This Day ... In Jewish History

This Day, January 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-28T15:49:00.002-06:00

January 29 In Jewish History

1421(17th of Shevat, 5181): The Jews of Sargossa, Spain were spared from slaughter at the hands of King Alfonso V , thanks to the fact that a handful of synagogues beadles had acted on the advice given to them by the Prophet Elijah in a dream shared by each of them. The resulting salvation on the 17th of Shevat was celebrated by Saragossan Jews, and dubbed "Purim Saragossa." A Hebrew Megillah (scroll) was penned, describing the details of the miraculous story. To this day, this scroll is read in certain communities on Purim Saragossa.

1455: Birthdate of Johann (Johannes) Reuchlin, a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew.

1482: Pope Sixtus V addresses a “severe letter” to Ferdinand and Isabella censuring the conduct of the Inquisition. “In this letter the pope admitted that he had issued the bull for the institution of the Inquisition without due consideration.”

1676(OS): Tsar Alexis I of Russia passed away. “During his reign a considerable number of Jews lived in Moscow and the interior of Russia. In a work of travels, written at that time, but published later, and bearing the title, Reise nach dem Norden the author states that, owing to the influence of a certain Stephan von Gaden, the czar's Jewish physician, the number of Jews considerably increased in Moscow. The same information is contained in the work, The Present State of Russia by Samuel Collins, who was also a physician at the court of the czar. From the edicts issued by Alexis Mikhailovich, it appears that the czar often granted the Jews passports with red seals (gosudarevy zhalovannyya gramoty), without which no foreigners could be admitted to the interior; and that they traveled without restriction to Moscow, dealing in cloth and jewelry, and even received from his court commissions to procure various articles of merchandise. Thus, in 1672, the Jewish merchants Samuel Jakovlev and his companions were commissioned at Moscow to go abroad and buy Hungarian wine.” Another edict “instructed a party of Lithuanian Jews to proceed from Kaluga to Nijni-Novgorod, and as a protection they received an escort of twenty sharpshooters.” The Czar’s attitude towards the Jews was a mixed bag as can be seen from his expulsion of “the Jews from the newly acquired Lithuanian and Polish cities” – Mohilev, Wilna, and Kiev. Altogether, taking into consideration the hatred of foreigners among the Russian population of his time, it is evident that Alexis was kindly disposed toward the Jews.”

1790: "The Jews of Paris obtained a certificate, couched in most flattering terms, and testifying to their excellent reputation, from the inhabitants of the district of the Carmelites, where most Jews dwelt at this time.”

1791: During the French Revolution, a Jewish delegation dressed in their uniforms as National Guardsmen and bearing certificates of ‘good behavior’ from the Christian citizens of Paris appeared before the Commune seeking support for their demand to be granted full rights as citizens of France.

1794: Ezekiel Hart, one of the early leaders of the Canadian-Jewish community married Frances Lazarus. She was the niece of Frances Noah and her husband Ephraim Hart, a successful New York merchant.

1803(6th of Sh'vat, 5563): Jonas Phillips passed away. Born in Germany in 1736, he was the first of the Phillips family to settle in America. A founder of Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, Phillips was the father of twenty-two children and the grandfather of Uriah Phillips Levy, the first Jewish Commodore in the United States Navy.

1803: Birthdate of Anselm Salomon von Rothschild, who was an Austrian banker, and a member of the Vienna branch of the Rothschild family, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany to baron Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and his wife Caroline.

1808: Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Canadian parliament but was prevented from taking his seat because as a Jew he could not take the oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Though reelected in May 1808, and in April 1809, he was again prevented from being seated. Only in 1832 was legislation passed allowing Jews to hold public office and giving them full civil rights. Born in 1767, Hart passed away in 1843.

1848: In a speech at the annual Thomas Paine Dinner, suffragist and anti-slavery activist Ernestine Rose declared "superstition keeps women ignorant, dependent, and enslaved beings. Knowledge will make them free." “Ernestine Rose, born in Poland in 1810, came to the U.S. at age 26 to help found a community of free-thinkers. Based on the ideas of Robert Owen, the free-thought movement emphasized individual liberty and economic cooperation. Having left Poland to escape an arranged marriage, Rose had encountered and adopted Owenite free-thought ideas in England, where she also met and married her husband. Once in the U.S., the Roses elected not to join a separatist Owenite colony, but instead became active in free-thought, abolitionist, and women's rights circles in New York City. By the 1840s, Rose was a regular speaker at the annual Thomas Paine dinner in New York, held to celebrate the January 29 birthday of the Revolutionary-era pamphleteer and freethinker. In an 1848 speech at that event, Rose combined anti-slavery and women's rights imagery with free-thought ideas. Borrowing language from abolitionist and women's rights activist Sarah Grimké, Rose told her audience that "superstition keeps women ignorant, dependent, and enslaved beings. Knowledge will make them free. The churches have been built upon their necks; and it is only by throwing them off, that they will be able to stand up in the full majesty of their being." This mixture of causes was a hallmark of Rose's oratory, and her popularity on the stages of various movements helped to advance them all. But Rose's work was not limited to giving speeches. In the 1840s, she worked with Susan B. Anthony to pass a New York state law that would protect married women's property rights. In 1869, she joined Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the National Woman's Suffrage Association. Anthony called her the "most eloquent ... speaker on our platform," and "that noble worker for the cause of women's rights." Though American women would not obtain the right to vote until more than a quarter-century after Rose's death in 1892, her activism was recognized by contemporaries as a key contribution to the suffrage movement.”

1852: Birthdate of Frederick Hyman Cohen, the native of Kingston Jamaica, who would gain fame as the Composer, Conductor, and Pianist, Sir Fredrick H. Cowen.

1856: Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross. Frank de Pass was the first Jew to be awarded Britain’s highest award for valor. He earned it for action on the Western Front on November 24, 1917. The award was made posthumously since he was killed the next day.

1859 (24th of Shevat, 5619): Passing of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk. Born in 1787, he was renowned Chassidic leader, and forerunner of the "Ger" Chassidic dynasty.

1860: Birthdate of Russian author Anton Chekhov. Unlike other Russian literary lions, Chekhov fully opposed anti-Semitism. He was a supporter of Dreyfus, publicly declaring his innocence and supporting Zola when he came to the defense of the French Colonel. When Alexsi Suvorin, his long time friend and literary colleague, attacked Zola as an agent of the Jews, Chekhov ended their professional and personal relationship.

1861: Kansas became the 34th state of the Union. One of the unique aspects of the history of the Jews of Kansas was the Jewish agricultural colonies that were established on the High Plains during the 1880’s. The Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society of America seven Jewish agricultural colonies in places with such Biblical and or Jewish names as Beersheba, Montefiore, Lasker, Leeser, and Touro, Gilead and Hebron. For more about this interesting attempt to create what Zionist would come to call The New Jew in America’s heartland see "Jewish Farming Communities Enriched Kansas Cultural Heritage" at http://www.kshs.org/features/feat1201.htm. Today there is a thriving Jewish Community in Kansas, much of it centered in Overland, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb.

1877(15th of Shevat, 5637): Tu B’Shevat

1877: It was reported today that according to an unconfirmed rumor, the Ottoman government is so desperate for money that it has offered to sell the Pashaluk of the Holy Land, which is effectively Palestine, to any candidate acceptable to the Jews in return for a loan. If the Jews are not interested, the Turks might make a similar offer to Brigham Young since agents of the Mormon have been reported making similar inquiries during the past year.

1878: Birthdate of Dr. Alexander Marx, the native of Elberfield, Germany who became the director of libraries and Jacob H. Schiff Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

1899: The meeting of the Zionist Actions Committee in Vienna came to an end.

1903: Herzl and the Actions Committee in Vienna work out the outline of a Charter which is taken to Cairo by the expedition and delivered to Leopold Greenberg.

1911: Birthdate of composer Bernard Herrmann. Among other works, he composed the music for “Citizens Kane,” “Torn Curtain,” “The Trouble With Harry” and “Psycho.”

1913: The British Consul in Jerusalem, P.J.C. McGregor wrote a dispatch assuring his government that he had talked to one of the leading Zionists in Palestine who denied reports in some British papers that the Palestinian Jews were pro Turk and pro German. This un-named leader assured the British diplomat that the Zionist sought the protection of the Union Jack since it was the only force that would support their goal of a Jewish home in Palestine.

1913: Birthdate of Nina Zimet Schneider. A native of Antwerp, Belgium, Schneider grew up in the United States where she combined forces with her Husband Herman to write dozens of books for children “that deftly explained the intricacies of stars, plants, the human body and even the networks of pipes and cables below the city streets…”

1913: Churchill sends a letter to the Reform Club announcing his resignation because Baron de Forest, his Jewish friend and Member of Parliament had been blackballed in his bid for membership.

1916: The opposition in the Senate yesterday to the nomination of Louis D. Brandeis of Boston to the Supreme Court of the United States appears to have been softened over night. One Democratic Senator, who is especially well placed for knowing the drift of sentiment on the subject, said today that twenty-four hours ago he would have estimated that two-thirds of the Senate was against Mr. Brandeis.

1918: Two days before his death, Zionist leader Dr. Jechiel Tchlenow wrote a letter to the convention of the English Zionist Federation which was to take place four days later in which he stated that the convention was of the greatest historical importance; that Great Britain is the traditional friend of the small nations and that history would record in letters of gold the English promise to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

1923: Birthdate of writer Paddy Chayevsky. Chayevsky created works both for the big screen and television. Some of his more famous efforts included Marty, Hospital and Network. “Television is democracy at its worst.”

1928: The New York Times reported on improving economic conditions in Palestine. For example, at Petakh Tikvah, an additional fifty Jewish workers have been hired and “the Arab lessees of local orange groves have promised to take on 200 more Jews within the next few days.”

1929: Birthdate of Richard Lawrence Ottinger who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York before he went on to pursue a career as a law school professor.

1928: When asked by an interviewer in an article published two days before his 80th birthday “When should one commence giving?” Nathan Straus replied, “As soon as one has a little more than he actually needs. At first it is hard. But afterwards it grows into a pleasure and there is nothing more satisfying, nothing to make one happier than to give in order to relieve the distress of others.” By “others” Mr. Straus means “men women and children of all races and creeds.” He has “the deep seated feeling that all humanity is one blood whatever the accident of birth or the circumstances of religious faith. We are all brothers and should help each other to the full extent of the opportunities that the one God of all mankind gives to each of us.

1932: The American Hebrew appeared for the last time. It would merge with the New York Jewish Tribune and re-appear as American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune

1932: In London, England, celebration of the 80th anniversary of the birth of famed composer, conductor and pianist Sir Frederic H. Cowen.

1933: Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis did not come to power through a coup or putsch. They came to power legally, using the German political and electoral processes.

1941(1st of Shevat, 5701): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1941(1st of Shevat, 5701): At the Lodz Ghetto, Bluma Lichtensztajn committed suicide and painter Maurycy Trebacz died of hunger. (He was one of five thousand Jews who will die of hunger over the next six months.)

1943: Germans execute 15 Poles at the village of Wierzbica for aiding three Jews. One of the victims is a two-year-old girl.

1944: In Trieste, the Nazis conduct a roundup of Jews aimed the old and sick people including those living in facilities for the aged.

1944: A Nazi court in Kraków, Poland, sentences five Poles to death for aiding Jews. One of the accused, Kazimierz Jozefek, is hanged in the public square.

1944: In Lithuania, Soviet led partisans including Jews from the Kovno and Vilnius ghettos attacked Koniuchy which was later described a pro-Nazi town from which Germans launched attacks against partisans. According to various reports several civilians were killed in the action which has led to it being described as a “massacre.”

1945(15th of Shevat, 5705): Tu B’Shevat

1947: Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" premiered in New York City

1948: The colleagues and friends of Dr. Alexander Marx will hold a reception in the reading room of the JTS Library so that they can celebrate his 70th birthday and congratulate him on his 45 years of service to the academic institution which is the flagship of Conservative Judaism.

1948: At its annual meeting in the Commodore Hotel, the board of governors of the Hebrew Union College approved an $8,000,000 "Blueprint for the Future."

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Mapam, by a vote of 228 to 22, expelled from the party one of its veteran Zionist leaders, Dr. Moshe Sneh. According to the Post's leading article there was no room in Mapam for two groups which justified the new Soviet anti-Semitic policy and this explained why Sneh, and his more extreme "Left Faction," were expelled. They were expected to join the Communists.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Juan Peron said that the gates of Argentina stood wide open to any Soviet Jew who wished to find shelter there. The offer was also valid for Jews from other Soviet-dominated countries.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Ministry of Interior closed the Communist daily Kol Ha'am for 10 days for publishing articles threatening the public peace.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that arson damaged the Russian bookshop in Jerusalem.

1962: Violinist Fritz Kreisler passed away. According to at least one source, Kreisler’s father was Jewish, but he was not. Reportedly Kreisler’s wife was an Austrian anti-Semite whose reactions to Kreisler’s ethnic origins have helped to cloud the issue. At least one of Kreisler’s brothers is reported to have said that he was Jewish but the same could not be said of Fritz.

1964(15th of Sh'vat, 5724): Tu B'Sh'vat

1964: Premiere of Stanley Kubrick's anti-war dark comedy, "Dr Strangelove"

1967 "Let's Sing Yiddish" closed at Brooks Atkinson in New York City NY after 107 performances.

1969: Birthdate of Dov Charney CEO of the garment company American Apparel.

1970(22nd of Shevat, 5730): Areyh Ben-Eliezer, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, a member of several pre-state organizations including Hebrew Committee for National Liberation, The American League for a Free Palestine and the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, passed away

1970: Gideon Patt, a sabra born in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, began serving in the Knesset following the death of Areyh Ben-Eliezer.

1975: Alan King hosted the First Annual Comedy Awards of the Year. Considering the number of Jewish comedians going back to the early days of vaudeville, the choice of the Jewish King is doubly appropriate.

1975: Birthdate of actress Sara Gilbert. Sara is the younger sister of Melissa Gilbert who starred in “Little House on the Prairie.” Sara starred in the sitcom “Roseanne” a twentieth century version of the family unit which provides a interesting counterpoint to the 19th version of the family shown on Little House on the Prairie.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Menachem Begin had reversed his earlier decision and recommended to the cabinet that the Israeli military delegation return to Cairo to resume negotiations. He hoped that the joint Egyptian-Israeli Political Committee would eventually resume its meetings in Jerusalem. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made a direct appeal to US Jewry and complained "that the behavior of the Israeli government had been negative and disappointing." Egypt, according to its Foreign Ministry statements, would never bargain over its territory and will always defend the rights of the Palestinians.

1989: The New York Times reported that a Holocaust museum is to be built on the National Mall in Washington, DC has received thousands of artifacts, including letters, diaries, arm bands and secret coded communications between inmates.

1989: The New York Times reported that a Jewish institute plans to donate $100,000 for training black South African medical workers. The grant will be presented to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

1990: Yuli M. Vorontsov, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, met with the head of Israel's consular delegation in Moscow, Aryeh Levin. Mr. Vorontsov was quoted as saying, ''We oppose any use of citizens' leaving the Soviet Union, at great risk to them, to push Palestinians off land belonging to them.'' Soviet displeasure over the settlement debate is also threatening an agreement reached between El Al and Aeroflot for direct flights between Moscow and Tel Aviv. The head of the Soviet consular mission in Israel, Georgi Martirosov, told reporters on Monday that ''recent Israeli statements have hindered any possibility of moving this process forward.''

1991: After several days of growing frustration over the slow pace of allied efforts to eliminate Iraq's Scud missile launchers, Israeli officials warned today that Israel may not wait much longer before it attacks. An Israeli television interviewer offered a sentiment common among Israelis when he told Defense Minister Moshe Arens this evening: "The Americans keep bombing launchers but haven't been terribly effective. Meanwhile, Americans are watching the Super Bowl, and Israelis are sitting in shelters and sealed rooms." Mr. Arens responded: "The situation you described isn't going to continue -- not two months, and not a month. I simply estimate that a situation in which we'll be neutral or not active, and their ability to launch missiles against us isn't eliminated, it won't continue for a long time."

1991: In a meeting with a visiting French politician today, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is reported to have said that Israel wants to play an active role in the battle against Iraq but is constrained by limits imposed by the United States. Mr. Shamir said he hoped the limits would be lifted soon. Iraq has fired 26 missiles at Haifa or Tel Aviv on seven occasions over the last 12 days, killing four people and wounding nearly 200. More than 2,000 apartments have been seriously damaged or destroyed. Elementary schools remain closed because there are too few teachers to help children put on gas masks quickly when the missile alert sounds. Productivity in business and industry is off. Much of the nation is traumatized. For the first time, Israel is under attack and unable to respond.

1991: Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman will share a stage in New York today when they team up to honor Zubin Mehta. The three violinists will appear at the annual lunch that benefits the orchestra. Last week, Mr. Mehta turned around en route to New York from Europe and flew to Tel Aviv on the eve of the war in the Persian Gulf as a show of support for Israel, where he is musical director of the national orchestra.

1992: Gila Almajor, performed a one-woman play entitled “The Summer of Aviya” which she wrote as part of “Israel: The Next Generation.”

1992: The daughter of Abie Nathan the Israeli philanthropist and peace campaigner, Sharona Nathan El Saieh, accepted the Abraham Joshua Heschel Peace Award from the Jewish Peace Fellowship today on behalf of her father because Mr. Nathan is in prison in Israel. In October, he was sentenced to 18 months for violating an Israeli law prohibiting contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. He had met with the P.L.O. chairman, in Tunis in July. The award, named for the late theologian and educator, also went to Yehudi Menuhin,the violinist, and Dr. Jane Evans D, executive director emeritus of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. The Jewish Peace Fellowship was founded 50 years ago to promote conscientious objection among Jews.

1993: Feeling bolstered by a seal of approval from the country's High Court of Justice, Israel renewed its diplomatic offensive today to stave off United Nations sanctions over its deportation of more than 400 Palestinians to Lebanon.

2000(22nd of Sh'vat, 5760): Harold H. Greene a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia who was nominated by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 passed away.

2001: Prime Minister Ehud Barak campaigned inside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, where he spoke to a small group of disabled Israelis and some youth advocates.

2002: In the battered center of Jerusalem, beefed-up police squads guarded sidewalks and street corners today as weary shopkeepers opened for business and workers repaired the stores damaged by a bomb set off yesterday by a Palestinian woman. Along the main street, Jaffa Road, where two terrorist attacks in six days have killed three Israelis and wounded dozens, the routines of daily life became a test of bravery. Shmuel Kapash waited for customers in his empty shoe shop as an employee peered warily out the front door. Going back to work this morning was no easy matter, they said. ''I'm scared, but I have to make a living,'' Mr. Kapash said. ''I can't stay home, but I think twice before going out of the store for some fresh air. I try not to step out.'' After yesterday’s attack, the Israeli Merchants Association demanded that the government give shopkeepers in urban centers that have been targets of attacks tax breaks similar to those granted to businesses in communities along Israel's borders. In downtown Jerusalem, the disappearance of tourists and many shoppers has drastically cut sales. At the Freiman & Bein shoe store, a Jerusalem institution for more than 50 years, Yoach Freiman stood in the debris left by the bomb, which went off just outside the front door. The store has functioned continuously on Jaffa Road, through war and peace, since 1947, and it was not about to close now, Mr. Freiman asserted. ''We don't have the right to close down or to be frightened by such incidents,'' he said of the latest bombing. ''We owe it to our customers, who have been coming here for four generations. The principle is to continue our normal lives.''

2004: A Palestinian suicide bomber killed 10 Israelis in Jerusalem today.

2004: As she was returning to her home in Rehavia after having left her child at kindergarten, award winning-Israeli author Zeruya Shalev was severely injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a near-by bus. Shalev is the daughter-in-law of Israeli playwright Aharon Megged and the cousin of award winning author Meir Shalev. [Meir Shalev’s latest literary effort is “Beginnings,” a must read for anybody interested in the TaNaCh and Jewish philosophy and history]

2004: Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah carried through with their deal to exchange prisoners and war dead today, in a trade greeted in Israel by a spare ceremony for three fallen soldiers and in Lebanon by a day of national celebration. Besides the soldiers -- Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Sawayed -- Hezbollah also freed an Israeli businessman, Elhanan Tannenbaum, kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000. Unlike the returning Lebanese, Mr. Tannenbaum, who said he had been treated well in captivity, did not receive a hero's welcome. He was permitted a brief reunion with his family at the airport, and was then taken away for a medical check and questioning by the Israeli authorities about possible illegal activities, Israeli officials said.

2004: The Thirteenth Annual New York Jewish Film Festival comes to an end.

2006: A day after International Holocaust Memorial Day, the new Chancellor of Germany met with the acting Prime Minister of Israel. In one of those amazing turnabouts in history German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany would have no contact with Hamas until it disavowed terrorism and recognized Israel and all agreements signed with it. This declaration comes in the face of the recent electoral victory by Hamas, an organization dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel and death to the Jewish people.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville by Bernard-Henri Lévy

2007: Haaretz reported that according to the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism this past year saw a substantial rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries. In an annual press conference, the forum explained that 2006 was characterized by escalation in the number and violent nature of attacks on Jews, proliferation of Holocaust denial and increased comparison of Israel to the Nazi regime. The Global Forum - a joint effort of the Jewish Agency, the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office - counted 360 anti-Semitic incidents in France in 2006, compared to 300 in 2005. In the United Kingdom, the report listed a yearly decrease from 321 incidents in 2005 to 312 incidents in 2006. Russia recorded 300 incidents in 2006 compared to 250 the preceding year, and Austria saw a jump from 50 incidents to 83 last year. The Scandinavian countries saw 53 incidents in 2006, substantially more than the previous year's 35. The report cited a 60-percent rise in incidents in the Berlin area, although it did not include figures for all of Germany.

2007(10th of Shevat): A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip blew himself up today inside a bakery in the Israeli resort city of Eilat, killing all three people inside. The two owners of the bakery, Amil Elimelech, 32, and Michael Ben Sa'adon, 27 were killed in the attack as well as one of their employees, Israel Samolia, 26. Elimelech was married with two children while Ben Sa'adon was married with one child. Samolia was an immigrant from Peru. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, each took credit for the bombing.

2008: In New York City, the 92nd St Y hosts “Commando Krva Maga: Israeli Self Defense” where attendees learn defense skills developed by the Israeli military, now popular with civilians.

2008: In Iowa City, the funeral is held for Dr. Michael Balch, Associate Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Iowa and a long time member of the Jewish community. Michael earned a BS in Engineering Science from Pratt Institute in 1960 an MS from New York University in 1962 and a PhD in Mathematics from New York University in1965. His areas of expertise were Economic behavior under uncertainty and Theories of deterrence, arms control, and war. He passed away on January 28, 2008 (21 Shevat, 5768).

2008: Barnard College named as its next president Debora L. Spar, a Harvard Business School professor who has written about the economics of the human fertility industry and the evolution of the Internet but has not previously been affiliated with a women’s college. Professor Spar, 44, whose appointment is effective July 1, will succeed Judith R. Shapiro, president since 1994, the college announced on Tuesday morning. “We never expected to have anybody until March or April or May, but she was too good to pass up,” said Helene L. Kaplan, a Barnard trustee and one of two leaders of its presidential search committee. “She’s bright, she’s lively, she’s young and she’s very energetic.”

2009: Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the former (now emeritus) president of George Washington University, discusses and signs Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks Out on Higher Education at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, Md.

2009: An American appeals court today dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts. Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia had filed suit against the Vatican bank in 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered the looted assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who were killed or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia. They sought an accounting from the Vatican, as well as restitution and damages. The court didn't rule on the allegations. In its decision, the court said the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, was a sovereign entity entitled to the protections of the foreign sovereign immunities act, and that therefore U.S. courts had no jurisdiction. The pope himself has been granted such protections in U.S. courts hearing clerical sex abuse cases. Jeffrey Lena, who represented the Vatican Bank in the case, said he was gratified with the ruling since the court decided not only that the IOR was a sovereign entity but that as such it was immune from U.S. jurisdiction. "In defending the lawsuit, the IOR did not challenge the allegations of the plaintiffs that they had suffered terrible losses at the hands of the Ustasha," he told The Associated Press. "Rather the challenge was simply to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts over the IOR." Jonathan Levy, who represents the survivors, said he thought he had sufficiently shown that the Vatican bank engaged in commercial activities in the United States, which can serve as an exemption to the protections granted by the immunities act. "The reason we're disappointed is the court found that dealing in gold teeth from concentration camps was not a commercial act," he said. In its ruling, the court said that the Vatican banks' U.S. commercial activities were "too tangentially related to their legal claims to be considered the basis for the suit." Levy said he didn't plan to appeal the judgment. The victims are also suing the Franciscans, the Roman Catholic order, on identical charges, and that portion of the lawsuit is going ahead, he said. The survivors filed suit against the Vatican Bank a year after Swiss Banks agreed to pay some $1.25 billion to Nazi victims and their families who accused the banks of stealing, concealing or sending to the Nazis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings. Many of the survivors named as plaintiffs in the suit live in the United States.

2009: “The Wedding Song,” Karin Albou’s story of a friendship between a Muslim man and a Jewish woman, set in Tunisia during the Nazi occupation is featured tonight at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2010: An exhibition entitled Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin is scheduled to have its final showing at the JCC in Washington, D.C. Siona Benjamin is a painter originally from the Bombay Jewish (Bene Israel) community now living in the United States.

2010: The Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem is scheduled to celebrate Tu Bishvat from a bit of a different angle, with parents and children and having a chance to learn about the connection between planting trees and global warming. The initiative is part of the museum's ACCENT events, which teach about the the subjects of environmental sustainability, in order to raise awareness and action so as to reduce carbon emissions.

2010: The Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Chapter of Hadassah is scheduled to sponsor a Tu B'Shevat Seder and Shabbat Services at Temple Judah.

2010: US President Barack Obama's national security adviser cited a heightened risk that Iran will respond to growing pressure over its nuclear program by stoking violence against Israel. The adviser, retired Marine Gen. James Jones, said today that history shows that when regimes are feeling pressure they can lash out through surrogates. He said that in Iran's case that would mean facilitating attacks on Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas

2011: A screening of The Matchmaker directed by Avi Nesher is scheduled to take place at the Seventh Annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival.

2011: Internationally recognized rising star, Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to join Orpheus for the first time in a performance of Prokofiev’s hauntingly beautiful second violin concerto at Carnegie Hall.

2011: “A Musical Mitzvah Evening” the Mitzvah Day fundraiser for Agudas Achim is scheduled to take place in Iowa City, IA.

2011: Israel watched fearfully today as anti-government unrest roiled Egypt, one of its most important allies and a bridge to the wider Arab world. The Israeli prime minister ordered government spokesmen to keep silent. Officials speaking anonymously nonethless expressed concern violence could threaten ties with Egypt and spread to the Palestinian Authority. The Egyptian unrest dominated Israeli media. Israeli TV news channels provided hourly updates. Israel Radio reported extensively on developments and dubbed its broadcasts "Fire on the Nile."Writing in the Haaretz daily, columnist Aluf Benn speculated that President Hosni Mubarak's "fading power" leaves Israel with few friends in the Middle East. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today called Mubarak, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Abbas told the Egyptian leader that he is eager to see Egypt stable and secure, the agency said. If Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood -- the main opposition group -- gains power in the turmoil, the balance of power between the rival Palestinian camps could change. Abbas is backed by the West, while his Islamic militant Hamas rivals draw their support from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Hamas is the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Two Israeli officials said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered all government spokesmen not to comment on the mass riots in Egypt, where protesters are demanding Mubarak resign after nearly 30 years in power. Both officials were speaking on condition of anonymity. The spokesmen have likely been silenced out of fears that any perceived Israeli involvement could further compromise an ally whose ouster would pose a serious threat to Israel.

2011: An official at Cairo International Airport said today that El Al was trying to arrange a special flight Saturday to take roughly 200 Israeli tourists out of Egypt. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

2011: At Coe College in Cedar Rapids, the final performance of “Copenhagen” in which Barb Feller played Margrethe Bohr and her husband Steve played Niels Bohr

2012: “The Religion Thing” is scheduled to have its final performance at Theatre J in Washington, D.C.

2012: A display featuring a selection of 32 Chanukah lamps selected by Maurice Sendak is scheduled to come to a close today at the Jewish Museum in New York.

2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Boulder JCC in Boulder, CO.

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Ida” by Gertrude Stein, “Stanzas in Meditation: The Corrected Edition” by Gertrude Stein, “Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition” by Marni Davis, “The Street Sweeper” by Elliot Perlman and “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World.”

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, January 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-27T17:25:00.003-06:00

January 28 In History

814: Charlemagne passed away. The grandson of Charles Martel was one of the greatest European rulers during the Dark Ages. There was nothing Dark about his treatment of the Jews. For the most part, he ignored canon law and the wishes of the Pope and treated the Jews of his realm rather decently.

1077: As a result of an event called the Walk to Canossa, Pope Gregory VII lifted he excommunication of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. This was part of the struggle between the Church and the temporal rulers as to who would be the final voice of authority in Europe. Jews could not have taken comfort in this apparent success of Gregory over Henry. Gregory was hostile to Jewish interest. This can be seen in his letter to King Alfonso forbidding Jews to hold public office or to “have power over Christians.” Furthermore, he ordered the King to have the Jews pay special “Jew Taxes” throughout his kingdom. Henry was protective of his Jewish subjects. He issued charters to the Jews of Speyer and Worms allowing them to trade in these cities and to practice their religion according to their laws and practices. Furthermore, during the Crusades, he defied Christian doctrine and the Pope, by supporting the right of Jews who had been forced to convert “to disregard their baptism and return to Judaism.”

1167(4927): Poet and philosopher Abraham Ibn Ezra, hero of the golden age of Spain, passed away. There is some disagreement about when this sage actually passed away. Some say he passed away in 1164. Others say that he passed away on January 23. Although specificity as to the date of his death may not be possible, there is no doubt about his greatness. This brief blog cannot do him justice so here are two sites where you can at least gain a nodding acquaintance with the life and work of this sage.

1547: King Henry VIII of England passed away. When seeking to divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn, Henry sought to make use of Biblical law in his fight with Rome. He thought that Rabbis, learned in the matter, might be of some help. Since Jews were not supposed to be living in England, Henry was forced to seek out Rabbis living in Italy. While the Rabbis offered some help, they were loathe to give too much assistance to a monarch in far away England lest they offend and anger the Pope who could make miserable for the Jews of Italy.

1573: Articles of the Warsaw Confederation are signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland. The primary beneficiaries of the document were competing Christian groups – Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox. Jews continued to enjoy the benefits of The General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz that had been promulgated at the end of the 13th century.

1594(5354): Elia Levita passed away. Born in 1469, he was “also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Eliahu Bakhur ("Eliahu the Bachelor"). He “was a Renaissance-period Hebrew grammarian, poet and one of the first writers in the Yiddish language. He was the author of the Bovo-Bukh the most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is ‘generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish.’”

1668: Pope Clement IX canceled the humiliating forced races known as the Palio. During the Plaio near naked Jews were forced to run through the streets of Rome during carnival time. In return for the revocation the Jews of Rome had to pay a special cancellation tax of 200 ducats. This tax was paid for almost 200 years.

1717: Birthdate of Mustafa III. During his reign, the Ottoman Empire continued to decline as a world power and became less accepting of non-Moslems. Mustafa personally helped to enforce the decrees regarding clothing that could be worn by his subjects. “In 1758, he was walking incognito in Istanbul and ordered the beheading of a Jew and an Armenian seen dressed in forbidden attire.”

1789: Lieutenant Colonel David Salisbury Franks, one of the highest ranking Jewish officers to serve in the American Army during the revolution was granted four hundred acres in recognition of his military service. Franks was one of the founders of the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary war veterans.

1790: The French National Assembly granted full and equal citizenship to the Portuguese and Avignonese Jews. The Jews of Alsace would have to wait until 1791 to be granted these same rights. France was the first European country to pass such liberal legislation.

1800 (2nd of Shevat, 5560): Chasidic Master Rabbi Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli passed away. While there is much to say about this sage, most know him because of the following story or one of its variants. “Reb Zusha was on his deathbed surrounded by his disciples. He was crying and no one could comfort him. One student asked his Rebbe, "Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham." Reb Zusha answered, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham,' rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?'”

1814(7th of Shevat, 5574): Rabbi Dovid of Lelov passed away. He was the first Grand Rabbi of the Lelover Dynasty. The Lelovers moved from Poland to Jerusalem in the late 1840’s or early 1850’s.

1849: Isaac Noah Mannheimer delivered a speech in the Austrian Reichstag on the abolition of capital punishment.

1851: Emma and Philip Salomons gave birth to Sir David Lionel Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons, who gained fame as an author, scientist and barrister.

1860: The community of Kingston, Jamaica, “which is composed chiefly of Jews” have been making contributions for the relief of their suffering brethren of Morocco. They have managed to collect large sums in spite of the prevailing poverty.

1860: An article entitled “Relief of the Jews in Austria” published today reported that “from Austria, amid the echoes of Hungarian dissatisfaction, and Tyrolese boldness, come the reports of promised reform. It is stated as a certain fact that in a few days the Emperor will issue a decree, relieving the Jews from many disabilities under which they now lie. The law which forbade a Jew to have a Christian servant is already repealed; and the emancipated Israelite can now rejoice in the possession of a cook who hasn't a conscientious objection to getting up and making a fire, of a Saturday morning. The expected decree will abolish the old law, by which no one of the three witnesses required for a Christian's will could be a Jew -- a blind provision, which has been the source of more trouble to Christians than Jews. Then the rule, still on the statute-books in Austria, that a Jew's evidence in a civil case against a Christian should be considered as "doubtful," will be done away; as also the present prohibition, which prevents any but a Christian from filling the office of Notary. This last provision is no older than 1855. Before that year Jews were allowed to be Notaries, and it is said that there is a Jewish Notary in Prague, who was appointed under the old law, and holds his office still. It is proper that the Government should concede these rights to an oppressed class; but one cannot but notice how, through these reforms, it hopes to escape more pressing and important demands from its subjects. Hungary demands her constitutional rights, and the Emperor grants a couple of reforms to Venice. Tyrol desires her ancient and guaranteed privileges, and he emancipates the Jews at Prague! No matter -- the day is coming.”

1862: Birthdate of Hannah Bachman Einstein, an activist for child welfare in both Jewish and secular settings. Einstein “was raised in New York City's Temple Emanu-El, a German Reform congregation. As an adult, she remained active in the Temple, and in 1897, she became president of the sisterhood, a position she held for twenty-five years. One of Einstein's activities as sisterhood president was visiting the homes of recent immigrants. She soon became convinced that the private relief provided by the Temple would never be sufficient to alleviate the problems of this group. Only government action, she decided, could address the myriad social problems that immigrants and other impoverished people faced. Joining with other activists, Einstein lobbied the New York State legislature for widowed mothers' pensions, which would enable widowed women to care for their children without working outside the home. In 1913, she was appointed chair of the state committee to investigate the issue. Her committee wrote what became the Child Welfare Law of 1915, which became the national model. By 1920, nearly all the states had passed similar legislation. In the wake of her committee's success, Einstein became president of the New York State Association of Child Welfare Boards, served as the first woman on the board of the United Hebrew Charities, and helped found the National Union of Public Child Welfare Officers. Einstein died in New York City in 1929.

1865(1st of Shevat, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1871: Paris surrendered to the Prussians. This marked the end of the Franco-Prussian War. From the point of view of history, this was the first of a three act play. The second act was World War I and the third act was World War II, including the Holocaust.

1873: Lewis J. Cohen and Henry Lehman, the Jewish proprietors of a store on Chatham Street, were sentenced to a month in the Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary after having been convicted of verbally abusing a visitor to their shop named Robert J. Quinlan.

1873: B’nai B’rith held its annual meeting at Masonic Hall in Manhattan tonight. According to the treasurer’s report, the society has $58, 961.76 in assets. Founded 14 years ago, the society has 6,096 members.

1874: Rabbi S.M. Isaacs officiated at the wedding of Jacob Schnizter and Cordelia Menken, the daughter of the lat Solomon Menken.

1874: In Chicago, Illinois, The B’nai B’rith adjourned the third day of its national convention at 7 o’clock this evening.

1874: In Chicago, Illinois, delegates to the national B’nai B’rith convention attended a banquet at the Sherman House.

1875: Gratz Nathan, a prominent 30 year old New York lawyer who had served as the Assistant Corporation Attorney, attempted to commit suicide in his office tonight. Nathan gained a certain kind of unwanted notoriety when his uncle, Judge Cardozo, was impeached.

1876: Birthdate of Irving Lehman, New York lawyer and jurist.

1877: The New York Times featured a review of John Peter Lange’s “Commentary of the Holy Scriptures” which focuses on the period of Persian rule when the exiles returned from Babylonia. The commentaries are tied to the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

1878: The annual convention of the District Grand Lodge No.1 of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rit came to a close today after a second day of meetings. The delegates will attend a banquet at Nilsson Hall this evening to mark the end of the event.

1880: Birthdate of Herbert Max Finlay Freudnlich, the German chemist who served the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from 1919 until his forced retirement in 1933. His father was Jewish. His mother was not. He passed away in 1941 in Minneapolis, MN.

1887: Birthdate of pianist Arthur Rubinstein

1888(15th of Shevat, 5648): Tu B’Shevat

1892: Birthdate of German –born American director Ernst Lubitsch. His movies are witty and sophisticated, with a fine and malicious sexuality: in all of them there is the famous "Lubitsch touch", that is an unconventional way to make a picture, based on his sarcastic sense of humour and his scornful view of life. Lubitsch had turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911 he was a member of Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. His first film work came in 1912 as an actor. Gradually, he abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and in 1918 he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), a tragic drama starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch subsequently alternated between escapist comedies and grand-scale historical dramas; he enjoyed great international success with both. His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry (Passion, 1919) and Anna Boleyn (Deception, 1920). Lubitsch left Germany for Hollywood in 1922, invited by Mary Pickford. She allowed Lubitsch to sign with Warner Bros., where he established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish and delightful films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926). In 1928, when sound arrived in Hollywood, Lubitsch joined Paramount Pictures. With his first talkie, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies (and got himself another Oscar nomination). With the beginning of the sound era, he created witty and sarcastic dialogue, and malicious and bizarre comedic situations. The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. But whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934), or without, as in Paramount's delicious Trouble in Paradise (1932, certainly his best film), One Hour with You (1932) and Design for Living (1933), Lubitsch continued to specialize in sophisticated comedy. He made only one other dramatic film, an antiwar picture, titled Broken Lullaby (aka The Man I Killed, 1932). In 1935 he was appointed that studio's production manager and subsequently produced his own films and supervised the production of films of other directors. In 1939, Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed the divine Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, a satirical and scintillating comedy in which the great actress laughed for the first time on the screen. Then he directed the delightful The Shop Around the Corner(1940), with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of secret admirers. He went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again, and the cynical anti-Nazi comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942), Carole Lombard’s last picture. Lubitsch spent the balance of his career at 20th Century Fox, but a heart condition curtailed his activity. The last great picture made by the director is certainly Heaven Can Wait (1943), an elegant and ironic comedy. The plot is about Henry Van Cleve (played by Don Ameche) who presents himself at the gates of Hell only to find he is closely vetted on his qualifications for entry; surprised there is any question on his suitability, he recounts his lively life and the women he has known from his mother onwards, but mainly concentrating on his happy but sometimes difficult twenty-five years of marriage to Martha (played by the beautiful Gene Tierney).In March of 1947 he was awarded a special Academy Award for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures". He died later that year of a heart attack, his sixth. His last film, That Lady in Ermine, with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously in 1948. At the director's funeral, the great Billy Wilder said, "No more Lubitsch," and William Wyler responded, "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures".

1897: In Baltimore, the closing session of the Fifth Annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society.

1903: Herzl appoints Leopold Kessler as leader of the commission "for the exploration of the feasibility of settling in the northern half of the Sinai Peninsula.

1905: Birthdate of Barnett Newmann. Newmann was an American artist who is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters. Newman was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He studied philosophy at the City College of New York and worked in his father's business manufacturing clothing. From the 1930s he made paintings, said to be in an expressionist style, but eventually destroyed all these works. In the 1940s he first worked in a surrealist mode before developing his mature style. This is characterized by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, or "zips" as Newman called them. In the first works featuring zips, the color fields are variegated, but later the colors are pure and flat. Newman himself thought that he reached his fully mature style with the Onement series (from 1948). The zip remained a constant feature of Newman's work throughout his life. In some paintings of the 1950s, such as The Wild, which is eight feet tall by one and a half inches wide, the zip is all there is to the work. Newman also made a few sculptures which are essentially three-dimensional zips. Although Newman's paintings appear to be purely abstract, and many of them were originally untitled, the names he later gave them hinted at specific subjects being addressed, often with a Jewish theme. Two paintings from the early 1950s, for example, are called Adam and Eve (see Adam and Eve), and there is also Uriel (1954) and Abraham (1949), a very dark painting, which as well as being the name of a biblical patriach, was also the name of Newman's father, who had died in 1947. The Stations of the Cross series of black and white paintings (1958-64), begun shortly after Newman had recovered from a heart attack, is usually regarded as the peak of his achievement. The series is subtitled "Lema sabachthani" - "why have you forsaken me" - words spoken by Christ on the cross. Newman saw these words as having universal significance in his own time. The series has also been seen an a memorial to the victims of the holocaust. Newman's late works, such as the Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue series, use vibrant, pure colors, often on very large canvases - Anna's Light (1968), named in memory of his mother who had died in 1965, is his largest work, twenty-eight feet wide by nine feet tall. Newman also worked on shaped canvases late in life, with Chartres (1969), for example, being triangular, and returned to sculpture, making a small number of sleek pieces in steel. These later works are executed in acrylic paint rather than the oil paint of earlier pieces. Of his sculptures, Broken Obelisk is the most monumental and perhaps best-known, depicting an inverted obelisk whose point balances on the apex of a pyramid. ewman also made a series of lithographs, the 18 Cantos (1963-64) which, according to Newman, are meant to be evocotive of music. He also made a small number of etchings. Newman is generally classified as an abstract expressionist on account of his working in New York City in the 1950s, associating with other artists of the group and developing an abstract style which owed little or nothing to European art. However, his rejection of the expressive brushwork employed by other abstract expressionists such as Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, and his use of hard-edged areas of flat color, can be seen as a precursor to post painterly abstraction and the minimalist works of artists such as Frank Stella. Newman was unappreciated as an artist for much of his life, being overlooked in favor of more colorful characters such as Jackson Pollock. The influential critic Clement Greenberg wrote enthusiastically about him, but it was not until the end of his life that he began to be taken really seriously. He was, however, an important influence on many younger painters. Newman died in New York City of a heart attack in 1970.

