69: Vitellius defeated
Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seized the throne and became the
third Emperor in what is known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Vitellius’
rise to power made the Roman populace very uneasy because it seemed as if the
Empire was tottering on the brink of a destructive Civil War. Following the death of Nero in 68, four men
served as Emperor during 69 including. First came Galba, who was followed by
Galba who was followed by Vitellius who was followed by Vespasian, the general
who had been sent to Judea to put an end to the Jewish Revolt. Vespasian was
the first of the Flavian Emperors. When
Vespasian replaced Vitellius it was with the understanding that he and his son
Titus would bring stability to the Empire.
Jerusalem was destroyed as a demonstration of the Flavian’s ability to
end civil strife in the Empire and bring a return to the Pax Rommana. [Editor’s Note: According to this, the
leaders who had seized control in Jerusalem completely failed to understand the
new reality of Roman power, even as they had confused their victory of Roman
Cohorts as being the same as victory over a Roman Legion. If they had spent
more time considering the realities of the situation and less time killing
their Jewish “enemies” they might have been able to negotiate some kind of
settlement that would have avoided the destruction of the Temple and the
massive deportation of the Jewish population that marked the beginning of the
Diaspora.]
70: The Siege of
Jerusalem begins in earnest as Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, surrounds the
Jewish capital, with four Roman legions.
73(19th of
Nissan, 3833): According to the Jewish
historian Josephus, 967 Jewish zealots committed mass suicide within the
fortress of Masada on this last night before the walls were breached by the
attacking Roman Tenth Legion. (Two women and five children survived by hiding
in a cistern and were later released unharmed by the
Romans. Technically it was not a mass suicide. According to
the story a group of the leaders killed most the population who had agreed to
die this way rather than become prisoners of the Romans. The leaders
committed suicide. This way of dealing with the Romans contrast with
Yochanan Ben Zakai who negotiated with the Romans. He ended up saving
many scholars and establishing the Academy at Yavneh. While the Legend of
Masada has taken on a life of its own, the cold reality is that if the
rest of the Jewish population had followed their example, the Jews of Israel
would have disappeared.
193: Septimius Severus began his reign as Roman Emperor. In 194,
Severus defeated Pescennnius Niger at the Battle of Issus. Niger had competed with Severus for throne
and made his headquarters in Antioch where “he displayed especial harshness to
the Jews.” When the Jews came to
complain about their heavy tax burned Niger replied “You asked me to relieve
your lands of their taxes; would that I were able to tax the very air that you
breathe!” Severus spent a short period in Palestine (200) following his semi-successful
war with the Parthia. He promulgated laws forbidding conversion to either
Christianity or Judaism. He allowed Jews to serve in public positions, but they
were not to receive any pay for their work.
The people continued to suffer from attacks at the hands of marauding
bands that had been active since the war with Niger. Eleazar, the son of Simon
ben Jochai and Ishmael, the son of Jose the Prudent were the leading sages of
this time.
1118: As the Crusaders
continue their hold over the “Holy Land” Baldwin II is crowned King of
Jerusalem, a title that should not be confused with that held by those who
ruled from the days of Saul until 586 BCE.
1205: Bulgarians under Tsar Kaloyan of Bulgaria soundly defeated
the Crusaders under Baldwin I at the Battle of Adrianople. The victory cemented the rule of Kaloyan and
his family. This would prove to be
beneficial for Jews since Kaloyan’s nephew opened the kingdom to Jewish traders
from Italy. This also would have proved
beneficial to Jewish community already living in Bulgaria which probably dated
back to the second century of the common era
1341: In the Piedmont
Region, Italian-Angevine troops sack the city of Saluzzo. Although Jews have been living in the
Piedmont since the middle ages, the first synagogue was not built until the 16th
century. A synagogue was built in
Saluzzo in the early 18th century.
For more see http://synagogues360.net/synagogues.php?ident=italy_014
1484: The Cortes at
Tarazona approved the formation of Inquisitional Tribunals at Valencia and
Saragossa. The Inquisitors wasted no time in beginning their investigations for
signs of Jewishness in the communities of the New Christians.
1578: Birthdate of
Phillip III, who supported the policy of making his realm Jew free and gave a
free hand to the murderous Inquisition
1660: Seven Jews were
burned at the stake in Seville.
1712(7th of Nisan):
Rabbi Elijah Shapira of Prague, author of Eilyahu Rabba, passed away.
1713(18th of
Nisan, 5473): Fourth day of Pesach
1713(18th of
Nisan, 5473): Frumet Guggenhiem, the “daughter of Samuel Wolf Oppenheimer and
Leah Wohl Oppenheimer, the wife of Joseph Juda Loeb Guggenheim and the mother
of Simon Wolf Guggenheim; Miriam Sara Sinzheim; Abraham Ben Joseph Guggenheim;
Moses Joseph Guggenheim; Hajle Guggenheim; and Marum Guggenheim passed away
today in Frankfurt am Main.
1726: According to
today’s edition of the New York Gazette, Moses Levy. The father of London born
Benjamin and Bilhah and New York born Rachel Levy, wished to dispose of a house in Rye, NY,
“with about sixty or seventy acres of upland and about five acres of a meadow,
together with the part of a mansion…”
1753(10th of
Nisan, 5513): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol was observed two days before
the House of Lord passed The Jewish Naturalization Act which permitted “Jewish immigrants to England
to become naturalized citizens "without receiving the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper".
1754(18th of Nisan, 5513): In one of those calendar coincidences, Easter
is observed on the same day that last day of Pesach is observed
1755: In today’s
journal entry “John Wesley refers to the excellent relations” the Jews in
Liverpool “enjoyed with their Christian neighbors.”
1759: Composer George
Frederic Handel passed away. Among Handel’s Oratorios that used Jewish
characters and/or themes were “Esther,” Saul,” “Joseph and His Brethren,”
“Athalia,” “Israel In Egypt,” “Samson,” “Joshua,” “Judas Maccabaeus,” “Jephtha”
and “Deborah.” For more about Handel and the Jewish people see “George Frederic
Handel and the Jews: Fact, Fiction and Tolerances of Scholarship by David
Hunter.
1762(21st of
Nian, 5522): Seventh Day of Pesach observed as the people living along the Bay
of Bengal recover from last week’s earthquake and tsunami that claimed at least
200 lives.
1763(1st of
Iyar, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1764(12th of
Nisan, 5524): Parashat Achrei Mot; Shabbat HaGadol is observed two days after
Massachusetts observed “a Day of Feasting and Prayer” during a smallpox
outbreak.
1767(15 of Nisan,
5527): First Day of Pesach observed on the same day that founding father
Benjami Franklin wrote from London to Joseph Galloway concerning actions taken
by the House including a measure to allow for circuit judges in Pennsylvania
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-14-02-0066
1771(30th of
Nisan, 5531): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1773(21st of
Nisan, 5533): Seventh Day of Pesach
1775(14th of
Nisan, 5535): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach
1775: Massachusetts
Governor Gage is secretly ordered by the British to enforce the Coercive Acts
and suppress "open rebellion" among colonists by using all necessary
force. From this simple statement flowed all of the events that would lead to
the battles of Lexington & Concord and the American Revolution. During the
American Revolution the Jewish population was so small that it could only
support five synagogues which were located in, Newport, New York, Philadelphia,
Charleston, and Savannah. All five followed the Sephardic Minchag. Most of the
Jews supported the Revolutionaries.
1778(17th of
Nisan, 5538): Third Day of Pesach observed on the same day that the Continental
Congress adopted a resolution empowering “the commissary general of purchases
have full power to appoint and remove every officer in his department. …” and
that General George issue a series of “general orders” from his headquarters at
Valley Forge pertaining to camp sanitation” the lack of which often claimed
more lives than any one battle.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-14-02-0469
1783: Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise” which the church refused to be allowed to be
produced during the author’s lifetime was performed for the first time today in
Berlin. “Nathan the Wise” is set in Jerusalem
during the Third Crusade and tells the story of Nathan, a character modeled
after the German Jewish reformer Moses Mendelsohn, who tries to create harmony
among the three major monotheism.
http://www.theatredatabase.com/18th_century/nathan_the_wise.html
1789(18th of
Nisan, 5549): Fourth Day of Pesach observed on the same day that Charles
Thomson arrived at Mt. Vernon and told George Washing that he had been
unanimously elected President of the United States.
1792(22nd of
Nisan, 5552): Eight Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach observed on the same
day that President George Washington signed into law “The Appointment Act of
1792” which “set the number of members of the United States House of
Representatives at 105, effective with the 3rd Congress on March 4, 1793, and
established that a number of representatives would be allotted to each state
based on the population enumeration provided by the 1790 Census.”
1794: In Kuhlsheim,
Germany, Nanna Schmay and Mannases Held gave birth to Jakob Held, the husband
Chanet Hahn with whom he had nine children.
1797(14th of
Nisan, 5557): Fourth Day of Pesach
1797: Today, as Jews
munch on their Matzah, newly sworn-in President John Adams wrote to his wife
asking, her among other things, about the possibility of her joining him in our
nation’ capitol.
1799: Napoleon called for establishing Jerusalem
for the Jews.
1799: An Ottoman Army
of 35,000 infantry and horseman continues to advance towards Acre where
Napoleon is besieging the city as part of his Palestine campaign.
1802: Birthdate of
Jacob Liebermann, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Saverne who converted to
Catholicism and gained fame as Francis Mary Paul Libermann “The Second Founder
of the Holy Ghost Fathers.”
1803(22nd of
Nisan, 5563): Eighth Day of Pesach
1803(22nd of
Nisan, 5563): Ninety-two-year-old Jacob Wolf Guggenheim, the Alsace, France,
born son of Joseph Juda Loeb Guggenheim and Frumet Guggenheim and his
wife Dreitel Treinel Guggenheim (Weyl) the “husband of Maden Guggenheim
and Sara Guggenheim and the father of Dreitel Bernheim; Rachel Gougenheim;
Hannah Hannah Weyl; Fromet Freitel Levy; Samuel Sanvil Jacob Wolff Guggenheim;
Abraham Jacob Gougenheim; Baruch Gougenheim; Abraham Gugenheim; Myriam
Guggenheim and Zeret Dreyfus passed away today in Haguenau, France.
1804: Fanni Fradele
Hajim and Immanuel Einstein gave birth to Therese Einstein, the wife of Jakob
Hirsh Lindauer and the mother of Babette, Manasse, Rebekka, David and Joseph
Lindauer.
1804: In Saverne,
France, the town’s Chief Rabbi and his wife gave birth to Jacob Libermann who converted to Catholicism and as
Marie-Paul Liebrmann founded the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
1805(15th of
Nisan, 5565): Pesach observed as Lewis and Clark continue on their journey to
the Pacific Ocean.
1807: In Philadelphia,
Rachel Gratz and Solomon Moses gave birth to Isaac Moses who died at Mobile,
AL, eleven days before his fortieth birthday.
1808(17th of
Nisan, 5568): Third Day of Pesach
1808: In London, Moses
de Mattos Mocatta, the London born son of Abraham Lumbroso de Mattos and Esther
Isaac Lumbroso de Mattos Mocatta and his wife Abigail Mocatta gave birth to
Samuel Mocatta part of a distinguished Anglo-Sephardi clan whose brother David
became a leading architect who was the first Jew in England to design a
synagogue.
1808: Birthdate of
Laupheim, Germany native Alexander Hofheimer, the husband of Henriette
Wallersteiner and the mother of Juliana and Hermann Hofheimer
1809: Three Royal Dukes visit the Great Synagogue.
1810(10th of Nisan, 5570): Shabbat
HaGadol
1811(20th of Nisan, 5571): Sixth Day
of Pesach observed on the same day 3,000 Anglo-Allied soldiers led by Generals
Sir Alexander Campbell, 1st Baronet and Sir William Erskine, 2nd Baronet began
the blockade of French forces at Almeida during the Peninsular War which was a
part of the combat of the wars that would not end until Napoleon was defeated
at Waterloo
1813(14th of Nisan, 5573): Ta’anit
Bechorot; Erev Pesach observed as American forces prepare to attack York during
the War of 1812 which was important because the British would burn Washington
in 1814 because the Americans had sacked York when they finally seized the
Canadian town.
1814: Birthdate of Bohemian native Rabbi
Bernard “Yissachar Dov” Illowy who came to the United States after the failed
Revolutions of 1848 where he served several congregations including United
Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis, Shaare Zedek in New York, Congregation Rodeph
Shalom in Philadelphia and Congregation Kneset Shalom in Baltimore
1814: In Liverpool, Hannah Woolf and Myer
Tobias gave birth to Augusta Tobias.
1815: Birthdate of Chaim Zebi Lerner, the
native of Dubno whose “reputation among Hebrew grammarians was founded on his More
ha-Lashon” first published in 1859, thirty years before he passed away in
1889.
1817: Birthdate of Herschberg, Germany native
Baruch Weis.
