956: While speaking at a ground-breaking ceremony for the Birchwood Jewish Ceremony, State Controller Arthur Levitt today urged monetary and moral support for Israel in her ‘trying times.’”

1956: “Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion said today the cease-fire with Egypt negotiated by Dag Hammarskjold "does not reduce in the slightest" the danger of war.”

1957(21st of Nisan, 5717): Seventh Day of Pesach

1957: Today, “in his sermon at Congregation Zichron Ephraim, Rabbi Zev Zahavy said that individuals and nations were in need of redemptions.”

1957: On Long Island, Rabbi Samuel M. Silver who is the director of public information for Union of American Hebrew Congregations “voiced criticism of the State Department” saying that its “agreement to bar Jewish service men from Saudi Arabia was a concession to bigotry.

1958: “Jordanian soldiers shot and kill two fishermen near Aqaba.”

1959(14th of Nisan, 5719): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

1960: In Quebec, Dr. Harry J. Stern led the services dedicating the new home of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, the oldest Reform or Liberal congregation in Canada.

1961: Lucille Ball collapsed while performing in “Wildcast” the musical with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh and music by Cy Coleman.

1963(28th of Nisan, 5723): Yom HaShoah

1965(20th of Nisan, 5725): Sixth Day of Pesach

1965(20th of Nisan, 5725): Silesia native and Breslau Theological Seminary trained rabbi, Dr. Arthur Loewenstamm, who served a as rabbi in Pless from 1917 until 1939 when he came to  London as a refugee and “worked as the Director of Jewish Studies based at West London Synagogue passed away today.

1967(12th of Nisan, 5727): Shabbat HaGadol

1967(12th of Nisan, 5727): Eighty-four-year-old Ukraine born agricultural economist and statistician Dr. Naum Jasny, “a specialist in the study of the Soviet economy” passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jasny-naum

1969(4th of Iyar, 5729): Yom HaZikaron

1969: As of today, Samuel Dalsimer begins serving as national chairman of the ADL.

1970(16th of Nisan, 5730): Second Day of Pesach

1970: Arthur Krock “was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon.”

1971(27th of Nisan, 5731): Yom HaShoah

1971(27th of Nisan, 5731): Seventy-two-year-old Joseph Ginsburg the father of French entertainer Serge Gainsbourg passed away today.

1973: Birthdate of Ofer Talker, the native of Ashdod who gained fame playing football for several teams the last of which was Hapoel Kfar Saba from which he retired in 2009.

1973: Birthdate of Delmar, NY native Anita Lynn Kaplan, the 6’5” center on the Stanford University Basketball team who played professionally for the San Jose Laser and Chicago Condors and was released by the WNBA Cleveland Rockers before league play began.

1974: Birthdate of Israeli Arab MK Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, or United Arab List.

1974: Israeli political leader Amir Peretz was severely injured in accident at the Mitla Pass.

1975:  Barbara Walters signed a five-year $5 million contract with the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), becoming the highest paid television newsperson.

1975: Eighty-two-year-old Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver the Old Testament scholar who was a Professor of Semitic Philology at Oxford whose expertise included a knowledge of the Semitic languages of the Biblical period passed away today.

http://www.theologicalstudies.org.uk/article_driver_bruce.html

1976(22nd of Nisan, 5736): Eighth Day of Pesach observed for the last time during the Presidency of Gerald Ford.

1977:  Shimon Peres became premier of Israel.

1977: “The Late Show,” a mystery co-starring Bill Macy was released today in the United States.

1978:  In Paris, France, Izhar Cohen & Alphabeta won the twenty-third Eurovision Song Contest for Israel by singing "A-ba-ni-bi".

1978:  The Jerusalem Post reported that an agreement was reached to end the 18-days-long El Al lockout which had already cost the national airline more than IL100m, and the tourist industry hundreds of millions more.

1978:  The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time with an entry called "A-Ba-Ni-Bi". Israel scored 157 points, Belgium 121 and France 119.

1978: After six seasons, CBS broadcast the final episode of “Maude” a sitcom created by Norman Lear and starring Beatrice Arthur in the title role.