1912: The New York Times published a description of President Taft’s appearance as guest of honor at The Daughter of Jacobs Ball. The President was greeted by a throng of between 12,000 and 15,000 who had come together to raise funds for the Infirmary of the Daughters of Jacob on East Broadway. In his speech, Taft praised the Jewish people for “their perfect system of charitable institutions to look after their poor and infirm.” The President left the ball as the band played Boola-Boola.

1912: Birthdate of comedian “Professor” Irwin Corey.

1914(1st of Sh'vat, 5674): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1915: An act of Congress merged the Revenue Cutter Service with the Life-Saving Service creating the United States Coast Guard. Some of the Jews were members of, or associated with this valiant force were: musician and vocalist, Mel Torme,; Arthur Fiedler who “volunteered during the early days of World War II for the Temporary Reserve of the U.S. Coast Guard and was later a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary” and comedian and television star Sid Caear who joined the Coast Guard in 1939. This proved to be a boon to his carrer. Assigned to play in military shows, he caught the attention of producer Max Liebman, who was impressed by his ability to make other musicians laugh. Liebman took him out of the orchestra and cast him as a comedian, jump-starting his career upon release from the Coast Guard in 1945. And the rest is show biz history. When Sid Caesar was celebrating his 80th birthday, The Coast Guard presented him with a public service award that read as follows:
"The Commandant of the United Stated Coast Guard takes great pleasure in wishing a joyous 80th birthday to Coast Guard veteran Sid Caesar and presenting to him this Coast Guard Certificate of Appreciation, in recognition of his public support of the Coast Guard, most notably in the early days of his career as an actor, musician and comedian and more recently as public spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard. Mr. Caesar joined the Coast Guard in 1939, after studying saxophone at the Julliard School of Music and playing in a number of prominent big bands. In the Coast Guard, he was assigned to play in military revues and shows, such as "Tars and Spars," but he showed a natural penchant for comedy by entertaining other band members with his improvised routines, prompting show producer Max Liebman to move him from the orchestra and cast him as a stand-up comedian to entertain troops, jump-starting his career upon his release from the Coast Guard in 1945. After leaving the Coast Guard, Mr. Caesar went on to perform his "war routine" in both the stage and movie versions of the revue, and continued under Liebman's guidance after the war, in theatrical performances in the Catskills and Florida, but he never forgot the service that launched his career. Mr. Caesar's performance distinguished the Coast Guard as an honorable and valuable service. Friends and acquaintances say he always kept the Coast Guard close to his heart, especially its hardworking enlisted members. Each and every time the Coast Guard asked Mr. Caesar for a favor, he came through for us, whether it was speaking before the Coast Guard Chief Petty Officers Association or recording audio public service announcements for Coast Guard recruiting campaigns. His respect, admiration and fondness for our service shines bright. Mr. Caesar's years of generosity, concern and dedication to the Coast Guard family are deeply appreciated and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Coast Guard and public service."

1916: President Woodrow Wilson appointed Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Brandeis was the first Jewish member of the court. Although there was opposition to a Jewish justice in some quarters, Brandeis was followed by two more distinguished Jewish Supremes - Benjamin Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter. Brandeis was an active member of the American Jewish Community. He was an early an ardent Zionist. Unfortunately he did not live to see the creation of the modern state of Israel.

1917: James Malcom, an Armenian businessman and advocate for an independent Armenian state, introduces Chaim Weitzman to Sir Mark Sykes. Sykes is a protégé of Lord Kichner and a dominant, if not the dominant, force in forming British policy in the Middle East. Weitzman is seeking Sykes’ support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine after World War I.

1918(15th of Sh'vat, 5678):Tu B'Shvat

1918 In Jerusalem, the cornerstone is laid for Hebrew University.

1918: Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein) became leader of “the Reds.”

1923: The First "Reich’s Party" (NSDAP) forms in Munich. These are the Nazis.

1926(13th of Sh'vat, 5686): Kaufman Kohler, the German born American leader who was one of the great leaders of Reform Judaism, passed away today in New York at the age of 83.

1928: Birthdate of Hal Prince, American stage producer and director.

1929: The British government is reportedly planning on building a road to the Megiddo Excavation which is being funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

1934 (12th of Shevat, 5694): German Chemist Fritz Haber passed away at the age of 65. Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1918.

1938: The Palestine Post published a major study on the extent of the 'Octopus of Nazi Propaganda in Syria.' There were two major German propaganda centers in the Middle East: one in Cairo for Egypt, Sudan, Palestine and Transjordan, and the second in Baghdad, for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The Germans proved to be masters in the art of propaganda and anti-Semitic incitement spread by their well-trained agents and maintained a number of exclusive, influential clubs in major cities. Large bribes were handed over for the 'Arab victims of the Jewish aggression in Palestine.

1938(8th of Sh'vat, 5699): Louis Cohen a New York mobster who murdered labor racketeer "Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan and was an associate of labor racketeer Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was killed today along with Isadore Friedman shortly before they were to testify against Buchalter.

1941: Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and one of the “fathers of modern public relations,” writes a letter to the New York Times opposing a proposal by Dr. Harwood L. Childs of Princeton University that the U.S. should create a national propaganda ministry.

1943: Over the next 3 days, ten thousand Jews from Pruzhany, Belorussia, are deported to Auschwitz.

1944: Leonard Bernstein's "Jeremiah" premiered in Pittsburg.

1945: The weekly internal report of the War Refugee Board, states that the United States would permanently close its War Refugee office in Turkey. The outgoing representative stated, "Inadequate sources of information and communication channels render impossible the orderly organization or direction from Turkey of any rescue activities...."

1949: Israel was recognized (diplomatically) by Australia, Belgium, Chile, Great Britain, Holland, Luxembourg, and New Zealand.

1950: Birthdate of Barbara Klein who gain fame as Barbi Benton, friend of Hugh Hefner, Playboy Bunny and regular on the television country comedy hit, “Hee Haw.”

1950 (10th of Shevat, 5710): On the secular calendar the date on which Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn or Friyerdikker Rebbe ("Previous Rebbe" in Yiddish) or Rayatz) passed away. "Born in 1880, he was the sixth Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic Judaism movement. After many years of fighting to keep Judaism alive in the Soviet Union, he was forced into exile, which eventually brought him to the United States after spending some years in Poland. He was the father-in-law to the last and most famous Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson. Joseph Isaac Schneersohn was born in Lubavitch, Belarus (then Russian empire). He was appointed as his father's personal secretary at the age of fifteen. In 1897 at the age of seventeen he married a distant cousin Nehama Dina Schneersohn. He was appointed as the first head of the new Tomchei Temimin network of Lubavitch yeshivas in Russian empire. As he matured, he campaigned for the rights of Jews by appearing before the Czarist authorities in St. Petersburg and Moscow. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 he sought relief for Jewish conscripts in the Russian army by sending them kosher food and supplies. With rising anti-Semitism and pogroms against Jews, he traveled with other prominent rabbis to seek help from Western European governments. He was arrested four times between 1902 and 1911 by the Czarist police because of his activism, but was released each time. Upon the death of his father Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn in 1920 Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn became the sixth Rebbe (paramount leader) of Lubavitch. It was a time of great social and political upheaval following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War 1914 - 1918 as Russia was first defeated by Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II and then succumbed to the Russian Civil War after the execution of the last Czar Nicholas II and the entire royal family in 1918. The victorious anti-religious secular -minded Bolsheviks, with Jews who had joined the Communist Party in their midst, were intent on uprooting and suppressing all religious life in the "new" Soviet Russia. Following the takeover of Russia by the Communists, they created a special "Jewish affairs section" known as the Yevsektsiya which instigated anti-Jewish activities meant to strip Jews of their Torah -centered way of life based on Orthodox Judaism and its ancient codes such as the Shulkhan Arukh and the Shulchan Aruch HaRav laws compiled by the first Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. As Rebbe of a Russian-based segment of the Jewish people, Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn was vehemently outspoken against the new aggressive Communist regime and its goals to establish atheism in the land. He purposely directed his followers to set up religious schools going against the dictates of the Marxist Leninist "dictatorship of the proletariat". Thus in 1927 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Spalerno prison in Leningrad. He was tried by an armed council of revolutionaries who repeatedly threatened his life waving guns in his face. He was sentenced to death. A world-wide storm of outrage and pressure from Western governments forced the communist regime to commute the death sentence and instead banished him to Kostroma on the Urals for three years. This was also commuted following political pressure from the outside, and he was finally allowed to leave Russia for Riga in Latvia 1928 - 1929. He then went to visit the Eretz Israel) and the USA where he was received by US President Herbert Hoover in the White House. From 1934 until the early part of the Second World War he lived in Warsaw Poland. Following the Nazi Germany attack against Poland in 1939 Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn refused to leave Warsaw. He remained in the city during the bombardments and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. He gave the full support of his organizations under Chabad Hasidism to assist as many Jews as possible to flee the invading armies. With the intercession of the United States Department of State in Washington, DC (at that time Germany was not at war with the USA) and with the lobbying of many Jewish leaders on behalf of the Rebbe, he was finally granted diplomatic immunity and given safe conduct to go to New York City where he arrived on March 19, 1940. Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn was already physically weak and ill from his suffering at the hands of the Communists and the Nazis, but he had a strong vision of rebuilding Orthodox Judaism in America and he wanted his movement to spearhead it. In order to do so he went on a crash building campaign to establish religious Jewish Day Schools and yeshivas for boys and girls, seminaries for women and rabbinical colleges for men during the last decade of his life, from 1940 to 1950 when he was often unable to stand up due to his past sufferings in prisons and interrogations. He settled himself in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in New York City. He established publications, printing houses for the voluminous writings of his movement, and started the process of trying to win over the Jewish masses world-wide to his cause. He began to teach publicly, and many came to seek out his teachings. He began gathering and sending out a small amount of his newly trained rabbis to other cities which was emulated and amplified by his son-in-law and successor Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson with phenomenal success. In 1948 he established a Lubavitch village in Israel known as Kfar Chabad near Lod. When he died in 1950, he was buried in the Borough of Queens in New York City. He had no sons, so his two remaining sons-in-law were left to run the Lubavitch movement. His gravesite became a central point of focus for his successor who would visit it weekly for many hours of meditation and supplication."

1952(1st of Sh'vat, 5712): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Soviet-controlled Hungarian regime was deporting Jews to work camps in a Soviet-inspired anti-Semitic campaign, resembling that of the Nazi era. In a similar manner Czechoslovakia started purging Jewish doctors in order 'to prevent the threat of a repetition of the murder of Soviet leaders.' The Knesset approved vastly increased customs duties on a series of commodities, including the food parcels sent to Israelis by their relatives from abroad. This increase was expected to cover at least a part of the budget deficit, which stood at IL 5.6 million, as claimed by the government, or IL 25m. as claimed by the opposition

1958: Dore Schary's "Sunrise at Campobello" premieres in New York City

1959 (19th of Shevat, 5719): Joseph Sprinzak, Speaker of Israel Knesset from 1949 until 1959, passed away. A dedicated Labor Zionist Sprinzak was one of the unsung founders of the early Zionist movement who dedicated their lives to creation of the Jewish homeland.

1965: Three days after the death of Winston Churchill, “Halina Neuman, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote to The New York Times” expressing her feelings about Britain’s war time leader. To Neuman, for those trapped in the darkness of Nazi Europe, Churchill’s speeches and the sound of his voice were a light, a beacon of hope and proof “that the world was not coming to an end.”

1968: Ya’acov Ra’anan, commander of the INS Dakar, had wanted to enter his home port today but was told to stick to the original schedule and dock the boat on January 29 as planned.

1969: In the ever shifting sands of Israeli party politics, the Labor Party and Mapam created a political allicance called the Alignment.

1986 (18th of Shevat, 5746): The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members: flight commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka; Judith A. Resnik; Gregory B. Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. “Among the seven crewmembers killed was Judith Resnik, the first American Jewish astronaut in space. Resnik joined the space program in 1978 after graduating from Carnegie-Mellon with a B.S. in electrical engineering and the University of Maryland with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Prior to the 1986 Challenger tragedy, Resnik served as the mission specialist on Discovery's maiden voyage in 1984, logging 144 hours 57 minutes in space. Resnik was the second American woman in space (after Sally Ride) and the fourth worldwide. Before joining the space program, Resnik worked in the radar division of RCA, as a biomedical engineer in neurophysics at the National Institute of Health, and finally for the Xerox corporation. She was accepted into the NASA program, along with five other women, in 1978. An Akron, Ohio, native, Resnik was a classical pianist and a gourmet cook, and also enjoyed running and bicycling. She was active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the IEEE Committee on Professional Opportunities for Women, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of University Women.”

1991: Iraq fired another missile with a conventional warhead at Tel Aviv tonight, the seventh attack in 12 days. But this time the army said the Scud was defective and disintegrated as it fell back to earth. No one was hurt, and there was no property damage. The missile had fallen apart even before any Patriot air-defense missiles could be fired at it.

1992: As part of “Israel: The Next Generation,” a performance is given of “‘Jabar’s Head, a cabaret show presented in Arabic, Hebrew, and English by the Beit Hagefen Theatre”

1992(23rd of Shevat, 5752): Nahman Avigad, Israeli archaeologist, passed away at the age of 86. Avigad led the team that found the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter.

1993: At New York’s Plaza Hotel, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and the Zahal Disabled Veterans Organization, which operates two sports rehabilitation and social centers in Tel Aviv and Haifa and is building a facility in Jerusalem, receive the 10th annual Defender of Jerusalem Awards from the Jabotinsky Foundation.

1996 (7th of Shevat, 5756): Jerry Siegel noted cartoonist and creator of Superman passed away at the age of 81. Whether it is highbrow (see next entry) or lowbrow, there always seems to be a Jew somewhere creating American Culture.

1996(7th of Shevat, 5756): Joseph Brodsky passes away at the age of 55. Born in Russia in 1940, the famed poet would survive persecution in his native and exile to the United States to win the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature and become Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991.

1996: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” closed at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre after 116 performances

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Newest Place in the World by Suzanne Ruta, Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer and the Jewish Confederates by Robert N. Rosen.

2002(15th of Sh'vat, 5762) Tu B'Shvat

2002: Today Mark Sokolow, who escaped without injury from the second tower of the World Trade Center during the attack on September 11, was walking with his family in the scarred central shopping district here when a Palestinian bomber set off an explosion that resounded throughout Jerusalem, killing herself and an 81-year-old man and wounding 113, most of them slightly. ''I was a lot luckier last time,'' Mr. Sokolow, a 43-year-old lawyer from Woodmere, N.Y., said as he recovered in a hospital here from shrapnel wounds to his face and leg. ''This one involved my whole family.'' After a frantic search for his wife and two of his daughters, he learned at the hospital that most of their wounds were also slight, though one girl, Jamie, 12, had shrapnel in her right eye. She was likely to retain her sight, doctors said. The blast scattered burning body parts across Jaffa Road and sent a cloud of swirling dust and circling pigeons into the air, witnesses said. The attack was steps from where a Palestinian gunman raked the area with semiautomatic gunfire last week, killing two and wounding 20 before being shot dead by the police. If the bomber in the attack today intended to die, she would be the first female suicide bomber to strike in Israel since such attacks began here in 1994, the police said. Minutes after the explosion, Ariel Ohayon, 30, sobbed, ''Where's my wife?'' as he searched through the pandemonium of wounded people, broken glass and shouting police officers. ''My wife disappeared, and I don't know where she is.'' A rescue worker directed him to a nearby hospital, Bikur Holim. As Jerusalem's police chief, Mickey Levy, visited the scene he suffered a heart attack. He was able to walk with assistance to Bikur Holim, where he underwent surgery. He was likely to make a full recovery within days, the police said. Of the 113 wounded, the police said, 2 were wounded seriously and 5 moderately. The dead man was identified as Pinhas Toktaly, a seventh-generation resident of Jerusalem who was returning from an art class. The attack took place just below Jaffa Road's intersection with King George Street. In 16 months of conflict, that area had already been the scene of eight bombings or shootings that killed 28, besides the attackers. Some store owners on the block had just replaced windows broken in last week’s gunfire attack, only to see them shattered again today. ''This is life?'' asked one shopkeeper, Edmund Barocher. ''This is a way to live?'' The blast threw him into the air inside his shoe store, Mr. Barocher said, but he not venture out to see the destruction. ''Who's got the strength anymore?'' he asked. Across from the shoe shop, Kami Malkan, 37, said his own store was ''full of flesh -- it's unbelievable.'' Boaz Sabbagh, 29, said he and his fiancée, Moriah Levy, 18, had been thrown by the bomb's concussion into the kiosk where he sells snacks and cigarettes. The kiosk has been his family's business for 40 years, but Mr. Sabbagh said he was through. ''Business was down 70 percent, anyway,'' he said. ''There's no point in continuing.'' Down the street, the blast knocked plaster from the ceiling of the music store managed by Yossi Tzah, 31. ''It's the main street of Jerusalem,'' he said. ''Imagine this in the main street of Washington or New York. If this scenario was in the United States, the Arabs after 24 hours wouldn't be alive or would be in custody. We have too much patience in this country.'' That music store played a role in a suicide bombing in August that killed 15 around the corner at the Sbarro pizzeria. The bomb was hidden in a guitar case bought at the store, according to the police, Mr. Tzah said. Freiman & Bein, the shoe store, is a Jerusalem institution. With a carousel for children and a broad inventory, it continued to draw customers as the area became more dangerous. The Sokolow family from Woodmere, on Long Island, paid it a visit as part of a shopping expedition on the last day of a visit to the eldest daughter, who is studying here for a year. They had just walked out of the store when the bomb went off. ''I heard a loud whooshing noise and then a bang,'' Mr. Sokolow said. ''I found myself running to the left, I think down the road. A number of people were pulling me out of the road to safety.'' Mr. Sokolow, who once worked on the 38th floor of the second tower of the World Trade Center, said that originally only he and his wife, Rina, had planned to visit. They decided to bring their two daughters after the attack in New York. ''I felt it was more important, more meaningful that we do this, come here and spend time in Israel,'' he said. ''I think it's important that people come here,'' he said. ''I want to emphasize maybe they should stay away from places that are targets.''

2003: Ariel Sharon emerges victorious in Israeli elections today which included the defeat of Amram Mitzna, the leader of the Labor Party. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his rightist party, Likud, crushed Israel's Labor Party in parliamentary elections, as voters vented their doubts about any prompt, secure end to the bitter conflict with the Palestinians. Based on results from 99.9 percent of the polling centers, Likud won 37 seats, and Labor only 19 -- the fewest ever for the party with a mighty past. Another clear winner was an anti-religious party, Shinui, which appears to have surged to 15 seats from 6 in the last Parliament. Israel registered its lowest voter turnout ever -- which at 68.5 percent is still a level of participation that the United States might envy. Nearly 79 percent of voters cast ballots in the last parliamentary elections, in 1999. Politicians and political scientists said some voters sat on their hands in the belief that Mr. Sharon's victory was assured. But they said others stayed away out of anger at corruption scandals or despair of any party's curing Israel's ills.

2004: The memory day for Greek Jews who lost their lives in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau was honored by the Jewish community in Thessalonica. In northern Greece, in the presence of US Ambassador to Athens Thomas Miller, Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel and representatives of the city's political and cultural sectors. Events got underway in the morning with wreaths being laid at the Jewish Holocaust memorial by Miller, Wiesel, Central Jewish Board President Moisis Konstantinidis, German Ambassador Alper Spiegel, French Consul Roland Blatman, Russian Consul Aleksander Osvikan and Thessalonica Prefect Panayiotis Psomiadis, while on behalf of the New Democracy party leader a wreath was laid by Deputy Sotiris Kouvelas and on behalf of the mayor of Thessalonica by municipal councilor Aspasidis. The events continued at the amphitheatre of the Byzantine Instruments Museum, where the Jewish community's choir sang for those who died in the concentration camps and for peace. The main speaker was Wiesel, who was given the Nobel peace prize in 1986, who said he was very moved to be in Thessalonica since the Greek Jews put to death in concentration camps were mainly from Thessalonica and added that he had met many of them when he had been detained there with his family. He also pointed out that it is unfair that the contribution and resistance of the Jews of Thessalonica is not mentioned by history and that he himself felt it his duty to refer to them in his books. Moreover, he said people must remember history, be aware of what is happening in the rest of the world and not be indifferent about the problems of other peoples. Wiesel also noted the importance of the decision taken by the Greek Parliament to establish January 27 as the Memory Day of Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust.

2006(28th of Tevet, 5766): Kabbalah sage Rabbi Yitzhak Kedouri passed away at the Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem. His precise age was unknown, but estimated to be somewhere between 106 and 113 years old. Rabbi Kedouri was born in Iraq at the turn of the 20th century. He began his studies in Jewish mysticism in his youth, before coming to Israel in 1923. Kaduri, known as "the senior Kabbalist," is the last of a generation of Sephardic Jewish mystics. His close circle of friends and family say he was one of the few known living Kabbalist who used "practical Kabbalah," a type of Jewish magic aimed at affecting a change in the world. More rational schools of Judaism are skeptical about Kaduri's powers. Nevertheless, few doubted Kaduri's righteousness and vast knowledge of both conventional and more esoteric Jewish thought and law. For most of his life Kaduri was unknown to the general public. He led a modest life of study and prayer and worked as a bookbinder. During the past decade and a half he served as the head of Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Bukharan quarter.

2007: Maccabiah U.S.A. (MUSA) held its annual meeting in Newark, New Jersey.

2007: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present by Michael B. Oren.

2007: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by the late Carl Sagan.

2007: The Los Angeles Times book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Little Book of Plagiarism by Judge Richard A. Posner.

2007: The Times of London featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including of Imposture by Benjamin Markovits.

2008: In Seattle, Washington, the final performance of “The Westerbork Serenade.” “The Westerbork Serenade” is a one-person play which tells the true story of Jewish cabaret performers held by the Nazis in the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork. From 1942-1944, some of Berlin's greatest stars performed at Westerbork, thereby delaying their transport to death camps. Most, however, were killed before the end of the war. The play contains period songs, sketches and accounts. “The Westerbork Serenade” is the title of an acerbic love song about camp life written by Dutch singing duo, Johnny and Jones, in 1944, just months before their deportation to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen death camps.

2008: U.S. News & World Report features an article entitled “New Taste for Kosher Food” that begins “Not only Jews look for the kosher symbol on food these days. In a surprising turn of events, "kosher" has become the most popular claim on new food products, trouncing "organic" and "no additives or preservatives," according to a recent report. A noteworthy 4,719 new kosher items were launched in the United States last year—nearly double the number of new "all natural" products, which placed second in the report, issued last month by Mintel, a Chicago-based market research firm. In fact, sales of kosher foods have risen an estimated 15 percent a year for the past decade. Yet Jews, whose religious doctrine mandates the observance of kosher dietary laws, make up only 20 percent of those buying kosher products. What gives? "It's the belief among all consumers that kosher food is safer, a critical thing right now with worries about the integrity of the food supply," says Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior analyst at Mintel a Chicago based market research firm.

2008: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Palestinian refugees belong in their own state and do not have a "literal" right of return to Israel. "The outlines of any agreement would involve ensuring that Israel remains a Jewish state.” He reiterated his support for a two-state solution, but said, "We cannot move forward until there is some confidence that the Palestinians are able to provide the security apparatus that would prevent constant attacks against Israel from taking place." His statements of support for the Israeli position on refugees came on the heels of scurrilous charges that Obama is secretly a Muslim who received a radical Wahabi education.

2008: Israeli officials said today that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak held talks in Paris last week with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf even though their countries have no diplomatic relations. The two men first met by chance in the hotel where Barak was staying and spoke briefly, a spokeswoman from his ministry told AFP. The following day, Musharraf invited Barak for a meeting and the two talked for about an hour, focusing on Iran s nuclear program, she said.

2008 (21 Shevat, 5768): In Iowa City Dr. Michael Balch, Associate Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Iowa and a long time member of the Jewish community passed away. Michael earned a BS in Engineering Science from Pratt Institute in 1960 an MS from New York University in 1962 and a PhD in Mathematics from New York University in1965. His areas of expertise were Economic behavior under uncertainty and Theories of deterrence, arms control, and war.

2009: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents a lecture by Yedid Kanfter entitled: “The Lodz Towers of Babel: Industry and Religious Politics in Lodz Before the First World War” in which the Yale University professor explores the link between Lodz and religious infrastructure, between industry and Orthodox politics. In the years before WWI, the industrial city of Lodz was a center of Jewish religion in Russian Poland.

2009: The Jerusalem Conference hosts its concluding session. The Jerusalem Conference is the unique annual forum co-sponsored by Arutz Sheva for the discussion of Israel's national priorities, social values, and aspirations. Every year the Jerusalem Conference hosts key figures and policy makers from Israel and around the world -- all leaders in the political, economic, academic, communal, security, military, and rabbinic spheres. Originally, the 2009 Jerusalem Conference planned to focus on the "New Leadership and New Directions" that will emerge this year in Israel and the United States following their national elections. In the last two weeks, in response to the massive Hamas rocket attack on Israeli citizens and the IDF’s response, the Conference expanded its focus to analyze the decisive war being waged against Hamas, Iran and Islamic radicalism.

2009: “Stumbling Stone,” a documentary study of the artist Gunter Demnig and his continuing Holocaust memorial project is shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2009: “Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh” opens today in Manhattan.

2009: Israel's chief rabbinate severed ties with the Vatican today to protest a papal decision to reinstate a bishop who publicly denied 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The Jewish state's highest religious authority sent a letter to the Holy See expressing "sorrow and pain" at the papal decision. "It will be very difficult for the chief rabbinate of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before," the letter said. Chief rabbis of both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews were parties to the letter. The rabbinate, which faxed a copy of the letter to The Associated Press, also canceled a meeting with the Vatican set for March. The rabbinate and the state of Israel have separate ties with the Vatican, and Wednesday's move does not affect state relations. Pope Benedict XVI, faced with an uproar over the bishop, said today he feels "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews and warned against any denial of the full horror of the Nazi genocide. The remarks were his first public comments. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican hoped that in light of the pope's words, "the difficulties expressed by the Israeli Rabbinate can be subjected to further and deeper reflection."
Lombardi expressed hope that dialogue between the two parties can continue "fruitfully and serenely." Oded Weiner, the director general of the chief rabbinate's office, welcomed the pope's remarks, calling them "a big step toward reconciliation."With his comments, the pope reached out to Jews angered by his decision to rehabilitate bishop Richard Williamson, who told Swedish TV in an interview broadcast last week that evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews being deliberately gassed." He said 300,000 Jews were killed at most, "but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber." About 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Many were gassed in death camps while others were killed en masse in other ways, including shooting and starvation. About 240,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel. Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Israel's quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, denounced the Vatican for bringing a Holocaust denier back into the fold. The Vatican quickly distanced itself from Williamson's comments and said removing the excommunication by no means implied the Vatican shared his views. Williamson and three other bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by an ultraconservative archbishop without papal consent _ a move the Vatican at the time called an act of schism. Benedict said today he had lifted the excommunication because the bishops had "repeatedly shown their deep suffering over the situation." The German-born Benedict expressed his "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews. He recalled his visits to the Auschwitz death camp _ including as pope in May 2006 _ and the "brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred." The Vatican and the rabbinate launched formal relations in 2000 when Pope John Paul II visited Jerusalem. Since then, delegates from the Holy See and the rabbinate have met twice a year to discuss religious issues. This is the first time ties have been severed. The Vatican and the state of Israel have had their own relationship since establishing diplomatic ties in 1993.

2010: In New York City, closing day of "Laba’s Guests" at Laba Gallery, New York

2010: Walter Isaacson is scheduled to discuss and sign his new book, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane, at Barnes & Noble in Bethesda, Md.

2010: Novelist Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season and Wickett's Remedy, is scheduled to “chat” about "The Story Behind the Stories" at the D.C. Jewish Community Center. This event, co-sponsored with George Washington University, is the launch of the JCC's new series, "Authors Out Loud."

2010: Elisa New is scheduled to discuss and sign her new memoir, "Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore," at Barnes & Noble in Rockville, Md.

2010: Israeli drip irrigation giant Netafim opened a new factory in Turkey today despite recent diplomatic tensions between the two countries.The factory will produce the heavier pipes for the many projects the company has in Turkey, with future expansion to supply surrounding European countries an option, the company said. All of the sprinkler heads are still made at kibbutzim. Netafim has been active for several years in Turkish projects.The cutting-edge factory was established outside Adana in south-central Anatolia, with Turkey’s Minister of Agriculture, Mehdi Eker, and the city’s mayor, Aytac Durak, on hand. Netafim is the world’s largest and leading provider of drip and micro-irrigation solutions. Company sales reached over $600 million in 2008. Netafim maintains business ventures in over 110 countries, and operates through 35 subsidiaries and 13 production facilities worldwide. The company has 2,300 employees.

2010(13th of Sh'vat, 5770) Seymour Bernard Sarason, professor emeritus of psychology at Yale University passed away in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 91. Seymour was the founder and the “conscience” of the field of community psychology, a prophetic and guiding light in the study of school culture and reform in education, and a groundbreaking leader in the field of mental retardation. Seymour (as he was known by all) was unique not only because he elevated intellectual debate in these three fields but also because he was among the most beloved of psychologists. He was a deeply loving and caring person who had a profound personal impact on hundreds of people, even those he met briefly. He was a central force in each of our lives: an emotional and intellectual father, a visionary, and a mentor. The three of us worked closely with him during his “Camelot years” at the Psycho-Educational Clinic at Yale as a student (RSW) and as colleagues (DR and ML) Seymour was born on January 12, 1919, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents, the late Maxwell and Anna (Silverlight) Sarason. The family, including his brother Irwin and sister Mildred, moved to Newark, New Jersey, when Seymour was six. In his autobiography, The Making of an American Psychologist (1988, Jossey-Bass), Seymour described his childhood self as deeply attuned to a sense of place (geographically, historically, and culturally), as an achiever, and as always asking “Why?” Shaped by the Depression, poverty, immigrant roots, and a disability, he lived in an unpredictable world in which the concept of “options” was totally foreign. Two early events were critical: A cousin's intervention caused his parents to enroll him in a college preparatory instead of a commercial course in high school, and he was stricken with polio as a teenager. Urged by his mother, he wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt asking for treatment that his family could not afford, and he ended up in a six-month inpatient treatment program. Although he made an almost complete recovery, the disease left him with a lifelong legacy of disability. He became a champion of the downtrodden. He came to believe that the enhancement of the psychological sense of community was essential to the positive mental health of all people and that qualities of settings could either enhance or hinder development. Seymour earned his undergraduate degree from Dana College in Newark (now Rutgers University) in 1939 and his doctorate in clinical psychology from Clark University in 1942 at the age of 23 (his mentor was Saul Rosenzweig). He met Esther Kroop, a fellow graduate student, and they married in 1943. Their intellectual and emotional partnership lasted 50 years until Esther's tragic death in a 1993 automobile accident. He is survived by his devoted daughter Julie Sarason, her husband Paul Feuerstein, his grandson Nathaniel, and his companion Irma Miller. His brother and sister-in-law, psychologists Irwin and Barbara Sarason, and his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Irving and Eugenia Kroop, also survive him.Seymour's first job (1942–1945) was as chief psychologist at the Southbury Training School in Connecticut, at the time a new and innovative institution for the mentally retarded. During these formative years, Seymour saw how art, under the skillful teaching of Henry Schaefer-Simmern, could unleash the creativity of those whom society deemed mentally challenged. Here Seymour developed his humanistic view of mental retardation, became skeptical about the misuses of IQ testing for social, political and organizational purposes, and became fascinated with a question that propelled his later work: Why does the innovative impetus of a new setting fade so rapidly? In 1945, Seymour accepted a faculty position in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, where he spent the next 45 years—his entire professional career. He was a prolific writer (45 books and 66 articles), and many of his writings are viewed as classics. As he would say to countless disciples, “Why write an article when a book is needed?” His first book, Psychological Problems in Mental Deficiency (Harper & Brothers, 1949; 4th ed., 1969), presented an entirely new way of understanding and addressing mental retardation. For the first time, social-cultural determinants were included in a broadened behavioral science perspective. A few years later he wrote his seminal book on The Clinical Interaction (1956, Harper & Brothers), which remains one of the most sensitive descriptions of the situational determinants of the testing situation. During the 1950s, he focused on the neglected issue of children's test anxiety and produced a series of empirical studies and a coauthored book that provided the foundation for research and understanding of this profoundly important emotion in children's lives. With Burton Blatt and Ken Davidson, he wrote the influential The Preparation of Teachers: An Unstudied Problem in Education (1962, Wiley), a major critique of teacher education that contributed to changing practices in schools of education throughout the country. 1961, Seymour created the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic (1961–1970), a critical forerunner to the founding of community psychology. The Clinic marked the end of Seymour's “running a research factory” and began his active engagement in creating and changing community settings. By providing this new setting for observation, action, and reflection, he made it possible for faculty and students to work directly in the community with schools, youth programs, and institutions for the retarded and the delinquent. Seymour challenged the “individual treatment” focus of clinical psychology and shifted attention toward the settings in which human problems were located. He argued that both the settings themselves and the targeted individuals needed to be objects of effective interventions. The 1966 book Psychology in Community Settings (Wiley) coauthored with Levine, Goldenberg, Cherlin, and Bennett, described the work of the Clinic and provided an early definition of community psychology. The lessons Seymour learned at the Clinic resulted in three signature volumes published in the early 1970s: The Culture of Schools and the Process of Change (1971, 1982, Allyn & Bacon), The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (1972, Jossey-Bass), and The Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for a Community Psychology (1975, Jossey-Bass). These landmark volumes integrated keen observations from the field with political, sociological, anthropological, psychological, organizational, and philosophical insights. Ever sensitive to historical and cultural context, Seymour provided a conceptual framework and language for understanding the qualities of social settings that hinder human development and the challenges that confront social and institutional changes. The books provided an original and insightful analysis of previously unidentified problems involved in the creation and change of settings. They were a clarion call for a preventive stance and for social action in schools, communities, and society at large. Throughout his life, Seymour was a penetrating observer of the underlying but often ignored qualities of schools, especially as they impacted children and teachers, as well as an incisive critic of educational reform. Revisiting the Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (1996, Teachers College Press) offered a powerful critique of top-down reforms and their failure to address deep-seated “regularities” of schooling. It spoke deeply to the experience of educators and became a bible for many working to improve schools. In a continual stream of books from the 1970s until 2007, Seymour boldly challenged conventional wisdom about school reform, emphasizing the overarching importance of creating a context for productive learning for students and teachers alike. His contributions remain seminal for understanding school culture, productive learning, teacher preparation, teaching as a performing art, political governance, parent involvement, and charter schools. Seymour was also an outspoken critic of psychology. His socially cast observations rudely collided with the ahistorical individualism of psychology. He railed against a psychology that patterned itself after medicine, did not take education seriously, and neglected caring (see Psychology Misdirected [1981, Free Press]; American Psychology & Schools: A Critique [2001, Teachers College Press]; and Caring and Compassion in Clinical Practic e [1986, Jossey-Bass]). He even wrote a novel, St. James and Goldstein at Yale (2005, iUniverse). Ever the social critic, in his last book, Centers for Ending: The Coming Crisis in the Care of Aged People (2010, Springer), he described his experiences in residential care communities. The body of work that Seymour produced across his career reflects an astonishing range of topics about which his analysis was always informed and riveting. He was in every way the “Renaissance and public scholar” he aspired to be. He worked in the bold tradition of John Dewey, William James, and Sigmund Freud, whom he described as his intellectual mentors. Among his many awards were the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Clinical Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA; 1969); the Distinguished Contributions Award from the Division of Education and Psychology, American Association of Mental Deficiency (1973); the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community Psychology and Mental Health from APA Division 27 (1975); the APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (1984); the Lifetime Contribution to Education Award from the American Federation of Teachers (1989); and the Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Contributions by a Psychologist in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Foundation (1996). He was the recipient of three honorary degrees (Syracuse University, Queens College, and the University of Rhode Island) and a distinguished service medal (Columbia University). The Society for Community Research and Action established an award in his name. Beyond the remarkable legacy of his written work and the community programs shaped by his vision, Seymour's personal impact on innumerable students, scholars, and practitioners has been unparalleled. As his door was always open and his stance was ever welcoming, old and new friends sought his counsel until his dying days. Seymour created that loving context for learning about which he wrote so passionately. So who was this intellectual giant of a man whose passing left such an aching void? Most of all, he was a beloved mensch!

2011: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to host its Shababa Bakery where children of all ages can “squish, roll and braid” their own challah to take home and bake for Shabbat.

2011: Ezra Rosenfeld is scheduled to lead a guided tour of “the amazing mountain palace and fortress of Herodion” that many consider King Herod's "Piece de Resistance."

2011: Rabbi Edward Feld, the senior editor of the new Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative) High Holy Day Mahzor was not able to deliver his lecutre about “Why Words?”—a discussion of how we relate to words in a prayer book at Congregation Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, VA because of a snow storm and power outage.

2011: Paraguay has joined a string of South American nations in recognizing an independent Palestinian state. A declaration from the government of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo made today also recognizes "Palestine's" borders predating the 1967 Six Day War. Paraguay issued its declaration today, ahead of a mid-February summit in Peru of South American and Arab leaders. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador all made similar proclamations in recent weeks. Chile and Peru also recognized a sovereign Palestine. But they said the border issue must be worked out between Israelis and Palestinians. Earlier in the week, Ireland upgraded its relations with the Palestinian Authority, but did not go so far as to recognize a Palestinian state. The move was slammed by Israeli officials.

2011(22nd of Shevat, 5771): Gerry Faier, a longtime gay activist in New York who returned to Jewish practice in her later years, passed away today at 102. Faier joined the front lines of community protests, organized neighbors to fight for jobs and wages, and participated in boycotts for better access to transportation and groceries. In her later years she was a founder of the organization Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Faier was featured in the 1989 book “Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish,” telling her story about coming out as a lesbian in 1938, one of the earliest to be documented: "I’m a seventy-nine year-old great grandmother who also happens to be a lesbian. I was a person who felt like such an outcast ... I carried guilt, embarrassment, shame, isolation, and all of the ugliness that society heaped on my kind of people -- gay people -- and we internalized it all to such a degree that it made us sneaky ... And my life was lived that way for a long time, until I realized that I’m a person, I’m a wonderful person, I’m a very unique woman." Returning to Jewish practice late in life, Faier became active in the Greenwich Village synagogue Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, where she taught herself to read Hebrew from the siddur and celebrated her 100th birthday in 2008. In remembering Faier, the synagogue’s Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum said that “She was unique, feisty and outrageous to the end. We honor her as an elder, and her memory will be for a blessing for all of us.” Faier was born in 1908 to Polish immigrant parents, was briefly married and had two children. She met her lover, Ethel Cohen, in 1948, and they were together for 40 years. (As reported by the Eulogizer)

2012: “Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber” is scheduled to be shown at the Brotherhood Film Festival sponsored by Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York and the Virginia Peninsula Jewish Film Festival in Williamsburg, Va.

2012: Rachel Feinstein is scheduled perform on the final night of the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

2012: In Iowa City, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host “Support Mitzvah Day 2012” a fund raiser sponsored by the Tikkun Olam Committee.

Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin
Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

This Day, January 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-26T17:55:00.002-06:00

January 27 In Jewish History

98: Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva. The second of the three Jewish revolts against Roman authority took place at the end of Trajan’s reign. This second revolt took place in the Diaspora. It started in 115 and lasted until 117. The revolt began in Egypt and then spread to other parts of North Africa including Libya, Cyrenaica and the Island of Cyprus. The revolt angered Trajan because it took place while he was campaigning in the East and he saw it as an act of treachery aimed at his rear. Just as the Jews of the Diaspora remained passive during the two revolts that took place in the land of Israel, so the Jews of Israel took no part in this bloody action which resulted in the destruction of the Cypriot Jewish community and the start of the decline of the Egyptian Jewish community.

661: The Rashidun Caliphate ends with death of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. Begun in 632, the Caliphate marked a period of conquest that gave Islam control over a large swath of North Africa, the old Persian Empire and the modern Middle East. It was during this period that the forces of Islam defeated the Byzantines thus giving them control over Jerusalem.

1186: Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, married Constance of Sicily. During Henry’s reign Jews would be massacred from the Rhine districts all the way to the Vienna.

1349: The Jews were driven out of Burgundy and escorted as far as Montbozon.

1449: New Christians or Conversos were the targets of a riot in Toledo, Spain. The Conversos especially the wealthy ones, were attacked during a revolt against taxation. Three hundred of them decided to band together and defend themselves. During the attack one Christian were killed. In response, 22 Marranos were murdered and numerous of their houses were destroyed.

1659: Cornelis Janss Plavier and his wife Geertje Andriesz, who were about to leave for New Amsterdam borrowed 1625 guilders, insurance included, from Amsterdam merchant Abraham Cohen Henriquez. The loan was to be repaid with the sale of beaver shipped in the autumn to Amsterdam. Merchandise and bills of lading for the beaver were to be kept by Asser Levy, or in his absence by Joseph d' Acosta, until proper security could be given by the couple for the shipment for which they were obligated. The borrowers were not Jewish; the others involved were.

1695: Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Amhed II. Ahmed II had been born in 1643. During his reign he imprison Doctor Hayati Zadi in the Yedikule prison where he died. During the reign of Mustafa II, Belgrade was reconqured and the Jews were allowed to return to the city in 1690. Also, Doctor Nuh efendi, Doctor Levi, Doctor Tobias Cohen and Doctor Israel Koenigland were appointed palace doctors. Mustafa ruled until 1703.

1785: Founding of the University of Georgia. According to the January, 2005 issue of “The Jewish Week,” the University of Georgia is emerging as one of the new “hot campuses” for Jewish students. “In 1993 the state of Georgia began paying full tuition to students with a 3.0 average or better in high school who kept a B average or better in college. So now the University of Georgia, which the Chronicle of Higher Education said had been considered a party school 10 years ago, is now a popular destination for in-state Jewish students. It’s 58th on this year’s U.S. News and World Report ranking of state schools for undergraduates, right below Maryland. Now the University of Georgia Hillel gets as many as 130 students at a Shabbat dinner, according to its director Shawn Laing.”

1788: “The first of England’s flotilla of convict transports dropped anchor at Sydney harbor, New South Wales.” There were eight Jews among the eight hundred prisoners one of whom was sixteen-year old Esther Abrahams of London, sentenced to an Australian penal farm for stealing a piece of lace.

1790: In France, active citizenship was extended to the "well born" Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, who promptly bowed out of the fight for equal rights. They looked upon their poorer brothers in Alsace-Lorraine with contempt.