1818: In London, “Abraham Montefiore (brother
of Sir Moses Montefiore) and his second wife, Henriette (Jette) Rothschild,
(youngest daughter of Mayer Amschel Rothschild)” gave birth to author and
supporter of Jewish education Charlotte [Simcha/Schönche] Montefiore, the
creator of "The Cheap Jewish Library, dedicated to the Working
Classes" a periodical which appeared between 1841 and 1849, the of wife of
her widowed uncle Horatio Joseph Montefiore (1798-1867), by whom she had two
children, Helen Sarah (1848-1933) and Charles Abraham (1854-1945) who died the
day after Charles's birth at Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park and who was buried
at the Jewish cemetery in Bancroft Road
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/nashim.30.1.03
1819(19th of Nisan, 5579): Fifth Day
of Pesach
1819: Birthdate of Fredericia, Denmark native
Frederikke Cohn, the daughter of Abraham Cohn, who passed away two days before
her seventy-sixth birthday.
1824(16th of Nisan, 5584): Second
Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer
1824: In Bavaria, Fanny and David Isaac
Seligman gave birth to James (Jacob) Seligman the husband of Rosa Seligman and
father of Dewitt James Seligman; Samuel Jefferson Seligman; Washington
Seligman; Eugene Seligman; Jefferson Seligman; Frances (Fanny) Nathan; Angeline
Gross and Fleurette Guggenheim who with his brother Joseph found the investment
bank of J&W Seligman
1827(17th of Nisan, 5587): Shabbat
shel Pesach
1828(30th of Nisan, 5588): Rosh
Chodesh Iyar
1830(21st of Nisan, 5590): Seventh
Day of Pesach
1830: In Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Henry and
Sophia Schatz Ullman gave birth to Peoria, Il, merchant Aaron Ullman, the
husband of Mina Rothschild Ullman and the father of Clarence Aaron Ullman.
1831: In Finsbury, Esther and Joseph Moses Levy
gave birth to Angelina Levy, the wife of Frankfurt am Main native Edward Ludwig
Goetz and mother of Lucy, Jessie, Alice, Evelyn, Ludovic and Charles Goetz.
1831: Lewis Solomons married Ann Levy today at
the Hambro Synagogue.
1832(14th of Nisan, 5592): Shabbat
HaGadol; erev Pesah observed on the same day that the terms of the Treaty of
Cusetta which requires the Creeks to “relinquish all claims to land east o the
Mississippi River including the territory of Alabama” were published.
https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/631651
1835(15th of Nisan, 5595): Pesach
observed after Robert Peel left office of Prime Minster of the UK and four days
before Lord Melbourne assumed the office,
1836: On Kent Road, Cornwall, Amelia Jacobs and
Daniel Levy gave birth to Ernest Braham Levy, the husband of future New Yorker
Isabella Levy.
1836: At Zemum, Serbia Simon Loeb Herzl and
Rivka Bliz Herzl gave birth to Jacob Herzl, the husband of Jeanette Nanette
Diamant Herzl and the father of Pauline and Theodore Herzl.
1837(9th of Nisan, 5597): Benjamin Zeeb Wolf
ben Isaac ha-Kohen Rapoport passed away today at Papa, Hungary. Born at
Nikolsburg, Morvia in 1754, his views set him at odds with Mordecai Benet, the
chief rabbi of Moravia and Moses Schreiber, rabbi of Presburg. Their enmity was such that they denounced him
to the civil authorities. He published
several works including Simlat Binyamin u-Bigde Kehunnah a “novellæ on
that part of the Shulḥan 'Aruk (Yoreh De'ah) which deals with vows and oaths.”
1838(19th of Nisan, 5598): Shabbat
shel Pesach
1839(30th of Nisan, 5599): Rosh
Chodesh Iyar
1839: Louis Haghe and David Roberts create a
lithograph of the “Gate of Damacus” in Jerusalem.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g03426/
1843(14th of Nisan, 5603): Ta’anit
Bechorot; Erev Pesach
1843: Birthdate of Chalons-en-Champagne native
Sophie Neymarck the wife of Elie Camille Espir and the mother of Daniel and
Ferdinand Espir.
1844: Elisa-Rachel Felix, the Swiss born Jewish - French actress known as “Rachel” appeared
in the title rôle of "Adrienne Lecouvreur," a play written especially
for her, and one in which she had immense success.
1845: In Amsterdam, Salomon Abraham van Raalte
and Hester Goudsmit gave birth to Emanuel van Raalter, theusband of Gertrude
Benedictus and father of Alexander van Raalte who passed away at the age of 72
in London.
1846(18th
of Nisan,5606): Fourth day of Pesach observed on the same day that the families
of brothers George and Jacob Donner and local businessman James Reed, who would
go down in history as the infamous “Donner Party, left Springfield today/
1847: Founding of B’nai Israel, a New
York City congregation whose membership was “composed exclusively of natives of
Holland.”
1848: In Hungary, Rose and Joseph
Desberg gave birth to Deborah Klein, the wife of Julis Klein and mother of Emma
Klein; Samuel L. Klein; Edward Klein; Joseph Desberg Klein; Josephine (Pepi)
Borgos; and Ethel Apple
1849(22nd of Nisan, 5609):
Eight Day of Pesach; Shabbat Shel Pesach
1849: Hungary declares itself
independent of Austria with Louis Kossuth as its leader. Kossuth was
sympathetic to Jewish hopes for emancipation and the right to become full-fledged citizens of the newly
independent Hungry. Based on Kossuth’s
commitment to these values Jews contributed 80,000 florins to the cause. Thirty thousand
Jews enlisted in Kossuth’s army, making them 11% of the force. Unfortunately, the Magyar leadership and the
rural peasants did not share Kossuth’s values. Anti-Semitic outbreaks in the countryside combined with the efforts of these
political leaders blocked attempts to grant the Jews full rights of
citizenship. All this would become a
moot point, since Kossuth and the independent Hungarian movement would be
defeated by the imperial forces and Kossuth would be forced to flee for his
life. Ironically, the returning Imperial
government saved their harshest punishment for the Jews.
1850: In Germany Mary Pretzfedler and
Moses Aufesser gave birth to Ferdinand Aufesser, a resident of the First Ward
in Albany, NY and the husband of Amalia Barnet.
https://gw.geneanet.org/pfdm?lang=en&n=aufsesser&oc=0&p=ferdinand
1852: In New Orleans,
Joseph Hart Marks, the New York born Alexander and Esther Hetty Marks and his
wife Cecilia Marks gave birth to Henrietta Jaffe, the husband of Ludwig Salomon
Jaffe and the mother of Paul, Vera, Georg Jaffe.
1852: Birthdate of
Amsterdam native and painter Meijer Isaac de Haan also known by his French name
Meyer de Haan whose works included a painting of the excommunication of
Portuguese philosopher Uriel a Costa and his pupils included Dutch painter Baruch
Lopes Leão de Laguna who along with his wife was murdered at Auschwitz.
1854(16th of
Nisan, 5614): Second Day of Pesach
1854: As a sign of
appreciation for Judah Touro’s bequest of three thousand dollars, today,
Congregation Beth El voted to place marble slabs in the synagogue and have them
inscribed "with suitable epitaphs both in Hebrew and English, descriptive
of the life of the late Judah Touro." These white slabs are today located
in the rear of the Temple sanctuary.”
1855(26th of
Nisan, 5615): Parashat Shmini
1856: In Wattenheim,
Germany Sarah Hartman and Jacob Kastor gave birth to Adolph Kastor, the husband
of Minnie Denzer and manufacturer of cutlery who in 1870 came to the United
States where he became President of the Camillus Cutlery Company in Camillus,
NY, a senior member of Adolph Kaster and Brothers, chairman of the hardware
section of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and a member of
Temple Emanu-El in New York.
1857(20th of
Nisan, 5617): Sixth Day of Pesach
1858(30th of
Nisan, 5618) Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1858: Herman Wulfson
married Leah Hart today.
1859: In Galatz, Rumania, Jews were accused of
taking blood from a Christian child (for the baking of matzos) though not of
killing him. Fifteen "culprits" were arrested. The next day a
mob broke into the synagogue, killing some of the worshippers, destroying some
fifty scrolls and demolishing the synagogue. The fifteen were soon released
with no convictions, yet the government refused to allow the synagogue to be
rebuilt for nearly twenty years.
1859: In Lubova,
Poland, Hannah and Moses Meyer Denebeim gave birth to future Kansas City
resident Louis Denebeim the husband of Jennie Denebeim
1860(22nd of
Nisan, 5620): Eighth Day of Pesach; with war clouds looming over the horizons,
Yizkor is recited for the last time in a United States where the states are
united.
1861: Birthdate of
Belarusian native Israel Belkind a founder of the Bilu and a leader of the Fist
Aliyah
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-belkind
1861: Today, the Isabel,
a ship belonging to Moses Cohen Mordecai, the owner of the Mordecai Steamship
Line, which was name for his wife was used to evacuate Major Robert Anderson
from Fort Sumter following the bombardment of that installation which marked
the start of the Civil War.
1862 (14th of Nisan, 5622): Fast of the First Born.
1862: With over 1500
cows having been sold today the Jewish cattle dealers were active in the market
at New York today since they would be absent tomorrow due to the fact tomorrow
is “their Passover.”
1862: Private Louis
Leon enlisted in Company B of the 53rd North Carolina (CSA). He was
one of five Jews to serve in this infantry company that had been mustered at
Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, in the western part of the state of North
Carolina.
1862(14th of Nisan,
5622): In the evening, during the Civil War, Pesach begins with 21 Union
soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment celebrating with a
Seder in Fayette, West Virginia.
1862: Birthdate of Dr.
Martin Grove Brumbaugh who as Governor of Pennsylvania in 1916 issued a
proclamation calling upon the citizens of that state “to set aside January 27
as a day on which to make donations for the relief of the Jewish people in
various countries at war” which President Wilson had named as “Relief Day.”
1862: In Pittsburgh,
PA, Henry and Babette (Frank) Silverman gave birth to Isaac H. Silverman the
husband of Ida Silverman who had a
thirty-year partnership with William Stern “in the electric light and street
railway business while also serving as the president of various railroads
including the Philadelphia Railways Company and the Atlantic City and Shore
R.R. Company and maintaining a membership at Keneseth Israel.
1863: In Illigen,
Germany, Gottlieb and Pauline Victor Barth gave birth to highly regarded
Oklahoma City businessman Solomon Barth, the husband of Lena Myer amd the
business partner of her brother Joseph Meyer
1864:
Fifty-seven-year-old Ridley Haim Herschell, the “Anglo-Polish minister who
converted from Judaism to evangelical Christianity and was a founder of the
British Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Jews and of the
Evangelical Alliance.
1865(18th of
Nisan, 5625): Fourth Day of Pesach; erev Shabbat
1865: Abraham Lincoln
was shot while attending at play at Ford Theatre. In the late 1850’s, Lincoln expressed his disgust with the “Known Nothing
Party” and its platform of bigotry and ant-Semitism. Lincoln enjoyed electoral support among
Jews. In 1860, Louis Dembitz of Kentucky
was a staunch supporter of Lincoln at the Republican Convention in 1860. (Dembitz was an ancestor of Supreme Court
Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis.) Sigmund Kaufman a German-Jewish newspaper
publisher in New York worked furiously and successfully to deliver the German
immigrant vote to Lincoln. The
philanthropist Moses Dropsie, founder of Dropsie College was another of
Lincoln’s famous Jewish supporters.
Lincoln appointed a Jew to serve as U.S. Counsel in Zurich, the first
time a Jew had been appointed to such a high diplomatic post. But Lincoln’s most famous moment in dealing
with the Jews came when he countermanded Grant’s infamous Order #11. Lincoln was the first president to approve of
the appointment of Jewish Chaplains in the U.S. Army. April the 14th
was the fourth day of Pesach. But
Lincoln was killed on Friday night, so a case can be made that he was actually
killed on the fifth day of the Jewish holiday of freedom that provided so much
of the liberation motif for the work of the Great Emancipator.
1864: Seven days after
his 57th birthday Ridley Haim Herschell, the Polish born Jew who
converted and founded the British Society Propagating the Gospel Among the Jews
in 1842 passed away today.
1867: In San Francisco,
Leopold Seligmann, the son of David Isaac Seligmann and Fanny Seligmann and his
wife Julia Levi gave birth to Edgar Seligman
1867: Dr. Simon
Abrahams, a well-known New York physician passed away today at the age 57.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9502E1DE113BE63BBC4B53DFB566838B669FDE
1868(22nd of
Nisan, 5628): Eighth Day of Pesach observed for the last time during the
Presidency of Andrew Johnson.
1870: In London, Nathan Adler and Lionel Cahn
established the United Synagogue. It united the Ashkenazi synagogues of London
for charities and civic affairs.
1870: In New York
Banker Isaias Wolf Hellman, one of the founders of the University of Southern
California married Esther Newgass whose sister, Babette, was married to Mayer
Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers and with whom he had three
children - Isaias William Hellman, Jr., Clara, and Florence1872: Birthdate of
Vilna native David Podolsky, the pioneer Zionist leader
David Podolsky who came to the United States in 1896 where he combined work as
a realtor with support of such organization of Yeshiva College and HIAS while
raising three daughters and a son with his wife Fannie https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/12/23/107129972.pdf
1872: In Breidenbach,
Germany, Levi Sonneborn and Amalie Bacharach gave birth to Siegmund B.
Sonneburn a graduate of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the husband
of Camille K. Goldschmid who was the “managing member of Henry Sonneborn and
Company which employed three thousand workers, about 60 per cent of whom were
Jewish” and who was active in the Baltimore Jewish community as can be seen by
his service as treasurer of the Baltimore Branch of JTS.
