This Day ... In Jewish History

This Day, February 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-31T18:54:00.003-06:00

February 1 In Jewish History

682: Visigoth King Erwig pressed for the "utter extirpation of the pest of the Jews," and made it illegal to practice any Jewish rites in an area that corresponds to much of modern day Spain. This put further pressure on the Jews to convert or emigrate

1605: Birthdate of Aboab de Fonseca, the Portuguese born Dutch Rabbi and Mystic. In 1642, when Brazil was under Dutch control the 600 Jews of Recife established a synagogue where they could worship in public. They recruited de Fonseca, who was living in Amsterdam, to come to Brazil and serve as their Hocham or spiritual leader. This means that Aboab de Fonseca was the first congregational rabbi in the New World. In 1654, when the Portuguese defeated the Dutch and seized Recife, he joined a group of Jews returning to the Netherlands and successfully said back to Amsterdam. Aboab was held in high esteem by his former Amsterdam congregants, that he was reappointed as hocham in the synagogue and made teacher in the city’s Talmud Torah, principal of its yeshiva and member of the city’s bet din, or rabbinic court. He died in 1693 at the age of 88, having served the Jewish community of Amsterdam for 50 years after his return from Recife. While Aboab spent his final years as a man of letters, engaged in teaching and spiritual contemplation, “the adventuresome Isaac Aboab de Fonseca had been, from 1642 to 1654, America’s first rabbi, first Hebrew poet and a man who risked his life for Jewish religious freedom.” (One can only wonder what would have happened if Aboab had joined the group of Jews who left Recife in 1654 and ended up in New Amsterdam. Would he have been the first rabbi in New York/)

1682(5442): Asser Levy, the "founding father" of North American Jewry passed away.. He was survived by his wife Miriam (aka Maria). Though Levy and the "Levy" family of New York are thought of as Sephardic with roots in Holland and even further roots in Spain, he might have been the son of Benjamin Levy, an Ashkenazi shochet from Recife, Brazil.

1733: King Augustus II of Poland passed away. Born in 1670, Augustus II was the Elector of Saxony (Germany) before gaining Augustus gained the Polish throne. His rise to power was facilitated by his “court Jew” and financier Issachar Berend Lehmann. August II was a contemporary of the Besht who was making his public personna known at about the same time as the Polish King passed away.

1796: The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York. Jews did not settle in Canada until the British defeated the French in 1760, at which time the French ban on Jewish settlement in the area became null and void. By the time of this move, the Jews had already built their first synagogue, The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal also known as Shearith Israel which was established in 1768.

1799: The French army under Napoleon left for Palestine to forestall a Turco-British invasion through the Palestinian land-bridge.

1810(27 Shevat 5570): Rabbi Mechel Scheuer passed away. He was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1739. His father was Rabbi David Tebele Scheuer and he led his father's Yeshiva in Mainz as its Rosh Yeshiva during the years 1776 and 1777. In 1778 he became rabbi of Worms and in 1782 was appointed rabbi of Manheim. At the time of his death, he was the rabbi of Coblence.

1827: Birthdate of Alphonse de Rothschild, French banker, philanthropist and member of the French branch of the fabled Rothschild family.

1856: Auburn University is chartered as the East Alabama Male College. Today Auburn has 60 Jewish students out of an undergraduate population of 19,000 students. Auburn does not offer Jewish studies classes but does have a Hillel Chapter.

1860: Rabbi Morris Raphall becomes the first Jewish clergyman to open a session of the House of Representatives. Raphall’s son-in-law would serve in the Union Army and after he had committed some unspecified infraction, Lincoln pardoned him. Raphall’s letter thanking Lincoln is still in existence today.

1861: Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise published an article in The Israelite entitled “No Political Preaching” in which he explained why he had refrained from preaching a sermon on January 4, 1861. President James Buchanan had designated that date “ ‘as a day of feasting and prayer, that God might have mercy upon us and save this Union.’” [This was just about the only action that Buchanan took to preserve the Union!]

1862(1st of Adar I, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Adar I

1862: The will of Samuel Samuels was admitted to probate today. According to the terms of the will, Samuels left $100 to the Jewish congregation, "Bnai Jeshurun," on Greene-street, and $100 for the benefit of the Orphan Asylum under the charge of the Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1868(8th of Sh'vat, 5628): Isaac Leeser passed away. Born in 1806, he “was an American Jewish minister of religion, author, translator, editor, and publisher; pioneer of the Jewish pulpit in the United States, and founder of the Jewish press of America. He produced the first Jewish translation of the Bible into English to be published in the United States. He is considered one of the most important American Jewish personalities of the nineteenth century America.”

1879: It was reported today that the Purim Association of New York will resume hosting a masked ball after a hiatus of 10 years. The ball is scheduled to be held on Purim night.

1880: In St. Louis, the Young Men's Hebrew Association was organized.

1887: Birthdate of Harry Scherman, American economist, author and co-founder of the Book of the Month Club.

1901: A Memorial Service for Queen Victoria was held at the Hurva synagogue in Jerusalem. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Samuel Salant officiated at the service which was so well attended that local police were called to control the crowd.

1904: Birthdate of Sidney Joseph Perelman. Better known as S. J. Perelman, he was a humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is primarily known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker magazine. His most famous cinematic venture was writing the script for the Academy Award-winning screenplay Around the World in Eighty Days starring David Niven.

1905: Birthdate of Emilio Segre. The Italian born physicist worked on the Manhattan Project and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1959.

1915: A dispatch from the London Daily News datelined Cairo, based, in part on reports from “Vladimir Jabotinsky, a well-known Moscow journalist” describes the deteriorating conditions faced by the Jews living under Ottoman rule in Eretz Israel. Mr. Jabotinksy “entertains the graves fears for the safety of the 15,000 colonists in Galilee, Judea and Samaria should the Turkish army in Syria” suffer a defeat since the Turkish government will blame it on the Jews. The government “is doing its utmost to stir up feelings against the Zionists. The Turks have declared Zionism to a be a revolutionary, anti-Turkish movement “which must be stamped out.” The Anglo-Palestine bank has been liquidated which will lead to ruin for many of the Jewish settlers. A large number of Jewish refugees have fled to Alexandria among them “1,000 young men who have have declared their eagerness to join the British army.” The report closes with expression of concern for the 5,000 Jews and 12,000 Christians living in Jerusalem who are trying to survive on American relief supplies described as “insufficient to maintain life.”

1918: Russia adopted the Gregorian Calendar. Russia’s comparatively late adoption of the calendar used by most of the western world makes precise dating of certain events all the more difficult.

1919: The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Assocations began its deliberations in Jersualem.

1923: Birthdate of Canadian businessman Benjamin Weider who “was the co-founder of the International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness (IFBB).”

1925: Today, Sophie Udin and six other women who had been active in the labor Zionist organization Poale Zion, created the Pioneer Women’s Organization of America The organization was renamed Pioneer Women in 1947 and Na'amat (a Hebrew acronym for "Movement of Working Women and Volunteers") USA in 1981. Udin and her colleagues had previously attempted to raise money from American women in support of the creation of agricultural schools in Palestine. The male leaders of Poale Zion argued that their organization offered women full equality and that there was no need for a separate women’s organization. The creators of Pioneer Women, however, pointed to Poale Zion’s small number of female members and its domination by male leaders. Moreover, the middle-class orientation of the rapidly expanding Hadassah, founded in 1912, made that organization seem less than welcoming to many immigrant, working-class, and Yiddish-speaking women Zionists. The creators of Pioneer Women believed that a women’s labor Zionist organization would engage immigrant and working women who might otherwise be unable to find a home for their Zionist energies. Post 1948, the organization focused on helping female pioneers and working women in Israel, largely by raising money for necessities ranging from laundry equipment to wells for irrigating fruit trees. Feminism and class consciousness were also crucial components of the Pioneer Women philosophy. Its leaders stressed the importance of women's contributions to the Zionist enterprise and encouraged each member to become a "coworker in the establishment of a better and more just society in America and throughout the world." Today, Na'amat works on a wide range of issues relevant to women in Israel, the U.S.A., and internationally, from seeking an end to domestic violence to improving workplace conditions, and from child well-being to peace in the Middle East.

1928: Birthdate of Representative Tom Lantos. This California Democrat took his seat in Congress in 1981. He is the only survivor of the Holocaust serving in Congress.

1930: Birthdate of Ping Pong or Table Tennis Champion, Marty Reisman.

1935: At the annual convention of the Palestine Jewish Farmers Federation, Moshe Smilansky, veteran farmer economist, poet, writer and journalist, shocked the assembled gathering when in his opening address as president he announced that in the present circumstances in Palestine Jewish farmers and colonists should employ Jewish labor only

1941: Prime Minister Churchill instructed his Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, to send a warning to Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu telling him “that we will hold him and immediate circle personally responsible in life and limb” if the Iron Cross did not stop their murderous attacks on the Jews.

1943: Most of the 1,500 Jews remaining in Buczacz who had not been sent to Belzac were murdered. One survivor, Netka Goldberg, lost three sisters, two brothers and her mother. Her father would be killed seven months later.

1946: Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie was chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations. Lie was head of the U.N. when Israel was created and was supportive of creating the Jewish state.

1947: Birthdate of American television journalist Jessica Savitch.

1948: The Arabs bombed the Palestine Post (a.k.a. Jerusalem Post) building in Jerusalem

1950(14th of Sh'vat, 5710): French sociologist. Marcel Mauss passed away.

1952: SN (Samuel Nathaniel) Behrman's "Jane" premiered in New York City. Behrman, was a popular and prolific dramatist who tackled a number of topics in his works including what it was like to grow up Jewish in a small town as the 19th gave way to the 20th century.

1955: Lord Rothschild wrote to Churchill “thanking him for the fact that in Jerusalem in 1921 ‘you laid the foundation of the Jewish State by separating Abdullah’s Kingdom from the rest of Palestine. Without this much-opposed prophetic foresight there would not have been an Israel today.’”

1958: Egypt and Syria announced plans to merge into United Arab Republic. This was one of those failed attempts at pan-Arabism that was really a military alliance designed to destroy Israel. The U.A.R. was neither united or a real republic. The Syrians pulled out in 1961, but the name lingered on for many years after.

1959(23rd of Sh'vat, 5719): Rabbi Jonah Bondi Wise passed away. He “was an American Rabbi and leader of the Reform Judaism movement, who served for over thirty years as rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan and was a founder of the United Jewish Appeal, serving as its chairman from its creation in 1939 until 1958.”

1968: Birthdate of comedic actor Pauly Shore best known for his role in “Encino Man.”

1969: Birthdate of jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman son of a legendary jazz musician and Jewish dancer from Russia.

1967: As part of their confrontation with the unionized bagel bakers, owners shut the doors to their bakeries claiming “that they did not have enough work.”

1970: The New York Times includes a review of Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow.

1976: "Rich Man, Poor Man" mini-series based on the work of Irwin Shaw, premieres on ABC TV.

1978: Director Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl. The father of the Polish born director was Jewish. His mother died in a concentration camp. Polanski avoided being trapped in the ghetto and spent the war wandering the woods of Poland.

1979: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile. This marked a major turning point in the Islamic world as religious fundamentalists began coming to power. There are those who would say that there is a direct line between the success of Khomeini and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections in 2006. After 28 years, Iran boasts a leader who denies the Holocaust happened and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

1984: Daniel Stern became NBA commissioner. Jews seem to gravitate to the position since at one point the commissioners of most major sports were Jewish: Commissioner of Major League Baseball: Bud Selig, Commissioner of the National Basketball Association: David Stern and Commissioner of the National Hockey League: Gary Bettman. According to one Urban Legend, there was a move to get Commissioner of the National Football League: Paul Tagliabue to convert to Judaism so that it would be four for four!

1985: Morton I. Abramowitz began serving as President Reagan’s Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

1988: Two Palestinians were shot dead today near Anabta in a fracas on the Nablus road north of Jerusalem that involved demonstrators and settlers. Military authorities said settlers were trapped at roadblocks by stone throwers and drew their guns and opened fire. Soldiers also shot at the demonstrators. Another account said a convoy of 75 settlers returned when the trouble subsided and vandalized a score of Arab cars.