1979: The President’s Commission on the Holocaust has set today as the first day of the week entitled “Days of Remembrance” for honoring the victims of Nazism.

1979(25th of Nisan, 5739): Seventy-seven-year-old Kiev born and Birkbeck College trained solicitor Sir Leon Bagrit who led “Elliot-Automation Ltd” one of the world largest computer manufacturers pass away today.

1979(25th of Nisan, 5739): Shamir Kuntar was part of a cell that raided the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, fatally shooting a civilian, Danny Haran, while his daughter Einat, 4, watched, then smashing the girl’s head, killing her as well. Mr. Haran’s wife, Smadar, hid with their 2-year-old daughter, accidentally suffocating her in an effort to stop her from crying out.

1980(6th of Iya, 5740): Seventy-three-year-old NYC born Columbia and Long Island College Hospital trained physician Louis Elliott Siltzbach, who “established the specific diagnostic value of the Kevi test in 1954 which is now appropriately called the Kevim Silzbach Test” passed away today.

1981(18th of Nisan, 5741): Fourth Day of Pesach

1981: Birthdate of Parisian native and baritone opera singer David Serero who was responsible for creating a version “Cyrano De Bergerac,” that features “Sephardi and jazz standards.”

1982(29th of Nisan, 5742): Eighty-two-year-old Irish film director and actor Harold Goldblatt passed away today.

1982(29th of Nisan, 5742): Seventy-nine-year-old Gertrude Nadler Perlman, the daughter of Abraham and Shaindel Buchalter Nadler and wife of Harry Perlman who she married in 1929 passed away today after which she was buried at the Baron de Hirsch Cemetery in Montreal.

1982: “Six refuseniks in Odessa joined the hunger strike begun by Kiev refuseniks on March 15th.”

1983: “The Hunger,” a horror story filmed by South African born Jewish Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt  was released in the United States today.

1984: In Israel Al HaMishmar published the first report of allegations that the hijackers of Bus 300 had been shot after being captured.

1985: According to Israeli businessman Yaacov Nimrodi, today was the day when a chartered merchant ship, the Westline, was scheduled to leave Eilat filled with weaponry for Iran as part of a deal that Americans would come to know as Iran-Contra.

1985: Birthdate of Chicago native and Stanford University drop-out Samuel Harris Altman “an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019…”

https://blog.samaltman.com/

1985: The United States Trade Representative and the Israeli Minister of Industry and Trade signed a Free Trade Agreement today that “eliminated all duties and virtually all other restrictions on trade in goods between” their two respective countries.

1988: U. S. premiere of “White Mischief” directed by Michael Radford who co-authored the screenplay.

1988: “Permanent Record,” the highly praised drama directed by Marisa Silver was released today in the United States.

1988: “Two Moon Junctions,” directed by Zalman King who co-authored the screenplay was released today in the United States.

1989(17th of Nisan, 5749): Third Day of Pesach

1989(17th of Nisan, 5749): Eighty-four-year-old Emilio Gino Segrè the Italian refugee who was part of the Manhattan Project and who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1989 passed away today.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1959/segre-bio.html

1990: At the Royale Theatre, after 476 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway of “Lend Me a Tenor" produced by Jerry Zaks and featuring Tova Feldshuh and Victor Garber

1991(8th of Iyar, 5751): Eighty-one-year-old Judah Bergman, the London born boxer known was Jack Kid Berg “who became the World Light Welterweight Champion in 1930” passed away today in his hometown.

1991:  Shalom America (Jewish cable network) was launched in Brooklyn & Queens.

1993:  The Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C.  There is no way to do this justice.  For more information see http://www.ushmm.org/.

1993(1st of Iyar 5753): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1993(1st of Iyar, 5753): Miles Lerhman served as chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Museum from its opening today until 2000, eight years before his death in 2008 at the age of 88.

1994: “Chasers” a comedy featuring Betty Schram as “Flo” was released in the United States today.