1791: The National Assembly grants civil rights to the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine completing the process of emancipation for French Jews.

1824: Birthdate of Dutch painter Jozef Israëls. “Descended from a poor Jewish family, Jozef Israëls started taking drawing lessons in 1835 at the Academy Minerva in Groningen…. In addition to fishermen scenes and portraits, he expanded his subject matter with peasant scenes, and later in his career he returned to the subject of death and old age, as well as treating Jewish and biblical themes. He traveled extensively and was much honored at home and abroad. Israëls was the most acclaimed Dutch painter in his time, eagerly sought after by collectors in Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. Hailed as a second Rembrandt, he participated in many exhibitions, and his work was disseminated through reproductions.”

1842: During the consecration of the first Reform Synagogue in London, Rabbi David Woolf Marks shocked the traditional Anglo-Jewish community by declaring. “We solemnly deny that a belief in the divinity of those traditions written in the Mishnah and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud is of equal obligation to the Israelite with the faith in the divinity of the Laws of Moses… These books are human compositions; and, though we are content to accept with reverence, advice and instruction from our post-biblical ancestors, we cannot unconditionally accept their laws. For Israelites there is but One immutable Law – the sacred volume of the Scriptures commanded by God to be written down for the unerring guidance of His people until the end of time.” Every Hebrew congregation must be authorised to take such measures as shall bring the divine services into consonance with the will of the Almighty, as explained to us in the Law and in the Prophets.”

1847: A ball was held at the Museum Building to raise funds for the establishment of Hebrew school in Philadelphia, PA. Among those in charge of the event were M.H. De Young, Moses Nathans, Isaac Nathans, Benjamin Pincus, S.M. Klossser, and David Van Beil.

1850: Birthdate of Samuel Gompers, first president the American Federation of Labor. When asked what does the American working man want, Gompers responded, “More!”

1859: Birthdate of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm served as German emperor from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. Wilhelm played many complex roles in the lives of the Jews of Europe. He missed one opportunity to alter Jewish history by not supporting Herzl when he sought the Kaiser’s help in creating a Jewish state in Eretz Israel.

1860: Birthdate of Sir Charles Solomon Henry, an Australian merchant and businessman who lived mostly in Britain and sat as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1906-1918.

1863: Edward Robinson, the American biblical scholar who is considered the “Father of Biblical Geography” passed away. The American Protestant journeyed to Palestine with Reverend Eli Smith where they indentified many of the sites described in the Bible. Among them was the tunnel dug during the reign of King Hezekiah. An arch dating back to Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple was named Robinson’s Arch in his honor.

1864: During the American Civil War, the Richmond (VA) Examiner published an article today about those who have are deserting the southern Confederacy for the safety of the North with Jews being the only group identified by their religion. According to the paper, a “great underground route to the North is now open through to Washington, D.C, via the track of the York River Railroad. This route, so generously left open by the Confederate Government, is patronized daily by scores of the principal of substitutes in search of more healthful localities -- Jews and blockade-runners carrying out gold and running in goods…”

1873: In Russia, the recently promulgated Ukase concerning recruiting sailors and soldiers for the Czar’s military went into effect. Among the change in the new law was the termination of the exemption from service that had been given to Jews who had converted to Christianity. This is one of dozens of exemptions that were terminated. Now an exemption may be purchased upon payment of 800 silver rubles to the government.

1876(1st of Shevat, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1878: President Henry S. Herman presided over the opening session of District Grand Lodge No. 1 of the Independent Order of the B’nai Brit which was being held at the Nilsson Hall in New York City. District 1 includes New York States, all the states of New England and the Dominion of Canada.

1885: Birthdate of Jerome (David) Kern, one of America's foremost composers of music for the theatre and screen. He is best known as the composer of Broadway musicals like The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) and Roberta (1933). Kern's mother encouraged his musical gifts from the time he was very young, but Kern's father wanted his son to join the family retail business. Kern followed his father at first. And then, when he was sixteen, Kern mistakenly ordered 200 pianos for the family retail store, when he was supposed to order only two. Kern had a long lunch with the factory owner who took his order, and the two of them got drunk, and so they failed to notice the mistake. Then all the pianos were delivered. Kern said, "You've no idea what that many pianos coming off a truck look like." After this, Kern's father allowed him to study at the New York College of Music. Then Kern worked as a song-plugger and an in-house composer for a local publisher. When he was 19, Kern traveled to London, and he received his first real training in the theater. He also married his wife Eva there, in 1910. Kern and his wife returned to America, where he enhanced the scores of European musicals and worked as a rehearsal pianist. In May of 1915, Kern and his wife planned to sail to Liverpool on the Lusitania. Kern overslept, they missed the boat, and days later it was torpedoed. Then he met Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a lifelong friend, and the two collaborated on Show Boat in 1927. This musical gave us the songs "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." He had a passion for gambling—he sometimes lost thousands of dollars a night—and for book collecting. The books became too much of an obsession, and so in 1928 he decided to sell them. The "Kern Sale" was big news. It was the roaring 20's, euphoria filled the auction house, and no one could believe it when the sale brought in almost two million dollars. Kern invested most of it in stocks; the market crashed later that year. In 1933, Kern and Hammerstein produced Roberta, which included the famous song "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." Kern moved to Hollywood in 1935, and he enjoyed success there. He wrote "The Way You Look Tonight" for the movie Swing Time, and the song won an Academy Award™. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote "The Last Time I Saw Paris" because Paris had just been occupied by Nazi Germany, and that song also won an Academy Award.
Kern died in 1945 with Hammerstein at his side. At the memorial service, Hammerstein said of his friend Jerome Kern, "He stimulated everyone. He annoyed some. He never bored anyone at any time."

1885: Birthdate of musician and composer Harry Ruby.

1888: Birthdate of mineralogist and petrologist Victor Moritz Goldschmidt

1891(NS): Birthdate of Russian and later Soviet author, journalist and activist, Ilya Ehrenburg.

1892: Birthdate of Ernst Lubitsch “a German-born Jewish film director” whose “urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director” which led critics to say that his films had “the Lubitsch touch".

1897: Opening session of the Fifth Annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society took place in Baltimore, MD.

1900: Birthdate of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover was the father of the atomic and later nuclear powered Navy. He, more than any other single individual, was responsible for the creation of the submarine fleet that gave America its strategic edge over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

1904: Herzl received a telegram from Leopold Greenberg that described a definitive offer from the British Government that would allow for a Jewish homeland in Nandi, a territory in the colony of Kenya. Greenberg advised immediate acceptance and the sending of an expedition. Greenberg was a British Zionist and publisher of the Jewish Chronicle.

1912: In New York City, President Taft attended a ball sponsored by the Daughters of Jacob, an organization established in 1895 to fund a home for aged Jewish citizens.

1917: As World War I drags on for a third year it is reported that not one home in the Jewish quarter of Belgrade remains standing undamaged. Large numbers of Jews have immigrated to Greece from various areas in the Balkans. The Americans sent $55,000 to help with relief in Serbia and Greece, after receiving a cablegram for help from the Chief Rabbi of Salonica, Jacob Meir.

1926: Birthdate of journalist, broadcaster and humorist Fritz Spiegl. Born and educated in Austria, Spiegel and his family fled when the Nazis annexed Austria. He settled in England where he lived and worked until his death in 2003.

1929: Birthdate of Richard Ottinger, a New York Democratic Party leader who served in the House of Representatives and then pursued a career with the Pace University School of Law.

1930: According to reports published today, “there are more than 213,000 volumes in the Hebrew University Library.” During 1929, 22,000 volumes were added to the library’s collection. The library includes the ‘only medical library of note in the entire region.’” The Library has expanded its locations as well as it collection. Based on the demand of physicians in Palestine, the library has established a branch medical library at the Nathan Straus Health Center in Jerusalem and another such facility in Tel Aviv.

1931: Birthdate of author Mordecai Richler. A native of Montréal many Americans know him as the author The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz which was later turned into a film of the same name. His first novel, The Acrobats (1954), is about a young Canadian painter in Spain with a group of expatriates and revolutionaries. Richler was a sharp cultural critic, and his books The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959), St. Urbain's Horsemen (1971), and Joshua Then and Now (1980) all deal with greed and success. He wrote a collection of humorous essays titled Notes on an Endangered Species and Others (1974), and a series of children's books. He said, "Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials."

1938: The Palestine Post reported on the plight of the Jews in Romania. Under the new restrictions over 200,000 Jews had lost their trading licenses and one hundred thirty Jewish lawyers at Yassy had been expelled from the bar.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach opened a picturesque garden on the seven-dunam oval island at Zina Dizengoff Circle.

1940 (17th of Sh'vat, 5700): Based on information that became public in the 1990’s, today is the day on which author Isaac Babel was shot to death after being found guilty of belonging to an anti-Soviet Trotskyite organization and with spying for France and Austria during a 20 minute trial that had been held the day before. Babel had been arrested by Stalin’s NKVD in 1939 and shipped off to a Siberian labor camp. Two of Babel’s more famous works were Red Cavalry based on his experiences as a cavalry officer fighting against the Whites and Odessa Tales which describes the richly textured Jewish society of Odessa. Babel was rehabilitated in the 1950’s by Khrushchev.

1943: Members of the 'Amitié Chrétienne’ held an emergency meeting at the home of Swiss Protestant pastor Roland de Pury to try and find a way to warn Jews that the Gestapo was watching the offices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF),where they were going to get false documents. They decided to have Germaine Ribière pose as a cleaning lady, who, while cleaning the stairs would warn the Jews not to end the building. Germaine Ribière was a Catholic member of the French Resistance who was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for her efforts to save Jews from the Nazis. The 'Amitié Chrétienne’ was founded in Lyon, France, in 1941 with the goal of saving Jews and others from the Nazis and the Vichy Governments

1944: SS Morris Hillquit, a liberty ship named after the Jewish Socialist who opposed the United States entering World War I, was launched today. Like so many other supply vessels that survived the war, it would be sold to a private entity in 1947 and finally be scrapped in 1968. Not bad for a ship that was built in 34 days.

1945: The Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered

1945: The Red Army entered Birkenau and found it almost entirely empty of human inhabitants. One survivor found in the hospital was Anne Frank's father, Otto. Anne had died there months earlier from decease. (Otto would return to Amsterdam to find the famed diary.) Though most of the storage facilities were already destroyed, the Russians discover 836,255 women's dresses, 348,000 sets of men's suits and 38,000 pairs of men's shoes.

1945: After Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz today Salamo Arouch, a Greek-born Jewish boxer who survived the death camp by winning fight after fight against fellow prisoners, began searching other liberated camps for any family members who might have survived. During the search he found Marta Yechiel, a girl from his home in Greece. The two moved to Palestine, married and raised a family that included four children and 12 children at the time of his death.

1946: Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle to attend the wedding of Holocaust survivors Lilly and Ludwig Friedman’s wedding. Lily wore a wedding gown that had been created from a parachute acquired from a former Nazi pilot by an unknown seamstress. For Lilly “the dress symbolized the innocent, normal life she and her family had once led before the world descended into madness.” The dress would eventually go on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

1947: As part of “Aliya Bet,” the Chaim Arlozoroff set sail from Trelleborg, Sweden, carrying 664 survivors of the European death camps. Most of those on board, who labeled illegal immigrants by the British, were women. When the ship finally arrived in Haifa, a struggle ensued at the end of which the British transferred the former camp inmates to detention camps at Cyprus.

1952: Birthdate of Brian Gottfried, Baltimore born tennis star who won the Wimbledon Doubles in 1976

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that over 2,000 frightened refugees, including many Jews, escaped the purges in East Germany and crossed over from East to West Berlin. Israel got an urgently needed one-year loan of $16 million from an American group of banks, headed by the Bank of America.

1955: At the Boston Medical Library an exhibit of Jewish medical leaders, including medieval manuscripts and awards presented to Jewish physicians.

1955: “Plain and Fancy,” a musical comedy co-authored by Joseph Stein opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre for the first of 461 performances.

1959: Birthdate of Keith Olbermann former TV sportscaster and former MSNBC host.

1964(13th of Sh'vat, 5724): Lieb Glantz, famed chazzan and composer, passed away at the age of 65

1961: "Sing Along with Mitch" featuring Mitch Miller premiered on NBC TV

1965: Up the Down Staircase, a best-selling novel written by Bel Kaufman was published. When the novel appeared, Bel Kaufman was already a published writer, whose short stories had appeared in magazines like Esquire and The Saturday Review. Because Esquire in the early 1940s had refused to publish fiction by women, Belle Kaufman had submitted her work under the androgynous first name "Bel," and has published under that name ever since. Born in Germany and raised in Russia, Kaufman came to the U.S. at age 12. She was the granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, and her mother Lyalya Kaufman was a regular columnist for the Yiddish Forverts. Bel graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College at age 22. After earning a master's degree at Columbia, Kaufman taught in the New York City public schools for three decades. Her experiences there were the inspiration for Up the Down Staircase. The novel, which was marked by its satirical look at the administrative bureaucracy of the school system, spent 64 weeks on the best-seller list. It has been translated into 16 languages, and has sold 6.5 million copies. Time magazine has called it "easily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history." The book was made into a film in 1967, and into a stage play a decade later. It was later made into a popular film.

1968: A radio station in Nicosia, Cyprus, received a distress call on the frequency of the INS Dakar's “emergency buoy, apparently from south-east of Cyprus, but no further traces of the submarine were found.”

1969(8th of Sh'vat, 5729): Nine Jews were publicly executed in Damascus Syria

1971(1st of Sh'vat, 5731) Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1973(24th of Sh'vat, 5733): Actor John Banner passed away. Best known for his portrayal of Sgt. Schultz in the television hit “Hogan’s’ Heroes,” Banner was born on this date in 1910.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt embarked on a massive diplomatic effort to explain why it had broken off peace talks with Israel.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Jerusalem Municipality had begun the installation of a sewerage network at the Anatot Refugee Camp, despite UNRWA's objections that this would violate the camp's protected status as a "refugee camp of implicitly temporary nature." UNRWA had previously objected to the installation of such a network, despite the 1970 cholera outbreak. (This should provide a slightly different slant on the "refugee problem" and how these poor souls are being exploited.)

1982: In an example of “The Bible on Broadway,” "Joseph & the Amazing Dreamcoat" opened at the Royale in New York City for the first of what would be a total of 747 performances.

1991: In the midst of Iraqi attacks on Israel 74 year old Alexander Goldberg, a retired aeronautical engineer from Hempstead, Long Island, will join more than 100 other Americans, both Jews and Christians, for a flight tonight to Israel, where they will be put to work at army bases, hospitals and collective settlements, or kibbutzim. Some will pick fruit or help maintain army tanks; others will work in a factory that makes protective gear for chemical warfare. In the midst of Iraqi attacks on Israel

1992: Singer Ofra Haza and the Amka Oshrat Yemenite Dance Troupe appear in concerted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

1993: During the Intifada, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian terrorist.

1994(15th of Sh'vat, 5754): Tu B'Shvat

1996: Germany celebrated its 1st Holocaust Remembrance Day

1997: It was revealed that French museums had nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by the Nazis.

2001: Survivors of Auschwitz have gone on a poignant march past the gas chambers which claimed their fellow prisoners as Europe marked Holocaust Memorial Day. Today, Shabbat, 700 people, including camp survivors and local Jewish leaders, walked from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp's Gate of Death to its giant memorial wall, past the remains of the gas chambers and the crematoria. The Nazis killed 1.5 million people in Auschwitz, the highest number at any camp, before hastily retreating from an advancing Soviet army which liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, regarded as the world's largest Jewish burial ground, now houses a museum and is little changed from the day Red Army troops freed its last inmates. Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek told the participants in a letter that they were the "guardians of this tragic heritage of mankind." Ceremonies from London to Lithuania marked the 56th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation. Britain and Italy held their first-ever Holocaust memorial days, while survivors, spiritual leaders and politicians across the continent pledged to remember a grim historical lesson about the consequences of intolerance.
"Not everyone who survived has the strength to share," said Auschwitz survivor Hedi Fried, speaking at a forum in Stockholm, Sweden. "We who can have an extra obligation. We owe it to our murdered parents, the 6 million Jews, 500,000 Gypsies and countless homosexuals, Russians and Poles who died." Britain observed its first national Holocaust Memorial Day with ceremonies across the country and a London service that also honours victims of other 20th-century genocides. The guest list for the memorial at Westminster Central Hall in London included Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. The ceremony included tributes to survivors of violence in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. In Germany, where a sharp rise this year in violent attacks on minorities gave the annual Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism added resonance, Parliament president Wolfgang Thierse issued a warning about the dangers of neo-Nazism. Germans must show "commitment to democracy and against raging right-wing extremism," he told Deutschland Radio. "This isn't about remembrance without consequences."
Six million Jews and five million others, including communists, homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally retarded, perished under the Nazi regime. Italy also marked Holocaust Memorial Day for the first time, with a ceremony in Milan organised by Italian unions and a moment of silence during evening soccer games. Padua, in northern Italy, was honoring Giorgio Perlasca, a butcher credited with saving more than 5,000 Italian Jews by pretending to be a Spanish diplomat. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi acknowledged Italy's blame in the Holocaust, calling Benito Mussolini's racial laws a betrayal of the country's founding principles.
"But numerous Italians knew how to further the demands of their conscience against the violence of the dictator," he said. About 7,000 Jews were deported from Italy during the Holocaust, and 5,910 of them died. Lithuanian Jews gathered in Vilnius to mark the anniversary, and in Sweden, Prime Minister Goeran Persson was attending a ceremony at a Stockholm synagogue. The Jewish Museum planned a lecture, music and a reading from Anne Frank's diary. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was to give the keynote speech in Sweden on Monday at an international conference on ethnic and religious intolerance.

2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis and Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness by Alan Rabinowitz.

2002: In Great Britain, a Holocaust event, organized by the Holocaust Education Trust, takes place in Bridgewater Hall. Extracts of the event will be broadcast by the Granada group of television companies during the week following the event. The second UK Holocaust Memorial Day takes place in Manchester involving the participation of survivors from the Holocaust and victims of contemporary racism and prejudice, young people and a range of community representatives.

2003: In the United Kingdom the main Holocaust Memorial Day event took place in Edinburgh with a theme of “Children and the Holocaust.

2003: Polls published today affirmed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is likely to retain his post in elections on Tuesday, and then to face the complex challenge of assembling a durable coalition from a fragmented Parliament. Although corruption scandals dented the commanding lead of Mr. Sharon's right-of-center Likud Party and almost 30 parties took part in the campaign, it has generally been pallid -- a reflection, politicians said, of the dismal economy and voter cynicism that any leader can achieve peace with the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon's promises of peace and security remain unfulfilled, but Israelis generally place their trust in him and the blame elsewhere.

2004: An event on establishing January 27 as memory day for Greek Jews and Holocaust victims was held at the Athens Concert Hall's convention center today, under the auspices of the foreign ministry. Greece's Parliament had unanimously adopted recently a relevant legislation. Today’s event was attended by Parliament President Apostolos Kaklamanis, Foreign Minister George Papandreou, Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou, Deputy Interior Minister Nikos Bistis, the New Democracy party's Parliamentary representative Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the Communist Party of Greece's Parliamentary representative Achilleas Kantartzis, Coalition of the Left party Deputy Fotis Kouvelis, a representative of Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodoulos and many ambassadors in Athens. Papandreou said in a speech that the unanimous ratification by Parliament of the bill setting a Holocaust anniversary date is ''confirmation of the collective sensitivity of the Greeks and of the fact that Greece is an open society, a society of tolerance and of respect of all its citizens.'' He added that ''democracy must defend the citizen. Exclusion of any kind constitutes our moral failure. The decision we took honors us all. It helps us to keep historical memory alive and it will serve as valuable help for the generations to come.'' Emerging from the Concert Hall, the foreign minister said ''we must remember the past and be taught by it'' and reiterated the need for ''respect for the right to be different.''

2004: Israel honored 9 Greeks for their efforts to save Jews during WWII. Today, Israel’s ambassador to Athens presented that country’s influential “Righteous Among the Nations” award to nine Greek nationals who saved persecuted Jewish compatriots during the Nazi occupation of Greece (1941-44). Ambassador Ram Aviram presented the awards the same day as the recently enacted Greek Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan. 27), with a relevant event held at the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron) as well. According to a press release by the Israeli embassy in Athens, the “Righteous among the Nations” awards are given by “Yad Vashem”, an institute created by the Israeli state to perpetuate the memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust. They are bestowed to individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Second World War. More than 200 Greek citizens have been honored by the Yad Vashem Institute, including the late Archbishop of Greece during the occupation, Damaskinos, the Greek chief of police at the time, Angelos Evert, the Metropolitans of Zakynthos and Dimitrias at the time, Chrysostomos and Loakeim, respectively, the one-time mayor of Zakynthos, Loukas Karrer, and many other unsung Greek heroes of World War II. This year’s awardees are Dimos and Theodora Vevelekos, Michalis and Eleni Mavridis, Smaragda Sarafianou, Ioannis and Tasia Spentzos as well as Ilias and Angeliki Kazantzis. The president of the Central Board of Greek Jewish Communities, Moses Konstantinis, also participated at the ceremony.

2005: The Fourteenth Annual New York Jewish Film Festival comes to an end.

2005: Holocaust Memorial Day in Great Britain. Holocaust Memorial Day is a national event in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. It was first held in January 2001, and has been hold on 27 January every year since. The chosen date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945. This year’s major event took place in London with a theme of “Survivors, Liberation and Rebuilding Lives.

2006: The following column in the Jerusalem Post explains the importance of the First annual "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

Last November the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as an annual "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust." With 104 co-sponsors, including Israel, the historic UN resolution selected that date as it is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. During the 1950s the Knesset debated which date to establish as Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Chief Rabbinate had already designated the 10th of Tevet - an existing fast day marking the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem that culminated in the destruction of the Temple - as the date of "General Kaddish" for Holocaust survivors who did not know the date of death of their fallen family members. The ultra-Orthodox rabbinate suggested adding - as had been done to signify the destruction of Jewish communities by marauding Crusaders - additional piyyutim (liturgical poems) relating to the Holocaust to the lamentations recited on Tisha B'Av itself, the solemn fast day commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temples. While incorporating the Holocaust within existing fast days marking national calamities reflected the traditional view that the Holocaust was yet another chapter in a long story of Jewish suffering through the ages, others argued that the Holocaust needed to be commemorated on its own.After long debate, the Knesset established the 27th day of Nisan as "Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevura," literally "Holocaust and Heroism Day." The date marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which in fact began on the 15th day of Nisan (April 19, 1943). Since the actual beginning of the uprising coincided with Pessah, the Knesset, as a compromise, chose a date that falls a week after the end of Pessah and a week before Yom Hazikaron, our Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, and Independence Day - but within the span of the nearly month-long uprising. As a further compromise, the legislation provided that if the 27th day of Nisan impinged upon Shabbat (i.e. fell on a Friday or a Saturday), the commemoration would be moved to the following Sunday. In effect, both sides of the debate in Israel in the 1950s wanted to place the Holocaust within an established context, either the traditional suffering of the Jew or the heroic Zionist model of the "new" Jew. Neither wanted to face the enormity and senselessness of the tragedy, especially in the first decade after World War II.In its infancy, Israel could not bear the image of Jews as victims being "led like sheep to the slaughter" and, accordingly, latched on to the heroic (if doomed) resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto as the proper "Israeli" model on which to base Holocaust remembrance. Moreover, the placement of Holocaust Memorial Day as a prelude to Independence Day conveyed the "Israel-centric" message that the Holocaust was a stepping stone in the founding of the State of Israel, the proverbial "darkness before the light" of national redemption. But this focus on the perceived heroic aspects of the Holocaust to fit our tough (but vulnerable) sabra self-image, together with the implicit message that the Holocaust's true significance lies in its happy ending - Israel's establishment - has had unfortunate repercussions. Sadly, most Israelis don't mark Yom Hashoah in any meaningful way.
For its part, the ultra-Orthodox community has always opposed, on halachic grounds, the imposition of a day of mourning during the joyous month of Nisan, which commemorates the birth of the Jewish nation and its exodus from bondage in Egypt. Sandwiched between Pessah and, to most Israelis, the more significant Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars and Independence Day, Holocaust Memorial Day has traditionally not been given the undivided attention it deserves. The Holocaust deserves to be viewed honestly and in depth as a unique historic event. Adopting January 27 as Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day would:
signify Israel's appreciation of the unusual step taken by the UN; ensure that the worldwide Holocaust Memorial Day will not be a passing fad since Israel's annual ceremonies can serve as the focus of global attention and as a model for other national commemorative events; indicate that Israel has "grown up" since the 1950s to appreciate that Jewish victimhood in the Holocaust is not something shameful that must be obscured in the celebration of Jewish heroism; unite the Jews in Israel, both observant and secular, to commemorate, discuss and ponder in an unhurried and thoughtful manner the manifold aspects of a tragedy that does not easily fit into any previous category of Jewish or world history. The UN has finally acknowledged the global historical significance of the Holocaust. Israel should support this development for its own good as well as that of the world.

2006: In Poland, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day observances a 1940’s tram marked with the Star of David - like the ones that used to travel through the ghetto - is seen again on the streets of Warsaw. It is empty, with nobody getting on or off. It will be empty. Nobody will get on or off.

2006: Rick Recht takes Cedar Rapids by storm as he leads the Jewish Community in a celebration of “Shabbat Alive.”

2007: “Dirty Girl,” a play based on the experiences of Ronnie Koenig, the former editor in chief of Playgirl Magazine, finished its initial run in New York City.

2007: In the UK, the main National Holocaust Memorial Day event is hosted at Newcastle with a theme of “The Dignity of Difference.”

2008: In an article entitled “The Capa Cache,” the New York Times describes the fate of “the suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — that contained thousands of negatives of pictures that the Hungarian born Jew Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom. Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion.” The negatives were in fact “hidden for more than half a century until last month… they made what will most likely be their final trip, to the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, founded by Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell.”

2008: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alfred Kazin: A Biography by Richard Cook. “Whenever anyone writes about the “New York intellectuals” — the group of male Jewish writers who came to prominence in the years after the Second World War — Kazin’s name is near the top of the list. And yet he wasn’t a typical member of the tribe. If you were drawing a composite sketch of a model New York intellectual, you’d make him an atheist, largely unconcerned with spiritual questions; a partisan of European literary modernism; and a creature whose political thinking had been forever marked by 1930s debates about socialism and Communism. Kazin, by contrast, was God-haunted (“I want my God back” is the next-to-last sentence of his 1978 memoir, “New York Jew”); unquenchably fascinated by American literature and American history; and politically radical, but in a fashion that owed less to Marx than to Whitman — Kazin’s radicalism was democratic, generous, angry and thoroughly in the American grain.”

2008: International Holocaust Memorial Day – light a light, kindle a candle – Holocaust Memorial Trust website http://www.hmd.org.uk/

2009: In Manhattan’s East Village, third part of a four part series “The Comedy and Kabbalah of Relationships” featuring Rabbi YY Jacobson

2009: As part of Holocaust Remembrance Day, The Centro Primo Levi, the Consulate General of Italy and the Italian academic institutions in NY under the auspices of the United Nations present Giorno della Memoria (Day of Memory) including a reading the names of the Jews deported from Italy and the Italian territories on Park Avenue at 68th Street in front of the Consulate General of Italy and a discussion of the Fascist Racial Laws and the socio-political conditions, the indifference, and collaborationism that allowed their promulgation in 1938.

2009: In his new book We Must Rise From Its Ashes, Avraham Burg advocates commemorating the Holocaust three times during the year. “By observing it on January 27, the international day of Holocaust remembrance, Israelis would never lose sight of the fact that the Shoah was a crime against humanity, not just against the Jews, and that preventing further genocide is the business of the entire world. Commemorating it May 9, the day on which the former Soviet republics — and Israel’s immigrants from those countries — mark the victory over Nazi Germany, would symbolically embrace the many immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish under Jewish law. Finally, celebrating it on the Ninth of Av would express the Jewish particularity of the genocide, while incorporating the Shoah into that day’s remembrance of the destruction of the Temples would place it within the historical continuum of Jewish suffering rather than consider it wholly unprecedented.

2009: Former Agriprocessors official Sholom Rubashkin can be released from jail, a federal judge ruled. Judge Linda Reade of U.S. District Court in Northern Iowa ruled today that although Rubashkin is a flight risk, reasonable measures could be taken to ensure his appearance at trial, the Des Moines Register reported. Reade required that Rubashkin post $500,000 bail and confine himself to Allamakee County, Iowa. She also barred him from any contact with potential witnesses in the case. Rubashkin, who has been behind bars since November, is expected to be released Thursday. He is facing a range of charges related to his management of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, which was the target of a massive federal immigration raid in May. A federal judge in Iowa had ruled that Rubashkin was a flight risk and should be held until trial, which is scheduled to begin in September. Judge Magistrate Jon Scoles drew pointed criticism on his ruling from several national Jewish groups in part because of his reference to Israel's Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews. The Jewish groups warned that the ruling set a dangerous precedent that could be used to deny bail to Jews solely on the basis of their religion. “All I know is obviously we've been missing him at home and we're very excited that he's coming home,” Rubashkin's wife, Leah, told JTA. “Jail life is no picnic, especially when you're an observant Jew. And he's looking forward to coming home and being together with his family.”

2009: The Massachusetts attorney general’s office said today that it planned to conduct a detailed review of Brandeis University’s surprise decision to sell off the entire holdings of its Rose Art Museum, one of the most important collections of postwar art in New England. The decision to close the 48-year-old museum in Waltham, Mass., and disperse the collection as a way to shore up the university’s struggling finances was denounced by the museum’s board, its director and a wide range of art experts, who warned that the university was cannibalizing its cultural heritage to pay its bills .“This is one of the artistic and cultural legacies of American Jewry,” said Jonathan Lee, the chairman of the museum’s board of overseers, who said that “nobody at the museum — neither the director nor myself nor anyone else — was informed of this or had any idea what was going on.”Jehuda Reinharz, the university’s president, said in a statement that the decision, made on Monday by the university’s trustees, was agonizing but necessary as Brandeis faces a deepening financial crisis, with its endowment, once $700 million, significantly diminished. “Choosing between and among important and valued university assets is terrible, but our priority in the face of hard choices will always be the university’s core teaching and research mission,” he wrote. Emily LaGrassa, director of communications for the state attorney general, Martha Coakley, said that Brandeis had informed the office on Monday of its decision, but had not consulted with the attorney general in advance. The attorney general has approval powers over certain actions of nonprofit institutions in the state. Ms. LaGrassa said that in the case of Brandeis, the attorney general would review wills and agreements made between the museum and the estates of donors to determine if selling artworks violated the terms of donations. “We have not yet offered any opinion on any aspect of the proposed sales,” she said, adding, “We do expect this to be a lengthy process.” Dennis Nealon, a spokesman for the university, said it would have no comment on any legal questions related to the proposed closing and the sale of the art. The university said in a statement that the Rose would shut down by late summer and be turned into a teaching center with a gallery and studio space. Like other universities around the country, Brandeis depends on income from its endowment to cover much of its operating expenses. And like most such college endowments, Brandeis’s fund has been seriously eroded by the economic downturn, although officials on Tuesday declined to give a figure on the extent of the drop. Several of the university’s large donors have been hit particularly hard by losses connected to Bernard L. Madoff, the disgraced financier accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

2010: The recently discovered 29 blueprints depicting the layout of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in chilling detail, with gas chambers, crematoria, delousing facilities and watch towers drawn to scale are scheduled to go on display in Jerusalem today.

2010: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to be at Auschwitz to take part in a ceremony marking the 65th liberation of the death camp by the Soviet Red Army.

2010: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet at Temple Judah where attendees will discuss Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. De Rosnay's novel is set against a backdrop of the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, and then transported to Auschwitz.

2010: International Holocaust Memorial Day.

2010: Bundled tightly against the cold and snow, elderly Auschwitz survivors walked among the barracks and watchtowers of Auschwitz and Birkenau on today, many clad in scarves bearing the gray and blue stripes of their Nazi prison garments decades ago. Moving later into a heated tent to escape the minus 12 Celsius (10 Fahrenheit) temperatures, they heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vow that his country would never allow anyone to erase the memory of the victims of Nazi Germany's death camps. ''We sit in a warm tent and remember those who shivered to death, and if they didn't freeze to death, they were gassed and burned,'' Netanyahu said in a solemn ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army. Some 150 Auschwitz survivors and European leaders were on hand for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, one of scores around the world marking the global day of commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005. ''From this damned ground of Auschwitz and Birkenau and the other death camps rise the voices of millions of our brothers and sisters of our people who were suffocated, burned and tortured in a thousand different and unusual deaths,'' Netanyahu told the crowd in Hebrew. After brief remarks in English, Netanyahu switched into Hebrew, saying he wanted to use ''the newborn language of the people whom the Nazis sought to exterminate'' and chanting the first line of the Jewish prayer for the dead. ''My murdered brothers and sisters and brothers who survived the inferno, I came here today from Jerusalem to say to you we will never forget,'' Netanyahu said. ''We will not allow Holocaust deniers and desecrators of grave stones to erase or distort the memory.'' Netanyahu's remarks were a clear reference to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad, who has called for Israel's demise and questioned the extent of the Holocaust. In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation's supreme leader, predicted the destruction of Israel in comments posted on his Web site Wednesday, in some of his strongest remarks about the Jewish state in years. ''Definitely, the day will come when nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime,'' Khamenei was quoted as saying. ''How soon or late (Israel's demise) will happen depends on how Islamic countries and Muslim nations approach the issue.'' President Barack Obama, in a video message, thanked Holocaust survivors for finding ''the strength to come back again, so many years later, despite the horror you saw here, the suffering you endured here, and the loved ones you lost here.'' ''We have a sacred duty to remember the twisted thinking that led here -- how a great society of culture and science succumbed to the worst instincts of man and rationalized mass murder and one of the most barbaric acts in history,'' Obama said. Obama also thanked Polish leaders and the people ''for preserving a place of such great pain for the Polish people, but a place of remembrance and learning for the world.'' Poland's President Lech Kaczynski recalled the pain of the Polish nation, which was occupied by Nazi Germany throughout the war, but also acknowledged the unique suffering of Jews, who were targeted for extermination. ''Jews were being murdered only because they were Jews,'' said Kaczynski, a strong supporter of Poland's reviving Jewish community. ''Many others were killed only because they were Poles or Russians, Ukrainians or Belarusians. But there was no death sentence for the whole nation.'' Survivors passed under a replica of the infamous sign at the main entrance to Auschwitz, which bears the Nazi slogan ''Arbeit Macht Frei'' -- or ''Work Sets You Free.'' The original sign was stolen last month but recovered by police in a nationwide hunt after three days. The thieves had cut the sign into three pieces, however, and it is undergoing repairs. Jadwiga Bogucka, an 84-year-old non-Jewish Pole, was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 for taking part in the Warsaw uprising against the Germans. Before the ceremony, she told The Associated Press that Wednesday's weather was similar to that on Jan. 27, 1945, when she woke up and found the Nazis had fled the camp. ''It was all covered in snow and it was very cold. There was no gong as usual for breakfast that morning, but the previous night there had been the usual terror, or even worse -- the roll call, the screaming of the SS men,'' said Bogucka, who was 19 at the time. ''I left the barrack to see what was going on (and) there were dead bodies everywhere, because the Germans had shot anyone still able to move or who tried to flee,'' she said. The Nazis opened Auschwitz as a concentration camp in the summer of 1940 after they invaded and occupied Poland. Its first prisoners were non-Jewish Poles and others. Because of its central location, Germany soon turned it into a center for implementing the ''Final Solution,'' the plan to kill Europe's Jews. By the end of World War II, at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and others, had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Some 6 million Jews overall were killed in the Holocaust. In other commemorations, German-born Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the Vatican of ''the horror of crimes of unheard-of brutality that were committed in the death camps created by Nazi Germany.'' Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the German parliament, calling for the surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust to be brought to justice. ''Across the world, survivors of the Holocaust are gradually departing from the world of the living,'' Peres said. ''At the same time, men and women who took part in the most odious activity on earth -- that of genocide -- still live on German and European soil, and in other parts of the world,'' he added. ''My request of you is: Please do everything to bring them to justice.'' In Hungary, government officials promised to pursue efforts to criminalize Holocaust denial and drew parallels between the rise of pro-Nazi groups in the 1930s and the current strengthening of far-right parties. ''The struggle against extremists begins with remembrance,'' said Csaba Molnar, head of the prime minister's office. Historians say about a third of those killed in Auschwitz were Hungarians.

2010(12 Shevat, 5770): J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died today at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

2010 (12 Shevat, 5770): Howard Zinn, historian and shipyard worker, civil rights activist and World War II bombardier, and author of “A People’s History of the United States,” a best seller that inspired a generation of high school and college students to rethink American history, died today in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass.

2011: The Seventh Annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival is scheduled to open tonight “with three episodes from Season 2 of Srugim, the very popular Israeli television series about the lives and loves of five young Jewish singles living in the hip Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, as they navigate the frequently contradictory worlds of contemporary Israeli romance and traditional observance.”

2011: ASF is scheduled to present “Behind the Scenes: An Intimate Video Visit to Morocco” which is part of the year-long series, "2,000 Years of Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey", presented Under the High Patronage of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, and made possible through the generous support of the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation.

2011: A program entitled The Holocaust and Justice: How Do You Prosecute Unprecedented Crimes is scheduled to be held at the University of Iowa Law School. The program will included a screening of the film “Night and Fog” followed by a discussion by UI Law Professor Mark Osiel

2011: International Holocaust Memorial Day
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=205541

2011: In Italy, observance of Giorno della Memoria (Day of Memory)

2011: Holocaust Memorial Day (UK)

2011: The memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II was honored around the world today, the day which marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. German President Christian Wulff paid his respects on a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the biggest Nazi concentration camp, where about a million Jews were murdered during the war, accompanied by World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder and his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski. "On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish community and the survivors of the Shoah welcome the fact that President Wulff - who has only been in office for a few months and has already been to Israel - is visibly giving the issue of the Holocaust remembrance such a high political priority,” Lauder declared ahead of the ceremonies in Auschwitz and Birkenau. “Clearly, Germany's political leaders have learnt the lessons of the past, but much remains to be done throughout Europe to keep the memory of the darkest chapter in history alive, in order to prevent a future Holocaust.” Wulff's official delegation also comprises several Holocaust survivors, the leaders of Germany's Jewish community, and members of parliament. Together with his Komorowski, Wulff will visit the International Youth Meeting Center at Auschwitz. Events were held in capitals across the world. In Rome, a ceremony was set to take place this evening at Rome's Great synagogue, organised by the local Jewish community and Jewish youth movements including World Bnei Akiva. At least 1000 people, Jews and non-Jews, participated including Rome's Mayor, Minister and Representatives of the Italian Prime Minister will participate, together with the Chief Rabbi and Jewish community leaders. At the same time, a study published today that showed Israeli, Polish and German citizens believed that Israel should take part in funding the preservation of the former Nazi camp, whose buildings and artifacts are in need of restoration. “All the participants were very supportive of preservation,” Gila Oren of the College of Management said. “Both Israelis and non-Israelis believe Israel should take part in the preservation, which to date it has not even though former Prime Minister Yitzhack Rabin promised NIS 100,000 years ago and that’s been forgotten. The question is whether Israel should or shouldn’t have to pay to preserve the former Nazi concentration camp, and that’s an interesting question.” The data was collected from a survey of 310 participants in major cities in Israel, Poland and Germany. In particular, the study attempted to identify financial aspects relevant to the site preservation. Additionally, the findings highlight participants’ positive response towards personally donating towards the site's preservation. The average amount of money people are willing to donate is close to $10. Israelis are willing to donate up to $16, while Germans and Polish are willing to donate on average $ 8.5.

2011: “Copenhagen” a (high) drama with considerable comedy concerning the two Nobel physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and Bohr's wife Margrethe, opened tonight at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The play features performances by Steve and Barbara Feller, pillars of the Temple Judah community.

2011: Four hundred rabbis will submit a letter today, demanding Fox News sanction host Glenn Beck for his repeated airing of Nazi and Holocaust imagery, and for putting on his show attacks on WWII survivor George Soros, Reuters reported. The letter also urged Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp which owns Fox, to get an apology from Roger Ailes, the Fox News. In the letter, which the rabbis paid $100,00 to have published in News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal, the rabbis claimed that Beck unfairly attacked Soros, a billionaire financier who grew up in Nazi-occupied Hungary. According to the rabbis, Beck has made "literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom he disagrees," calling American politicians he disagrees with Nazis and saying that putting the "common good" first leads to "death camps." "You diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit an individual or organization you disagree with," the letter said. "That is is what Fox News has done in recent weeks, and it is not only 'left-wing rabbis' who think so."

2011: In excerpts of Ehud Olmert’s new memoirs that were published today, the former Jewish leaders says that he and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, were very close to a peace deal two years ago, but Mr. Abbas’s hesitation killed the deal. According to Olmert, at their last meeting, Abbas “said that he could not decide and that he needed more time.” (As reported by Ethan Bronner)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?pagewanted=all

2012: “With a French Flavor” featuring the wind and string Ensembles from the Buchmann Mehta Music School at Tel Aviv University is scheduled to begin at noon in the Ein Kerem Music Center.

2012: Today, "I Honor Wall" - Online virtual event on Yad Vashem's Facebook page, invites people to honor the Righteous Among the Nations. When particpants agree to attend the online event, their names and Facebook profile pictures will be automatically connected to the name and story of a Righteous Among the Nations.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Anti-Semitism+and+the+Holocaust/Documents+and+communiques/Posters_International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day-Jan_2012.htm

2012: International Holocaust Memorial Day

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin; Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, January 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-25T16:19:00.002-06:00

January 26 In Jewish History

1531: Three tremors shake Portugal and numerous houses are destroyed in Lisbon by an earthquake which the Pope and others believe confirm the prediction of suffering made by Solomon Molcho who was seeking relief for Jews and Marranos.

1654: MAJOR DATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. With the capture of Pernambuco (Recife) from the Dutch, Portugal retook Peru and Brazil. The Jews, (numbering approximately 5,000) having fought on the side of the Dutch, fled for the most part to Amsterdam. Hundreds also escaped to North America, with 23 eventually arriving in New Amsterdam

1689: Jean Racine's "Esther" premieres in Saint-Cyr. Racine's last plays, “Esther” (1689) and “Athalie” (1691), each of which were based on Biblical figures were commissioned by King Louis XIV's wife.

1736: As the Kingdom of Poland continues to unravel, Stanislaus I abdicated his throne during a period of increasing anti-Semitism. Twenty eight years after the abdication, the Austrians, Prussians and Russians would begin to partition Poland much to the detriment of the Jewish people who had originally been “invited” to settle in Poland.