1989(26th of Shevat,5749): Marie Syrkin, an author, editor and teacher who was active in the Zionist cause for many decades, died of cancer today at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 89 years old and lived in Santa Monica. Miss Syrkin was born in Bern, Switzerland, the daughter of Dr. Nachman Syrkin, a prominent Socialist Zionist theoretician. She came with her family to the United States in 1908 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University, then taught high school in New York City. Her first book, ''Your School, Your Children,'' published in 1944, was an impassioned plea for schools to propagandize democratic values instead of remaining neutral in the war of ideas. In 1950 Miss Syrkin was named associate professor of English at Brandeis University, where she taught until her retirement in 1966 as professor of the humanities. Her involvement with Zionism dated to the early 1930's, when she was a translator of Yiddish poetry and a commentator on Jewish life in the United States. She was a founder of the Labor Zionist journal Jewish Frontier in 1934 and for a quarter century beginning in 1948 was its editor in chief. Her most recent article for the magazine appears in its current issue. Golda Meir Biography In the 1940's Miss Syrkin made the first of many trips to Palestine - later Israel - to interview survivors of the Holocaust and to gather material for her 1947 book, ''Blessed Is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance,'' which chronicled the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and other revolts against the Nazis. A longtime friend and associate of Golda Meir, who was also a schoolteacher, Miss Syrkin published ''Golda Meir: Woman With a Cause'' - a three-volume biography of the Israeli Prime Minister - in 1964. She was a prolific writer for such periodicals as Midstream, Commentary, The Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine and The New Republic. Her final volume was a collection of essays from those and other magazines entitled ''The State of the Jews,'' published in 1980. From 1965 to 1969 Miss Syrkin was on the executive body of the World Zionist Movement and during that period was honorary president of the Labor Zionist Movement in the United States. Miss Syrkin was married to the poet Charles Reznikoff, who died in 1976. She is survived by a son, David Bodansky of Seattle; a sister, Zivia Wurtele of Santa Monica; two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

1992(27th of Shevat, 5752): U.S. District Court Judge Irving R Kaufman, who presided at the Rosenberg Spy Case, passed away at the age of 81.

1993: Gary Bettman becomes the NHL's first commissioner

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time by Gershom Scholem and Selected Poems by Harvey Shapiro

2003(25th of Tevet, 5771): The Space Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere killing the crew of six including Israel’s first man in space, Ilan Ramon. Ilan Ramon was born in 1954. He was a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force. He was a graduate of Tel Aviv University and held the rank of Colonel at the time of his death. Ramon was a veteran of the Yom Kippur War, one of the first Israeli pilots to fly the then new F-16 jet and was part of the group that destroyed the Iraqi nueclar reactor before it could go on line.

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua; translated by Hillel Halkin and The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind.

2005: One of the highlights of the completion of the most recent Talmud cyle of study was the Siyum HaShas celebration at Madison Square Garden. At Madison Square Garden this evening, “a handful of the 25,000 people there taking part in the 11th Siyum HaShas Daf Yomi celebration recalled some of the more unusual settings in which they have demonstrated their commitment to the daily study of Talmud, which was completed — and renewed for a new seven-and-a-half-year cycle — this week. Daf Yomi, or daily page, was introduced in 1923 at the First International Congress of Agudath Israel in Vienna by a young Polish rabbi, Meir Shapiro, as a way to bring uniformity to the worldwide study of Shas, an acronym for the names of the six orders of the Mishna, on which the Talmudic sages recorded their commentaries around 200 C.E. Agudah said 120,000 North American Jews were taking part in the celebration this year.”

2006: Despite violent protests, Israel successfully completed the evacuation of the West Bank outpost of Amona. This is in line with the policy of the Sharon government provide security for the state of Israel and ensuring that Israel remains both a democratic nation and a Jewish homeland. The withdrawal policy has the support of the majority of Israelis.

2007: The first exhibition of female architects in the history of Israeli architecture entitled "The feminine presence in Israeli architecture," opened at the gallery of the Union of Architects in Jaffa.Twenty-two female architects participated and displayed works they have planned in the past few years and which have since been built.

2007: As part of a kosher cooking contest, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a proclamation naming this date as Simply Manischewitz Cook-off Day. Candace McMenamin, a non-Jew from Lexington, S.C. won with her sweet potato encrusted chicken. Only in America

2008: Six gunmen opened fire on the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania early this morning, trading fire with guards before fleeing screaming "Allah Akbar," witnesses said. The six men arrived by car and regrouped in front of a discotheque that is just beside the embassy, said Hamza Ould Bilal, a taxi driver who was parked outside the club, called the VIP. He saw them pull out their automatic weapons and scream "God is Great!" in Arabic, before assailing the embassy, he said.

2008: “Praying With Lior,” a new documentary about a Philadelphia boy with Down syndrome preparing for his bar mitzvah opens at the Cinema Village in New York.

2009: At Yale University, CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America presents “Palestinian Issues in Israeli Journalism: A conversation with Khalid Abu Toameh, a journalist who writes for the Jerusalem Post”

2009: The New York Times and the Washington Post each featured a review of Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East by Martin Indyk, the assistant secretary of state for near east affairs during the Clinton Administration and the first Jewish American to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

2010: The Center for Jewish History and the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation is scheduled to present “Diplomacy and Genocide: Challenges for the Future” during which a distinguished panel of policy makers, diplomats, and scholars discuss the issues and opportunities in diplomatic approaches to the prevention of genocide in the contemporary international community.

2010: Two barrels of explosives were discovered on Israeli beaches today, which were dispatched into the sea as part of a large-scale Palestinian terror attack against Israeli navy ships. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) was investigating the discovery of the explosive devices, described as barrels of explosives, with a particular emphasis on the detonator and type of explosives.On Friday, a number of explosions were heard off the coast of the Gaza Strip, likely caused by additional devices that were thrown out to sea. Three Palestinian terror groups – Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades - claimed responsibility.Today, an explosive device washed ashore in Ashkelon and in the evening a second one was discovered in Ashdod. Both were destroyed by police sappers. Defense officials said that Palestinian terror groups have been trying for years to strike at Israeli Navy ships that patrol along the Gaza coast. “The terror groups have difficulty carrying out attacks due to the blockade on Gaza,” one official explained. “This is their way of trying to bypass the blockade and carry out an attack.”

2010: Seven American and European scientists were named winners of Israel's prestigious $100,000 Wolf Prize today. The Wolf Foundation said its prize in medicine went to Axel Ullrich of Germany for groundbreaking cancer research that has led to development of new drugs. Sir David Baulcombe of Cambridge University was awarded Wolf Prize for agriculture research in defending plants against viruses. The physics prize was shared by US professor John F. Clauser, Alain Aspect of France and Anton Zeilinger of Austria for their work in quantum physics. The mathematics prize was shared by two US-based professors: Shing-Tung Yau for geometric analysis, and Dennis Sullivan for contributions to algebraic topology and conformal dynamics.
Each category carries a $100,000 prize, which is then divided if there is more than one recipient.
The Wolf Foundation said that 38 past winners have gone on to win Nobel prizes. The winners will receive the awards in a ceremony on May 13. The Wolf Foundation was founded by the late German-born Dr. Ricardo Wolf, an inventor, philanthropist and former Cuban ambassador to Israel. The private nonprofit foundation's council is chaired by Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar.

2010(17th of Shevat): Selma G. Hirsh, a humanitarian and an author who was associated with the American Jewish Committee for many years, passed away today at her home in Stamford, Conn. She was 92. From 1972 until her retirement in 1982, Ms. Hirsh was the associate executive director of the A.J.C., an international advocacy organization based in New York. She was also the founder of its Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. Ms. Hirsh was the author of “The Fears Men Live By” (Harper, 1955), about the roots of prejudice. She also wrote, with Frederick Elliott Robin, “The Pursuit of Equality: A Half Century With the American Jewish Committee” (Crown, 1957), a history of the group. Selma Goldstone was born in Manhattan on June 9, 1917. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College and a master’s in geology from Oberlin. Afterward she wrote radio scripts on earth-science subjects for the Smithsonian Institution. During World War II, Ms. Hirsh worked as executive director of the Writers’ War Board, a group of prominent writers and other artists involved in the war effort. She joined the staff of the A.J.C. in 1945. Ms. Hirsh’s marriage to Joseph Hirsh, whom she wed in 1938, ended in divorce. Besides her daughter Lisa, she is survived by another daughter, Donna Hirsh; a sister, Louise Meier; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

2011: Virginia Jewish Advocacy Day is scheduled to take placed in Richmond, VA.

2011: The Leo Baeck Institute and American Council on Germany are scheduled to present a lecture by Joschka Fischer and Norbert Frei entitled "The German Foreign Office and the Nazi Past"

2011: At Tulane University, Dean Carole Haber announced that Prof. Ronna Burger, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, has been appointed at the Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman Chair in Judeo-Christian Studies. This chair was endowed through of generous gift of Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman. Prof. Burger’s intellectual path has taken her from an early interest in the Bible and its interpretation to Greek philosophy and most recently to the question of the relation between them. This path is reflected in her scholarly pursuits and her teaching at Tulane, where she has found an intellectual home for over three decades. After receiving her PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 1975, a Mellon Fellowship in New York, followed by a Humboldt Fellowship in Tübingen allowed Burger to turn her dissertation into her first book, on Plato’s Phaedrus (Alabama 1980), and go on to her second book, on Plato’s Phaedo (Yale, 1984; St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Over many years of study and teaching, Burger became increasingly struck by the deep Platonic roots of Aristotle’s thought, and a fellowship at the Siemens Foundation in Munich offered the opportunity to bring that understanding to fruition in Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: on the Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago, 2008). Plato and Aristotle provided a foundation for Burger to explore the thought of Maimonides and his response to the confrontation between Greek philosophy and the Bible, which she has addressed on several occasions, including two papers presented at the American Philosophical Association. Burger’s philosophic background has enabled her at the same time to open up new lines of interpretation of the Bible, from a Platonic reading of the story of Adam and Eve to reflections on the biblical account of Moses as legislator and founder, which she has presented at numerous college campuses. Her interests converged in a recent lecture Burger gave in Munich on the problem of the holy in Plato’s Euthyphro, soon to be published in English with a German translation. Burger was the recipient of Tulane’s SLA Faculty Research Award in May 2010.

2011: Six Senate Democrats rejected a deficit-driven proposal by a new Republican senator to cut United States aid to Israel. In a letter sent today to the top House Republicans on the Appropriations and Budget committees, the Democrats said aid to Israel, the only democratic nation in the Middle East, is imperative. They backed the $3 billion in foreign military assistance that the U.S. provides annually to Israel. Republican Sen. Rand Paul said last week that the nation faces a fiscal crisis and argued that the U.S. cannot give money away, even to allies, as the debt grows. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last week Paul said that “Reuters did a poll, and 71 percent of American people agree with me that when we're short of money, where we can't do the things we need to do in our country, we certainly shouldn't be shipping the money overseas.” When asked by Blitzer if he wanted to halt an annual $3 billion that go to Israel, Paul replied affirmatively, explaining that Egypt receives almost the same amount. "You have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides? I have a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as, you know, a fountain of peace and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East. But at the same time, I don't think funding both sides of the arm race, particularly when we have to borrow the money from China to send it to someone else. We just can't do it anymore. The debt is all- consuming and it threatens our well-being as a country,” Paul said. Many pro-Israel Jewish groups condemned Paul's remarks, including the pro-Israel lobby J Street and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Congresswoman Nita Lowey, ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, called the initiative “shocking”. “Israel is the only democratic nation in the Middle East and one of our most stalwart allies”, Lowey said. “A stable and secure Israel is in our national security interest and has been a staple of our foreign policy for more than sixty years. Using our budget deficit as a reason to abandon Israel is inexcusable. It is unclear to me whether Rand Paul speaks for the Tea Party, the Republican Party, or simply himself”.

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak informed Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant today that they have cancelled his upcoming appointment to the post of Israel Defense Forces chief. The announcement comes after months of scandal surrounding his appointment due to allegations that he had seized public lands near his home in Moshav Amikam in northern Israel. Galant was designated to succeed current IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi this month.

2011: A Tunisian Jewish leader said today that the burning of a building that served as a synagogue in the South of the country was not an attack on the local Jewish community. Roger Bismuth, the president of the Jewish community in Tunisia, told The Jerusalem Post that the fire that broke out at a makeshift Jewish place of worship in the town of Ghabes was probably not an act of anti-Semitism, but one of vandalism. “It was a room used as a synagogue by Jews who did not want to go to a synagogue which was far away,” he said. “It is their fault, really, because they left it open... This is not an attack on the Jewish community.” Earlier, news wires quoted a member of the Jewish community as saying the fire was politically motivated and that local security forces had willfully ignored it. “Someone set fire to the synagogue on Monday night, and the Torah scrolls were burned,” Trabelsi Perez told AFP. “What astonished me was that there were police not far from the synagogue,” added Perez, who is also head of the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in Africa. In April 2002, 21 people were killed, including 16 European tourists, when al- Qaida bombers attacked Ghriba. Since riots broke out in Tunisia two weeks ago, setting off a wave of regional unrest and inspiring the current stand-off between the government and protesters in Egypt, there have been no registered attacks on the Jewish community in that country despite fears that Islamic extremists may take advantage of the chaos to harm Jews. Bismuth said the situation in Tunisia had calmed down significantly in recent days, although some protesters still occupied one of the main squares of Tunis. “The revolution is over, but now there are some crowds of people with no jobs and other protesters there,” he said. “Right now we are building the constitution and preparing the next election in the next four months.” Meanwhile, no attacks were reported on Egypt’s tiny Jewish community, which numbers around 70 people, or any of its institutions. One report from Cairo indicated that the stores on the street where the city’s biggest synagogue is located were looted, although the synagogue itself remained untouched. Members of the country’s remaining Jewish population, which once numbered over 100,000 people, were extremely wary of speaking to the press on Tuesday and declined to give interviews. Asked what he thought of the uprising in Egypt, Bismuth said he believed it would go much the same way as the protests in his country had. “Egypt will follow the same as we do, and I believe the president will leave anytime now,” he said. “What’s significant is that for the first time, the army refused to shoot the people.”