1873(17th of
Nisan, 5633): Third Day of Pesach
1873: “The Wandering
Jew” by Leopold Davis Lewis, who was the author of “The Bells”, opened at the
Adelphi Theatre.
1873: Two days after
she had passed away at the age of 7 months and 12 days, Amy Martha Raphael, the
daughter of Charles Raphael and Beatrice Rosalie was buried today at the “Balls
Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nomberg-hersh-david
https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1118
1877(1st of Iyar, 5637): Rosh Chodesh Iyar; 16th
day of the Omer
1878: In Kishinev, “Eva
Geller and Joseph Fishbein gave birth to Rhode Island resident Louis Fishbein,
the husband of Sarah Miller Fishbein and the father of Morris, Jay, Nathan,
Ralph, Matthew, Joseph, Samuel and Arthur Fishbein.
1879(21st of
Nisan, 5639): Seventh Day of Pesach
1879: “A Railroad Test
Case” published today described litigation filed against Joseph Seligman &
Co in which if he plaintiffs are successful could ruin the “eminent bankers
from New York City.”
1880: “Became A Hebrew
For Love” published today described the path that led to the marriage of
Baltimore merchant Emanuel Strauss and Lillie Williams. Miss Williams met and fell in love with Mr.
Straus while working at Strauss Brothers, a large wholesale dry goods store in
Baltimore. Since young Mr. Strauss came
from a prominent Orthodox family she studied for six months and then went
through a conversion ceremony that included immersion in the mikvah at which
time she changed her name from Lillie to Rachel. The couple wed secretly and took a trip to
Chicago from which they hope to return with the blessings of his family.
1880: The New York Times featured a review of
a book about Palestine entitled “The Land and the Book: Or Biblical
Illustrations drawn from manners and customs, the Scenes and Scenery of the
Holy Land” by William M. Thompson.
1881(15th of
Nisan, 5641): American Jews observe the first and only Pesach of newly
inaugurated President James Garfield who would be die from an assassin’s bullet
in September of 1881.
1881: In Hungary,
Katherine Cline and Maxwell Grossman gave birth to Cornell University and
Fordham University medical schools trained neurologist Moris Grossman the
husband of Edith Sachs whose career included serving as the associate attending
neurologist at Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases and associate
consulting neurologist at Monmouth Memorial Hospital.
1882: In Frankfurt am
Main, Stella Rothschild, the German born daughter of Leopold Schott and Sara
Randegger and her husband of Wilhelm Benjamin Rothschild gave birth to Karoline
Carola Schwarz, the wife Gustavo Schwarz.
1882(25th of
Nisan, 5642): Dr. Ludwig Waldenburg passed away in Berlin.
1882: Birthdate of
Paris native and phenomenally wealthy banker Jacques Stern who served as the
Minister of Merchant Marin and Minister of the Colonies during the 1930’s
before finding refuge in the United States during WW II teaching at Princeton
University.
1882: Observance of the
first feast day for Justin Martyr, the second century Church leader whose most
famous polemic against the Jews was “Dialogue with Trypho.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/justin-martyr-x00b0
https://brill.com/view/title/7369
1883: In Bialystok,
Hyman and Esther Halpert gave birth to “skirt manufacturer” Isidor Halpert, the
husband of the former Tillie Epstein and the father of Naomi and Juliet Halpert
who in 1888 came to the United States where after working as a stock clerk and
salesman founded the skirt manufacturing concern Halpert Brothers with his
brother Max and became a member of the Federation of Jewish Charities in New
York.
1884(19th of
Nisan, 5644): Fifth Day of Pesach
1885: Birthdate of
Russian native Harry Lefrak, prominent Jewish real estate executive and
philanthropist, who was “a pioneer in apartment construction in New York City
and who was the founder of one of the largest construction firms in the United
States.
1885: In Minsk,
Vladimir and Sophie Bernstein gave birth to Rachel Bernstein, who, as Rachel
Wishnitzer gained fame as “a pioneer in the fields of Jewish art history and
synagogue architecture.” (As reported by Shulamith Z. Berger)
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wischnitzer-rachel
https://www.aejm.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bio-Rachel-Wischnitzer-Ivanov-Sokolova.pdf
1885: Birthdate of
Bobroisk, Russia native Harry Lefrak, “the chairman of the Lefrak Organization,
one of the largest building companies” in the United States and the founder the
Lefrak Foundation who came to the United States at the turn of the century where
he worked at shoveling snow and carpentry and raised a family with his wife,
“the former Sara Schwartz.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/07/02/82072156.pdf
1886: A major story,
possibly the first of its kind, was published in today’s Atlanta Constituion, Georgia’s leading daily newspaper. “The main headline read: ‘Passover
Preparations for Celebrating the Festival.’ The writer stated, “The Jewish
citizens of Atlanta are getting ready for the Feast of Passover. Unleavened
bread will be eaten. The interesting facts
about observance will be given plus an explanation of the plagues of Egypt.”
1887(20th of
Nisan, 5647): Sixth Day of Pesach
1887: One day after he
had passed away, Michael Cohen was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish
Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.
1887: In a part of
Germany that is now modern-day Poland, Abraham and Fanny Lippman gave birth to
Leo Lippman, the brother of Else, Emma and Hanns Lipman, who was murdered at
Auschwitz.
1887: In Labischin,
Fanny and Abraham Lippmann gave birth to Leo Pippman who died at Auschwitz in
1943 and the husband of Kate Lippmann who also died in Auschwitz in February of
1943.
1888: Birthdate of
Russian native and Cooper Union trained civil engineer Lazarus Trommer, the
husband of the former Sarah Sussman with whom he raised three children –
Joseph, Alice and Rachel – who wrote under the pen name of Elbert Aidline and
served as an editor with the American Hebrew and The Jewish Tribune.
1888: In Kansas City,
MO, “Joseph C. and Mollie (Hays) Manheimer gave birth to University of Chicago
alum and Harvard Law School trained attorney Arthur E. Manheimer who rose to
the rank of 1st Lt. while serving overseas with the USA Signal Corps
and returned to Chicago to practice law while serving as the a director for the
Young Men’s Jewish Charities and being an active member of Sinai Congregation
on Chicago’s South Side.
1889: In London, Harry
Valpy Toynbee, the secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and his wife
Sarah Edith Marshal gave birth to Oxford educated historian Arnold Toynbee
whose view Jews much more complicated than his view that the Jews were a
“fossil civilization since during WW I he was sympathetic to the Zionism, a
view which shifted to a more pro-Arab stance in the 1940’s which culminated in
a debate with Ambassador Yaakov Herzog. (Editor’s note – Toynbee’s views of
Jews and Jewish civilization is too complex for one entry on this blog and you
are urged to read more on your own to form your own views. At the same time, for many Toynbee’s works
are really irrelevant and are of interest to only a very small number of
people.
https://www.haaretz.com/1.4954029
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/194545/summary
1890(24th of Nisan, 5650): Hanover
native and University of Halle graduate Marcus (Meir) Lehmann, the prolific
author who served as the rabbi of a “private religious society” in Mainz which
was really a congregation passed away today at the age of 58.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9721-lehmann-marcus-meyer
1891: In delivering his
response to the claims of Reverend Howard MacQueary “the alleged heretic who
has been expelled from the Protestant Episcopal Church” Rabbi Gustav Gottheil
denied claims made about the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews” stating that
“Jesus of Nazareth was never persecuted by the Jews.”
1891: Birthdate of
Portage, PA native Hyman “Goldie” Goldstein the Dickinson College football
player described by legendary coach Pop Warner as “being a star kicker, passer
and ball carrier” possessing “the rare quality of fine judgment and
generalship” who went on to serve in the Navy during WW I and pursue a legal
career in Carlisle, PA.
http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/hyman-goldstein-1891-1982
1892(17th of
Nisan, 5652): Third Day of Pesach
1892: “Russia’s Warlike
Measures” published today described the major moves by Czar to strengthen his
military position on the western frontier including a demand by General Iosif Gurko that he be
given permission to expel the Jewish people from the frontier and move them
sixty verts (approx. 40 miles) inland. (Having forced the Jews to live in the
Pale, now the Russians want to dispose them for military reasons – think of the
scene at the end of Fiddler on the Roof for context)
1892: It was reported
today that the Jewish Emigration Committee has decided to only send Russian
Jews to the United States and Argentina who are “suitable for colonization” and
to limit the immigrants to batches of a hundred. At this rate, it will take twenty years to
settle all of the land bought under Baron Hirsch’s auspices for agricultural
settlements.
1893: As the Reichstag
opened today in Berlin, members waited for Hermann Ahlwardt , “the Jew baiter”
to produce documents proving German officials of corrupt conduct.
1893: “A Frenzied Mob
In Bohemia” described an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in Kolin, a town 35
miles from Prague which was nothing more than another blood libel. The body of a servant girl name Marie Panlik
was found floating in the Elbe and the citizenry decided that she had been
killed by the Jews as part of their religious customs. Before the military could quell the riot the
homes of the Jews had been sacked, the population “assaulted” and the synagogue
had been wrecked.
1894(8th of
Nisan, 5654): Shabbat HaGadol
1894: The former Leah
Barntett, the wife of Michael Israel with whom she had had ten children was
buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1894: Birthdate of
Antopol Russia native and U.S, World War veteran Emanuel Applebaum the Columbia
trained physician and bacteriologist who in 1906 came to the United States
where he served on the faculty of NYU and worked for the NYC Health Department.
1894: Birthdate of
Brooklyn native Robert Adler, the former journalist and public relations man
who served as deputy sanitation commissioner in New York.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/03/19/95765461.pdf
1894: “Shaaray Tefila’s
New Home” published today described the consecration of the new home for Gates
of Prayer located on West 82nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam
Avenues.
1895: Lt. Colonel Jean
Sandherr who was head of the Statistical Section, the French army’s
counter-espionage unit who “gathered a secret commission of inquiry that
hastily decided on Captain Alfred Dreyfus as being the author of handwritten
notes found in the wastepaper basked of the German ambassador in Paris, was
promoted to Colonel today.
1895: In Russia, Hannah
and Max Jaffe gave birth to Adeline Jaffe who gained fame as Adeline Schulberg
the talent and literary agent who married B.P. Schulberg.
1895: It was reported
today that “last winter, Lord Rothschild had assured his co-religionist…that he
and his associates would not have touched the new Russian loan” without a
promise from St. Petersburg that “the persecution of their people would be stopped.” Not only have the Russians not kept their
promises, in the last fortnight, they have revived all the edicts against the
Jews that had been cancelled meaning that “this is to be year of peculiarly
evil memory to Israel in Holy Russia,”
1895: The highlight of
the third and final day marking the celebration of Temple Emanu-El’s fiftieth
anniversary was “the festival arranged by the children of the religious
school.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30B13FA385911738DDDAC0994DC405B8585F0D3
more 2014
1896: Janet Simons
Haris, the Titusville, PA born daughter Helen Esther Katz and Abraham Hirsch
Simons and Bradford High School teacher who served as vice president and then
president of the National Council of Jewish Women married Nathanial Harris
today in Bradford, PA.
1897: Two days after he
had passed away, 36-year-old Reuben Harris was buried today at the “Plashet
Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1897: It was reported
today that Jewish children from Russia have a disproportionately high rate of
Trachoma or “granulated eyelid.”
1897(12th of
Nisan): Seventy-eight-year-old French rabbi and author Lazar Wogue “best known
for his translation of the Pentateuch…and for his history of Bible exegesis”
passed away today in Paris.
1898(22nd of
Nisan, 5658): Eighth and final day of Pesach
1898: The Hebrew Aid
Association was founded today in Birmingham, AL.
1899: Among the bills
passed today by the New York State Assembly was one providing “for the
consolidation of the Educational Alliance and the Hebrew Free School
Association of New York…”
1900(15th of
Nisan, 5660): First Day of Pesach and Shabbat.
1900: Observance of the
first Pesach since the death of “Silver Dollar” Smith whose saloon on Essex
Street provided piles of Matzoth for the underprivileged Jews of the Lower East
Side.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1900/04/15/101056427.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1900: It was reported
today that the fact that Erev Pesach coincided with Good Friday “had accounted
for some of the extraordinary suspension of business and absence of traffic on
the streets” of New York.
1901: In Cardiff,
Wales, Sarah Stone and Asher Epstein, gave birth to Phoebe Epstein the wife of
Leonard Cooklin and the mother of Shirley Barbar and Alan Cooklin who during
the First World War “served as an Auxiliary Nurse in the Voluntary Aid
Detachment (VAD)” and during the Second World War served in “the Mechanized
Transport Corp, driving soldiers up and down the country” while raising three
children and keeping “her home open to any Canadian, Free French and American
Soldiers in need of a place to stay” and whose brother Isadore “Izzy” Epstein
who died in 1922 after suffering from a mustard gas attack in World War I.
1901: Henri Daniel
Mayrargue and Eveline Bethsabée Lattès, the daughter Eveline Bethsabée Lattès
gave birth to Albert Mayrargue
1902(NS): Birthdate of
Lithuanian native and “deputy head of the Soviet Air Forces Yakov Vladimirovich
Smushkevich, the first Jew to be named “Hero of the Soviet Union” and “the only
person to receive the Hero of the Soviet Union twice and then be executed”
after being arrested on what later proved to be falsified charge that he was
part of anti-Soviet conspiracy.”