1994: “The Inkwell,” a romantic comedy produced by Irving Azoff was released today in the United States

1994(11th of Iyar, 5754): Dr. Lewis Barth, Professor of Midrash and Related Literature at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles delivered the 1994 Rabbi Max Nussbaum Memorial Lecture.

 http://bcf.usc.edu/~lbarth/nussbaum/nussbaum.html

1994:  Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States passed away.  Nixon's relations with Jews and the Jewish community ranged from uneven to stormy.  In his first campaign for the U.S. Senate, Nixon supporters smeared his opponent with the tar brush of anti-Semitism.  Nixon did have Jews working on White House Staff.  He was frustrated by is inability to gain support among Jewish voters and some of his comments on the White House tapes about Jews are, to be charitable, less than complimentary.  At the same time, in 1973, he came through for Israel.  Thanks to Nixon, the Americans conducted a mammoth airlift of supplies that enabled the IDF to turn the tide after the Arab sneak attack and gain a military victory in the Yom Kippur War.

1995:  Yagil Amir, who had sworn to kill Prime Minister Rabin, unsuccessfully tried to enter a hall in Jerusalem where Rabin was present as the guest of honor.

1995(22nd of Nisan, 5755): 8th Day of Pesach

1995(22nd of Nisan, 5755): Ninety-two-year-old Sir Horace Kadoorie, scion of the Kdoorie family that migrated from Baghdad to Mumbai to Hong Kong passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/26/obituaries/horace-kadoorie-philanthropist-92.html

1997(15th of Nisan, 5757): Pesach

1997: ‘Déjà Vu,” an “American dramatic romance film directed by Henry Jaglom” was released in the United States today.

1998: Five days after premiering in the United States, “Paulie” a fantasy film co-starring Hallie Eisenberg was released in Germany today.

1999(6th of Iyar, 5759): Seventy-one-year-old Matthew A. Margolis the Akron, OH born son of Elias H. Margolis and Dora Margolis passed away today in his home town.

1999: In Manhattan, jurors awarded a patient of Dr. Pamela Lipkin, an East Side plastic surgeon $600,000 in damages.

2000(17th of Nisan, 5760): Third day of Pesach

2000(17th of Nisan, 5760): Seventy-nine-year-old theatrical producer Alexander H. Cohen passed away today. (As reported by Alex Witchel)

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/23/nyregion/alexander-h-cohen-producer-of-101-theatrical-hits-and-flops-dies-at-79.html

http://archives.nypl.org/the/21770

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving From a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse by Michael Korda, Teacha!: Stories From a Yeshiva by Gerry Albarelli and Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra by
Shareen Blair Brysac.

2001(29th of Nisan, 5761): Dr. Mario Goldin, 53, of Kfar Sava, was killed when a terrorist detonated a powerful bomb he was carrying near a group of people waiting at a bus stop on the corner of Weizman and Tchernichovsky streets. About 60 people were injured in the blast. Hamas claimed responsibility.

2001: The National Football League Draft ended today with Iowa State University Quarterback Sage Rosenthal becoming a Washington Redskin.

2002: During Operation “Defensive Shield,” IDF ended the curfew at Nablus which had begun on April 4.

2002 “Mideast Turmoil: American Jews; Unusually Unified in Solidarity With Israel, but Also Unusually Unnerved” published today describes the feelings an action of the Jewish community in the wake of attacks on Israel and anti-Semitism in the United States.

2002(10th of Iyar, 5762): Ninety-three-year-old Victor Frederick Weisskopf’ an Austrian-born Jewish American theoretical physicist, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/25/obituaries/25WEIS.html

2002(10th of Iyar, 5762): Twenty-two-year-old Sgt. Mag. Nir Kirchmann of Hadera was killed when the IDF entered a village north of Nablus to arrest Hamas terrorists.

2003: Charles “Krauthammer predicted that the President would have a "credibility problem" if weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq within the next five months.”

2004: In North Korea, a freight train exploded killing technicians from Syria who had come the country to take possession of fissionable material which they were to take home as part of nuclear program that could lead to the creation of warheads for the Assad regime

2004: The Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins”  opened today

2005: After premiering in Israel yesterday, “A Lot Like Love” co-starring Amanda Peet was released in the United States today. today

2005: “The Interpreter” a complex mystery set at the UN directed by Sydney Pollack who also made a cameo appearance was released in the United State today.