2011(27th of Shevat, 5771): Seventeen year old Mitchell Perlmeter, the son of rabbi Rex Perlmeter and Rabbi Rachel Hertzman, passed away today in his home at Montclair, NJ.

2012: “Mamele” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Etz Chaim in Toledo, Ohio.

2012: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is scheduled to be shown at temple Jeremiah in Northfield, Illinois.

2012: Liel Leibovitz is scheduled to moderate a presentation by New York Times columnist David Brooks at the 92nd Street Y.

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

This Day, January 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-30T17:42:00.003-06:00

January 31 In Jewish History

439: Promulgation of the Code of Theodosius II in the Byzantine Empire. This was the first imperial compilation of anti- Jewish laws since Constantine. Jews were prohibited from holding important positions involving money including judicial and executive offices and the ban against building new synagogues was reinstated. Theodosius was the Roman emperor of the East (408–450) The Code was readily accepted as well by Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III (425-455).

1253: Henry III of England ordered that Jewish worship in Synagogues must be held quietly so that Christians should not have to hear it when passing by. In addition Jews were not to employ Christian nurses or maids, nor was any Jew allowed to prevent another Jew from converting to Christianity.

1419: Pope Martin V issued a Bull that abolished the oppressive laws promulgated by antipope Benedict XIII and granted the Jews those privileges which had been accorded them under previous popes.

1493: Jews fleeing Spain were no longer allowed to enter to enter Genoa. During the previous year Jews fleeing Spain were allowed to land in Genoa for three days. As of this date the special consideration was cancelled due to the “fear” that the Jews may introduce the Plague.

1813: Birthdate of Dutch physician, pharmacist and philanthropist, Samuel Sarphati. “One of the great Amsterdammers of the 19th century,” Sarphati, was a promoter of public housing, an organizer of municipal services such as garbage collecting, and the builder of a bread factory that provided better and cheaper bread for the city. He also built the Amstel hotel. Sarphati is seen by Dutch history as a great philanthropist. Nobody ever knew he was Jewish—until the Germans authorities changed the name Sarphati Street into “Muiderschans”.

1845: The government Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler permission to leave Hanover so that he could move to London and assume the position of Chief Rabbi.

1846: After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown were incorporated to form the modern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Four years prior to this, the families of Solomon Adler, Isaac Neustadt, and Moses Weil settled in the city. As proof of the vibrancy of the young community, during the 1840’s the first Rosh Hashanah services were held at the home of Henry Newhouse and the first Yom Kippur Services were held in a building containing Pereles grocery store. For more about the history of the Jews of Milwaukee consider a visit to the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee or reading "One People, Many Paths: A History of Jewish Milwaukee," by John Gurda.

1848: Birthdate of Nathan Straus who the wealthy American businessman and philanthropist who owned R.H. Macy & Company and Abraham and Straus. Born in Otterberg, Germany, Strauss moved to the United States with his family in 1854 where they first settled in Georgia before moving to New York City after the Civil War where young Nathan worked in his father’s firms L Straus & Sons. In the 1880’s he began a life of philanthropy and public service that included leading the fight against tuberculosis and a major effort to improve the public libraries. His philanthropy extended to developing a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel following his first visit to the area in 1912. His support is memorialized by the fact that a street in the Jerusalem is called “Rehov Straus” and that the city of The modern Israeli city of Netanya, founded in 1927, was named in his honor

1851(28th of Shevat, 5611): David Spangler Kaufman passed away. Born in 1813, Kaufman was the first Jewish United States Congressman from Texas. No other Jewish Texan served in Congress until Martin Frost in 1979. He was born in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. After graduating with high honors from Princeton College in 1830, he studied law under John A. Quitman in Natchez, Mississippi, and was admitted to the bar. He began his legal career in Natchitoches, Louisiana, five years later. In 1837 Kaufman settled in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he practiced law and participated in military campaigns against the Cherokee Indians. He was wounded in a encounter in 1839. Between 1838 and 1845 he was a member of the Republic of Texas's congress. He served in the Republic's House of Representatives from 1838 to 1842, and was Speaker of the House in the last two years. He was a member of the Texas Senate from 1843 to 1845, when president of Texas Anson Jones named him chargé d'affaires to the United States in February 1845. After the Texas Annexation, Kaufman represented the Eastern District (District 1 of Texas in the United States House of Representatives from 1845 to 1851. While in Congress, Kaufman argued unsuccessfully that Texas owned lands that are now parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. He encouraged Governor of Texas Peter Hansborough Bell to have Texas troops seize Santa Fe, New Mexico, which never occurred. He also played a role in the Compromise of 1850, as one result of which the national government assumed the debts of the former republic. Kaufman was a Freemason and a charter member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. He died in Washington, D.C. while attending the Congress, and was originally buried in the Congressional Cemetery there. In 1932 his remains were moved to the State Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Kaufman County, Texas and the city of Kaufman, Texas are named for him.

1856: F.W. Evans delivered a lecture tonight entitled "Shakerism" during which he described numerous similarities in the beliefs and/or practices of the Shakers and those of the Jews. This positive view Jews may be one of the reasons that systemic European style anti-Semitism never took firm root in the United States.

1871: It was reported today that the Russian government has issued an imperial decree exempting Jews from military service once they reach the age of 32. Christians are exempt once they reach the age of 23. Any Jew who converts will not have to serve in the military – another example of “proselytism by main force.”

1886: Birthdate of Lev Shestov. Lev Isaakovich Shestov, born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann was a Russian - Jewish existentialist philosopher. The Kiev native fled to France in 1921 seeking to escape the society created by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death in 1938.

1892: Birthdate of entertainer Eddie Cantor.

1906: Birthdate of composer Benjamin Frankel.

1909: Birthdate Yosef Burg, “a seminal Israeli political figure who was a Cabinet Minister for 35 years as a head of the religious Zionist movement…” (As reported by Deborah Sontag)

1916: While developments today with respect to the nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court did not change the rather general opinion among Senators that the nomination would be confirmed, it became more apparent that confirmation would not be accomplished without a struggle.

1917: Germany announces its U-boats will engage in unrestricted submarine warfare.

1918(18th of Shevat, 5678): Dr. Jechiel Tchlenow, the Moscow physician who was a major leader of the Zionist movement passed away. In 1917, Tchlenow had come to London “where he took an active part in the diplomatic negotiations that have resulted in official declarations by Great Britain” favoring the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1919: Birthdate of Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in major league baseball when he played with the Brooklyn Dodgers. . Robinson was befriended by Hank Greenberg, the Jewish slugger who had had to deal with bigotry during his career. According to Jonathan Eig, the only friends that Robinson had in Brooklyn during his first year “were Jewish people.” “The Jewish community clearly recognized a kindred spirit here, someone who had to prove himself. The war had just ended, [and] anti-Semitism was running high. Blacks and Jews both, after the war, felt they had some work to do to establish more respect."

1921: The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Victor Berger. Berger had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. In overturning the conviction the Supreme Court found that the presiding Judge, Kennesaw Landis (the future Baseball Commissioner) had improperly presided over the case after the filing of an affidavit of prejudice.

1923: Birthdate of author Norman Mailer. Born in Long Branch, NJ, The future Pulitzer Prize winner’s family soon moved to Brooklyn “later described by Mailer as ‘the most secure Jewish environment in America.’”

1925: Birthdate of Charles Eliot Silberman, the native of Des Moines, Iowa, who gained fame as “a journalist whose books addressed vast, turbulent social subjects including race, education, crime and the state of American Jewry.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1928: Nathan Straus, prominent philanthropist, celebrated the eightieth anniversary of his birthday today at his home, 580 West End Avenue. He will spend the day quietly with members of his immediate family. Among those sending congratulatory communications are President Calvin Coolidge and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker. While Straus has gained great honor for his humanitarian efforts, he was proud of his business acumen and some of his unique accomplishments which, according to him, included the introduction of rest rooms and medical care employees. His philanthropic contributions in Palestine were made with the understanding that they would be available to all regardless of race, religion, creed or nationality. Everybody knows about his support of Jewish settlers, but how many people are aware of the fact that he gave funds that were to be used by Arabs so that they buy modern agricultural equipment? How many people known that when Palestine was struck by an earthquake, and Arabs were the chief victims, he sent a substantial sum earmarked for their use?

1928: Mrs. Hertha Fuerth Lasker, a Viennese artist who was married last August to Edward Lasker, one of the leading chess players in the United States and a cousin of Albert Lasker, former Chairman of the United States Shipping Board, was a passenger on the Hamburg-American liner which arrived in New York tonight.

1929: Stalin expelled Leon Trotsky Russia. Trotsky took refuge in Turkey.

1930: The Golden Ring, a romantic operetta, set in Tel Aviv, premiered at the National Theatre on Second Avenue in New York City.

1930: The trial of Simcha Hinkas, the Jewish policeman charged with leading a Jewish crowd which killed a family of Arabs in Jaffa on Aug. 25, 1929 continued today in Jaffa with the prosecution presenting what it consider to be its strongest witnesses.

1931: Dr. William H. Hechler, a Protestant clergyman and teacher who was an early supporter of Theodore Herzl and his Zionist program passed away today at the age of 86. Among other things, Hechler arranged for Herzl to meet Kaiser Wilhelm in those pre-war days when it was thought that the German monarch could persuade the Ottomans to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1932: It was reported today that Miss Freda Berson of Warsaw who is one of the best discus throwers in Poland and Miss Heda Bienenfeld of the Vienna Hokah, an outstanding Austrian swimmer will be competing in the upcoming Maccabiah.

1934: Birthdate of “Alfred Appel Jr., a scholarly expert on Vladimir Nabokov, whose lecture course he attended at Cornell and the author of wide-ranging interpretive books on modern art and jazz.” (As reported by William Grimes)

1934(15th of Sh'vat, 5694): Tu B'Shvat

1935 (27th of Sh'vat, 5695); David Trietsch, an expert on the agriculture and economy of Palestine, as well as “one of the founders of the Zionist movement” passed away today. The 65 year old native of Germany died of heart failure at Rmat Ayim, near Tel Aviv. Trietsch believed that a Jewish homeland would be created through “practical colonization” as opposed to political negotiations. When the Ottomans sought to halt Jewish settlement in Palestine, Trietsch supported the settlement of Jews in Cyprus so that they would be poised to move to Palestine quickly as soon as there was a change in the political climate.

1937: Birthdate of American born composer Philip Glass.

1937: Ben-Zion Mossinson of Tel Aviv delivered an address at New York’s Rodeph Sholom entitled “Is There A Solution for the Jewish Problem?”

1938: Muriel Rukeyser established herself as a poet of enduring impact with the publication of U.S. 1, her second book of poems.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that three large Arab bands abducted nine Arab supernumerary policemen from their police post near Acre, and shot their corporal dead in cold blood. The Arab policemen were disarmed and beaten, warned to leave the force and released. At another police post in the South arms and ammunition were stolen.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Romania officially denounced the Minorities Treaty into which it had entered upon gaining independence at the Peace Conference at Versailles, and claimed that the Jewish question was now "a purely internal matter" over which the League of Nations had no more jurisdiction. This meant that Romania now felt free to implement still more severe anti-Semitic discriminatory measures.

1938: The Palestine Post reported on the rise of anti-Jewish feelings and vandalism in Yugoslavia including the fact that "local Nazis" had smashed the windows out of the Sephardic synagogue of Belgrade.

1940: Birthdate of Alan G. Hevesi “a Democratic politician who served as a New York State Assemblyman from 1971 to 1993, as Comptroller of the City of New York from 1994 to 2001, and as State Comptroller for the State of New York from 2003 to 2006”

1941: Three thousand Jews were taken from their villages and moved into the Warsaw Ghetto. Another 70,000 Jews would be uprooted and moved into the Warsaw Ghetto by the end of March.