1755 (14th of Shevat, 5515): Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua Falk Katz passed away. Born in 1680, he was the author of the Talmudic work "P'nei Yehoshua." He served as rabbi of Lemberg (Lvov) in 1718, Berlin in 1730, Metz in 1734 and Frankfurt in 1740.

1804: Birthdate of Eugane "Marie Joseph" Sue France, novelist and author of The Wandering Jew. It is a tale of good and evil. This time the villain was a Jesuit clerk, Rodin, who is after the Wandering Jew's treasure, which has been gathering interest over the centuries. The descendants of a man, who once aided the cursed wanderer, are summoned to Paris to receive the fortune. Rodin represents the oppression of Church, the Jew stands for dispossessed laborers and his female counterpart Herodias for downtrodden womankind.

1837: Michigan is admitted as the 26th state in the Union. By the time Michigan joined the union, Jews had been living there for at least three quarters of a century. The first known Jewish settler, Ezekiel Solomon arrived in what is now Mackinaw city in 1761. Chapman Abraham arrived in Detroit a year later. Abraham was a Loyalist who fought on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War. Other early Jewish residents of what would become the Wolverine state were Louis Benjamin who suffered a loss during Detroit’s great fire in 1805 and Frederick E. Cohen, the portrait painter, who had arrived in Michigan by 1837. In reality there were only a handful of Jews living in Michigan at the time of statehood. . The real growth of the Michigan Jewish community began in the 1840’s with the arrival of German Jews the most prominent group of which was the forty-eighters. The first synagogue would be formed in 1850, as Congregation Beth El. For more about the Michigan Jewish community you might consider reading Jews In Michigan by Judith Levin Cantor.

1851(23rd of Sh'vat, 5611): Leon Vita Saraval passed away. Born at Triest in 1771, he was a bibliophile and author whose “entire library” was purchased for the Breslau seminary in 1853.

1856: “Charitable Bequest of the Late Baron Rothschild” an article published today described the fortune of the Rothschild family, paying special attention to the spending habits and will of the late Amschel Mayer Rothschild, the second child and oldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founding father of the banking dynasty. While Rothschild’s personal habits “were extremely simple” he shared his wealth with Jews and Gentiles. During his life time he distributed at least 50,000 florins per year to 2,600 Christian families. While his mother was alive, he visited her daily in the original family home on “The Street of the Jews’; a home he was never able to convince her to leave so she could take up residence in a dwelling more fitting with her economic status . The Baron’s will which was written in 1849, was intended to dispose of a fortune calculated at sixty million florins when he passed away in 1855. Among other bequests, he left 1,200,000 florins for the establishment of a foundation for the poor of Frankfort intended “to keep up the weekly distribution of alms at the ‘Old Rothschild ‘ house in the Street of the Jews,” 25,000 florins for Jewish hospitals, 5,000 florins for Jewish schools and 20,000 florins “for various Christian charitable institutions.” Two of his bequests have special meaning for those aware of Jewish laws and customs. In an apparent attempt to follow the rules of Maimonides on charity he gave 10,000 florins “to the society for encouraging Jewish traders and workmen. And in an echo of the morning prayer which says that “participating in making a wedding” is one of the things to be done while waiting for the World-to-Come, he bequeathed the interest on 50,000 florins to be used as perpetual fund “to furnish dowers to Jewish maidens.” Baron Rothschild was not the only member of his family to know financial success. According to the article, Baron Charles left an estate of 17 million florins and Baron Solomon left an estate of 48 million florins.

1862: An Imperial ukase was published in St. Petersburg, Russia, “permitting Jews to enter every branch of the State service; permitting Jewish merchants to reside anywhere, and granting other concessions to the Jews.”

1868(2nd of Sh'vat, 5628): Jacob Raphael De Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer passed away. He was born in Spanish Town (near Kingston), Jamaica, in 1808, the youngest of three sons of Judith and Raphael De Cordova. Since his mother died at his birth, he was reared by an aunt in England. He was well educated and became proficient in English, French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. His father, a Jewish Jamaican coffee grower and exporter, moved to Philadelphia, where he became president of Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1820. Jacob joined his father in Philadelphia, and there he married Rebecca Sterling about 1826 and learned the printing trade. His ancestors had supported themselves as printers for generations, beginning in the sixteenth century, when a De Cordova in Spain published Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's explorations in Texas. In 1834 Jacob moved back to Kingston, where he and his brother Joshua started a newspaper, the Kingston Daily Gleaner that still exists today as The Gleaner. In early 1836 Jacob went to New Orleans, where he shipped cargoes of staples to Texas during its struggle for independence. At this time he served a term as Grand Master of the Odd Fellows. After the battle of San Jacinto he visited the Republic of Texas to install members in the Odd Fellows lodges, the first established outside the United States. He settled in Texas in 1839 and lived in Galveston and later Houston, where he was elected a state representative to the Second Texas Legislature in 1847. He served for one term but lost the election in 1849. De Cordova traveled extensively through Texas, including the frontier western areas. Through scrip and direct purchase he acquired large amounts of land to sell to settlers; at one time he had a million acres in scrip or title. To attract settlers to Texas, he made speeches on Texas in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, and even to the cotton-spinners association in Manchester, England. His lectures were published on both sides of the Atlantic and were widely read. His land agency, which he owned with his half-brother Phineas De Cordova, became one of the largest such agencies that ever operated in the Southwest. De Cordova and two other men laid out the town of Waco in 1848–49. Town lots of an acre sold for five dollars, and nearby farmland brought two to three dollars an acre. At the urging of his wife, De Cordova reserved free sites for schools, churches, and commons. De Cordova and Robert Creuzbaur compiled the Map of the State of Texas, first published in 1849. Much subsequent Texas cartography was based on this map, which was praised by Sam Houston on the floor of the United States Senate. Books De Cordova wrote that were influential in attracting settlers included The Texas Immigrant and Traveller's Guide Book (1856), and Texas, Her Resources and Her Public Men (1858), the first attempt at an encyclopedia of Texas. Jacob and Phineas De Cordova published two early Texas newspapers, the Texas Herald (also known as De Cordova's Herald and Immigrant's Guide) out of Houston and the Southwestern American out of Austin. The latter was at the solicitation of Governor Peter H. Bell and helped to pass the Compromise of 1850, which resulted in a $10 million payment to Texas for adjusted boundaries after annexation. In the 1850s De Cordova moved from Austin to Seguin, where five miles from town he built for his wife and five children a fine country home, which he called Wanderer's Retreat. In the 1860s he tried to develop a power project on the Brazos River in Bosque County for textile mills to spin Texas cotton. The Civil War brought financial reverses to De Cordova. When he died, he was buried in Kimball, but in 1935 his body and that of his wife were moved to the State Cemetery. He was survived by five children. The De Cordova Bend in the Brazos River south of Fort Worth, and the De Cordova Bend Dam which impounds Lake Granbury, were both named for him. Today the Kingston Gleaner founded by Jacob De Cordova is now known as the Jamaica Daily Gleaner and maintains offices in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

1884: Birthdate of Edward Sapir, German-born anthropologist and linguist. He was on the faculty of the University of Chicago and Yale until his death until 1939.

1891: Birthdate of Ilya G Ehrenburg prolific Russian writer and journalist. Born into a middle class Jewish family living in Kiev, Ehrenburg was able to navigate the treacherous waters of the Soviet Union pursuing his career even during the days of Stalin’s anti-Semitic outbursts and dying peacefully in 1967.

1905: The New York Times publishes a letter from Henry S. Morias reminding readers of Benjamin Disraeli’s support for the Union during the Civil War. Rabbi Morias, the son of Sabato Morais was a well known Jewish journalist who served in the pulpits of numerous east coast congregations.

1907: A law establishing national quotas in the 515 seat Austrian Parliament would lead to five Jewish deputies (4 Zionist and 1 Jewish Democrat) being chosen in the next national elections.

1912: Aaron Hahn, a delegate from Cuyahoga County to Ohio Constitutional Convention, suggests a provision be made in the state constitution for prohibition of sectarian religious instruction. A Rabbi named Aaron Hahn had served as the spiritual leader of Cleveland’s Tifereth Israel but we can find no verifiable evidence that these are one and the same person.

1913: The New York Times reviews The Romance of the Rothschilds by Ignatius Balla a book which the great bankers whose name adorns its title-page allegedly are endeavoring to suppress in England and which shortly will be published in this country by G.P. Putnam's Sons. According to Balla, “A passion for old coins and skill as a chess player formed the basis for the most colossal fortune ever conceived in the brain of a romancer or recorded among the facts of history.”

1916: Jewish Socialist political leader Morris Hillquit was part of a three person delegation to President Wilson to advocate part of the Socialist Party's peace program, which proposed that "the President of the United States convoke a congress of neutral nations, which shall offer mediation to the belligerents and remain in permanent session until the termination of the war." [Editor’s note: For those of you not acquainted with U.S. history, at this point the United States was not a participant in the Great War and most of her citizens wanted it to stay that way. In the fall, Wilson would be re-elected on a platform of He Kept Us Out of War. It was only after America entered the war and during the Red Scare of 1919 that what Hillquit and others like him expounded would come to be consider ‘un-American’ or treasonous.)

1917: Seventy-five years after the opening of the Burton Street Synagogue, The Jewish Chronicle said today that “virtually all the bitterness of the Reform controversy has – Heaven be praised! – passed”, but added a sting in the tail that “Reform has made no important constructive contribution to the religious life of the community”.

1917: The Italian government sent twelve thousand Lire ($2,400) to the Governor of Tripoli for the Jewish poor.

1918: Birthdate of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Regardless of his other "shortcomings" from a Jewish point of Ceausescu is memorable for his refusal to break diplomatic relations with Israel after the June, 1967 War. Romania was the only Eastern European country to defy the Soviets which had ordered all of her client states to break relations with Israel.

1919: In Poland, Jewish parties receive about 10% of the votes during the election for the constituent assembly. But the under the electoral system in use, they get only 11 out of 394 seats

1920: Amadeo Modigliani's mistress jumps out of a window. He was Jewish. She was not.

1921: Austrian born violinist Erika Morini made her American debut in New York City.

1923: Final session of The Golden Jubilee Convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations was held at the Hotel Astor in New York City.

1924: Birthdate of Houston native Annette Strauss who would become the first Jewish female mayor of Dallas, Texas. She was the second woman elected to the position and the second Jew to serve in that capacity.

1925: Birthdate of actor Paul Newman. Newman’s father was Jewish. His mother wasn’t

1926: Birthdate of Stuart Etz Hample, a humorist who entertained children (and adults) as an author, playwright, adman, performer and cartoonist

1928: In Trieste, Italy, an insurance executive named Ottocaro Weiss and the former Ortensia Schmitz, a violinist and a niece of the novelist Italo Svevo, gave birth to Piero Weiss. Weiss fled fascist Italy and came to America in 1940 where he gained fame as a concert pianist and recording artist before turning to musicology where he became an author and co-author of books in the field, including a widely used textbook, and founded the music history department at the Peabody Conservatory. (As reported by James R. Oestreich

1929: Birthdate of cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer. Jules Feiffer's cartoons ran in Playboy and The Village Voice for decades. Feiffer's work appeared often in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Nation, and was nationally syndicated. In 1986, Feiffer won a Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons, and from 1997-2000 he drew monthly op-ed comics in The New York Times.
As a young man, Feiffer studied with the Art Students League and attended the Pratt Institute from 1947-1951. He worked as an assistant to Will Eisner, creator of "The Spirit," a popular comic strip about a "middle class crime fighter." In 1949, Feiffer created his own comic strip, "Clifford," and later he briefly worked for Terrytoons. He was drafted into the U.S. Signal Corps during the Korean War, and worked on animated shorts for the military until 1953. He returned to civilian life with a profound distaste for bureaucracy and authority, and his cartooning quickly developed serious political bite. Feiffer wrote Passionella and Other Stories, which introduced Munro, a four-year-old boy who is mistakenly drafted into the Army. In 1960, Munro was made into a viciously funny anti-war cartoon. Several biographies report that Feiffer won an Oscar for Munro, but that's not quite correct. Feiffer deserved an Oscar, and Munro did win the award for best animated short, but the statue went to Bill Snyder, the film's producer, and it has his name engraved on it. Snyder had provided some of the film's funding, but his only creative contribution was arguing (unsuccessfully) to have this line of Feiffer's dialogue cut: "I want to welcome you men to the Army. This is a time of great struggle. I will explain the issues: Our side is in favor of God. The other side isn’t. Any questions?" Feiffer's first book-length collection of comic strips was published in 1958, titled Sick, Sick, Sick. Other collections include Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl, Feiffer on Civil Rights, and Feiffer on Nixon: The Cartoon Presidency. He wrote several children's books, including The Man in the Ceiling, Meanwhile, and A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. He wrote the novel Harry, the Rat with Women and the graphic novel Tantrum. Feiffer's plays include Knock Knock, Little Murders, and White House Murder Case (the latter two won Obies, the award for outstanding off-Broadway plays). Feiffer's screenplays include Carnal Knowledge and Robin Williams’ Popeye. Feiffer's comics are usually bleak, cynical, and funny. He retired at around the turn of the millennium, but admirers still refer to him as "the dean of American intellectual cartoonists." His work was widely considered the epitome of sophisticated humor, while still being accessible and often hilarious to those of us with no sophistication at all.

1930: Birthdate of A. N. Solomons chairman of Singer & Friedlander.

1933: The Jack Benny Program is broadcast for the last time on CBS Radio.

1934: Germany and Poland sign a ten-year nonaggression pact. This was one of the first steps of acceptance of the Hitler regime by the governments of Europe. Five years later, the Poles would find out that Germans did not really mean it.

1934 Josef Pilsudski signed a ten-year peace pact with Hitler. That same year the Warsaw authorities, observing the impotence of the League of Nations in dealing with the German problem, decided to repudiate the Minorities Treaty signed under duress at Versailles.

1935: In a speech before 3,800 people at the Mecca Temple, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Zionist Revisionist leader urged his listeners to put the development of a Jewish national state in Palestine ahead of all other issues related to economic and political development.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Mordecai Uhana, the sole Jewish resident of Ramallah, a cobbler who lived had there for 34 years, was shot while at work and badly wounded. The driver and a passenger of a Givat Shaul bus were shot and hit on their way to Jerusalem. Nissim Dorani, a lorry driver, was killed by a bomb, thrown at him at Km. 5 on the Jaffa-Jerusalem Road. Twenty children, eight women and two men, all of them Jewish, were arrested as illegal immigrants at Safed. Three Arab terrorists were executed at Acre.

1939: In light of the news that German scientists in Berlin had split the uranium nucleus, Leo Szilard wired the British Admiralty, the keeper of his 1935 patent on chain reactions, to disregard his earlier letter telling them to cancel his patent.

1940: At a prison camp in Siberia, Isaac Babel is found guilty of belonging to an anti-Soviet Trotskyite organization and with spying for France and Austria after a twenty minute trial. He is condemned to death and will be shot tomorrow.

1940: Nazis denied Polish Jews the right to travel on trains. One cannot help but see a note of irony in this decree.

1942 (8th of Shevat, 5702): At Stari Becej, Hungary, 200 Jews and Serbs were slaughtered. At Titel, 35 Jews killed. At Teofipol, 300 Jews marched naked for three miles and then are shot.

1945: On this date the The Virgin Island Daily News reports that Peter de Hemmer Gudme, journalist, Oriental scholar and author of two philo-semtic tomes “From Nebuchadnessar to Hitler” and “A Sketch of the History of Zionism” died while in the hands of the Gestapo in Copehagen. Born in 1897, he was the brother of Sten Gudme who has been working in London on behalf of the Free Danish government. [Ed note: The Gudmes were not Jewish; they were just decent human beings.]

1945: One thousand Jewish women interned at the Neusalz, Poland, slave-labor camp are set on a month-and-a-half-long forced march to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, Germany, about 200 miles to the southwest. Along the way, 800 are beaten and shot.

1946: Birthdate of movie critic, Gene Siskel. He was part of the t.v. duo of Siskel and Ebert.

1947: Joseph B. Levin was assigned to the Office of Opinion Writing at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Levin had joined the SEC in 1942 while it was still located in Washington, DC. At the time of his appointment, the Commission had not returned to Washington from its wartime headquarters in Philadelphia, PA.

1948 (15th of Shevat, 5708): Composer, Ignaz Friedman passed away at the age of 65. Born in 1882, Ignaz Friedman (also spelled Ignace or Ignacy) was a Polish pianist and composer famous for his Chopin interpretations. The son of a musician in Krakow, Ignaz Friedman was one of the most highly regarded virtuoso pianists of his time. A child prodigy he studied with Theodor Leschetizky. His official début in Vienna in 1904 featured a program of three piano concertos and several encores, rivalling the similar programs of established titans like Busoni and Godowsky, and he remained a titan throughout his career. His style was quiet and effortless, imbued with a sense of rhythm and color, grounded in a sovereign technique, and much has been written about his peerless interpretations of Chopin in particular. He was also known for "Friedman moments" in his interpretations where he might double bass notes, fill in chords, extend passagework, and add ornamentation though always with an aristocratic sense of style. His recordings of Chopin Mazurkas are particularly admired, matched perhaps only by the Mazurka recordings of Moritz Rosenthl. During his lifetime his playing was admired, but considered secondary compared to the other virtuosos then playing the concert circuit and he often received lukewarm reviews, especially in the United States, where critics found his playing mannered. At the outbreak of the Second World War Freidman was on a concert tour in Australia and, unable to return to Europe, remained there until his death. Partial paralysis of his left hand forced him to retire from the concert platform in 1943. Friedman estimated that he had given over 2,800 concerts in his life. His many recordings are admired and loved. Like most of the great artists of his time who broadcast, much of his recorded material has been lost, including hours of radio recordings made in Australia and New Zealand. His place in the pantheon of great pianists of the twentieth century is assured. He composed more than ninety works, mainly piano miniatures, but also pieces for cello and a piano quintet. His compositions are superior to those of most other virtuoso pianists of his time, but have not found a niche in the repertory. He arranged many works, especially those of J. S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He also edited the complete works of Chopin and produced editions of Schumann and Liszt, as did his colleagues Harold Bauer and Alfred Cortot.

1949: Switzerland recognized Israel.

1951: Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Miss. became the first Jewish congregation to allow women to perform the functions of a rabbi.

1952: In Cairo, the main Cicurel Department Store was destroyed by a fire set either by the Muslim Brotherhood or militant nationalists. The store was part of chain started in 1909 by Moreno Cicurel an Egyptian Jew who was both active in Jewish and Egyptian community affairs.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the unexpected delay in the ratification of the Reparations Agreement with West Germany upset the Ministry of Finance budget calculations.

1954: Prime Minister Churchill urges the members of his cabinet to support a policy of open navigation through the Suez Canal, which is another way of saying he was calling on the British government to support all measures to force the Egyptian government to open the waterway to ships traveling to and from Israel.

1954: David Ben-Gurion steps down as Minister of Defense, a position he had held since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

1954: Pinchas Lavon becomes the second person to hold the position of Minister of Defense

1968 (25th of Tevet, 5728): The British Admiralty reported the Dakar, an Israeli submarine, was missing and gave the last known position as 100 miles (160 km) west of Cyprus

1973 (23rd of Shevat, 5733): Famed actor Edward G. Robinson, born Emanuel Goldenberg, passed away.

1976: Israel opened the "Good Fence" to Lebanon.

1976: David Mamet's "American Buffalo" premiered in New York City.

1976: Birthdate of William “Willie” Adler, guitarist who played with the Lamb of God.

1978: In Cairo, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced that serious negotiations were going on behind the scenes on the stalled peace talks and that the US officials expressed hope that the current rift with Israel will soon be over.

1980: Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relations

1981: Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz and two other Likud members of the Knesset broke away from the Likud to form Rafi - National List.

1991: Flaws are becoming apparent in the Patriot air defense system deployed against Iraqi Scud missiles, with some warheads exploding and wreaking damage even though the missiles themselves are shot down. Those flaws were evident today, after Iraq fired four more Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Israeli military said that Patriot defense missiles destroyed the four Scuds, but that at least one Scud warhead survived the midair collisions and exploded on the ground, causing some damage and slightly wounding two Israelis.

1992: Final performance of in Rina Yerushalmi's adaptation of "Hamlet" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People by Gary Greenberg, The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim by Richard Pollak and Girls Only by Alex Witchel.

1997: The New York Times published “The Antagonist as Liberator” by Amos Elon
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/specials/goldhagen-elon.html?_r=2

1998: During what will become known as the Monica Lewinsky ScandalU.S. President Bill Clinton appeared on national and denied having had "sexual relations" with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

2001: ''Voyages'', Emmanuel Finkiel's film that deals with the Holocaust opens today at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center.

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush by David Frum, AMERIKA (The Man Who Disappeared) by Franz Kafka; translated by Michael Hofmann. An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign by Joe Lieberman and Hadassah Lieberman with Sarah Crichton and newly released in paperback Einstein’s’ Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time, by Marcia Bartusiak. The author, a freelance science writer with a breezy yet careful style, tells of the efforts by scientists to detect and measure gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted would ripple through the fabric of space-time. Her account is ''informative and easy to read,'' David Goodstein wrote here in 2000. ''When a gravity wave is first detected, the reader of this book will feel like a participant in the great event.''

2006: As part of events leading up to Holocaust Memorial Day observances in Poland, Holocaust survivors mixed with the young at the memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto.

2006: The Fifteenth Annual Jewish Film Festival comes to an end in New York.

2006: Hamas, an organization committed to the creation of a Palestinian state in all of the territory stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean won 76 of the 132 seats in the first parliamentary elections held in the PA in ten years. The Hamas victory means that the terrorist organization can form a government without any coalition partners. For many Israelis who had continued to look for an Arab partner for peace, the election results seemed to doom any hopes of peace.

2006: The board of directors of Hudson’s Bay Co., Canada’s largest chain of department stores, agreed to sell the venerable institution to Jerry Zucker. Born in Israel, Zucker graduated with a triple major from the University of Florida. He is a resident of Charleston, South Carolina and ranks #346 on the Forbes Four Hundred List of Richest Americans.

2007: In a sign of growing acceptance of an expanded role for Israelis in international organization, The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Margaret Chan, the new director-general of the World Health Organization, has invited Israeli health professionals to contribute their experience and skills to the UN organization. The Chinese born, Canadian educated Chan told the Post that she welcomes from any member country including Israel.

2008: Shabbat Yitro – The Giving of the Ten Commandments

2008: In New York City, the 92nd St Y hosts Israeli Folk Dance: Winter Marathon, an “all-night dancing, guaranteed to chase your winter chills away” as part of the Israel at 60 Celebration.

2009: The American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History present: “Stella in the Bois de Boulogne” a dramatic reading of a new play by Jane Wood and Tara Prem that brings alive the historic conflict between Stella Adler of the influential Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty and the controversial artistic director Lee Strasberg, and her subsequent meetings in Paris with Russian director Constantine Stanislavsky in 1934.
2009: Rosh Chodesh Shevat, 5769.

2009: Sports Illustrated reports that Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 for what the NBA called “improper interactions with Denver Nuggets players” during and a game on January 13. Cuban has been fined 14 times by the league for fines totaling almost $1.5 million.
The name is Cuban; the religion is Jewish.

2009: Faced with a decline in their operating budget and a shrinking endowment, the trustees of Brandeis University voted unanimously today to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection to help shore up the university’s finances. The museum, founded in 1961, holds more than 8,000 pieces. It is best known for its collection of modern art, including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. “These are extraordinary times,” Jehuda Reinharz, the president of Brandeis, said in a statement. “We cannot control or fix the nation’s economic problems. We can only do what we have been entrusted to do: act responsibly with the best interests of our students and their futures foremost in mind.” The plan calls for the museum to be closed in late summer and turned into a fine arts teaching center and exhibition gallery. It is unclear how much the collection is worth. The university plans to take all proceeds from the sale and invest them back into the university. Brandeis faces a budget shortfall that could reach $10 million, and the sale of the art is a step to help combat the deficit. The university has already announced a hiring freeze and is considering revamping academic programs to help save money.

2009: Brazilian Jack Terpins was unanimously re-elected president of the Latin American Jewish Congress. A longtime activist in Brazil, Terpins, 61, recently finished his term as president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, Brazil's Jewish umbrella organization.

2009: In an Agriprocessor Doubleheader Leah Rubashkin, 36, wife of former Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin, testified in a bail appeal hearing Monday that cash found in their home during a search was used for living expenses, not to escape the country while Soglowek Nahariya Ltd an Israeli food company has made a $40 million offer for the Postville kosher meatpacking company, which became mired in legal and financial troubles after an immigration raid in May snared about one-third of its work force.

2010: The 92nd Street Y in New York is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Future of Islam” featuring John L. Esposito and Mahmoud Mamdani.

2011: The U.S. Premiere of “Inventory,” a film that tells the story three explorers, who painstakingly deciphered inscriptions on gravestones in the lushly overgrown Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, is scheduled to take place at The New York Jewish Film Festival.

2011: In Columbus, Ohio the Cultural Arts Committee Meeting of Tifereth Israel is scheduled to meet at the home of Cantor Chomsky.

2011: Today, the Jerusalem District Police released details regarding its investigation into a cell of Palestinian militants suspected in two murders and 19 other security incidents since 1997. The cell is alleged to be behind the recent stabbing of an American tourist and her friend in the Jerusalem hills five weeks ago; the tourist, Kristine Luken, was killed, while her friend, Kaye Wilson, managed to flee the attackers with serious wounds. Police believe that the same cell carried out the murder of 53-year-old Netta Blatt-Sorek, a resident of Zichron Ya'akov, whose body was found a year ago near the Jerusalem-area monastery of Beit Jamal last year. The militants are suspected in two cases of attempted murder, one count of rape, another of attempted rape, seven incidents of robbery, seven cases of breaking-and-entering, and for shooting at an Israeli military jeep. Jerusalem District Police chief Aharon Franco said that the cell started off as a group of petty criminals and turned into a nationalist threat when it began carrying out attacks to avenge the January 2010 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, an incident which has been widely blamed on Israel's Mossad.

2012: “Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort” is scheduled to have its world premiere on the closing night of the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Comedian Jeff Applebaum and Ari Hoptman are scheduled to appear at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, January 25, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-24T17:30:00.002-06:00

January 25 In Jewish History

41: Claudius is accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate. “Claudius rescinded Caligula’s provocative decrees affecting Judean and reaffirmed Jewish rights throughout the rest of the Roman world.” Claudius supported the cause of the Jews when they were attacked in separate incidents by the Greeks of Alexandria and the Samaritans. He maintained a life-long friendship with the Agrippa the last Jewish king in Eretz Israel.

749: Birthdate Leo IV (the Khazar). He was Byzantine emperor from 775 through 780. He was known as “the Khazar” because his mother was a Khazar Princess. If the Khazars were Jewish, does this mean that at least one Byzantine emperor was Jewish?

1138: Anacletus II passed away. Known as Pietro Pierleone before his elevation to the Papacy in 1130, Anacletus II was referred to as the Jewish anti-pope because he came from a family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity. The appellation of anti-pope is one that is hung on several popes who were elected under controversial circumstances.

1327: Edward III becomes King of England. During his reign King Edward III would re-apply the Edict of Expulsion of 1290 because there were reports of “secret Jews” or conversos who had remained in England and were practicing “the faith of their fathers.”
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1554: Founding of São Paulo, Brazil. As was the case in so many other parts of Latin America, the first Jews to inhabit Sao Paulo were New Christians or Conversos. The first openly Jewish residents of the city arrived from Alsace-Lorraine in the 19th century. Today São Paulo is home to the largest Jewish community in Brazil with about 130,000 people,

1569: Phillip II of Spain issued the order to set up an inquisition in the New World. Mexico would be the first five years later.

1648: The Khmelnytsky or Chmielnicki Rebellion against the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania began in earnest when Bohdan Khmelnytsky brought a contingent of 300-500 Cossacks to the Zaporizhian Sich and quickly dispatched the guards assigned by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to protect the entrance. His defeat of the counterattacking Commonwealth forces coupled with is oratorical skills brought thousands of rebels including the Ruthenians to join his uprising. Jews, who served as the middle-man and administrators for the absentee Polish landlords were an easy target for the rebels. The bloody uprising will mark the long, slow disintegration of the Polish state. The slaughter of the Jews was so great that it would not be surpassed until the time of the Nazis.

1844: Congregation Shaarai Shomayim u-Maskil el Dol was chartered today in Mobile, Alabama. “Israel I. Jones (1810–1877), a London Jew who arrived early in the 1830s, was president of the congregation for most of his life; one of his daughters married the well-known New Orleans rabbi, James Koppel Gutheim (1817–1886). An auctioneer and tobacco merchant, Jones was active in politics, served as an alderman, was president of the Mobile Musical Association, and introduced streetcars to Mobile”

1852: Achille Fould resigned as the French Minister of Finance.

1852: French political leader Achille Fould was appointed as a Senator and later rejoined the government as a Minister of State.

1854(25th of Tevet, 5614): Filosseno Luzzatto passed away. Born at Trieste in 1829; he was an Italian Jewish scholar; son of Samuel David Luzzatto. His name is the Italian equivalent of the title of one of his father's principal works, "Oheb Ger," which was written at the time of Filosseno's birth. “He showed from childhood linguistic aptitude, and having mastered several European languages, he devoted himself to the study of Semitic languages and Sanskrit.” At the age of thirteen he deciphered some old inscriptions on the tombstones of Padua which had puzzled older scholars. Two years later, happening to read D'Abbadie's narrative of his travels in Abyssinia, he resolved to write a history of the Falashas. In addition to writing several original works, he “translated into Italian eighteen chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, adding a Hebrew commentary. Luzzatto contributed to many periodicals, mostly on philological or exegetical subjects.”

1854: An article published today entitled “The Will of Judah Touro,” described the terms of the late philanthopist and businessman’s final testamentary document. The will was dated January 6, 1854, 7 days before his death. The will appointed four executors, three of whom were to receive $10,000 and a four, R.D. Shepperd who is the “residuary legatee. Touro bequeathed approximately $450,000 to different Jewish and non-Jewish institutions and charities. Among them were $20,000 left to the Jew’s Hospital Society of New York; $10,000 left to the New York Relief Society for Indigent Jews in Palestine; $50,000 left for the agent of “a society dedicated to ameliorating the condition of the Jews in the Holy Land and the securing the enjoyment of their religion” as well as bequests left to Jewish congregations throughout the United States including, but not limited to $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in Boston, $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in Hartford, $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in New Haven, $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in New York, $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in Charleston and $5,000 to a Jewish congregation in Savannah

1858: The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn becomes a popular wedding recessional after it is played on this day at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia. Felix Mendelssohn is the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn. Felix Mendelssohn was born to Jewish parents in 1809, Felix’s father, Abraham, had the famous composer baptized as a Lutheran in 1816.

1861: In a letter that an unidentified resident of New Orleans, LA, wrote to a friend in Boston, he described the voting patterns of various groups in the recent election. If you believe his description, most groups voted for one of the Unionist or Compromise candidates. Only "The Jews voted for secession."

1865: Dr. William H. Thomson read a paper entitled "What we have to learn in the East" at tonight’s meeting of the American Ethnological Society. A long time resident of Syria, who traveled extensively in throughout the Middle East, Dr. Thomson reported on “the importance of extensive investigations among the innumerable mounds” found in the area. Examination of similar mounds has provided information about early inhabitants including the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. [Ed. Note – What the doctor was describing are the innumerable “tels” that would become the focal point of archaeological interest in modern day Israel.]

1868(1st of Sh'vat, 5628): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1872: The United States confirmed M.A. Shaffenburg as U.S. Marshall for the Territory of Colorado.

1870: The New York Times published an editorial defending itself against charges by “a Jewish newspaper” that the paper is paying too much attention to the “Reform party within the ancient sect.” The editorial cites the creation of Temple Israel in Brooklyn as proof of that there is a significant segment of the Jews that “are anxious to make great and fundamental changes in their doctrines and faith.” The editorial finished by saying that it would publish information about any sect within Judaism that are based on “facts.” [Editor’s note: It is significant that a leading metropolitan daily was publishing stories about Jewish culture and religion that were generally informative at a time when the Jewish population was a rather infittesimal part of the general population

1874: “The second constitutional convention of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith” opened today in Chicago, Illinois at the Kingsbury Music Hall. Simon Wolf of Washington, D.C. was elected President. During the afternoon session, a massive gold medal was presented in memory of A.E. Frankland, the Memphis, TN, Jew who worked to ameliorate the suffering in that city’s Yellow Fever Epidemic.

1874: Reverend Samuel Alman was installed today as the pastor of the Second Mission Baptist Church. Before converting, Alman had been a member of the Stanton Street Jewish Congregation.

1879(1st of Shevat, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1879: The Pioneers, a St. Louis literary club for Jewish women, meet for the first time today. Founded by Rosa Sonneschein, who was married to the local Reform rabbi, the club was modeled after similar Christian women's clubs and was devoted to general literary subjects rather than specifically Jewish literature. Sonneschein, who in 1895 would found The American Jewess, the first English periodical for Jewish women, had been an active participant in German cultural life in St. Louis. She hoped the Pioneers would expand the intellectual horizons of the city’s Jewish women. In its early years, the Pioneers, which claimed to be the nation's first literary society for Jewish women, devoted themselves chiefly to "entertainments," which included some general discussions of literature and the issues of the day. The Pioneers society was an early example of a Jewish women’s group that existed for a purpose outside of charity or mutual aid. By the 1890s, Jewish women across the United States were taking the potential for their collective efforts more seriously. Evidence for this can be seen in the creation of the National Council of Jewish Women (1893) and the publication of Sonneschein's The American Jewess (1895). In this atmosphere, the Pioneers directed themselves toward more serious and systematic study. In 1895, for example, they devoted themselves to a rigorous course on the vicissitudes of Jewish history.

1887: Birthdate of Berl Katznelson the Russian native who “ was one the intellectual founders of Labor Zionism, instrumental to the establishment of the modern State of Israel, and the editor of Davar, the first daily newspaper of the workers' movement.”

1895: The Young Ladies and Gentlemen's League of the Montefiore Home hosted a ball at the Carnegie Music Hall to raise fund for the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids.

1899: Birthdate of Goodman Ace. Born Goodman Aiskowitz, Kansas City, Missouri, he was a writer and comedian who created Easy Aces. The scripts for this long running radio hit would be the source for television shows in the 1970’s. He also created the “You Are There,” the pseudo-news show that helped to launch the career of Walter Cronkite.

1902: Herzl proposes to Franz Oppenheimer the creation of a model cooperative colony in El Arish.

1904: Herzl met Pope Pius X and tried to convince him to support the vision of Zionism without any success. The pope totally rejected the idea that Jerusalem would be in Jewish hands. (The papacy still clings to this notion.) Herzl is received by Pope Pius X, who declares, he cannot support the return of the infidel Jews to the Holy Land. ("If you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we want to have churches and priests ready to baptize all of you.")

1909: German composer Richard Strauss' opera “Elektra” receives its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera. Strauss was born in 1864 and passed away in 1949 which means that his last years as an active composer coincided with the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazis. Many have been critical of his close association with the Third Reich. His defenders claim that Strauss’ behavior was determined by his need to protect his son and daughter-in-law who was Jewish, In fact, the couple was arrested in Vienna during the war and it took all of Strauss’ best efforts to save them.

1912: The Savannah Section withdraws from the Council of Jewish Women.

1913(17th of Shevat, 5673): Wilhelm Bacher, a Hungarian rabbi and scholar passed away in Budapest. Born in 1850, he was “a major contributor” to the “Jewish Encyclopedia” as well as close friend of many Jewish intellectuals notably Chaim Nachman Bialik

1919: Birthdate of NBC newsman Edwin Newman.

1919: Awni Abdul Hadi and Ahmad Qadri met with an unnamed Zionist representative at the Hotel Meurice

1919: The League of Nations was founded. British control over Palestine would take its legal form from a Mandate by the League of Nations. The failure of the League to halt the aggression of Japan in China, Italy in Abyssinia and the fascists in Spain is listed as one of the causes of World War II and therefore the Shoah. The League failed as a peace keeper, in part, because the United States refused to join, a mistake it would not repeat at the end of WW II when it joined the United Nations.

1921: In Brooklyn, Lazarus and Jenny Cohen gave birth to Samuel Theodore Cohen, the Father of the Neutron Bomb.

1922: A committee chaired by Rabbi Louis Feinberg of Cincinnati, Ohio, will deliver a report to Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) on the acceptability of using unfermented grape juice for sacramental purposes.

1922: Temple Beth El held its 10th Annual Ball at the Elmwood Music Hall in Buffalo, New York.

1925: The former Hahambashi of Turkey, Rabbi Haim Nahoum was elected Chief Rabbi of Cairo, Egypt.

1925: Birthdate of John Livingston Weinberg, American banker and businessman.

1928: Birthdate of Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder the Birmingham Temple in suburban Detroit in 1963. He also was the driving force behind the creation of the Society for Humanistic Judaism in 1969. He died in auto accident at the age of 79 in 2007.

1940: Birthdate of Lt. Col. Avraham "Avi" Lanir one of the most accomplished and bravest pilots in the IAF. On the first day of the Yom Kippur War, Lanir joined with Colonel Oded Marom flew their Mirage jets to the Golan where they engaged four MiGs, shooting down one a piece. Tragically, Colonel Lanir would be shot down by the Syrians who tortured him to death.

1940: The Nazi decreed the establishment of Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland

1944: Hans Frank, governor-general of Occupied Poland, notes in his diary that approximately 100,000 Jews remain in the region under his control, down by 3,400,000 from the end of 1941.

1945: The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Stutthof concentration camp. In yet another Death March prisoners are sent westward in the middle of driving snow storm.. Many would die from freezing. Others were shot or thrown into the icy Baltic Sea.

1949: Ben-Gurion's Mapai party was the top vote getter in Israel’s first election after the creation of the Jewish state. However, the party only gained 35.7% of the vote which translated into 46 seats in the Knesset leaving Ben-Gurion 15 seats short of the majority he would need in the parliament that has 120 seats. This would necessitate the formation of a coalition. This would set the stage for a joining of strange bedfellows which some see as detrimental to the long term stability of the Jewish state.

1954: Birthdate of Israeli author David Grossman whose work included Her Body Knows, a collection of two novellas.

1958: Birthdate of actress Dinah Manoff. She is the daughter of screenwriter Arnold Manoff and Lee Grant who was Lyova Haskell Rosenthal before she began her acting career.

1959: Pope John XXIII proclaims Second Vatican Council. This would lead to the greatest improvement in relations between the Church and the Jewish People since the days of Constantine.

1959: Contributions of $132 were received by the annual appeal of the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund from the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York.

1960: Yitzhak Rabin flew to IDF Southern Headquarters to ascertain the military situation as Egyptian forces stood on the border with Israel. The crisis would pass since neither side was prepared for war. But the crisis of 1960 did help to set the stage for Israel’s response to Egypt’s next foray into the Sinai in 1967.

1961 (8 Shevat 5721): Bar Mitzvah of Yissachar Dov Rokeach. Born in 1948 he is the fifth and present Rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Belz. He has led Belz since 1966.

1968: Last transmission is received from the Israeli submarine, Dakar.
http://www.submarines.dotan.net/memorial/index.htm

1971: Idi Amin led a coup deposing Milton Obote and became Uganda's president. In his younger days, Amin was favorably disposed towards the Israelis who trained him as a paratrooper. However, in 1976, he would prove himself to be a strong supporter of the PLO as he gave refuge to the terrorists who landed their high jacked aircraft at Entebbe.

1975: Birthdate of Canadian actress Mia Kirshner, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of a Canadian Jewish journalist.

1983: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia

1987: Neil Diamond sang the national anthem at Super Bowl XXI.

1988: As the latest round of Arab terrorism escalates, Yehuda Genyan, a tailor, seems to be expressing the frustration of many Israelis when he said today of the terrorists, “They walk around here like kings, but a Jew goes to pray at the wall and he gets stabbed.'' In the wake of international criticism over Israel’s response to Palestine protesters, Prime Minister Shamir seems to echoing Genyan when he states, ''We are not allowed to kill, we are not allowed to expel, we are not allowed to beat,'' Prime Minister Shamir said. What are Jews allowed to do - Only to be killed, only to be wounded, only to be defeated.''

1992: Singer Ofra Haza and the Amka Oshrat Yeminite Dance Troupe appear in concert as part of “Israel: The Next Generation.”

1993: The New York Times reported that a United States Senator from Hawaii, the Brooklyn-born chief rabbi of an Israeli West Bank community, and an organization of disabled Israeli war veterans will receive the 10th annual Defender of Jerusalem Awards. The $100,000 prize that will be divided among the recipients will be presented by the Jabotinsky Foundation Thursday at the Plaza Hotel. The foundation is named for Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Zionist, philosopher and mentor of many Israeli leaders. Being honored this year are Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, founder of the settlement of Efrat on the West Bank, where he is described as a peace-keeper and arbitrator between Jews and Palestinians, and the Zahal Disabled Veterans Organization, which operates two sports, rehabilitation and social centers in Tel Aviv and Haifa and is building a facility in Jerusalem. The purpose of the prize, said Eryk Spektor, founder and chairman of the Jabotinsky Foundation, "is to honor people who have stood up in the defense of Jewish rights."

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including Hitler’s Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht by John Weitz and Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer; translated by Joseph Sherman.

1999: Yitzhak Mordechai completed his service as Minister of Defense.

2001: Israel's state-owned power utility said today that it planned to buy more than half of its $3 billion supply of natural gas over the next decade from Egypt, after receiving an offer that was 20 to 30 percent lower than domestic prices. Israel Electric said it would enter detailed negotiations to buy the gas from Eastern Mediterranean Group, which involves Israel's Merhav Group and Egypt's state-owned oil company. Other gas will come from an Israeli supplier. The purchase could establish the strongest economic tie between the two nations since they signed a peace treaty in 1978.

2001: After a 48-hour hiatus, Israelis and Palestinians resumed their peace talks today still hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough, though increasingly dubious about a full-fledged agreement before the Feb. 6 election in Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Barak told an Israeli business group today that he did not believe there would be an agreement before the election, in which he is being challenged by the hawkish Ariel Sharon. But Israeli and Palestinian negotiators greeted each other warmly after a two-day suspension of talks and immediately began more intensive bargaining.

2002: A Palestinian suicide bomber wounded more than two dozen people when he blew himself up today in a pedestrian mall in a Tel Aviv neighborhood of populated largely by immigrant workers.

