According to one web-site, April 19th is one of
the blackest days on the Jewish calendar. From the 11th century (1014) through
the 20th century (1943) this
date is remembered for the atrocities which took place. Below are a few: )
69:
Aulus Vitellius began his eight-month
reign as Emperor Rome during the Jewish rebellion against Rome who was followed by Vespasian, the general
who was appointed to subdue the Jewish revolt
1014: During a civil
war that had broken out between Arabs and Berbers in 1013, the Jews of Cordoba
experienced their first massacre today.
1283: Following an
accusation of ritual murder (the blood libel) thirty-six Jews were murdered in
Mayence (Mainz), Germany,
1283: On the second day of Easter which coincided
with the penultimate day of Passover, a Christian mob attacked the Jews of
Mayence (Germany) killing ten and pillaging their homes. The mob was responding to the discovery of
the body of a Christian child and acting out the consequence of the blood
libel. Archbishop Werner tried to stop
the mob before they attacked. His
intervention kept the blood bath from being even worse. The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph, conducted an
investigation into the affair, confirmed the judgment the mob had passed on the
Jews and acquitted the citizens of Mayence of all blame.
1306(4th of Iyar,
5066): The body of Rabbi Meir Ben Baruch was released by the authorities 13
years after his death so that he could receive a Jewish burial Maharam of
Rothenburg
1343: A massacre of the
Jews in Wachenheim, Germany which had begun before Easter spread to surrounding
communities.
1506: During a service
at St. Dominic’s Church in Lisbon, Portugal, some of the people thought they
saw a vision on one of the statues. Outside, a newly converted
Jew-turned-Christian raises doubts about the "miracle." He was
literally torn to pieces and then burnt. The crowd led by two Dominican monks
proceeded to ransack Jewish houses and kill any Jews they could find. During
the next few days, countrymen hearing about the massacre came to Lisbon to join
in. Over two thousand Jews were killed during a period of three days ending on
April 21.
1541: Ignatius of
Loyola took office as the first Superior General of the Society of Jesus.
1566: Pius V issued “Romanus Pontifex. After being in office for three months, Pope
Pious rejected the lenience's of his predecessor and reinstated all the
restrictions that Paul IV had placed on the Jews. These included being forced
to wear a special cap, the prohibitions against owning real estate and
practicing medicine on Christians. Communities were not allowed to have more
than one synagogue and Jews were confined to a cramped ghetto.
http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?startyear=1530&endyear=1539
1539: Eighty-year-old
Catherine Zaleshovska was burned at the stake on the order of Bishop Gamrat and
with the approval of Queen Bona Sforza for having denied the basic tenants of
Christianity after having converted to Judaism.
She had been held as a prisoner for ten years before being murdered. (As
reported by The History of the Jewish People)
1658: Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, Baron Rich, the English
colonial administrator and advocate of religious toleration in the North
American Colonies who supported the repeal of the Act of Expulsion because it
would help to make it possible for the Jews to return to the United Kingdom
passed away today
1664: In London, “Moses
Athias ceased to be Rabbi of the synagogue.”
1664: “Haham Jacob
Sasportas of Amsterdam consented today “to take spiritual charge of the London
Sephardi Community” and accepted the post of Chief Rabbi replacing Moses Athias
1670(29th of
Nisan, 5430): Moses Samson Bacharach, the son of Samuel and Eva Bacharach who
married “Fiege, the widow of Moses Ha-Kohen Nerol” after the death of his first
wife” Dobrusch, a daughter of Isaac ben Phœbus, of Ungarisch-Brod, Moravia” and
who was the chief rabbi at Worms passed away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Samson_Bacharach
more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yair_Bacharach
1670(29th of
Nisan, 5430): Solomon Ben Isaac Marini, “the only rabbi at Padua who survived
the plague of 1631” and who wrote a commentary to Isaiah entitled Tikkun Olam
in 1652 and who was the brother of Dr. Shabbethai ben Isaac Marini, passed away
today.
1689: Sixty-two-year-old
Augusta Christian, the Queen of Sweden who studied Hebrew literature and was
philo-Semitic as could be seen by her friendship with Menassaeh ben Israel and
“other Hebrew Scholars” but who was unable “to prevent the banishment of the
Jews of Vienna, decreed by Emperor Leopold in 1670” passed away today.
1707: Emperor Joseph, I
confirmed an arrangement reached by the Council of Worms on June 7,1699, which
granted “certain concessions” to the Jews of that city.
1753(15th of
Nisan, 5513): Jews in Great Britain observed the first day of Pesach as they
waited for the House of Lords to act on a bill approved by the House of Commons
that would provide them with full civil rights.
1761(15th of
Nisan, 5521): Pesach
1762(26th of
Nisan, 5522): In South Carolina, “Moses Cohen or as he is described on his
tombstone ‘The R.R. Moses Cohen, D.D.’” passed away today after which he buried
“in the Coming Street cemetery in Charleston” which would remain the private
burial ground of Isaac Da Costa until it was “transferred to the Congregation
Beth Elohim in 1764.”
1764(17th of
Nisan, 5524): Third Day of Pesach celebrated on the same day of the enactment
of The Currency Act of 1764 which was designed “to protect British merchants
and creditors from depreciated colonial currency, this act regulated currency,
abolishing the colonies' paper currency in favor of a system based on the pound
sterling.”
1767(20th of Nisan, 5527):
Sixth Day of Pesach observed for the last time Charles Townsend, of “Townsend
Act” served as British Chancellor of the Exchequer.