1942 (13th of Shevat, 5702): Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah passed away in New York. Wife of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneerson, and mother of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah lived through the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. She fled the advancing front of World War I from Lubavitch to Rostov, where her husband passed away in 1920 at age 59. In 1927, she witnessed the arrest of her son by Stalin's henchmen the night he was taken away and sentenced to death, G-d forbid, for his efforts to keep Judaism alive throughout the Soviet empire. After Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's release, the family resettled in Latvia and later, Poland; in 1940, they survived the bombing of Warsaw, were rescued from Nazi-occupied city, and immigrated to the United States.

1942: Einsatzgruppe A commanding officer, Franz W. Stahlecker, sent a detailed report about activities in the Baltic and White Russian countries. It stated that between July 23 and October 15, 1941, 135,567 Jews were killed. Eichmann sent out a letter making official the conclusions of the Wannsee Conference, "The evacuation of the Jews . . . is the beginning of the final solution of the Jewish problem."

1945 (17th of Shevat, 5705): Fritz Freund, husband of Mathilde Freund, died at Buchenwald just three months before the camp was liberated. In the first decade of the 21st century Mathilde Freund would sue France’s government owned railroad, Societe National des Chemins de Fer Francais over its role in the deportation of her husband and thousands of other French Jews to the death camps.

1947: In the House of Commons, during a debate about Britain marinating the Mandate in Palestine, Churchill, leading the Opposition, calls for the Government to end the Mandate. Two weeks later, the Labor Government will adopt this as policy.

1948: Birthdate of poet Albert Goldbarth.

1948: J D Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish" appears in New York City.

1949: After hearing Churchill’s speech in Parliament denouncing the logic of the Labor Government’s policy towards Israel and calling for recognition of the new Jewish state, Sir Simon Marks, a leading Jewish businessman and philanthropist, wrote to the former PM assuring him that Chaim Weizmann would find great comfort in his words.

1950: President Truman revealed that he had ordered the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb. This decision might have been called Dueling Jewish Physicists. On one side was Dr. Oppenheimer father of the A-Bomb who opposed building the hydrogen bomb. On the other side was Dr. Teller who had worked on the A-Bomb and favored building the H-Bomb. Teller won out. Oppenheimer’s opposition was one of the causes of him losing his security clearance during the 1950’s. This was an injustice that Teller did not support and that President Kennedy would rectify.

1955: Egyptian authorities hanged two Jews in Cairo – Dr. Moshe Marzouk and Samuel (Shmeul) Azar – who had been found guilty of spying for Israel. Eight other Jews had been given long prison sentences for the same reason.

1960: World Sephardi Federation meets in Madrid, Spain. Some members complain they did not want Spain to be the site of the meeting, as they did not want to return to Spain for any reason.

1960: Songwriter Adolph Green marries actress/singer Phyllis Newman in New York City.

1961: David Ben-Gurion resigned as premier of Israel.

1968: At sunset, all non-Israeli military units gave up the search for the INS Dakar, an Israeli submarine that had been first been reported missing on January 26.

1974 (8th of Shevat, 5734): Samuel Goldwyn, a major force in the creation of the motion picture industry, passed away at the age of 91. The evolution of Goldwyn’s name is microcosm of the experience of European Jews who came to America. Born Schmuel Gelbfisz, he changed his name to Samuel Goldfish when he moved to Great Britain because that sounded more English. After he moved to America he went into partnership with two Broadway producers whose names were Selwyn. In naming their partnership they combined their two last names to create Goldwyn. Sam liked the American sound of it so much that he changed his name for the third and last time. What is amazing is the role that this Jewish immigrant from Poland played in creating modern American culture. Among other things, he discovered that quintessential American hero, Gary Cooper and won the Oscar for best picture with his production “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Goldwyn may have been. When Louis B Mayer a former partner turned commented on Goldwyn’s death he said, “The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is that they wanted to make sure he was dead." However Goldwyn’s last production marked him as a man of moral fiber. In his final film made in 1959, Samuel Goldwyn brought together African-American actors Sidney Poitier Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr. and singer Pearl Bailey in a film rendition of the George Gershwin Opera, Porgy and Bess. The film won three Oscars. Samuel Goldwyn's lack of English language skills led to many of his malapropisms being frequently quoted such as:
• "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."
• "Include me out."
• "What we need now is some new, fresh clichés."
• "Anyone who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined!"
• "Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg."
• "Flashbacks are a thing of the past."
• "A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad."

1978: Israel turned 3 military outposts in the West Bank into civilian settlements

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Defense Minister Ezer Weizmann left for Cairo for the second round of the interrupted military discussions. One of his specific aims was reported to be to influence the Egyptians so that they would modify their position of "not giving up even one inch of Sinai."

1979(3rd of Shevat, 5739): Celia Adler passed away today at the age of 89. Known as the “First Lady of the Yiddish Theatre” she was part of Jewish theatrical dynasty that included her parents, Jacob and Dinah Shtettin, her half-sister Stella Adler and her half-brother Luther Adler.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F40B16F73B5D12728DDDAB0894DA405B898BF1D3

1987: As more information came out about what would be known as The Iran-Contra Affair, Yaacov Nimrodi, said today that Israel's Defense Ministry had approved the sale of $50 million worth of Israeli-made weapons to Iran almost two months before the first reported American request for Israel's help in approaching Teheran.

1988: A Jewish settler was severely burned today when his car was firebombed in an area near the Ofra settlement north of Jerusalem.

1990: Yuval Ne'eman resigned from the Knesset today and was replaced by Gershon Shafat.

1992: Tonight’ performance of the Gershwin musical "Crazy for You" at the Shubert Theater is a benefit designed to raised funds for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

1995(30TH of Shevat, 5755) Rosh Chodesh Adar I

1996 (10th of Shevat, 5756): Mathematician Gustave Solomon passed away at the age of 65.

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or topics of special interest to Jewish readers including Playing For Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made by David Halbestram and The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century by Tony Judt.

2004: “Talmud: in the Art of Ben-Zion and Marc Chagall,” an exhibit at the Center Art Gallery at Calvin College that brings together the Biblical work of two of the most important Jewish artists of the 20th Century that features 18 intaglio prints by Ben-Zion and 25 color lithographs by Marc Chagall comes to an end.

2007: The Times of London reported that Lord Levy (Michael Levy) the Prime Minister's personal friend and fundraiser, is the second person close to No 10 Downing Street to be questioned by police under suspicion of perverting the course of justice in the ongoing cash-for-honors investigation. After amassing a fortune in the recording industry, Levy became a major fundraiser for the Labor Party and Tony Blair as well as various Jewish and Israeli charities.

2007: The Jerusalem Post reported that the recently launched Yad Vashem Farsi site has been well received by the target audience. Since the Persian site went on-line last week, some 11,000 hits have been recorded, including 2,242 visits from Iran. That figure is just 1,000 hits short of the total number of visits the Yad Vashem Web site received from Iranians in the whole of 2006. Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari said that none of the Farsi-language posts translated so far had been negative”

2008: In Manhattan, the 92nd St Y presents “Praise, Grumble, Schmooze, Lament: The Voices of 21st Century Jewish Poetry.” The program features readings by established and emerging Jewish poets, including Alicia Ostriker, Rodger Kamenetz, Robin Becker, Jacqueline Osherow, Dan Bellm, Patty Seyburn, Philip Terman, Scott Cairns, Jay Michaelson and Richard Chess.

2008: The Washington Post featured a review of Sacha Baron Cohen the Unauthorized Biography: from Cambridge to Kazakhstan by Kathleen Tracy

2008: It was announced that Neil Diamond will appear at the upcoming Glastonbury Festival in the UK.

2009: The 92nd St Y presents a musical evening featuring the Tokyo String Quartet and Jerusalem born pianist Benjamin Hochman.

2009: The Jewish Federation of Howard County (MD) presents Yom Hadash Community Concert.

2010: Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said today that Israel would allow the ultra-Orthodox community to continue to run their private bus lines segregated by gender, but could not officially recognize the practice on public bus lines. The minister was responding to a petition sent by the Israel Religious Action Center and a women's rights group to the government and to the Egged and Dan transportation companies. Katz declared in his response that Israel does not disapprove of buses which separate between men and women to accommodate the Hardi community, but that segregation could not become institutionalized. The minister added that buses should be permitted to hang signs explaining the ultra-Orthodox community's request to separate seating between men and women, however the request could not be enforced if passengers chose not to adhere to it. Kats also said that violence and the disruption of order on segregated buses must be stopped, and instructed professional security forces on the matter.
Currently, there are 56 segregated bus lines operating throughout the country, a total of 2,108 buses a day. All the buses will be permitted to remain segregated so long as they choose to, but passengers will not be forced to adhere to the decision, only to respect it at will. Most of the buses cater to ultra-Orthodox passengers. "The minister expressed a worthy attitude towards the ultra-Orthodox community and he understands the publics' needs," Rabbi Shimon Stern of the Rabbis Transportation Committee said in praise of the decision. Segregated buses are a relatively new phenomenon in Israel, with the first one appearing 10 years ago on a line between Jerusalem and neighboring Beit Shemesh

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain by Matthew Carr and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

2010: The Tenth Herzliya Conference is scheduled to open this afternoon on the Campus of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya in Israel.

2010: The Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and the Jewish Museum Milwaukee invite the Jewish community to attend “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: A Jewish Night at the Museum” which will include a tour of the “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible” exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum and recitation by Museum President and CEO Daniel Finley of the real story of how the exhibit came to the Museum.

2010: Opening session of The Tenth Herzliya Conference, “Israel‘s primary global policy annual gathering, drawing together Israeli and international participants from the highest levels of government, business, and academia to address pressing national, regional and world strategic issues.”

2010: An exhibition at the Krasdale Gallery in White Plains, NY, entitled “Pages de Guerre” featuring the works of Avigdor Arikha comes to an end.

2010(16th of Sh'vat, 5770): David V. Becker, a pioneer in using radioactive materials to diagnose and treat thyroid disease and an expert on the thyroid damage caused by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in 1986, passed away at his home in Manhattan. He was 86 and had continued his research work until last year. At his death, Dr. Becker was a professor of radiology and medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan and an attending radiologist and physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Becker was an early leader in the use of radioactive materials for organ imaging and treatment. In his research he took advantage of the fact that one product of nuclear fission is a radioactive form of iodine, which is absorbed into the human thyroid gland just like ordinary iodine. By measuring the radiation emissions from a contaminated thyroid, physicians can get an image of the organ, and if it is diseased, larger doses of radioactive iodine can be used to destroy it. After the explosion at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, huge releases of radioactive iodine spread for miles over grazing land for dairy cattle, resulting in high concentrations of the iodine in the animals’ milk. Many thousands of people, mostly children, were exposed. A study in 2005 linked about 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer to the accident. After the accident, Dr. Becker led a team assembled by the National Cancer Institute that investigated the effects of the radioactive iodine on the thyroid. In 1996, he was awarded a White House citation for humanitarian efforts for the work. Dr. Becker was active in a movement to stockpile a drug called potassium iodide in the event of a nuclear reactor accident. Potassium iodide is also absorbed by the thyroid gland, and if given to people downwind of an accident before the radioactive iodine arrives, it will saturate the gland and protect it. David V. Becker was born May 24, 1923, in New York City, the only child of Albert Israel Becker and Miriam Rosner Becker. Dr. Becker began his work with radioactive materials while serving in the Army during the Korean War. A graduate of Columbia University and the New York University School of Medicine, he established one of the Army’s first radioisotope laboratories at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Tex. Dr. Becker also went to Micronesia in the postwar years to study the health of people who had been exposed to radiation from atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs, said his son, Daniel. In one case, he examined the crew of a Japanese fishing trawler that had been in the vicinity of a test in the South Pacific. Dr. Becker was the founding director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian, where he worked for more than 50 years, having started there as a resident in 1954. A former president of the American Thyroid Society, he was a consultant to the National Cancer Institute for more than 25 years. Dr. Becker’s first wife, Naomi Isaacson, a sculptor, died in 1974. Dr. Becker wrote or was a co-author of several peer-reviewed studies in the 1980s using cats, beagles and other dogs. Indeed, Dr. Becker did extensive work on the effects of radioactive iodine in animals, often using rats for research, but not always. Dr. James Hurley, a colleague at Cornell, recalled an incident decades ago when a veterinarian in New York consulted with Dr. Becker after observing a prevalence of thyroid disease in pet cats. Dr. Becker decided to take the cats to the hospital. “In the middle of the night,” Dr. Hurley said, “he brought them in and imaged them on the same machines used on humans.”