1902: “Religious
Auction Sale” described cornerstone laying ceremonies for the “new Home for
Aged Orthodox Jews” in Chicago where “Samuel Sdartz of Waukegan gave $1,000 for
the privilege of laying the cornerstone.”
1902: “Opportunity of
Judaism” published today described a lecture by Dr. William S. Friedman, the
rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Denver in which he addressed “the miracle of the
preservation of the Jew” which has baffled the explanations of the Church and the
theories of materialists” while saying that “anti-Semitism is a striking
demonstration that the boasted brotherhood of man is as yet merely a beautiful
metaphor…”
1903(17th of
Nisan,5663): Third Day of Pesach
1903: Birthdate of West
Hoboken, NJ native and NYU Law School trained attorney Walter Leichter, a
president of the New Jersey Bar Association and president of the North Hudson
Jewish Community Center who was the husband of “the former Irma Cohen.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/21/archives/walter-leichter-68-led-jersey-bar-association.html
1904: Birthdate of Essen, Germany native and Holocaust victim Margaret Dornbush
1904: Birthdate of Lithuanian
“choreographer and dance teacher” Sonia Gaskell who in 1939 move to her
husband’s home in the Netherlands where she survived the war and continued
teaching until she passed away in Paris.
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095844879
http://www.jewishvilkaviskis.org/Sara__Gaskel_Album_.html
1905: In Dublin, Philip
Bradlaw and his wife gave birth to dentist Sir Robert Vivian Bradlaw who was “the
chair of dental surgery at the Dental School of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Dean
and Director of Studies at the Institute of Dental Surgery, Director of the
Eastman Dental Hospital and Professor of Oral Medicine at the University of
London, posts which he held until his retirement.
1906(19th of
Nisan, 5666): Fifth Day of Pesach; Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach
1906: As Jews munched
on their Matzah, word was received of an explosion that killed at least five
sailors serving aboard the Kersarge, a U.S Navy battleship.
1907(30th of
Nisan, 5667) Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1907: The project led
by Mrs. Solomon Schechter to “re-establish congregational singing” and to
reintroduce in the services many of the beautiful old Hebrew melodies which had
fallen into disuse” bore fruit tonight during a concert attended by people from
the Lower East Side as well as such uptown Jews as Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Schiff
and Mr. and Mrs. Felix M. Warburg heard The Choral Society of Ancient Hebrew
Melodies organized by Isaac Rosenblatt sang Psalms 24 and 118 and the Downtown
Cantors Association sang Kol Nidre.
1908: “The Redemption
Produced” published today described the first performance in Philadelphia of
“The Redemption,” a sociological drama dealing with the Jews in Russia by Rabbi
Isaac Landman” who “advanced the theory that the only way the Jews could be
safe was to publicly join the Greek Church” while living “as Jews in private.”
1909: The engagement
was announced today of Charles Waldstein, the Professor of Fine Arts at
Cambridge University whose books include The Jewish Question and the Mission of
the Jews and Mrs. Theodore Seligman, the widow of the late Theodore Seligman
who was “formerly Miss Florence Einstein, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D.L
Einstein.”
1910: “J. Walter
Freiberg, Rabbi Louis Grossman, Joseph Lazarus, Rabbi Jacob Mailziner, Meyer
Oetting and Rabbi David Philipson” issued “an appeal to the Jewish people of
the United States for funds for the publication of the news translation of the
Bible” which they will provide $100,000 for this project.
1911(16th of
Nisan, 5671): Second Day of Pesach
1911(16th of
Nisan, 5671): Sixty-one-year-old August Iganaz Einstein, the brother of Hermann
Einstein and an uncle of Albert Einstein passed away today.
1912: The RMS Titanic
struck an iceberg at approximately 11:45 pm. Among those who were not aboard
was Nathan Strauss, the brother of Isidor Strauss, and his wife “In 1912, the
brothers and their wives were touring Europe, when Nathan, the more ardent
Zionist of the two, impulsively said one day:- “Hey, why don’t we hop over to
Palestine?”Israel wasn’t the tourist hotspot then that it is today. Its
population was ravaged by disease, famine, and poverty; but the two had a
strong sense of solidarity with their less fortunate brethren, and they also
wanted to see the health and welfare centers they had endowed with their
millions.
However, after a week
spent touring, Isidor Straus had enough.- “How many camels, hovels, and
yeshivas can you see? It’s time to go,”
Isidor decreed with edgy impatience in his voice. But Nathan refused to heed his brother’s
imperious command. It wasn’t that he was
oblivious to the hardships around him; it was precisely because of them that he
wanted to stay. As he absorbed firsthand the vastness of the challenges his
fellow Jews were coping with, he felt the burden of responsibility.- “We can’t
leave now,” he protested. “Look how much
work has to be done here. We have to help. We have the means to help. We can’t
turn our backs on our people.”- “So we’ll send more money,” his brother snapped
back. “I just want to get out of here.”
But Nathan felt that
money simply wasn’t enough. He felt that
the Jews who lived under such dire circumstances in Palestine needed the
brothers’ very presence among them: their initiative, their leadership, and
their ideas. Isidor disagreed. The two argued back and forth, and finally
Isidor said,- “If you insist, stay here. Ida and I are going back to America
where we belong.” The two separated. Isidor and his wife returned to Europe,
while Nathan and his spouse stayed in Palestine, traveling the country and
contributing huge sums of money to the establishment of education, health, and
social welfare programs to benefit the needy. Nathan also financed the creation
of a brand-new city on the shores of the Mediterranean. And since his name in Hebrew was Natan, and
he was the city’s chief donor, the founders named it after him and called
it…Natanya. Meanwhile, back in Europe, Isidor Straus was preparing to sail home
to America aboard an ocean liner for which he had also made reservations for
his brother, Nathan, and his wife. - “You must leave Palestine NOW!” he cabled his brother in an urgent
telegram. “I have made reservations for
you and if you don’t get here soon, you’ll miss the boat.”
But Nathan delayed. There
was so much work to be done that he waited until the last possible moment to
make the connection. By the time he reached London, it was April 12 and the
liner had already left port in Southampton with Isidor and Ida Straus aboard. Nathan
felt disconsolate that he had, as his brother had warned, “missed the boat.”
For this was no ordinary expedition, no common, everyday cruise that he had
forfeited, but the much-ballyhooed maiden voyage of the most famous ship of the
century. This was the Titanic. Nathan Straus, grief-stricken and deeply
mourning his brother and sister-in-law could not shake off his sense that he
had had a rendezvous with history The knowledge that he had avoided death
permeated his consciousness for the rest of his life, and until his death in
l931, he pursued his philanthropic activities with an intensity that was
unrivaled in his time. Today, Natanya is a scenic resort city of 200,000 and
headquarters to Israel’s thriving diamond trade – one of the most important
industries in the country. And in almost every part of the city, there is some
small reminder of Nathan Straus’s largesse, his humanity, and love for his
people.”
1912: Just before
midnight, Archibald Gracie IV, who had spent much of the voyage talking about
the Civil War with his friend Isidor Straus was jolted awake as the Titanic
struck an iceberg. Gracie is the source
for the story of the last moments of the Mr. and Mrs. Straus who died together
on the ship.
1912: Mary Antin's The
Promised Land, an autobiography recounting her life in the Russian Pale of
Settlement and as an immigrant in Boston, was reviewed in the New York Times.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/14/1912/mary-antin
1913(7th of Nisan, 5673):
Seventy-six-year-old “communal worker” M.D. Levy passed away today in
Springfield, Ohio.
1913(7th of
Nisan, 5673): Nathan Kahn passed away in Selma, Alabama.
1913(7th of
Nisan, 5673): Eighty-five-year-old Baltimore merchant Solomon Preiss passed
away today.
1913: It was reported
today that “the late Joseph Liebermann who left an estate of upward of half a
million dollars, bequeathed the sum of $7,000 to the leading Jewish charities
in” New York and Brooklyn.
1914: “Potash and
Perlmutter,” a three-act play featuring the characters Abe Potash and Mawruss
Perlmutter, who are business partners in the garment industry opened today at
the Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End.
1914: Tulane graduate
and Columbia trained attorney, Ralph J. Schwartz, the Galveston, TX born son of
Mathilde Seligman and David Schwartz and Tulane Law School Professor married
Irma Sale today in St. Louis.
1915(30th of
Nisan, 5675): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1915(30th of
Nisan, 5675): Sixty-seven-year-old Hungarian native and humorist Carl Hauser, a
resident of the United States for over forty years who was “editor of Puck when
it was a German publication, author of Fun for the Millions, published
and known as the “German Mark Twain” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/04/16/100150402.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1915: In London, Lord
Reading, the Lord Chief Justice of England spoke at meeting today aimed at
recruiting Jews to serve in the military where he acknowledged the
comparatively high rate of Jewish enlistment but called for more because Jews
in England have enjoyed “the security and freedom not always known elsewhere.
1915: “The next regular
meeting of the Baron Hirsch Woman’s Club is scheduled to” take place this
afternoon at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago.
1916: Birthdate of
Suleiman (Solomon) Alexandrovich Yudakov , the native of Kokand who became a
leading Bukharian composer whose work included “Surudi Milli,” the modern-day
national anthem of Tajikistan. After surviving a lifetime under Soviet rule, he
passed away in 1990.
1917(22nd of
Nisan, 5677): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach
1917(22nd of
Nisan, 5677): Fifty-seven-year-old L.L. (Leyzer Leyvi) Zamenhoff, the Jewish
doctor and linguist who created Esperanto passed away in Warsaw. His youngest daughter Lidia was murdered by
the Nazis at Treblinka in 1942.
1917: Those attending
the tenth annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America which
began tonight at the Hebrew Technical School applauded Dr. Julius Weiss, the
organization’s president “when he said that the Jews of the federation were
ready to offer their lives this country now that it was at war” with Germany.
1917: In the Bronx, elementary school teacher
Gertrude Wald Miller and clothing salesman Alexander Miller gave birth to
Marvin Miller, the Brooklyn Dodgers fan who changed the face of Major League
Baseball while service as executive director of the player’s union. According
to The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum “Marvin
Miller never played the game, but he may have had more influence on baseball
than anyone else in this half of the century. Hired by the players in 1966, he
brought a wealth of experience garnered in the tough steelworkers' union to
bear on baseball labor relations, and his knowledge, organizational ability,
and resolve completely overmatched the owners and their representatives,
particularly Commissioners Bowie Kuhn and Spike Eckert. In a time of baseball
prosperity which saw manifold increase in the value of franchises, his tough
tactics finally got the players not only a "bigger piece of the pie"
but also greater, if grudging, respect for their wishes in regard to trades and
other matters. Executive director of Players' Assn. from 1966-82; increased
average salary from $19,000 to over $240,000; led 13-day strike in 1972 and
50-day walkout in '81.”
1918: The “3rd Indian
Division” which had arrived in Palestine today from Mesopotamia to reinforce
Allenby’s forces as they continued their drive against the Ottomans.
1918: William Edlin, the President
of the Jewish Socialist League of America and the editor of The Day presided
over a meeting at Beethoven Hall the aim of which to bring “all Jewish
Socialist and labor organizations into hearty co-operation with the Government
in a vigorous prosecution of the war” where he told the attendees they must “be
prepared to stand by the United States in this crisis if they help their
comrades in Russia and maintain their own self-respect.”
1918: Sixty-nine-year-old William
J. Stone, the U.S. Senator from Missouri who as Chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee had held hearings on the resolution to create Jewish Relief
Day in 1916 – a proposal which he supported – and who was one of only six
senators to vote against the U.S. declaration of war on Germany passed away
today.
1919(14th of Nisan,
5679): Fast of the First Born
1919(14th of Nisan,
5679): Jewish Soldiers serving with His Majesty’s forces hold a Seder in
Jerusalem
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/193600#.VSs5Wpvwt9C
1920: Birthdate of Sheldon Douglas
Moldoff who “drew covers for the first appearances of the characters Flash and
Green Lantern in 1940”, created “some of the earliest renderings of Hawkman:
and who “contributed to the first issue of Action Comics, in which Superman was
introduced (though he did not draw the Man of Steel).”
1920: The National Conference of
Jewish Service which had been meeting at the Hotel Grunewald in New Orleans
came to an end today.
1920(26th of Nisan,
5680): Eighty-five-year-old Hungarian-Austrian neurologist Mortiz Benedikt
passed away today.
1920: In Gomel, the Twelfth
Conference of the Bund continued to meet for a third day.
1921: Joseph Barondess went to
Ellis Island today where he was united with the infant child of Elka Lerner, a
refugee from pogroms in Ukraine who had died last night and who was a cousin of
Barondess.
1921: Pinchus Ruttenberg “announced
today that within a few days his plan for electrification of Jaffa, Tel-Aviv
and Petach-Tikvah will be completed.”
1921: A delegation of about 200
rabbis, who were attending their annual convention in Washington, DC visited
the White House this afternoon where they met with the President Harding who
“said he was especially goad to meet the rabbis because, while not of their
religious faith, he recognized the value of their work in raising the moral
standards of the community at large as any religious movement was bound to do”
and Mrs. Harding who exchanged pleasantries with the clergy men from the home
state of Ohio.