2005: Jews of Omaha, Nebraska celebrated Israel’s 59th year of Independence as the Jewish Community Center hosts the Jewish Arts Festival and Yom Ha’Atzmaut activities designed for the whole family. This year’s Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration is a unique and exciting compilation of an Arts Festival with more than 25 vendors, plus the usual exciting assortment of carnival games, first-class entertainment, and delicious foods from a variety of Omaha restaurants.

2006: On Shabbat, thousands of police were positioned around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in east Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, hoping to prevent confrontations between various groups of worshippers making their way to the church on Saturday afternoon.

2007: At the Yeshiva University Museum the exhibition entitled “Reuben Kadish’s Holocaust Sculpture” comes to an end.

2007: Yom Hazikaron begins tonight in Israel with a special memorial ceremony at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.

2007: The Sunday New York Times Book Section featured reviews of The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman, edited by Stephen Pascal, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time by Chuck Schumer (the Jewish Senator from New York) with Daniel Squadron, Black and White a novel by Jewish author Dani Shapiro and The Lady Upstairs: Dorothy Schiff and The New York Post by Marilyn Nissenson. Schiff was the granddaughter of the German Jewish banking magnate Jacob H. Schiff.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post Book Section featured a review of The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein by Martin Duberman. This “rich and revelatory biography of one of the crucial cultural figures of the twentieth century” provides another example of an American Jew who has had a major impact on our culture.

2008: Earth Day; Third Day of Pesach – suggested date for Street Seders designed to address the Global Climate Crisis.

2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents “Refusenik”  first retrospective documentary to chronicle the thirty-year movement to free Soviet Jewry between the early 60s and the fall of the Iron Curtain..

2009: At Yale Hagai El-Ad, Israeli civil rights activist, founding director of Jerusalem Open House and director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, delivers a talk entitled “Civil Rights in Israel.”

2009: The Tribeca Film Festival opens with the world premiere of Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works.”

 

2009: Holocaust Survivor Irene Furst speaks at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa and Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

 

2009: In Cedar Falls, Iowa, Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum presents “The Holocaust and Contemporary Ethics: Legal, Religious, Political and Medical Ethical Implications of the Holocaust,” the inaugural address for the Norman Cohn Family Holocaust Remembrance and Education Lecture Series at the University of Northern Iowa.

2009: “Author Jared Diamond Sued for Libel” published today described the litigation face by the Pulitzer-Prize winning author.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090422/us-jared-diamond-lawsuit/

2009: Rome’s city hall was the site for the Nobel Laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini’s 100th birthday party.

2009: Five hundred Jews who were making their monthly visit to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus arrived at the shrine this evening and found that it had been subjected to anti-Semitic vandalism including being painted with swastikas. 

2010: Professor Jason Rosenblatt, author of Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden is scheduled to speak at the Washington DCJCC as part of the

Distinguished Scholar Series

2010: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host the reception marking the opening of the Annual NoVa International Jewish Film Festival.

2011: On the 41st annual Earth Day and the first anniversary of the BP oil spill Reform congregations and their rabbis are scheduled to implement “tried-and-true Earth Day ideas, innovative programs in education and advocacy, and ways to continue our service and commitment to the Gulf Coast” some of which had been presented in a workshop that featured Margo Wolfson of Temple Shalom, Aberdeen, NJ (a GreenFaith Pilot Program congregation), Stephen Fox of Temple Isaiah, Los Angeles, CA, Rabbi Andy Koren, Temple Emanuel, Greensboro and Rabbi Daniel Swartz, Temple Hesed, Scranton, PA.”

2011: The Maccabee Queen is scheduled to be performed 12 noon at Beit Avi Chai in Jerusalem. “Written and directed by Lauri Donahue, the play chronicles the rule of the last queen of Judea.”

2011: The Beit Yisrael synagogue in Netanya has been pelted with rocks, allegedly by ultra-Orthodox youths waging a battle to scare the congregants into leaving.

2012: Amy Irving, star of “Crossing Delancey” is scheduled to take part in a Q&A following a showing of this Jewish romantic comedy featuring “Sam, the pickleman” at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The Iowa Jewish Historical Society and the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are scheduled to host a special event to recognize and honor Iowa’s Jewish men and women who serve and have served in all branches of the United States military, during times of both war and peace.