2011: Dr. Ron Taffel is scheduled to present a program entitled “Childhood Unbound: Confident Parenting in a World of Change” at the 92nd Street Y in NYC.

2011: Rami Feinstein is scheduled to presents a concert featuring songs from his two albums—a combination of rock, folk, and funk- in Jerusalem.

2011: NYC based Israeli choreographers Deganit Shemy and Netta Yerushalmy, are scheduled to perform this evening in an event intended to raise funds for the 1st Contemporary Israeli Dance Festival in New York, coming in June 2011.

2011: Last day for submitting recipes for the 2011 Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off.

2011: The Jerusalem Post reported today that “The Sundance independent film festival over the weekend followed the Oscars and Golden Globes in recognizing the Jewish and Israeli contribution to world cinema by handing out awards to two Israeli filmmakers. The world cinema dramatic screenwriting award went to Erez Kav-El for his film, Restoration. "Thank you to the shuttles in Sundance," Kav-El joked on receiving the award. Restoration depicts the rich texture of modern Israeli society telling the story of Yakov Fidelman who is forced to deal with his estranged son when he discovers his antique furniture-restoration shop is in grave financial difficulty. Talya Lavie received an Inaugural Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Film-making award which recognizes and supports emerging independent filmmakers from around the world.
Her film, Zero Motivation, is a sometimes comic, often dramatic look at the power struggles of three female clerks over one year in an administrative office at a remote army base in the Israeli desert.”

2011: Right-wing activists have exploited Facebook's protocol that prohibits organizations from opening personal profiles to report and block the profiles of several leftist groups, Haaretz learned on today. The move, initiated by activists linked to the far-right leader Baruch Marzel, has thus far led to the blocking of the profile pages of left-wing groups including Machsom Watch, Yesh Gvul, and Anarchists against the Wall.

2011: Grad rockets landed near the cities of Netivot and Ofakim in the western Negev today, causing damage to a car and leading to four people being treated for shock. One rocket hit Netivot, which is 9 miles east of Gaza, and the second exploded in Ofakim, 15 miles from Gaza.

2011: American Sephardi Federation presents an evening with Edwin Black author of “The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.”

2011: Thanks to the efforts of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation and the British Christian Zionist Movement an appropriate tombstone was placed what had been the unmarked gravesite of Reverend William Henry Hechler, a Protestant clergyman who was an early ally of Herzl and a supporter of the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.

2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Southwest Florida Jewish Film Festival in Fort Meyers, FL.

2012: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is scheduled to be shown at Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Toronto, Canada.

2012: Alan Zweibel will be signing copies of “Lunatics,” a nove, he co-authored with Dave Barry, following his scheduled interview with Mo Rocca at Buttenwieser Hall at the 92nd Street Y.

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

This Day, January 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

2012-01-29T18:07:00.002-06:00

January 30 In Jewish History

1349: The Jews of Freilsburg Germany were massacred.

1648: Spain and the United Netherlands sign The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück marking the end of the eighty year long Dutch revolt against Spanish rule. The treaty guarantees the independence of the Protestant Netherlands from the rule of Catholic Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. It means that the Jewish community in the Netherlands, which includes many Sephardic refugees and Marranos, will be able to grow and flourish.

1667: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceded Kiev, Smolensk, and left-bank Ukraine to the Tsardom of Russia in the Treaty of Andrusovo. According “to the treaty...arranged with John the Jews, who then lived in the towns and districts that became Russian territory, were permitted to remain "on the side of the Russian czar," under Russian rule, if they did not choose to remain under Polish rule. Jewish wives of Greek Orthodox Russians were permitted to remain with their husbands without being forced to change their religion.

1807: Sir Robert Grant was “called to the bar” and began the practice of law. This was but one step on the ladder that led to Grant’s successful career as a member of the House of Commons. Grant was not Jewish. Robert Grant was a strenuous advocate for the removal of the disabilities of the Jews, and twice carried bills on the subject through the House of Commons. They were, however, rejected in the Upper House, which did not yield on the question until 1858, twenty years after Grant’s death.

1852: The horribly mutilated body of Jacob Lehman was found today in the Delaware River. Lehman was the son of Aaron Lehman, a German Jewish peddler living in Philadelphia. When last seen, Jacob had in his possession $200 worth of watches, jewelry and other items that constituted most of his father's inventory.

1852: A jury in Philadelphia rendered the following verdict: "That the lad Jacob Lehman came to his death at the hand or hands of some person or person to the Jury unknown." Lehman was the son of a German Jewish peddler whose gruesomely dismembered body had been found floating in the Delaware River

1854(1st of Sh'vat, 5614): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1857: The will of Marcus Cone was offered for probate today. Included in the will were instructions for establishing Cone's German Human Benevolent Society of New York, Cone's German Human Benevolent Society of Syracuse and Cone's German Human Benevolent Society of Albersweiller, the Germany city in which he was born. Cone wanted to establish the two societies in the United States because neither of these cities had any organized way to provide aid for their indigent Jewish citizens.

1860: The New York Times reported that "In England, astonishment is expressed” that Emperor Napoleon has not appointed the Duc de Persigny to the Foreign Ministry. Unbeknown to the public M de Persigny will not join the cabinet because he refuses to serve with Achille Fould, the Minister of State. M Fould is a favorite of the Empress who “absolutely clings” to him “as the only man competent to” serve as “Minister of State and of the Household of the Emperor.” Furthermore, M Fould is Jewish, a millionaire and is connected to “other rich Jews” through his banking connections.(“Nearly all the millionaires of Paris at this moment are Jews.”) The Emperor is reportedly “afraid to offend so important” a component needed to ensure the stability of his government. “There are people malicious enough to suggest that the Empress' wish in the matter goes for very little, however, and that she is made to bear the blame because that is more convenient in these personal matters than a reason of State.”

1875: The London Punch has a cartoon of Disraeli shaking hands with Gladstone and saying: "Sorry to lose you. I began with books; you’re ending with them. Perhaps you're the wiser of the two." Disraeli is Benjamin Disraeli the English Prime Minister who began as an author. Gladstone was his political opponent who held the post of Prime Minister.]

1876: It was reported today that Jews had joined with Gentiles to raise twelve thousand dollars for the Woman’s Christian Home in St. Louis, MO.

1876: It was reported today that a Jewish synagogue has been opened in Toronto, Canada.

1877: The Downtown Hebrew Benevolent Society is schedule to host a ball tonight as part of the New York City 1876-1877 Ball Season.

1878: It was reported today Marcuse Woodle has been elected President of the Literary Society of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and Samson Lachman has been elected Vice President.

1889: In Kiel, Germany, Jewish businessman and communal leader Julius Frankenthal and his wife Cäcilie, née Goldmann., gave birth to Käte Frankenthal who gained fame as a psychiatrist and a socialist political leader who served on the Berlin City Council and in the Prussian State Parliament during the days of the Weimar Republic.

1882: Birthdate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States. Roosevelt’s New Deal created a variety of career opportunities for a whole generation of newly college educated generation of Jewish professionals. For several generations of Jews, FDR was a near-saint. Starting in the 1970’s, questions were raised about Roosevelt’s failure to do more to rescue the Jews of Europe. The problem with criticizing Roosevelt is the need to come to grips with the level of anti-Semitism that existed before, during and after the war. This reality played a part in Roosevelt’s dealing with the furor of the Holocaust.

1893: Birthdate of Rabbi Yitzhak-Meir Levin a Haredi, politician, member of the Kensett and one of 37 people to sign the Israeli declaration of independence.

1900: Birthdate of Russian composer Isaak Iosifovich Dunayevsky.

1903: Leopold Greenberg, Herzl's representative in London, left for Cairo to carry on political negotiations.

1904: Herzl finished his visit to Italy.

1908: Caught up in the dispute between the Territorialists and the Jews who will only settle for a homeland in Palestine, Churchill drafted a letter at the behest of British Zionist, Rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster. Seeking not to offend either party, Churchill expressed his support for the Zionist dream of settling in Palestine while allowing that a temporary refuge may have to be found if such is the wish of the Jewish people. The Territoralists were those Jews were willing to accept the British offer of a homeland in Uganda or Kenya as an immediate solution to the suffering of the Jews in Russia. The Russian Jews were among those who were the strongest opponents of the solution.

1909: Birthdate of activist and author Saul David Alinsky

1912: In response to an appeal by Dr. J. L. Magnes the New York City Jewish community announces subscriptions amounting to over sixty thousand dollars annually for five years for Jewish education in New York City.

1912: In Brooklyn, N. Y, The Atlantic Union Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist convention adopts resolutions protesting against the recent massacres of Jews in Russia and outbreaks of anti-Jewish feeling in so-called Christian countries as un-Christian and affirming their belief that the Jew is entitled to religious and civil rights.

1912: Birthdate of Barbara Tuchman. Ms. Tuchman was a prolific popular historian who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Guns of August a book that President Kennedy urged people to read so that his generation might avoid the folly which led to World War I. Ms. Tuchman won a second Pulitzer for Stillwell and the American Experience in China, a very readable tome that uses the experiences of Stillwell's career in Asia to explain the events that would ultimately lead to the victory of the Communist Chinese. Although she was Jewish, Ms. Tuchman wrote only one book related to Jewish History - Bible and Sword (England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour). Ms. Tuchman passed away in 1989 at the age of 77. Born in New York City, New York she is best known for her book The Guns of August (1962), a history of the outbreak of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, (1970). She won Pulitzer Prizes for both books. Tuchman's father was a one-time owner and publisher of The Nation, as well as the founder of the Theatre Guild. Her maternal grandfather was the ambassador to Constantinople under President Woodrow Wilson, and her uncle was the Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She said, "The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard." Tuchman never went to graduate school, and never took a single course in writing. In deciding to write, she said, "The single most formative experience, I think, was the stacks at Widener Library where I was allowed to have as my own one of those little cubicles with a table under a window, queerly called, as I have since learned, 'carrels,' a word I never knew when I sat in one. Mine was deep in among the 940's (British History, that is) and I could roam at liberty through the rich stacks, taking whatever I wanted. The experience was marvelous, a word I use in its exact sense meaning full of marvels. It gave me a lifelong affinity for libraries, where I find happiness, refuge, not to mention the material for making books of my own."Tuchman said, "Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library." She also said, "Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."

1916(25th of Sh'vat, 5676): Joseph Jacobs passed away. Born in 1854, he “was an Australian literary and Jewish historian who was a writer for the Jewish Encyclopaedia and a notable folklorist, creating several noteworthy collections of fairy tales.
1918: Birthdate of actor David Opatoshu.

1919: The Versailles Conference decided that the Arab provinces should be wholly separated from the Ottoman Empire and the newly conceived mandate-system applied to them. This decision clashed with the expectation of Faisal's Arab delegation that his state would include Palestine, and the conditional understandings reached in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement.

1922(1st of Sh'vat, 5682): Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat

1923: In Newark, NJ, Jacob Israel Gersten and Henrietta (Henig) Gersten gave birth to Bernard Gersten, the Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater.

1926(15th of Shevat, 5686): Tu B’Shevat

1927: Birthdate of Zeev (Heinz) Raphael, a native of Germany who escaped to safety in Sweden three days before the German invasion of Poland.

1928: Birthdate of Harold “Hal” Prince, Tony Award winning theatrical producer and director.

1930: Simcha Hinkas, a Jewish policeman, went on trial in Tel Aviv. He is accused of leading a crowd of Jews who reportedly killed five adults and wounded two children in an Arab family on August 25, 1929 during the Arab Uprising. According to the government, while Hinkas was on duty at a crossroad on Herzl Street during the Arab riots he saw a truck filled with Jews fired on by Arabs who killed four and wounded five. Hinkas allegedly went back to his barracks, got his rifle and led a Jewish mob in an attack on an Arab house. A government witness identified the bullets in the dead Arabs as having come from a government issued rifle, but could not tie them to the gun belonging to Hinkas. Two Arabs later identified Hinkas from a group of 13 Constables, but other Arabs identified different Constables. Alfred Riggs, assistant superintendant of the police “declared that Hinkas was one of the mildest and best of the police” but, “for reasons of his own,” the British police official seemed certain that the Jewish policeman was guilty.

1931: Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" premieres at Los Angeles Theater.

1933: Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

1933: On the day that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Eli Boschwitz, a judicial abriter came home and told his wife, 'We are leaving Germany forever.'" Boshwitz was the father of 5 year old Rudy Boschwitz the future Republican leader who would eventually serve 12 years as U.S. Senator from Minn.

1933: Youth Aliyah opens its offices in Berlin. The previous year Recha Freier, a rabbi's wife decided it would be a good idea to send young people from Germany to Kibbutzim. She founded the Juedische Jugendhilfe organization to help facilitate the work. That same year it became a department of the World Zionist Organization under Henrietta Szold. Five thousand adolescents were rescued before the war and another 15,000 after the war.

