Tuesday, October 29, 2024

This Day, October 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

OCTOBER 31

445 BCE: In Jerusalem Ezra, the Scribe reads the Scroll of the Law, the Torah, to the Jews of Judea as described in Nehemiah 9:1. 

475: Twenty-five years after the redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud, Orestes refused to “wear the Purple” and named his son Romulus Augustus as Western Roman Emperor.  Romulus Augustus would be the last person to hold this job and when he was deposed in 476 it marked the end of the Roman Empire, at least in the West.  This period of chaos combined with the rise of Christianity as the state religion in Europe was not conducive to the well-being of the Jews who had settled in what once had been the Roman Empire.

1345: Birthdate King Fernando I of Portugal.  During his reign Jews not only enjoyed a certain amount of self-government through the position of a Chief Rabbi or Ar-Rabbi Mor.  The King trusted Jews so much that Don Judah served as his chief treasurer and Don David Negro served as “his confidant and counselor.”

1391: Birthdate of King Duarte of Portugal who during his reign enacted laws prohibiting Jews from employing Christians.

1497: Last date given by King Manuel for Jews to leave Portugal. Four years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, he had ordered them expelled from Portugal. As his real desire was not to see the Jews leave for financial reasons, he only opened one port forcing most of them to remain behind after the designated date then baptizing them against their will.

1514: Birthdate of Viennese cartographer Wolfgang Lazius who “suggested that after Babel the earliest Hebrews had migrated from Mesopotamia to German” and who found evidence of Hebrew in European languages

1517: Luther posted 95 theses on Wittenberg church starting the Protestant Reformation.  From the point of view of Jewish history it is ironic that Luther took his action on Halloween, the holiday known for trick or treat.  In his battle with the Pope, Luther sought to gain the support of the Jews.  He publicly admitted that Christians had ill-treated the Jews and it was time to change.  He believed that once the Jews experienced Christian love, Jews would embrace his version of Christianity en masse.  When the Jews refused to convert, Luther turned on them and became a virulent anti-Semite.  At the same time, the Jews would become the unwitting victims as the Protestants and Catholics engaged in a variety of religious wars that would consume Europe for the next one hundred years.

1558: In a document bearing today’s date, “it is st ated that the customs, inns, breweries and ferries of Pinsk, which had been leased to Nahum and Israel Pesakhovich for 450 kop groschen were now awared to Khaim Rubinovich for the annual sum of 550 groschen.

1617: Heny Marten, the son of Sir Henry Martin and member of the House of Commons who called for Parliament to repeal the Act of Expulsion which would have led to the admission to Jews in the United Kingdom “matriculated” today “as a gentleman commoner from University College” from which he graduated in 1620 with a BA.

1630: Birthdate of English lawyer and MP Sir Peter Pett who along with the Bishop of Langley and Lord Anglesey drew up a plan shortly after King Charles II returned to the throne that would have placed the Jews in a ghetto like environment and subjected them to special taxes…”

1650: Today Sir Thomas Pack, who surprisingly joined with merchants in London in opposing the readmission of Jews, was made an admiralty commissioner.

1655: As the weeklong Tishrei festivals come to an end, Manassah Ben Israel prepared to make his voyage where is to meet with Oliver Cromwell whom he hopes will allow the Jews to return to the British Isles.

1655: A “humble address” is sent from Manasseh ben Israel to Oliver Cromwell, The Lord Protector. A fortnight later on 13 November he submitted a petition for the readmission of Jews to England.

1705: Birthdate of Clement XIV, the Pope who declared the Jews “innocent of the slanderous blood accusation” and who moved the Jews from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition to the “Viciariato di Roma.” (The Vicar of Rome who is the Pope)

1759(10th of Cheshvan, 5520): An earthquake killed several hundred Jews in Safed.  Safed is the town most people connect with Jewish mystics and the famous Shabbat Eve hymn, Lecha Dodi.  Prior to the earthquake, Safed had been a thriving city.  The first printing presses in the Middle East were set up in Safed and the first Hebrew book published in Eretz Israel was produced in Safed in the year before the earthquake.  The quake was one of a series of disasters including plagues and Arab attacks that would turn the town into a comparative backwater until the creation of the modern state of Israel.

1768: Birthdate of Penzance native and co-owner of the ships Nancy and Betsy, Lemon Hart, the grandson of Rhineland native Abraham Hart whose birth coincided with the town’s “first purpose-built synagogue” and who married Mary Solomon after his first wife Letita died in fire and eventually passed away in Brighton in 1845.

https://www.penwithlocalhistorygroup.co.uk/on-this-day/?id=268#:~:text=There%20was%20a%20thriving%20Jewish,was%20built%20in%20the%20town.

1778: Today, Philip Minis, the Savannah born Jewish son of Abraham Minis and successful businessman who was “an ardent patriot” who would act as guide for the Americans during the siege of Savannah gave a receipt to Treasurer Michael Helligard for “six thousand nine hundred and nineteen and a half dollars’ which may have been part of the payment that Congress had directed he should receive from the "acting paymaster and commissary to the Virginia and North Carolina troops in the State of Georgia.

1784(16th of Cheshvan, 5545): Couronna, the wife of Lion Acher ou Shaagat Arie and the mother of Asser, Juda and Wolf Lion passed away today in Metz, Lorraine, France.

1761: Birthdate of Sir Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninckthe who in 1802 as the  Batavian (Dutch) Ambassador to France delivered a note to the French foreign minister on behalf of the Jews of Germany.

1793: “Marx Berr, another member of the Cerfberr family, who had been a Jacobin until the purge during the Terror was taxed 25, 000 livres today.

1796(29th of Tishrei, 5557): Eighty-one-year-old Naphtali Franks, the New York Colony bon so of Bilhah Abigail Levy and Jacob Franks and the husband of Phila Franks whom he married in London in 1742 passed away to in Mortlake, Surrey, England.

1799: In Jamaica, Joseph Alexandre Lindo the son of Hanah and Alexande (Elisha) Lindo and his wife Sarah Lindo gave birth to

1806: In Philadelphia, PA, John Moss and Rebecca Lyons gave birth to Eleazer (Eugene) Moss the ‘husband of Rebecca DaSilva Lindo and father of Sarah Lindo Lyon and Herbert Lindo”

1810: Philip Raphael married Grace Simmons at the Great Synagogue today.

1811: In Spitafields, London, Rose and Barnet Salomons gave birth to Reuben Salomons, the husband of Sarah Hurwitz and the father of Rosa, Albert, Julia, Emily and Constance Salomons.

1817: Birthdate of Tzvi Hirsch Graetz who gained fame as historian Heinrich Graetz.

1821: Samuel Jacobs married Phoebe Levy at the Great Synagogue today

1821: Mordecai ben Joseph married Mata bat Simon at the Western Synagogue today.

1824(9th of Cheshvan, 5585): One of two dates of death given for Strasbourg, Germany native and American “teacher and merchant” Joseph Andrews, the husband of Sallie Salomon whom he married in 1794.

1824: Birthdate of Galician author Fabius Mieses whose works including “a history of modern philosophy from Kant to his own time” published in 1887.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_13860.html

1826: Birthdate of Agnes (nee Lewin) Byk, the native of Pinsk who was the wife of Samuel Alexander Byk.

1826: In South Carolina, Eliza R. Levy Anderson and Dr. Edward Henry Anderson, Sr gave birth Chapman Levy Anderson

1827: Jacob ben Moses married Shifra bat Joel at the New Synagogue today.

1827: Isaac Cohen married Sarah Samuel at the Great Synagogue today.

1827: Birthdate of Isle of Wight, VA native and College of William and Mary graduate William Mallory Levy the attorney practicing law in Natchitoches, LA and a veteran of the Mexican War and the Civil War who was elected to the Fourth-fourth congress and who after his defeat for re-election served as “member of the State constitutional convention in 1879” and “an associated justice, of the State Supreme Court.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/william-mallory-levy

1830: Solomon ben Nathaniel Ha-Levi married Beila bat David at the Western Synagogue today.

1830: In Charleston, SC, Hertz Wolf Oppenheim, the Hanover, Germany born ‘son of Wolf Jacob Simon Oppenheim and Gutrad Gertrud Jachet Oppenheimer and his wife Catharine Oppenheim” gave birth to Mathilda Rebecca Baruc, the wife of Bernard S. Baruc and the “mother of Nannie Baruch; Emmie Baruc; Rachel Baruc; Kate Baruc; Catherine O. Menke; and Mathilda Rebecca Baruc”  

1831: Samuel Hyam married Phoebe Levy at the New Synagogue today.

1832: Moses Levin married Sarah Nannette Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.

1832: In Hamburg, Moses Nathan Levy, the Hamburg born son of Jette and Nathan Levy and his wife gave birth to Levin Levy who did not live to celebrate his second birthday.

1833: The so-called law of October 31,,1833 which Jacob Pinhas was instrumental in drafting “gave full citizenship to such Jews who were willing  to abandon petty trading” in Hesse-Cassel.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12166-pinhas-jacob

1834(28th of Tishrei, 5595): Samuel Landau, the chief dayan of Prague who was the son of Rabbi Yechezkel ben Yehuda Landau passed away today. “He was the champion of Orthodox Rabbinism, and when, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Austrian emperor planned the establishment of Jewish theological seminaries, Landau was one of the rabbis that objected thereto. He had a controversy on this subject with Baruch Jeiteles (Phinehas Hananiah Argosi di Silva), who, under the title of Ha-Oreb, published (Vienna, 1795) Landau's letter to him and his own rejoinder. Landau published his responsa under the title of Shibat Ẓiyyon (Prague, 1827). He edited his father's Ahabat Ẓiyyon and Doresh le-Ẓiyyon (ib. 1827), adding to the former work four homilies of his own, and to the latter a number of halakic discourses.” [Jewish Encyclopedia]

1835: Birthdate of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer, known as Adolph von Baeyer, the first Jew to ever receive the Nobel Prize. A native of Berlin, this German chemist was acknowledged in 1905 for synthesizing dye indigo and was awarded the Davie Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1881, for his work with indigo. He passed away in 1917.

1837: Birthdate of Bertha Eppstein, the husband of Max Eppstein and the mother of Seraphine Eppstein Pisko.

1838: Birthdate of Luis I of Portugal who in 1869 conferred the noble title of viscond on David de Ster in recognition of the work of Stern's bank in floating Portuguese loans

1841: In the first Jewish marriage in New Zealand, David Nathan wed Rosetta Aarons in Kororareka.

1842(27th of Cheshvan, 5603): Eighty-year-old Rabbi Solomon Hirschell passed away. Born in 1761, he was the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, from 1802 until his death.  He is best remembered for his unsuccessful attempt to stop the spread of Reform Judaism in Britain by excommunicating its leaders. His father was a Polish Jew from Galicia Hirschel Levin, Chief Rabbi of London and Berlin and a friend of Moses Mendelssohn. His older brother was Talmudist Saul Berlin.

http://www.oztorah.com/2010/06/solomon-hirschel-high-priest-of-the-jews/

1842(27th of Cheshvan, 5603): Joseph Simson, the son of Solomon and Sarah Simon and the husband Francs (Frumet) Simons passed away in New York City.

1842: Birthdate of Bagdad native Manasseh Abdulla Joseph who was buried in the Hong Kong at the Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery when he passed away in 1903.

1843: In Philadelphia, PA, Benvenida Valentina Nathans, the Wilmington, Delaware born daughter of Sarah Helen Solis and Daniel da Silva Solis and her husband Moses Nathans gave birth to Orlando Daniel Nathans.

1847(21st of Cheshvan, 5608): Seventy-three year old Alexander Mack, the German born of Getta Sender and Moses Mack, the husband of Sara Aub and the father of Wolfgang Mack passed away today.

1848: Birthdate of Andrew Rosewater, the native of Bohemia, husband of Frances Meinerath and graduate of the Cleveland, Ohio public schools who became a civil and sanitary engineer as well as the editor of the Omaha (Neb) Bee.

1849; Mordecai Manuel Noah wrote to Daniel Webster today inviting him to attend the Hebrew Benevolent and German Hebrew Benevolent Society banquet to be held in New York on November 13.  In the letter, Noah informs Webster that there are 13,000 Jews living in New York City and that number is continuing to rise daily.

1851: “Hebrew Customs – Interesting Case” published today described a case being heard in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia where P.S. Rowland, a Jewish plaintiff has filed suit against the widow of his brother and her new husband contesting the distribution of the will based on the Biblical concept of the Levirate Marriage .

1856: Birthdate of Julia Raphael the mother of Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt a pioneer female automobile and motor boat racer

1856: Eighty-year-old Fogel Solomon was buried today at the “Exeter Jewish Cemetery.”