2012: Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Northern Virginia’s 2012 Holocaust Observance at Gesher Jewish Day School

2012(30th of Nisan, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2013: Fifty-three years after its founding the Canadian Jewish News “issued termination notices to its 50 staff and announced that it will cease printing with its June 20 edition due to financial constraints.”

2013: The American Jewish Historical Society and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present a performance by The Momenta Quartet featuring the music of Stefan Wolpe, Aaron Copland and Darius Milhaud.

2013: “Portrait of Wally” and “A Bottle in the Gaza Sea” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2013:” Dressing America: Tales from the Garment Center” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Daniel Mendelsohn, author of the international bestseller The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, is scheduled to join award- winning journalist Leslie Maitland, author of Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Love Story of War, Exile and Love Reclaimed in a discussion of their true stories of lives and loves lost in the Holocaust at the Washington DCJCC.

2013: Twentieth anniversary of the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

http://www.ushmm.org/

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/

2013: The Histadrut labor federation today threatened to shut down Ben-Gurion International Airport as a show of solidarity with Israeli airline employees, who are striking against Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz's Open Skies agreement with the European Union that was approved by the cabinet yesterday

2013: Jordan has allowed Israel to fly military drones over the country en route to Syria in order to monitor the situation there and, should the need arise, target chemical weapons caches in the civil war-torn country, the French daily Le Figaro reported today.

2014: In New York, Temple Shaaray Tefila is scheduled to host the Yom HaShoah Screening of “No Place On Earth.”

2014(22nd of Nisan, 5774): 8th day of Pesach – Yizkor

2014: In Serbia, Holocaust Remembrance Day

2014(22nd of Nisan): Circumcision of Isaac (Rosh Ha-Shannah 10b)

2015: Shoah survivor Marcel Drimer is scheduled to speak at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host a tour “Modeling the Synagogue – From Dura to Touro.” http://www.yumuseum.org/programs/2015/04/22/curators-tour-modeling-the-synagogue-from-dura-to-touro-4

2015: “Belle and Sebastian” and “Famous Nathan” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2015(3rd of Iyar, 5775):  Seventy-eight-year-old performer Lois Lilienstein passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/arts/music/lois-lilienstein-78-of-the-childrens-trio-sharon-lois-bram-is-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2015: Rabbi Lance J. Sussman is scheduled to teach the second session “Jews, Judaism and American Law” in Philadelphia, PA.

2015: Today, another official memorial ceremony is scheduled to be held at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem and will be attended by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, as well as senior Israel Defense Forces officers and politicians followed by a separate commemoration for Israel’s terror victims will take place at Mount Herzl.(As reported by Times of Israel)

2015: Memorial Day is scheduled to end at sundown today with the start of Independence Day, traditionally ushered in with fireworks and street celebrations nationwide. (As reported by Times of Israel)

2016(14th of Nisan, 5776): Ta’anit Berchorot; Erev Pesach and Erev Shabbat

2016(14th of Nisan): Yahrzeit for the thirty people murdered by terrorists at a Seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002 and this does not include the 140 who were wounded.

2016(14th of Nisan, 5776): 99th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I.  As Jews were fasting for the first born, searching for chametz and getting ready for their first Seder, Congress was declaring war on Germany.  This would usher in a three-year period of dynamic change and growth for the American Jewish community. 

2016; “Mr. Church,” an underappreciated cinematic gem film by cinematography by Sharone Meir premiered today at the Tribeca Film Festival.

2017(26th of Nisan, 5777): Parashat Shemini; Start of Pirke Avot Cycle – Read Chapter One;

2017(26th of Nisan, 5777): Eighty-seven-year-old Professor of Philosophy Hubert Lederer Dreyfus passed away today in Berkeley.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/hubert-dreyfus-dead-philosopher-of-artificial-intelligence.html

https://philosophy.berkeley.edu/people/detail/12

https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/news/memoriam-hubert-l-dreyfus-1929-2017

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to provide a full day of events including lunch following Shachrit and Mussaf capped off by a Seduah an before the end of Shabbat

2017:  The Jerusalem Opera Festival is scheduled to continue its opening week events with another concert dedicated to Enrico Caruso.