1771: Maria Theresa granted two
Sovereign Licenses to the Jews of Trieste, licenses that constitute real
improvement in their economic conditions.
1772(16th of Nisan, 5532):
Second Day of Pesach
1772: Birthdate of economist David
Ricardo. Raised as a Sephardic Jew, Ricardo eloped
with a woman who was a Quaker. He later
converted and became a Unitarian.
1775(19th
of Nisan, 5535): Fifth Day of Pesach
1775: The Battles of Lexington and
Concord with the “Shot heard round the world” marked the start of the American
Revolution. Besides the famous Hyam Solomon, “there were hundreds of Jewish soldiers and
sailors who fought in the Revolution and patriots who supported it. There was
Phillip Russell, a surgeon at Valley Forge; Col. David Franks an aide to George
Washington; a “Jew Company, " which fought in South Carolina; Moses Myers,
who fought in Virginia; the Sheftall family, which fought and were captured in
Savannah. In Manhattan's Chatham Square cemetery, 22 Revolutionary Jewish
soldiers lie. Many had sacrificed their lives for their new country. Just like
the approximately 500 Americans who were killed or wounded during the three
British assaults at Bunker Hill in 1775. (New evidence has surfaced that a
Jewish soldier, Abraham Solomon, participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill as a
member of Colonel John Glover's 21st Regiment from Gloucester.)”
1776(30th
of Nisan, 5536): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1776(30th of Nisan, 5536): Birthdate of Joseph Moses Martin the London
native and the husband of Abigail Aron Martin whom he married at Bevis Marks on
March 27, 1833.
1776: Birthdate of London native Joseph Moses Martin who married Abigail Aron Martin five years and two days
after the death of his first wife, Dinah Elimaleh Mudahi, the mother of his
son, Moses Joseph Martin.
1777(12th of
Nisan,5537) Parashat Metzora and Shabbat HaGadol observed on the second
anniversary of “the shot heard round the world,”
1778(22nd of
Nisan, 5538): Eighth Day of Pesach
1778: In Georgia, where
the first Torah scroll had been brought to Savannah in 1733, three row galleys
of the Georgia Navy engaged, defeated, and captured a Royal Navy brigantine, an
armed British East Florida provincial sloop, and an armed brig.
1780(14th of
Nisan 5540): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesah
1780: During the
American Revolution, British forces under Lord Cornwallis tighten their siege
of Charleston which had one of the oldest, and for its time, largest Jewish
communities in the thirteen colonies.
1783(17th of
Nisan, 5543): Shabbat shel Pesach
1784: Rebecca Franks,
and English native Lucius Levy Solomons who died in Montreal eight years after
the birth of his daughter gave birth to Esther Solomons today.
1787(1st of
Iyar, 5547): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1791(15th of
Nissan, 5551): First Day of Pesach.
1793: In Savannah, GA, Sarah Sheftall and
Abraham De Lyon, who had been married in their hometown in 1785 gave birth to
Abraham De Lyon, Jr, the husband of Esther Nunes Ribeiro.
1794: Zygmunt and Zofia
Hert gave birth to University of Konigsberg graduate and Polish ophthalmologist
Leopold Agustus Leo, the “head of 'Instytut Oftalmiczny' (the Ophthalmic
Institute) in Warsaw) and husband of Julianna Levy Lyon “with whom he had five
children: Josepha Amalie (1824-1902, wife of Stanisław Solomon Kronenberg),
Ernestine Rozalie (1826-1893, wife of Leopold Stanisław Kronenberg), Edward
Wiktor (1828-1901, lawyer and publicist), Anna (1829-1830), and Ludwik Filip
(born 1831)” who became a Lutheran and was buried in Christian cemetery.
1794(19th of
Nisan, 5554): Fifth Day of Pesach; Shabbat Chol Hamoed
1794: Birthdate of
Breindel Blumenfeld, the wife of Wurtemberg, Germany native Mihael Amson
Oberndoefrer with whom she had two children.
1796: Birthdate of
Louisa Country, VA native Ann Overton Fontaine, the wife of Baltimore born John
Jeremiah Jacob and the mother of lifelong Louisville, KY resident John Jerimiah
Jacob
1799(14th of
Nisan, 5559): Final Fast of the First Born in the 18th century
1807: David Braham
married Sarah Abrahams today at the Western Synagogue.
1808(22nd of
Nisan, 5568): Eight Day of Pesach; Yizkor recite for the last time during the
Presidency of Thomas Jefferson
1810(15th of
Nisan, 5570): Pesach
1813(19th of
Nisan, 5573):Fifth Day of Pesach
1818: Thirty-four-year-old
Sarah Joseph, the wife of Raphael Joseph was buried today at the “Brady Street
Jewish Cemetery.”
1819: Birthdate of S.L.
Schwabacher, the future Rabbi of Odessa, Russia.
1824: Lord Byron, the
English poet, passed away. Byron and Isaac Nathan
produced Hebrew Melodies, “a both book of songs
with lyrics written by Lord Byron set to Jewish tunes by Isaac Nathan as well
as a book of poetry containing Byron's lyrics alone. It was published in April
1815 with musical settings; though expensive at a cost of one guinea, over 10,000
copies sold. In the summer of the same year Byron's lyrics were published as a
book of poems. The melodies include the famous poems She Walks in Beauty, The
Destruction of Sennacherib and Vision of Belshazzar.”