1856: In Philadelphia, PA, Abraham Kahn and the former Rebecca Ezekiel gave birth to Florence Kahn Liveright, the wife of Simon Livewright and Jewish community leader who serve as a Director of the Hebrew Education Society and was active in the Jewish Hospital Auxiliary and the Personal Interest Section of the United Hebrew Charities.

1857: Birthdate of Austrian composer and pianist Robert Fischhof who “took piano lessons from composer Franz Liszt” and who played in public for the first time when he was only seven years old.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6155-fischhof-robert

1857: In a letter to the editor published in today's New York Times, "Grace, a farmer's wife" expresses her indignation of having the farmer classed with "the Wall-street gamblers or Chatham-street Jews."  In New York, Chatham Street was the center of the second-hand clothing business, an industry dominated by immigrant Jews who allegedly took advantage of their Christian costumers.

1860: In Leavenworth, KS,  Henry/Hartog Bernard Haas, the Arnhem born of Christina and Benjamin Philip Haas and his wife Sarah Haas gave birth to Christina Johanna Fredericka Haas who passed away before her second birthday.

1860: The News of the Day Column published today reported that “a ball and banquet in aid of the ‘Jews Hospital in New-York’ was given at the City Assembly Rooms last evening, which was largely attended by members of the Jewish faith and others. Donations in aid of the Hospital were received from those present, and from absent persons, by letter, amounting to $14,000. Among the donors was Gov. Morgan, who sent a complimentary letter in closing $100.”

1861: The General News column published today reported that “A murder of a most atrocious nature has been committed in New-Jersey, on the body of a German Jew named Sigismund Felluer. Deceased had only been in this country a few days, and had property in jewels and diamonds to the amount of $50,000. A man with whom Felluer left the Prescott House, and a Jewess in whose company Felluer was seen, are suspected, and the police are diligently searching for them. A reward of $500 for the discovery of the murderer or murderers has been offered by the friends of Felluer.

1864:  Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state.  It was a series of silver strikes, the most famous of which was the Comstock Lode that attracted large numbers of early settlers to Nevada including Jews as well as Gentiles.  For example, when Eureka, Nevada experienced its silver strike the town’s population reached four thousand including more than one hundred Jews.  Among these Jews was Ben C. Levy a native of France who became superintendent of two mines and who, along with his wife, was a leader of the Jewish community.  David H. Cohen was typical of these early Jewish settlers.  He began as a “49er” in California, moved on to Virginia City, Nevada before “striking it reach” with a liquor business in Austin, Nevada.  Adoph Sutro left the most lasting monument to the intrepid Jewish population of Nevada’s early days.  This placer panner turned entrepreneur raised the money for the construction of the four mile long Sutro Tunnel designed to drain water from the mines thus making them safer and more protective. The man who made the modern Nevada was Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel, the man behind Las Vegas.  As of 2000, there were an estimated 77,100 Jews living in Nevada, representing an increase of 277% from 1990.

1864: Birthdate of Albert Henry Jessel, a London –born “communal worker.”

1865: James Goldsmith, who had risen from the rank of Corporal to Sergeant since joining Company H of the 163rd Regiment of the 18th Cavalry in 1862 completed his “term of service today.”

1866: On the Isle of Wight, Read Admiral John Bourmaster Dickson and his wife gave birth to John Dickson-Poynder, the first Baron Islington who in 1922 and 1930 condemned the mandate in Palestine because he said it favored the Jews whom he described as “undesirable.”

1868: In New York, Sarah Naar Cardozo, the New York born daughter of Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto and Rachel Lopes Mendes Peixotto and her husband Abraham Hart Cardozo gave birth to Algernon Jarvis Cardozo

1869: Birthdate of David Pollock, the native of Lida, Russia who became the Superintendent of the Zion Hebrew Sabbath Schools in Chicago and the editor of the Zion Messenger.

1870: Major Louis Alexander Gratz, the son of Henrietta and Salomon Gratz, and his wife Elisabeth Trigg Gratz gave birth to Louis Alexander Gratz, Jr., the husband of Maggie Gratz.

1872( 29th of Tishrei, 5633): Thirty-one-year-old Isadore Myers the son of Caroline and Joseph Myers and the “”rother of Isabelle Rosenbaum; Max Myers; Herman J. Myers; Bertha (Betty) Myers; Clara Myers; and Lee Roy Myers” passed away today.

1872(29th of Tishrei, 5633): Edward Henry Beddington, the “chairman of the Building Committee of the United Synagogue and treasurer of Jew’s College who played a key role in “connection with the erection of the Central Synagogue” and the creation “of a new Jewish cemetery at Willesden” passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Jacobs and Goodman Lipkind)

1873: “A later ordinance” promulgated today, “stipulated that the issue of marriages between members of the Swedish State Church and Jews should be brought up in the Lutheran faith.”

1873: Birthdate of Rudolf Lubinski the Croatian architect whose projects included the synagogue in Sarajevo, Il Kal Grandi.

1873: Heungseon Daewongun, the whom German Jewish businessman Ernst Jakob Oppert attempted to blackmail in an attempt  to remove “Korean trading barriers” completed his service today as Regent in Korea.

1875: It was reported today that “eight Jews and Jewesses were recently baptized in London.

1875: It was reported today that in England, a revision of the Book of Isaiah has been completed and work on a revision of the translation of the Book of Jeremiah has reach the midpoint of that book of the Bible.

1875: It was reported today that the Jewish messenger said of Moody and Sankey, “We give the two enterprising gentlemen the credit of being honest in their intentions, earnest in their work and as the past has proved, disinterested in the pecuniary results of their vast undertakings.  Would that we could say the same of all our Deacons and Trustees, Pastors and Rabbis” [ Moody is Dwight Moody, the famous evangelist.  Sankey is Ira David Sankey, “The Sweet Singer of Methodism” who was known for his composition and singing of gospel music. During a trip to the United Kingdom, the two raised tens of thousands of dollars for the use of missionaries.

1875: In Los Angeles, Harriet (née Newmark) and Marc Eugene Meyer gave birth to Eugene Meyer, a Yale graduate, who established his own very successful banking firm and did not choose to continue identifying as a Jews.  Starting with World War I, he served actively on numerous government boards and committees.  He gained lasting fame when he bought the bankrupt Washington Post at public auction.  As published of the Post until 1946 and then as chairman of the board of the Washington Post & Times Herald, Meyer was instrumentally in making the Post a leading American newspaper and creating a media empire that included the Washington outlet of CBS and Newsweek Magazine. He passed away in 1959.  His daughter, Katherine Graham would continue his work and take the Post to levels of which he only dreamed.

1877: Sara Louise the daughter of Edward Isaacs of Auckland, NZ was married today.

1879: According to reports published today from Berlin, Romania is seeking to gain formal recognition of her independence in light of her government’s recent action concerning the emancipation of the Jews.

1880: Simon Sterne was among those who attended a reception this evening for President and Mrs. Grant at Parlor No. 81 in New York City.

1880 Birthdate of New York City native and NYU trained attorney Nathan Raymond Leavitt, the founder of the Central Home and Trust Company and a resident of Elizabeth, NJ.

1880: Reverend J.P. Newman delivered a sermon this morning at New York’s Central Methodist Church on “The Impending Danger to Our Public Schools  in which he contended “that the public schools were sectarian” because all children including Jewish children “meet there on an equal footing…without undergoing sectarian instruction.” (This benign view of the public schools was one that many Jews showed they favored by sending their children to them.  This was especially true among the Russian and Polish Jews who saw the schools as the pathway to “Americanization.’)

1881: It was reported today that “the Turkish Governor of Jerusalem has recently received orders from Sultan Abdul Hamid to resume the work” on “restoration of Solomon’s Temple” that had stopped five years ago.  The first order of business is to remove “all the rubbish and …vegetation” that has filled the area. The original restoration work had begun “at the instance of” Franz Joseph and the Austrian imperial family.

1881: It was reported today a fair being held in Cincinnati, Ohio, will raise $50,000 for the Jewish Orphan Asylum in Cleveland, Ohio.

1881: “Reformed Judaism” published today described the change in Jewish observance that took place at Temple Beth-El where Dr. Kaufmann Kohler delivered a lecture entitled “Our Religious and Social State” as part of a Sunday morning service that will now replace the traditional Saturday Sabbath observance.

1882: In Kovno, Mary Dember and Louis Camelhor gave birth to Providence RI resident Ida Marcia Silverman, the husband of Archibald Silverman and a an active participant in a number of Jewish pursuits including Hadassah and  the Hebrew University Hospital Building and who “toured the U.S. in behalf of the United Palestine Appeal” in 1925.

1884: “The Clergymen and Mr. Blaine” published today took “Rabbi Brown” task for the manner in which he expressed his support for the Republican candidate for President.

1885: Rabbi de Sola Mendes responded approvingly today to plans to create a prayer book with selections in Hebrew and English “for the home use of women and children” Rabbi Mendes said there is nothing new about such tomes but that for some reason those that exist are all written in German.

1885: In Lemberg, Bernhard Sobelsohn, a postal worker and his wife gave birth to Karl Sobelsohn who gained fame as Communist revolutionary Karl Radek who was murdered while serving a ten year sentence after being convicted in one of Stalin’s notorious Show Trials.

1885: One day after he had passed away, “George Henry Morris, the infant son of Henry Martin Morris” and the former “Julie Pollitzer” was buried today at “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1885: It was reported today that the Hebrew Journal has endorsed Walter Howe to serve in the New York State representing the 10th District.  Howe was active in the protesting the treatment of Russian Jews and has worked to have the penal code changed so that Jews who observed Shabbat can work on Sunday.

1885: In Zitomar, Russia Rebecca and Israel Jacob Wainer gave birth to Colonel Max Robert Wainer, who was presented with the “French Legion of Honor, Chevalier” by Marshal Foch for his “service on General John J. Pershing’s General Staff and who served as “Chairman of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Board at Fort Lee, Virginia during WW II” while being married to “Amy Elivin Shephard Wainter with whom he had two children – Amos and Max.”

1886: It was reported today that, in a rare display of 19th ecumenical harmony, English Jews and Protestants joined with Catholics in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of János Cardinal Simor

1887: The annual meeting of the United Hebrew Charities was held this evening at Temple Emanu-El where the following officers were elected: President – Henry Rice, Vice President – Morris Tuska, Treasurer – James H Hoffman, Secretary – J.S. Isaacs

1887(13th of Cheshvan, 5648): Two weeks before his 77th birthday, “educator and author” Jacob Auerbach author of “Lessing and Mendelssohn” and a “History of the Jewish Community of Vienna from 1784” passed away today.

1888: In Birzai, Lithuanian Rabbi Pinchas HaKoen Lintup and his wife gave birth to “rabbi, author and historian” Harry Sebee Linfield, who in 1905 came to the United States where he earned a Ph.D from the University of Chicago, wrote a dissertation on “The Relation of the Jewish Law on Interest to Babylonian Law” and became a demographer and statistician who studied the Jewish people.

https://archives.cjh.org//repositories/3/resources/2751

1888: Based on information supplied by Mrs. Philip J. Joachimsen, the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society has taken 1,339 Jewish children since it began providing service.  Currently there are 585 children living in the institution 278 of whom are girls and 307 are boys.  207 of the children were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and 242 came from Russia or Poland.

1889: Mr. Rosenthal, the leader of the Republicans in the Fourth District and the head of the Hebrew-American Republic Party sent a letter to the leader of the district today stating that he is leaving the party because of its “ingratitude” and “disregard for sacred promises.”

1889: Elise Hausch and Major General Erwin Von Heimerdinger gave birth to Gertrud von Heimerdinger who was employed in the German Foreign Office as assistant Chief of the Diplomatic Courier Section but as an anti-Nazi, secretly arranged for special passes to enable diplomat Fritz Kolbe (the main Allied source of intelligence) to make frequent trips to Switzerland to pass on information to Allen Dulles, head of American O.S.S. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1889: “Lore of the East” published today described the recent meeting of the American Oriental Society during which Professor Isaac Hall read from “The Colloquy of Moses on Mount Sinai, the Martyrdom of St. Geroge and the Story of the Letters which Fell from Heaven” and attendees examined “a scroll of the Law in Hebrew which” had been found “in China.

1889: “Marriage or Betrothal” published today described events surrounding claims that David Harfeld is a serial bigamist.  Miss Julia Harlan testified that after nine years of marriage, Harfield had disappeared without a trace. Last year she heard that that Harfeld had been wed to Sarah Marx in a traditional Jewish ceremony.  The defendant’s brother, who is a rabbi, testified that it was a betrothal ceremony, a claim that Miss Marx repeated on the stand.  However, Rabbi DeSola Mendes testified that the ceremony described was a wedding ceremony.  However, Mendes is a Sephardic Jew and the contract submitted by the defense was identified as what Polish Jews consider a betrothal contract. The confused Judge has not rendered a verdict.