2003: On the first day of his trial, an Israeli Arab student denied that he had tried to hijack an El Al jetliner and force it to slam into a skyscraper in Tel Aviv. Tawfiq Foqara, 23, told the court that during the November 17 flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul he had a dispute with a flight attendant who yelled at him. He said he had been humiliated by the flight attendant who he said picked on him because he was an Arab. He testified that he pulled a penknife out of his pocket and grabbed her arm when the plane approached Istanbul, but was immediately overpowered by passengers. Mr. Foqara faces up to five years in prison if convicted of attempted hijacking.

2003: The Guardian published an article entitled “Solzhenitsyn breaks last taboo of the revolution; Nobel laureate under fire for new book on the role of Jews in Soviet-era,” in which Nick Paton reviews Two Hundred Years Together by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. [Ed. Note: The article is reproduced in its entirety to provide a sense of what one of the most acclaimed writers of the 20th century had to say about Jews. He seemed to comprehend the fact that Communists like Trotsky had rejected Judaism and to remind us that for Jews, Russia is a good place “to be from” regardless of who is in charge]

“Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who first exposed the horrors of the Stalinist gulag, is now attempting to tackle one of the most sensitive topics of his writing career - the role of the Jews in the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet purges. In his latest book Solzhenitsyn, 84, deals with one of the last taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much perpetrators of the repression as its victims. Two Hundred Years Together -a reference to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population - contains three chapters discussing the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia. But Jewish leaders and some historians have reacted furiously to the book, and questioned Solzhenitsyn's motives in writing it, accusing him of factual inaccuracies and of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism in Russia. Solzhenitsyn argues that some Jewish satire of the revolutionary period” consciously or unconsciously descends on the Russians" as being behind the genocide. But he states that all the nation's ethnic groups must share the blame, and that people shy away from speaking the truth about the Jewish experience. In one remark which infuriated Russian Jews, he wrote: "If I would care to generalize, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an unjust national generalization. But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was softer than that of others.” Yet he added: "But it is impossible to find the answer to the eternal question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police] only by the fact that two thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect.” Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, spent much of his life in Soviet prison camps, enduring persecution when he wrote about is experiences. He is currently in frail health, but in an interview given last month he said that Russia must come to terms with the Stalinist and evolutionary genocides - and that its Jewish population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them.” My book was directed to empathize with the thoughts, feelings and the psychology of the Jews - their spiritual component," he said. "I have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back. The Jewish subject for a long time was considered prohibited. Zhabotinsky [a Jewish writer] once said that the best service our Russian friends give to us is never to speak aloud about us.” But Solzhenitsyn's book has caused controversy in Russia, where one Jewish leader said it was "not of any merit". "This is a mistake, but even geniuses make mistakes," said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress. "Richard Wagner did not like the Jews, but was a great composer. Dostoyevsky was a great Russian writer, but had a very skeptical attitude towards the Jews. "This is not a book about how the Jews and Russians lived together for 200 years, but one about how they lived apart after finding themselves on the same territory. This book is a weak one professionally. Factually, it is so bad as to be beyond criticism. As literature, it is not of any merit." But DM Thomas, one of Solzhenitsyn's biographers, said that he did not think the book was fuelled by anti-Semitism. "I would not doubt his sincerity. He says that he firmly supports the state of Israel. In his fiction and factual writing there are Jewish characters that he writes about who are bright, decent, anti-Stalinist people." Professor Robert Service of Oxford University, an expert on 20th century Russian history, said that from what he had read about the book, Solzhenitsyn was "absolutely right”. Researching a book on Lenin, Prof Service came across details of how Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin, asked the politburo in 1919 to ensure that Jews were enrolled in the Red army. Trotsky said that Jews were disproportionately represented in the Soviet civil bureaucracy, including the cheka. "Trotsky's idea was that the spread of anti-Semitism was [partly down to] objections about their entrance into the civil service. There is something in this; that they were not just passive spectators of the revolution. They were part-victims and part-perpetrators.
"It is not a question that anyone can write about without a huge amount of bravery, and [it] needs doing in Russia because the Jews are quite often written about by fanatics. Mr Solzhenitsyn's book seems much more measured than that." Yet others failed to see the need for Solzhenitsyn's pursuit of this particular subject at present. Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB), said: "The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and cheka were serving ideas of social change "If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-Semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history.”

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power by George Soros, Rape: A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates, Collect Poems by Paul Auster and a newly released paperback edition of A Saint, More or Less by Henry Grunwald
2004: Today Israel's high court suspended for 30 days the state's efforts to expel the Palestinian father of an Israeli soldier, pending a hearing on granting him the right to remain in Israel.

2005(15th of Sh'vat, 5765): Tu B'Shvat

2006: The Tenafly Jewish community has won a six-year battle with local officials over the right to place symbolic plastic strips on utility poles to create an enclosure that would allow them to perform certain restricted activities on the Sabbath. By a 5-0 vote, the Borough Council of Tenafly agreed Tuesday to allow the strips to be used to create an enclosure known as an eruv.
Local officials also agreed to pay $325,000 to cover court costs incurred by the group which sued over the ban. The courts had already rejected the council's efforts to ban the strips.
An eruv is a symbolic district within which Jews can perform tasks otherwise forbidden on the Sabbath such as pushing baby strollers. By having the eruv extended to the utility polls, the domain of the home is extended, thereby allowing more activities on the Sabbath. According to the doctrine observed by some Jewish communities, objects cannot be moved from the home to the outside world on the Sabbath. The plastic strips, called lechis, are attached to utility poles, forming a boundary. In 2000, a portion of the eruv was found at the Tenafly Nature Center, prompting the Borough to ban the strips. Local officials said that allowing the markings could be construed as the government giving preferential treatment to certain religious groups, since it is illegal in Tenafly to put posters or other objects on utility poles. The Tenafly Eruv Association, which had obtained permission to place the strips from two utility companies and the county, sued over the ban. A federal judge ruled in 2001 that the Borough had the right to ban the lechis, but the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, saying the Borough had selectively enforced the ban on utility pole attachments. The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that ruling. "We didn't agree with the claim that it was any type of violation of the separation between church and state," Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Times in an article published Wednesday. "We hope that this will be the last chapter in this painful and divisive fight." The strips have been erected in other New Jersey communities, including Englewood, Fair Lawn, Fort Lee, Teaneck and Paramus. Tenafly's encompassed about one-third of the Borough and linked with one in neighboring Englewood. "This was a dark period in Tenafly history," Councilman Joseph Salvatore told The Record of Bergen County. "If I had one wish, it would be that the Orthodox community was welcomed with open arms."

2007(6th of Sh'vat, 5767): Sydney Simon Shulemson, DFC, died today in Florida. Born in 1915, he “was a Canadian fighter pilot, and Canada's highest decorated Jewish soldier, during World War II.Growing up in Montreal, Shulemson attended McGill University. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force on September 10, 1939, and graduated from flight school in 1942. He joined RCAF 404 Squadron in Wick in Scotland, flying a Bristol Beaufighter. Shulemson downed a German flying boat on his first sortie. He pioneered techniques for rocket attacks on Axis ships in the North Atlantic. After the war, Shulemson located aircraft and recruited pilots for Israel's growing Israeli Air Force.”

2007: In Derby, UK, Holocaust Memorial Day Service

2007: Speaker of the Knesset Dalia Itzik became acting President of Israel when President Moshe Katzav took a three month long leave of absence.

2008: In Iowa City funeral is held for orthopedic surgeon Dr. Webster B. Gelman, recipient of the 1985 University of Iowa Alumnae Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award who passed away at the age of 89.

2008: First Musical Shabbat Service at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2008: Rami Zuari, a 20 year old Border Police officer killed during a terrorist attack at an East Jerusalem checkpoint was buried in the military cemetery at Be’er Sheva, his home town.

2008: In Great Britain at Friday Prayers the community of Ahmadi Muslims in the UK say the following prayer in commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day. "Sunday 27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day in UK. We pray that people learn to recognize, accept and respect their differences. People of all races and faiths are God’s people. May everyone accept this truth so that the world can look forward to a peaceful future. May God enable people to remain close to their Creator, follow His teachings of peace, and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Amen."

2009: Politics and Prose Bookstore hosts a reading from Words that Burn Within Me: Faith, Values, Survival, a collection of notebooks by Hilda Stern Cohen containing poetry and recollections of life in 1930s Germany, which was discovered by her husband, Werner Cohen, after her death in 1997.

2009: The 5th annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival closes this evening with a showing of “Children of the Sun,” written and directed by Ran Tal and the winner of Israel's Academy Award for Best Documentary. This eye-opening look at the kibbutz movement includes rare historic footage and personal interviews.

2009: The New York Times includes reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Benjamin Disraeli by Adam Kirsch and Ballet’s Magic: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 by Akim Volynsky; edited and translated by Stanley J. Rabinowitz. Akim Volynsky was the pen name of Chaim Leib Flekser who was born in 1861 into an Orthodox Jewish family of booksellers in Ukraine.

2009: The New York Times reports that the kosher symbol, intended to show consumers that the contents adhere to Jewish dietary laws, was mistakenly left off 14 million boxes of Thin Mints, the variety that accounts for roughly 25 percent of Girl Scout cookie sales, said Raymond Baxter, president and chief executive of Interbake Foods, the parent company of ABC Bakers of Richmond, Va., one of two approved manufacturers of the cookies. Proofreaders missed the mistake. But a customer noticed in November that the symbol — a circled U accompanied by a D for dairy — was missing, said Brian Crawford, an executive at the Scouts’ New York headquarters. (Some troops sell cookies in the fall, though most sales are held January through March.) ABC Bakers quickly sent letters explaining the oversight (and showing proof of kosher certification from the Orthodox Union) to Scout councils. Rabbi Yisroel Bendelstein of the Orthodox Union, who has fielded perhaps a half-dozen calls about the cookies, said he hoped the letters would “obviate any concerns.” Thin Mints, the rabbi said, are his favorite Girl Scout cookie.

2009 (29 Tevet 5769): Rabbi Leon Klenicki, a pioneer in interfaith relations passed away today according to an announcement from the Anti-Defamation League, where he served as director emeritus of interfaith affairs. A leading figure in efforts to promote Jewish-Christian understanding, Klenicki was made a Papal Knight by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 in recognition of his historic contributions to improving relations between Catholics and Jews. He worked for the ADL for 28 years before his retirement in 2001. Klenicki, a renowned scholar and theologian, wrote numerous books and articles on Catholic-Jewish issues. A native of Argentina, Klenicki was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati. He was a member of an Argentine government commission to investigate Nazi activities in Argentina from 1933 to 1945.

2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the New York premiere “Leap of Faith,” a documentary about the difficulties that four families face when they abandons their traditions and embrace Judaism.

2010: The Brooklyn Israel Film Festival is scheduled to close this evening with a screening of the 2008 Israel Academy Award for Best Documentary, ‘Children of the Sun.”

2010 (10th of Tevet): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchok Schneersohn, sixth Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch movement who was also known as the Friediker Rebbe or "Previous Rebbe."
One year later, to the day, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Rebbe assumed the leadership position of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

2010: At the Sundance Festival the first screening of “A Film Unfinished.” Yael Hersonski’s powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film—the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these “everyday” scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate. Hersonski relentlessly screens each reel as ghetto survivors and (amazingly) one of the original cameramen recall actual events, investing the cryptic scenes with detail, complexity, and authority. Rigorous in its regard for human tragedy and the power of images, A Film Unfinished indicts both the evil and the astounding narcissism of the Nazi state.

2010: The week after Miep Gies, Elie Wiesel wrote the following about in Time magazine.
Miep Gies entered history without wanting to. She did what many others were too afraid to do: she risked her freedom, her life, in her determination to save Jews from deportation and death.From 1942 to '44, Gies, who died Jan. 11 at 100, helped shelter and feed Anne Frank and her family in an attic in Amsterdam, where at that time Jews were being branded, humiliated and condemned just because they were Jews. Her life remains a moral example for millions to follow. I met Gies much later and was impressed by her sincerity, the simplicity of her comments and the moving quality of her smile. Calm, soft and reserved, she radiated nobility and strength of character. She talked little and quietly, reflecting on the significance of every word. When speaking of the past, she seemed to relive it. Naturally, I knew much about her life. Anne's immortal diary, which Gies found and gave to Otto Frank after the war, was filled with praise for her devotion and sacrifice.I asked her where she had found the courage to defy the Gestapo during the dark days of the occupation, and she protested. "I did nothing heroic or extraordinary," she said. "Human beings were in peril, and I had to care for them." But for the Franks, she represented all that is good and generous. She was the incarnation of hope.

2011: The New York Premiere of Black Bus, which “tells story of two young women who chose to leave their close-knit Haredi communities in Israel and are, as a consequence, estranged from their families” is scheduled to take place at The New York Jewish Film Festival.

2011: David Makovsky and Ghaith al-Omari with Jane Eisner are scheduled to lead a discussion entitled “Israelis and Palestinians: Poised Between Crisis and Opportunity” at the 92nd Street Y.

2011: To mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2011, the Wiener Library is scheduled to hold a special lecture by Prof Clare Ungerson on The Kitchener Camp, a largely forgotten camp established in 1939 for 4000 male Jewish refugees situated near Sandwich in East Kent. “The Kitchener camp, a derelict site which had previously been an army camp, was taken over by the Council for German Jewry at the beginning of 1939 as a result of pressure from the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to rescue threatened Jews from Germany and Austria. Conditions for admission were that inmates must be aged between 18 and 40 and that they have a definite prospect of emigration overseas. The camp began receiving refugees in February 1939 and ended with the outbreak of war in September after which most of the inmates chose to enlist in the British army. Three young English Jews, Jonas and Phineas May and M Banks, who were later to become commissioned officers in the Pioneer Corps, were put in charge of the management of the camp.” Located in London, the Wiener Library describes itself “The World’s Oldest Holocaust Memorial Institution.”

2011: Police Commissioner David Cohen said today that he was concerned by the possibility of ideology-based murders against public officials in Israel. "One of the most disturbing topics of the times is murder for ideological reasons which could occur in Israel," Cohen said at a conference dealing with crime and law enforcement. Cohen said the growing threats against public figures on the one hand, with over 100 public figures needing police protection, and the insufficient punishing handed down by the courts, were a dangerous situation, yet he warned that the police should not be tested on the matter. "Such a thing is equated to a threat against the law itself," Cohen said, adding that "the policy is unclear – any person who threatens a public figure is destined to be arrested, investigated and charged." "A democratic country will not accept such threats," Cohen said. The police chief also expressed concern about the rising murder rates of murder within the family, which rose drastically during 2010. The police chief said that most criminal cases that made it to court received only 25 percent of the maximum legal punishment for the crime, and indicated that he wanted the courts to hand down more significant sentences. The police commissioner added that increasing the police force by over 1,000 police officers would significantly decrease the crime rate in the country, which is what the police force aims to achieve.

2011: The international department of the prosecution services failed to obtain the extradition from Peru of former judge Dan Cohen, wanted in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice, the government informed the department today. Israeli prosecutors were still optimistic last month, after a seventh judge in the Lima District Court decided the extradition could go ahead. This decision opened the way for the Peruvian government to sign the extradition warrant. The Israeli government officials offered their prosecution colleagues no explanation as to why the extradition process eventually failed. Although the Supreme Court of Peru decided Cohen could be extradited as early as last July, the one-time Israeli district court judge appealed to a lower court in Peru, claiming the legal process against him had been flawed. Cohen also argued that the extradition could not proceed because of a lack of mutual diplomatic relations between Israel and Peru. The lower court upheld his appeal, canceling the Supreme Court's verdict and leading the Supreme Court to launch a counter-appeal. That counter-appeal was upheld by the district court last month. Cohen is believed to have received millions of dollars in bribes when he served as a director on the Israel Electric Corporation board, in return for influencing the company's decisions and pressuring them to buy turbines from the German corporation Siemens.

2011: After a preliminary hearing today determined that the issue should be handled in the courts, the Jerusalem Labor Court will be deciding over the next few months whether rabbinic ordination should be recognized as equivalent to a bachelor’s degree, vis-à-vis the Civil Service Commission’s prerequisites for the position of a supervisor in the haredi educational system. The legality of the standard tender published by the commission in October for general supervisors is being challenged as discriminatory by the Haredi Clinic for Human Rights at Kiryat Ono Academic College and Rabbi Haim Havlin of Jerusalem, who, despite being an ordained rabbi with many years of experience as an educator, was denied the possibility to compete for a slot as a supervisor as he lacks an academic degree.

2011: Nominations for the 83rd annual Academy Awards, announced this morning, were good for the Jews. Shoo-ins Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”) and Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network”) got Best Actress and Actor nods, respectively. James Franco, whose mother is Jewish, also scored a Best Actor nod for his role in “127 Hours.” “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky earned a Best Director nomination, along with “True Grit” helmers Joel and Ethan Coen. “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, son of a Jewish father and Italian-American mother, also got a Best Director nomination. Jews also ruled the screenwriting categories. Debra Granik scored a nod in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for the brutal “Winter’s Bone,” while Hollywood vet Aaron Sorkin earned his for Facebook docudrama “The Social Network,” as did fellow A-lister Scott Silver for scrappy Boston epic “The Fighter.” In the same category, the Coen Brothers won the Academy’s attention for their highly acclaimed adaptation of Charles Portis’ 1968 novel “True Grit.” British improv-drama icon Mike Leigh was nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category for “Another Year,” his sobering look at happiness — and the lack thereof — among the British chattering classes. And British-born, Long Island-raised David Seidler got his first Oscar nomination — in the Original Screenplay slot — for “The King’s Speech”. Semites didn’t fare as well in the Best Supporting Actor or Actress categories, though 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld — reportedly the daughter of a Jewish dad and black/Filipino mom — got a nod for her widely lauded turn as vengeful tween Mattie Ross in “True Grit.”
2011: Misaskim reported that Nazi-era RIF soap was handed over to the organization for burial. The incident received much attention as it opened up raw and painful scars dating back to the days when our parents were young and suffered Nazi atrocities. It rekindled a debate and prompted people to question, research, and delve deeper in an attempt to uncover the myths and facts surrounding the RIF soap controversy. Questions and comments received from readers included: “Why don’t they test it?” “Is it permissible to test it?” “Can’t it just be buried?” These questions along with many others are being carefully evaluated by Misaskim’s rabbinical authority, Rabbi Yechezikel Roth Shlita and his Bais Din, to halachically determine what should be done with the soap. More survivors came forward relating what they know about the infamous RIF soap bars. And most surprisingly, more RIF soap bars have been sent to Misaskim. Yoni Marrus from Mequon, Wisconsin recently reached out to Misaskim with 8 more bars that he chanced upon after reading about the RIF story. In addition, 10 more bars from Poland were shipped to Misaskim. It is very possible that more bars of soap may surface in the interim before the final rabbinical decision is reached. Misaskim will make sure that the soap will be handled according to correct halachic procedure. YiddishNayes

2011: A Jewish hockey player has sued the National Hockey League's Anaheim Ducks for religious discrimination and harassment based on religion. Jason Bailey, 23, in a lawsuit filed today in California's Orange County Superior Court, accused the coaches of one of the Ducks' affiliate teams of making anti-Semitic remarks and harassment. Bailey said he was subjected to "a barrage of anti-Semitic, offensive and degrading verbal attacks regarding his Jewish faith" by Martin Raymond, head coach of the Bakersfield Condors. The suit says assistant head coach Mark Pederson also made anti-Semitic remarks about Bailey.The suit claims that Bailey was the victim of religious discrimination, harassment based on religion, intentional infliction of emotional distress and retaliation. It asserts that he lost income, benefits and suffered humiliation, according to CNN. Bailey was drafted by the Ducks in 2005, but has not played in the NHL. He was traded last year and now plays right wing for the Binghamton Senators, a farm team for the Ottawa Senators. (As reported by JTA)

2011(20th of Shevat, 5771): Daniel Bell, the writer, editor, sociologist and teacher who over seven decades came to epitomize the engaged intellectual as he struggled to reveal the past, comprehend the present and anticipate the future, died today at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 91. Mr. Bell’s output was prodigious and his range enormous. His major lines of inquiry included the failures of socialism in America, the exhaustion of modern culture and the transformation of capitalism from an industrial-based system to one built on consumerism. But there was room in his mind for plenty of digressions. He wrote about the changing structure of organized crime and even the growing popularity of gangsta rap among white, middle-class, suburban youth. Two of Mr. Bell’s books, “The End of Ideology” (1960) and the “Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism” (1978), were ranked among the 100 most influential books since World War II by The Times Literary Supplement in London. In titling “The End of Ideology” and another work, “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society” (1973), Mr. Bell coined terms that have entered common usage. In “The End of Ideology” he contended — nearly three decades before the collapse of Communism — that ideologies that had once driven global politics were losing force and thus providing openings for newer galvanizing beliefs to gain toeholds. In “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society,” he foresaw the global spread of service-based economies as generators of capital and employment, supplanting those dominated by manufacturing or agriculture. In Mr. Bell’s view, Western capitalism had come to rely on mass consumerism, acquisitiveness and widespread indebtedness, undermining the old Protestant ethic of thrift and modesty that writers like Max Weber and R.H. Tawney had long credited as the reasons for capitalism’s success. He also predicted the rising importance of science-based industries and of new technical elites. Indeed, in 1967, he predicted something like the Internet, writing: “We will probably see a national information-computer-utility system, with tens of thousands of terminals in homes and offices ‘hooked’ into giant central computers providing library and information services, retail ordering and billing services, and the like.” Mr. Bell became an influential editor of periodicals, starting out with The New Leader, a small social democratic publication that he referred to as his “intellectual home.” He joined Fortune magazine as its labor editor and in 1965 helped found and edit The Public Interest with his old City College classmate Irving Kristol, who died in 2009. Though The Public Interest never attained a wide readership, it gained great prestige, beginning as a policy journal that questioned Great Society programs and then broadening into one of the most intellectually formidable of neoconservative publications. “It has had more influence on domestic policy than any other journal in the country — by far,” the columnist David Brooks wrote in The New York Times in 2005. Mr. Bell also maintained a distinguished academic career, first as a professor of sociology at Columbia from 1959 to 1969 — the university awarded him a Ph.D. for his work on “The End of Ideology” — and then at Harvard, where in 1980 he was appointed the Henry Ford II professor of social sciences. As both a public intellectual and an academic, Mr. Bell saw a distinction between those breeds. In one of his typical yeasty digressions in “The End of Ideology,” he wrote: “The scholar has a bounded field of knowledge, a tradition, and seeks to find his place in it, adding to the accumulated, tested knowledge of the past as to a mosaic. The scholar, qua scholar, is less involved with his ‘self.’ “The intellectual,” he went on, “begins with his experience, his individual perceptions of the world, his privileges and deprivations, and judges the world by these sensibilities.” In some measure Mr. Bell may well have been referring to himself in that passage — his intellectual persona self-consciously winking at its detached scholarly twin with whom it conspired in a lifetime of work and experience. Daniel Bolotsky was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on May 10, 1919, to Benjamin and Anna Bolotsky, garment workers and immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father died when Daniel was eight months old, and Daniel, his mother and his older brother, Leo, moved in with relatives. The family changed the name to Bell when Daniel was 13. Mr. Bell liked to tell of his political beginnings with an anecdote about his bar mitzvah, in 1932. “I said to the Rabbi: ‘I’ve found the truth. I don’t believe in God. I’m joining the Young People’s Socialist League.’ So he looked at me and said, ‘Kid, you don’t believe in God. Tell me, do you think God cares?’ ” Mr. Bell did join the League and as an adolescent delivered sidewalk speeches for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for president. By the time he had graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and entered City College in the late 1930s, he was well grounded in the Socialist and Marxist canon and well aware of the leftist landscape, with its bitter rivalries and schisms. At City College, he had no trouble finding his way to Alcove No. 1 in the cafeteria, where, among the anti-Stalinist socialists who dominated that nook, he found a remarkable cohort that challenged and sustained him for much of his life as it helped to define America’s political spectrum over the last half of the 20th century. Its principal members, in addition to Mr. Bell, included Mr. Kristol, whose eventual move to the right as a founding neoconservative led Mr. Bell to leave The Public Interest in 1972 while steadfastly affirming his friendship for his old school chum. There was Irving Howe, the late critic, professor and editor of the leftist journal Dissent, who remained a Social Democrat. And there was Nathan Glazer, who would become Mr. Bell’s colleague in the Harvard sociology department, the author, with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of “Beyond the Melting Pot,” and the architect of strategies for school integration. In 1998 the four men were the subjects of a documentary film by Joseph Dorman titled “Arguing the World.” The atmosphere of City College in the ’30s was supercharged with leftist ideology. There were Communists and Socialists, Stalinists and Trotskyites, all giving vent to their views in the years of the Spanish Civil War just before Hitler’s pact with Stalin paved the way to world war. In the film, Mr. Bell described the atmosphere in the cafeteria as “kind of a heder,” referring to the Jewish religious schools where arguing a variety of views and redefining positions was the basis of learning. He graduated in 1939. The associations Mr. Bell made at City College were fundamental. He also met the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and the literary critic Alfred Kazin, whose sister, Pearl Kazin, Mr. Bell married in 1960. She survives him. Mr. Bell never hesitated to expand and revise his thinking through the years. New editions of his older books often include new prefaces and afterwords that look at his old arguments in the light of new developments in politics and society. And he was always quick to point out what he regarded as misconceptions about his work and his life. In 2003, for example, an article by James Atlas in The Times described him and Mr. Kristol as neoconservatives who had felt that the Vietnam War had a “persuasive rationale.” He answered with a letter that declared, “I was not and never have been a ‘neoconservative.’ Nor did I support the war.” Indeed, for all the ideological wars he had witnessed, Mr. Bello disdained labels, particularly as they were applied to him. Over the years he would offer his own political profile, declaring what he called his “triune” view of himself: “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics and a conservative in culture.” (As reported by Michael T. Kaufman)

2012: The David Harris & David Harris Comedy and Variety Show with Special Guests, The Chosen Few are scheduled to appear at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

2012: At the New York Jewish Film Festival “The Silent Historian” is scheduled to have its U.S. Premiere and “Joann Sfar Draws From Memory” is scheduled to have its World Premiere.

2012(1st of Shevat, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin
Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

This Day, January 24, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-23T16:57:00.002-06:00

January 24 In Jewish History

41: Roman Emperor Caligula is murdered by the Praetorian Guard. Caligula’s treatment of the Jews does not qualify him as an anti-Semite since he was “a certifiable nut case” who murdered several of his family members, reportedly had incestuous relationships with at least of on his sisters and planned to name his favorite horse as a Counsel of Rome. Caligula believed he was a divinity who was to be publicly worshipped. A delegation of Jews from Alexandria, including the famous Philo, went to Rome to plead the Jewish case before Caligula. At first Caligula was hostile to the Jews, but in the end he reportedly dismissed the delegation saying, the Jews are “just a poor, stupid people unable to believe in my divinity.” The real threat came when Caligula took steps to install a statute of himself in Jerusalem that was to be worshipped. Agrippa, King of Judea and Petronious Publius, the Roman governor of Syria were able to stall the Emperor whose subsequent assassination rendered the point moot.

76: Birthdate of Publius A Hadrianus 14th Roman Emperor. Hadrian reigned from 117 through 138. Hadrian banned Torah study, Synagogue worships and led the Romans in the defeat of the Bar Kochba Revolt.

1436: In Aix-en-Provence, a riot ensued after a crowd felt that a Jew who insulted the Virgin Mary received too light a sentence

1656: Dr. Jacob Lumbrozo, the first Jewish physician in what would be the United States arrived in Maryland

1712: Birthdate of Frederick II, King of Prussia from 1740 until 86. Known as Frederick the Great, the Prussian king’s treatment of Jews was, to say the least, uneven. He did grant special rights to some, including Mendelssohn. However for the most part, he treated them as an exploitable economic commodity. But what can you expect from a man who wished to be buried with his greyhounds, the only living creatures he really loved.

1803(1st of Sh'vat, 5563): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1828: Birthdate of Ferdinand J Cohn, German botanist. He is considered a founder of the science of bacteriology. From his early studies of microscopic life he developed theories of the bacterial causes of infectious disease and recognized bacteria as plants. He aided Robert Koch in preparing Koch's famous work on anthrax. Cohn's writings cover such diverse subjects as fungi, algae, insect epidemics, and plant diseases.

1844: The Second Annual Benevolent Ball of the Israelites of Philadelphia raised $489.79 today.

1848: James Marshall finds gold at mill that is being built for John Sutter near San Francisco, CA. According to historian Hubert Howe Bancroft this event brought “a medley of races and nationalities, including the ubiquitous Hebrews." According to Stephen Mark Dobbs there were thirty Jews at a Rosh Hashanah services in San Francisco and the number grew to fifty for Yom Kippur. Jews mined for gold but they mined the commercial opportunities and by 1853 their number had grown to 3,000 in San Francisco alone.

1851: In Cayuga County, NY, Albert Baham was hung for his role in the murder of the Jewish peddler Nathan Adler. After the execution, Albert’s brother John confessed his role which resulted in his death sentence being commuted to life in prison. In point of fact, he was pardoned by the governor after having served 8 years in prison for his part in the crime.

1856 (17th of Shevat, 5616): Rabbi Yechezkel of Kuzmir, Polish Hasidic leader passed away. (Ed. Note: This comparatively lengthy note is intended to provide those with limited background an introduction to the richly textured, multi-dimensional world of Chassidic Jewry.) Born in 1755, he was the founder of the) Modzitz or Modzhitz Chassidim. This is the name of a Chassidic group that derives its name from Modzice, one of the boroughs of the town of Dęblin, Poland, located on the Vistula River. Followers of this group are known as Modzitzer Chasidim and they are now based mainly in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem in Israel where their Rebbe lives. They also have a smaller following in Brooklyn, New York. The rabbis who lead them have come from a family by the name of "Taub". Rabbi Yechezkel Taub of Kuzmir established yeshivas and a type of Hasidic teaching that was similar to that of the Seer of Lublin, and distinct from the Hasidism of Ger and Kotzk. Upon his death, his son, Rabbi Eliyahu Taub of Zvolin, Poland succeeded him. He excelled in Torah scholarship and creating Hasidic songs. He was called Menagen mafli pla'os Hebrew for "a wondrous musical talent". His first son Rabbi Moshe Aaron succeeded him as Rabbi of Zvolin. His second son Yisrael went on to found the actual Modzitz Hasidic dynasty. Rabbi Yisrael Taub was born in 1849 and in 1891 founded the Modzitzer Hasidic movement in Modzitz, Poland. He created many melodies that are still sung by Hasidim today. When he passed away on November 24, 1920, he was succeeded by his son Rabbi Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub. Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub was born on October 20, 1886. He guided his Hasidim until 1938 when he fled Poland due to Nazi persecution. He made his way to Lithuania, then to Russia, then to China, and then to Japan. Eventually, with the help of some Modzitzer Chassidim, he and some family members reached the shores of San Francisco and then moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1940. It was during his stay in Brooklyn that Rabbi Shaul became popular and helped rebuild Modzitz. He was a gifted songwriter and wrote over 1000 Hasidic melodies. He constantly talked about the coming of the State of Israel. He was unable to see his prediction come true and he passed away on November 29, 1947, the day the UN voted to create the state of Israel. He was succeded by his son Rabbi Samuel Eliyahu Taub. Rabbi Samuel Eliyahu was born in Lublin, Poland on February 9, 1905. Rabbi Shaul and his son Rabbi Samuel were on a trip to the then British Mandate of Palestine in 1935. While they were there Samuel fell in love with Palestine and asked his father if he could stay there. His father agreed and within a year Rabbi Samuel's wife and their child came over to Israel. In 1947 he succeeded his father and became the Modzitzer Rebbe to be known as the Imre Aish ("Words of Fire") as Samuel Eliyahu is called, and continued the traditions of Modzitz both as a composer and Torah scholar. He passed away on May 6, 1984, when he was succeeded by his son Rabbi Dan Israel Taub. Rabbi Israel Dan was born in 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. He came with his mother to Palestine in 1936 to meet up with his father Rabbi Samuel. For a number of years he headed the Modzitz Chasidim in the city of Tel-Aviv where his father had lived. He moved to a new building in Bnei Brak, Israel on Lag Ba'omer 5755 (May 18. 1995). Like his predecessors he also composes Hasidic melodies and many of them have are sung regularly in Hasidic synagogues. His opinion is highly regarded. The Modzitz Hasidim are well-known for their uniquely inspiring melodies and their devotion to serious learning of Torah and Talmud.

1862: Bucharest was proclaimed capital of Romania. The Jewish population of Bucharest had grown from 127 families in 1820 to 5,934 persons in 1860. By the turn of the century, the Jewish population would exceed 40,000 people making them almost 15% of the city’s total population.

1874: Nathan W. Lyman appeared at the Jefferson Market Police Court today and withdrew his complaint that he had been swindled out of $7,000 by a Hungarian born Jew, Dr. Gabor Naphegyi.

1876: Leaders of several New York congregations met at Temple Emanu-El met tonight to discuss the possibility of establishing a college for Jewish students. A committee was established to contact congregations throughout the United States to gain support for the endeavor. Louis May, President of Temple Emanu-El was selected as chairman and Meyer S. Isaacs was selected as Secretary.

1879: Rosa Sonneschein founded "The Pioneers," a Jewish women's literary club in St. Louis, Missouri. “The club, which met in Sonneschein's home, was modeled after similar Christian women's clubs and was devoted to general literary subjects rather than specifically Jewish literature. Perhaps inspired by this literary circle, in the 1880s Sonneschein began publishing stories in Jewish magazines. She also worked as a correspondent for the German-language press in the U.S., a position for which she was prepared by both her German upbringing and her social status as the wife of a prominent St. Louis rabbi. In 1895, after divorcing her husband, Sonneschein moved to Chicago and founded a magazine specifically addressed to American Jewish women, the American Jewess. Though the magazine ran only until 1899, it was the first English periodical specifically addressed to Jewish women. It sought to document and inspire the activism of an emerging network of Jewish women's organizations that expanded upon the model established by the Pioneers.”

1880: Birthdate of New York political leader and Congressman Meyer Jacobstein.

1888: Birthdate of Austrian writer, Hedwig (Vicki) Baum. Vicki Baum is considered one of the first modern bestselling authors, and her books are reputed to be among the first examples of contemporary mainstream literature. She attended Vienna Conservatory to study the harp, later playing the harp professionally and teaching music for several years in Darmstadt. After a number of novels in German, a breakthrough novel, Menschen im Hotel, was turned into a play and then at the instigation of producer Irving Thalberg into the highly successful film Grand Hotel directed by Edmund Goulding. The story details one weekend in a posh hotel in minute detail -- Baum had taken a job as maid to yield realism. The film won Best Picture Oscar. Her time in the United States made her realize it was time to leave Germany, emigrating in 1932. From that point Baum wrote many of her novels in English and took citizenship in 1938. Residing in California, she lived in Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, and then Hollywood, where she died of leukemia in 1960. Among two of her most pithy sayings are, "Pity is the deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman" and "To be a Jew is a destiny.”

1888: In New York City, over a thousand people attended a benefit performance of "King Solomon" at the Roumania Opera House. The event was organized by Mrs. M. Rosendorff who will use the funds to buy meat for needy Jews at Passover time. This is not Mrs. Rosendorff's first foray into fund raising. In 1887, she hosted a ball at the the Webster Hall that paid for meat Passover time.

1897: Berlin Zionists Willy Bambus and Theodor Zlocisti address a letter to Herzl.

1901: The Industrial Removal Office was formally created as part of the Jewish Agricultural Society at the Society's Executive Committee meeting. The Society rented a store at 34 Stanton Street in New York and named it "The Industrial Removal Office." The philosophy behind the IRO was to assimilate the immigrants into American Society, both economically and culturally. In 1901, following anti-Semitic decrees by the Romanian government, a large wave of Romanian Jews fled to New York. The Rumanian Committee was quickly formed in New York to distribute the immigrants to other towns where they might find employment. B'nai B'rith lodges in these towns and cities assisted the refugees upon their arrival. The Romanian Committee rapidly evolved into the Industrial Removal Office, which took over the work on a much larger scale and opened its availability to any unemployed Jewish immigrant, regardless of their origin. The process of procuring work for immigrants was done through traveling agents, who also obtained the cooperation of local Jewish organizations. Local committees, organized primarily by B'nai B'rith, obtained orders for workers and assisted the immigrants on their arrival. The New York bureau noted requests received from the traveling agents and local committees and matched up opportunities from their applicant lists. In the first year of the Industrial Removal Office's existence, nearly 2000 individuals were sent to 250 places throughout the United States.
1902: Birthdate of economist Oskar Morgenstern. Morgenstern enjoyed a successful career in Europe until the coming of the Nazis forced him to flee to the United States, where he pursued his career.

1903: The New York Times reports on the growth and development of the Jewish Theological Seminary including the securing of a $500,000 endowment and the election of Justice Greenbaum, the New York state jurist, to the Board of Directors.

1905: Henry S. Morais, journalist, educator and rabbi, writes a letter praising Benjamin Disraeli to the New York Times entitled “Why the People of the United States Should Cherish His Memory” in which he reviews Disraeli’s support for the Union during the Civil War when other English leaders including Gladstone “were known to be in sympathy” with the Confederates and which concludes with the statement that this “scion of the famous Israelis of Jewish history…the offspring of a people as old as the ages, will live in the minds and in the hearts not alone of his own, but in those of a liberty loving humanity.”

1911: Founding of Merchaviya the first Jewish settlement in Emek Yizra'el (Jezreel Valley). Ten years after its founding, Merchaviya would be joined by its most famous member, Golda Meir. The future Prime Minister of Israel would tend chickens

1913: Birthdate of Mark Goodson, TV game-show producer

1913: Franz Kafka stopped working on "Amerika"; it will never be finished

1917(1st of Sh'vat, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1918: The Gregorian calendar introduced in Russia by decree of the Council of People's Commissars effective from February 14(NS). This change is one of the impediments to pinpoint accuracy in dating events in Russian history. Events are marked in different places by Old Style and New Style dates. Unfortunately, some sources do not tell which they are which leads to added confusion. (Yes, this is an excuse for some of the inaccuracies in this document.)

1920 (29th of Tevet, 5680): Amedeo Clemente Modigliani passed away at the age of 35. “Amedeo Modigliani, a painter and a sculptor, was born July 2, 1884, in Livorno, Italy. Modigliani came from a wealthy background. His family members were Sephardic Jews, and when his father's career was ruined as a banker, he was forced to work as a wood and coal merchant. Sadly, Amedeo lost his father while still a young boy. Modigliani's health was very delicate, as he had very weak lungs, which he had inherited from his family. He had many close calls with pneumonia while he was growing up and spent many years being cared for by his worried mother and sisters. He developed tuberculosis and battled with it for the rest of his life. His mother had been the first one to notice and encourage his incredible talent and she sent him to study at art academies in Florence and Venice. Finally, in 1902, when he was 17yrs, he left for Venice, excited about beginning his art studies. Five years later in 1907, he arrived in Paris, ready for fame and fortune, but within weeks he found himself penniless, and had to move from one seedy hotel to another. He was getting out 'n' about however, and meeting all the famous writers and artists of the day from Picasso to Utrillo. According to a good friend of his, he looked very dashing in his brown corduroy coat that he wore everywhere, the bright scarf around his neck, and his broad felt hat. He was very handsome, brooding and thought of as eccentric by his close friends. Modigliani did crazy things in Paris, like dancing in the moonlight with a famous prostitute and getting jailed for drunkenness constantly. He was very successful at attracting women, who found him quite irresistible, and he could always find willing models to paint. Modigliani was involved in one love affair after another, and was completely swallowed up by the dark side of the Parisian nightlife. Women quite fascinated him, and he once said, "Women of beauty worth painting or sculpting, often seem encumbered by their clothes". In 1909, he found himself in a sticky patch. He really needed money, and he had to keep moving from one tiny studio to another, to escape angry landlords. He was even reduced at one time, to pushing his belongings in a wheelbarrow through the streets. He wasn't taking care of himself and was always coming down with infections. Finally, he had to return to his home in Italy that summer, to recover and regain his strength. He returned to Paris and then in 1913, his health worsened. His lungs were giving him a lot of trouble, and each time he got sick, he would go home to recover. He was constantly drinking and using drugs and was thoroughly miserable. He was wasting his talents as much as he wasted his money. He could never make enough money to live and was used to selling his drawings for only a few sous. He drifted from cafe to cafe and attic to attic. He made friends with the sculptor Brancusi, who introduced him to African sculpture. Modigliani was utterly fascinated with the simplicity of African masks and art and kept it all in mind when he painted his portraits. He never really mastered the medium of sculpture and left many pieces unfinished, but from this time on, his paintings were far more influenced by what he had learnt through sculpture. At Zborowski's home, a Polish friend and poet, Modigliani met his beloved, Jeanne Hebuterne, who was also a very talented young artist. Amedeo was over the moon with Jeanne and they fell deeply in love, married and soon had a son. With Zborowski's encouragement, Modigliani agreed to opening an art show on Oct 3rd, 1917. This was to be his first show and he didn't know what to expect. He had gathered together a total of 32 paintings and drawings. Almost nothing sold, except for some drawings. His show was actually closed for 'indecency' the same day it opened. In desperate financial trouble and very ill, his good friend, Zborowski, paid for the couple to go to Nice for the winter. In 1918, Jeanne gave birth to a daughter. Amedeo was overjoyed, but he soon had to begin moving his little family around from hotel to hotel. Amedeo was terribly ashamed at not having enough money to support his family. Jeanne even left their little daughter with her wet nurse, and began to paint once more, using her husband as her model. Modigliani became weaker and weaker, yet still he continued to paint the people around them. He was a remarkable painter, and it shows through his compelling portraits. He often deliberately chose sickly children to paint, feeling a connection with them and their sickness. He had a love of the humble people, which he expressed in his drawings, his paintings and his choice of models. He would often be seen on the terraces, drawing portraits and then offering them to his subjects, in the hope of getting a drink in return. In the middle of January, his friends found him as he lay dying in his studio, next to his distraught wife. They took him to a hospital, where he later died of tubercular meningitis, combined with the affects of too much alcohol and drugs. Amedeo Modigliani died while just 36yrs, January 25th, 1920. The next day, his hysterical wife threw herself from a window of her parent's home. Jeanne was 9 months pregnant and carrying their third child at the time. Sadly, both Jeanne and her unborn child died instantly. Modigliani was an artist whose paintings are dominated by his sense of linear design. He used line exclusively to suggest body and form, with skill and sensitivity. He used distortion as a way of highlighting characteristics of his subjects, and perhaps, maybe even their personalities? Modigliani developed his own unique style, surrounded by artists experimenting with impressionism, surrealism, and cubism. Many of his subject's heads are elegantly bowed with swan-like necks, and sloping shoulders. The effect is delicate and gentle, yet you feel the people in these paintings are almost aloof, in a dreamy kind of way. His faces are very distinctive with the long thin noses, the empty almond-shaped eyes, and the tiny pursed lips. The eyes are so haunting and when I look at them, it seems odd that they look quite normal in his paintings, as if everyone has empty eyes. Some people feel he played on the sickness in humanity, while others recognize it as a new definition in breathtaking beauty.” A movie about the painter entitled “Modigliani” starring Andy Garcia is currently available in DVD,

1922: Eskimo Pie patented by Christian K Nelson of Iowa. (Nelson was not an Eskimo and he was not Jewish. But those of who live in Iowa don’t get to brag very often, so just laugh and move on. There is a Jewish connection between Iowa and Ice Cream. Many of the products manufactured by Blue Bunny Ice Cream which is located in La Mars, Iowa, are kosher and delicious)

1922: Professor Louis Ginzberg presented a paper on “The Question of Fermented Wines in Jewish Religious Observances” to members of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary who meeting in an executive session today. Following a lengthy and lively discussion the consensus of opinion was that unfermented grape juice may be used for sacramental purposes. This decision will be forwarded to the American Jewish Committee which is collecting information on the acceptability of using grape juice instead of wine when reciting Kiddush, etc. Ginzberg’s belief that the use of unfermented grape juice could be used put him at odds with the writings of Rabi Abraham Klausner. Currently, nobody produces grape juice that meets the standards of Kashrut so adoption of Ginzberg’s view would require the start of a new business venture. [For those of you unacquainted with American History, this issue arose with the start of Prohibition and its attempt to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol in the U.S.]