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present the final performance of “Cyrano De Bergerac” starring David Serero in the title role.

2018: “The entire Twin Cities Jewish Community” is scheduled to celebrate “Israel@70” at the Minneapolis Event Center this evening in an event featuring the singing of Abbie Strauss.

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a presentation by “Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University Professor of Jewish Studies, which will examine the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive as a major project of public memory situated in a series of contexts: Jewish ethnographies, public memory projects at the turn of the millennium, and the different media used to document the Holocaust.”

2018: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host the “8th Annual Concert of Commemoration.”

2018: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Bible of Dirty Jokes by Eileen Pollack and Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich

2019: The Center for Jewish History, ALL*ARTS, YIVO and Burke Cohen Entertainment are scheduled to present “award winning actors Ed Asner and Tovah Feldshuh star in a concert reading of The Soap Myth, a powerful play about survival, memory, and truth” which is set more than fifty years after WWII, when a young Jewish reporter grapples with different versions of the same story - did the Nazis make soap from the corpses of murdered Jews?” 

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker is scheduled to present “Modern Matters -- Ancient Jewish Wisdom with Rabbi David Wolpe

2019: Earth Day 2019

http://www.arcworld.org/faiths.asp?pageID=81

https://www.jewishboston.com/whats-jewish-about-earth-day/

https://www.jfcsmpls.org/earth-day-good-deeds-day-bal-taschit-each-of-us-can-make-a-difference-every-day/

2019(17th of Nissan, 5779): Third Day of Pesach; Second Day of the Omer;

2020: In Coralville, IA it will take more than a pandemic stop the quest for learning since the Agudas Achim Wednesday Book Group is scheduled to meet via Zoom this afternoon.

2020: One day after Yom HaShoah the celebration of Earth Day is scheduled to take place which was first celebrated on the 49th birthday of Julian Koenig, the creator of the original advertising event for this event.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/business/julian-koenig-who-sold-americans-on-beetles-and-earth-day-dies-at-93.html

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dr. Michael Berenbaum as he leads a virtual presentation on “Not Your Father’s Anti-Semitism.”

2020: Live via Zoom, the Center for Jewish History and Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies are scheduled to host “Epidemics, Disease and Plagues in Jewish History and Memory.”

2020: As Israel’s death toll from Covid-19 moves past 180, it was reported that Ran Saar, the CEO of Maccabi Helathcare Services, an HMO, has said that “the economic crisis stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic will more people than the virus itself.

2020: As Israelis contend with the Pandemic and unprecedented period of political deadlock they will be considering whether to follow the words of Yair Lapid who “slammed” Benny Gantz “for going back on all of his election promises and allying himself with Prime Minister Netanyahu or to accept the explanation of Gantz that he made the deal because “he felt compelled to bring out Israel of the political deadlock of the past year in order to tackle the immense challenges ahead” specifically those presented by the coronavirus epidemic. 

2021: Graduate Theological Union is scheduled to present a conversation with U. of Chicago professor Michael Fishbane, a scholar of modern Jewish thought, Jewish mysticism, Biblical studies and other areas.

2021: The Jewish Community Library is scheduled to present educator Ilan Vitemberg talking about Yehuda Amichai’s poetry in general, and specifically how it influenced a generation of songwriters who turned it into popular Israeli songs.

2021: Chabad of North Peninsula. Is scheduled to present “Escape from Cairo,” during Cairo-born Hussein Aboubakr Mansour will about how the Egyptian government persecuted, harassed and jailed him for his studies of Israel and how he got asylum.

2021: JCC East Bay and Reboot are scheduled to present a program that reflects on how climate change is causing grief, over issues such as “new normal” wildfires and the loss of biodiversity that will include a meditation led by Rabbi Dorothy Richman and an art project.

2021: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker is scheduled to host Jerald Walker talking about his latest book How to Make A Slave and Other Essays.

2021: In preparation for Lag B’Omer, today, the Jewish Studio Project in Berkeley is scheduled to lead a class for making art that explores uncertainty and the countdown between Passover and Shavuot.