1890: Two days after she had passed away, 60 year old Sarah Joseph, “the wife of Samuel Joseph” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”

1890: In Zutphen, Holland, Philip Cohen who died at Auschwitz and the former Betje Brook gave birth to Sabiena Cohen who died at Sobibor, the wife of Levie Van Praage who died at Sobibor.

1890: In Bialystok, Hannah Freedman and Oscar H. Slone gave birth to University of Pittsburgh trained attorney Victor Slone the husband of Ella J. Weiner who returned to the practice of law in Kansas City, MO after serving in the Army from 1917 to 1918 and who was active in the United Jewish Charities of Kansas City.

1892: The eighty-six Russian and Polish workers arrested yesterday at the cloakmaking firm of S.M. Levi & Co on charges that they were violating the “Sunday law” claimed that they did not work on Saturday which meant that they could work on Sunday according to the law.  Labor leader Joseph Barondess claimed that this was not so and that they along with thousands of other cloakmakers in the city worked seven days a week.  The Judge released them with a warning that if they were ever brought before him on these charges again “he would fine them heavily.”

1892: In Lower Saxony, German, Ida Bach, the Bunde, Germany born daughter of Hermann Rosenwald and Jeanette David and her husband David Bach gave birth to Alfred Bach  the American husband of Betty Bach.

1893: The Chicago World’s Fair which owed much of its success to Sol Bloom who created “the mile-long Midway Plaisance,” “a grand mix of fakes, hokum, and the genuinely educational and introduced the "hootchy-cootchy" version of the belly dance in the "Street in Cairo" amusement with 2.25 million admissions. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.'s original Ferris Wheel carried over 1.5 million passengers. The Midway's money-making concessions and sideshows made over $4 million in 1893 dollars, and it was the more memorable portion of the Exposition for many visitors. The Midway also featured more scholarly exhibits which were overseen by Frederic Ward Putnam, head of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and ethnologist Otis Tufton Mason of the Smithsonian Institution.”

1893: “Mr. Hammerstein’s Work” published today described a speech given by Oscar Hammerstein at the premiere of “Koh-i-Noor” in which he said he had made “a bet of $100” with himself “that he could write an operetta, words and music, design the scenery and costumes, engage the company and get 300 columns of advance notices in the newspaper, all in forty-eight hours” and that he was pleased to say he had won the bet.

1894: Governor Roswell P. Flower delivered speeches today at Niagara Falls and Suspension in which he warned of an alliance between the Republicans and the American Protective Association (A.P.A.) a secret Protestant organization that promotes “hostility to Jews and Catholics” and would keep “men from employment and pubic office on account of their religious belief.” (Compare this to the anti-immigrant stance taken in the 21st century)

1894: Major Du Paty de Clam “finished his inquiry, and handed in his report, which accused Dreyfus but left it to the minister to decide what further steps should be taken.”

1894: Jacob H. Schiff chaired this evening’s meeting at Cooper Union where “German-American Citizen” enthusiastically endorsed the anti-Tammany ticket.  Among those on the platform were Aaron Levy, Hy Hyman, Magnus Levy and Dr. Felix Adler.

1894: Max Nordeau’s “drama Die Kugel was presented at the Lessing Theatre” today.

1894: In Charleston, SC, Gustave Pollitzer and his wife, the former Clara Guinzberg gave birth to suffragette Anita Pollitzer who was also a protégé of Alfred Stieglitz. (Another Jew with a camera!)

http://americancivilwar.com/women/Womens_Suffrage/Anita_Pollistzer.html

http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/pollitzer_family_sc/anita_pollitzer

1894: In New York City, Minnie Mutnick ad Abram Tetelman gave birth to Cooper Union trained electrical engineer and NYU trained attorney Louis L. Tetelman, an assistant engineer for the Public Service Commission

1894: A summary of the annual report for the United Hebrew Charities in New York published today showed that the organization had responded to 37,097 applications for relief. The new applications for relief included 623 from people over sixty and 1,107 widows. In responding to all requests for assistance, the society spent $225, 063.73 while bringing in $227, 244.82 from all sources.

1895: “Annie Silverman of 105 Allen Street was arrested” today “on a warrant sworn out by Max Sanftman, an agent for the Hebrew Anti-Vice Society, charging her with being a disorderly woman.”

1895: In Lachva, Russia, Maurice Glass and Pearl Chafters gave birth John Judah Glass who came to Canada in 1907, served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WW I, began practicing law in 1920 before going into politics where he represented St. Andrew in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

1896(24th of Cheshvan, 5657): Sixty-year-old Ernestine Fox died from consumption 2 days after her son Abraham passed away from the same cause.

1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC won its fifth straight game today.

1896: Joseph Jacobs, “the distinguished Jewish scholar” arrived in New York from London aboard the SS St. Louis.  The President of the British Folklore Association, some of Jacobs best known works are Jews of Angevin England, Sources of Spanish History and the recently published Jewish Year Book.

1897(5th of Cheshvan, 5658): In London, Lizzie Emanuel, the wife of Emanuel Emanuel passed away today.

1897: “The eleventh session of the Board of the Federation of Synagogues” of which Sir Samuel Montagu is president opened this evening at the Jewish Working Men’s Club in London.

1897: Mr. B.A. Elkin presided over a debate at the West Central Institute on the subject of “Is Happiness the Aim of Life.”

1898: George Jessel Jones, Morris Conheim and Carly Meyer who were serving with the 1st Missouri Volunteer Infantry were mustered out today at St. Louis, the city where all three men lived before the war.

1898: Second Lt. Charles F. Wolf, Sergeant Charles Olschefskie and Privates Simon J. Bush and Simon Freund all of whom were serving with Company A from Hartford were among those whose military service came to an end when the 1st Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was mustered out today.

1898: Detective Connelly arrested Leopold Lederer and Abraham Zucker on charges of arson in the first and second degrees.  Zucker is the brother of Isaac Zucker who is serving 36 years in prison for burning down his own store.

1898: Private Louis W. Cahn of New Haven, who had been serving with Battery C of the 1st Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Artillery was mustered out of service today.

1898: Solomon Loeb was elected honorary vice president at tonight’s annual meeting of the Society of United Hebrew Charities which was held at Temple Emanu-El

1898: Their Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of Germany attended the consecration of the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem, which is part of the trip where the Herzl will meet with the Kaiser to promote his Zionist dream.

1898: Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary today “When I remember thee in days to come, O, Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure” which some say is proof that “the founder of modern Zionism had no particular affection for the holy city.” (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)

1899: Today, Simon Pendleton Kramer, the 31-year-old Cincinnati born son of Emma Bloom and Jacob Kramer and graduate of f Medicine Medical College of Ohio completed his service as a brigade surgeon for the United States Army which he had served during the Spanish-American War.

1899: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and Ohio State graduate Herbert Byer, the WW I veteran known both as an “advertising agent and novelist.”

1900: In New York Hugo Piesen married Annie Piesen the daughter of Abraham and Sarah Abrahamowitz.

1900: Today, the synagogue for the Reading Hebrew Congregation “was consecrated by Chief Rabbi Dr Hermann Adler and Rev. Dr. Hermann Gallancz and opened by Sir Samuel Montagu (later Lord Swaythling)” who “had strongly supported the formation and development of the community and its synagogue and was an early contributor to the community”

1900: In Poland, “Benjamin and Shaine (Kumok) Feder gave birth to Sara Feder, the Milwaukee school girl who was friends with Golda Mabovitch, (Golda Meir) and who after marrying Professor Isidore Keyfitz became known as Sara Feder-Keyfitz, an early, ardent Zionist, sociologist and champion for the right’s of women.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/feder-keyfitz-sara-rivka

1901: Eduard Bernstein, the son of a “locomotive driver” who was active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse” and a leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany  began serving his first term in office as a Member of the Imperial Reichstag from Silesia.

1902: According to today’s Carlisle Evening Sentinel on The Bon-Ton chain store which was founded in 1898, when Max Grumbacher and his father, Samuel, opened S. Grumbacher & Son, a one-room millinery and dry goods store on Market Street in York, Pennsylvania “had two additional locations under the name "Bon-Ton Millinery" in Trenton, New Jersey, and five Pennsylvania locations: Carlisle, Lancaster, Lebanon, Altoona, and East Liverpool.

1902: It was reported today that The Staakburger Zeitgun,  an anti-Semitic paper whose “editor was recently sentenced to two years imprisonment fo alleging that the authorities protected Jews in the celebrated murder case in Konitz” “avers that Sarah Bernhardt is German claiming that she was born at Frankfort-on-the-Oder” to a horse dealer named “Feibel.”

1902: Twenty-four-year-old pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Saint Petersburg born son of Salomon Gabrilowitsch and Rose Segall “will be unable to appear as the soloist at the first public rehearsal of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Academy of Music” this afternoon after having bruised “the little finger of his right hand” yesterday.”

1903(10th of Cheshvan, 5664): Parashat Lech-Lecha

1903: “The last chapter…in the history of the agitation resulting from the Kishineff massacre was written today when Simon Wolf” of Washington, D.C., “representing the Executive Committee of the B’nai B’rith…presented Secretary of State Hay the petition which has been in circulation through the United States for several months…which the Russian government” which the Russian government has declined to receive and which will remain permanently at the U.S. State Department.

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-pogroms-kishinev.htm

1904: “Honor M.S. Isaacs’s Memory” published described the memorial service at the Educational Alliance for Myer S. Issacs who had died on May 24 and whom Jacob H. Schiff praised for “his untiring efforts to benefit immigrant Jewish children”

1904: In San Francisco,  Henry George Washington Dinkelspiel and Estelle Dinkelspiel gave birth to University of California graduate and Harvard Law School trained attorney John Walton Dinkelspiel, the husband of Clara Mack Dinkelspiel whom he married in 1931 and father of Jean Chaitin who was a Republican and later in life a judge.

1905: Twenty-seven-year-old Nathan Trivers, the Russian born son of Peter and Taube Trivers who in 1902 came to the United States where he eventually became president of Trivers Clothes Stores and serving on the board of trustees of Sinai Temple in Mt. Vernon, NY married Anna Lillian Lipschitz today.

1905(2nd of Cheshvan, 5666): Three hundred Jews were killed in a Pogrom in Odessa, Russia.

1905: Rabbi Moses and Tamara Shorr were married at Königsberg

1905: Constantine Petrovitch Pobiedonostzeff , Chief Procurator of the Holy Synagogue “who has persecuted the Jews, Lutherans and Catholics….with unswerving zeal” and who “from 1890 to 1902 caused 6,000,000 Jewish families to be expelled from Russia” resigned.

1906: “In views of the various difficulties which Jews at present encounter in emigrating to America, a special conference of local Jews” in Odessa, “decided to apply to Oscar Straus upon his entrance into the United States Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce and Labor to obtain additional facilities for Jewish immigration.”

1906: “The Grand Street Theatre was crowded tonight by residents of the east side, who were there to extend to Sholem Aleichem, the Jewish "Mark Twain," a welcome to the United States.”

1907: The apartment building at 67 Riverside Drive in Riverdale, designed by architect George F. Pelham who also designed the synagogue for Beth Jacob Anshe Sholom in Brooklyn, opened today.

1907: Birthdate of Helen Brook, the daughter of a London furrier who gained fame as Helen Lessore, the director of the Beaux Arts Gallery.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-helen-lessore-1434653.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lessore#/media/File:Helen_Lessore,_Symposium_I,_1974-1977,_oil_on_canvas,_Tate.jpg

1908(6th of Cheshvan, 5669): Parashat Noach

1908: “Fully 2,000 persons, among whom were many Democrats and Socialists, attended the Republican rally tonight at Cooper Union to hear Oscar S. Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and Senator Thurston of Nebraska speak in behalf of the Republican ticket.

1909: It was reported today that The Gompers family had gathered in force at the Yorkville Casino, in East Eighty-sixth Street, where a reunion was held to celebrate the eighty-second birthday of Solomon Gompers, father of Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor. Two hundred members of the family, representing four generations, were there.

1910: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Jeannette Orleans Gayl, the husband of Joseph Gayl and President of the Women’s Division of ORT.

1911: In Brooklyn Edward and Martha Esther Cahn gave birth Ruth Cahn who became Ruth Marshall when she married Harold Marshall

1911(9th of Cheshvan, 5672): At Constantinople Daoud Effendi Molho, a member of the Ottoman Diplomatic Staff, passed away at the age of 67.