1924: Birthdate of character actor Marvin Kaplan.

1932(16th of Shevat, 5692): Sixty-four year old Paul M. Warburg, the brother of Felix Warburg, passed away at 6:30 this evening at his home in Manhattan. At the time of his death he was chairman of the boards of the International Acceptance Bank of New York and the Manhattan Company. A native of Hamburg, and a member of one of the most prominent banking family, he was instrumental in providing many of the ideas that culminated in the creation of the Federal Reserve. He was married to Nina Loeb, the daughter of the late Solomon Loeb of the famed financial firm Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

1932: Celebration of the 70th anniversary of the birth of author Sigmund Dische in Czernowitz, Romania.

1932: The New York Times describes Dr. Abraham Schwardon’s gift to Hebrew University as being “A Great Collection of Autographs and Portraits Assembled by the Labors of a Galician Chemist.”

1933(26th of Tevet, 5693): Charles "King" Solomon a Boston racketeer born in 1884 who controlled New England's bootlegging, narcotics and illegal gambling during Prohibition was killed in Boston's Cotton Club by rival gunmen. One of the earliest crime figures in New England's history, Solomon immigrated from his native Russia as a boy settling with his family in Boston's West End. The son of a local theater owner, Solomon and his three brothers came from a middle class background and, during his teenage years, worked as a counterman in his uncle's restaurant. However, by his early 20s, he had had become involved in prostitution, fencing and bail bonding prior to Prohibition. By the early 1920s, he controlled the majority of illegal gambling and narcotics such as cocaine and morphine before expanding into bootlegging with Dan Carroll during Prohibition owning many of the cities most prominent speakeasies including the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. He enjoyed extensive contacts throughout the underworld including the Bronfmans in Canada as well as associates in New York and Chicago. Although never indicted on bootlegging charges (due to his political connections), he was tried on narcotics charges in 1922. Represented by editor and general councilor of the Boston American Grenville MacFarlane, which had then been crusading against drug abuse, he was later acquitted of charges. He would however serve thirteen months of a five year prison sentence at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for intimidating a witness into perjury for his narcotics trial. During his imprisonment, a request for his transfer to a prison closer to Boston was made by Boston Congressmen George H. Tinkham and James A. Gallivan. Attending the Atlantic City Conference in 1927, Solomon was one of the several leaders in the "Big Seven” who helped negotiate territorial disputes and establish policies which would influence the later National Crime Syndicate in 1932.

1934: A Lutheran minister (name unknown) opposed to the Reich Church is beaten by Nazi thugs.

1936: Jewish band leader Benny Goodman and his orchestra record "Stompin' at the Savoy" on Victor Records

1938: The Palestine Post reported that a meeting of the General Council (Va'ad Leumi) of Palestine Jews published a manifesto calling for the immediate opening of the gates of the country to the millions of suffering Diaspora Jews.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that one Jew was severely wounded when Arabs shot at a group of workers returning from the Givat Shaul quarry to Jerusalem.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that according to the new Romanian law, all Jews had to appear before the courts in order to prove their citizenship rights.

1939: Hermann Goring, Hitler’s #2, formally appointed Reinhard Heydrich as head of Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration and ordered him to speed up the process

1940: Final day of an Aktion begun on January 18 during which 255 Jews were arrested in Warsaw and then murdered in the Palmiry Forest.

1940: As the Nazi plunder of Poland continues, General Gouvernment ordered registration of all Jewish property.

1943: During the past three weeks, fifteen trains reached the Auschwitz from Belgium, Holland, Berlin, Grodno and Bialystok. Of the new arrivals, 4,000 were sent to the barracks and 20,000 were killed before their luggage could be sorted. To accommodate the rate of killing, four new crematoriums were constructed.

1943 One thousand Jews from Jasionowka were rounded up and deported to Treblinka.

1943: The Nazis incinerated Jewish patients, nurses and doctors at Auschwitz-Birkenau

1943: Hitler ordered Nazi troops at Stalingrad to fight to death. This militarily stupid command helped seal the fate of the German army and marked the beginning of the end for the Nazi juggernaut.

1944: The SS Meyer London was launched today. This “liberty ship” was named for the American Jewish leader who was one of only two Socialist Party members to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was sunk by a torpedo off the cost of Lybia.

1944: Birthdate of singer Neil Diamond

1944: Birthdate of David Gerrold [Jerrold David Friedman] author of the World of Star Trek. There has always been a strange affinity between Jewish writers and science fiction. Maybe it comes from those Biblical chariots of Elijah, Ezekiel and Isaiah.

1947: Birthdate of Warren William Zevon, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant and a Scottish/Welsh Mormon who became a noted singer, song writer and musician

1949: France recognized Israel.

1948: Birthdate Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State and foreign policy expert.

1951: Birthdate of Soviet-born American comedian Yakov Smirfnoff

1959(15th of Sh'vat, 5719): Tu B'Shvat

1959: "Party with Comden & Green" closes at John Golden New York City

1962: Brian Epstein signed a contract to manage The Beatles

1965: In Damascus, Syrian police arrested Kamel Amin Th’abet on charges of being an Israeli spy. After being tortured he was hung in a pubic execution. Th’abet was Eli Cohen who successfully penetrated the highest level of the Syrian government and provided intelligence of immeasurable value.

1965: Winston Churchill passed away in London at age 90. Churchill supported the Balfour Declaration. He led the fight against Hitler. At the same time, he stood by and did virtually nothing to rescue the Jews of Europe. And he continued to enforce the White Paper after there was no military reason to do so. Sir Martin Gilbert, his official biographer, is Jewish and has written a slim, fascinating volume entitled Churchill and the Jews.

1974(1st of Sh'vat, 5734): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1975: Larry Fine, actor, comedian and member of the Three Stooges passed away

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Menachem Begin told the Knesset that he might reconsider his previous decision, and would send a delegation to the Cairo-held military talks, but warned that this would not happen if Egypt continued to issue statements offensive to Jewish dignity. Begin explained that Egypt broke off the political talks held in Jerusalem despite the fact that President Anwar Sadat was well aware, in advance, of Israel's stand on the Rafiah Sinai salient and on the future of Palestine's Arab people. In Cairo Egypt confirmed that the political peace talks had been frozen, but not terminated. The US insisted that both Egypt and Israel should embark on a useful process that should resume whenever possible.

1983: Director George Cukor passed away at the age of 83 after a stroke and a heart attack. 1986: Birthdate of child actor Ricky Ullman.

1988: After the Israeli Cabinet met today Police Minister Haim Bar-Lev told reporters that reports to contrary, there is no policy to beat Palestinians to stop protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He said that the using the word beatings “is an unfortunate term.”

1990: An Israeli court jailed for life plus 40 years a Palestinian known as the ''Tel Aviv Strangler,'' who claimed to have killed seven people to prove he was not a collaborator with the Israelis. Four of his victims were Jews and three were Arabs. Mohammed Halabi, 32 years old, was sentenced today for the murders in October of five women and two men. The Tel Aviv District Court jailed him for 40 additional years for two attempted murders. The police said Mr. Halabi confessed to all the charges.

1991: Israel said it would not carry out an immediate retaliatory strike against Iraq despite the missile attack on Tel Aviv that killed three people. After that decision, another Iraqi missile was destroyed by one of the American Patriot missiles stationed in Israel over the weekend. And it was disclosed that a Patriot had clipped the missile that hit Tel Aviv.

1991: Mayor David N. Dinkins, who has repeatedly criticized the American effort in the Persian Gulf, said today that he would travel to Israel next week in a symbolic gesture of support for Israelis and for American troops. In the tender world of the city's ethnic politics, the visit could prove awkward. It would appeal to Jewish supporters and strengthen his pro-Israel stance, but it might appear too hawkish to some of his anti-war constituents, including many blacks, who still form the base of his support.

1991: In the currency market, the dollar's recovery today, which was partly technical, followed comments by Israel's Ambassador to the United States, who said Tel Aviv would be ready to join in regional arms control efforts and possible peace talks with the Palestinians once the Persian Gulf War ended.

1992: In “A Physical Approach For an Israeli 'Hamlet'” Mel Gussow reviews Rina Yerushalmi's provocative adaptation of "Hamlet" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

1993: A “travel advisory” issued to reported that the American Jewish Congress will be sponsoring 4 “family tours of Israel” this year ‘that include the opportunity to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and at the Zealot's Synagogue in Masada”

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or topics of special interest to Jewish readers including Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist by Myriam Anissimov, The Conversion by Aharon Appelfeld and Reporting Live by Leslie Stahl.

2000: RADWARE Ltd., of Tel Aviv is prepared to make an equity offering 2.5 million shares this week.

2001: As the controversy surrounding the pardon of Marc Rich continues to grow, Jack Quinn, former White House counsel under President Clinton, who is now Mr. Rich's lawyer said in an interview today that the president had given every indication in their conversations on January 19th that he had read the petition and piles of testimonials that had been sent the previous month and that he was eager to discuss the case on its merits. Their conversation was strictly about the “legal merits.” There were no questions about party affiliations or the role of Denis Rich, Mr. Rich's former wife, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser and close friend of the Clintons. But now with the pardon drawing so much criticism, Mr. Quinn acknowledged making mistakes and said that President Clinton had every right to be angry with him. ''He should be upset,'' Mr. Quinn said. ''I'm upset.'' Mr. Quinn faulted himself for failing to go public sooner with the rationale for the pardon. Mr. Clinton has been widely criticized for pardoning Mr. Rich, a financier who lived a wealthy exile life in Switzerland for the last 17 years instead of returning to face charges of tax fraud and trading with Iran in violation of sanctions. ''I didn't anticipate well enough the reaction to this,'' Mr. Quinn said. Beyond his kindling a firestorm of criticism more searing than that surrounding any of Mr. Clinton's other last-minute pardons, Mr. Quinn said he was distressed by the perception that he had used connections gained in the years when he was chief of staff to Al Gore and White House counsel to Mr. Clinton to obliterate much of the case against Mr. Rich.

2001: Today, President Bush appeared to be directing attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian talks and toward major Arab countries by placing telephone calls to four leaders: King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, described the calls as an effort to ''underscore the strong relations the United States has with these nations.'' He said they were ''introductory'' in nature and declined to be specific about substance.

2001: The cabinet decided tonight Israel will return to peace talks with the Palestinians here on Thursday, after a nearly two-day suspension prompted by the killing of two Israeli civilians in the West Bank.

2002: In New York, the 11th annual New York Jewish Film Festival comes to a close.

2004(1st of Shevat, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

2004: An exhibition entitled “What Does It Mean To Be Jewish?” opens at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

2005: In an article entitled “A Bright Diaspora Star Fails to Dazzle Israel,” Steven Erlanger describes the Israeli reaction to American economist and banker Stanley Fischer becoming Governor of the Bank of Israel.

2006: During the Presidency of Robert A. Iger, The Walt Disney Company announced that it would acquire Pixar for $7.4 billion in an all-stock transaction

2006: The Los Angeles Times published a column by Joel Stein under the headline "Warriors and Wusses" in which he wrote that it is a cop-out to oppose a war and yet claim to support the soldiers fighting it. "I don’t support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism...".

2006: Ehud Olmert, in his first major policy address since becoming Israel's acting prime minister, said at the Herzliya Conference that he backed the creation of a Palestinian state, and that Israel would have to relinquish parts of the West Bank to maintain its Jewish majority.

2006: The Antiquities Authority recommended the Meggido Prison be transferred to a new location, after the remains of an ancient church were discovered on the facility's grounds four months ago. The Antiquities Authority made the recommendation on Tuesday at a meeting with President Moshe Katzav and Christian leaders at the excavation site. An excavation team last year discovered a mosaic floor on the prison grounds adorned with three inscriptions indicating religious activity from the early Christian period. Some 60 prisoners from Meggido and Tzalmon Prison participated in the excavation, which was carried out as part of the prison's decision to build new incarceration units on the grounds. The Prisons Service responded to the Antiquities Authority's recommendation by saying, "we will carry out whatever decision is reached. If it is decided to protect the site as an important place, we will act accordingly." The Meggido Prison last year was transferred from the Israel Defense Forces' jurisdiction to the Prison Services, which has since invested tens of million of shekels in renovations and expansions. Meggido is considered an important Christian theological site where, according to tradition, the Day of Judgment will take place. It is located west of Afula.

2007: In what some considered as a major breakthrough in the history of the Holocaust, Haaretz reported that Khaled Abd al-Wahab, a well-to-do Tunisian farmer who died in 1997, was the first Arab to be named as a candidate for a Righteous Gentile award from Yad Vashem. The nomination was based on testimony of Anny Boukris, a 73-year-old Jewish woman from Los Angeles who survived the Axis occupation of North Africa. In a letter sent to the authorities at Yad Vashaem, she described how Abd al-Wahab rescued her and 24 relatives from their hiding place and hid them on his farm until the end of the German occupation. Boukris, who was 11 at the time, related that al-Wahab risked his life when he stopped a German officer from raping her mother.

2007: At the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, an exhibition entitled “Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited” comes to a close. By 1966, kingmaker-critics had anointed Morris Louis, the great Washington abstractionist, the greatest painter since Jackson Pollock.

2008: The New York Jewish Film Festival comes to an end with showings of Orthodox Stance a documentary about “Dmitry Salita a twenty-something Russian immigrant equally devoted to the seemingly disparate worlds of professional boxing and Orthodox Judaism”; Villa Jasmin, a film about “Serge, a Tunisian-born Jew living in Paris, who takes his wife to see the country he remembers fondly from his childhood. It is based on a novel by Serge Moati, also explores Serge’s parents’ courtship and his father’s activities with the anti-fascist movement in the 1930s”; The Film Fanatic and The Unkosher Truth a short documentary, in which the filmmaker must muster the courage to tell her father, an Orthodox rabbi and U.S. Army general, that her boyfriend is German and gentile.”

2009: The 5th annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival continues with Noodle, a comic drama about an El Al flight attendant and a 5-year-old Chinese boy left behind when his illegal immigrant mother is deported. Though they have no language in common, the two build a bond as they search for his mother.

2010: Final performance of the The Kosher Cheerleader by Sandy Wolshin at the Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona.

2010: “From Verse to Universe: Reading the People’s Torah” is scheduled to open at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum.

2010: An exhibition entitled: “Hyman Bloom: A Spiritual Embrace at the Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to come a close.” Considered by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to be "the first Abstract Expressionist in America," Hyman Bloom never gave up representational art. He began his career by painting rabbis, cantors and Torah covers, using them as a metaphor for his own spiritual questioning. This exhibition of nearly 50 paintings and drawings by the renowned Boston Expressionist painter reveals his recurring interest in these motifs and his exploration of Jewish spirituality and mysticism through a distinctly personal modernist style.

2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the Unite States premiere of the restored print of Bar Mitzvah, a classic of Yiddish cinema, in which a mother miraculously survives a shipwreck and shocks the family by appearing at her son’s bar mitzvah. The film features “the legendary Boris Thomashefsky in his only film performance.”

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present the East Coast Premiere of “The Yankles,” which tells the story of ex-con who is forced to coach an “upstart Orthodox baseball team” as part of the community service sentence imposed by the Judge for a drunk driving conviction.

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival comes to a close.

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Listener by Shira Nayman

2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom.

2011: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to present a program entitled “2011: Challenges and Opportunities for American and World Jewry” during which Malcolm Hoenlein and John Batchelor are scheduled to lead “a candid discussion of the dangers and issues facing the Jewish community in the coming year, from delegitimization to the peace process to Iran globalization.”

2011: The U.S. Premiere of “Convoys of Shame” / “Les Convois de la honte” is scheduled to take place at the New York Jewish Film Festival. “This incisive documentary examines how the SNCF (the French national rail company) used its trains and its extensive infrastructure to transport tens of thousands of Jews, Roma, and members of the resistance from France to Nazi concentration camps from 1940 to 1944. Accounts from eyewitnesses, historians, and attorneys are supplemented by elegant reconstitutions. Also examined is the creation of an exaggerated myth of resistance among railroad workers.”

2011: Today, Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar defended his decision to approve the military conversions which are undertaken according to orthodox Jewish law. His reaction came in the wake of claims from parts of the Ashkenazi-haredi camp that such conversions should not be considered valid, since the process the candidates underwent was faulty and the converts never really intended on maintaining a Jewish lifestyle, as evident in the fact that many of them do not keep mitzvot in the years that follow. In a letter apparently intended to senior Ashkenazi haredi rabbis, Amar noted the general guidelines of conversions – the necessity that the convert be circumcised, immersed in a ritual bath, face a qualified three-man panel of rabbinic judges and “take upon himself the mitzvot of the Torah,” all of which are conditions that can prevent or even retroactively annul a conversion. The chief rabbi then proceeded to make the distinction between those who never really accepted “Torah and mitzvot at the time of [their] conversion,” and are not considered converts. On the other hand, converts who had the right intent at the time of their process, but did not remain observant afterward are Jewish and must be married and divorced accordingly, he wrote. “A convert who was circumcised and immersed in a ritual bath, and accepted the Torah and mitzvot in front of three [rabbinic judges], and everything was done according to Halacha, and later on returned to his old ways and transgresses the Torah's mitzvot – such a person is considered a Jewish apostate,” Amar wrote. “But his Jewish matrimony and divorce” are valid, the chief rabbi stressed, citing Maimonides and the Shulkhan Aruch who ruled hence. At the end of the typed letter Amar added in hand that not only do the IDF converts accept the “burden of Torah and mitzvot,” after learning the principles of Judaism and being tested on them, they also are accompanied by religious families, who appraise them to the rabbinic judges converting. Amar also noted that in his ruling he was following the lead of senior Sephardi adjudicator Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose affirmative decree on the subject of the halachic validity of the military conversions was what led the chief rabbi's decision on the topic some ten days ago. Today's letter, which was also endorsed by Yosef who signed its bottom, does not seem to bear much tidings, since Amar had reiterated that the military conversions are, and were, conducted in accordance with Halacha, and therefore receive his approval and signature, as the law demands. But sources close to Amar explained that the doubts cast by the Ashkenazi haredi rabbinic world on the military process, which inevitably lead to aspersions on the two senior Sephardi rabbis – Yosef and Amar – who endorsed them, led the chief rabbi to release the latests letter. On Sunday, there were reports in the haredi online media that senior Ashkenazi-haredi authority Rabbi Shalom Yosef Elyashiv had signed a letter declaring the military conversions halachically invalid, and that other senior haredi rabbis were adding their names to it.

2011: Rahm Emanuel should not appear on the Feb. 22 mayoral ballot because he does not meet the residency standard, according to a ruling issued by a state appellate court today. Emanuel told a news conference he would appeal the decision to the Illinois Supreme Court and would ask for an injunction so his name will appear on the mayoral ballot.

2011(19th of Shevat, 5771): David Frye, whose wicked send-ups of political figures like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey and, above all, Richard M. Nixon, made him one of the most popular comedians in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, died today in Las Vegas, where he lived. He was 77. In the early 1960s Mr. Frye was a struggling impressionist working the clubs of Greenwich Village, relying on a fairly standard repertoire of Hollywood actors. Then he slipped Robert F. Kennedy into his act, basing his impression on a girlfriend’s comment that Kennedy sounded like Bugs Bunny. Audiences loved it, and Mr. Frye began adding other politicians, capturing not just their vocal peculiarities but also their body language and facial expressions. His L.B.J., with a lugubrious hound-dog face and a Texas twang rich in slushy “s” sounds, became a trademark, as did his bouncy Hubert Humphrey. But it was Nixon who made his career. Shoulders hunched, his deep-set eyes glowering, Mr. Frye captured the insecure, neurotic Nixon to perfection. “I am the president” — his blustery tag line and the title of a 1969 comedy album he recorded for Elektra — seemed to get at the essence of a powerful politician in desperate need of validation. “I do Nixon not by copying his real actions but by feeling his attitude, which is that he cannot believe that he really is president,” Mr. Frye told Esquire magazine in 1971. Nixon also played the starring role in Mr. Frye’s later albums “Radio Free Nixon” (1971), “Richard Nixon Superstar” (1971) and the Watergate satire “Richard Nixon: A Fantasy” (1973). Mr. Frye added a panoply of political and cultural figures to his act. His William F. Buckley Jr., all darting tongue and wildly searching eyes, was stellar, but he also worked up dead-on impressions of George Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, David Susskind, Billy Graham, Howard Cosell and a long list of film actors. It was Nixon, however, who kept Mr. Frye a regular on the top television variety shows and at the big Las Vegas casinos, perhaps because he was one of the few politicians with a truly Shakespearean richness of character. In one skit Mr. Frye even had the president smoking marijuana and reporting, in hushed tones, “I see spacious skies and fruited plains and amber waves of grain.” David Shapiro was born in Brooklyn and attended James Madison High School there. His father, who owned a highly successful office-cleaning business, was dead set against his son’s going into show business, but even at the University of Miami, David was already doing mime impressions in campus productions. Soon he discovered he had an ear for distinctive Hollywood voices like Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant and began doing vocal impressions as well. After serving with an Army Special Services unit in France, he returned to New York and developed his act at small clubs while working as a salesman for his father’s company. At the Village Gate, where he was filling in for a regular in early 1966, talent scouts saw his Bobby Kennedy imitation and booked him on “The Merv Griffin Show.” Soon he was appearing on “The Leslie Uggams Show,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and “The Tonight Show.” Nixon came as a gift, but mastering the impression was a struggle. “It took me a long time to get Nixon — but it took the country a long time to get Nixon,” Mr. Frye told Esquire. “Nixon has these brooding eyes that look like my eyes. That helped a lot. But the voice is still the main thing. He has a radio announcer’s evenness of speech, very well modulated, and you can’t pick out any highs and lows. If I hadn’t had to do him, I wouldn’t have tried.” Nixon’s departure from the scene took most of the air out of Mr. Frye’s career. He capitalized on Watergate, although some radio stations refused to play material from “Richard Nixon: A Fantasy,” which they thought cut a little too close to the bone for some listeners. “Today I have regretfully been forced to accept the resignations of 1,541 of the finest public servants it has ever been my privilege to know,” Mr. Frye’s Nixon intones on the album. “As the man in charge, I must accept full responsibility, but not the blame. Let me explain the difference. People who are to blame lose their jobs; people who are responsible do not.” In another skit, Nixon goes to the Godfather for help. “You want justice?” the Godfather asks. “Not necessarily,” Nixon replies. With Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, Mr. Frye lost the best friend an impressionist ever had. He continued to perform and to add new impressions to his act: Jimmy Carter, Anwar El Sadat and Menachim Begin, among others. He recorded the comedy albums “David Frye Presents the Great Debate” (1980) and “Clinton: An Oral History” (1998). But he never enjoyed anything approaching the fame that the Johnson and Nixon years had given him. He could see the end quite clearly. “It’s a weird feeling, knowing that you can lose the guts of your act at any time,” he told Time in 1974. Nixon’s presidential successor, Gerald R. Ford, offered scant hope. “He looks like the guy in a science fiction movie who is the first one to see The Creature,” Mr. Frye said. (As reported by William Grimes)

2012: “Dressing America: Tales From The Garment Center” – a documentary that explores the post-World War II heyday of the garment district in Manhattan” and “pays tribute to the Jewish immigrant roots of the garment industry” – is scheduled to have its New York Premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: YIVO is scheduled to present a lecture by Cur Leviant entitled “The Works of Chaim Grade” one of the 20th century’s leading Yiddish authors.

2012: In Mt. Vernon, Iowa, Holocaust survivor and education Irving Roth is scheduled to speak at Cornell College as part of “Standing With Israel Event.”

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin; Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, January 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-22T15:37:00.003-06:00

January 23 In Jewish History

393: Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his nine year old son Honorius co-emperor. “Under the rule of Theodosius and his sons… the Christian church consolidated its position as the sole power in the empire,” became less tolerant and the Jews “suffered in inverse proportion to the strength of the emperor’s personality.”

1002: Otto III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire passed away. No, Otto was not Jewish. But his passing offers an instructive note when studying history, especially Jewish history. A thousand years ago, Otto was the “George Bush” of his day, a major political and military leader. Otto lived in the same century as Rashi, a guy who sold wine in a small town in France. We remember Rashi. Rashi still speaks to us today infusing our lives in ways in which we are not aware. Who remembers Otto?

1199: Birthdate of Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf who ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah al-Adil made a concession after appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans.

1235: False accusations of Ritual Murder at Baden, Germany resulted in a massacre of the Jewish population.

1490: At Naples, the first printed edition of the Ramban’s “Sha’ar ha-Gemul,” The Gate of Reward, was published by Joseph ben Jacob Gunzenhauser. Gunzenhauser and his son Azriel had moved from southern Germany to Italy where “they produced various books, including a Hagiographa with rabbinical commentaries, Avicenna's medical Canon, and Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch.” Jacob passed away in 1490, the same that they published the Ramban’s seminal work.

1492: At Brescia. Italy, Gershon Soncino produced the first printed Chumash with Megilot.

1571: The Royal Exchange opens in London. The first Jewish broker was admitted to the Royal Exchange in 1657; the same year a piece of land was purchased for a Jewish cemetery in London.

1579: The Union of Utrecht forms a Protestant republic in the Netherlands. The treaty that created the union guaranteed religious peace under article 13. As a consequence this, the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal turned toward Holland as a place of refuge.

1634: Trial of the men implicated in the 'Complicidad Grande' (Great Complicity). Seventeen arrests were made by the Inquisition after a man turned another man in for being "unwilling to make a sale on Saturday," and for not wanting to eat bacon. The man’s possessions were confiscated, more people were implicated, and eventually a total of 81 persons would be locked up and their possessions sequestered. These men were prominent businessmen of the Lima(Peru) community, and their arrests and led to a "widespread commercial crisis" and failure of the community bank.

1639 In Lima, Peru, at an Auto Da Fe, more than eighty New Christians were burned, including Francisco Maldonna de Silva (Elia Nazareno), after the Inquisition discovered that they were holding regular Jewish services. De Silva spent 12 years in prison, during which time he managed to write two books using a chicken bone and charcoal. Each book was about 100 pages. He succeeded in putting together a rope out of corn husks but instead of escaping he used it to visit other prisoners urging them to believe in Judaism.

1656: French Philosopher Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provinciales. Pascal did not radiate the anti-Semitism typical of so many European intellectuals. Over 300 years ago, when King Louis XIV of France asked, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews, your Majesty -- the Jews." The best proof of the supernatural that Pascal could think of was: "The Jews."

1789: In Washington, D.C., Georgetown becomes the first Catholic college in the United States. Today approximately 650 of Georgetown’s 6,000 are Jewish and a thousand of its 6,000 graduate students are Jewish. The school offers 35 Jewish studies courses and students can major in Jewish Studies. The university also has an active Hillel Chapter.

1855: In New York City, a complaint was entered today in "The Mayor's Little Black Book" stating that on Chatham Street "a Jewish drummer is stationed in front of his store insulting passengers as they pass along. The latter nuisance is glaring and intolerable...and calls for intervention of the proper authorities." Chatham Street was the heart of the second-hand clothing “industry” and was equated with Jews in a most uncomplimentary way.

1864(15th of Shevat, 5624): Tu B’Shevat

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

1873:, A large crowd braved a snowstorm to hear a lecture at the Beeckman Street Church by Jewish humorist Raphael De Cordova entitled “The New Clergyman.”

1878: Marcus J. Waldheimer, a partner in the firm of Townsend & Waldheimer, denied reports that his father-in-law, Leopold Bamberger, had disappeared. Waldheimer said that Bamberger who has been holding funds in trust that are related to a messy bankruptcy case, has “merely left…temporarily for recreation.”

1879: It was reported today that a revised edition of “Hebrew Men and Times from the Patriarchs to the Messiah” by Joseph Henry Allen will be reissued by Roberts Brothers.

1893: The New York Times featured a review of A Visit to Wazan: The Sacred City of Morocco by Robert Spence Watson. Watson used a letter of introduction from Sir Moses Montifore to the Chief Rabbi of Morocco “as a passport to meeting Jews” wherever he went. Watson reported that Montefiore’s efforts on behalf of the Moroccan Jews had improved their condition including the comment that “the children of the better class of Jews of Tangiers are taught in English” and use English textbooks.

1891: Birthdate of Jonas Bernanke. Born in Boryslav, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he eventually made his way to Dillon, South Carolina where he owned a drug store and raised a son named Ben who would become Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

1895: In New York, the Young Ladies' and Gentlemen's League of the Montefiore Home sponsored a grand ball to raise funds for the Montifore Home for Chronic Invalids. The successful fund raiser was attended by members of “the best circles of Jewish society.” The dances for the Montefiore Home have replaced the Purim Balls which up until two years ago were the great fund raising and major winter social events of these prosperous Jewish citizens

1898: Birthdate of Sergei Eisenstein. The Russian, film maker worked in the United States before returning to the Soviet Union. One of his most famous films was the “Battleship Potemkin.”

1898 (29th of Tevet, 5658): Yehoshua Yehudah Leib Diskin passed away. Born in 1818, this important rabbi, Talmudist and Biblical commentator was also known as the Maharil Diskin,. He served as a rabbi in Łomża, Mezritch, Kovno, Shklov, Brisk and finally Jerusalem after moving there in 1878, where he became the spiritual leader of a part of the Yishuv haYashan. He was part of a family of rabbis. His father, Binyamin Diskin, served as rabbi in Grodno, Volkovisk and later Łomża. His son was Rabbi Yitzchok Yeruchem Diskin.

1904: Herzl was received by the Italian King, Vittorio Emanuele III. The king showed a serious interest in Zionism. But under the Italian political system, the king reigns but does not rule so it will be to Foreign Minister Tittoni to gain political support in Constantinople.Tittoni asked for a memorandum and promised to write to the Italian ambassador in Constantinople.

1910: The Board of Directors of Mount Sinai Hospital held their annual board meeting today at the hospital on 100th Street and Fifth Avenue. During the reading of the annual report Isaac Stern, the President, announced that the plan to establish a federation of the larger Jewish charitable institutions of the city, a plan for some time in contemplation, had failed. Mr. Stern said that there were certain disadvantages to the creation of such a federation without the guarantee of “any permanent advantages.” Therefore, the directors considered it “in the best interest of the community not give their consent” to such a plan. Mr. Stern announced that the children of the late Mayer Lehman had donated $78,528 which was to used to add two stories to the Dispensary Building as a memorial to their late father. In the past year, almost 89% of the nearly 9,000 patients admitted to the hospital were treated without paying a fee. The hospital’s expenditure of $399,170 exceeded income by almost $15,000. Jacob Schiff, who apparently favored the creation of the federation, gave a speech in which he thanked the board and the medical staff for their efforts in the last year. The board’s decision about joining a federation of charitable institutions doomed the idea at a cost of one million dollars. That was the amount that the late Louis A. Heinsheimer had set aside in his will for such an organization, if and when, it should be created.

1918: Birthdate of Gertrude Belle Elion. Born in New York City to immigrant Jewish parents from Lithuania, Elion graduated from Hunter College and then earned a Master in Science from N.Y.U. in 1941. In a classic case of sex discrimination, she was unable to obtain a graduate research job which meant she could not earn a Ph.D. Thus the 1988 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ended up working as a lab assistant and high school teacher.

1918: The Chief Rabbi of Algeria plans a community building which will contain a yeshiva, an assembly hall, a library, shelter for strangers, a mikvah and a bakery for matzah.

1919: General Lyautey, the resident General of Morocco visits the Mellah (Jewish Quarter) and urges the Jews to contribute towards its sanitation and enlargement.

1921: In Shanghai, Rabbi W. Hirsch consecrated The Ohel Rachel Synagogue for worship. This marked the culminating achievement of Shanghai's First Wave of Jewish immigrants and it was built to accommodate the community of Baghdadi Jews which at its peak numbered 700.

1923 (6th of Shevat, 5683): Max Nordau passed away at the age of 73. “Max Nordau was born in Pest, Hungary in 1849, the son of Gabriel Sudfeld, an Orthodox rabbi of Sephardi origin. Although given a good grounding in Jewish tradition, Nordau drifted away from the Jewish community. Initially he worked as a journalist but later decided to study medicine. In 1880 his studies took him to Paris where he opened a practice, even though it was in the literary field that he was to make a name for himself. Nordau was considered a controversial writer with his attacks on contemporary European art, social and political behavior. His Conventional Lies of Society, written in 1883 was an attack on irrationality, egotism and nihilism which he perceived as the evils of his time. By 1898 his works were translated into some 18 languages. Nordau's Zionist conversion was an experience not dissimilar to Herzl's and he admitted that the rising tide of anti-Semitism had brought him back to realize his duties toward the Jewish people. When Herzl met with Nordau, it took little persuasion to convince the latter of the worthiness of the Jewish State idea. Nordau soon became Herzl's partner in the Zionist movement playing a central role in defining the Basle program. At the first Zionist Congress, Nordau gave the opening speech on the condition of the Jewish people, which subsequently became a tradition at later Zionist Congresses. At the Sixth Zionist Congress, Nordau defended Herzl's Uganda plan arguing that they offered a temporary solution to the Jewish people's sufferings. It was he who coined the term nachtasyl (night shelter) to describe the Uganda plan. Following Herzl's death, Nordau was offered the position of President of the World Zionist Organization but he declined preferring instead to serve as advisor to David Wolffsohn. He opposed the growing trend toward practical Zionism remaining faithful to Herzl's political program. Nordau distanced himself from the Zionist movement but not from the idea. He last attended a Zionist Congress in 1911 and although resident in Spain during the First World War tried to maintain contact with the movement throughout that period. Weizmann attempted to bring him back into the organization at the end of the War; however, Nordau rejected the overtures, believing that the movement was a shadow of what Herzl had intended it to be. In 1920 he raised the idea of evacuating half a million Jews from Europe to Eretz-Israel but no one took the idea seriously at that time. By then he had returned to Paris, where despite discussion of his immigration to Eretz-Israel he died after a long illness.

1924: Birthdate of Democrat Frank R Lautenberg. Lautenberg is serving again as a United States Senator from New Jersey. He is also a leader in the Jewish community.

1929: Birthdate of Myron Sidney Kopelman, who, as Myron Cope, would become an American sports journalist, radio personality, and sportscaster best known for being "the voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers."

1932: Chief Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo of the Court of Appeals was formally endorsed for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court to fill the seat recently vacated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at tonight’s closing session of the annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association at the Hotel Astor

1933: Birthdate of composer Joel Spiegelman.

1936: Sir Isaac Isaacs, a native born Australian who was the son of Polish Jews, completes his term as the 9th Governor-General of Australia.

1937: In Moscow, 17 leading Communists went on trial. They were accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders. Stalin combined Trotsky’s Jewish parentage with traditional Russian anti-Semitism to demonize Trotsky and destroy those opposing his authoritarian rule. Having branded the “Jew, Trostky” as an enemy of the revolution, or the Communist Party and/or the Soviet Union, Stalin would feel to move against the Jews of the U.S.S.R when it fit his needs or his demonic spirit.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that two Arabs, implicated in the murder of J.L. Starkey, a noted archaeologist who was excavating in Palestine, were hanged at Acre. The Motza brick and burnt-tile factory was completely gutted by fire. Arson by Arab terrorists was suspected. Ephraim Brin, 19, and Aziz Jacob, 17, both of Jerusalem, were the first Jews to be sentenced, under the newly created Military Courts, to five years' imprisonment for carrying a pistol and a few rounds of ammunition.

1941: Charles Lindbergh testified before the U.S. Congress and recommended that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. For those who are perplexed by Roosevelt’s response to the plight of European Jewry, this entry should give you a clue as to the kind of the environment in which he was operating. “The Lone Eagle” was a national monument and, as the leader of the America First Movement, he saw WW II was a European measure. He would only grudgingly give ground on his opposition to war once the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor. Opposition of this magnitude fashioned all of FDR’s decisions about the war, including how to deal with the Shoah. It is only with the warmth of the myth of America’s Greatest Generation that the United States seems like a ant-fascist monolith in WWII.

1941: “Lady in the Dark” a product of “3 Jewish Musketters” - music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart – opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York

1942(5th of Shevat, 5702): In Novi Sad, Hungary, 550 Jews and 292 Serbs were driven onto the ice and then shelled. All drowned. [Ed. Note: Who says Kaddish for these people?]

1942(5th of Shevat, 5702): Paul Levinstein was killed in Hadjerat M'Guil a Nazi concentration camp built in remote part of the Sahara Desert in 1941. Upon hearing of their son's death his parents committed suicide in Britain.

1943: Italian authorities refuse to cooperate with Germans in deportations of French Jews living in zones of France under Italian control

1944: "Ode to Napoleon" by the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg premieres in New York City

1945: Birthdate of Bruce Ratner. Appointed by Ed Koch to the position of Commissioner of Consumer Affairs for New York City in 1978, he became a real estate developer in 1982. He is now the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, his net worth now several hundred million dollars. Ratner is the developer charged with building the New York Times Tower. He is a member of the board of the Jewish Heritage Museum.

1949: At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards are presented. A year later, two Jewish stars would dominate the Emmy Awards. The Texaco Star Theatre starring Milton Berle and The Ed Wynn Show starring Ed Wynn would walk off with top honors while Berle and Wynn would each earn awards in their own right.

1950: The 3rd edition of Famous 1st Facts by Jewish trivia expert Joseph Kane is published

1950: Israeli Knesset resolved that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

1952: Birthdate of Jeanette Ingberman, the Brooklyn born daughter of Holocaust survivors who became a founder of the New York cultural center Exit Art, a hotbed of avant-garde work by artists from around the world. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported from New York that the Soviet Union was about to break diplomatic relations with Israel. The first five tons of the copper ore, excavated from Timna mine in the Negev, were sent for industrial tests to Europe.

1960: Israeli General Yitzhak Rabin sends an aerial reconnaissance across the Suez Canal to ascertain the position of Nasser’s advancing troops. When the troops cannot be found, Rabin correctly assumes they have crossed the Canal. It turned out that the bulk of Egyptian army was almost at the border with Israel where they would only be opposed by force of twenty or thirty tanks.

1963: The latest installment of the memoirs of Ilya Ehrenberg which describe the Soviet response to the invasion of June, 1941, appeared today. Ehrenbeg depicted a hesitant Stalin whose ever—present picture disappeared from view for months and who did not speak to the nation until November of 1941. This installment also describes how Stalin mobilized Soviet Jews including Ehrenberg, sergei Eisenstein and Solomon Mikhoels to make broadcasts abroad to gain support for the Soviets in their fight against the Nazis. [After the war, Stalin, like Pharaoh, would know not the Jewish contribution and murdered many of them included Mikhoels.]

1964: Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" premiered in New York City.

1975: "Barney Miller" starring Hal Linden premiered on ABC TV.

1977(4th of Shevat, 5737): Bernard "Toots" Shor passed away. “Toots Shor, a bulky Jewish street kid from Philadelphia, who made and gambled away several fortunes in the big town, was in a sense the original insult comic—crass, coarse, jesting jibes being the prime ingredient of pal ship among all those heavy hitters.” Shor was the premier Saloonkeeper and his New York restaurant was a thing of legend.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet decided to postpone the military talks held with Egypt in Cairo, after the Egyptian delegation broke off political negotiations with Israel, held in Jerusalem. It was expected that this step might influence Egypt to moderate its demands, in tone as well as in contents. The US expressed its disappointment with Israel's sharp reaction to President Anwar Sadat's demands for a total withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the recognition of the rights of the Palestinians. Four hundred and twenty-five Israelis flew to the US under the 'Friendly Force' program designed to promote peace through personal contacts.

1978 (15th of Shevat, 5738): A hundred thousand trees were planted on Tu Bishvat by the Jewish National Fund.

1986: "Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood" opens at Ritz Theater New York City.

1987: Meir Heth, was appointed today as the new chairman of Bank Leumi L'Yisrael, Israel's biggest commercial bank. The former head of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, Heith was criticized over a 1983 collapse of bank shares. A commission of inquiry last year criticized Mr. Heth for failing to prevent the country's four major banks from manipulating their shares. the former head of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, criticized over a 1983 collapse of bank shares.

1988: As the Arab uprising called the Intifada brings an increase in violence The representative of the Arab League and three other Arab diplomats met with a senior State Department official today to complain about what they considered inadequate United States pressure on Israel to halt the violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

1991. At a briefing this morning, Israeli officials appeared to play down the deaths that occurred when an Iraqi Scud missile evaded two American Patriot air-defense missiles and slammed into a Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday night, leaving 3 people dead and 96 wounded emphasizing that the three victims had suffered heart attacks.

1991: "Seinfeld" debuts on NBC-TV

1997: Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. During her term as Secretary of State, Albright found out for the first time that her family was Jewish.

2000: The New York Times includes a review of The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson.

2001: This afternoon, two Tel Aviv restaurateurs and an Israeli Arab friend sat down for a late lunch in Tulkarm, a battle-scarred town rarely visited by Israeli Jews since the West Bank erupted in riotous protests nearly four months ago. The three were seized by armed men who later let the Israeli Arab go, but shot the two Israeli Jews at point-blank range, Israeli officials said. Hamas, the militant Gaza-based Islamic movement, took responsibility for what it called an ''execution'' and said the shooting had been videotaped.