2021: The JCC Contra Costa is scheduled to present “Music As Midrash: Behind the Music of Prayer”

During which Rabbi Josh Warshawsky will provide a lesson about the text and stories of the traditional Jewish songs we sing, with a song session.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, Israelis are confronting a new trend that “seems to be gaining momentum among Arab youths in Jerusalem, who videotape themselves harassing ultra-Orthodox Jews in the capital as a "challenge", which they then upload to the social media platform TikTok.” (As reported by Nir Cohen,Alexandra Lukash)

2021: Despite the fact that “Spring has Sprung,” in Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifterth Israel will not be holding its outdoor minyan today “due to cold temperatures.”

2022(21st of Nisan, 5782): Seventh Day of Pesach and Earth Day 2022

https://www.jewishboston.com/whats-jewish-about-earth-day/

https://www.jfcsmpls.org/earth-day-good-deeds-day-bal-taschit-each-of-us-can-make-a-difference-every-day/

 2022: The International Conferences on Metallurgy, Technology and Materials is scheduled to begin today in Tel Aviv.

2022: As they await to if “Palestinian protesters” who have been egged on by terrorist leaders in Gaza will throw stones while at the Al Aqsa Mosque as they did last Friday, Israeli security forces remain on high alert.

2023: Israel braces for the possibility of another round of Saturday night protest by those opposed to the proposed reform judicial legislation.

2023: The exhibition “Two Grains of Wheat” that includes the work of Hinda Weiss is scheduled to open at 601 Artspace.

2023: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host the religious school's special, musical, intergenerational service.

2023: The exhibition “This Place We Once Remembered” that includes the work of Dana Levy is scheduled to open today.

2023(1st of Iyar, 5783): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2024: 120th anniversary of the birth of J. Robert Oppenheimer who was the subject of the biopic “Oppenheimer” which strangely enough won the best picture Oscar in a time of rising anti-Semitism and growing anti-intellectualism.

2024: This afternoon, JCCSF is scheduled to present ““J. Robert Oppenheimer: From Hero to Outcast” during which Attorney Oak Dowling will discuss the life and work of “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” with clips from a 2009 PBS documentary.

2024: As Jews prepare to celebrate Pesach, the nonprofit Security Community Network (SCN) which is the “official homeland security and safety initiative of the organized Jewish community in North America,” hosted a call from FBI director warning of increased threats including those from “lone actors who could target large gatherings, high profile events or symbolic or religious locations for violence…”

2024: The Seder Seat for a Hostage campaign sponsored by “the leading Jewish organization in the United Kingdom” is scheduled to begin tonight.”

https://www.akronjewishnews.com/news/nation_world/uk-holiday-campaign-urges-families-to-set-a-seder-seat-for-a-hostage/article_b8913941-1dbd-5b85-b92b-f5ffdac09a9b.html

 

2024: As April 22nd begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 199 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.)

 

2024(14th of Nisan, 5784): Fast of First born; erev Pesach

 

2024(14th of Nisan, 5784): On the Jewish calendar, anniversary of the second most important Pesach of the twentieth century.  On the 14th of Nisan, 5677(April 6, 1917) the United States entered WW I on the side of the Allies. Ironically, most Jews were fixated on the recent revolution in Russia and the message of freedom that it sent to the Jews in the country and their kinsman around the world.  Indeed the year 1917 which included two Russian Revolutions, the U.S. entry into the war and the Balfour Declaration could be said to be one of the seminal years in the four thousand years of Jewish history.

14th of Nisan, 5622(1862): In the evening, during the Civil War, Pesach begins with 21 Union soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment celebrating with a Seder in Fayette, West Virginia.

14th of Nisan, 5660(1900):  Poor Jews living on the Lower East Side were relieved to find that free matzoth were being distributed at Charles “Silver Dollar” Smith’s “old place on Essex Street.”  There was concern that the distribution would end since Smith had passed away last year.  Before he had changed his name, Smith was known as variously as Charles Goldschmidt or Charles Solomon.  A New York alderman who was part of the Tammany Hall machine, he was called “Silver Dollar” because of the “2,400 silver dollars used as a studded inlay in his saloon…”

14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.