1912: Birthdate of Oscar Dystel  “who combined sharp editorial judgments, shrewd marketing and attention-grabbing covers to propel Bantam Books from the brink of collapse to pre-eminence in paperback publishing after World War II.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1912: In Lancaster, PA, Laurence B. Myers and Edith Hirsh Myers gave birth to Robert Julius Myers the actuary who helped to create the Social Security program and to set America’s official retirement age at 65

1913: Birthdate of Milton Green, the world class hurdler, Harvard graduate and WW II veteran who refused to participate in the Nazi 1936 Olympics.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9500EED81E3EE63BBC4153DFB3668389669EDE

1913: After thirty-five years as head of the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Home, Dr. Samuel Wolfenstein was forced to retire today “due to failing health.”

1913: Fifteen-year-old Chaya Kaufman, the Ukraine born daughter of Joseph and Ethel Appel Kaufman became Ariel Durant today when she married Will Durant and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 for Rousseau and Revolution, the tenth volume of The Story of Civilization.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/28/obituaries/ariel-durant-historian-is-dead-wrote-the-story-of-civilization.html

1913: A motion granting Leo Frank a new trial “was brought” today “but after a bitter fight was denied with Judge Roan adding, "Gentlemen, I have thought about this case more than any other I have ever tried. With all the thought I have put on this case, I am not thoroughly convinced that Frank is guilty or innocent. But I do not have to be convinced. The jury was convinced. There is no room to doubt that."

1914: Birthdate of Palestine native and future New Jersey native Ovid Shifriss the husband of Shoshana Shifriss.

1914: Lodz native Louis DeWitt Gibbs, the 1906 graduate of New York University Law and state legislator who led the battle to make the Bronx into a separate country before going to serve as “a member of the New York State Supreme Court and who was the husband of Anna White Gibbs with whom he had three children – Howard, Harriet and Isadora – “survived an assassination attempt, when a bomb intended to kill him exploded at the Bronx Court House” today.

1914: As charges of bigotry come to dominate the New York gubernatorial race, former President Theodore Roosevelt, the leader of the Progressive Party delivered a speech tonight in which said that his party treats “with absolute equality all me, whether they are Catholics, Protestants or Jews.”

1914: Charles H. Sherrill, the former American Minister to Argentina, reported on “the patriotism of Russian Jews” who are “rallying to the Russian flag in the present war.”

1915: Reverend Anthony Maliauskis, a Lithuanian priest is scheduled to speak to in New York and Newark on the plight of the Lithuanian and Jewish refugees fleeing in the wake of the Russian army’s withdrawal and to try and raise funds for these people who are face with starvation and death.

1915: “Sisterhood Wants Help” published today described the appeals of the Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue for help in continuing activities this winter at “the neighborhood house at 88 Orchard Street which houses “Talmud Torah schools, an advice and information bureau” and provides classes, lectures and relief for the poor.

1915: The final session of the triennial convention of the 124 lodges of the Independent Order Free Sons of Israel came to a close today at the Free Sons Hall in New York with the installation of new officers.

1915: In London, Leopold de Rothschild presided over a meeting “held in behalf of the fund for the relief of Jewish victims of the war in Russia” where “it was announced that 1,500,000 Russian Jews were starving.”

1915: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, addressing an audience of 2,500 person who filled Carnegie Hall” tonight “to hear his sermon on woman suffrage before the Free Synagogue said that war would never end before women have the vote and that if the vote continued to be withheld and wars continue he would wish to see women make a united protest by refusing to bear children.”

1915: It was reported today that “during the past week the American Jewish Relief Committee of which Felix M. Warburg is the Treasurer” will use all of the money it has collected “for the relief of Jewish sufferers in the war zones of Europe – Russia, Poland and Galicia – with the exception of $1,000 which was sent to Crete.”

1916: A letter which was triggered by the anti-Semitic writings that appeared in Psychology of War by U.S. Army Captain LeRoy indicating the favorable attitude of the War Department as it pertains to the quality of Jewish soldiers “was given out at the White House executive offices today.”

1916: In his annual report to the Board of Managers the Sinai Congregation of the Bronx, Rabbi Max Reicher wrote today that “the year 1916 was a banner year in the history of Sinai Congregation” as can be seen by the dedication of the new facility, the doubling of membership which is now approaching 300 families and the growth in attendance at Friday evening and Saturday morning services.

1917: Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Adolph Lewisohnn, Oscar S. Straus, Joseph Barondess, Isaac Allen, Bernard G. Richards, Louis Lipsky, Daniel Guggenheim, Samuel Strauss and Henry Morgenthau were the “prominent Jews” who signed a statement addressed to the citizens of New York “urging the re-election of Mayor Mitchel.”

1917:  During World War I, the “last successful cavalry charge in history” took place at the Battle of Beersheba.  The Battle of Beersheba was part of the British campaign against the Ottoman Turks. In an era dominated by machine guns, barbed wire and massed heavy artillery, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade charged four miles of Turkish trenches, overran them and captured the wells at Beersheba. The British needed to take Beersheba because its wells would provide the water needed for a successful campaign.  On October 30, 2004, the day before the anniversary of this event Jews around the world would read an account from the book of Bereshit of contest between Abraham and Abimelech over the wells at Beersheba.  Surely some Rabbi in Sydney or Melbourne would include mention of this battle in his d'var torah on the sidrah. The capture of Beersheba leads to the seizure of Gaza by British troops including the Jewish Soldiers of the 39th Battalion of Royal Fusiliers.

1917: In Great Britain, “the cabinet overrode the opposition of two cabinet members and authorized the Foreign Secretary to issue a much-diluted version of the assurance of support that Weizmann had requested.”  This “statement of support” would soon be known as The Balfour Declaration.

1918: Following the armistice with Turkey today, the 38th Battalion under the command of Colonel John Henry Patterson (the Jewish Legion) was sent to Raf.

1918: After having been appointed a first lieutenant in the reserves in February and then placed on leave from military service in March so that he work on the Arbeiter -Zietung, Otto Bauer, “left-socialist Austromarxist” and son of Jewish textile manufacturer Philipp Bauer and Katherine Bauer ended his formal military service today.

1918: As WW I wound down, The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 that established the dual monarchy and re-established the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary which emancipated its Jews in1867, was formally terminated today – a move that would prove detrimental to the Jews of Central Europe.

1918: Six days after he had passed away, Jack Berge was buried today in the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”

1918: Birthdate of Massachusetts native Jack Rotman who earned All-New England honors while playing basketball for Boston University from 1938 through 1940.

1919: “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” published today written by Marin Henry Glynn, the former of governor of New York appeared in today’s issue of The American Hebrew. Glynn lamented the poor conditions for European Jews after World War I. He “referred to these conditions as a potential ‘holocaust’ and asserted that ‘six million Jewish men and women are starving across the seas’. Because of these coincidences, the article has been exploited by Holocaust-denial groups. Others, while in no way intending to deny the Holocaust, nonetheless acknowledge that the commonly-quoted figure of six million deaths is an estimate, that the actual number may have been less, that not all of the victims were Jewish, and that there is a wide margin of error.”

1920: The Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary decided to name a professorship in memory of Jacob H. Schiff.

1920: Attorney John Levy is scheduled to give the opening address at the public forum at the Bronx Free Synagogue where attendees will discuss the League of Ntionals.

1920: “The formal dedication of the new building of the Bronx Maternity Hospital is scheduled to take places this afternoon under the auspices of President Elias Bayer and Secretary Barnett E. Koppelman.

1920: In Berlin Klara "Claire" (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner gave birth to photographer Helmut Newton.

https://www.google.com/search?q=helmut+newton&source=hp&ei=2cJeY9y0IdnNptQPhPmpyAg&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAY17Q6Wy_sE6QVT8mRjicKiF7IQHqHtQr&gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwtMgwNzNg9OLNSM3JLS1RyEstL8nPAwBf_Qgf&oq=helmut+newt&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIFCC4QgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUILhCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCC4QgAQ6CAguELEDEIMBOhEILhCABBCxAxCDARDHARDRAzoLCC4QgAQQxwEQ0QM6BAguEEM6CwgAEIAEELEDEIMBOg4ILhCABBCxAxDHARDRAzoKCAAQsQMQgwEQQzoECAAQQzoLCC4QgAQQsQMQgwE6CgguELEDEIMBEEM6CAgAELEDEIMBOgUIABCRAjoOCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQ1AI6CwguEIAEELEDENQCOggILhCABBCxAzoLCC4QgAQQxwEQrwE6BwguELEDEEM6CAgAEIAEELEDOgcIABCxAxBDUABY5hNguihoAHAAeACAAegBiAH8CZIBBTMuNy4xmAEAoAEB&sclient=gws-wiz

1921: Jewish leader Samuel Untermyer, who had previously announced his support of Senator Charles C. Lockwood, Coalition candidate for Controller, came out last night for Henry H. Curran, Coalition candidate for Mayor, and against Mayor Hylan in a speech at Public School 84.

https://www.nytimes.com/1921/11/01/archives/untermyer-sees-currans-election-best-for-transit-declares-fusion.html?searchResultPosition=3

1922: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at the Jewish Hospital Chapel in Brooklyn for Esther Neiman who had passed away on October 29, the wife Michael Neiman and the mother of Harry and Jerome Neiman after which she will be buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery.

1923: “Arabs digging the Valley of Kidron sometimes known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives accidentally discovered three chambers and family vault, the contents of which had not been disturbed.”

1923: “New York businessmen subscribed $150,000 in the first fortnight of the campaign to raise funds to the $700,000 deficit of the Jewish Philanthropic Societies” President Arthur Lehman announced today at the federations 5th Avenue Headquarters.

1924: “Clubs Are Trumps” a three-act play produced by Walter Hast has its final performance on Broadway at the Bijou Theatre.

1924: Birthdate of Yehuda Klien who as Yehuda Amital would become an Orthodox rabbi, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion and a member of the Israeli cabinet.

1924: The Civil Tribunal of the Seine granted a divorce to Mrs. Hart O. Berg, the wife of Jewish business manager of the Wright Brothers.

1925(13th of Cheshvan, 5686): Parashat Lech-Lecha

1925(13th of Cheshvan, 5686): Max Linder, French actor, director and screenwriter, passed away.

1925: Today marked the final Broadway performance of “Jane, Our Stranger” staring Anton Ascher as “Marce” which had opened at the Cort Theatre on October 8.

1925: It was reported today that Frank D. Waterman, the Republican nominee for Mayor of New York has denounced the publication of letter claiming that the Fountain Inn in Florida of which he is president does not admit Jews as last minute trick by Tammany Hall.

1926: “Habima Theatre Steeped In Romance” published today provides a history of the Habima Theatre which was “a troubadour company founded in 1905 by the ardor of young actor N.L. Zemach” which is coming to the United States this Autumn.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/10/31/100005930.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1926(23rd of Cheshvan, 5687): Erich Weiss better known as magician Harry Houdini, died in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix thought to have been brought on by interaction at an earlier performance.

http://www.thegreatharryhoudini.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0324.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/houdini/

1926: Following his recent arrival in the United States Dr. Chaim Weismann, President of the ZOA announced that “he had come to work with his friends on behalf of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. He said that he feld confident that this time, as on earlier occasions, his pleading would find a sympathetic response among the great Jewish Community of America.

1927: In New York, Witia (née Haskell), an actress and teacher, and Abraham W. Rosenthal, a realtor and educator gave birth to their only child Lyova Haskell Rosenthal who gained fame as actress Lee Grant.

1927: “The Strange Case of Captain Ramper,” a silent film directed by Max Reichman was released today in Germany

1927(5th of Cheshvan, 5688): Sixty-eight-year-old Russian born Benjamin Davidson who in 1911 came to the United States where he became “the founder and president of Davidson Brothers Company, one of Iowa’s leading department stores passed away today in Sioux City, IA.

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/davidson/6114/

1928: Lord Allenby called on Dr. Chaim Weizmann at the Hotel Commodore where he “expressed his satisfaction with the results of the Non-Zionist Conference on Palestine, which will unite American Jews for the rebuilding of Palestine.”

1928: “The Power of the Press” a silent newspaper movie written by Sonya Levien was released in the United States by Columbia Pictures.

1929: It was reported today that when Acting Police Commandant Saunders completed his “testimony before the Parliamentary Commission” in Jerusalem “he made the startling statement that in the of a massacre the Palestine police cannot be counted upon, inasmuch as they are for the most part Arabs.”