1934: Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Chasan of the Bronx announce the engagement of their daughter Shulamith Chasan to Theodore S. Chazin, son of Cantor and Mrs. Hirsch L. Chazin. Mr. Chazin is a practicing attorney and the secretary of the Jersey City Zionist District.

1934: Moses Mendel Penn, the oldest patient ever cared for at Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases, will observe his 109th birthday there today. He has partly recovered from a stroke that paralyzed one side of his body eight months ago. Mr. Penn entered the hospital on the application of the Bronx Young Men's Hebrew Association, of which he is the oldest living member.

1937: Rabbi Samuel Goldenson delivers a sermon entitled “The Ten Commandments and Social Problems” during Saturday morning services at New York’s Temple Emanu-El.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish constable, Mordechai Schwartz, who was charged with the premeditated murder of Police Constable Mustapha Khoury, was sentenced to death. The court refused to accept evidence that the previous murder by Arabs of two Jews in Karkur had influenced Schwartz to an immediate act of reprisal. Schwartz continued to claim his innocence.

1939: Hitler, in his anniversary speech in Berlin, talked about the event of war, "The result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Hitler also spoke in warm terms about its friendship with Poland.

1942: In a speech at the Sports Palace in Berlin, Hitler told of his confidence in victory and his hatred for the Jews. "The hour will come when the most evil universal enemy of all time will be finished, at least for a thousand years." By the spring, four labor camps would be converted to death camps for the purpose of extinguishing the Jews; joining Chelmno were Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz.

1942: Birthdate of Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane.

1943 (24th of Shevat, 5703): In Letychiv, Ukraine, German Gestapo commences mass shootings of Jews from Letychiv Ghetto. 200 surviving Jews from Letychiv slave labor camp were ordered to undress and were shot with machine-gun into a ravine. Some 7,000 Jews were murdered in Letychiv. For those with a sense of irony, this was Shabbat and the Torah reading was Yitro.

1943: The SS Pierre Soule, a liberty ship, was launched today 45 days after its keel was laid. The ship was named after Pierre Soule a Louisiana political leader who was an ally of Judah P. Benjamin, and according to one story in the New York Times, was Jewish.

1944: Seven hundred Jews are deported from Milan, Italy, to Auschwitz.

1945: Hitler gives his last ever public address; a radio address on the 12th anniversary of his coming to power.

1948: Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist. While Gandhi was a figure revered by many, some Jews have their reservations about this proponent of civil disobedience and non-violence no matter what the threat. After Kristallnacht Gandhi wrote, "If the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined by Nazis could be turned into a day of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of a tyrant...the German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity." Apparently Ghandi lacked any concept of the evil that was Hitler. But even after the war when the total horror was known, Gandhi said that the Holocaust was "the greatest crime of our time, but the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany."

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported from Bonn that the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, assured Israel that his country would pay the first installment of 47 million marks of the German-Israeli Reparation Agreement within the next two months.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that IDF patrols had beaten back two attacks by Jordanian marauders at two points along the armistice lines, inflicting heavy casualties. Jordan falsely claimed that a number of Israeli soldiers were killed in both encounters. Both sides complained to the UN Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that traces of copper were found near Jenin.

1964(16th of Shevat, 4724): Writer and theatrical producer Allen A. Adler passed away today in New York City at the age of 47. Adler was part of a famous Jewish theatrical family. His grandfather was actor and producer Jacob Adler. His father was theatre manager and owner, Adolph Adler. His uncle was Luther Adler and his aunt was Stella Adler.

1971: Carole King's “Tapestry” album is released. This recording by Brooklyn born Jewess Carol Klien would become the longest charting album by a female solo artist and sell 24 million copies worldwide.

1974: The Mayor and City of West Berlin hosted a reception to mark the 85th birthday of Dr. Kate Frankenthal. A psychiatrist and socialist political leader during the Weimar Republic she fled Germany in 1933 and settled in the United States in 1936 where she became a consultant to the Jewish Family Service of New York.

1975: The final part of the Agranat Commission’s report was published today. The commission had been set up after the Yom Kippur War to find out why the IDF had failed to perform as expected prior to, and during, the hostilities.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter sent a sharp note to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, complaining over the plan to establish Shilo, a new West Bank settlement.

1978(22nd of Shevat, 5738): Mordechai Yehuel, 27, of Ramat Gan was stabbed and killed in Ramallah.

1979: The civilian government of Iran announced it had decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return from exile in France. The subsequent Islamist revolution would end the reign of the Shah, a regime which was much friendlier to Israel than the government that would follow. In retrospect, one can draw a straight line between the French decision to provide the Ayatollah with political sanctuary and the Iranian nuclear threat that the West and Israel face in the 21st century.

1990: The Israeli Government said today that it had no official policy of settling Soviet Jewish immigrants in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir dismissed the debate over the issue as an ''artificial storm'' created by panicked Arab leaders.

1991(15th of Sh'vat, 5751): Tu B'Shvat

1991: The New York Times reviews The Smile of the Lamb by David Grossman; translated by Betsy Rosenberg.

1991: In Amman, around 3,000 Jordanians demonstrated in favor of Iraq, burned American and Israeli flags and urged Mr. Hussein to fire chemical weapons at Israel. The demonstration reflected Jordan's tilt toward Baghdad throughout the gulf crisis. "O Saddam, hit, hit Tel Aviv!" some chanted. "With chemical weapons, O Saddam!" others replied. Jordan's population is more than half Palestinian, and many have voiced support for the Iraqi leader as a champion who will lead them to statehood.

1991: The Young Professionals of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University is sponsoring a black-tie cocktail party and dance, at Stringfellows to benefit the Adopt-a-Student Endowment Fund at the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University.

1992: "ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD," by Tom Stoppard, adapted by Yosef Brodski, staged by Yevgeny Arye and featuring the Gesher Theater Company is scheduled to be performed in Brooklyn, NY.

1992: As Israel presses the United States for loan guarantees to cope with a projected huge influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, officials here said today that the immigrant flow this month had sunk to its lowest in almost two years and could dwindle even further. According to the agency's provisional figures, 5,800 immigrants from the former Soviet Union have arrived so far this month, with 600 more expected before the start of February, a lower figure than those recorded during the Persian Gulf war, when Iraqi Scud missiles fell on Tel Aviv and other places. The last time the figure fell below 7,000 was in February 1990. Since late 1989, when the wave of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union began, some 350,000 immigrants have arrived in Israel. The wave peaked in December 1990, when, according to the Jewish Agency, more than 35,000 arrived, making 1990 a record year.

1998: Premier performance of Paul Simon's "The Capeman."

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Einstein’s German World by Fritz Stern and The Greenspan Effect: Words That Move the World's Markets by David B. Sicilia and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank.

2001: Prime Minister Ehud Barak saw 20 immigrants' representatives inside his Jerusalem office and then presided tonight over a modest support rally at the city's convention center as he continued his campaign against Ariel Sharon. Despite Mr. Sharon’s “seemingly invincible lead,, Mr. Barak told foreign journalists today that he discounts the polls, remains confident of victory

2003: In an article entitled “A Burst of Light Provides Privacy,” Elaine Louie discusses the work of Ayala Sefaty of Tel Aviv who designed her own underwater restaurant in Eilat.

2003: “The Israeli experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia has accomplished its goals of studying the effects of dust storms on weather and recording electrical phenomena atop storm clouds, scientists said today. Researchers from Tel Aviv University said their Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment had gathered solid information on the plumes of dust and other aerosol particles blown from deserts by storms before being carried worldwide by high winds. The particles affect rain production in clouds, deposit minerals in the ocean and scatter sunlight that affects global warming, the scientists said. ''The experiment has worked without a hitch,'' Dr. Joachim Joseph, a principal investigator, told a briefing at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ''We have very good data, very unique data.'' A twin-camera multispectral instrument in the payload bay of the shuttle has been scanning desert particles whipped into the atmosphere and, at night, making images of the tops of some of the thousands of thunderstorms that rumble through the atmosphere every hour. The shuttle, nearing the end of a 16-day mission, is to return to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday with its crew of seven, including the first Israeli astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force. The flight, which had been delayed almost two years, finally went into orbit at a time when storms in the Sahara that push dust into the Mediterranean Sea are infrequent. But researchers said luck was with them and they were able to obtain images of dust plumes. The first was made on Sunday, blowing from the western coast of Africa into the Atlantic. The big payoff was on Monday, on the last scheduled pass over the Mideast. ''On the last orbit over the Mediterranean,'' Dr. Joseph said, ''we got a nice dust storm over Israel. ''We just lucked out.'' Israeli scientists said they had clear images of cloud-to-space lightning, called sprites, and the first scientific pictures recorded from space that show an elf, a luminous doughnut-shape electrical glow above a thunderstorm that lasts less than a millisecond. Aside from the successful science, the mission is important to Dr. Joseph because Colonel Ramon is carrying a keepsake, a small Torah scroll used at Dr. Joseph's bar mitzvah almost 60 years ago while he was in a concentration camp in Germany. The elderly rabbi performing the ceremony, who died soon afterward in the camp, gave the Torah to the boy and told him to tell people what had occurred there. Dr. Joseph said Colonel Ramon saw the Torah when visiting his house and was so moved by the history that he asked to take it into space as a tribute. In an interview from space last week with Israeli officials, the astronaut displayed the Torah. ''This represents more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive despite everything from horrible periods, black days, to reach periods of hope and belief in the future,'' the colonel said. Because of the gesture from space, Dr. Joseph said, he feels he has finally fulfilled his promise to the rabbi.”

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Lot’s Daughters: Sex, Redemption, and Women's Quest for Authority by Robert M. Polhemus and the newly released paperback editions of Growing Up Fast by Joanna Lipper and Oracle Night by Paul Auster