1825(1st of Iyar, 5585):
Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1826: According to the
Jewish Encyclopedia, today, in The Hague, Leonardus Levy Abraham Verveer and
Caroline Elkan gave birth to Dutch painter and engraver Elchanan Verveer whose
paintings included "The First Pipe" and "Winter," both in
the museum at Rotterdam, and "The Widow" and "Sufferers from
Sea-Sickness," which belong to the Stadtmuseum in The Hague.”
1827(22nd of
Nisan, 5587): Eighth and final day of Pesach
1828(5th of
Iyar, 5588): Parashat Tariza-Metzora
1828(5th of
Iyar, 5588): Rachel Aarons, the daughter of Jacob Aarons and the husband of
Joseph Tobias whom she married in 1785, passed away today in Charleston.
1833: In Emmendingen, Liebmann
Haas and Dusette (Tolza) Haas gave birth to Benedikt Haas, the husband of
Hedwig Haas and the “father of Anton Haas; Lina Günzburger; Friedrich Haas;
Ludwig Haas and Jette Haas.”
1834(10th of
Nisan, 5594): Shabbat HaGadol
1835(20th of
Nisan, 5595): Sixth Day of Pesach
1837(14th of
Nisan, 5597): Fast of the First Born observed for the first time during the
Presidency of Martin Van Buren, the first Chief Executive to be born in the
independent United States of America.
1839: In Edmonton,
Greater London, Fanny and Henry Naphtali Solmon gave birth to future Melbourne
resident Charles Moses Solomon.
1839: The Treaty of
London established Belgium as a kingdom. Jews reportedly had first come to
Belgium with the Roman Legions in the first century of the Common Era. Written evidence dates backs to the 13th
century. The community disappeared in the 14th century during the
Black Death, only to return again in the 16th century when those
fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition found refuge there. Brussels and Antwerp were the main centers of
Jewish settlement when Belgium gained its independence. The guarantee of an independent Belgium was a
given among European powers. It would be
the Kaiser’s disregard for Belgium’s independence that would seal British entry
into World War I which…well we all know where that led.
1840(16th of
Nisan, 5600): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
1840: Birthdate of
Charleston, SC native Abraham Alexander Goldsmith, the husband of Rose Hilzeim
Goldsmith and the father of Henrietta, Dr. Isaac, Momar, Lila, Edward and
Oliver Godsmith who passed away at the age of 66 and was buried in Coming
Street Cemetery.
1841: After Jacob
Ezekiel wrote to President John Tyler challenging Tyler’s reference “to the
American nation as a ‘Christian people’” President Tyler wrote back to Ezekiel
today explaining his reason for the statement and assuring him that he meant no
disrespect to Jews in the United States.
1843(19th of
Nisan, 5603): Fifth Day of Pesach
1845(12th of
Nisan, 5605): Shabbat Hagadol
1848(16th of
Nisan, 5608): Second day of Pesach
1848: Anti-Jewish
violence broke out in Budapest, Hungary.
1851(17th of
Nisan, 5611): Shabbat shel Pesach
1851: In Germany,
Harris Loewenthal and Hannah Myers gave birth to their daughter Hattie, who
became Hattie Weindhandler when she married Solomon Weindhandler after which
she served as Vice president of the Federation of Sisterhoods and organizer of
the Sisterhood at Rodeph Shalom in New York.
1854(21st of Nisan,
5614): Seventh Day of Pesach
1854(21st of
Nisan, 5614): Ninety-year-old Isaac Levy, the New York City born son of Hayman
Levy passed away.
1855(1st of
Iyar, 5615): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1855: In New York,
Solomon Belais, the son of Rabbi Abraham and Naomi Belais and Jael Belais gave
birth to Julia Ascher
1856(14th of Nisan,
5616): Shabbat HaGadol observed for the last time during the Presidency of
Franklin Pierce.
1856: The town of
Nevada, where the Nevada Hebrew City Society had been organized in 1855 was
incorporated today.
1856: In Cincinnati,
OH, Louis Stix, the Dusseldorf, Germany born son of Deborah and Solomon Stix
and his wife Yetta Stix gave birth to Robert Louis Stix.
1856(14th of Nisan,
5616): In the evening, first Seder.
1859(15th of
Nisan, 5619): Five weeks after the Dred Scott Decision strengthened the
stranglehold of slavery in the United States, Jews observed Pesach.
1860: One day after she
had passed away, Laura Henrietta Symons, the daughter of George Symons and
Rachel Elizabeth was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1860: At Madison,
Indiana, Raphael Sulzer and Rachel Meimendinger gave birth to attorney Marcus
R. Sulzer, the husband of Lida Griffith who was active in Republican politics
and served as President of District Grand Lodge, No.2 of B’nai B’rth.
1861: A week after the Civil War began with the
Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, "Joseph Friedenwald, a member of a
leading Jewish family in" Baltimore, MD was among the six people arrested
for attacking Union troops marching through the city on their way to
Washington, DC. Baltimore was a hot- bed of Southern supporters whose
attacks on the troops verged on being a riot.
1861:
The 26th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment whose members included Dr.
Jacob da Silva Solis Cohen was attacked by a group of Rebel sympathizers as it
went through Baltimore, MD on its way to Washington, DC.
1861:
Colonel Henry K. Craig wrote to Major Alfred Mordecai that he " 'thought
well' of his request for a transfer."
Mordecai was a prominent Jewish officer serving in the U.S. Army who was
born in the South. He was seeking a way
to stay in the Army without having to fight against his family and
friends. Before Craig could act, he fell
ill and Mordecai's chance for a transfer would go no further.