1929: In New York, Mr. and Mrs. William Zeckendorf, Sr. gave birth to William Zeckendorf, Jr. who “transformed New York City by making big bets on big projects that helped refashion neighborhoods from the Upper West Side to Union Square.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1930: Dr. Karl Landsteiner, who was just named as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine talked today “of his research that led to the discovery of a serum for infantile paralysis; of his studies of human blood groups, which have opened a new field in the establishment of the paternity of children…and of his work in immunology…” His work in the classification of blood into thirty subdivisions has improved the selection of blood donors transforming transfusions from a “dangerous operation” to “a safe and frequently used procedure.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00A1EF7355B11728DDDA80894D9415B808FF1D3

1930: General Wilhelm Adam succeeded General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein as head of The Truppenamt or 'Troop Office' which was a cover for the German General Staff which had been outlawed by the Versailles Treaty.  The existence of the organization was proof that Germany’s violation of the treaty began in 1919 and not in 1933.

1930: Tonight, approximately eight thousand “Jews gathered in Tel Aviv to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Vladimir Jabotinsky”   and to protest against the White Paper on the British Policy in Palestine.

1931: U.S. premiere of “Platinum Blonde,” a romantic comedy produced Harry Cohn and a script by Robert Riskin and future Tony Award winner Jo Swerling.

1931: “Everybody’s Welcome,” “a musical comedy with lyrics Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain” opened today at the Shubert Theatre in New York City.

1931: “The Main Event,” “a story of prize fighting and the inevitable heart affair wherein Cupid downs two victims’ co-staring Rudolph Schildkraut is one of eight Pathe pictures being shown on Broadway.

1931: “A Halloween Party” with pianist and orchestra leader Irving Aaronson and his band the Commandeers is playing at the Roxy Theatre in New York.

1932: Today  Lieut. Gov. Lehman who is Jewish “opened the last phase of his campaign for the Governorship in the New York City area with a series of speeches in Rockland and Westchester Counties, in which for the first time he leveled his guns at the campaign Colonel William J. Donovan has been making against him.”

1931: Professor Otto Warburg’s explanation of “how respiration takes place in the cell” and proof that “a living cell can breathe only in the presence of the iron carried by a specific enzyme” was published today.  This is the work for which Warburg won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Warburg explained that his conclusion had differed from Dr. Heinrich Wieland’s because he had used living cells and Wieland, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1928, used dead cell material.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F30F11F63B5D1B7A93C3AA178BD95F458385F9

1932: In Chicago, Fanny (née Doppelt) and A.N. Pritzker gave birth to entrepreneur Donald Pritzker, part of the legendary Pritzker clan.

https://www.google.com/search?q=donald+pritzker&source=hp&ei=H8ReY9unK7qgptQPuPaviAQ&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAY17SL3D2Iw9P6k8gN0u8LMmqCgbk6bOL&gs_ssp=eJzj4tLP1TcoMTUuNjMzYPTiT8nPS8xJUSgoyiypyk4tAgB98wli&oq=donald+prit&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIFCC4QgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeMgYIABAWEB46BAguEEM6BwguENQCEEM6BAgAEEM6EQguEIAEELEDEIMBEMcBENEDOgsILhCABBCxAxCDAToLCAAQgAQQsQMQgwE6CgguELEDEIMBEEM6CAgAEIAEELEDOgsILhCABBCxAxDUAjoLCC4QgAQQxwEQrwE6CAgAELEDEIMBOhEILhCABBCxAxCDARDHARCvAToOCAAQgAQQsQMQgwEQyQM6BQguEJECOggILhDUAhCRAjoKCAAQsQMQgwEQQzoHCC4QsQMQQzoICC4QgAQQsQM6BQgAEJECOggIABCABBDJAzoOCC4QgAQQxwEQrwEQ1AJQAFiDGWDAL2gAcAB4AIAB2AGIAbYKkgEFMi44LjGYAQCgAQE&sclient=gws-wiz

1932: In Cleveland, the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds was formed today and elected officers including William J. Shroder of Cincinnati, President; Dr. Solomon Lowenstein, Edward M. Baker, Vice Presidents; Irwin Bettman, Secretary; Eugene Warner of Buffalo, Treasurer and George W. Rabbinoff, Executive Director.

1933: “The new port of Haifa, the first modern port in Palestine” which had been chosen by the Mandatory government “because of its natural harbor and its proximity to important shipping lanes, to rail transport to the rest of Palestine and Egypt, and to the Hejaz railway to Jordan and Syria” was opened today.

1934: U.S. premiere of “Broadway Bill,” a comedy with a script by Mark Hellinger and Robert Riskin.

1935(4th of Cheshvan, 5696): According to the New York Times, Professor Sylvain Levy, the President of the Alliance Isarelite Universelle passed away today. (Other sources show October 30)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9505E6D6153FEE3BBC4A53DFB566838D629EDE

1935: Under orders from the German government, SS Albert Balin was re-named the SS Hansa because Ballin was Jewish.

1936(15th of Cheshvan, 5697): Parashat Vayera

1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Social Significance of a Righteous Minority.”

1936: At the West End Synagogue, Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Call for Sacrifice.”

1936: At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Wendell A. Phillips is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Respect for the Individual in Religion.”

1936: On Halloween, Bess Houdini, the widow of the Harry Houdini and his manager Edward Saint conducted a "Final Houdini Séance" on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood at the conclusion of which she put out the candle beside a photograph of Houdini that was said to have burned for ten years.”

1936:  Birthdate of Eugene Orowitz, better-known as Michael Landon, the actor and director who first gained fame playing the part of Little Joe on the hit western Bonanza.  Pa Cartwright was played by Jewish actor Lorene Greene.  Later he played the father on another television hit, Little House on the Prairie.  Once again Jewish artists helped to create the cultural American myth.  He died of cancer in 1991.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/02/obituaries/michael-landon-54-little-joe-on-bonanza-for-14-years-dies.html?pagewanted=print

1937: Funeral services are scheduled to be held at Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue for Mrs. Hannah Leerburger, the former President of the Sisterhood of Central Synagogue and active member of the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations and “widow of the late Benjamin Leerburger.”

1938: As of this date the Polish government would no long allow Jews of Polish origins “whom it no longer considered to be Polish citizens” to enter the country. (Editor’s note – Jews from Poland living in Germany had been forced to leave Germany by the Nazis.  Now the Poles were saying that these Jews could not enter Poland.  Gives a whole new meaning to the term stateless.

1938:  As of today, between five and ten thousand Jewish refugees are trapped in the Polish border town of Zbaszyn.  The Germans have expelled them, and the Poles will not let them enter Poland hoping that somehow pressure will be brought to bear on Hitler’s government and the Jews will be allowed to return to the Reich.

1938: “You Can’t Take It With You” written by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman and directed by Kaufman continued its Broadway run with it opened at the Ambassador Theatre.

1939:  Psychologist Otto Rank passed away.  Born Otto Rosenfeld in Vienna in 1884, Rank was one of Freud’s closest aides and colleagues.  He later split with Freud and became one his critics.  He extended psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and other works of creativity. Instead of the Freudian Oedipus-Complex he took the trauma of birth to be more profound.  He was living in New York City when he passed away.

1939: In New York, Miriam and Herman Rifkin gave birth to the first of their three children Saul M. Rifkin who gained fame as actor Ron Rifkin.

1939: In what is now central Israel, Kfar Warburg or Warburg Village was founded by members of the "Menachem" organization. It was named after Felix M. Warburg, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the United States and a founder of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

1940: The French authorities in Morocco imposed the Vichy racial laws on its own Jewish population of over 150,000.

1940:  During World War II, the Nazi air attacks against the British Isles known as the Battle of Britain ended.  The good news was that the victory of the RAF (Royal Air Force) meant there would be no invasion of England.  The British would live on to fight another day.  The bad news was that the end of the Battle of Britain meant that Hitler was working to put his plan to invade the Soviet Union into effect.  The invasion of the Soviet Union would lead to the murder of millions of Jews.

1940: “Władysław Szpilman and his family, along with all other Jews living in Warsaw, were forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto.

1941: Eighty-year-old James Joseph Speyer, the German educated banker who was part of “The House of Speyer” which before WW I was the “third largest investment banking firm” and whose philanthropies included founding the Museum of the City of New York and the University Settlement Society of New, “the first settlement house in the United States” passed away today.

http://archives.nypl.org/mss/2845

https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/speyer.pdf

1941(10th of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis murdered 200 Jews in Kleck (Byelorussia) when its council members tried to make contact with non-Jews from outside the ghetto.  Jews had lived in Kleck since 1529.  At the start of the war, there were more than 4000 Jews living in the town.  After putting most of the Jews in a ghetto, the ghetto was set on fire and most of the Jews perished.  The community was not rebuilt after the war.

1941(10th of Cheshvan, 5702): Sixty-two-year-old Herwarth Walden died in Stalin’s Gulag.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20567.html

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

1942: “Now, Voyager,” a psychological melodrama directed by Irving Rapper, produced by Hal B. Wallis, with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States today.

1942: “Three Men on a Horse,” produced by Alexander Yokel was performed for the last time today  on Broadway at the Forrest Theatre.

1942: Local peasants betray six members of the Jewish Fighting Organization near Kraków, Poland, alerting German troops to the Jews' presence.

1942: Three thousand Jews readied for deportation from eastern Poland to the Belzec death camp are stripped naked to prevent resistance.

1943: “Thirty-seven national Jewish organizations are affiliated and cooperating with the National Jewish Welfare Board in welfare activities among Jewish men and women in the armed services, Frank L. Weil, president of the board, announced today.”

1943: The Allied governments are guilty of moral cowardice in failing to meet "the major political weapon of Nazi bestiality," that is, extermination of the Jews, Leon Henderson declared tonight.”

1944: Birthdate of Kinky Friedman, musician and candidate for governor of the state of Texas in 2006.

1944: By the end of October, the Jewish brigade under the command of Brigadier General Ernest F. Benjamin had been shipped to Italy where it joined the British Eighth Army.

1944: The gas chambers at Birkenau were silenced and ceased operating. The Germans began to dismantle them in a futile attempt to hide their evil deeds.

1944: Days before his own death, Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti wrote “Postcard 4” which “describes the horror of seeing ‘his friend, the violinist Miklós Lorsi" executed.”

http://www.ohio.com/blogs/education/education-1.286050/poem-of-the-day-miklos-radnoti-1.286679

 

"Postcard 4"

 

I fell next to him.His body rolled over.

It was tight as a string before it snaps.

Shot in the back of the head- "This is how

you'll end." "Just lie quietly," I said to myself.

Patience flowers into death now.

"Der springt noch auf," I heard above me.

Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear.

Szentkiralyszabadja October 31, 1944

1945: Birthdate of Iraqi born Israeli historian Avi Shalim who is “emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford” and author of several works including The Cold War and the Middle East.

1945: In the wake of the British government’s decision to continue enforcing the White Paper of 1939, “Palmach sank three British patrol boats, 2 in Haifa and one in Jaffa, and were involved in 153 bomb attacks on bridges and culverts of the railway system.”

1945: “Spellbound,” a murder mystery with a strange twist produced by David O. Selznick, written by Ben Hecht and with music by Miklós Rózsa premiered in New York City.

1946(6th of Cheshvan, 5707): Sixty-seven year old Rabbi Solomon Sadowsky who in 1902 came to the United States where served “a congregation in Albany for eight years before coming to Rochester where he led Congregation Beth Israel and Congregation Agudas Achim Nusach Ari, “organized the “Orthodox Orphans Home Rochester, became an active Zionist a and authored several books including Necromancy in Hebrew Literature while raising five sons with his wife Celia passed away today.

 

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/11/01/121626032.pdf

1946: Two bombs exploded at a Jerusalem railway station killing a British constable.  Meir Feinstein, a British army veteran, Daniel Azulai, Massoud Bouton and Moshe Horowitz were captured afterwards and charged with the bombing.

1947(17th of Cheshvan, 5708): Seventy-two-year-old electrical engineer Sandor I Oesterreicher, the Budapest born son of Maurus and Sally Oesterreicher and husband of Anna Newman Oesterricher passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/11/01/104360908.html?pageNumber=15

1947: Following a request by Major Leon B. Poullada, Milton Crook joined the lawyers defending the accused during the Dora-Mittelbau War Crimes Trial.

1948: Herbert Bayard Swope delivered the eulogy today at the funeral services of 77 year old philanthropist Henry Ittelson whose importance in the community could be seen by the honorary pallbearers – Bernard Baruch, Herbert Lehman and David Sarnoff. (JTA)

1948(28th of Tishrei, 5709): Seventy-one year old Emilie (Mimi) Borchardt (Cohen) the daughter of Eduard and Ida Cohen and the wife of Dr. Ludwig Borchardt passed away today at Basel.

1948: The United Nations observers in Jerusalem reported that “Last night the cannons thundered again in most part parts of the city.  There have been 108 instances of Arab firing at Jewish positions in the city during the last week.”