2001: The killing of two Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants earlier today interrupted a new round of peace negotiations here, with Prime Minister Ehud Barak condemning the slayings as ''horrendous'' and ordering the three cabinet ministers in the talks to return to Jerusalem.

2001: Today, in a talk with high school students on the campaign trail, Ehud Barak appeared to disavow proposals for relinquishing control of the ancient city core of Jerusalem. ''Under any settlement, the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter, and the Mount of Olives, and what is called the holy basin, will remain under Israeli sovereignty,'' Mr. Barak said.

2002(10th of Sh'vat, 5762): Bernard Rothman passed away. Cause of death was a stroke. He was better known as Benny Rothman, “a UK political activist, most famous for his leading role in the Mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932. He was born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, in 1911. He is family was so poor that he had tostart work at the earliest opportunity rather than take full advantage of a scholarship that he had won. Working as an errand boy in the motor trade, he studied geography and economics in his spare time while his Aunt Ettie introduced him to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and the works of Upton Sinclair. Increasingly committed to the causes of socialism and communism, Rothman lost his job after getting into some trouble with the law while selling copies of the Daily Worker. During a period of unemployment, with the help of a bicycle salvaged from spare parts, he discovered the nearby wilderness regions of the Peak District and North Wales. The combination of his political activism and interest in the outdoors led to his participation in the mass trespass of 1932, an enterprise that resulted in a spell in prison and further employment difficulties. In 1934, Rothman went to work at Avro in Newton Heath and instantly became an officer of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). At Avro's, he met and married fellow communist Lily Crabtree but his political views became increasingly visible to his employer and he was dismissed. Rothman was active in working with Jewish groups in Manchester to oppose the campaigns of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. In 1936, he started work at Metropolitan Vickers at Trafford Park and was again soon an AEU official.”

2002: Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered in Karachi, Pakistan. Based on the tape of his murder, Pearl was killed because he was a Jew.

2003 (20th of Shevat, 5763): Actress Nell Carter passed away. She had converted from Catholicism to Judaism in 1982.

2003: The 12th annual Jewish Film Festival comes to an end in New York.

2003: As of 10 pm, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, the holy man of unknown but tremendous age, who was scheduled to visit the Hall of Moses synagogue and then a candlelit graveyard in this Tel Aviv suburb tonight for a rally that mixed mystic ritual with all the grit of Chicago ward politics had failed to make an appearance and the police were forced to disperse the disappointed crowd

2004: German born photographer Helmut Newton passed away at the age of 79.

2005: Stanley Fischer, a widely respected American economist and banker, has agreed to leave the United States and a job as a vice chairman of Citigroup to become governor of the Bank of Israel. 2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently published paperback editions of Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life by Michael Korda and Unsettled: An Anthropolgy of Jews, Melvin Konner’s sweeping study that follows a roughly historical outline, from the earliest pre-biblical days to the establishment of the state of Israel, and tracks down far-flung Jewish communities in China, India and Afghanistan.

2006: The Andrew Carnegie Medal for best children's video was given to the producers of Mordicai Gerstein's "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers," winner of the Caldecott in 2004. Mordicai Gerstein was born in Los Angeles in 1935. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, Susan Yard Harris, who is also an illustrator, and their daughter, Risa. The award winning illustrator, painter and graphics artist has collaborated on numerous books for children including many with a Jewish motif including Queen Esther the Morning Star, Noah and the Great Flood and Jonah and the Two Great Fish

2006(7th of Tevet, 5766): Andrea Bronfman, the wife of Jewish Canadian billionaire Charles Bronfman, was killed in a traffic accident in New York Monday.

2007(4th of Shevat, 5767): Aharon Uzan passed away at the age of 82. Born in Tunisia in 1924, he made Aliyah in 1949 where he became active in a variety of left-wing political parties. He served in the Knesset and held a variety of cabinet posts included Minister of communications and Minister of Agriculture.

2007: "Two Hands” a short documentary on Leon Fleisher by Nathaniel Kahn was nominated for an Academy Award for best short subject today

2007: Israel’s “Sweet Mud” and Holland’s “Black Book,” a movie about a Jewish woman serving in the Resistance against the Nazis are among 61 foreign language films that may be nominated for an Oscar.

2007: Rabbi Andrew Bossov successfully received a kidney from Methodist minister, Reverend Karen Onesti.

2008: The third and final episode of “The Jewish Americans” airs on PBS. The three episode series traces the history of the Jews in America starts with the arrival of the first 23 Sephardic Jews in New Amsterdam in 1654 and “ends with Maisyahu, the Chasidic hip-hop star, one of about six million Jews in America today.” For more information
seehttp://www.jewishtvnetwork.com/jewishamericans/

2008: The New York Jewish Film Festival presents “Labyrinths of Memory, a documentary that draws parallels between two very different women united by a search for identity: Maite Guiteras, Mexican born, adopted at birth, and raised in Cuba; and the film’s director, born in Costa Rica to East European Jewish parents and raised in Mexico. Each defies ethnic and geographic boundaries to travel to her ancestral home to claim a place in the world”; “The Unkosher Truth a short documentary in which the filmmaker must muster the courage to tell her father, an Orthodox rabbi and U.S. Army general, that her boyfriend is German and gentile”; “Film Fanatic, in which Ultra-Orthodox Jew Yehuda Grovais rebels against his religious community, and battles the secular cultural establishment in Israel to make Hollywood-style blockbusters on a budget.”

2008: In a night time attack, two armed Palestinians affiliated with Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades infiltrated a yeshiva at Kfar Etzion wounding three civilians. The two had just been released from an Israeli prison.

2008 (16th of Shevat, 5768): Rami Zuari, a 20 year old Border Police officer was killed during a terrorist attack at an East Jerusalem checkpoint. Border Police officer Shoshana Samendayev sustained moderate to serious injuries in the same attack.

2008: The New York Times featured a review of The Forger: An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin, the autobiography of Cioma Schonhaus.

2009: “Lansky,” a one-man play about Meyer Lansky starring Mike Burstyn opens in an off-Broadway production. “Acclaimed American/Israeli actor Mike Burstyn stars as Meyer Lansky in the New York premiere of a new play by Richard Krevolin and Joseph Bologna about the life of the “little man,” known as the “brains behind the mob,” and his efforts to become an Israeli citizen.

2009: Final showing of “Zion and His Brother,” a family drama set in Tel Aviv, at the Sundance Film Festival.

2009: Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids hosts another creative Musical Shabbat Service.

2009: In article entitled “The End of a Chicago Tradition: Is absolutely nothing sacred?”, Susan Berger reports on the demise of the Best Kosher Sausage Company while documenting the history of a small slice of Chicago-base Jewish Americana.

My family and the Jewish community in particular, are mourning one fatality of the financial meltdown that for us is unthinkable. By the end of the month, the company that my great-grandfather Isaac Oscherwitz started in 1886 will close. Best's Kosher Sausage Co., was family owned for more than 100 years. In 1993, Sara Lee Corp. acquired Best's Kosher. Mike Cummins, a Sara Lee spokesperson, said of the closing: "It was not because it's not profitable—it's just not where it needs to be."This is a loss not only for my family, but for the millions of Jews who keep kosher and the many millions who don't but learned to love my family's hot dogs.My great-grandfather emigrated from Germany. On his way to Ellis Island, he met Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz. Rabbi Manischewitz asked Isaac to go into business with him. But my great-grandfather had five sons and said he needed to go it alone. They both landed in Cincinnati. Isaac started Oscherwitz's (later changed to Best's Kosher and moved to Chicago) and Rabbi Manischewitz started his matzo and wine business. Isaac's five sons—Sam, Max, Israel, Philip and Harry—joined the business in the early 1900s. The business expanded throughout the Midwest. In 1909, the business was renamed I. Oscherwitz & Sons Co. It was my grandfather, Philip, and his brother, Harry, who moved to Chicago in 1925 after their father died. They opened Best's Kosher Sausage Co., a sister company to Oscherwitz's, which successfully survived the Depression. My father, Sheldon Sternberg, ran the company, along with other relatives, over the years. While the guts of the business was hot dogs, Best's later expanded to include luncheon meats not typically kosher, like Polish and Italian sausages. In 1972, it was ahead of its time, introducing the first low-fat, low-salt hot dog. Business was great. Our hot dogs became The Hot Dog at Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, United Center and Soldier Field. And, in 1990, you could even buy Best's Kosher at Costco in England. My siblings and I all worked at the factory from the time we were 12. My friends all thought I must be a spoiled little rich girl and nicknamed me the Kosher Queen. But we were far from rich. Truth be told, Best Kosher supported a lot of families (we once had a family reunion and more than 200 family members attended).Oh, the memories. There was my summer on the switchboard. I almost got fired for answering the phone, "Best's Kosher, what's your beef?" One of my favorite stories is when there had been a lot of stealing in the factory, detectives were hired and immediately caught the culprit. It was my Grandfather Phil, who apparently left each night with bags of meat. The employees at the factory stayed for years. It was common before a Jewish holiday to hear African-American, Hispanic, Polish or Asian workers greet each other and say, "Hey man, tomorrow's Tu Bishvat!" was like family. In 1983 Best's Kosher merged with a competitor, Sinai Kosher. In 1986 we celebrated Best's 100th anniversary at a party at the Museum of Science and Industry. And in 1993, my dad brokered the sale of Best's Kosher to Sara Lee. We were proud that our company, with annual sales of $93 million, would be in solid hands. Last month, when we got word that Sara Lee would be closing Best's at the end of January, my family was heartsick.Any business going under these days is a tragedy. A business built on the backs of one family for more than 100 years is especially so. There will be fewer choices for those who keep kosher now. And lots more, I am sure, will be missing the Best dog.

2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the New York premiere of “Eyes Wide Open,” a film whose protagonist is an ultra-orthodox butcher living in Jerusalem.

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “Protektor,” “a smart, stylish psycho-thriller about a Prague journalist and his part-Jewish wife whose lives are ravaged by the outbreak of WWII.”

2010: Israel is looking into adopting Haitians orphaned by January 12's earthquake, Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog told The Jerusalem Post today. "We see this as part of Israel's humanitarian outreach," Herzog said, referring to the IDF medical operation and the Israeli rescue efforts in the Caribbean nation. "Haiti was one of the countries that supported us on November 29, 1947, [in the UN vote on the establishment of the state], and now it's our turn to support them," he said.

2011: Israeli cellist Amit Peled and pianist Eli Kalman are scheduled to perform this afternoon at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

2011: The 2011 Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival is scheduled to present “Laughter Yoga Workshop with Molly Dworsky” and “An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein.”

2011: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including J.D. Salinger: A Life by Kenneth Slawenski

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein and the recently published paperback editions of A Strange Death by Hillel Halkin and Where The God of Loves Hangs Out by Amy Bloom.

2011(18th of Shevat, 5771): Stanley Frazen, a longtime film and television editor who was a member of the Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit during World War II, passed away today at the age of 91.He was a supervising editor for such shows as "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" beginning in 1951, "I Married Joan" in 1952-53 and "The Bob Cummings Show" beginning in 1955. His other TV credits included "The Lone Ranger" in 1949, "The Beverly Hillbillies" in 1962-63, "My Favorite Martian" in 1963-65, "The Monkees" in 1966-67, "Get Smart" in 1968 and "Charlie's Angels" in 1979-80. "I liked the anonymity of editing in a room and putting this huge puzzle together," he told Daily Variety in 2001.
Frazen was born Aug. 15, 1919, in Chicago. He moved with his mother to Los Angeles when he was 3, grew up in Boyle Heights and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles in 1937. Frazen was 16 when he started working in the mailroom at Warner Brothers. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces and joined the First Motion Picture Unit, which produced training films at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. "Most of us realized how lucky we were to be in the unit," he told The Times in 2002. Frazen's film credits included "Young Doctors in Love" in 1982, "The Milagro Beanfield War" in 1988 and "The Amityville Horror" in 1979. He also produced the 1961 film "Man-Trap" and was a commercial director. He received a career achievement award in 2001 from the American Cinema Editors and was a former president of that group and of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

2011(18th of Shevat, 5771): Rabbi Nachum Zev Dessler, a leader at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland for more than 60 years and a nationally known leader in Orthodox education passed away today at the age of 89. Dessler, the school's first principal in 1944, pressed the Jewish Federation of Cleveland to back the school, and it became the first federation in the country to subsidize a full-day Jewish school in 1948. At the end of 2010, the school had nearly 800 students on three campuses in Cleveland and its suburbs, and nearly 6,000 alumni. Over the years, the school has accepted children from families with all degrees of observance, children of former Soviet Jews who had moved to Cleveland, as well as those with special needs. “His vision was focused on providing every Jewish child, regardless of religious orientation or ability to pay, a quality Jewish and secular education,” said Ivan Soclof, a past president of the school. "Each child was truly an individual and was treated like he or she was the most important person in the world," wrote Louis Malcmacher, the Hebrew Academy's current president. "As a child of Holocaust survivors, my parents came to this country with literally nothing. And as part of Rabbi Dessler's greatness, the doors to The Hebrew Academy were opened to every Jewish child, no matter what their background was or their ability to pay." Dessler was born in Lithuania, raised in London, and traveled through Siberia and Japan to reach the United States during World War II, a route similar to that traveled by another recently deceased Orthodox rabbi and educator, Menachem Zeev “Wolf” Greenglass. Dessler arrived in Cleveland in 1941 with students and rabbis to re-establish the Telshe Yeshiva of Lithuania. Dessler came from a line of rabbis; His father was Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler. Nachum Zev Dessler also was instrumental in building Torah Umesorah, an organization of nearly 700 Orthodox schools. (As reported by The Eulogizer)

2012: “Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story” is scheduled to shown this evening at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Israeli pianist Alon Goldstein and the Jupiter musicians are scheduled to perform Schubert's celebrated Piano Trio in B-flat Major and the Beethoven "Gassenhauer" Trio at Good Shepherd Church in NYC.

2012: On the secular calendar, 10th anniversary of the kidnapping of Danny Pearl.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin

This Day, January 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-21T18:12:00.002-06:00

January 22 In Jewish History

1167(4927): Ibn-Ezra passed away at the age of 78 in Calahorra which was on the border between Navarre and Aragon. There is no way that any entry could do justice to this Sephardic writer, philosopher, scientist and most important of all, world traveler.

1521: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, opens the Diet of Worms. The Diet of Worms would vote to declare Luther an outlaw, banning his literature, and requiring his arrest” and require that he be punished as a heretic. Ultimately this would lead to warfare between Charles and the rebellious Germanic princes who supported Luther. This outbreak of fighting would determine who “the real Charles was” when it came to dealing with Jews. Charles wore two hats or should we say, crowns. As King of Spain, he was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, following in the footsteps, the monarchs who brought the inquisition to Spain and expelled the Jews in 1492. But as Holy Roman Emperor “he had issued a letter of protection for Germany’s Jews” and “did not tamper with the privileges extended by previous Emperors to his Jewish subjects. When the fighting broke out, Spanish troops came to Germany to support Charles against the rebellious Protestant princes. When the Jews complained that the Spanish troops were treating them in the “Spanish manner,” the Emperor issued an order to end the molestation of the Jews. So in this instance Charles worse his “German Hat” and ironically it was a better deal for the Jews of that time and place.

1729: Birthdate of Gotthold Lessing, German poet, philosopher and playwright. Although a strong believing Christian, he advocated religious tolerance. His plays, such as “Die Juden” which appeared in 1749, portrayed the Jews as decent, admirable people. Lessing was a close friend of Moses Mendelssohn, who provided the inspiration for the character of Nathan in “Nathan the Wise” a play whose sympathetic portrayal of the Jews earned it the distinction of being banned by 18th century Christians and 20th century Nazis.

1775: Pope Pious VI reinforces all existing anti-Jewish legislation as part of his campaign against liberalism. He passed away in 1781.

1814(1st of Sh'vat, 5574): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1814(1st of Sh'vat, 5574): Raphael Bischoffsheim passed away Mayence. A merchant and prominent philanthropist, he was born at Bischofsheim-on-the-Tauber in 1773. He went to Mayence during the French Revolution, and from a small merchant became a purveyor to the army. Bischoffsheim was well thought of by his co-religionist and served as was president of the Jewish community of Mayence.

1840: British colonists reach New Zealand. According to Maria Weiss, Jewish merchants began arriving in New Zealand in the 1830’s. By 1840, there were approximately 30 Jews living in the colony including David Nathan who helped found the Jewish community in Aukland and Abraham Hort who helped found the Jewish community in Wellington.

1856: Twelve Bavarian, Dutch, and Portuguese Jews, who “had originally organized in 1855 as the United Brethren Society, a benefit society that provided members with medical and burial assistance” met today in Brooklyn to discuss plans for the incorporation of their group as a synagogue. Their efforts would bear fruit in March of 1856 with the founding of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes. (בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אַנְשֵׁי אֱמֶת‎, "House of Israel – People of Truth"), the first synagogue formed on Long Island and “the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Brooklyn.” Today Baith Israel is “commonly known as the Kane Street Synagogue, an egalitarian Conservative synagogue on Kane Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

1861:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9806E6DB1439EF34BC4A53DFB7678389669FDE

1863: The January Uprising breaks out in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The aim of the national movement was to liberate the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth from Russian occupation. It is estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 Jews participated in the uprising. Approximately 400 of them lost their lives while several hundred more were exiled to Siberia by the Russians when the uprising failed.

1870: Rabbi Lewin conducted the first Shabbat morning service at the newly formed Temple Israel. Services were held in the building owned by the YMCA in Brooklyn. Dr. Samuel Adler of Temple Emanu-El delivered the sermon. The service was conducted in English and the sermon was delivered in German.

1871: Birthdate of composer Leon Jessel. Jessel died at the hands of the Gestapo in 1942

1874: New Jersey authorities took Abraham Levy off of the Hamburg steamer Silesia before it sailed this afternoon. The Jewish businessman has been accused by his partner of stealing $2,200 from their Baltimore, MD business.

1878: A Jew named William Yandaw was held as a material witness after he accused Annie Walker of stealing $35 from him.

1890(1st of Sh'vat, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1891: Baron Hirsch signed a deed of trust in the presence of the Consul General of the United States in Paris and the Vice Consul that gave control of $2,400,000 to a group of prominent New York Jewish community leaders who would use the funds to aid recent Russian and Romanian immigrants to the United States.

1891: Birthdate of painter Moise Kisling. Born in Poland, he moved to France in 1910. Here he developed his style and gained fame and popularity. Kisling was decorated by the French for heroism during World War I. He passed away in 1973.

1892: Birthdate of Marcel Dassault, French airplane builder

1893: Birthdate of actor Conrad Veidt who is remembered for his role of Major Strasser in the famous World War II film, “Casablanca.”

1895(26th of Tevet, 5655): Edward “Teddy” Solomon passed away today six months before his 40th birthday. An accomplished pianist and conductor, Solomon was a noted composer of comic operas in the manner of Gilbert and Sullivan.

1899: Birthdate of Czech born American historian Guido Kisch who specialized in the history of the Jews during the Middle Ages.

1901: King Edward VII followed his mother Queen Victoria to the British throne. Edward counted several Jews among his friends and “inner circle,” something that did not sit well with much of the British aristocracy. Even more important, was Edward’s willingness to intervene on behalf of the Jews of Russia. In a state visit, he approached his cousin, Czar Nicholas II, about the matter. Cousin Nicky ignored “Bertie.” English political leaders expressed dismay at the King’s behavior. But for the Jews, Edward would become a hero. His all too short reign came to an end in 1910.

1901: Following the death of Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill writes to his mother speculating on what changes will take place in the behavior of the Prince of Wales now that he is king. Churchill wonders if King Edward will “scatter his Jews or will Reuben Sassoon be enshrined among the crown jewels and other regalia?” The King would keep his Jewish friends including “the Baghdadi-born Jew Reuben Sassoon.”

1904: Herzl is received by Rafael Merry del Val the Papal Secretary, who promises to take into consideration the matter of supporting the Zionist aspirations.

1905: The Sunday New York Times Magazine publishes the first three chapters of an unfinished novel by the late Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield.

1909: Birthdate of physicist Lev d Landau who won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

1911: At the annual meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society several speakers including Jacob Schiff and Judge Leon Sanders condemned the Gardner Immigration bill, which proposed to add an educational test clause to the exclusion laws and severely criticized the special boards of inquiry on Ellis Island.

1911: Birthdate of Bruno Kreisky, the first Jewish Chancellor of Austria. He died in 1990.

1912: Dr. Benzion Mossinsohn, a representative of the Gymnasium of Jaffa, spoke to a very large audience at Cooper Union tonight on the work of that school, the first strictly Jewish school to be established in Palestine for 2,000 years. Dr. Mossinsohn was given an enthusiastic welcome when he was introduced by Dr. Harry Friedenwald of Baltimore, Honorary President of the Federation of American Zionists. The lecture was in Yiddish.

1913: The new Hebrew Union College buildings were dedicated at Cincinnati, Ohio.

1915: Birthdate of Samuel J. Popeil, inventor of the Veg-O-Matic.

1918: Moishe Zilberfarb completed an 18 month stint as Deputy-Secretary of Jewish Affairs in the General Secretariat of Ukraine, the main executive institution of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

1923: The Golden Jubilee Convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations opened at the Hotel Astor in New York City.

1931: Sir Isaac Isaacs, the son of a British tailor, was sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.

1931: Silent screen star Alma Rubens, whose father was Jewish and whose mother was not, passed away.

1933: Birthdate of basketball star Leonard Robert "Lennie" Rosenbluth, who played forward on the North Carolina team that won the NCAA Championship in 1957 and went on to a pro career with the Philadelphia Warriors.

1934: Birthdate of Emanuel “Manny” Azenburg, the Bronx native who gained fame as a theatrical producer who worked with playwright Neil Simon for over three decades.

1935: Today when the High Commissioner for Palestine, Brig. Gen. Sir Arthur Wauchope, opened a valve that inaugurated the British section of the gigantic enterprise, crude oil that had been pumped 600 mile through the new desert pipe line from the Iraq oil fields flowed into a tanker moored in the Bay of Acre off the coast of Palestine.

1935: Birthdate of American actor Seymour Cassel.

1938: An appeal for continued support of the Jewish colonization movement in Palestine in a time of renewed persecution of Jews in Rumania, Germany and Poland was voiced in Washington tonight by speakers before the National Conference for Palestine, meeting in observance of the completion of twenty years of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land.

1941: Dr. Bernard Joseph, legal adviser to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the executive body that is cooperating with the British Government asserted that Jews in Palestine “are facing the paradox of supporting Prime Minister Churchill's war effort completely and yet being at odds with British administration” over issues related to the establishment of Jewish homeland including immigration and land ownership.

1941: The British army has renewed its recruiting efforts aimed at Palestinian Arabs and Jews. The new recruits will be used for sentry and other similar guard duties which would release other British infantry regiments for use in active combat roles in North Africa.

1941: In Lublin, Poland; Hans Frank told his fellow Nazis, "We...cannot be asked to have any consideration left for the Jews."

1941: The Iron Guard revolt in Rumania led to the first massacre of Jews there during World War II.

1941: The Law for the Defense of the Nation is imposed by Bulgaria, forcing Jews to give up public posts and forcing Jewish doctors, lawyers, and other professionals to forfeit their jobs. Also, a selective tax is imposed on Bulgaria's Jewish shops and homes.

1943: This was Rivka Libeskind first Shabbat in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The women, who had just recently arrived at the camp, lit candles and sang Shabbat melodies. Women who had lived there for years wept and joined the prayer session

1943: During Operation Tiger in Marseilles, France, Nazis seized more than 4000 Jews for deportation over a four day period. At nearby Les Accates, 29 Jewish children were seized at La Rose Orphanage. Their guardian, Alice Salomon, insisted on remaining with them. Marseilles had had a reputation as being the Jerusalem of the Mediterranean.

1943: The Jewish ghetto at Grodno, Belorussia, is liquidated

1943: A death train that originated in Grodno, Poland, on January 17 erupts in violence at the Treblinka death camp when 1000 Jews armed with boards, knives, and razors attack guards. By morning thousands of Jews who had been on the train are dead, killed by Treblinka SS troops armed with machine guns and grenades

1944: President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9417, establishing the War Refugee Board. The Board is committed to enforcing the policies of the U.S. government regarding the rescue and relief of victims of persecution.

1945 (8th of Shevat, 5705): Else Lasker-Schüler passed away. Born in 1869, Else Lasker-Schüler came from a well-to-do family in Elberfield, in the Rhineland. From her father Aaron Schüler, who was a banker and builder, she inherited a passion for toys and play. She attributed her poetic inspiration to her mother, who loved literature. In 1894, Else Schüler married the physician Berthold Lasker, and moved with him to Berlin. There they settled into a comfortable middle class existence. For Else, as well as for many other young and aspiring artists, Berlin was a Mecca of artistic exchange and inspiration. She immersed herself in the city's abundant cultural life, attending meetings of artists' groups and societies. She was soon a part of the vibrant and often incestuous Berlin art world. But Lasker-Schüler soon became dissatisfied with her marriage and her bourgeois existence. Divorcing Berthold Lasker in 1899, she embraced the bohemian lifestyle that characterized the rest of her life. After her divorce, she married the talented critic and editor Georg Lewin, who established the famous expressionist art journal, Der Sturm. (She named both the journal and its editor, giving Lewin the name Herworth Walden, which he used for the rest of his professional life). Her first book of poetry, Styx, was published in 1902, and she published prolifically in Der Sturm, as well as the many other avant garde Berlin art journals. She also wrote a play calleds "die Wupper" (completed in 1909), named after the river by that name that runs through her home town. Divorcing again in 1911, Lasker-Schüler's life became increasingly unstable and poverty stricken. She spent much of her time in the cafes, which were a second home to many young Berlin artists and intellectuals, most of them younger than her forty-plus years. It was in the cafes that she wrote the expressionist poems that would be published as My Wonder (Meine Wunder) and met many of the great expressionist artists of the period, including Georg Trakl, Franz Marc, Karl Kraus, Oscar Kokoschka, George Grosz, and Franz Werfel. In 1913, she published Hebrew Ballads (Hebraische Balladen), a collection of poems based on the figures of the Bible. The later years of Lasker Schüler's life were to be characterized by tragedy, loss, and ultimately, a feeling of betrayal and alienation from her fellow Jews. Her beloved son Paul died of tuberculosis in 1927, which led her to intense introspection and reflection upon the Jewish tradition, and especially Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah. In 1932 she received the prestigious Kleist Prize for literature. Several months later a group of Nazis beat her with an iron rod. Without so much as returning to her room, she left Germany forever. From her refuge in Switzerland, she visited Palestine several times, and eventually moved to Jerusalem. The reality of Palestine's social and political turmoil, however, disillusioned the poet. While she had glorified and romanticized the land in her earlier poetry (and in the utopian prose work called The Land of the Hebrews which she wrote during one of her visits from Switzerland), she was never to feel at home living there. Lasker-Schüler lived the rest of her life a pauper, partially through her own mismanagement of the support given to her by friends and admirers. In Israel, she was viewed mainly as an eccentric, dressed dramatically in long dresses, jewelry and hats, her rooms decorated only with toys and dolls. When Else Lasker Schüer died, she was buried at the foot of the Mount of Olives

1946: Birthdate of Malcolm McLaren, the British born manager of the musical group “The Sex Pistols.”

1946: Following the “blasting of a British installation” the British imposed a stern, tight sunrise-to-sunset curfew on the entire Hadera district of the Palestine coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

1947(1st of Sh'vat, 5707): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1947: The British government decided today that it would turn the Palestine Problem over to the United Nations since it could not get the Jews and Arabs to accept a common solution.. However, the British would not make their decision public for another six weeks.

1948: Birthdate of Brooklyn born conductor Sir Gilbert Levine.

1949: During a debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill, leader of the Opposition, attacked Foreign Minister Bevin for his “astounding mishandling of the Palestine problem” that could only be described as “gross and glaring.”

1953: The Arthur Miller drama ''The Crucible'' opened on Broadway

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that East Germany had started probing the 'Jewish descent' of its officials and public figures and that the National Zeitung, an organ of the East German National Democratic Party, warned Jews that they would be punished if they 'ally themselves with American warmongers.' In Moscow the New Times accused Zionists of being the enemies of the Russian people who sought world domination and claimed that the officials of the American Joint Distribution Committee were 'the lackeys of American imperialism.'

1957: Under massive pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union, Israeli forces withdrew from most of Sinai after the Sinai Campaign. The threat of economic sanctions by the United States presented to great a threat for the Israelis not to give ground. President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, gave new life to President Nassar of Egypt. Nasser repaid their support by tying the cause of the Arabs even more tightly to the Soviet Bloc. The promises that the U.N. gave to effect the withdrawal were not honored. And like all other dishonorable acts of peace, war would again be the result.

1964(8th of Shevat, 5724): Marc Blitzstein, American composer whose works included “Cradle Will Rock,” passed away at the age of 58

1967 (11th of Shevat, 5727): Robert David Quixano Henriques passed away. Born in 1911, he was a British writer, broadcaster and farmer. He gained modest renown for two award-winning novels and two biographies of Jewish business tycoons, published during the middle part of the 20th century. The following year, he wrote 100 Hours to Suez, and it was around this time, in his late forties, that Henriques began to take an active interest and pride in his Jewish identity. He was won over by the Zionist cause, and made frequent trips to Israel where he bought a small property. In the 1960s, Henriques wrote two biographies. The first one charted the life and career of his wife's grandfather Marcus Samuel, the great oil pioneer and leader of the Jewish community, and the second one described the life of Sir Robert Waley-Cohen

1967: Simon & Garfunkel performed live at Philharmonic Hall in the Lincoln Center, New York City. The recording would not be released until July 16, 2002.

1970(15th of Shevat, 5730): Tu B’Shevat

1973: President Lyndon B Johnson President passed way at his ranch in Stonewall, Texas at the age of 64. One of LBJ’s closest advisors was Abe Fortas who considered himself “a nominal Jew.” When LBJ nominated him to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court, Fortas, who was one of the few people who could speak candidly to the tall Texan, told him that the Jews would not consider this a Jewish nomination. As President, Lyndon Johnson had the courage (both political and personal) and the skill to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He also enacted many measures such Head Start and Medicare which had a great deal of support among Jewish voters. At the same time, his support of the Viet Nam War cost him a lot of support among these same Jewish voters. More to the point, he supported Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. Among other things, he kept the Soviets from interfering on behalf of their Arab clients and forced the Russians to quit threatening Israel. Long after he had left the White House, The Associated Press published more information about LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel” which is worth reading in its entirety.

Based on newly released tapes of the president’s conversations, the news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969) “the United States became Israel's chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” LBJ is quoted in one conversation, “"I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel." Further reports reveal the full extent of Johnson’s actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Indeed, the title of “Righteous Gentile” is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ’s actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews 30 years earlier, actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. The Texas congressman’s district had only 400 Jews, but clearly the Johnson family’s Christian teachings had given him a strong affinity for Jews and their return to the Holy Land. Five days after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the “Dixiecrats” and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported from the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the U.S. Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the world famous musician and conductor, credited LBJ for saving his live. That same year, LBJ warned a Jewish friend that European Jews faced annihilation. Somehow, Johnson provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews out of Warsaw. But that wasn’t enough. According to historian, James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle “hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. … Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration…. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more.” On June 4, 1945, Johnson visited the Dachau concentration camp. According to historian Smallwood, Lady Bird later recalled that “when her husband returned home, he was still shaken, stunned, terrorized, and ‘bursting with an overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at what he had seen.’” As President, Johnson met with Israel’s Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and undertook to replace the recalcitrant France as Israel’s principal arms supplier, providing Patton tanks and Skyhawk jets and Phantom jets. Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin once asked Johnson why the United States supported Israel when there are 80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. “Because it is right,” responded the straight-shooting Texan.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who a week earlier instructed his delegation to break off the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations held in Jerusalem, had now announced that he was leaving the door open for renewed talks, but on certain conditions. He demanded that, before any concrete peace negotiations may continue, Israel must agree to a total withdrawal to the pre-1967 frontiers and recognize the Palestinian rights to self-determination. The US sought a new format for political negotiations and urged Israel to resume military talks held in Cairo and postponed by Premier Menachem Begin. Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan warned that Sadat's conditions would lead to a dead end and offered no opportunity for progress.

1980(4th of Sh'vat, 5740): Yitzhak Baer passed away. Born in 1888, he was a German-Israeli historian and an expert in medieval Spanish Jewish history.

1984: The New York Times features Paul Johnson’s review of The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine by Ronald Sanders.

1988: The police imposed a curfew tonight on A-Tur, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, invoking special emergency powers in this city for the first time since East Jerusalem was captured from Jordan in 1967.

1991: El Al Israel Airlines and Tower Air are still flying to Tel Aviv. Sheryl Stein, the manager of public relations for El Al, said it was continuing daily service from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Tel Aviv. She said that the carrier had not reduced its schedule and that it had 17 flights yesterday in and out of Tel Aviv to other parts of the world. In addition, she said the airline was bringing in immigrants daily from Hungary and Romania.

1991: After a Scud slammed into a two-story apartment building in a Tel Aviv suburb today, 260 Israelis were forced to move into hotels. Almost 1,000 Israelis, most of whom live in Tel Aviv have already lost their homes because of attack by Iraqi Scuds.

1994 (10th of Shevat, 5754): Irving B Kahn inventor of the teleprompter passed away at the age of 76

1995: In central Israel, two suicide bombers from the Gaza Strip blew themselves-up at a military transit point killing 19 Israelis. This was just one of the many acts of terrorism that took placed after Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn. Despite, them the Israelis would make a variety of territorial concessions. The terror would continue.

1996(1st of Shevat, 5756): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

1996 (1st of Shevat, 5756): Yisrael Eldad, member of the Stern Gang and leader of right wing political groups after the creation of the state of Israel extremist politician, died at the age of 85

1996: When the top awards in children's publishing were announced today, the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults went to Judy Blume in recognition of lifetime achievement in the field. Blume is the author of Blubber, Then Again Maybe I Won't, and Superfudge. While recognizing Blume's full body of work, the award made special mention of Forever, perhaps Blume's most controversial work. Born in 1938 and raised in New Jersey, Blume published her first book in 1969. The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, a picture book, was soon followed by the books for adolescents that have made Blume famous. In such classics as Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), Deenie (1973), Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977), and Just as Long as We're Together (1987), Blume addresses issues such as divorce, friendship, death and loss, and teenage sexual development. Because of the frank way in which Blume deals with sexuality, her books have often been banned from school and public libraries. In 2004, the American Library Association called her the "second-most censored author of the past 15 years." Forever (1975), which Blume says she wrote when her daughter asked for "a story about two nice kids who have sex without either of them having to die," has been a particular target of censors. The book, which features the teenage protagonists' trip to Planned Parenthood, came in eighth on the ALA's list of most-banned books of the 1990s. Four other Blume titles also made the top 100. Despite challenges from would-be book banners, Blume has enjoyed tremendous success as an author. Together, her books have sold 75 million copies worldwide. In addition to her 20 books for children and young adults, Blume is the author of three novels for adults, of which the most recent is Summer Sisters (1998). She is also the founder of The Kids Fund, which encourages parent-child communication through books.

1997 (14th of Shevat, 5757): Irwin Levine, composer of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” passed away at the age of 58.

2000(15th of Sh'vat, 5760):Tu B'Sh’vat

2001: In talks today Israeli officials unexpectedly revived the idea of some form of joint or international administration for the historic city center of Jerusalem and its holy sites. This trial balloon was simultaneously punctured by the Palestinians, who reiterated their demand for sovereignty over all Arab districts and religious sites in East Jerusalem, and by the Israeli opposition, which objected to any plan for limiting Israeli rule in the city.

2002: A Palestinian gunman carried out a terrorist attack in Jerusalem’s central shopping distrct, raking the area with semiautomatic gunfire that killed two and wounded 20 before being shot dead by the police

2004: Sicor becomes the wholly owned subsidiary of Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

2004: Two Israeli cabinet ministers said today that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would have to resign if a bribery investigation eventually leads to his indictment.

2005: The Washington Post published an op-ed column by Samuel Pisar entitled “Will We ‘Never Forget’?” An international lawyer and author of Of Blood and Hope, Pisar survived Auschwitz. Pisar expressed his concern that as the survivors reach the autumn of their lives, the world has not learned from the horrors of their experiences nor will they really remember what happened in a meaningful manner.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Between You and Me: A Memoir by Mike Wallace with Gary Paul, Maimonides by Sherwin Nuland, The Poems of Charles Reanikoff: 1918-1975, edited by Seamus Cooney and Nicholas Miraculous a biography of Nicholas Murray Butler. Regardless of how history views him (and the picture is none too flattering) Butler earns low marks in the American Jewish Experience. As the reviewer says of Butler, “His most creative involvement with the undergraduate college seems to have come in searching for ways to keeps its Jewish enrollment down. He considered having applicants take physicals that would ‘find grounds to eliminate socially unappealing Jews smart enough to have passed the entrance examination,’ and throughout the 1930's he funneled Jewish students into an affiliated two-year college in Brooklyn. Its courses were "taught largely by junior faculty members from Morningside Heights," and the dropout rate was enormous. When it closed after 10 years, Butler at last gave up on ‘the Hebrew problem.’"

2006: The New York Times reported on the “four founding mothers of a large chunk of today’s Ashkenazi Jewish population” in an article entitled “Loy you, K2a2a, Whoever You Are” by Amy Harmon, a “direct descendant” of one of these four “bubbes”

2006: The S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program hosted a career fair at the Renaissance Hotel in Jerusalem to demonstrate how a Yeshiva University education can benefit them.

2007: In an article in The Jerusalem Post, Stephen Arnoff contended that the future of Jewish survival in the United States, depended, in part on older leaders of the Jewish community paying attention to the generation of young Jewish leaders who created projects like Hadar, Storahtelling, Zeek, jewschool, Hazon, Jdub Records and similar Jewish enterprises

2007: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz agreed to appoint Major General (Res.) Gabi Ashkenazi as the 19th Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

2008(15th of Shevat, 5768): Tu B’Shevat

2008 (15th of Shevat, 5768): Miles Lerman, the Nazi Camp survivor who helped found the U.S. Holocaust Museum, passed away.

2009: The International Astronomical Union named a crater on the moon after American physiologist Joseph Erlanger.

2009:.The final five nominees for the Oscar for best documentary are scheduled to be announced today. Among those being considered is, “Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh”

2009: In Germany the scheduled date for the nationwide release of Adam Resurrected. It follows the story of Adam Stein, a charismatic patient at an asylum for Holocaust survivors in Israel, in 1961. Jeff Goldblum stars as Adam, alongside Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Ayelet Zurer..

2009: The Centro Primo Levi and the Yeshiva University Museum present a lecture by Eva Forgacs on the life and work of István Farkas. István Farkas (1887-1944), a modernist of the École de Paris, whose elusive landscapes fascinated writers and painters alike, returned in 1932 to his native Hungary where his mysterious works ultimately presaged his own death at Auschwitz.

2010: Mishkenot Sha'ananim is scheduled to present a second round of "A Shortcut In Time," part of series of lectures delivered over the course of seven months by the Weizmann Institute's Professor Illem Gross that place “scientists ranging from Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking under the microscope.”

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “Where I Stand: The Hank Greenspun Story,” a “chronicle of the endlessly surprising life of the charismatic newspaperman, Vegas icon and real-life Zelig. Greenspun's epic journey from associate of mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel to maverick founder of the Las Vegas Sun (and its long-running Where I Stand editorial) features a colorful cast of characters including high-rolling businessmen and gangsters, movie stars, politicians, family and wheeler-dealer friends. Following Siegel's murder in 1947, the crusading Greenspun rediscovered his Jewish heritage, and became a prominent guerrilla figure in Israeli politics and gun smuggling. Director Scott Goldstein combines archival stills, illuminating interviews, rare diary entries read by Anthony Hopkins, and atmospheric music to create a spirited, highly-stylized mosaic of Greenspun's legendary escapades.”

2011: The New York Premiere of “Miss You”(Te extraño) is scheduled to take place at The New York Jewish Film Festival. The film depicts the travail of a middle class Jewish Argentinean family and Javier, a 15-year-old boy who left his home because of the political situation in 1970s Argentina.

2011: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present the Sixth Annual Comedy Night featuring Dan Adhoot

2011(17th of Shevat, 5771): Frank Lieberman passed away. A native of New York, Lieberman moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. He parlayed his work as an entertainment reporter for the Herald-Examiner into a public relations career where he developed a special relationship with Elvis Presley and represented such show business notables as Sammy Davis, Jr., Phyllis Diller and Tony Orlando.

2011: The 2011 Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival is scheduled to present “In Rehearsal – a one woman show by Alison Vodnoy.”

2011(17th of Shevat, 5771):Tullia Zevi, a pillar of Italy's Jewish community and an ardent anti-fascist who spent the war years in exile in Switzerland, France and the U.S., died today. She was 91. Zevi, the only female president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, died in Rome, current union president Renzo Gattegna said. One of four children of a bourgeois Jewish family, Zevi was vacationing with her parents in Switzerland in 1938 when Italy passed its racial laws. The family, known for her father's anti-fascist beliefs, moved to France and later the US as World War II raged. She returned to Italy in 1946 and worked as a journalist as well as with various center-left political parties. In a biographical article she wrote in 1999, Zevi said she returned because she wanted to help Italy and its Jews rebuild after the war. "The horrors of the war had just been discovered; the mass extermination of the Jews, the gypsies and political opponents, the devastation of Jewish communities," she wrote. "It seemed right, having had the fortune of having survived, to return and participate in the reconstruction of this traumatized community in chaos, and also to participate in the rebirth of democracy in Italy following the defeat of fascism." She headed the Union of Italian Jewish Communities from 1983-1998, and even after that remained active in the Jewish community, frequently commenting in the media about Jewish-Vatican relations in particular. In 1992, she was awarded Italy's highest civilian honor, news reports said. "We recall her profound and dignified interventions that she made in defense of the Jews and all minorities," Gattegna said in a statement. Her husband Bruno Zevi, an architect, Jewish leader and member of Italy's clandestine Justice and Liberty movement while fascists held power, died in 2000. They had two children.

2012: Awkward Moment Productions is scheduled to present “Circmference” written and performed by Amy Salloway at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of “The Balfour Declaration: the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” by Jonathan Schneer.

2012: YIVO is scheduled to present the world premiere of “When Our Bubbas and Zeydas Were Young.”

Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin
Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

This Day, January 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-20T14:34:00.002-06:00

January 21 In Jewish History

1189: Philip II, Henry II and Richard Lion-Hearted initiated The Third Crusade. The Third Crusade took an exceptionally harsh toll on the Jews of England. Although the third crusade became famous in song and fable, it was a failure. Unfortunately, it did not end the crusading spirit. More crusades would follow which meant more misery for the Jews of Europe and the Middle East.