1921: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
reports that “Tel-Aviv has been officially recognized as an independent
township.”
1921: The adoption of Hebrew names
by Jewish immigrants has resulted in the adoption of government policy
“permitting any change of name provided the change is duly advertised in the Official
Gazette.
1922(16th of Pesach,
5682): Second Day of Pesach; observed on the same day that “The Teapot Dome
scandal broke when The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Secretary of the
Interior Albert B. Fall had secretly leased the government-owned Teapot Dome
oil reserves in Wyoming to a subsidiary of Sinclair Consolidated Oil
Corporation,”
1923(28th of Nisan
5683): Mevarchim Chodesh Iyar observed on the same day that “The National
League of Women Voters voted against an endorsement of the League of Nations as
presently constituted but urged that the United States "associate itself
with other nations" in order to prevent war. A dance marathon in Baltimore
was stopped by police after 53 hours.”
1924: “Five hundred delegates from reformed
congregations throughout the United States” including Charles Shohl, Julius
Frieberg, Maurice D. Rosenberg, Herman Wile and Isaac M. Ullman are scheduled
to hold their final meeting today Chicago where “they will discuss methods of
raising funds” to support the “various activities of Union of American Hebrew
Congregations.”
1924: In
The Bronx, Maurice Schulweis and his wife gave birth Harold Maurice Schulweis “an
influential rabbi and theologian who focused his sermons, books and social
activism on connecting the Jewish community with the wider world — and vice
versa —.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)
1925(20th of Nisan, 5685) Sixth Day of Pesach
1925: “Delegates to the National Association of Jewish Bakers' Convention
will vote today, at the Broadway Central Hotel, upon a recommendation to insist
that the Bakery Workers' International Union grant collective bargaining to the
employers.”
1925: In Manhattan Sam and Bea Traub gave birth to Marvin Stuart Traub, “the
retailing impresario who transformed Bloomingdale’s from a stodgy Upper East
Side family department store into a trendsetting international showcase of
style and showmanship in the 1970s and ’80s.” (As reported by Robert D.
McFadden)
1926: In address given today to the students of the religious schools of
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, “Rabbi Michael Aaronsohn the
sightless chaplain of the National Association of Disabled War Veterans
predicted a revival of religious interest among Jews” and “said that in a
recent tour of the country he found a great revival of Jewish consciousness and
an awakened interest in the establishment of religious schools and seminaries.”
1926: In Kokomo, Indiana, Samuel and Bessie Kopelov gave birth to Connie
Kopelov, one of the partners in New York’s first same-sex marriage.
1926: “Lady, Be Good” a George and Ira Gershwin musical “opened in the
West End at the Empire Theatre’ today.
1927(12th of Nisan, 5687): Fast of the First born is held on a
Thursday since the first seder falls on Saturday night.
1927: A campaign to raise a half million dollar to support the National
Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver led by a committee whose members
include Judge Samuel D. Levy, Mrs. Willard Parker, Ben Altheimer, Patrick
Cardinal Hayes and Bishop William T. Manning began today.
1928(24th of Nisan, 5688): Parashat Shimini; Mevarchim Chodesh
Iyar
1928: James Rosenberg, the Chairman of the Agro-Joint, the agency of the
American Joint Distribution Committee for its agricultural activities in
Russian announced today that Louis Marshall had made “a subscription of
$100,000” which is “the first donation toward the fund which the Jews of” the
United States “are rising to match the five million dollars subscribed by
Julius Rosenwald of Chicago.”
1929: It was reported today that despite denials from the Vatican, the
Archbishop of Canterbury has cancelled his visit to the Holy land “in deference
to the inferred wishes of the Vatican” which was acting on a complaint from
Monseigneur Barlissina, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem that he was disturbed
by the proposed visit because of the close relations between the Anglican
Church and “various Eastern Orthodox churches.” (Editor’s note: Problems of
religion in Eretz Israel often had nothing to do with the Jews.)
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1929/04/14/95923136.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1929: Dedication services led by Rabbi B.A. Tintner are scheduled to
continue this afternoon “at the new Unity Synagogue at 140 West 79th
Street.”
1929: It was reported today that Rabbi Samuel Rosinger of Beaumont TX has
been elected president of the Kallah organization of Texas rabbis.
1930: Six-year-old Beatrice Edith Berch Factor, the Seattle born daughter
of Rose Chmeinitsky and Samuel Harry Berch, the Russian born Los Angeles dairy
company executive was living at 1001 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
1930 “Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru” who was opposed to the
creation of the Jewish state of Israel” was arrested and charged with violating
the salt law.”
1931: In Atlantic City, NJ, “David and Fanny (Hapern) Bayless” gave birth
to Theodore Morris Bayless the University of Chicago trained physician who made
groundbreaking discoveries in the field of dairy intolerance while raising
three sons with his wife the former Janet “Jaye” Nides.
https://jewishtimes.com/tag/dr-theodore-bayless/
1931: Count Juno Klebelberg, the Minister of Education is scheduled to
represent the government at today’s funeral for Eugen Both, the boy who was
fatally shot by Emil Zatloka who fired eight revolver shots during an
anti-Semitic attack at the “chief synagogue” in Budapest.
1932: U.S. premiere of “Symphony of Six Million,” “based on the story “Night
Bell” by Fannie Hurst, the movie concerns the rise of a Jewish physician from
humble roots to the top of his profession and the social costs of losing his
connection with his community, his family and with the craft of healing” with a
script co-authored by J. Walter Ruben, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants produced
by Pandro S. Berman and David O. Selznick, co-starring Gregory Ratoff and with
music by Max Steiner. (Editor’s note: Selznick changed the name from “Night
Bell” to “Symphony of Six Million” because that number represented the
population of New York. How ironic that
a decade later it would come to stand for the wholesale slaughter of the Jews
and destruction of European Jewish Culture.)
1933: Today photographer Lou Bernstein “received a diploma…from The
General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City New York” upon his
completion of a course in “iron drafting” which enabled him to earn a living
working in the shipyards of Brooklyn.
1933: The Nationalpolitische
Erziehungsanstalten (National Political Educational Institutes) were
established as training schools for Nazi Party cadets.
1934(29th of
Nisan, 5694): Parashat Shmini
1934: An anti-Semitic
organization in Poland, Ob<ó>z Narodowo-Radykalny (National
Radical Camp), was established.
Anti-Semitism was part of the Polish social fabric before and after
World War II.
1934: In the second of
such outbreaks in Tangier, "Arabs responded to a march by Jewish boy
scouts by mounting public demonstrations against Jews." As Martin Gilbert points out, April the 14th
was Shabbat, and the demonstrations took place when most Jews were in their
homes.
1935(11th of Nisan,
5695): Fifty-three-year-old German born American mathematician and physicist
Emmy Noether passed away in Bryn Mawr, PA.
https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm
1935: “Joseph
Greenfield an executive member of the Young Men’s Tammany Club of the First
Assembly District” is scheduled to “distributed 1,500 packages of matzoth to
the poor families” living on the lower East Side” this afternoon.
1935: Publication today
of “The Life and Genius of Maimonides,” a review of Maimonides: The Story of
His Life and Genius by Dr. J. Muenz.
1936(22nd of Nisan,
5696): 8th day of Pesach
1936: It was reported
today “for the last several months the lives of over 3,000,000 Jews in the
Republic of Poland have in constant jeopardy” as a result of the “persecution
of the Jews” by Poland which “is openly and willfully violating the minorities clause
of the League Nations.”
1936: Dr. Everett R.
Clinchy, a Presbyterian minister and the director of the National Conference of
Jews and Christians was quoted today as saying the aim of the cross country
trip he is making with Reverend Michael J. Ahern and Rabbi Morris Lazaron “is
to consolidate the recent gains in inter-faith amity as a result of Brotherhood
Day and President Roosevelt’s emphasis upon cooperation among those of
different faiths for the common good.”
1937:
“Babes in Arms”, a Rodgers and Hart musical opened on Broadway at the Shubert
Theatre today.
1937: Dr. Emanuel
Libman and Dr. Nathan Ratnoff are co-chairman of the physicians’ division of
the Greater New York drive of the United Palestine Appeal which it was reported
today has agreed to raise $25,000.
1938: The Palestine Post
reported from London that the Palestine Police Force had been supplemented and
would continue to be increased - new men were being trained and sent to
Palestine.
1938: After viewing it
in March, today, the New York Board of regents disapproved a request by Arthur
Maye and Joseph Burstyn to grant a license for the screening of “the French
film ‘Remous.’”
1938: The Palestine Post
reported that 35 families from Rexigen in south Germany were settled, together
with a number of other families in a new village, south of Nahariya. Work went
on erecting buildings, the defense stockade and a search-light tower.
1939(25th of Nisan,
5699): In Tel Aviv, Samuel Solow passed away at the age of 90. Born in Russia, he moved to the United States
in 1893 where he became a successful shirt manufacturer. He retired in 1927 and moved to
Palestine. In 1935 he gave $15,000 for
the construction of a students’ club at Hebrew University.
1940(6th of
Nisan, 5700): Sixty-four-year-old New York City native and CCNY graduate Moses
Beckhardt, a forty-year veteran of the city school system and the rabbi at Bath
Israel Congregation of Kingsbridge in the Bronx passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/04/15/92940789.pdf
1940: Birthdate of
Yossef Romano ( יוסף רומנו) “a Libyan-born, Jewish Israeli weightlifter with the
Israeli team that went to the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. He was
the second of eleven Israeli team members murdered in the Munich massacre by
Black September terrorists during that Olympics. He was the Israeli
weight-lifting champion in the light and middle-weight divisions for nine
years.”
1941: Adolf Hitler
appeared on the cover of Time magazine
1941: Time magazine published its cover story
– “World War, Strategy: A Dictator’s Hour.”
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,932213,00.html
1941: Time magazine featured a review of
“Blood, Sweat and Tears,” a collection of Churchill’s public pronouncements
from May 1938 to February 1941.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932268,00.html#ixzz1rxaUgmdv'
1941: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right
organization that pursued Nazi and fascist policies, is put in charge of the
Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers. The Ustashe would be responsible for the murder of at least 30,000
Croatian Jews.
1941: Hungarian troops
occupied portions of northern Yugoslavia. About 500 Jews and Serbs were shot.
1941: “After watching
the German propaganda film Der Ewige Jude, Flemish paramilitaries from the
Volksverwering, VNV and Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen began a pogrom in the city of
Antwerp” in which “the mob, armed with iron bars, attacked and burned two
synagogues in the city and threw the Torah scrolls onto the street” after which
“they then attacked the home of Marcus Rottenburg, the town's chief rabbi.”
1941: Two hundred
Flemish supporters of the Nazis burned two synagogues in the Oosten straat as
part of what is called the “Antwerp Pogrom.”
By the end of WW II, the Jewish population had been decreased from a
pre-war total of 35,000 to 15,000. The
Jewish community traced its origins back to the 13th century
although its modern configuration did not begin until the end of the 18th
century with reforms forced by the French Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Antwerp
1942: “Word was received” in New York today “of that 69 year old
Professor Jacob Zallel Lauterbach, the Professor Emeritus of Rabbinics at the
Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati had passed away on March 21st.
1943: The slave-labor camp at Siedlce, Poland, was
dissolved.
1943: A paper, Program
for the Rescue of Jews from Nazi Occupied Europe, was submitted to the
Bermuda Conference by the Joint Emergency Committee for European Jewish
Affairs.
1943: Gerhart Riegner, World
Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, suggested that money be deposited in
a Swiss account to be paid after the war to enable the 70,000 Romanian Jews
previously offered to the Allies to immigrate to Palestine. This comes to be
known as the Riegner Plan.
1944(21st of
Nisan, 5704): Seventh Day of Pesach
1944: Henk Drogt, a 24
year old Dutch policeman who had refused orders to round up the remaining local
Jews in Grootegast, Holland and deserted the police force and joined one of the
Dutch resistance groups, where he took part in the smuggling of downed Allied
pilots to the Belgian border as well as helping to keep Jews out of the hands
of the Nazis was executed after having been caputed and sentenced to death by
the Germans.
1944: Henk Drogt, a
24-year-old Dutch military policeman, was executed by the Nazis eight months
after having been arrested by the Nazis for his refusal to arrest Jews and then
joining the Resistance. After the war, Drogt was posthumously decorated by US
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and
the Dutch Government for his actions in the resistance movement. He has also
been honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem
1944: “While an
agreement was arrived at between Wesenmayer, German Minister and a
representative of Sauckel on the other hand, and Prime Minister Sztojay, on the
other, that Hungary would place 300,000 Jewish workers at the disposal of the
Reich (who were to be selected by a mixed Hungarian-German committee), total
deportation was decided by Endre, Baky, and Eichmann at a meeting in the
Ministry of the Interior” today.
1944: The first transport of Athenian Jews left
Greece for Auschwitz.
1944(21st of Nisan):
Rabbi Benjamin Menasseh Levin, author of “Ozar ha-Geonim” passed away today
1945: U.S. Soldiers of
the 84th Division of the Ninth Army liberated Salzwedel Labor
Camp. Frank J. Cmelik of Iowa was on the
liberators. Lea Fuchs Chayen was one of
those who were liberated.
1945: Private H. Miller took a picture
of “slave laborers in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena.”