1948:  Despite their lack of modern equipment, Israeli forces liberated the Galilee panhandle and actually took the land all the way to the Litani River in Lebanon at the end of Operation Hiram.

1948: During the Israel War of Independence, a ceasefire was scheduled to go into effect today at eleven o’clock

1948: As October came to an end, “the Egyptian paper, El-Ahram, estimated that as a result of arrests, trials and sequestration of property, the Iraqi treasury collected some 20 million dinars or the equivalent of 80 million U.S. dollars.”

1949: “Regina,” an opera by Marc Blitzstein, based on the play “The Little Foxes” by Lillian Hellman “with choreography by Anna Sokolow” “premiered on Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre under the baton of conductor Maurice Abravanel.

1949: Today Lux Radio Theatre “presented an long adaption the movie version of Robert Nathan’s 1940 novel Portrait of Jennie.”

1950: During the Korean War, Tibor Rubinmanned a .30 caliber machine gun at the south end of the unit's line after three previous gunners became casualties. He continued to man his machine gun until his ammunition was exhausted. His determined stand slowed the pace of the enemy advance in his sector, permitting the remnants of his unit to retreat southward.” (From his Medal of Honor citation)

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

1950(20th of Cheshvan, 5711): Seventy-two-year-old attorney and former “Democratic co-leader of the Twenty-second Assembly District Cecile Scheuer, the “widow of leather goods manufacturer William Scheuer” and the mother of Arthur and Sidney Scheuer passed away today.

1952: The Stratford Shakespearian Festival where Marcel Marceau made “his North American debut” became a legal entity today.

1954: The Algerian Revolution against the French begins.  The French were sure that President of Nasser was a driving force behind the Arab uprising in Algeria.  They would join with Israel and Britain in an ill-fated attempt to unseat him in what became known as the Suez Campaign in 1956.  Much to the dismay of France, President Eisenhower would join with the Soviets to keep Nasser in power.

1954: It was reported today that “Senator Herbert H. Lehman, Democrat of New York, and Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, are among laymen and spiritual leaders who will take part in Sunday morning lectures at the Washington Hebrew Congregation.”

1956: Britain and France begin to bomb Egypt airfields during the Suez Crisis.  According the scenario, the bombing was supposed to be part of European intervention designed to save the canal. It would be a week before the Anglo-French military force would show up in Egypt. This meant that the dirty work of the infantry fell to the Israelis.  In point of fact the Israelis had moved quicker than planned and the Egyptians had folded like a cheap suit leaving the Anglo-French forces with no fig-leaf to cover their mission.

1956: An Egyptian frigate began shelling Haifa at 3:30 in the morning.  A French destroyer, later joined by two Israeli ships, drove off the attacker.  As dawn broke, the ship that bombarded Haifa with more than two hundred rounds was attacked by two Israeli warplanes.  The damage to the vessel forced the captain to run up the white flag.  Later that morning that captured vessel was ignominiously towed into the harbor at Haifa.

1956: The rest of the paratroop brigade joins Rafael Eitan’s regiment and completed its missional

1956:  In what would be part of a pattern for his career, Sharon disobeyed orders and launched an unnecessary attack into the Mitla Pass.  The force was ambushed by the Egyptians and suffered a total loss of 158 killed and wounded.  The Pass was taken, but the price was unnecessarily high. 

1956:  The Egyptians put up a stubborn defense at Abu Agelia.  This would be the start of a two day battle for this key piece of real estate that Israel need to protect and supply its forces on the way to the Suez Canal.  Anybody who thinks that Arabs cannot fight need only go to Abu Agelia. 

1957: “Jamaica, a musical with a book by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Harold Arlen” “opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre.

1957: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and Cornell educated  “cultural theorist” Lauren Gail Berlant the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Chicago” “who is regarded as "one of the most esteemed and influential literary and cultural critics in the United States.:

1958: “Dreaming Lips,” a Germany film written by Paul Czinner and Carl Mayer was released in the United States today.

1958: Today, “the Moscow section of the Soviet Union of Writer petitioned the Government to strip the traitor Pasternak (i.e. the Jewish born son of painter Leonid Pasternak and pianist Rosa Kaufman) of his citizenship and expel him from the country.”

1958: "Two Concepts of Liberty" was the inaugural lecture delivered by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford today” after which it was “published as a 57-page pamphlet by Oxford at the Clarendon Press.”

https://cactus.dixie.edu/green/B_Readings/I_Berlin%20Two%20Concpets%20of%20Liberty.pdf

1960: Henry L. Zucker, the executive director of he Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and “a special consultant to JDC headquarters” Geneva is scheduled to attend the annual conference of JDC country directors which opens today in Geneva.

1961: In Tucson, AZ, businessman and banker Jack Server, the developer of the Aztec Inn, the Plaza International Inn and had of the American Savings and Loan Association and his wife gave birth University of Arizona graduate Robert Gary Sarver, the husband of Penny Sarver with whom he had three sons – Max, Jake and Zach -- and the “co-founder of Southwest Value Partners, a real estate development company, and the former owner of the Phoenix Suns NBA team, Phoenix Mercury WNBA team and the RCD Mallorca La Liga Spanish football team” who courageously opposed Arizona SB-1700.

https://azjewishpost.com/2011/wandering-jews-former-tucsonans-thrive-in-new-locales-robert-sarver/

1963(13th of Cheshvan, 5724): Fifty-nine-year-old “screenwriter and art director” Hans Jacoby who was forced to flee from Germany to the United States when the Nazis came to power and who returned to his native land during the 1950’s passed away today in Zurich.

1963: Birthdate of comedic actor Rob Schneider.

1964: Birthdate of Yoram Marciano, the native of Lod who is Labor MK.

1964:  Barbra Streisand's album "People," began a five week stint at the top of music charts.

1965: Arthur Gelb, the managing editor of the New York Times phoned McCandlish Phillips to tell him that that Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Daniel Burros whose Jewish origins he had exposed had shot himself to which Phillips replied, “What I think we’ve seen here, Arthur is the God of Israel acting in judgment.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1966: Birthdate of entertainer Adam Keefe Horovitz, a.k.a. King Ad-Rock.

1966(17th of Cheshvan,5727): Ninety- three -year-old Simon E. Osserman, the Polish born son of Tabue and Chaim and Aharon Osserman who was  “ a founder in 1917 of the Federation of the Jewish Philanthropies of New York, the President of both the Jewish Society for the Deaf and the Hebrew Free Loan Society and the husband of Dorothy Osserman with whom he had tw0 children Beatrice Glenn and Ethel Coleman passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/11/02/82935893.html?pageNumber=45

1967: NBC broadcast “Stranger on the Run” a made-for-television directed by Don Siegel t0day.

1967(27th of Tishrei, 5728): Seventy-year-old German born American award winning book cover designer George Salter passed away today

http://academics.wellesley.edu/German/GeorgeSalter/Documents/bio.html

1967: In New York, “Barbara "Bobbi" (Bernthal), a publicist, and Stephen Schlesinger” gave birth to Adam Lyons Schlesinger, the composer, musician, and producer who has performed on bass guitar in the indie pop band Ivy and the power pop band Fountains of Wayne while also earning an Academy Award nomination for best original song for the title song to That Thing You Do! “ and tragically proving that it is not only old people with health problems who die from coronavirus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/arts/music/adam-schlesinger-dead-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1968(9th of Cheshvan, 5729): Sixty-eight-year-old producer William Perlberg who teamed with George Seaton to create such movie classics as “The Song of Bernadette” and “Miracle on 34th Street” passed away today.

1968: “In response to two heavy artillery bombings conducted by the Egyptian army on IDF positions along the Suez Canal, which killed 25 soldiers,” Israeli paratroopers conducted “Operation Schock,” a raid on the new Qena bridge 280 miles south of Cairo, the Nag Hammadi bridge 35 miles west of Qena span and the Nag Hammadi transformer station near the bridge” that “provided electricity to the area and was described as a switching station on a high tension line between Cairo and the Aswan Dam.”

1969: Birthdate of “stage magician and escapologist” Dorothy Dietrich who now holds the “yearly tribute” held yearly at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA.

1972: “Escape to the Sun,” a film about people fleeing the anti-Semitism of the USSR directed, produced and written by Menahem Goland and starring Laurence Harvey and Yehuda Barkin was released today in the United States.

1973: ITV broadcast the first episode of The World at War” a documentary about WW II “created by Jeremy Isaacs” and “directed by David Elstein.”

1974(15th of Cheshvan, 5735): Seventy-five-year-old Mordecai Joseph Brill Ezekiel, the Richmond, VA born son of Rachel and Jacob Levy Ezekiel, and to “agrarian economist” who holds of a BA from U. of MD, an MA from the University of MN and a Ph.D from Brookings Institute and who was instrumental in creating the New Deal’s Agriculture Adjustment Administration passed away today.

https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/mordecai-ezekiel/

1974(15th of Cheshvan, 5735): Seventy-four-year-old Charles Solomon “Buddy” Meyer the Washington Senator’s Second Baseman who won the American League batting crown in 1935 passed away today.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/myerbu01.shtml

1975: “One hundred nineteen Soviet Jews signed a protest against the UN Third Committee draft resolution equating Zionism with racism claiming it is ‘essentially anti-Semitic’.”

1975: “Boris Penson, sentenced to 10 years imprisonment at the first Leningrad trial, declared a hunger strike to “mark political prisoner day” in the USSR.”. 

1975: “The Night That Panicked America” a made-for-television movie written by Nicholas Meyer and co-starring Tom Bosley and Vic Morrow was broadcast for the first time on ABC.

1975(26th of Cheshvan, 5736): Seventy-three-year-old Bernard Irvin Greenhut who served as Mayor of Pensacola, FL from 1965 to 1967 passed away today in Pensacola.

1978: The West End production of “Bar Mitzvah Boy,” a musical by Jule Styne, Don Black and Jack Rosenthal opened at Her Majesty’s Theater. 

1978: “Stranger in Our House,” a horror film featuring Fran Drescher premiered on NBC tonight.

1979: Today, the United States Senate confirmed the nomination of H. Lee Sarokin tp service as a judge on United States District Court for the District of New Jersey,

1979: Birthdate of “American D.J, producer, composer and director” Sam Spiegel, known as Sami is the brother of Spike Jonze and a descendant of the Joseph Spiegel and Arthur Spiegel of Spiegel catalogue fame.

1980: The Soviets arrested refusnik “Isaac Moschcowtiz in Kharko.”

1980: The dedication of the Altheimer Laboratory Agricultural Experiment State, named in honor of Ben J. Altheimer, took place at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

1982: A revival performance of Abraham Goldfaden’s “Shulamith” takes place at the Norman Thomas Theater in New York City.

1982: In Monmouth County, NH, Temple Beth Miriam “a ceremony was held for the Religious School in which a Time Capsule designed by Joseph Bergman was filled with items made by the children and deposited at the entrance of the Temple.”

1983: Yale University trained attorney and Democratic politician Richard Ravitch the Brooklyn born son of Sylvia Lerner and Saul Ravitch completed his service as the 4th Chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

1984: The Mapleton Park Hebrew Institute, which houses a synagogue and a yeshiva, at 2022 66th Street, Brooklyn, was virtually destroyed in an arson fire.

1985: Richard Schifter, an American lawyer who was one of the Ritchie Boys, began serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs

1986(28th of Tishrei, 5747): Fifty-eight-year-old University of Chicago educated novelist, publisher and  author of many works on the history of modern Jewish thought Arthur A. Cohen, the son of Isidore Meyer and Bess Junger Cohen and husband of painter Elaine Lustig Cohen passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/01/obituaries/arthur-a-cohen-author-dies-at-58.html

1987: “The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains” directed by Daniel Mann and co-produced by Yoram Ben Ami was released in the United States today

1988(20th of Cheshvan, 5749): Eighty-six-year-old actor and producer John Houseman whose mother was a English Christian and whose father was an Alsatian born Jew passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0922.html

1989: “The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Bette Midler, deciding that a voice is as distinctive and personal as a face and awarding Ms. Midler $400,000” leaving her lawyer Peter Laird, to say he hoped ''national advertisers and advertising agencies will think twice in the future before they disregard the rights of artists.''

http://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/31/1989/this-week-in-history-bette-midler-owns-her-own-voice

1991(23rd of Cheshvan, 5752): Seventy-year-old Joseph Papp, American theatrical producer, passed away.

http://www.filmreference.com/film/63/Joseph-Papp.html

1991: Geula Cohen completed her service as Deputy Minister of Science and Technology.