2005: In “The Observant Reader,” Wendy Shalit provides a prescient synopsis of the varying ways in which Orthodoxy is portrayed in contemporary literature.
Jonathan Rosen’s novel ''Joy Comes in the Morning'' features a beatific Upper East Side Reform rabbi named Deborah whose days are spent reassuring insecure converts, studying the Talmud and cuddling deformed newborns whose parents have rejected them. This paragon is, we are told, like a ''plant . . . nourishing herself directly from the source.'' But if Deborah is a plant, she's certainly not a clinging vine. When she propositions a man named Lev, it's with a sexy whisper: ''I'm a rabbi, not a nun.'' In contrast, Deborah's Orthodox ex, Reuben, is a Venus' flytrap. Although he wasn't supposed to touch her, he had no qualms about sleeping with Deborah, a slip she's sure was ''only one of the 613 commandments he had violated, but perhaps the one he most easily discounted.'' Curiously, Reuben showed ''more anxiety about the state of her kitchen'' than he did about spending the night -- next morning, he went through the dishes to make sure she had separate sets for milk and meat. You might think Reuben is just a guy with a problem, but the problem may also be the author's. In the course of the novel, Rosen dismisses modern Orthodox men as ''macho sissies'' and depicts ''pencil-necked'' Orthodox boys ''poring over giant books instead of looking out the window at the natural world.'' Rosen's yeshiva students ''give in to the simplicity of rules rather than the negotiated truce that Deborah seemed to have achieved.'' Even an elderly lady attracts his withering eye: ''Like many Orthodox women of a certain age, she had the look of an aging drag queen.'' Authors who have renounced Orthodox Judaism -- or those who were never really exposed to it to begin with -- have often portrayed deeply observant Jews in an unflattering or ridiculous light. Admittedly, some of this has produced first-rate literature or, at the least, great entertainment, but it has left many people thinking traditional Jews actually live like Tevye in the musical ''Fiddler on the Roof'' or, at the opposite extreme, like the violent, vicious rabbi in Henry Roth's novel ''Call It Sleep.'' Not long ago, I did too. At 21, I was on the outside looking in, on my first trip to Israel with a friend who was, like me, a Reform Jew. One day, we wandered into a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, and suddenly there were black hats and side curls everywhere. My friend pointed out a group of men wearing odd fur hats. ''Those,'' he explained, ''are the really mean ones.'' I never questioned our snap judgment of these people until, a few years later, I returned to study at an all-girls seminary and was surprised to discover that my teachers, whom I adored, were men and women from this same community. The women were a particular revelation. Instead of the oppressed drudges I'd expected, they turned out to be strong and energetic, raising large families and passing on beloved Jewish traditions, quite often in addition to holding down outside jobs. Not all of them had been born into this world: some were newly religious women, former Broadway dancers or scholars with advanced degrees who had now dedicated themselves to performing good deeds. After spending more time in homes like theirs, in Israel and later in America, I came to have a very different view of the haredi, known to outsiders as the ultra-Orthodox. Some of my Jewish friends have intermarried with people of other faiths; others have gone back to their traditional roots. Because I did the latter, I'm fascinated by the ways different Jewish communities understand and misunderstand one another. As a writer, I'm especially fascinated by how this happens in print. And it seems I'm not the only one. Although some Jewish outsiders, like Allegra Goodman, have written sympathetically of the haredi, other writers have purported to explain the ultra-Orthodox from an insider's perspective. But are these authors really insiders? As I changed from outsider to insider, my perspective changed too. Consider, for example, Nathan Englander, a talented writer whose collection of stories, ''For the Relief of Unbearable Urges,'' brimmed with revelations of hypocrisy and self-inflicted misery: a fistfight that breaks out in synagogue over who will read from the Torah; a sect whose members fast three days instead of one and drink a dozen glasses of wine at the Passover Seders instead of four; a man whose rabbi sends him to a prostitute when his wife won't sleep with him. Of course, the Orthodox don't actually brawl over who reads the Torah, no rabbi is allowed to write a dispensation for a man to see a prostitute, and even extremely pious Jews can't invent their own traditions for fast days or Seders. Englander's sketches were fictional, but did most people realize this? Apparently not. The world at large took him to be a ''former yeshiva boy'' who had renounced his old life. Englander didn't help matters by referring to the ''anti-intellectual'' and ''fire-and-brimstone'' aspects of his ''shtetl mentality substandard education'' -- a strange way of describing the Long Island community where he grew up, which prides itself on its tolerance and dedication to learning, both secular and religious. Englander is about as much a product of the shtetl as John Kerry. He actually attended the coeducational Hebrew Academy of Nassau County and then the State University of New York, Binghamton. It was one of his supposedly substandard teachers who encouraged him to write in the first place. Englander is one of a number of outsider insiders. In 1978, Tova Reich's novel ''Mara'' depicted an Orthodox rabbi who doubles as a shady nursing-home owner, married to an overweight dietitian so obsessed with food that she gorges herself with five-course meals, even on the fast day of Yom Kippur. The Hasidic hero of her 1988 novel, ''Master of the Return'' (praised by Publishers Weekly for its ''devastating accuracy'') abandons his semi-paralyzed pregnant wife in her wheelchair in order to spit on immodestly clad female strangers; at home, he helps his 2-year-old son get ''high on the One Above'' by giving him marijuana. Reich's 1995 novel, ''The Jewish War,'' told of a band of zealots whose leader takes three wives and encourages his followers to kill themselves. Reich herself prefers not to comment on the level of observance she keeps today, while Englander for his part publicly boasts about eating pork. Ostensibly about ultra-Orthodox Jews, this kind of ''insider'' fiction actually reveals the authors' estrangement from the traditional Orthodox community, and sometimes from Judaism itself. Unlike Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth assimilated Jews who have written profoundly about the alienation that accompanies that way of life, the outsider insiders write about a community they may never have been part of. One of the most popular of these is Tova Mirvis. In her first novel, ''The Ladies Auxiliary,'' the Orthodox women of Memphis appear in an unsettlingly harsh light. One of Mirvis's favorite themes is the oddball ba'al teshuvah (literally, ''master of repentance''), a deeply observant Jew who did not grow up as one. Such a type can be seen in ''The Ladies Auxiliary'': Jocelyn, who after years of keeping kosher still regularly indulges in the shrimp salad she hides in her freezer. In Mirvis's more recent novel, ''The Outside World,'' we meet Shayna, a mother of five girls living in an ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn community. Shayna supposedly chose a more spiritual life as a young adult, yet now she spends most of her time reading bridal magazines. Another character, Bryan, is a 19-year-old who returns home from Israel as a deeply religious radical, renamed Baruch. Yet at his engagement party, he's suddenly starring in a Harlequin romance: out on the porch, Baruch embraces his fiancee and she leans ''in close, their bodies gently pressing against each other.'' It's bad enough that a yeshiva student would embrace a woman not related or married to him, but to do so in public is even worse. Yet Baruch's younger sister isn't surprised: ''They who pretended to be so holy in public were just like everyone else in private. It confirmed what she had suspected: that it was all pretense.'' It certainly seems that way. Shayna's supposedly observant husband, Herschel, ignores his job as a kosher supervisor for the Orthodox Coalition while collecting a salary, without experiencing a moment's guilt. Meanwhile, Shayna has a television in her bedroom, ''its presence an unacceptable connection to the outside world. It had long ago been smuggled into the house in an air-conditioner box to hide it from the neighbors, all of whom had done the same thing.'' There will always be people who fail to live up to their ideals, and it would be pointless to pretend the strictly observant don't have failings. But before there can be hypocrisy, there must be real idealism; in fiction that lacks idealistic characters, even the hypocrite's place can't be properly understood. Like other outsider insiders, Mirvis homes in on hypocrisy, but in the process she undermines the logic of her plot. The novel's jacket copy announces that ''The Outside World'' is meant to explain ''the retreat into traditionalism that has become a worldwide phenomenon among young people,'' but the uninformed reader might wonder why any young person would want to be part of such a contemptible community. On her Web site, Mirvis says she ''did very little research'' for her books because ''I grew up with all these rules and customs and rituals.'' People who grow up with some traditional customs may imagine themselves experts, but until they've logged real time among the haredi they may know as little as most secular writers. Come to think of it, they may know less, because a secular writer might do more on-the-spot research. What is the market for this fiction? Does it simply satisfy our desire, as one of Mirvis's reviewers put it, to indulge in ''eavesdropping on a closed world''? Or is there a deeper urge: do some readers want to believe the ultra-Orthodox are crooked and hypocritical, and thus lacking any competing claim to the truth? Perhaps, on the other hand, readers are genuinely interested in traditional Judaism but don't know where to look for more nuanced portraits of this world. Thankfully for this last group, another sort of fiction has recently appeared, written by some of the newly religious Jews that Mirvis, Englander and others describe but don't quite understand. In real life, thousands of people each year enter the religious fold, and the ones who are writers are bringing with them the literary training of the more secular life they left behind. This makes them ideally suited to act as interpreters between the two worlds. Consider, for example, Risa Miller, whose ''Welcome to Heavenly Heights'' is a sharply focused fictional portrait of a group of religious American Jews in a settlement on Israel's West Bank. Miller doesn't idealize her characters: they have the same worries and petty jealousies as the rest of us. But she also presents them as people who aspire to transcend their flaws. A ba'al teshuvah since her college days at Goucher, Miller may well have been the first woman to accept the PEN Discovery Award in a sheitel, the wig traditionally worn by observant married women. Ruchama King is another talented insiders' insider. King is also haredi, though she grew up less observant, and her novel, ''Seven Blessings,'' while ostensibly about matchmaking, is really about the revolution in women's learning among ultra-Orthodox Jews. Like Miller, King doesn't shy away from the problems that affect her world, but she also captures the subtlety and magic of its traditions. In particular, she convincingly describes the sublimated excitement that characterizes ultra-Orthodox dating as tiny gestures take on heightened meaning. The promising young poet Eve Grubin, who was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and went to Smith College, has recently committed herself to Orthodox Judaism. Her first collection, ''What Happened,'' which explores her faith, will appear this fall. For now, harshly satirical views of the haredi may still be too common, and novels and stories by sympathetic outsiders like Allegra Goodman too rare. But the emergence of these newly religious novelists is a refreshing development. In their work, age-old customs are being presented in a way that reminds us of the deep satisfactions they can provide, even, or especially, in the face of the uncertainties of modern life. Who knows, they may even succeed in converting some of those outsider insiders.

2005: In an article entitled “The Nation; One Clear Conscience, 60 Years After Auschwitz,” Roger Cohen tells the story of Miecyslaw Kasprzyk, an unsung hero of the Holocaust.

As the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is marked with solemn exhortations never to allow the infamy of the Nazi death camps to return, I find myself thinking of a Pole with a bad leg and dirty fingernails who did not need such lessons in the nature of evil. His name is Miecyslaw Kasprzyk. He lives in a shack atop a hill outside the southern Polish town of Wielicka, near Krakow. Clucking chickens are his principal companions. Now 79, Mr. Kasprzyk stands ramrod straight. He squints at the world through thick spectacles and he likes his vodka, but he sees clearly enough, always has. His bad leg dates to 1936, when it was broken in an accident. Then, in 1941, the leg was injured again: He was shot while trying to smuggle a message to his father in the Polish underground. Without that leg, I might not have found him. I am pleased that I did, pleased that I witnessed his reunion with a Jewish woman, born Amalia Gelband, whose life he saved by hiding her from the Nazis during World War II. Over more than 50 years, a lot is forgotten, but Mr. Kasprzyk's limp stuck in Amalia's mind, an awkward mnemonic. She was 11, a child adrift in the Nazi-terrorized Europe of 1942, when Mr. Kasprzyk, risking his life, hid her in his family's farmhouse outside Wielicka. Her mother, Frimeta, was already dead, killed that year by the Germans. Her father was overseas, unreachable. Mr. Kasprzyk took her in, along with her older brother, Zygmunt. Encouraged by his mother, he hid them in the attic of their isolated home. The children were known to him through an uncle who knew their uncle Pinkus Sobel, a horse trader. ''How can you not help, if a child asks?'' Mr. Kasprzyk said to me. How indeed? How can simple humanity be drained from so many people? But it was. Millions of Germans, and those complicit with them in countries the Nazis overran, must have known that what they were doing, or allowing happening, was vile and unconscionable. It must have occurred to them to try to stop the mass murder. But almost every one of them, after whatever internal debate occurred, acting out of fear or opportunism or anger or for simple convenience, sided with complicity, active or passive. They knew and nodded, or they knew and looked away, or they told themselves they really did not know. Not Mr. Kasprzyk. Soon after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he understood. Polish police officers ordered him to bring a small group of Jews to a local Jewish cemetery in his horse cart. The Jews were stripped and shot dead, their jewelry distributed to local officials. ''It was the first time I had seen a naked woman,'' said Mr. Kasprzyk, who was 14 at the time. The episode stuck in his throat. ''Someone who does not know the difference between good and evil is worth nothing,'' he said. ''In fact, such a person belongs in a mental institution.'' When the attic hiding-place seemed too vulnerable, Mr. Kasprzyk ushered Amalia to greater safety. Late in 1942, he helped her and her brother find work on two farms near Pleszow, on the outskirts of Krakow. Amalia assumed the name Helena Kowalska, went to church every Sunday, slept on the kitchen floor, peeled potatoes, and told anyone who asked that she was a Catholic whose father was a prisoner of war and whose stepmother had driven her out. The Gebala family, who put her to work, never knew her true identity. In 1945, when Poland was liberated, Amalia, alias Helena, left the farm and found refuge with her brother in a Jewish orphanage in Krakow. War's end brought no relief from penury for the modest Pole who protected them. People, he noted, talked for a while about the missing Jews, but soon the blur of discomfiting names was lost in silence. Hidden in the woods above Wielicka stands a monument to the town's murdered Jews. No road or path leads there. Weeds and nettles advance. An inscription records the slaughtered ''Polish Jews.'' Somebody has tried to scratch out the word Polish. Forgotten Jewish cemeteries, defaced headstones and crumbling little monuments to dead Jews dot Poland and Hungary. I saw a monument last year in Goncz, Hungary, that listed each of the town's Christian World War II dead by name; at the bottom it mentioned that 168 Jews also died. These Hungarian Jews were nameless, citizens of a different class. Mr. Kasprzyk, a righteous Pole, should have his name widely known. He did not do well after the war: The same nonconformism that led him to defy the Nazis with decency also led him to defy Communist authority. ''I was never a member of the party, and you had to be to get ahead,'' he said. ''I do not belong to anyone, not even Christ. I do not like anyone to give me orders.'' Instead of all the pious speeches surrounding this 60th anniversary, I wonder why Europe does not clean up some of those little monuments in towns like Wielicka and Goncz, and does not honor the likes of Mr. Kasprzyk. As Fritz Stern, the great historian of Germany, said recently: ''Even in the darkest period, there were individuals who showed active decency, who, defying intimidation and repression, opposed evil and tried to ease suffering. I wish these people would be given a proper European memorial not to appease our conscience, but to summon the courage of future generations.'' In this particular case, I confess to a personal interest in the memorializing of Mr. Kasprzyk. I see him limping toward Amalia as they met again after almost six decades. I see their embrace serenaded with clucking. I hear his tender words: ''Malvinka, Malvinka.'' The ''Malvinka'' he saved, now Amalia Baranek, a Brazilian citizen, is the mother of my wife.

2006(1st of Shevat, 5766): Playwright Wendy Wasserstein, author of the Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig passed away at the age of 55.