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-178.jpg
1945: U.S. Army Sgt. E.R. Allen took
this picture of “one of 150 prisoners savagely burned to death by Nazi SS
troops.”
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-179.jpg
1945: Pfc. W. Chichersky took this
picture of “a truck load of bodies of prisoners of the Nazis, in the Buchenwald
concentration camp at Weimar, Germany.”
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-181.jpg
1945: Pfc. W. Chichersky took this
picture of the “bones of women that were still in the crematoriums in he
concentration camp at Weimar, Germany.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-182.jpg
1945: Soldiers of
the United States Army reached Gardelegen Camp. They found smoldering logs
strewn with the bodies of the recently cremated victims.
1945: Ellen Geller was
among the 60,000 people who were liberated by British troops at Bergen-Belsen.
“Geller and her family were taken captive by the
Nazis in Poland when she was only 4 years old and she spent time in
concentration camps until the age of 8. Most of her time was spent in
Bergen-Belsen.”
1945: British units
reach the Elbe, joining American forces who had reached the river two days
earlier where they would not wait to be joined by Soviet Forces thus making the
encirclement and defeat of the remaining German forces a reality.
1946: The New York
Times reported that Bronislaw Huberman the Polish born violinist who is
President and founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra has begun a tenth
month concert tour that will take him to Europe and Egypt before he returns to
Palestine in December.
1947: “Norman S. Goetz
was re-elected to a third term as president of the Federation of Jewish
Philanthropies of New York at a meeting of the organization’s board of trustees
held today”
1947: Two thousand five
hundred fifty-two illegal immigrants reached Haifa on board the Guardian. Three of them had been killed while
unsuccessfully resisting a Royal Navy boarding party which was in the process
of transporting them to Cyprus.
1948:
The British withdrew from Safed. Before leaving, they gave the Arabs
the city's police station, the fortress like police station on Mount Canaan and
the ancient citadel in the heart of the town.
1948:
Surrounded by armed Arabs, the Jews of Safed awaited the final onslaught and
their death when a Palmach platoon that was the spearhead of Operation Yiftach
entered the city after marching through the mountains. They brought food,
weapons and hope.
1948:
“Design for Death” an Academy Award winning documentary directed by Richard
Fleischer was released today in the United States.
1949(15th of Nisan,
5709): First Day of Pesach in the newly created state of Israel.
1949(15th of Nisan,
5709): In one of the great ironies of history the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg's last judgment takes place on the first day of
Pesach. The Nuremberg Tribunal was an attempt to punish those responsible
for Crimes Against Humanity (among other charges) in a judicial setting.
The alternatives were to just line people up against the wall and shoot them or
let them go. For all of its imperfections, the Tribunal was an expression
of faith in the rule of law and it did punish some of the leading survivors of
the Third Reich. For a full account of the work of the Tribunal on line,
try this website
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judcont.htm.
1952(19th of Nisan, 5712): Fifth Day of Nisan
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the tenants of the houses administered by
the Custodian for Abandoned Property had from then on been allowed to sell, or
transfer their flats or rooms for an agreed sum. However, one-third of the
price would have to be paid to the custodian.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli-Syrian Mixed Armistice
Commission met for the first time in two years.
1953: Israelis
intercepted a boatload of terrorists who were trying, for the first time, to
infiltrate the state from the sea.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, hundreds of
singing and dancing men celebrated the conclusion of the fourth complete
reading of Gemara.
1954: “Knock On Wood,”
a comedy directed, produced and written by Melvin Franks, starring Danny Kaye
and featuring Leon Askin was released in the United States today.
1954: Birthdate
of Shari Ellin Redstone who would serve as president
of National Amusements, vice-chairman of CBS Corporation and Viacom, and
chairman of Midway Games. It probably did not hurt her career that she is the
daughter of Sumner Redstone and the granddaughter of Michael Redstone.
1955(22nd of
Nisan, 5715): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor
1955(22nd of
Nisan):Eighty-three-year old author and playwright Solomon Libin, the Gorki
Russia born son of Dora Herman and Sussman Horowitz and the husband of Sophie Plutkin who in 1891
moved to London and then to the United States where “he wrote short stories for
the Arbeiter Zeitung and Abendblatt and in 1897 became a member of the staff of
the Jewish Daily Forward” while scripts for “fifty plays” including “Broken
Hearts,” which had lengthy runs in New York and in London before being adapted
for a film starring Maurice Schwartz passed away today
https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/solomon-libin-yiddish-short-story-writer-playwright/
1956(3rd of
Iyar,5716): Parashat Tazaria-Metzora
1956: Twenty-year old
Larry Boardman defeated the current featherweight champion “in a unanimous
decision in 10 rounds and moved up to # 7” in the rankings.
1956: A memorial
service was held today at Garnet hill Synagogue for Cantor and composer Isaac
Hirshow, (aka Yitzak Gershov, the Russian born son of Simon Gershov ) “the
first person to obtain a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Glasgow
and of the cantor at the Chevra Kadisha
synagogue in the Gorbals area of Glasgow” before moving to Garnet hill
Synagogue in 1925, where he served for the next thirty years.
1957: In Pikesville,
MD, the former Sue Ellen Sezzin, who taught school and Howard Platt gave birth
to University of Pennsylvania graduate and NYU trained attorney Marc E.
Platt, the Emmy award winning and Oscar
nominated producer and husband of the former Julie Been who began his career
with the 1987 comedy “Campus Man” and has collaborated on musicals as “Mary
Poppins Returns” and “The Little Mermaid” and who is the father of Ben Platt,
the star the Broadway musical “Parade” which tells the story of Leo Frank.
https://marcplattproductions.com/
1959: Final broadcast
of “The George Burns Show,” a one season attempt by George Burns to keep alive
the sitcom known as” the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” without Gracie
Allen who had retired due to health problems.
1960(17th of
Nisan, 5720): Third Day of Pesach
1960: Birthdate of
actor Brad Garrett, Robert on “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
1961: “Oh, Kay!”, with
music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, produced by David Merrick and
for which Leo Cohen served as Associate Producer was performed for the last
time on Broadway at the Lunt Fontain Theatre.
1961: Birthdate of
cartoonist David Clowes creator of Eightball and Ghost World.
1962: On Shabbat
Hagadol Rabbi Maurice J. Bloom delivered a sermon at Termont Temple in the
Bronx condemning the “Soviet Union’s restrictions on Matzah baking.”
1962: In a sermon
delivered at Congregation and Talmud Torah Tifereth Israel, Rabbi Kurt
Klappholz decried the hypocrisy being shown during the current teachers strike
while ‘we stoutly maintain that the teaching profession must be on of dignity
we do not provide for a decent livelihood for those who are entrusted with the
molding of the characters of our children.”
1962: Rabbi Julius Mark
of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin of Whitestone Hebrew Center devoted
their sermons to condemnations of the U.N.’s recent resolution that censured
Israel for its attacks on its neighbors with censuring the Syrians for the
provocations and for the world organizations failure to deal with the root
cause of the problems in the Middle East.
1963(20th of
Nisan, 5723): Sixth Day of Pesach
of
1963: Tito, the leader
Yugoslavia, rebuffed Ben Gurion’s request for help in improving relations with
Egypt. The Yugoslav leader appeared to
be pandering to leaders of the so-called “Third World” by saying that he would
concentrate his efforts at the United Nations instead of on bi-lateral
talks.
1963: NBC broadcast the
final episode of “Car 54 Where Are You?” created by Nate Hiken who also served
as director, producer and wrote the theme music for the police themed sitcom.
1964: Sandy Koufax threw his 9th complete game
without allowing a walk.
1964: Today’s studio
tour sponsored by the National Council of Women in the United States is
scheduled to at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Saul Schary.
1967: “Mischa Elman,
the Russian born violin virtuoso left an estate of about $1 million, according
to his will, which, was filed for probate today in Surrogate's Court in
Manhattan.”
1968(16th of
Nisan, 5728): Second Day of Pesach
1968(16th of
Nisan, 5728): Seventy-three-year-old New York born, and Columbia trained
physician Dr. Jonas Jay Unger, the husband of the former Nettie Avedon with
whom he had two children and “a captain in the Army Medical during WW I” passed
away today at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach.
1968: “The Vengeance of
She” filmed by cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky was released today in the
United States.
1969: Barbra Streisand shared the Best
Actress Oscar with Katherine Hepburn
1969: In New Haven, CT, Linda Susan
(née Dronsick) who is Jewish and Professor Harry Jack Ausumus gave birth to
Bradley David "Brad" Ausmus who followed his career as a major league
baseball player by becoming a manager with the Detroit Tigers.
1969: Bernard J.
Lasker, 58-year-old senior partner of E. H. Stern Co., was nominated today “for
a one-year term as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange's board of governors.”
1971(19th of
Nisan, 5731): Fifth Day of Pesach
1971(19th of
Nisan, 5731): Ninety-year-old Amsterdam born Dutch composer Reine Colaço
Osorio-Swaab who “composed Monument in 1946 in honor of her son John who
was murdered in Dachau” and who “n the 1920s she translated the work of Martin
Buber into Dutch” passed away today
1972(30th of
Nisan, 5732): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1973(12th of
Nisan, 5733): Shabbat HaGadol
1973: Birthdate of actor Adrien Brody star of the film, “The Pianist.”
1974(22nd of Nisan,
5734): Eighth Day of Pesach
1974: ABC broadcast
“Thursday’s Game,” written by James L. Brooks, with Gene Wilder, Valier Harper,
Rob Reiner and Norman Fell.
1974: Several Jews from
Kiev laid wreaths and flowers at Babi Yar, “in memory of the Kiryat Shmona
victims and Warsaw ghetto heroes.”
1976(14th of
Nisan, 5736): Fast of the First Born observed for the last time during the
administration of President Gerald Ford
1977: The President Jimmy
Carter nominated Manuel D. Plotkin, of Chicago, Ill., to be Director of the
Census. Plotkin is associate director of corporate planning and research for
Sears, Roebuck and Co., in Chicago. (Plotkin was Jewish; Jimmy was not)
1977: NBC broadcasts
“Say It Ain’t So, Chief,” the third episode in the crime drama series
“Lanigan’s Rabbi” co-starring Bruce Solomon as David Small, the crime-busting
rabbi,
1978: “The Medusa
Touch” the movie version of the novel by the same name directed by Jack Gold
and produced by Arnon Milchan was released today in the United States.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the prime minister, Menachem Begin, and his
foreign minister, Moshe Dayan, had softened their policy regarding the
applicability of the UN Security Council's Resolution 242 on the West Bank -
hitherto the most serious area of disagreement with the US. This move was
expected to bring about a renewal of the American mediation efforts in the
stalled Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.
1979(17th of
Nisan, 5739): Third Day of Pesach; Shabbat
1979: CBS broadcast the
final episode of the 4th season of “One Day At A Time” the sitcom
developed by Norman Lear starring Bonnie Franklin.
1980(28th of
Nisan, 5740): Yom HaShoah
1980(28th of
Nisan, 5740: Fifty-eight-year-old New York born and holder of a Ph.D. from
Columbia “Herbert L. Lashinksy, the research professor of the Institute for
Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland passed away today
in Fairfax, VA.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.2914290
1980: Dustin Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best
Actor for his starring role in 'Kramer vs. Kramer.”
1980(28th of
Nisan, 5740): Jewish comedian Shimon Dzigan who along with Israel Shumacher
formed “the most famous Yiddish comic duo of ‘Dzigan and Schumacher’” passed
away today.
1980: The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Norman
Mailer for The Executioner's Song.
1981(10th of
Nisan, 5741): Ninety-five Demopolis, AL born producer and distributor Arthur L.
Mayer, the business partner of Joseph Burstyn passed away today in New York.
1982(21st of
Nisan, 5742): Seventh Day of Pesach
1982: Birthdate of
Rochester, NY native and classical cellist Alisa Weilerstein, a 2011 MacArthur
Fellow.
1983(1st of Iyar, 5743):
Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1984(12th of
Nisan, 5744): Shabbat HaGadol
1984(12th of
Nisan, 5744): Mayer Rosen, the husband of Shirley Rosen who was the Baltimore
born daughter of Shlomo Silverblatt and Rachel Silverman, and the father of Eli
Rosen and Iris Levy passed away today after which he was buried in Baltimore,
MD.
1984: The IDF began
blowing up the houses of the terrorists who had seized Bus 300.
1987(15th of
Nisan, 5747): Pesach
1987(15th of
Nisan, 5747): Seventy-seven-year-old Boston University alum and WW II veteran,
Julius Sumner Wells the son of Latvian and Lithuanian Jews whose wife Alice
Brown Millers sought to perpetuate his name through the Julius Sumner Miller
Foundation passe a way today.