1862(19th
of Nisan,5662): Pesach shel Shabbat celebrated as Union Forces under Farragut
and Porter continue their bombardment on Forts Jackson and St. Philip which are
the keys to New Orleans.
1863(30th
of Nisan, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Iyar observed on the same day that during the
Civil War, the Union Army defeated the Rebels at the Battle of Fayetteville, in
northwest Arkansas.
1864:
Before recessing, the New York Assembly passed a bill “relative to the New-York
Hebrew Benevolent Society.”
1865: The Sephardim in
New York held a special prayer for President Abraham Lincoln who was
assassinated as he watched a play at Ford's Theater in Washington DC just five
days earlier.
1865: Rabbi Sabato
Morais delivered an address at Mikve Israel in Philadelphia following the death
of President Abraham Lincoln. “The stillness of the grave reigns abroad. Where
is the joyous throng that enlivened this city of loyalty? Seek it now, my
friends, in the shrines of holiness. There, it lies prostrate; there, it
tearfully bemoans an irretrievable loss, Oh! tell it not in the country of the
Gauls; publish it not in the streets of Albion, lest the children of iniquity
rejoice, lest the son of Belial triumph. For the heart which abhorred
wickedness has ceased to throb; the hand which had stemmed a flood of
unrighteousness, is withered in death. ´ (As reported by the Jewish Virtual
Library)
1866: Jacob and Amalia
Freud give birth to Alexander Gotthold Ephraim Freud, a younger brother of
Sigmund Freud.
1866: An article
published today entitled “Laying the Corner Stone of a New Jewish Synagogue in
Thirty-ninth Street” described the ceremonies that took place at the future
home Adas Jeshurun, an 80-member congregation which will be housed on a lot
measuring 99 feet by 75 feet.
1867(14th of
Nisan, 5627): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach
1867(14th of
Nisan, 5627): Thirty-five-year-old Solmon Seixas, the son of Hayman Levy Seixas
and Abigail Seixas passed away today.
1868: At the suggestion of Chief Rabbi N. M. Adler, the three
city synagogues—the Great, the Hambro', and the New—with their western branches
at Portland Street and Bayswater agreed to a scheme today which was submitted
to the Charity Commissioners of England and embodied by them in an Act of
Parliament in 1870.
1868(27th of
Nisan, 5628): Seventy-two-year-old Judith Russell Nathans, the native of
Baltimore who was the second wife of Isaiah Nathans with whom she had seven
children passed away today in Philadelphia, PA.
1869: Theodore Minis
Etting who had volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War was
promoted from the rank of Midshipman to Ensign today.
1870: German native
Adolph Marix who had joined the Navy in 1864 while living in Iowa became an
Ensign today.
1871:
In New York, the Assembly passed an appropriations bill tonight designed to
assist a variety of charitable organizations throughout the state
including allocations of five hundred dollars each to the Hebrew
Benevolent Society of Albany and the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Brooklyn
1872: In Germany,
Albert and Anna Salomon gave birth to Alice Salomon the pioneer social worker,
who was forced to flee her native land because of her “Jewish origins” which
overrode the fact that she had become a Lutheran in 1914.
1872(11th of
Nisan, 5632): Herman Frenkel, who served in the Galician Diet, passed away
today.
1872: Today Francis
Goldsmid started a debate in the House of Commons on the persecution of the
Jews of Romania which resulted in the formation of a parliamentary committee
which “watched the activities of the illiberal government of that country.”
1872: Rabbi Adolph
Huebsch consecrated the new home for Congregation Ahawath Chesed Shaar
Hashomayim which is now known Central Synagogue located o Lexington Ave.
1872: Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, the U.S. Counsel wrote to the
Secretary of State “that all the foreign representatives at Bucharest, except
the Russians, had signed an address to the government of Prince Charles”
expressing their displeasure with the fact that the several Jews had been
severely punished while those “who were charged with the gravest excesses and
crimes against the Jewish population of Vilcoon” had been acquitted. “We see in this double verdict an indication
of the dangers to which the Israelites are exposed in Romania”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B0CE3D6113EEE34BC4D52DFB3668389669FDE
1873(22nd of
Nisan, 5633): Eighth day of Pesach; Yizkor
1873(22nd of
Nisan, 5633): Bernhard Duelken, the Duetz born “son of Markus Duelken and Beile
Sibilla Duelken
brother of Sibilla
Meyer; Sara Isaac and Elias Elieser Elieser Duelken;
1874: Three days after
he had passed away, 38-year-old Louis Goldschmidt, the husband of Hannah Moses
and the father of Therese and Annette Goldschmidt was buried today at the
“Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1875(14th of
Nisan, 5635): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach
1875: In Lunny (near
Grodno) Russia, Max Rubinow and Esther Shereshewsky, the husband of Sophie Himowich,
father of Raymond and Olga Rubinow and
graduate of Columbia Medical College who became an actuary and author of The
Quest of Security which “established him as the most recognized theorist on
social insurance in the first three decades of the twentieth century.”
1876(25th of Nisan):
Rabbi Chaim Halberstam of Zanz, author of “Divrei Chaim” passed away today.
1877: In Jacksonville,
Florida, David Levy officiated at the wedding of Martha Ritzwoller of Berlin
and Mr. Furchgott of Charleston, S.C.
1877: In Cincinnati,
Hamilton Blatt and Bernard Dreyfoos gave birth to University of Cincinnati and
Medical College of Ohio trained pediatrician Max Dreyfoos. The husband of
Belinda Levy and starting in 1919 an assistant professor of pediatrics at the
Medical College of the University of Cincinnati who was an attending physician
and member of the board at the Jewish
Hospital and a member of K.K. B’nai Yeshurun in Cincinnati, OH.