1992(4th of Cheshvan, 5753): Parashat Noach

1992(4th of Cheshvan, 5753): Eighty-two-year-old Mt. Pleasant, PA native Henry Wineberg  the Duquesne lineman who led his team to victory in the precursor of the Orange Bowl in 1934 and went to play for one season in 1934 with the Pittsburgh Pirates (now known as the Steelers) passed away today.

1993: Galgalatz an Israeli radio station operated by Israel Defense Forces Radio began broadcasting this morning

1993: BBC 1 broadcast the first episode of “Scarlet and Black” featuring Rachel Weisz as “Mathilde de la Mole.”

1995(7th of Cheshvan, 5756): Austrian born violinist, Erika Morini passed away in New York at the age of 91. She had retired in 1976, and passed away soon after the theft of her Stradivari violin.

1995: Doctors Jennifer and Todd Burstain give birth to their second son Jonathan, who like his Biblical namesake, is fine and virtuous young man.

1996(18th of Cheshvan, 5757): Ninety-three-year-old businessman, philanthropist and founder of the UJA, William Rosenwald, passed away today. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/01/us/william-rosenwald-dies-benefactor-to-many-was-93.html

1997: Publication of “POPE JOHN PAUL II TO A SYMPOSIUM ON THE ROOTS OF ANTI-JUDAISM.”

https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1997/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19971031_com-teologica.html

1999: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interesting including Rebellion by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann, Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail by Leslie Epstein and A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s by Roger Kahn.

1999 (21st of Cheshvan, 5760): Seventy-eight-year-old Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, Britain's emeritus chief rabbi,  died unexpectedly early this morning at his London home after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/nov/01/guardianobituaries1

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lord-jakobovits-743117.html

1999: After playing the role of the Phantom for a month, Stanley Bert Eisen bowed out of the Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera.

2000: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak told returning legislators that he had ''left no stone unturned'' in pursuit of peace, but that Yasir Arafat had proved not to be a ''partner for peace'' and that Israelis must unite in a time of crisis”.

2000: Prime Minister Barak “ordered missile attacks on Palestinian leadership offices after an Israeli man's bound and mutilated body was found at the edge of East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli security guard and wounded another in the city itself.”

2001: Ninety-two year old Indian diplomate Braj Kumar Nehru, the husband of Holocaust Survivor Magdolna Friedman

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/shobha-nehru-death.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2002: As the scandal surrounding Enron continues to grow Andrew “Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston, Texas on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.”

2003: As part of the government’s ongoing battle with Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky u Vladimir Putin froze shares of Yukos, his petroleum company, because of tax charges

2003: In Tel Aviv, the first ever Azrieli Circular Tower run-up competition (with 1144 stairs to the top) takes place.  Winners of the contest get to participate in the following year's Empire State Building run-up competition.

2003: “Mazel Tov Y'all! The South as a Melting Pot,” Pam Kingsbury’s interview with Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn was published today.

http://www.southernscribe.com/zine/authors/Hoffman_Roy.htm

2004: The New York Times features a review of The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld. Translated by Aloma Halter

2004: The Founders and Builders and Charter Members of the Jewish Historical Society were honored at the Double Chai (36th) anniversary banquet held at Etz Chaim Synagogue.

2005:  There are numerous signs today that Israel is breaking out of its diplomatic and cultural isolation.  First, the UN has scheduled a vote on the establishment of an international Holocaust Remembrance Day. The proposal, which was submitted by Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, enjoys a solid majority, with at least 100 out of a total of 190 UN members promising to approve it. The motion - which marks the first time Israel has submitted a resolution to the GA - calls for January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be recognized as an international day of Holocaust remembrance. As part of the proposal, all member states will be called upon to develop an educational curriculum meant to instill the memory of the Holocaust in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has expressed his support for the measure. The draft resolution reads, in part: "The Holocaust constituted a systematic and barbarous attempt to annihilate an entire people, in a manner and magnitude that have no parallel in human history. Six million Jews, a full third of the Jewish people, together with countless other minorities, were murdered. And yet, while the Holocaust was a unique tragedy for the Jewish people, its lessons are universal. "The United Nations, an organization founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and committed to `save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' and to uphold and protect the `dignity and worth of human beings,' bears a special responsibility to ensure that the Holocaust and its lessons are never forgotten and that this tragedy will forever serve as a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice." Second, the Jordaninans have agreed to end an anti-Semitic television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Third, Italian notables plan on taking part in public demonstration later this week protesting Iran’s call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

2006: For the first time ever, one of the largest and most prestigious music festivals in New York, the “Cmj Music Marathon” dedicates an entire evening to Israeli artists who sing in English. The festival which lasts through November 5, invited three Israeli artists to participate in this first time event.

2007: The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra performs Gershwin’s American in Paris, Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 6 and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 at the Jerusalem Theater in Jerusalem.

2007: At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem an exhibition entitled “Beliefs and Believers: Ancient Art from the Israel Museum” comes to an end. The exhibit includes “some thirty objects of critical and artistic merit, drawn from the permanent collection of the Israel Museum, shed light on the religion and rituals of the Land of Israel's early inhabitants. Featured among the works in the exhibition is a thirteenth-century BCE statue of the storm god, a prehistoric statue dated at approximately 10,000 years, ritual objects of the faithful, and breathtaking stone sculptures portraying Dionysus and Artemis.”

2007: The seventh Alex Rider novel, Snakehead by Anglo-Jewish author Anthony Horowitz was released today.

2007: Halloween - Should Jews participate in holiday celebrations.  See, Rabbi Michael Broyde’s “Collecting Candy on Halloween: Harmless Pastime or Halachic Prohibition?” for one view on this topic. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/About_Jewish_Holidays/Secular_Holidays/HalloweenBroyde.htm.

2008: At the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, premier of “One Day You’ll Understand.” A meditation on loss, memory, identity and family legacy, directed by acclaimed Israeli director Amos Gitai, “One Day You’ll Understand” takes place in Paris during the Klaus Barbie trial of 1987. As the trial plays out on television, a French businessman finds himself increasingly obsessed with piecing together the truth about his family’s history – especially after discovering an Aryan declaration written by his father during the war. But to his frustration, his mother Rivka has shuttered away her past and refuses to share any memories with him.

2008: The BBC broadcast “What is An American” the fourth and final episode of “The American Future: A History” “a four-part documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama.

2008: Suits were violated today relating to allegations that Deep Marine Technology (DMT) had illegally funneled campaign contributions to Norm Coleman through Hays Companies the employer of his wife Laurie.

2008(2nd of Cheshvan, 5769): Studs Terkel, 96, the preeminent oral historian of 20th-century America who described the major events of his time through the experiences and observations of the ordinary men and women who lived them, died today at his home in Chicago after a fall. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/books/01terkel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2009: In Jerusalem the Camery Theater presents "Amadeus," with Itzhak Hezkiah, Itai Tiran, Chani Firstenberg, Ezra Daggan, Eran Mor, Ori Ravitz, Ohad Shahar/Moti Katz/Amir Kriaf, Eran Sarel, and ten dancers. The play tells the incredible story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told in flashback mode by Antonio Salieri, the mediocre composer who envies Mozart's natural, outstanding talent. The story takes place in 18th century Vienna

2010: Theodore C. Sorensen, who was a close adviser and counselor to John F. Kennedy for 11 years, writing words and giving voice to ideas that shaped the president’s image and legacy, passed away today at the age of 82. The Nebraska native was the daughter Annis Chaikin, a Russian Jew.  However, he was raised as a Unitarian. In reality, he was best known as Kennedy’s Ghost Writer and the real author of “Profiles in Courage.” (As reported by Tim Weiner)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/us/01sorensen.html

2009: Today, novelist and college professor Lauren Grodstein  “wrote a New York Times article, entitled "Take Me to the Election" [20] in which she talks about New Jersey's upcoming gubernatorial election and the challenges of discussing it with her class.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01grodstein.html

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim and Adam and Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund. 

2010: The Ruth Spector Memorial Mah Jongg Tournament is scheduled to take place at the JCC of Northern Virginia

2010: AMC broadcast the first episode of “The Waling Dead” starring Jonathan Edward “Jon” Bernthal as “Shane Walsh.”

2010: The Israeli film, Intimate Grammar, won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prize Film Award at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival today. The film directed by Nir Bergman and starring actress Orly Zibershatz, was based on a novel by Israeli author David Grossman.

2010: Susan Jacoby reviewed Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends by Tom Segev.

2011: Israeli violinist and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador told a masterclass today “don’t be so polite with music, its’ like being love!”

2011(3rd of Cheshvan, 5772): Seventy-seven-year-old “director and producer) Gilbert “Gil” Cates (born Gilbert Katz) passed away today. (As reported by Michael Cieply)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/movies/gilbert-cates-producer-of-oscar-shows-dies-at-77.html

2011: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present a program based on “Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life” by Alicia Oltuski.

2011: An exhibition on the Mamilla Mall in Jerusalem featuring sculptures of stone, bronze and other materials, depicting Biblical scenes and characters, which were created by some of Israel’s top artists is scheduled to come to an end today.

2011: The David Posnack Jewish Day School in south Florida's Broward County, known as “the Rams” is scheduled to begin its Basketball Season today.

2011: IAF targeted the squad responsible for launching the rockets early this morning.

2011:  Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said he’s “very worried” about Israel’s economy in 2012 at a Knesset Finance Committee meeting today. “Our economic ship did not sink like most of the West’s ships did,” he explained, “but black storm clouds are gathering around us, and we have yet to steer the ship to shore safely

2011:  Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the IDF does not pay attention to empty calls for cease fires from various terrorist groups, in an interview today with Army Radio. If they want a cease fire, Islamic Jihad and Hamas will need to actually stop their attacks, he explained.

2012: In “Holocaust survivor tailors an American success story” published today Ned Martel tells the story of Buchenwald inmate Martin Greenfield.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tailoring-a-new-life-in-america/2012/10/31/d0f8b904-e56e-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html

2012: Before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, the Center for Jewish History had been scheduled to present “The Circumcision Debates, Then and Now: Religious Ritual in Historic Perspective.”

2012: Labor Party chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich said today that Israel should take more concrete steps to accommodate non-Orthodox

http://www.timesofisrael.com/shelly-yachimovich-calls-for-recognition-of-non-orthodox-judaism/

2012: Interior Minister Eli Yishai called on the public to boycott Israel’s largest supermarket chain after it announced it would be raising prices today. The Shufersal chain announced earlier today it will bump up the prices of thousands of products by 4 percent on average, the latest in a wave of unpopular price hikes.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/yishai-calls-consumer-boycott-on-supermarket-chain-following-price-hike/

2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won pledges from France’s president to push harder for new sanctions against Iran to keep it from developing nuclear weapons — but no empathy for any possible Israeli military strike against Iran. In a visit to Paris today, Netanyahu praised French pressure on Iran and called for tougher sanctions. “The sanctions are taking a bite out of Iran’s economy … unfortunately they have not stopped the Iranian program,” Netanyahu said

2013: The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra String Quarter is scheduled to perform in Sonoma County, marking the first time the quartet has performed in this California County.

2013: “The Jewish Film Festival of Sonoma County is scheduled to present a special screening of ‘Orchestra of Exiles’ at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol, CA.” “Orchestra of Exiles is the suspenseful chronicle of how one man helped save Europe’s premiere Jewish musicians from obliteration by the Nazis during WWII!”

2013: Halloween – See below for the Jewish Connection to the American Candy Orgy centered on good-natured ghosts and ghouls!

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/About_Holidays/Non Jewish_Holidays/Halloween.shtml

2013: The European Union’s foreign policy chief today condemned Israel’s announcement of expansion plans in East Jerusalem neighborhoods, calling on the government to desist even from construction intended to accommodate “natural growth.” (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

2013: While Israel has remained tight-lipped over an alleged strike in Syria, an Obama administration official confirmed today that Israeli warplanes had in fact attacked an airbase in Latakia yesterday. The target was “missiles and related equipment” the Israeli government assessed might be transferred to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the report said. (As reported by Yifa Yaakov, Lazar Berman and Ilan Ben Zion)

2013: “Former Yale Standout Breslow, Boston Red Sox Win World Series” published today described the role of Craig Breslow in defeating the St. Louis Cardinals.

http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/sports/bsb/2013-14/releases/Former_Yale_Standout_Breslow_and_Red_Sox_Win_World_Series

2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a piano recital by Dana Vakhustinsky as part of their Future Generation Series.

2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at the Arlene Schnitzer Hall in Portland, OR.

2014: Before Shabbat, “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem is scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival in Sydney, Australia.

2014: The site called the Temple Mount by Jews and the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims which had been closed following a wave of Arab violence is scheduled to be re-opened today.