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/40/11/114/404597/Julius-Sumner-Miller
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588697/bio/
http://www.juliussumnermiller.org/
1988: The New
York Times reported that “Plans to organize independent events to mark the
45th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising have provoked bitter Government
charges that the political opposition is exploiting the ghetto memory for
''petty, shallow and ad hoc political games.'' A principal organizer responded
that independent events were necessary because the Communist authorities had
endorsed the official program, ''and in Poland there exists a not
inconsiderable distrust of whatever they say.'' A committee of 46 people, some
of them linked to the political opposition, announced plans in March to unveil
a monument to two leaders of the Jewish Bund, or United Jewish Workers' League,
who were executed in 1941 in a Moscow prison for their criticism of Stalin's
invasion of eastern Poland in 1939. Among the signers of a statement on the
plans is Dr. Marek Edelman, now a cardiologist, who was deputy commander of the
ghetto resistance during the 1943 uprising. The monument is to honor Henryk
Erlich and Wiktor Alter, who went to Moscow, where they were arrested, tried
and executed for officially protesting, as councilors of the city of Warsaw,
the invasion and annexation by Russia of Polish territories. The organizers of
the monument project, in a statement issued March 25, said: ''The almost complete
annihilation of Polish Jews, conducted in the name of a criminal doctrine, has
terminated the coexistence of two nations in one land. We express deep sorrow
that all of that which we could and were able to do to save our brothers was
too little in comparison to their needs.'' Jerzy Urban, the Government spokesman, accused
the signers of masking the fact that Poland's Jews were killed by the Germans,
and imputing some kind of responsibility for the genocide to the Soviet Union.
''The perpetrators of the crime are anonymous,'' Mr. Urban said, alluding to
the document at the Government's regular news conference Tuesday. ''Instead,
they raise the fact of the execution of two Jewish activists in the Soviet
Union, in that special era, without saying that hundreds of thousands of Polish
Jews saved their lives thanks to being in the Soviet Union at that time.''
Earlier, the party daily, Trybuna Ludu, accused the organizers of exploiting
the ghetto events. ''The cause is too great, too tragic, for anyone to be
allowed to exploit it for his petty interest,'' said the article, which was
signed by Jerzy Lobman. ''The day after the Easter holiday, hyenas began to
howl in Warsaw. Shame.'' Jacek Kuron, a leader of the dissident organization
KOR, which had ties to the Solidarity union, said: ''The Polish People's
Republic also talks about the uprising, and in Poland there exists a not
inconsiderable distrust of whatever they say. We came to the conclusion that it
would be good to do something, not against the official commission, but
parallel to it.'' Mr. Kuron attributed the decision to erect the monument to a
desire to counter assumptions he said were widespread among Poles that many
Jews welcomed the Soviet invasion. ''For us, it was important to tell about the
relationship between Poles and the Jewish people in this land.'' ''They were
patriots,'' he said of the executed bund leaders. The opposition gesture is
clearly awkward for the Communist authorities, who have gone to great lengths
to organize six days of ceremonies, which will include wreath layings, museum
exhibits and a conference on the German genocide carried out against the
European Jews. Several hundred representatives of Jewish organizations, as well
as senior Israeli Government officials, have been invited by the organizing
committee to take part in the events. In March, the party formally admitted
that an anti-Semitic campaign drove thousands of Jews from Poland in 1967-68.
But Trybuna Ludu said the party ‘nonetheless tried to discourage an atmosphere
of anti-Semitism.''
1990(19th of
Nisan, 5750): Shabbat Shel Pesach
1990: Emma Freud
appeared on the game show “Just A Minute” “playing against her father Sir
Clement Freud who was a regular on the show.
1990: Detroit Tigers
pitcher Steve Wapnick appeared in his first major league baseball game.
1991(30th of
Nisan, 5751): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
Yosef Tekoah, 65, Israeli Delegate To the U.N. for 7 Years,
Is Dead - The New York Times
1991: A revival of “Oh
Kay,” with music by Geroge Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershswin and produced by
David Merrick was performed on Broadway for the last time at the Lunt Fontaine
Theatre “owned and operated by The Nederlander Organization (James M.
Nederlander: Chairman; Robert E. Nederlander: President; Arthur Rubin:
Vice-President)”
1992(3rd of
Iyar, 5754): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1992: A revival of
Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls” opened at the Martin Beck Theatre.
1993(23rd of
Nisan, 5753): After the pro-Iranian Party of God detonated a bomb by remote
control today killing three Israeli soldiers and wounding two others “Israel
retaliated with an artillery and helicopter attack…”
1994: Avi Perlmuter, a nineteen-year-old
soldier killed in the latest round of terror attacks, who lived in the Negev
town of Ir Ovot was buried today.
1994: Prime Minister
Rabin accused Jordan today of helping the Islamic militant group whose suicide
bombers have killed 12 Israelis in two weeks. "Israel cannot tolerate the
situation of Amman being a paradise for the activities of the Hamas," Mr.
Rabin said at a hastily called late-night news conference.
1995(14th of
Nisan, 5755): Fast of the First Born; Erev Pesach
1995: The family of
Alisa M. Flatow established a
scholarship fund in memory of Ms. Flatow, a 20-year-old from West Orange who
was killed in a bombing in the Gaza Strip, which will enable “students to
attend religious schools in Israel”
1996(25th of Nisan,
5756): Eighty-two-year-old artist, author, friend of the famous and WW II
veteran Mervyn Levy passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-mervyn-levy-1347766.html
1997: NBC broadcast the
final episode of “The Single Guy,” a sitcom starring Jonathan Silverman, the
son of a sabra and the grandson of Rabbi Morris Silverman and Jessica Hecht.
1998(18th of
Nisan, 5758): Fourth Day of Pesach observed as Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner
and Jeffrey Katzaenberg are reportedly focus on the Broadway legitimate
theatre.
1999(28th of
Nisan, 5759): Sixty-seven-year-old multi-talented British showman Anthony
Newley passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/16/arts/anthony-newley-film-and-stage-showman-dies-at-67.html
2000: U.S. release of
“Keeping the Faith” with a script by Stuart Blumberg, with Rena Sofer as Rachel
Rose, Lisa Edelstein as Ali Decker, Bodhi Elfman as Howard the Casanova, Susie
Essman as Ellen Friedman,Ben Stiller as Rabbi Jacob "Jake" Schram,
Miloš Forman as Father Havel and Eli Wallach as
Rabbi Ben Lewis and with music by Elmer Bernstein.
2000: Today, The Times
of London wrote about Deborah Lipstadt’s victory over David Irving saying
“History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory.”
2000: The Jewish News Weekly of Northern
California reports on the reissuance of a “D.P. camp Haggadah.” "A Survivors' Haggadah" which was
written by a Holocaust survivor in Germany in 1945 and 1946 was published again
this year. Yosef Dov Sheinson, a Holocaust survivor from Kovno,
Lithuania, created the Haggadah. Sheinson, a Hebrew teacher before the war,
survived the war in slave labor camps, including a subcamp of Dachau. After a
short stint in the Landsberg D.P. camp, Sheinson moved to a private house in
Munich, where he worked on a Jewish newspaper. There he complied this Haggadah,
which was printed by a German publishing house in return for cigarettes and
food rations. Saul Touster, a retired law professor at Brandeis University,
discovered the Haggadah in 1996, when he was cleaning out his late father's
papers. The book was inscribed to his father, a longtime executive with the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who received it when he visited the camps in
1952. Touster decided to publish the Haggadah - he had it translated from
Hebrew and Yiddish and compiled his own commentary - in part to honor his
father. "It's not about do-goodism. You go away feeling the experience.
And it tempers your spirit," Touster says, recommending that it be used as
a supplement to a more traditional Haggadah.With the help of 16 woodcuts
created during the war by Hungarian survivor Miklos Adler, the Haggadah brings
the burden of the Holocaust onto the relatively joyous Passover story. What
comes through most clearly is Sheinson's struggle to find an answer to the
questions of the existence of God and of Jewish survival in the wake of the
Holocaust. In 1948, Sheinson moved to Montreal, where he worked in Hebrew
education until he died in the mid-1990s.
2000(9th of Nisan, 5760): Phil Katz passed away. He was the creator of
"PKZIP" and the ZIP archive format, which replaced ARC
as the standard mechanism for distributing files on IBM PC compatible systems.
2001(21st of
Nisan, 5761): Seventh Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach
http://www.beki.org/archive/solosyma.html
2002(2nd of
Iyar, 5762): Eighty-one-year-old British jurist and author Sir Michael Robert
Emanuel Kerr passed away today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1391841/Sir-Michael-Kerr.html
2002: In Skokie,
Illinois, Gary Elkins collected $50,000 for the IDF today at a rally for
Russian Jews.
2002: IN the aftermath
of Operation Defensive Shield, IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told the media
that “the army intended to bury the bodies” of the terrorists killed during the
Battle of Jenin “in a special cemetery.”
2002: The New York
Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including the recently published paperback edition
of “Collected Poems In English” by Joseph Brodsky; edited by Ann Kjellberg, a
large volume containing all the verse that appeared in English during Brodsky's
lifetime.
2003: U.S. troops
captured Abul Abbas in Baghdad. Abbas was the leader of the Palestinian
terrorists who high jacked the Achille Laura in 1985. They threw Leon
Klinghoffer a wheelchair bound
Jewish passenger overboard. According to some accounts, Abbas was
"allowed to escape" by Italian authorities.
2004: Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon formally announced his plan for withdrawing from Gaza today in a
letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, stating that "there exists no
Palestinian partner with whom to advance peacefully toward a settlement"
2005: After having
premiered in Greece last week, “The Interpreter” directed by Sydney Pollack who
also made a cameo appearance was released today in the United Kingdom.
2005: Christie’s was
scheduled to sell “The Red Tree” a canvas painted and signed by Abram
Anshelovich Manevich also known as Abraham Manievich who passed away in 1942.
https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2005/NYR/2005_NYR_01499_0023_000().jpg
2006: Following Ariel
Sharon’s second stroke, Ehud Olmert officially became acting Prime Minister.
2007: Calling the decision by the
Vatican ambassador to Israel to boycott the Holocaust memorial services at Yad
Vashem "inappropriate and insulting," the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL) today repeated its longstanding call for the Vatican to open its wartime
archives so that the facts concerning the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII may
finally be brought to light. Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Vatican's
ambassador to Israel, has made the unprecedented announcement that he will
boycott the April 16 memorial events at Yad Vashem, Israel's national memorial
to the Holocaust, in protest of a photo caption in an exhibit that seemingly
charges Pope Pius XII with failing to save Jews during the Holocaust.
2008: In Seattle, Washington, Naveed Haq is scheduled to go on trial for a
shooting rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Haq, 32, is
charged with aggravated first-degree murder for storming into the Jewish
charity in July 2006, killing one woman and injuring five others. He railed
against the Iraq war and Israel during the rampage.
2008: State Department veteran Aaron
David Miller, discusses his new book, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli
Peace, at the World Affairs Council of Washington, D.C.
2008: Time magazine features a
profile of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell “Hillary’s Point Man” during the
state Democratic Primary. The article
mentions Rendell’s New York origins but says nothing about his Jewish heritage.
2009(20th of Nisan, 5769) Sixth Day of Pesach
2009(20th of Nisan, 5769): Just nine days before his 91st
birthday Maurice Druon, a hero of the French Resistance of and the author of
“The Accursed Kings” – seven novels about the 14th century French
monarch – passed away today.
2009: Publication date for Rhyming Life and Death
a new book written by Amos Oz and translated by Nicholas de Lange. According to a prepublication
review, this is “an ingenious, witty, behind-the-scenes novel about eight hours in the life
of an author. A literary celebrity is in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night to
give a reading from his new book. While the obligatory inane questions
("Why do you write? What is it like to be famous? Do you write with a pen
or on a computer?) are being asked and answered, his attention wanders and he
begins to invent lives for the strangers he sees around him. Among them are
Yakir Bar-Orian Zhitomirski, a self-styled literary guru; Tsefania
Beit-Halachmi, a poet (whose work provides the novel's title); and Rochele
Reznik, a professional reader, with whom the Author has a brief but steamy
sexual skirmish; to say nothing of Ricky the waitress, the real object of his
desire. One life story builds on another-and the author finds himself
unexpectedly involved with his creations.”
2010: PBS is scheduled to show “Worse Than War” which is based on Daniel
Goldhagen’s book of the same title. The program offers an exploration of the
nature of genocide, ethnic cleansing and large-scale mass murder in our time
during which Goldhagen speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, religious
leaders, politicians, diplomats, historians, humanitarian aid workers and
journalists.
2010: The new on-line Chabad Talmud Course for Beginners is scheduled to
begin today.
2011: The Center for Jewish History, The Jewish Week and Nextbook are
scheduled to present “Revisiting Eichmann: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Trial That Shook the World.”
2011: Elie Wiesel is scheduled to give a lecture entitled “The Rebbe of
Ger: A Tragedy in Hasidism” which will include information of “Rabbi Yitzhak
Meir, founder of the rebbes who lead the movement and the profound effects of
his life and work.”
2011: Teenage heartthrob Justin Beiber has invited children from Sderot
to attend his concert that is scheduled to take place today in Tel Aviv.
2011: The second annual Festigalgal happening, a colorful joyous occasion
which offers funky entertainment, informative workshops, outdoor education and
an opportunity to boost Jerusalemites’ awareness of the existence of, and need
for, cycling in the capital is scheduled to take place today. This afternoon,
from 4 p.m., part of the Jerusalem city center is scheduled to “be temporally
taken over by a different, even more environmentally friendly and far more
colorful, mode of transport when around 150 cyclists take off from Safra Square
and peddle their way through town, via the shuk, to the Nature Museum in the
German Colony.”