1877(6th of
Iyar, 5637): Maria Cohen, the daughter of Zipporah Isaacs and Hyman Cohen,
passed away today in London.
1877: In Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, Julie Judith Bamberger and Isaac Seckel Bamberger, the son of
Kela Bamberger and Rav Yitschak Dov Halevi Bambergerg, gave birth to Nathan
Bamberger
1878(16th of
Nisan, 5638): Second Day of Pesach
1878: In Bellaire,
Ohio, Alexander Schoenfeld and Rose Hartman gave birth to Julia Schoefeld, a
graduate of Allegheny (PA) College who worked as a probation officer and schoolteacher
while also serving as a “a member of the State Committee of Federated Women’s
Clubs of Pennsylvania” which worked “to effect improvement in child labor
legislation and in conditions of working women.”
1880: In Russia, Isaac
and Jennie (Samson) Marks gave birth of John Marshall Law School trained
Phoenix, AZ attorney Barnett Ellis Marks the husband of Freeda Lewis who a
legal advisor for the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, AZ and President
of the Board of Trustees of Congregation Beth Israel
1880: It was reported
today that the Rabbi Morias has published a paper in the April edition of Penn Monthly about the Falashas, “a
small nation of Jews in Abyssinia who do not speak Hebrew.”
1880: Birthdate of
Julius G. Feit, the native of Galicia who in 1898 came to the United States
where he worked as an insurance broker and was the financial and corresponding
secretary of the Men’s Club at Tempe Emanu-El of Borough Park.
1880: Jacob Ezekiel
Hyneman was elected first lieutenant in the Veteran Corps of the First Regiment
of the Pennsylvania National Guard was formed, Hyneman. Three years later he would be promoted to the
rank of Captain and serve as the quartermaster.
1880: In Boston, MA,
Harris and Sarah W. Gorfinkle gave birth to Harvard (Bachelors and Master) and
Columbia (Doctorate) graduate and HUC ordained rabbi Joseph I. Forfinkle, the
husband of the former Rose Leventhal with whom he had two sons – Herbert and Nathanial
– who was camp director and starting in 1909, the spiritual leader of Sinai
Temple in Mount Vernon, NY.
1881(20th of
Nisan, 5641): Sixth Day of Pesach
1881: “His Strange and
Great Career” published today traces the life of Benjamin D’Israeli starting
with the Inquisition and Expulsion from Spain in the 15th century.
1881: Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minster, 1st Earl Beaconsfield and
famous novelist passed away. Born
Jewish, Disraeli was converted to Christianity by his father. The elder Disraeli was angry with the Jewish
community and marched his children to the baptismal font in protest. The elder Disraeli did not convert. Disraeli was proud of his Jewish heritage and
certainly suffered many anti-Semitic attacks during his career. In one exchange, he reminded a political
opponent that while his ancestors had been drinking blood out skulls,
Disraeli’s ancestors had been singing the Psalms of David in the Temple of
Solomon.
1882(30th of Nisan, 5642): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1882: Sarah Lavanburg, the daughter of Hannah (Seller) Lavanburg and
Louis Lavenburg married Oscar Solomon Straus who as Sarah Straus would be the
life companion of one of the great leaders of pre-War Jewish community.
1882 Rabbi Dr. Henry W. Schneeberger married Sarah Nussbaum in New York
City. The couple had six children - Fannie, Sigmund, Charles, Philip,
Josephine, and Irvin. Sigmund, Charles, Fannie and Josephine never married and
were buried in plots adjoining their parents.
1882: In response to a suggestion from the Morning Post, large numbers of English men and women wore Primroses
today as a way of marking the anniversary of the death of the Earl of
Beaconsfield, better known as Benjamin Disraeli. The flower was a favorite of the famous
author and Prime Minister, and it was a fitting way of paying tribute to his
many contributions.
1882: A private meeting in Berlin raised 70,000 marks which will provide
assistance to Jews seeking to leave Russia.
The attendees were urged to show a sense of moderation in the
resolutions they adopted on the subject since it appeared that meetings in New
York and London held to support the Russian Jews had done “more harm than
good.”
1884: In Leadville, CO, Lottie, Eva and Abe Schloss participated in a
production of “Patience” at the Tabor Opera House.
1884: Birthdate of Harvard trained attorney, Israel Noah Thurman, the
native of Russia who in 1892 came to the United States where he supported the
work of Margaret Sanger in the cause of birth control and women’s suffrage and
joined Louis D. Brandeis as an early supporter of the Zionist movement, and
marrying twice, the second time to “Stephanie Robicsek.”
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29184015/israel_noah_thurman_obituary_1982/
1885(4th of Iyar, 5645): “Russian educator and author, Jacob
Lazar Epstein who wrote the first Hebrew language account of Abraham Lincoln’s
life and who at the government school in Shavil passed away today.
1885: “Afghans and Their Home” published today asks if these Asiatic
mountain warriors are descendants of the ancient Israelites.
1886(14th of Nisan, 5646): Fast of the first born
1886: Russian native and future Philadelphia resident Isaac Aronoff and
his wife Dora Aronoff gave birth to Dr. Joseph A. Aronoff.
1886: In Russia, Leo and Sarah Cohn, gave birth to Meyer Solomon Cohn,
the husband of Sadie Cohn and Bertha Cohn, who liked to claim that Maryland,
where he passed away, was the place of his birth as well.