2007:It was announced today that Michael Abraham Levy who had been named Baron Levy, had been “arrested by police on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice regarding the cash for peerages investigation and immediately released on bail” Six months later he would be cleared of charges related to a scandal regarding charges of granting life peerages in exchange for political contributions.

2007: The House of Love and Prayer, a new multi-lingual musical based on the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, had its final performance at the JCC in Manhattan

2007: In Derby, UK, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day observances a screening of 'Into the Arms of Strangers,” for students from the Millennium Centre, with a Q&A session to follow with Steven Mendelsson who traveled on the “Kindertransports.”

2008: In Manhattan, the 92nd St Y presents Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in debating “Does God Exist?” Two of today’s most provocative voices as debate the ultimate religious question: Is there a God? Best-selling authors Christopher Hitchens and Shmuley Boteach pull no punches as they discuss organized religion and its place in American life.

2009: Maira Kalman started a new illustrated blog in the New York Times called “And the Pursuit of Happiness” about American democracy today. The first entry chronicled her visit to Washington, D.C. for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Kalman's work is also featured on Rosenbach Museum and Library's 21st Century Abe project. Maira Kalman, born in 1949, is an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer. Born in Tel Aviv, Kalman came to New York City with her family at age 4. She attended the High School of Music and Art, now LaGuardia High School. Ms. Kalman has authored a series of children's books about Max Stravinsky, the poet-dog. She has done The New Yorker covers, including one she did with Rick Meyerowitz called New Yorkistan. She created the sets for the Mark Morris Dance Group production of Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein. Kalman is also known for her illustrations for the 2005 edition of the popular guide to writing style, The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White. Maira Kalman was married to the designer Tibor Kalman until his death in 1999. Together, the two ran the design company M&Co. The company remains successful today. Ms. Kalman wrote the monthly illustrated blog The Principles of Uncertainty for The New York Times for one year, ending in April 2007. The blog was published in a book of the same title, which was released in 2007 to critical acclaim

2009: Lillian Hellman’s “Scoundrel Time” opens at the City Lit Theatre in Chicago.

2009: “Batsheva Dance Company, one of the most inspirational and sought-after companies in the dance world, presents its acclaimed production, ‘Three’ at the Performing Arts Center in Purchase, New York. Three, choreographed by Artistic Director Ohad Naharin,is a collection of three dances: "Bellus," "Humus" and "Seccus." Its eclectic mix of music includes Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, a score by ambient maestro Brian Eno and a finale set to the Beach Boys. Since its founding in 1964 by dance luminaries Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva De Rothschild, Batsheva has become one of the most influential cultural role models in Israel.”

2009: A swastika was discovered today at Congregation Shaarey Tphilohan Orthodox synagogue in Portland, Maine which claims to be Portland's oldest Jewish congregation.

2009 (5th of Shevat 5769: Milton Parker, who brought long lines and renown to the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan with towering pastrami sandwiches and a voluble partner who kibitzed with common folk and celebrities alike, passed away today at the age of 90. Mr. Parker was primarily the back-room planner who brought taam — a Yiddish word suggesting great flavor and quality — to the pastrami, corned beef, brisket and tongue; the cheesecake and matzo balls; the soups and the pickles that placed the Carnegie, at 55th Street and Seventh Avenue, at or near the top of deli maven lists. Theater district tourists have made it a regular stop. His partner Leo Steiner, who died in 1987, was the shtick-happy frontman who greeted customers and escorted celebrities like Henny Youngman, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen and the French actor Yves Montand to their favored tables. The five-inch-high sandwiches were largely Mr. Parker’s domain. Mr. Parker and Mr. Steiner, along with a less active partner who later sold his share, bought the Carnegie from three previous owners in 1976. Mr. Parker retired in 2002 and handed over control of the business to his son-in-law, Sanford Levine. According to savethedeli.com, a Web site that celebrates delicatessens nationwide, Mr. Parker’s business card read “Milton Parker, CPM (corned beef and pastrami maven).” Mr. Levine’s card reads “MBD (Married Boss’s Daughter).” Besides the quality and belly-bulging portions of the Carnegie Deli’s menu items, several other factors brought fame to the restaurant. Dozens of delis dot the streets of the theater district. For years, the Stage Delicatessen — near the Carnegie, on Seventh Avenue — had a superior reputation. But in 1979, Carnegie pastrami was judged better by The New York Times. That touched off what newspaper articles called the Pastrami War. Both establishments fared well, with customers lining up down the block. “Them?” Mr. Parker said at the time of his rival. “They’re living off our overflow.” It certainly did not hurt business, five years later, when Mr. Allen’s movie “Broadway Danny Rose” was released, with some scenes shot at the Carnegie. Born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Jan. 10, 1919, Mr. Parker was one of three sons of Jacob and Jennie Picker Packowitz. His father was a clothing salesman. Besides his daughter, Mr. Parker is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Mildred Levy; his brother Irving; a son, Jeffrey; and a granddaughter. Both of Mr. Parker’s parents died when he was young. As a teenager, he worked at luncheonettes and diners in Brooklyn. After Levittown, the cookie-cutter suburb, was built on Long Island in the late 1940s, Mr. Parker opened a coffee shop in a nearby mall. At 58, he sold the coffee shop. But after a year in retirement, he was bored. A business broker, who knew that the Carnegie Deli was up for sale, paired him with Mr. Steiner. The Carnegie had opened in 1938; knishes came half a century later. In 1988, Mr. Parker placed them on the menu — but only after staging a publicity-seeking knish-eating contest. The favorite was Jay Resnick, the 1985 Brighton Beach Baths knish-eating champion. The $250 prize went to Mark Litman, a soft-drink route salesman from Brooklyn who said he had never before eaten a knish. In 15 minutes, Mr. Litman downed four and half knishes. Each whole knish weighed in at one pound — an indicator of Carnegie deli portions. “In the history of delicatessens, Milton Parker’s Carnegie Deli caused more heartburn to the Jewish world than anything I’ve ever heard of,” Freddie Roman, the veteran borscht belt comedian, said this week on the savethedeli Web site. “His pastrami sandwich was incredibly much too large for human consumption.”

2010: The Museum of Modern Art is scheduled to present a musical event featuring Israeli pianist Menahem Pressler with the New York Chamber Soloists.

2010: The JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, NJ, is scheduled to observe Tu B’Shevat with a program of stories and songs led by Miki Rahav, of Kibbutz Yagur entitled “Celebrating 100 years of Kibbutz Life with Stories and Songs.”

2010(15th of Shevat, 5770): Tu B’Shevat

2010(15th of Shevat, 5770): Aaron Ruben, who was a producer, writer and director for some of the most popular television comedies of the 1960s and ’70s, notably “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and “Sanford and Son,” passed away today at his home in Beverly Hills, at the age of 95. Mr. Ruben, who cut his teeth as a comedy writer on radio for George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Milton Berle and on television for Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar, tapped a rich vein of television gold when, in 1960, he shifted location to the mythical small town of Mayberry, N.C. As the producer and sometime writer and director of “The Andy Griffith Show” for its first five seasons, he helped create one of the most revered series in television history, a gentle family comedy whose troupe of genial actors included Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors Frances Bavier and Ron Howard. Spotting the appeal of Mr. Nabors, whose guest appearance as the gas-station attendant Gomer Pyle had become a regular role, Mr. Ruben created the series “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” with Mr. Nabors transposing his lovable but clueless character to the hostile environment of the Marine Corps. The series became an enormous hit, coming in second only to “Bonanza” in the 1965-66 season. It ran until 1969. Mr. Ruben was later hired by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin to produce “Sanford and Son,” an American version of the British hit “Steptoe and Son,” with the comedian Redd Foxx in the lead role as an ill-tempered junk dealer. That series, a runaway success from the outset, ran from 1972 to 1977. Aaron J. Ruben — he told an interviewer that he never knew what his middle initial stood for — was born on March 1, 1914, in Chicago. He went to college at Lewis Institute there, but after dropping out to find work he was drafted into the Army in 1941 and stationed in Southern California. After being discharged from the Army in 1943, Mr. Ruben, who had done some acting and writing in the theater in Chicago, stayed in Los Angeles and began writing comedy sketches for Wally Brown, a comedian on Dinah Shore’s radio show. After nine weeks he was offered the chance to write for Burns and Allen, a breakthrough opportunity that led to jobs writing for Fred Allen, Henry Morgan and Milton Berle in New York. In the early 1950s he started writing for various television shows, including “Caesar’s Hour” and “The Phil Silvers Show,” where he was also the director for two years. In 1960 he was offered his choice of three pilot shows to produce. One, created by the prolific producer Sheldon Leonard, was “The Andy Griffith Show,” which Mr. Ruben chose without hesitation. “You’d have to be brain-dead to pick anything except the Griffith show,” he told an interviewer for the Archive of American Television in 1999. Its innocent, conflict-free version of small-town American life, he said, offered viewers “the grown-up’s Oz.” After “Sanford and Son,” which he left after three years, Mr. Ruben was a producer or executive producer of “The Headmaster,” “C.P.O. Sharkey,” “Teachers Only,” “Too Close for Comfort” and “The Stockard Channing Show.” With Carl Reiner, a regular on “Caesar’s Hour,” he wrote and produced the 1969 film “The Comic,” with Dick Van Dyke in the starring role. In his later years, Mr. Ruben was a court-appointed special advocate for abused and abandoned children.

2010: Joëlle Alexis won the World Cinema Documentary prize for Editing tonight at Sundance for her work on Yael Hersonski's “A Film Unfinished.” The movie examines an unfinished Nazi propaganda film about life in the Warsaw ghetto.

2011: Blood Relation, a documentary film by Noa Ben Hagai is scheduled to shown on the final day of the Seventh Annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival.

2011: At the 92nd Street Y Drawing on a compendium of more than 600 New York Times articles on the Civil War, Harold Holzer and Craig L. Symonds are scheduled to discuss revelations about America’s great conflict that are still affecting Americans today.

2011: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit is scheduled to sponsor Super Sunday, the community wide telethon to benefit the Federation's 2011 Campaign.

2011: “Return to Haifa” is scheduled to have its last performance at the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater, Washington DCJCC

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 by Irving Kristol, Panorama by H.G. Adler and Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

2011: Cyprus has recognized a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said on today, following similar recent declarations coming mostly from South American states.

2011(25th of Shevat, 5771): Eugene Lubin, whose men and boys clothing store in suburban New York provided bar mitzvah suits for decades, and who was a longtime leader in Jewish organizations, passed away today at the age of 88. The store, Lubin's Men's World, has operated in several locations throughout Westchester County, just north of New York City. In 2010 it opened an operation within Rothman’s, an upscale men’s clothier in Scarsdale. “What happens when upscale specialty men’s clothier Rothman’s invites Lubin’s, the 56-year-old young men’s clothing institution (it has dressed generations of bar mitzvah boys), to move into his Scarsdale shop? Y-chromosome clothing kismet. From boys to men, all are suitably attired here at this brilliant -- and stylish -- pairing of retail roomies,” a Westchester magazine raved. Eric Schoen, who is active with the Jewish Council of Yonkers, said that “Gene Lubin was a man who cared greatly about the city of Yonkers and was involved in its business, civic, religious and philanthropic community." But, like others, Schoen also returned to Lubin’s bar mitzvah suits. "He also cared that bar mitzvah boys and anyone celebrating a special occasion looked perfect," Schoen said. "People traveled far and wide to get that perfect fit." Lubin was a former president of the Westchester Jewish Council and was a member of the Yonkers citizen budget commission in 1993. (As reported by the Eulogizer)

2011(25th of Shevat, 5771): Meyer O'hayon Tapiero, a Morocco native who was among the founders of the new Jewish community of Marbella in Andalusia, Spain, passed away at the age of 94. Tapiero and and his wife came to the resort town of Marbella in 1955 on a holiday from their home in Casablanca, where they had a successful men’s clothing business, and decided to set up their home and family in the Spanish region because he “felt the political change coming in Morocco and decided to look at new prospects beyond its borders.” His wife had come to Morocco from Berlin, which she fled in 1942. Tapiero convinced two brothers to join him in Spain, and they and other family members from Morocco built a synagogue and helped redevelop the community, which had been devoid of Jews since the Inquisition. The community is now a popular destination for Jewish tourism and has a Chabad house and other Jewish services (As reported by the Eulogizer)

2012: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Terezin Between Celebration and Investigation” a frank and challenging discussion about the dual function of the art of Terezín led by Hanna Arie-Faifman and Michael Beckerman.

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

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

2012-01-27T17:25:00.004-06:00

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

2012-01-26T17:55:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-25T16:19:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-24T17:30:00.003-06:00

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.”
.
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

2012-01-23T16:57:00.003-06:00

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