2014: As children are scheduled to participate in Halloween, Rabbi Regina Sandle-Phillips shares her views on whether Jews should participate in “Zombies, Vampires, and Things That Come Back to Life: A Rabbi’s Take on Halloween and Beyond.”

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/149661/jewish-halloween-undead?all=1

http://www.timesofisrael.com/shabbat-on-halloween-horror-of-horrors-or-wonder-of-wonders/

2014: “The National Post reported” today “that the 1944 comic book ‘Jewish War Heroes’ turned up in a box of books donated to the Kelly Library…”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/rare-canadian-jewish-comic-book-turns-up-in-toronto/

2014(7th of Cheshvan, 5775): Eighty-nine-year-old Russian born Australian cancer researcher Sir Henry Harris passed away today.

2014: “In Jerusalem a group of young East Jerusalem Palestinians attempted to storm a police cordon around the Temple Mount but were repelled” while on the same day “Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch was saying he did not believe Palestinian rioting in Jerusalem and the West Bank would develop into an all-out intifada, or popular uprising, as violent incidents

2014: “Police arrested a man who they said may have assisted the alleged shooter of right-wing activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick, Mu’taz Hijazi, Channel 2 reported.”

2015: Jonathan Alpeyrie’s series “Last Jews of Cuba” is scheduled to come to an end today at Anastasia’s New York Gallery.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/10/26/after-the-revolution-many-jews-fled-cuba-these-are-among-the-ones-who-remain/

2015: “Dough” is scheduled to be shown this evening at Jewish Arts & Film Festival of Fairfield County.

2015: “To Life/The Train” and “The Farewell Party” are scheduled to be shown this evening at the Rutgers Jewish Film Fesitval.

2015: “Fauda” “Sabena” and “10% My Child” are scheduled to be shown at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles.

2015: Agudas Achim is scheduled to sponsor “An Intimate Evening with Matisyahu: featuring an evening of “Reggae-Flavored Rap, Jewish Style” at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City

2015: Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh owned by Ahmed Zayat, an American Jew born in Cairo is scheduled to race for the last time in today’s American Breeder’s Cup Race.

2015: Mark Schapiro formally began working as the President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.

2015(18th of Cheshvan, 5776): Shabbat Va-yayra 

2015(18th of Cheshvan, 5776): Eighty-eight-year-old Thomas Blatt, one of the few who survived the uprising at Sobibor in 1943 passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/world/europe/thomas-blatt-who-escaped-death-camp-during-revolt-dies-at-88.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2015(18th of Cheshvan, 5776): Eighty-four-year-old composer Michael Leonard passed away today. (As reported by Robert Simonson)

http://www.playbill.com/article/michael-leonard-broadway-composer-dead-at-84-com-371319

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/arts/music/michael-leonard-whose-songs-from-failed-musicals-endured-dies-at-84.html

2016: Those preparing to greet the costumed kids on Halloween can spend the time reading “For Halloween, 5 Spooky Tales of Haunted Synagogues.

http://forward.com/culture/352825/for-halloween-5-spooky-tales-of-haunted-synagogues/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Weekly%202016-10-28&utm_term=Weekly%20%2B%20Daily

2016: On the secular calendar, 90th anniversary of the death of Houdini.

2016: The New York Times Company announced today that the company’s vice chairman, 67 year old Michael Golden “a member of the fourth generation of the Ochs/Sulzberger family that has controlled The Times since 1896, who has been at the company for 32 years and has been its vice chairman since 1997” will step down from his potion at the end of 2016.

2016: After a three-month break, the Knesset opened its winter session today. (As reported by Marissa Newman)

2016: “Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, in a shooting attack when a Palestinian police officer opened fire on them at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah” today. (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2016: In Washington, “the 1876 synagogue” is scheduled to be cut and lifted three feet from its base in preparation of the move to its new location.

2016: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a “special author even with Leslie Rupley, author of Beyond the Silk Mills, an historically rich Jewish immigrant sage of love, obsession and regret.”

2017: One hundredth anniversary of the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba during Allenby’s campaign to defeat the Ottomans during WW I.

2017(11th of Cheshvan, 5778): Forty-eight-year-old Ariel Erlij, “a Jewish steel mill owner from the city of Rosario in central Argentina” was among eight people killed in a terrorist truck-ramming attack today in New York City.

2017(11th of Cheshvan, 5778): Ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor Solomon David “Sam” Kimelman passed away today.

https://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/passage-details/id-250778/KIMELMAN_SOLOMON

2017: “Following the screening of The Bloom of Yesterday, German-Australian historian and Holocaust researcher Professor Dr. Konrad Kwiet and University of Sydney’s Dr Michael Robertson are scheduled to discuss trauma through the generations and the frailty and malleability of memory.”

2017: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Have I Got A Story For You: Exploring the Jewish Oral Tradition” in which Pennah Schram “will explore the need for folktales, the types of tales in our heritage, the dominant values and themes of these stories and, above all, the imperative to keep telling these tales.”

2017: Halloween – for Jews, who seem to have a penchant for making everything complicated, to celebrate or not to celebrate?

http://forward.com/opinion/352859/why-all-jews-should-hate-halloween-and-so-should-everybody-else/

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/434666/jewish/Do-Jews-Celebrate-Halloween.htm

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/collecting-candy-on-halloween/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-halloween

2018: Following yesterday’s funerals for 66-year old Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 71-year old Daniel Stein and for the brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal which was attended by members of the Pittsburgh Steelers, an additional “visitation” is scheduled to be held this evening “due to the large number of people wanting to see the Rosenthal family.”

2018: Today marks the deadline for submitting entries in “Jewish News and Wizo UK’s completion for budding author” for which “novelist and children’s author Santa Montefiore…is serving as the guest judge.”

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Jewbilation”

2018: As part of the “Legends from the Dawn of Humanity” series, the Bible Lands Museum is scheduled to host “Isis and King Ra” which tells the tale of Egyptian goddess who attempted to save the monarch from a deadly snake bite.

2018: Services were held today at Beth Shalom on Beacon Street in Squirrel Hill for 75 year old Joyce Feinberg of Oakland, one of the eleven people murdered during the Shabbat Slaughter at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

2018: Services were held today at Congregation Rodef Shalom in Shadyside for 69 year old Irving Younger of Mount Washington, one of the eleven people murdered during the Shabbat Slaughter at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

2018: Services were held today at Ralph Schugar Chapel in Shadyside for 87 year old Melvin Wax of Squirrel Hill, one of the eleven people murdered during the Shabbat Slaughter at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

2018(22nd of Cheshvan, 5779): Ninety-six-year-old Wolfgang Zuckerman, the Berlin born son of Aron and Gittel Zuckerman whose name is synonymous with the term “harpsichord” passed away today in Avignon. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/obituaries/wolfgang-zuckermann-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2018: In London, those visiting the Jewish Museum are scheduled to “take part in an alternative Halloween experience in celebration of the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’”

2019: Tonight, the following dinner at the  OJC,“Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, the Dean of LSJS (London School of Jewish Studies) and a renowned Jewish educator” is scheduled to discuss "An Indecent Proposal: Did Abraham treat Sarah well?” 

2019: As part of the Stone Series, a monthly music series cured by John Zorn, Russ and Daughters Café is scheduled to host a return performance by Laurie Anderson.

2019: In Forest City, CA, the Peninsula JCC is scheduled to host “Mindful Meditation” during which “Rabbi Lavey Derby leads a session with four individuals in mind: ourselves, someone who loves us, a neutral person and someone we’re having difficulties with.”

2019: In London, General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of Staff of the British Army is scheduled to participate in the Annual ZF Balfour Lecture, “celebrating 102 years since the signing of the Balfour Declaration.

 2019: As kids are scheduled to head out trick or treating, the perennial debate about Jews and Halloween goes on for another year.

http://forward.com/opinion/352859/why-all-jews-should-hate-halloween-and-so-should-everybody-else/

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/434666/jewish/Do-Jews-Celebrate-Halloween.htm

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/collecting-candy-on-halloween/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-halloween

2020(13th of Cheshvan, 5781): Parashat  Lech-Lecha;

2020: In Pepper Pike, OH, B'nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host “Starbucks, Bread and Torah Online.’

2020: In Columbus, OH, Cantor Jack Chomsky is scheduled to lead his final Shabbat service “before he transitions to being the Cantor Emeritus of Tifereth Israel.”

2020: “Since the beginning of the pandemic, 2,511 Israelis have died due to complications of COVID-19”

2020: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online “Clergy Havdalah, Cocktails and Mocktails.

2021: The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing reports suggesting the coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna can cause heart problems in some adolescents, the company said” today at a time when “in studies from Israel and the United States, the incidence of heart problems among people who had received Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine is highest in males aged 16 to 29 years.”

2021: Today marks the closing of the exhibit “Kindertransport-Rescuing Children on the Brink of War” at the American Swedish Institute in Minnesota.

https://www.lbi.org/news/kindertransport-exhibit-travels-to-minneapolis/

2021: “What Happens When Everyone Is Writing the Same Book You Are?” recounts tales of a British expedition that in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire set out for Jerusalem to find the ark of the covenant, only to fail, spectacularly, in 1911, in an eruption of political turmoil and religious animosity” and the attempts of various others to capture the tale on paper. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/books/review/montagu-parker-ark-of-the-covenant-jerusalem.html?searchResultPosition=1

2022: The Streicker Center is scheduled in-person the first lecture by Martin Kaufman on “Maimonides’ Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Scripture.”

2022:The Consulates General of Germany and Israel in New York are scheduled to present  a Halloween Special: Nosferatu (the holy grail of all silent films) followed by a life performance by Tel Aviv DJ and musician Ellyott.

2022: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to present YIVO archivist Hallel Yadin as he provides an overview of how to access YIVO’s digitized holdings.

2022: The Asian Jewish Business Network is scheduled to provide a forum for figures from a wide range of corporate businesses to come together at the Queen Elizabeth II Center in Westminster, UK.

2022: As kids (and now a growing number of adults) are scheduled to head out trick or treating, the ridiculous  perennial debate about Jews and Halloween goes on for another year since in they should be able to participate in a non-religious day devoted to just plain fun. (Editor’s note: Prior to COVID, Americans spent more money on Halloween than they did on any other holiday, except for one, and that money was not all for children)

http://forward.com/opinion/352859/why-all-jews-should-hate-halloween-and-so-should-everybody-else/

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/434666/jewish/Do-Jews-Celebrate-Halloween.htm

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/collecting-candy-on-halloween/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-halloween

2023: As part of the Women on the Move program, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host a presentation by novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, “a chronicler of the modern age.”

2023: As part of the Jewish Values and Strategy in Wartime series, Tikvah online Academy is scheduled to host a lecture by Vance Serchuk on “The Yom Kippur War in 1973: Lessons for Today.”

2023: The Skirball Academy is scheduled to host the third lecture by Martin Kaufman on “How to Read the Guide for the Perplexed.”

2023: YESOD is scheduled to host a lecture on Postbiblical History: The Shape of Modern Judaism given by  Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Dean, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, and Vice President, American Jewish University

2023: As Americans are scheduled to celebrate Halloween, there are those who ask the question, “should Jews observe this Autumnal event.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-halloween

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/collecting-candy-on-halloween/

https://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2020/10/26/jews-celebrate-halloween/

2023: As October 31 begins in Israel,  Pvt. Ori Megidish has been reunited with her family after being freed in IDF mission, rocket barrages continue to be fired into central Israel from Gaza,  The White House has “outlined a slew of actions intended to address what it called an “alarming” rise in reported antisemitic incidents at schools and on college campuses” while over 200 hostages begin their 25th day 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: In Metairie, LA JNOLA is scheduled to host  a women's centered discussion centered around a fusion of the physical and spiritual realms of Judaism led by Mushka Cohen from Chabad New Orleans.

2024: The Israel Defense and Security Forum is scheduled to host its third 30-minute briefing on the “War in Israel, hosted by Moshe Davis.”

2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to host a lecture by Trudy Gold on “Halloween, All Saints’ Day and the Jews of England.”

2024: As October 31st begins in Israel, an  unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that has included Hamas supporters calling for Zionist passengers on a New York subway to raise their hands, sweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostages begin day 390 in captivity while Israelis brace for more rocket attacks by Hezbollah, Iran and terrorists based in Iraq  (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: As kids are scheduled to head out trick or treating, the perennial debate about Jews and Halloween goes on for another year. (Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, my sister of blessed memory, my younger brother and I all went trick or treating.)

http://forward.com/opinion/352859/why-all-jews-should-hate-halloween-and-so-should-everybody-else/

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/434666/jewish/Do-Jews-Celebrate-Halloween.htm

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/collecting-candy-on-halloween/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-halloween

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

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