1886 (14th of Nisan, 5646): The City and Suburban News column reports
that “the Jewish community throughout the world will this evening begin the
celebration of Pesach, or the Feast of the Passover. This festival is also known as the Feast of
Unleavened Bread…”
1887: Birthdate of Russian native Boris Fingerdhood who in 1907 came to
the United States where he graduated from NYU, became superintendent of the
Israel Zion Hospital and married twice, the second time to the “former Mrs.
Sylvia Golden.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/04/28/91613055.pdf
1888:
Birthdate of Savannah, GA native and
Bryn Mawr College graduate Zipporah “Zip” Szold, the fourth president of
Hadassah and wife of labor lawyer and Zionist Robert Szold passed away today in
New York City.
1888: Birthdate of New York native William Axt, the holder of Doctorate
in Musical Arts from the University of Chicago “who organized the musical
department of MGM” and wrote the scores for numerous motion pictures.
1889: Birthdate of Austrian
native Herman Ausubel who in 1905 came to the United States where he trained as
a dentist at NYU and an oral surgeon at Columbia who should not be confused
with the historian with the same name.
1889: In London, UK,
Sir Meyer Adam Speilman and Gertrude Emily Spielman gave birth to Claude Myer
Spielman
1890: Immigrants,
including thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe, arriving in New York began
using the Barge Office as a processing center today
1891: Abraham Shapiro
married Sarah Jacobs at the East London Synagogue today
1891: Ira Leo Bamberger
defeated Ernst Nathan in an election for the presidency of the Hebrew Orphan
Asylum Society of Brooklyn.
1891: Birthdate of
Hartford, CT native George Fine, the husband of Charlotte S. Friedman Fine and
the father of Irving Gifford Fine
1891: It was reported
today that the Hartford Theological Seminary has issued the new Practical
Hebrew Grammar by Professor E.C. Bissell.
1891: It was reported
today that the Russian government is planning “a fresh campaign against the
Jews.”
1891: Birthdate of
Hartford, CT native George Fine, the husband of Charlotte S. Friedman Fine and
the father of Irving Fine.
1891: Based on material
that first appeared in the Fortnightly Review, E.B. Lanin described the
crumbling economic conditions in Russia.
In response to claims that Jews are at fault for the usurious rates paid
by peasants, he writes “Who are the usurers?
The Jews? They are not for the
misery of the peasants is not with the accursed pale.” The usurer “is not a Jew; he is as orthodox
as the Metropolitan Isidore; as loyal as an official of the secret
police.” (The fact that the Jews were
not responsible for the suffering of the peasants did not keep the Czar and his
cadres from using them as scapegoats.)
1892(22nd of
Nisan, 5652): Eighth and final day of Pesach
1892: As of today, the
city of New York is legally bound to furnish water to the Hebrew Sheltering
Guardian Society free of charge.
1892: In Cincinnati,
OH. Martha Pritz married Maurice Freiberg, the son of Duffie Workum and Julius
Frieberg who was, among other things, Treasurer of the Sinking Fund of the
United Jewish Social Agencies of Cincinnati, a member of the board of the Jewish
Hospital Association of Cincinnati, and vice president of the board of
governors of Hebrew Union College.
1893(3rd of
Iyar, 5653): Sixty-three-year-old Bailey Gatzert, the first only Jewish mayor
of Seattle passed away today.
http://www.historylink.org/File/86
1893: In Hungary, Judah
and Marjem Grunwald gave birth to Samuel Greenwald the husband of Szeri
Greenwald.
1893: “Converting The
Jews” published today provided editorial comment on “the procedure adopted by
certain crude and violent evangelists to ‘convert the Jews’” saying that to
convert “an educated Chinaman or an educated Hebrew to ‘convert’ him must strike
him in the first place as a piece of appalling impudence.”
1895: According to
remarks published today made by Rabbi Maurice H. Harris of Temple Israel in
Harlem Shakespeare did not want Shylock to be seen as “a selfish monster who
lived for gain” but as the victim of persecution who “if he had been treated
justly and not gibed and sneered at…would not have wanted his pound of flesh.”
1895(25th of
Nisan, 5655): Sixty-three-year-old Philadelphia philanthropist Lucien Moss, the
son of Eleazer Moss and Mary and “a machinist for the
firm of Morris & Taws, Philadelphia, for whom he superintended the erection
of sugar-mills in Porto Rico” and the founder firm of Wiler & Moss,
brass-workers who “left the bulk of his moderate fortune to the Jewish Hospital
Association of Philadelphia, for the founding and endowing of the Lucien Moss
Home for Incurables of the Jewish Faith” passed away today.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11171-moss-lucien
1895: “Banker,
philanthropist and Liberal MP” Sydney James Stern was raised to the peerage as
Baron Wandsworth, of Wandsworth in the County of London” today.
1896: Herzl's The
Jewish State was published. This is the seminal piece of
literature for the modern Zionist Movement. Known to many by its
more famous German title, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), is one of the seminal
pieces of literature for the modern Jewish Zionist Movement.
"We are a people — one people." "Palestine is our
unforgettable historic homeland. . . Let me repeat once more my opening words: The
Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men
on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be
liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and
beneficially to the good of all mankind."
1896: As of today, most
of the tickets for the upcoming concert being held for the benefit of the
United Hebrew Charities at the Metropolitan Opera House have been sold.
1896: The Union Hebrew
Veterans’ Association met at the Grand Opera House in New York City.