1306: Phillip the Fair of France issued secret orders today for his officials to prepare for the expulsion of his Jewish subjects and the confiscation of their property. Phillip found that his treasury had been depleted by his wars with the Flemish and he saw this as a way of replenishing his treasury. Under the terms of the expulsion any Jews found after the July 22, 1306 (10th of Av) were to be executed

1393: The Jews of Majorca were guaranteed protection by the governor who “issued an edict for their protection, providing that a citizen who should injure a Jew should be hanged, and that a knight for the same offense should be subjected to the strappado.”

1495: Isaac ben Judah Abravanel and King Alfonso sailed from Naples to Mazzara near Sicily. The city of Mazzazra was given as a gift from Ferdinand of Spain to Alfonso. While there, news reached both Abravanel and Alfonso that Charles VIII had taken Naples. The French rioted against and looted the Jewish community almost wiping it out. Many Jews were sold as slaves, and many were forced to convert to Christianity. Abravanel later wrote, "My entire enormous wealth was stolen."

1749: Birthdate of Chaim Volozhin, a disciple of the Valna Gaon. Also known as Reb Cahim he was the founder of the Volozhin Yeshiva, which provided the “template” for similar academies throughout much of what was at that time part of Poland and the Russian Empire.

1793: Prussia and Russia signed a treaty that portioned Poland. All of a sudden, Russia had a large Jewish population, something which her rulers had not bargained for and did not want.
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1812: Birthdate of Moses Hess, Born in Germany, Hess, was an author, socialist and forerunner of the Zionist movement. In his book Rome and Jerusalem published in 1862, he expressed the belief that German anti-Semitism was based on race and nationhood. He advised Jews to accept the fact and revive their own state in Eretz Israel. Hess, a socialist, had worked with Marx and Engels. He grew disillusioned with the idea that a "progressive society would eradicate anti-Semitism." He passed away in 1875.

1831 (7th of Shevat, 5591): Author Achim von Arnim passed away. Von Arnim was not Jewish but he incorporated the Golem into his works thus helping this Jewish myth to move into the general European culture.

1841: Birthdate of Edward Rosenwasser, the native of Bohemia, who gained fame as Edward Rosewater the Republican Party leader and editor of the Omaha (Nebraska) Bee. Rosewater played a minor role in one of the great moments of U.S. History – the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. While serving as the telegrapher at the White House, he was the one who actually sent President Lincoln’s words out over the wires to the world.

1847: Birthdate of Lionel Jonas Cohen, oldest brother of famed musician Frederic Hymen Cowen.

1860: Punch reported that a dispute has broken out between two Jewish businessmen – Lazarus Simon Magnus and Henry Guedalla – over control over the Great Eastern Steamship Company. In one exchange of letters, Mr. Magnus challenged Mr. Guedalla to a duel.

1861: David Levy Yulee, the first Jew elected to the United States Senate withdrew from that body when Florida seceded and joined the Confederacy. Yulee, who married a Christian and raised his children in the faith of his wife, then joined the Confederate cause as a Senator

1863: Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck wrote to Grant to explain the rescission of the order #11, stating that "The President has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which, I suppose was the object of your order; but as it in terms proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it." Captain Philip Trounstine of the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, being unable in good conscience to round up and expel his fellow Jews, resigned his army commission, saying he could "no longer bear the Taunts and malice of his fellow officers… brought on by … that order." The officials responsible for the United States government's most vicious anti-Jewish actions ever were never dismissed, admonished or, apparently, even officially criticized for the religious persecution they inflicted on innocent citizens.

1864: Birthdate of Israel Zangwill the noted Anglo-Jewish author and Zionist whose literary career in the United States was launched when he wrote “Children of the Ghetto." [His obituary in the New York Times

1864: Apparently Jews were a significant part of the population of Utah since in a report from Great Salt Lake City, it was noted that “there are two subjects…which Jew and Gentile..consider of more than ordinary importance” when it comes to legislative action – bills concerning mining claims and general corporation.

1871: It was reported today that a popular Jewish peddler named Frank who sold to customers throughout Queens County, New York, has died of wounds inflicted by an unknown assailant who shot him while traveling to his home in Flushing. Since nothing has been found missing, authorities assume that the motive was not robbery but no suspects are in custody at this time.

1871: Establishment of Emanuel Jewish Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa. The site is adjacent to the northwest corner of Woodland Cemetery at Woodland and Harding, just northwest of downtown Des Moines.

1874(3rd of Shevat, 5634): Daniel Joseph Jaffe died in Nice, France. Jaffe had settled in Belfast in 1852 where he had become a successful businessman. He was the father of Otto and Martin Jaffe. Martin bought a plot Belfast’s City Cemetery for his father’s internment. This plot was the origin of the city’s Jewish Cemetery.

1877: The 25th annual meeting of the B’nai Brit of the United states began in Cincinnati, Ohio with 100 delegates in attendance.

1878:Birthdate of Simon Glazer, the native of Lithuania who served as the Rabbi for Congregation Bnai Israel in Des Moines, Iowa from 1902 to 1905 before moving on to congregations in Toledo, Montreal, Seattle, Kansas City and New York City. He passed away in 1938.

1882: The BILU Movement took root in Russia. The Russian students at the University of Khrakov formed their own Zionist group called BILU (initials for House of Jacob Let Us Rise and Go) which called for active settlement of the Eretz Israel by agricultural pioneers. The first group of 14 arrived July 6 the next year, hiring themselves out as agricultural laborers. They believed it was possible to start a worldwide movement to encourage settlement in Eretz Israel.

1887: Birthdate of Wolfgang Kohler. “Kohler was the only non Jewish psychologist who ever protested against Germany and the Nazis. He was not afraid to make his thoughts about them very public which could have cost him his life at a very early age. He was lucky that he was not thrown into a prison and killed off for the things he said about Germany and the Nazis”

1890(29th of Tevet, 5650): Rabbi Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler put on his tallit and t’fillin, aided by Joseph Vangelder, his faithful servant for twenty years. He said the Sh’ma with a clear and unhesitating voice and at 8.45 am breathed his last.Born in 1803, he was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1845 until his death and one of the most prominent 19th century rabbi in the English-speaking world. (As reported by Rabbi Raymond Apple)

1899: Reports are published that Leopold de Rothschild was hurt when a branch hit his face, breaking his nose and injuring an eye, while the newly elected Member of Parliament was taking part in a hunt.

1899: Opel manufactured its first automobile. In 1931, General Motors acquired 100% ownership of the German automobile company. In 1998 General Motors hired historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. to investigate the wartime activities of Opel, its German subsidiary, which a group of Holocaust survivors was suing. His research led to the book General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe’s Biggest Carmaker published in 2005. Mr. Turner concluded that although Opel had made the morally dubious decision to produce engines for the Luftwaffe in 1938, by the time the war began General Motors had lost control of the company and therefore had no say in its production of military vehicles or its use of slave labor.

1903: Harry Houdini escaped fromthe police station Halvemaansteeg in Amsterdam.

1903: Herzl traveled to Paris.

1910: The Angel Island Immigration Station opened today. Prior to the opening of the Immigration Station, immigrants landed directly in San Francisco. Jews immigrated through Angel Island primarily in two waves: in the 1920s from Russia to escape the Bolshevik revolution, and between 1938 and 1940, when German and Austrian Jews crossed Asia to flee the Nazis. In some ways, Angel Island was the Ellis Island of the West. But because of the politics and laws of its time, unlike Ellis Island, many immigrants were detained on Angel Island for weeks or months at a time, particularly Chinese and other Asian immigrants. According to Judy Yung, a retired professor at U.C. Santa Cruz and co-author of a new book about Angel Island’s history, Jewish immigrants had it better. The average stay for Russians and Jews on Angel Island was two to three days, and less than 2 percent were deported. “Overall, the Russian and Jewish experiences on Angel Island were very similar if not better than those of their counterparts on Ellis Island, where their rejection rate was almost twice as high,” she writes. “For the overwhelming majority who were coming to escape religious or political persecution, Angel Island was truly a gateway to the promised land of freedom and opportunity.” However, it wasn’t an easy gateway to pass through. Many immigrants — including Jews — were detained. In some instances, representatives from Jewish and Hebrew benevolent societies felt compelled to come to Angel Island to testify on behalf of Jewish detainees. In 1915, for example, one such representative spoke to immigration officials, telling them that “we always take steps to see that Jewish boys obtain work and do not become beggars.” After this, officials released eight Jewish detainees, according to Yung’s book. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society also stepped in to help, opening a Pacific Coast branch in San Francisco in May 1915 mainly to advocate for the increased number of Jews coming through Angel Island. In 1916, for example, when 17 Jews refused to eat the food served to them in the Angel Island dining hall during Passover, HIAS provided the immigrants with matzah and kosher-for-Passover food they could eat in their rooms. And in 1933, when a 54-year-old widower traveling with his two sons was detained on the island because officials thought he was “emaciated and frail looking,” HIAS offered a hand. HIAS helped round up $1,000 from other family members, and the father, who spent two months on Angel Island, was finally released. In another instance, a shoe-store owner from Vienna and his wife were held overnight because they were suspected of being an LPC, a “likely public charge,” meaning they would need government support to get by. They had come from Shanghai with just $22 to their name. But because they had the foresight to leave Germany with two fur coats worth over $2,000 — the Nazis allowed them to take goods but not money — they were able to convince the officials of their financial stability. “I was really struck by the resourcefulness of the Jewish immigrants,” Yung said during a phone interview.

1912: Birthdate of Konrad Bloch. The noted biochemist earned a Nobel Prize in 1964 for his studies of cholesterol

1912:
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1913: At the request of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 156 women from 52 congregations around the country met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to create the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). While local women's groups had been formed in individual synagogues in the 1890s, the NFTS was the first national body to bring these groups together. Though NFTS was initially envisioned as a federation of all synagogue sisterhoods, sisterhoods from Conservative and Orthodox synagogues formed their own national organizations within a decade, leaving the NFTS as a body of Reform Judaism. Differentiating itself from the National Council of Jewish Women and other social service groups, the NFTS focused from the beginning on women's roles in the synagogue. Early projects included sponsoring children's Chanukah and Purim parties in synagogues, beautifying synagogues for holidays, and supporting religious schools. The NFTS also raised money for rabbinical school scholarships, and played a leading role in creating the National Federation of Temple Youth. Though the NFTS usually sought to stay out of politics, sisterhood members were concerned from the beginning with the changing role of women in Reform Judaism. Leaders encouraged women to sit on synagogue boards, and instituted Sisterhood Sabbaths, when women could lead the service in some congregations. From an initial membership of 9,000 in 49 local chapters, the NFTS grew to 100,000 members in six hundred affiliates across the U.S., Canada, and twelve other countries by 1995. In recent decades, NFTS extended its earlier mandate beyond the domestic sphere to take a public role in such issues as civil rights, child labor legislation, capital punishment, and abortion rights. In 1993, NFTS was renamed Women of Reform Judaism, reflecting a desire to be seen not only as an auxiliary group, but as an organization that puts its members and their interests at the center of Reform Judaism.

1914(23rd of Tevet, 5674): Adolph Krakauer, a pioneer Texas merchant died of a heart attack today in El Paso. Born in Fürth, Bavaria, in 1846, this son of Joel and Babette (Elsasser) Krakauer was educated in the Latin schools and graduated from the Royal Commercial College of Fürth in 1862. He immigrated to New York in 1865 and was employed as a clerk there. In 1869 he moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he went to work for Louis Zork, a leading merchant. He married Zork's daughter Ada and became a member of the firm. Though he was presumably well established, he chose to move to El Paso in 1875, at a time when the town's population was listed as seventy-five Mexicans and twenty-five Anglos. There he clerked in the firm of Sam Schutz and Son and became manager when the business was sold; later he became a partner. In 1885 he sold his interest in the firm and organized the firm of Krakauer, Zork, and Moye with his brother-in-law, Gustave Zork. The company became a leading wholesale hardware dealer in the Southwest, with a branch in Chihuahua, Mexico. Krakauer also became president of Two Republic Life Insurance Company, the Krakauer-Zork Investment Company, and the Mountainside Realty Company and director of the First National Bank and the Rio Grande Valley Banking and Trust Company. He also owned extensive real estate in El Paso. He served as county commissioner and alderman and was elected mayor as a Republican after a bitter election campaign in 1889. He never assumed the office, for it was discovered he had not taken out his final citizenship papers. Krakauer was a leader in Jewish community activities and served as president of Temple Mount Sinai. He spoke fluent Spanish.

1918: Following the lead of Reform Jewish sisterhoods, and at the behest of Solomon Schechter, Conservative synagogue sisterhoods joined together to form the National Women's League of the United Synagogue. The founding president of the League was Schechter's wife, Mathilde Roth Schechter. Mathilde Schechter, born in Silesia and educated in Breslau and London, had married Solomon Schechter in 1887 and came to the U.S. in 1902, when Solomon was appointed president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The Women's League was just one in a line of significant projects for Mathilde Schechter. Before establishing the League, she had helped to establish a Jewish vocational school for girls on the Lower East Side of New York, and had helped to publish a hymn book called Kol Rina — Hebrew Hymnal for School and Home.
The Women's League's mission was to promote traditional Judaism in homes, synagogues, and communities. In line with that goal, one early project was the establishment of a kosher boarding house for Jewish students in New York City. Other projects included publications providing guidance on domestic religious ritual as well as traditional recipes and music. In addition, the League became involved with social action from an early date, taking an especially active role in the Jewish Braille Institute. The League, now called the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, has grown from an original one hundred women in 26 sisterhoods to 150,000 members in 700 sisterhoods. As it has since the beginning, the League continues to be involved in public policy issues, including women's health, literacy, and foreign policy. Since 1972, the League has also helped to support sisterhoods in Masorti (Israeli Conservative) congregations.

1919: Submission of the Tentative Report of the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference

1921: King Constantine donates 10,000 Drachmae for the relief of Jewish sufferers of the fire in Salonica.

1921: Birthdate of Barney Clark. Clark was the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart, an operation that was performed at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

1923: Birthdate of Annemarie Dinah Gottliebova, the native of Brno, Czechoslovakia, who was shipped to Auschwitz with her mother where she bartered her services as a portrait painter for her life and her mother’s life. After the war, as Dina Babbit, she spent the past several decades trying to retrieve her paintings from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1924: Birthdate of comedian Benny Hill. “Roses are reddish, Violets are bluish If it weren't for Christmas, We’d all be Jewish.”

1924: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin Russian leader died of a stroke at the age of 54. Lenin’s death brought a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky to a boil. Stalin would triumph and anti-Semitism would become as much of a staple for the Commissars as it had been for the Czars.

1927: Two funeral services were held today for famed philanthropist Lee Kohns. Bishop Thomas F. Failer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Tennessee conducted the first service at the family’s Manhattan home. Dr. Samuel Schulman of Temple Beth-El presided over the grave side service in Beth-El Cemetery at Cypress Hills.

1927: Bernard Baruch is among the members of a delegation representing the Board of Directors of City College’s Alumni Association that is attending today’s funeral of Lee Kohns who graduated in 1884.

1927: At 10:30 this morning, classes were halted for five minutes at City College in memory of Lee Kohns.

1927: The will of Lee Kohns was filed for probate this afternoon after having been read at his funeral. The estate is worth about $3,000,000. While the will the leaves generous bequests to charity, the bulk of the estate will go to his wife and their children.

1928: While serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill receives a request from Chaim Weizmann for a loan intended to assist the Jewish population in Palestine in a manner consistent the aims of the Mandate. The loan would gain the support of Lord Balfour but would be rejected by the Cabinet in a move that had a whiff of anti-Semitism.

1931 (3rd of Shevat, 5691): Composer and pianist Felix Blumenfeld passed away at the age of 67 in the Soviet Union. Born in 1863 Blumenfeld taught Vladimir Horowitz. Blumenfeld’s work was primarily a product of pre-revolutionary Russia.

1931: Isaacs Isaacs, the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia completed his term of office. He was the third person to fill this position.

1933: Birthdate Itzhak Fuks, the Israeli El Al captain who would die when his plane crashed in Amsterdam 1992.

1934: The New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem suggests that “the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab canton with each of these peoples living as a separate entity” would be “a solution to the Arab Jewish problem.” Based on reports from other sources, the Arab canton would include Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa while the Jewish canton would be limited to Tel Aviv, which virtually an all-Jewish city any way, and a narrow strip of land stretching from Betsian to Tiberias to the swamps around Lake Huleh.

1938: The Romanian government strips Romanian Jews of their citizenship.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that an Arab from Hebron, sentenced to death by the Military Court, confessed that he participated, 11 days earlier, in the murder of John Starkey, one of the most distinguished archaeologists working in Palestine.

1941: After observing a three-day anti-Semitic rampage in Bucharest by the SS-supported Iron guard in Romania, the Romanian Jewish writer Mihael Sebastian wrote, “The stunning thing about the Bucharest bloodbath is the quite bestial ferocity to its…the butchered Jews were hanged by the neck on hooks normally used for beef carcasses. A sheet of paper was stuck to each corpse with the notation “Kosher Meat.”

1941: In Rumania, the Iron Guard raided thousands of Jews, destroyed hundreds of shops, and looted or burned twenty five synagogues. In addition, 120 Jews were cruelly tortured and killed.

1941: Bulgaria enacted its first anti-Jewish measures.

1942: In the Vilna Ghetto, the Jews established the United Partisan Organization (Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO), the only organization in the ghettos that included all the Zionist youth movements.

1943: In Warsaw, the Germans opened fire in the ghetto. Resistance was given by Jews seizing weapons and firing from rooftops with only 10 pistols. The Germans retreated after twelve were killed.

1943: Over the next four days, two thousand Jews from Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, are deported to Auschwitz. Some 1760 are gassed on arrival, including patients from the Jewish mental hospital at Apeldoorn, Holland, as well as about 50 of the hospital's nurses who accompany the patients to lessen their terror.

1944: Birthdate of Professor Stefan Reif the distinguished academic from Edinburg who was the founding director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit

1945: Ninety-six Hungarian Jews interned at Auschwitz and working at a quarry at Golleschau, Germany, are sealed inside a pair of cattle cars labeled "Property of the SS." Half of the prisoners freeze to death as the train travels aimlessly for days. At Zwittau, Germany, the cattle cars are detached from the train and left at the station. Manufacturer Oskar Schindler alters the bill of lading to read "Final Destination--Schindler Factory, Brünnlitz." After unsealing the cars at his factory, Schindler frees the Jews;

1945: Birthdate of Andrew Stein, President of the New York City Council.

1948: Golda Meir's speech to the General Assembly of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds helped raise $50 million for the Haganah at a critical moment in Israel's fight for independence.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported on the worsening security situation along the country's borders, especially the Jordanian-Israeli no-man's-land dividing Jerusalem. This security deterioration, infiltration and frequent robberies may have been directly influenced by an intensified anti-Israeli activity of the Arab states at the UN General Assembly. Jordan prevented any cement or building materials from being transported to the Israeli enclave on Mount Scopus, urgently needed there to repair damaged buildings, claiming that Israel wished to fortify the enclave. The 9,000-ton British cruiser, HMS Kenya, steamed into Haifa Port for a three-day unofficial visit.

1954: Letters of administration were granted to Richard Samuel because his father Bernard Samuel, the former mayor of Philadelphia, passed away without leaving a will. The estate of the man who served as mayor from 1941 until 1952 is worth approximately $50,000.

1954: The U.S.S. Nautilus, America’s first nuclear powered submarine is launched at Groton, Conn. Admiral Hyman Rickover is considered to be the godfather of the nuclear Navy.

1954: During a cabinet debate over Egypt’s decision to bar ships going to Israel from using the Suez Canal, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden is able to make a case for the Arab state’s behavior.

1959 (12th of Shevat, 5719): Film pioneer Cecil B. DeMille passed away

1964(7th of Shevat, 5724): Austrian born American actor Joseph Schildkraut passes away at the age of 68. He won an Oscar in 1937 as Best Supporting Actor. Younger audiences may remember him as the father in “Diary of Anne Frank.”

1968: Simon & Garfunkel released the Original Soundtrack to “The Graduate,” which quickly went to #1 on the pop charts and which will bring Paul Simon a Grammy for Best Original Score.

1971(24th of Tevet, 5731): Polish born Jewish author Yuli Borisovich Margolin passed away at the age of 70.

1971: Twenty one year old Annie Leibovitz’s photograph of John Lennon appeared on today’s issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

1974(27th of Tevet, 5734): Lewis L Strauss passed away at the age of 78. Strauss was a Republican which was unusual at that time and he headed the US Atomic Energy Commission under President Eisenhower from 1953 until 1958.

1979: Final performance of “The Girl From Tel Aviv” starring Israeli singer Mary Soreanu took plakce at the Hotel Diplomat in New York. Surprisingly, this Israeli play is written Yiddish with only a few words of Hebrews. The show was written by Moshe Tamir, with music by Shaul Berzowski

1983: The Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Anthony E Hecht.

1985: Ronald Reagan is publicly inaugurated for his second term as U.S. President. January 20 was a Sunday, so the public ceremony was delayed for twenty-four hours. During his second term Reagan awarded Elie Weisel with a Medal of Freedom. Much to the dismay of Weisel and other Jews, during his second term he also visited Bittberg Cemetery where SS Soldiers were buried. Last but not least, the Iran-Contra Affair which involved Israel in some rather strange arms deals took placed during Dutch’s second term.

1990: Shimon Peres, the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, arrived in Prague today on the first visit to Czechoslovakia by an Israeli minister since ties between the two countries were cut in 1967. During the two-day visit Mr. Peres will hold talks with President Vaclav Havel, Prime Minister Marian Calfa and Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus, with the aim of re-establishing contacts between the two countries. Mr. Peres was greeted at the Prague airport by Foreign Trade Minister Andrei Barcak. A Czechoslovak delegation visited Israel earlier this month for talks with the Foreign Ministry on the resumption of ties, which is expected soon. All East European countries except Rumania, which was then headed by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, broke off relations with Israel during the 1967 Middle East war. Mr. Peres, the head of the Labor Party, is scheduled to go to Egypt after this trip. Before his departure from Tel Aviv, Mr. Peres said he would try to narrow differences with Egypt on the makeup of a Palestinian delegation for proposed peace talks with Israel. ''For a long time we have had no meeting with the upper level of Egyptian leadership and my visit to Cairo is to examine the situation and see how we can advance the peace process,'' he said.

1991: Orders to stay home from work were canceled for the rest of Israel today, but not for Tel Aviv, which appears to be the main Iraqi target. Scud missiles came down here Friday and Saturday with miraculously little effect and no deaths thus far; one hit the only vacant lot for blocks, another an empty bomb shelter.

1991: Topol, who left his starring role as Tevye the milkman in the Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof," to return to Israel explained the reasons for his decision today. “Speaking by telephone from his home in Tel Aviv, where his son and daughter were visiting, said: ‘I really felt I should be where my heart is, with my friends and family and all the people I grew up with. I hope I can contribute something to the Israeli morale.’"
192: Yuval Ne’eman, a Likud MK, completed his terms as Minister of Science and Technology.

1994: The future of the New England Patriots was settled in New England's favor when Robert Kraft, a Jewish Boston businessman who bought the team's Foxboro Stadium six years ago, won a bidding war that included a nominally higher bid from a group that hoped to move the team to St. Louis.

1999 (4th of Shevat, 5759): Actress and author Susan Strasberg passed away at the age of 60.

2000: Maria Paasche, who helped Jews escape from Nazi Germany on the back of her motorcycle and whose father and brothers conspired to kill Hitler, died today in a San Francisco nursing home. She was 90. Mrs. Paasche was the daughter of General Kurt von Hammerstein, who was commander in chief of the German Army from 1930 to the winter of 1934. He was known as the ''Red General'' for his friendliness with trade unions and Russian generals during the years Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. The general plotted unsuccessfully in 1939 to lure Hitler to his headquarters on the Western front and kill him. Chancellor Heinrich Brening called the general ''the only man who could remove Hitler -- a man without nerves.'' Two of Mrs. Paasche's brothers, Ludwig and Kunrat, were part of another conspiracy to kill Hitler, in 1944. Unlike many plotters, both escaped. From growing up in military headquarters, they knew a secret passage to reach the subway in Berlin. Ludwig died two years ago, and Kunrat lives near Bonn. Maria Therese von Hammerstein was born in Magdeburg, just outside of Berlin, and grew up in an Army family. Her grandfather, General Walther von Luttwitz, was involved in the 1920 putsch against the Weimar Republic. But young Maria and her six brothers and sisters were allowed freedom to prowl a broader intellectual and political landscape. They made many Jewish friends, and though a Christian, Maria planned to join her Zionist friends in Palestine, said her son, Gottfried Paasche, a sociology professor at York University in Toronto. She left the convent where she began her education to attend a public school, where she studied agriculture to prepare for life in the Middle East. She attended the University of Berlin. Dr. Paasche only learned about his mother's past in recent years when he applied to have her admitted to the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco. She had previously talked little about her past, and now memory loss was setting in. Still, he was able to compile compelling evidence of her wartime aid to Jews. In the process, he realized that his mother represented part of a largely missing history. ''The work of women in the early years of Nazi power had been forgotten'' he said. Some of that history is contained in a documentary about Mrs. Paasche completed last year. The still unreleased film, ''Silent Courage: Maria Therese von Hammerstein and her Battle Against Nazism,'' was sponsored by B'nai B'rith and the German government. Last week, Mr. Paasche returned to Germany to continue research about his mother. Mr. Paasche spoke of great political activism of the three older von Hammerstein sisters, of which Maria was the middle one. In the 1930's, after the meaning of Hitler's rise was becoming clear, she began riding her motorcycle to Prague, still a free city not under Nazi domination. She would transport Jews and intellectuals out of Germany into Prague and also bring newspapers and other materials to the anti-Nazi community there. She would also warn Jews they were in danger, on the basis of intelligence information from her father. The von Hammersteins lived in military housing under constant supervision, as Hitler tightened his grip on Germany. This meant that when Maria married married in 1935, the ceremony was held in a rented apartment. Her father did not attend. Her new husband was John H. Paasche, who was of Jewish ancestry. He did not at first seem a perfect fit for a German military family: his father, Hans, a Navy captain who became a pacifist and was a pallbearer at the funeral for Rosa Luxemborg, the socialist leader, was assassinated by right-wing German naval officers in the 1920's. But Maria's father, General von Hammerstein, only wanted one answer: did his future son-in-law's father have an honorable discharge from the Navy? The answer was yes, and so the general blessed the union. The newlyweds moved to Palestine to join Zionist friends there, but a typhoid epidemic forced them to return to Germany. Mr. Paasche, as a Jew, was not allowed to study law, and studied oriental languages instead. They decided to emigrate to Japan after being interrogated several times by the Gestapo about the activities of friends and relatives. General von Hammerstein died of cancer in 1943, and after his sons' participation in the failed coup attempt, Maria's mother and her youngest siblings, a brother and sister, were placed in concentration camps in an attempt to force them to disclose their brothers' whereabouts. They never did. The three were freed by Allies at the end of the war. In Japan, Gottfried Paasche said, his parents lived in fear their politics would become known by the heavily Nazi German exile community. His mother tried to prepare the family for being taken away to camps, urging them to memorize poems. ''You've got to learn things by heart,'' she said. ''You may need it when you go to prison.'' Mr. Paasche said the Japanese police would sit in front of the house spying on the family, but the children were never told why. ''We were brought up to be loyal Japanese,'' Mr. Paasche said. ''My parents never told me as a child what side we were on.'' After the war, the elder Mr. Paasche worked as a translator for the American occupiers until 1948, when the family emigrated by ship, to San Francisco. At first, he worked in a tomato canning factory and his wife cleaned houses. After the father earned his master's degree from Berkeley, he worked for the Library of Congress in the Chinese section. Mrs. Paasche read avidly in German, Russian, French and English. She worked as a literary researcher. Mr. Paasche died in 1994. In addition to her son Gottfried, Mrs. Paasche, is survived by three daughters, Joan Briegleb of Hannoverisch-Munden, Germany, Michaela Grudin of Portland, Ore. and Virginia Dakin of San Francisco, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Family members regret that they may never know her complete story. ''She never lost her fear of naming names,'' Gottfried Paasche said.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Black, White and Jewish Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker.

2001: One day after leaving the White House, former President Bill Clinton said that Jack Quinn, a former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and a former counsel to President Clinton, had persuaded him to grant pardons to Marc Rich and Pincus Green, but he did not elaborate and he referred questions to Mr. Quinn. Mr. Quinn referred calls to Robert F. Fink, a partner in the Manhattan law firm Piper, Marbury, Rudnick & Wolfe who said he believed the president had been convinced that the criminal charges against the men had not been justified.

2002: As Arab violence continued the Associated Press reported that the governor of the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Izzedine Sharif, said today that about 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers took part in a raid on his town making it the largest raid on a Palestinian town in 16 months of fighting. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

2003: Today at Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Philharmonic played with its namesake from Israel for the first time in more than 20 years, and Lorin Maazel conducted Mahler's First Symphony, with the New York and Tel Aviv musicians sharing desks.

2003: Edward Gene "Ed" Rendell began his first term as Governor of Pennsylvania.

2004: David Appel, a prominent real estate developer with ties to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was indicted today. He is charged with having tried to bribe Mr. Sharon starting in the 1990’s when Sharon was the Foreign Minister. Specifically, the Israeli court indicted the real estate developer on charges of paying roughly $700,000 to Mr. Sharon's son, Gilad, in the hope of bribing Mr. Sharon.The indictment raises potentially serious legal and political issues for Mr. Sharon and prompted political opponents to call for his resignation.

2006: Hundreds of Venezuelan intellectuals expressed "shock and consternation" in a public condemnation of allegedly anti-Semitic remarks made recently by President Hugo Chavez. "These dangerous tendencies must be denounced and combated before our society loses its humanity," the group of 250 intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists and others said in a full-page letter published in the major Venezuelan daily El Nacional. Chavez in a Christmas Eve speech last month said: "The world has enough for all. But it turned out that some minorities, descendants of those who crucified Christ, descendants of those who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way in Santa Marta, there in Colombia, a minority took the world's riches for themselves." Chavez did not specifically mention Jews. Simon Bolivar led the 19th century fight to liberate Latin American nations from Spanish rule. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center shortly afterward accused Chavez of anti-Semitic remarks and demanded a public apology. Chavez rejected the criticism as a misinterpretation of his comments and accused the center of representing the "imperialist" policies of the U.S. government with which he often clashes. Historian Manuel Caballero, one of the promoters of Saturday's condemnation, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he was worried about a possible "radicalization" of Chavez's government. He called the remarks a "fairly clear allusion" against Jews and said the same tendency was seen in Chavez's former adviser, Argentine Norberto Ceresole, who was known for his openly anti-Semitic views. Chavez maintained close ties with Ceresole before his election to the presidency in 1998 but later distanced himself. Simon Bolivar University professor Maruja Tarre, who signed the letter, said Chavez's remarks were part of his continuous discourse of "very strong anti-Semitic comments." National Assembly President Nicolas Maduro called the condemnation "garbage," calling it part of a U.S. campaign against Chavez. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the group have said that Chavez's comments were classic characterizations leveled against the Jews regarding the accumulation of wealth and the crucifixion of Christ. Venezuela's local Jewish community, however, has backed Chavez's claims, saying he was misinterpreted by people who don't understand Venezuela. The Information Ministry responded sharply to the condemnation, accusing those behind it of "a lack of intellectual honesty" and being part of a "privileged caste without authority." Some of those who signed are frequent, outspoken critics of the Chavez administration. The advertisement was paid for by the signatories and anonymous donors, Caballero said. Chavez, who frequently expresses his devotion to Christ but has battled with Catholic clergymen here critical of his policies, says he wants to have good relations with all religious groups.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section opened with a review of Power, Faith And Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren. Oren is a prolific author who received a Ph.D. from Princeton. He served as Director of Inter-Religious Affairs under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. The Sunday edition of the Washington Post book section also featured “a conversation” with Norman Mailer discussing The Castle in The Forest, excerpts from the late Art Buchwald’s Too Soon To Say Goodbye, the last literary work of the humorist “dictated from his hospice chair” and the latest excerpt from the novel Jezebel’s Tomb by David Hilzenrath.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of Norman Mailer’s The Castle In The Forest “a remarkable novel about a young Adolph Hitler and his family.”

2007: The London Sunday Times book section featured a review of Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman in which the author asks “Was there anything intrinsic in Jewish and Roman society,” he asks, “that made it impossible for Jerusalem and Rome to coexist?”

2007: The Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times featured reviews of Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest and Daniel Hurwitz’s Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics.

2008: In Manhattan, screenings of “His Wife’s Lover” which was billed as the “first Jewish musical comedy talking picture,” staring popular stage comedian Ludwig Satz in his only screen performance; “Santa Fe” a film depicting the plight of exhausted Jewish immigrants desperate to begin a new life who arrive on a ship in New York harbor in 1940.This absorbing picture examines the hopes, doubts, and memories of exiles; “Jerusalem is Proud to be Present” which explores the struggle of those who in the summer of 2006 hosted World Pride, an international celebration of tolerance for all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity in Jerusalem. It describes how the event’s organizers were forced to make significant compromises due to the war in Lebanon and fierce opposition from the Holy City’s religious communities.

2008: As part of plans to celebrate the efforts of Sir Nicholas Winton to save Jewish children from Czechoslovakia at the outbreak of WW II, plans for the “Train Prague-London Project” were announced today.

2009(25th of Tevet, 5769): Charles Hirsh Schneer, a noted film producer who for a quarter-century helped the Oscar-winning special-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen lay waste to Washington, San Francisco, Rome and many other places, passed away today in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 88. “When the two joined forces in the early 1950s, Mr. Schneer was a young producer who badly wanted to make a picture in the giant-octopus-rips-down-the-Golden-Gate-Bridge tradition. In Mr. Harryhausen, an innovative but still little-known animator, he found his man. Together, they made a dozen science-fiction and fantasy films that endure as cult classics, notable for combining live action with Mr. Harryhausen’s distinctive stop-motion animation. They include “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (1956); the Sinbad trilogy, comprising “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1958), “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974) and “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977); and “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960). Their last film together was “Clash of the Titans” (1981), which, despite a cast of titans including Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress, had a lukewarm reception. Their most famous collaboration was “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), a retelling of the Greek myth that featured an army of walking, swashbuckling skeletons, memorably animated by Mr. Harryhausen. Mr. Harryhausen received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, a special Academy Award for lifetime technical achievement, in 1991. Mr. Schneer was at Columbia Pictures when he met Mr. Harryhausen. At the time, Mr. Harryhausen was an unheralded animator whose most recent film, “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” (1953), had been made on a shoestring budget of $200,000, just $10 a fathom. But Mr. Schneer loved the picture, and the two men joined forces with “It Came From Beneath the Sea,” released in 1955. The movie was Mr. Schneer’s octopus dream film come to life — almost. Because of financial constraints, the octopus was really a hexapus, with six arms where eight should have been. “The rumor got around that sometimes there were less,” Mr. Harryhausen said Monday by telephone from his London home. “If the budget was cut any more, we would have had a tripod.”The length of time Mr. Harryhausen’s painstaking animation required (a single picture could take several years) freed Mr. Schneer to produce other films. Among them was “Hellcats of the Navy” (1957), the only movie in which Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Davis appear together. Mr. Schneer also produced a biopic about the Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, released in the United States in 1960 as “I Aim at the Stars.” (The comedian Mort Sahl made short work of the title, amending it to read: “I Aim at the Stars — but Sometimes Hit London.") A hands-on producer, Mr. Schneer contributed enthusiastically to the story lines of his films, Mr. Harryhausen said on Monday. He scoured the papers for accounts of the paranormal, of which there was no shortage in the 1950s. He accompanied his crews on location, and at least once helped stave off an embarrassing anachronism. The film was “Jason and the Argonauts,” shot on the Italian coast. In one scene, the script called for Jason’s ship, the Argo, to sail around a bluff and into view. But as the cameras rolled, to everyone’s astonishment, Sir Francis Drake’s galleon the Golden Hind sailed by instead. It had been launched by a British film crew also shooting in the area. As Mr. Harryhausen recalled in an article he wrote for The Guardian in 2003, Mr. Schneer rose to the occasion at once. “Get that ship out of here!” he cried. “You’re in the wrong century.”

2009 The Jewish community will be represented in the Prayer Service at National Cathedral by Reform Rabbi David Saperstein, Conservative Rabbi Jerome Epstein and Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

2010(6th of Shevat, 5770): Lawrence Garfinkel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society who helped design landmark studies that linked smoking to lung cancer, died today in Seattle. He was 88. Mr. Garfinkel became a leader in cancer epidemiology despite having no formal education in the field. His college degrees were in statistics: a bachelor’s from the City College of New York and a master’s from Columbia. “He started as a statistical clerk at the cancer society,” his son said. “He was a recent veteran, just looking for work. It was a temporary job, and he stayed for 43 years.” Hired in 1947, Mr. Garfinkel learned epidemiology on the job. His mentor was Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, an epidemiologist and the director of the statistical research section. Scientists had begun to suspect that smoking might cause lung cancer, but large studies were needed to find out for sure. Mr. Garfinkel helped Dr. Hammond and Dr. Daniel Horn conduct a study in the 1950s that tracked nearly 188,000 men for 44 months. Its conclusion became a milestone in epidemiology: Smokers had a marked increase in lung cancer risk. The grim evidence began to turn the medical profession against tobacco and inspired public health campaigns against smoking. The tobacco industry fought back, picking over studies for flaws and questioning the researchers’ objectivity. But the epidemiologists had just begun to work. Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Hammond started an even bigger project in 1959, the Cancer Prevention Study I, which enrolled a million men and women. A study begun in 1982, by Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Steven D. Stellman, had 1.2 million participants. This research confirmed the earlier indictment of tobacco, and captured the steep rise in lung cancer among women who had taken up smoking. “Those studies have been extraordinarily valuable in that they were a major impetus for tobacco control in the United States,” said Dr. Michael Thun, the vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the cancer society. The studies also gathered data on obesity, alcohol, medications, hormones, occupational exposures, reproductive issues, other cancers and chronic diseases. Researchers are still using that information, said Dr. Stellman, a clinical professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Mr. Garfinkel and Dr. Hammond also worked with Dr. Oscar Auerbach, a pathologist who studied tissue from deceased smokers and showed that the degree of precancerous change depended on how much and how long they had smoked. The pathology findings bolstered the statistical correlations from the earlier studies by providing physical evidence of what smoke could do to the lungs. Mr. Garfinkel became head of epidemiology at the cancer society in 1979, retired in 1990 and worked as a volunteer until 2003. When Mr. Garfinkel retired, Dr. Richard D. Klausner, who was then the director of the National Cancer Institute, said, “Few individuals have contributed as much to our present-day knowledge about the disease consequences of smoking.” Although Mr. Garfinkel contributed to 147 articles in scientific journals, colleagues say he never flaunted his achievements. “He carried with him the fact that he was the product of two poor immigrants, one of whom never learned to read,” his son said. Lawrence Garfinkel was born on Jan. 11, 1922, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and grew up in the South Bronx. His parents were from Galicia, now in southeast Poland. Mr. Garfinkel finished high school at 15 and went to college at night while working days in the garment district. He studied while riding the subway. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Garfinkel joined the Army and was wounded by shrapnel in France. After months in a hospital, he received a medical discharge. He went back to school, but because he had to work, it took him 10 years to earn his bachelor’s degree. Mr. Garfinkel “indoctrinated his family” on the dangers of smoking, Martin Garfinkel said, recalling that when he was 10 his father gave him a deceased smoker’s blackened, cancerous lung in a jar of formaldehyde. “I put it in my room on a shelf with my baseball glove,” he said. “It did the trick. I never smoked.” (As reported by Denise Grady)

2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the New York Premiere of “Human Failure,” a documentary directed by Michael Verhoeven “that reveals the expropriation and sale of Jewish assets that benefited innumerable citizens of the Third Reich. Using documentation from recently opened German archives and riveting interviews with archivists, historians, and descendants of Jewish families who lost apartments, bank accounts and property, Verhoeven uncovers involvement at all levels, from tax officials to merchants to the next-door neighbors.”

2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “Ultimatum,” “a tense melodrama adopted from Valérie Zenatti's 2006 novel” that “authentically recreates the eerie wartime mood that consumed Israeli society in January 1991.” “Handheld cameras track terrified Israeli citizens as they don gas masks and seal themselves in special safe rooms.” The film also reminds us of the paradox of living in Israel. Faced the threat of a chemical and biological attack those living in Jerusalem demonstrate the desire of all Israeli citizens “to laugh, love, live and face reality.”

2010: Authorities say a misunderstanding about a Jewish prayer ritual led to the diversion of a US Airways flight to Philadelphia today. City police Lt. Frank Vanore said a 17-year-old boy on the plane was using tefillin. Tefillin is a set of small black boxes attached to leather straps and containing biblical passages. One box is strapped to the arm; the other box is placed on the head. Vanore said the crew on US Airways Flight 3079 questioned the teen, who explained the ritual. Still, the pilot decided to land in Philadelphia. The flight had left La Guardia airport in New York this morning bound for Louisville, Kentucky. It landed without incident in Philadelphia around 9 a.m. Vanore said the teen has been very cooperative with law enforcement.

2010: The Washington Post features a review of Koeslter: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic by Michael Scammel, a biography of Arthur Kosetler.

2011: At Bloomfield, Michigan, The Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host a concert performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

2011: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a Tu B'Shevat Seder Dinner with Karina where attendees can celebrate the birthday of the trees while welcoming Shabbat.

2011: In Washington, DC, Theater J Middle East Festival is scheduled to present “Argentina Reading.” Argentina is a new work by Boaz Gaon in which “the Israeli daughter of a ‘disappeared’ Argentinean Jew visits the former Ambassador to Argentina hoping to discover what became of her father 20 years earlier during the junta’s rise to power.”

2011: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was moved from the University Medical Center in Tucson to TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, Texas where she can continue her rehabilitation following her nearly fatal shooting two weeks ago.

2011: The funeral for Sonia Peres is scheduled to be held on today at 11:00 am at the Ben Shemen Youth Village cemetery.

2012: “Daas” – a period drama that explore the influence Jacob Frank, the false messiah -- is scheduled to have its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Comedian Dave Goldstein is scheduled to appear at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.

2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Baton Rouge (LA) Film Festival and the Polo Grill and Bar/ The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee in Lakewood Ranch, FL.

2012: “Mahler on the Couch” is scheduled to be shown at the Las Vegas (NV) Jewish Film Festival.

Created and Edited by Mitchell Levin; Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com
Copyright; January, 2012; Mitchell A. Levin