14th of Nisan, 5631(1871): As the Jews of Newark, New Jersey, begin the celebration of Passover this evening, it is estimated that they will consume 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of matzoth during the eight days of the holiday

14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.

 

14th of Nisan, 5674(1914): Four hundred and fifty Jewish servicemen including sailors from the battleships Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Ohio, Wyoming and Louisiana are scheduled to take part in a seder specifically for military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in Manhattan.

 

14th of Nisan, 5700(1940): The Sommer family sit down to their first Seder in Liechtenstiein.  How this family of German Jewish refugees from Munich came to be there was chronicled by Susi Pugatsch-Sommer in an article entitled “A Pesach Miracle in Nazi Germany.”

 

14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): Members of Belgium Jewish underground aided by Christian railroad men derailed a train filled with Jewish deportees bound for the extermination camps. Several hundred Jews were saved.

14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): PASSOVER, WARSAW Ghetto UPRISING; The Jews were determined not to be moved without giving up a fight. 2,100 Germans, fully armed, enter the Ghetto. The Jews fighting force consisted of about 700 men and women.  They were armed with 17 rifles, 50 pistols and several thousand grenades and Molotov cocktails.  A small group of Jewish fighters open fire on the entering German troops. After an hour of skirmishing, the Germans retreated. The final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began on the Eve of Passover, April 19, 1943. The deportation did not come as a surprise. The Germans had amassed a military force to carry it out, but did not expect to engage in a confrontation that included street battles. Armed German forces ringed the ghetto at 3:00 a.m. The unit that entered the ghetto encountered armed resistance and retreated. The main ghetto, with its population of 30,000 Jews, was deserted. The Jews could not be rounded up for the transport; the railroad cars at the deportation point remained empty. After Germans and rebels fought in the streets for three days, the Germans began to torch the ghetto, street by street, building by building. The entire ghetto became a sizzling, smoke-swathed conflagration. Most of the Jews who emerged from their hideouts, including entire families, were murdered by the Germans on the spot. The ghetto Jews gradually lost the strength to resist. On April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz the ZOB commander wrote the following to Yitzhak Zuckerman, a member of the ZOB command who was stationed on the "Aryan" side: "I cannot describe the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a special few will hold out; all the others will perish sooner or later. Their fate is sealed. None of the bunkers where our comrades are hiding has enough air to light a candle at night.... Be well, my dear, perhaps we shall yet meet. The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self - defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle". The rebels pursued their cause, even though they knew from the outset that they could not win. The Jewish underground would continue to fight the Nazis until the middle of May. The Polish underground only gave minimal help because of anti-Semitism prevalent among many. Although the Allies will neither publicize events nor try to help, even before the war ended, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol of Jewish resistance.

 

14th of Nisan, 5708(1948): Erev Pesach the rations given out in Jerusalem for the observance of Passover included 2 lbs. of potatoes, ½ lb of fish, 4 lb. of matzo, 1 ½ oz. dried fruit, ½ lb. meat, and ½ lb. of matzo flour. As one who was there later wrote, “For the trapped citizens of Jerusalem, who had become accustomed to privation, the Passover provisions seemed like a banquet. However, for the citizens of Jerusalem, it was not a particularly merry affair. On the verge of their national freedom, the inhabitants of Jerusalem sat somberly around their tables. This was the first time since the nightly shellings that the city's citizens had come together in assembly in the various homes throughout the city that had been the dream of two thousand years' Seders. Tonight is a holiday, but tomorrow the struggle will go on. As they sat to begin the Seder, they heard the beginning of the snipers bullets looking for a straggler in the streets. But tonight was different. As they opened the door, as they had done for scores of generations, to welcome in Elijah, there was no fear. Tonight is a night of divine protection. As the Holy One protected the Jews in Egypt, so shall he protect us here in the war torn city of Jerusalem. "Once we were slaves, but today we are free men" recited in the Haggadah, took on new meaning. The British are leaving, the Arabs are attacking, and we are beginning our new national lives as free men in our own country. "Next year in Jerusalem" had a meaning that we never before understood. We meant it; we would not relinquish our dream to return to our homeland, to the city that has been in our hearts throughout the two-thousand-year exile. Now we are free men, tomorrow we must continue the fight to remain free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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