1897(17th
of Nisan, 5657): Third Day of Pesach
1897: Running
of the first Boston Marathon. While many Jews have run in the race, none is
more famous than the team from the Jewish Special Education Cooperative. Team JSEC ran in the 108th Boston
Marathon. Runners included Dan Rosen, Amira Rosenberg, Josh Rosenberg,
and David Katz.
1897: The Civil Service Commission
is scheduled to conduct tests for foreign language interpreters including those
fluent in Hebrew.
1898: The new temple that is to be
built by Congregation of Adath Israel of West Harlem will used plans drawn by
Solomon D. Cohen.
1900(20th of
Nisan,5660): Sixth Day of Pesach
1900: In Leeds, U.K., Annie Morris
and Hyman Morris, the son of Fanny Sapira Morris and Jacob Samuel Morris, gave
birth to Albert Morris.
1901: “Nathan Straus, the head of
…R.H. Macy and Company declined” this “evening to say anything regarding the
prospective removal of their establishment from Fourteenth to Thirty-fourth
Street” and he sent “his nephew to a reported who called at this house, that
the reports to the effect that the Macy concern is buying the property at
Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets are without foundation.”
1902(12th of Nisan,
5662): Shabbat HaGadol
1902: The second annual exhibition
that includes “the work of east side artists” and featuring “an exhibition of
Jewish antiquities relating to Jewish rites and customs” is scheduled to begin
this evening at the Education Alliance on East Broadway and Jefferson Street.
1902: Birthdate of Newark, NJ
native Phil “K.O.” Kaplan a leading middleweight who fought most of the great
boxers of the 1920 including his co-religionist Maxie Rosnebloom
1903(22nd of Nisan, 5663): 8th
day of Pesach
1903:
Birthdate of David Silverman who rose from being an office boy at the Minneapolis
Star to serving as the assistant editor of the Minneapolis Star and
the Minneapolis Tribune while also serving as an officer and member of the
National Conference of Christians and Jews.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/07/29/89228189.html?pageNumber=29
1903: Riots broke out after a Christian child
is found murdered in Kishinev (Bessarabia). The mobs were incited by
Pavolachi Krusheven, the editor of the anti-Semitic Newspaper Bessarabetz and
the vice governor Ustrugov. Vyacheslav Von Plehev, the Minister of Interior
supposedly gave orders not to stop the rioters. The Jews were accused of ritual
murder. During the three days of rioting, 47 Jews were killed, 92 severely
wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses destroyed. Despite a world
outcry, only two men were sentenced to seven and five years in prison, and
twenty-two were sentenced for one or two years. This pogrom was
instrumental in convincing tens of thousands of Russian Jews to leave to the
West and to Eretz-Israel. The child was later discovered to have been killed by
a relative.
1904: Twenty-two-year-old Florence Bachman, the
Pennsylvania born daughter of Bertha Joseph and Max Maier Bachman married
Nathau Mayer Hartzell today in Allegheny, PA after which she had one daughter
and later moved to Youngstown, OH.
1904: Vice Admiral Skrydloff, who is married to
a Jewess” arrived at St Petersburg today on his way to Far East and was greeted
with “an enthusiastic reception from people who thronged the streets” including
a “number of prominent Jews” which would normally not be expected to have
happened.
1905: It was reported today that Magistrate
Steinert has announced in the Essex Market Court “that no summonses or warrants
would be issued to Jews except in the most urgent cases until the Jewish
holidays were brought to a close” and that “a number of Jews who were in court”
on April 18 “were told to return in eight days.
1905(14th of Nisan, 5665): Fast of
the First Born
1906: A young man with
a high forehead and piercing, black eyes, and describing himself as Gregory
Maxime of St. Petersburg, arrived today in New York as the representative of
the parent bund in Russia having been “sent for by the Revolutionary Bund of New
York, an organization of Jewish citizens helping the Jewish revolutionary
movement in Russia.
1907: “Five hundred
little Jewish boys and girls, most of them new arrivals in America, all of them
proteges of the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch Educational Fund, crowded into the
auditorium of the Educational Alliance on East Broadway” today “at the Yahrzeit
services held to commemorate the death of Baron de Hirsch…”
1907: Benedict Gimbel
of Philadelphia who had been arrested on charges that he had attempted to bribe
two of the District Attorney’s detectives attempted suicide this afternoon by
slashing his throat and left wrist with pieces of broken glass while staying at
the Palace Hotel in Hoboken, NJ.
1907: Isaac Gimbel, the
brother of Benedict Gimbel and Mrs. Benedict Gimbel arrived at St. Mary’s
hospital this evening where they went to the beside of Benedict Gimbel who
Charles Gimble said, “had been poor health for the last few weeks.”
1908(18th of
Nisan, 5668): Sixty-nine-year-old Charles Hallgarten, one of the four principle
partners at Hallgarten & Company passed away.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1908/04/21/105004782.pdf
1908: The New York
Times reported that the observance of Holy Week and Passover had cut into
the city’s social season. Activities had
been limited to “affairs for charity, and some private bridges and luncheons.”
1908: Today, Samuel B.
Hamburger was elected President “Temple Ahavath Chesed Shar Hashomayim” at
Lexington and 55th Street following the death of Marcus Kohner
1908: Organization of
the Sons of Zion fraternal order whose members included Jacob S. Strahl, Nathan
Chasan and Solomon Neuman
1908: “Ceremonies and
Customs of the Easter Season” published today examines the origins and customs
of Easter reminding its readers that “our Easter is a successor to the Jewish
Passover.” The article pointed out that
“the two are the same in their root; but the opposition of the Christians to
the Jews led to a change” in the Christian celebrations.