2011: IDF pensioners demonstrated outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv today,
complaining that their pensions were being eaten up by inflation. The Ministry
has promised numerous times to adjust a cost-of-living increase for the
pensions, but so far has not moved on the matter, the protesters said. In
recent years, they said, the value of their pensions has gone down by nearly a
third.
2011: Rabbi Gilad Kariv, head of the Reform Movement in Israel, told The
Jerusalem Post today that the nighttime attack on The Kehilat Ra’anan synagogue
in Ra’anana by vandals was the third such attack of its kind. Unknown persons
shattered six windows – covering two sides of the synagogue – with stones, and
spray-painted a black Star of David below the words “It has begun” on one of
the exterior walls.
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=216653
2011: President Shimon Peres paid a surprise visit to Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where
he met with children who were on school bus before it was hit by an anti-tank
missile last week.
2012(22nd of Nisan, 5772): 8th day of Pesach with
services to include Hallel, Yizkor and Shir HaShrim
2012: “Free Men,” a film based on actual events that took place during
the Nazi occupation of Paris, is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester
Jewish Film Festival.
2012: Hillel “Slovak was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as
a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers today with his brother accepting on his
behalf.”
2013: “Iron Man 3” based on a character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber
and Jack Kirby and co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jon Favreau was shown
publicly for the first time in Paris at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival
2013: The New York Times
featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to
Jewish readers including Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich and Mary
Coin by Marisa Silver.
2013: Historian Daniel Goldhagen is scheduled premieres his book and
documentary feature "Worse Than War" on PBS.
2013: The week-long “National Days of Remembrance” sponsored by the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to end today.
2013: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform at the Jewish Community
Center of Paramus (NJ) this afternoon.
2013: The State of Israel Memorial Day Service marking Yom Hazikaron,
sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel in New York is scheduled to take
place at the 92nd Street Y.
2013: PBS is scheduled to broadcast “Orchestra of Exiles” that describes
the creation of whatis now the Israel Philharmonic in the darks days just
before WW II.
2013: In the evening, Israel is scheduled to begin the observance of
Memorial Day for servicemen and women and terror victims.
2013: Israel’s population at its 65th Independence Day stands at 8,018,000
people, three-fourths of whom are Jewish, according to data released by the Central
Bureau of Statistics today.
2014(14 of Nisan): Fast of the first born- Erev Pesach
2014: “Nearly 100 members of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng,
China, attended a first-of-its-kind traditional Passover Seder” tonight.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179698#.VSsutJvwt9A
2014: The International Jewish Vegetarian Society is scheduled to host a
Vegan and Kosher Seder at 8 Balfour Street in Jerusalem
2014: The Tel Aviv Municipality is scheduled to host a Seder in the
community center in Beit Dani, in Hatikva Quarter
2014: White City Shabbat in partnership with Hineni is scheduled to host “a
massive international community Seder in Tel Aviv.”
2015: Zohar Weiman-Kelman is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Libe
and Linguistics: Towards an Archive of Yiddish Sexuality” at the Center for
Jewish History.
2015: Maggie Anton is scheduled to discuss her latest work Enchantress
at the Skirball Center
2015: “Zero Motivation” and “Beneath the Helmet: From High School to the
Home Front” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2015: The Jewish Historical Society of England is scheduled to sponsor Paul
Anticoni’s lecture “My Jewish Humanitarian Journey around the World.”
2015(25th of Nisan, 5775): Eighty-four-year-old senior Israeli
diplomat Meir Rosenne passed away today.
http://www.martindale.com/Dr-Meir-Rosenne/1222895-lawyer.htm
http://www.timesofisrael.com/meir-rosenne-former-top-diplomat-dies-at-84/
2016(6th of Nisan, 5776): Eighty-one-year-old Brooklyn restaurateur Walter
Rosen passed away today. (As reported by Rick Rojas)
2016: Bernie Sanders took part in
the Presidential debate known as the Battle In Brooklyn.
2016: The Leo Baeck Institute and
American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to present “German Jewry and the
Allure of the Sephardic” in which John M. Efron “explains how German Jews
depicted the Sephardim as worldly, moral, and beautiful—products of a tolerant
Muslim environment.”
2016: “Mikey and Nicky, the great gangster movie of the 1970s” is scheduled
to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2016: In San Francisco, an exhibition of the paintings of Rabbi Lawrence
Kushner at Congregation Emanu-El is scheduled to come to an end.
2016: Israeli rocker Tamar Eisenman
is scheduled to perform at Joe’s Pub in NYC.
2017(18th of
Nisan, 5777): Fourth Day of Pesach
2017(18th of
Nisan, 5777): Twenty-one-year-old Hannah Bladon, a British exchange student at
the Hebrew University was stabbed to death and two more were injured by a
Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem. (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)
2017: In Tel Aviv,
Abraham Hostel is scheduled to host “Exodus, a day of world music performances,
dance, worships and vegan food.
2017: Israel’s Legion
Run is scheduled to take place “along the beach at Kiryat Yam.”
2017: The Israeli Opera
is scheduled to perform “The Magic Flute” at 9:30 a.m.
2017: With today chosen
as National Beer Day, Jews must be wondering if there is Beer Day Sheni just as
there is a Pesach Sheni.
2018 (29th
of Nisan, 5778): Parashat Shemini and start of the Pirke Avot Study Cycle
2018(29th of
Nisan, 5778): “Sgt. Eliyahu Drori, 22 from Beit Shemesh, a combat soldier from
the 188th "Barak" Armored Brigade, was killed today in a tank
accident during operational activity on the Israel-Sinai border” and three of
his injured “tank teammates” were sent to Soroka Medical Center.
2018: Ronit Schachart
is scheduled to perform songs from “her latest album Lirdof Acharei HaRuach (Chasing After the Wind) at Noctorno Café
this evening in Jerusalem.
2019: “Rendered Void,
an exhibition of recent photographs and porcelain sculptures by Fellowship
Artist Gabriela Vainsencher, in her first solo show in New York is scheduled to
come to an end at A.I.R. Gallery III.
2019: The Illinois
Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host an afternoon with Ernest K. “Ernie”
Heimann as part of the Survivor Speaker series.
2019: In Atlanta, the
Breman Museum is scheduled to host the opening of the exhibition “The Life and
Legacy of Harry Houdini.”
2019: In Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, the Community Yom HaShoah Service is scheduled to take place this evening
at Coe College.
2019: The New York Times features reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including,
Hate: The Rise Tide of Anti-Semitism in France (and What It Means for Us)
by Marc Weitzman, Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichel, The
Lion’s Den: Zionism and the Left From Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky by
Susie Linfield and Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution
and End Mass Incarceration by Emily Bazelon
2020(20th of
Nisan, 5780): Sixth Day of Pesach; 5th day of Omer;
2020(20th of
Nisan, 5780): Yahrzeit Rabbi Ezekiel Panet; for more see https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/panet-ezekiel-ben-joseph
2020: In Israel, a
second Passover lockdown during which Israelis will not be allowed to leave
their cities and communities, is scheduled to begin at 5pm today and last until
Thursday at 5pm, covering the end of Passover on Wednesday and the Mimouna
celebration traditionally held by Jews of North African origin after the final
day of the holiday. (As reported by Itamar Eichner)
2020: The Streicker
Center is scheduled an on-line presentation by Neshama Carlebach, “Believe:
Choosing Joy.”
2021(2nd of
Iyar, 5781): Yom HaZikaron observed.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-hazikaron-israels-memorial-day/
2021: Rabbi Joshua M.
Davidson, the Senior Rabbi Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to the Yom HaZikaron observance “where members
of three bereaved families – Niza Shamah, the sister of Yigal Erez Z”L; Eli
Haliva, the son of Moseh Haliva Z”L and Michael Solomonov, brother of David
Solomonov Z”L – will share their personal stories of those who fell in defense
of the state of Israel.
2021: In Palm Beach
Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host, online, a Lunch and Learn with
Rabbi Yaron Kapitulnik will present “Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut through
the eyes of Israeli poets, songwriters, and artists.”
2021: The East Bay
International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a virtual screening of
“Here We Are.”
2021(2nd of
Iyar, 5781): Eighty-two year old Bernie Madoff who confessed to swindling thousands of clients out of
billions of dollars in investments over decades, in the largest private Ponzi
scheme in history died today at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, NC.
2021: In Virginia, the
Manassas Museum is scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald.”
2022: Lockdown
University is scheduled to host a webinar on “Hidden Islamic Sects of
Jerusalem” with Julian Barnett.
2022: Beginning this
evening the New York Jewish Week is scheduled to partner with the Marlene
Meyerson JCC Manhattan for their first-ever Virtual Passover Film Festival.
2022: In Jerusalem, the
Taste of the World Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2022: AJTis scheduled
to host “20 Newish and Jewish Plays you Should Know”
led by Adam Immerwahr
& Johanna Gruenhut
2022: Yiddishkayt's
founder Aaron Paley and acclaimed choreographer and filmmaker Tamar Rogoff are
scheduled to discuss her career and her work, The IVYE Project, which inspired
the founding of Yiddishkayt as an organization.
2023: As Israel’s
currency continues its downward trend, thanks in no small part to terror
attacks, rocket barrage and “the government’s efforts to radically overhaul the
country’s judiciary “Moody’s rating agency is set to publish its updated credit
score for” Israel today.
2023: Kan Kol Hamusika
is scheduled to broadcast live Singers of "Meitar" Opera Studio of
the Israel Opera
2023: Mimouna “a
traditional Maghrebi Jewish celebration dinner, that currently takes place in
Morocco, Israel, France, Canada, and other places around the world where Jews
of Maghrebi heritage live is scheduled to end this evening.
2023: After services.
Temple Judea is scheduled to host a Shabbat Diner that includes Israeli Salad,
Chicken Shawarma, Mediterranean Fish, Rice, Roasted Vegetables, Dips & Pita.
2024: Bruce Levy
Memorial Fund at the Jewish Endowment Foundation is scheduled to sponsor the
Jewish Family Service Passover Food Basket community distribution.
2024: The Museum at
Eldridge Steet is scheduled to host a performance of the Eyal Vilner Big Band
in its “Historic Main Sanctuary.”
2024: The exhibition
"I'll Have What She's Having": The Jewish Deli” is scheduled to close
at the Illinois Holocaust Museum.
2024: The Jewish
Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to host the reception marking
the opening of “Albert Einstein: Champion of Racial Justice and Equality” “which
explores Einstein’s contributions to civil rights and his deep friendships with
African Americans in Princeton and beyond and which explains how Einstein
worked to help the African American community and his relationship with some of
the 20th century’s civil rights leaders, including Paul Robeson.”
2024: “The Cleveland
Jewish News and Rock the House is scheduled to present the Mitzvah Showcase at Adrenaline Monkey” today.
The
Cleveland Jewish News and Rock the House present Mitzvah Showcase at Adrenaline
Monkey
2024: The American
Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “Socrates, Moses, and the Long
Fight Against Idolatry.’
2024: As April 14th
begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 191
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.)
2025(16th of
Nisan, 5785): Second day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
2025: In New Orleans,
Temple Sinai is scheduled to host the “Pride Seder.”
2025: Robert Edsell,
author of the must-read Monuments Men is scheduled to speak twice in
Austin, TX where he will participate in a book-signing for his latest work Remember
Us.
2025: 160th
anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, who led the
fight to save the Union from those who could not accept the outcome of a
Presidential election and were committed to slavery as a permanent way of life.
2025: 113th
anniversary of the Titanic, whose passenger list included Mr. and Mrs. Isidore
Straus, but did not include his brother Nathan who had missed the boat, struck
an iceberg just before midnight, starting events in “The Night to Remember.”
2025: As April 14th
begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of ant-Semitism sweeps across the
globe, the reality is that the remaining Hamas held hostages begin day 556 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)
2026: The National WWII
Museum of New Orleans is scheduled to host a Yom HaShoah Commemoration.
2026: The Streicker
Center is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Jerrilynn D. Dodds, the former
dean of Sarah Lawrance College on “The Spanish Jewish Experience.”
2026: The National
Center for Jewish Film is scheduled to present a screening of “All I Had Was
Nothingness.”
2026: In celebration of
YIVO’s 101st year, Darra Goldstein, the Willcox B. and Harriet M.
Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College and Founding Editor of
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture is scheduled to help kickoff the
new “Yiddish Civilization 101 Series.”
2026: Directed
Israel-Lebanon talks are set to begin today in Washington, D.C.
2026(27th of
Nisan, 5786): Yom HaShoah
2026: Dr. Alex Kor is
scheduled to share the extraordinary survival stories of his parents, Eva and
Mickey Kor, as well as the lessons of their lives: resilience and the power of
forgiveness at Cornell College as part of the Yom HaShoah observances
2026(27th of
Nisan, 5786): Seventy-fifth anniversary of the passage by the Knesset of a
resolution setting 27 Nissan as Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Remembrance
Day. Yom is the Hebrew word for 'day' and Shoah is the Hebrew word for
'whirlwind.' Shoah is the Hebrew term for the War Against the Jews that
claimed over six million lives between 1938 and 1945. In Israel, a morning
siren sounds, stopping all activity; people stand in honor of those who died.
Jews around the world hold memorials and vigils, often lighting six candles in
honor of the six million Holocaust victims. Many hold name-reading ceremonies
to memorialize those who perished. There are many websites to consult for this
observance including those supported by Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
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