1909: “Criticizes the
Jews” published today described a sermon on Sunday evening by Reverend
Frederick Lynch, past of the Pilgrim Church entitled “Christians and Jews in
New York City: A Warning” in which he characterized Jews as being “ungrateful
for American privileges.”
1910: Nellie Levinson
Hirsch and Ferdinand Kilsheimer Hirsch gave birth to Harriet Carolyn Hirsch
Kern, the wife of Joseph Kern.
1910: For the third day
in a row, the United Hebrew Community gave out supplies for the upcoming
Passover holiday to the poor people living on the east side.
1910: Rensselaer Poly
Tech and Columbia trained mining engineer Lucius Mayer, the New York City born
son of Rosa Wolf and Gerson Mayer married Mildred Mack today.
1911: On the day on
which the completed portions of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine were
consecrated The Board of Jewish Ministers sent a congratulatory telegram to
Episcopal Bishop Grier.
1911: Birthdate of
Podiatrist Benjamin W. Pushkin, the husband of Ann Pushkin and father of Judy
and Robert Pushkin
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?n=benjamin-w-pushkin&pid=847947
1912: In New York
events scheduled for tonight celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Free
Synagogue were canceled as a sign of mourning for those who were died when the
Titanic sank.
1912: James Etches, an
assistant steward in the first cabin of the Titanic appeared at the St. Regis
Hotel” this morning
1913(12th of
Nisan, 5673): Parashat Achrei Mot and Shabbat HaGadol
1913(12th of
Nisan, 5673): Fifty-five-year-old Sigmund Kohlman, the husband of Julia H.
Kolman passed away today after which he was interred in the Springhill Avenue
Temple Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama.
1913: It was reported
today that based on information from Beirut Baron Edmond Rothschild has been
granted permission from the government in Constantinople “to undertake
excavations in Palestine” and that he “intends to establish a museum in
Jerusalem in which all the objects that have historic tic bearing upon the
Jewish in Palest will be collected.”
1913: It was reported
today that Emperor Franz Joseph “has conferred the title of nobility upon the
Jewish bank, Dr. Neuman of Budapest” which makes him a member of the Upper
House of Hungary.
1913: It was reported
today that “The Jewish World of London
has been acquired by the proprietors of The
Jewish Chronicle of London and will be published from the offices of the Chronicle.
1914: Rabbi Samuel
Schulman “of the Temple Beth-El delivered a sermon this morning on “Reform
Judaism, Zionism and the New Palestine” in which he said “it is a great
pleasure to known that men like Jacob Schiff and Nathan Straus…are doing good
work in Palestine giving to young men in the Orient various posts of activity”
and that they are doing philanthropic work in Palestine as they have been doing
in the United States.
1914: It was reported
today that four-fifths of the population of Atlanta favor a new trial for Leo
Frank.
1914: “Calling the
execution of the four gunmen at Sing Sing a ‘barbarous illustration of the
working out of system that is wholly wrong’ Dr. Stephen S. Wise denounced
capital punished in a sermon at the Free Synagogue” this morning while denying
that “the fact that three of young men killed were Jews” had anything to do
with his attitude.
1915: In the case of
“Frank v. Mangum” “the Supreme Court denied Leo Frank’s appeal” by a seven to
two vote with Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the dissenters writing "It is
our duty to declare lynch law as little valid when practiced by a regularly
drawn jury as when administered by one elected by a mob intent on death."
1915: Elisa and Clairce
Lispector gave birth to their middle daughter Tania.
1915: Approximately 800
people filled in the Educational Alliance building in New York with an overflow
crowd in the streets heard Rabbi Stephen S. Wise speak at “a mass meeting in
honor of Baron Nathan Rothschild who died recently in London” where he praised
him for “his efforts to give education to the Jews of the world over.”
1916(16th of
Nisan, 5676): Second Day of Pesach; 1st Day of the Omer
1916: Because today is
the second day of Passover, “the collection of bundles and bags for the United
Hebrew Charities Bundle Day” did not take place today but is scheduled to be
resumed tomorrow.
1917: During World War
I, as the maneuvering continued to try and gain British support for a Jewish
homeland, Sir Ronald Graham wrote to Mark Sykes expressing his concern that the
Zionist movement was relying too heavily on the hope that British would be
annexing Palestine and making it part of the British Empire after the War.
1917(27th of
Nisan, 5677): Lt. Joshua Levy, who had been a “clothier” before enlisting in
the British Army in 1914 died today while serving with the Norfolk Regiment.
1917: Founding of the
Jewish Welfare Board which was designed “to meet the religious and cultural
needs of Jewish personnel in the U.S. military.
1917: On the same day
that the Russian Foreign Minister offered reassurances that his country would
not make a separate peace and that Lenin was criticized for having accepted
German assistance to return to Russia, reports continued to circulate that attempts
were being made to “organize a massacre of the Jews and intelligent classes” in
Kishinev.
1918(7th of
Iyar, 5678): Lt. Lawrence Braham Rosenbaum one of the sons of Solomon
Rosenbaum, a Russian-born pawnbroker, died today while serving with the
Monmouthshire Regiment.
1919: On the fifth day
of Pesach which was also Shabbat Chol Hamoed, the Polish army occupied Vilna
and attacked its Jewish community.
1919: Eugene Schiffer
completed his term as Minister of Finance in Germany.
1919: The Hebrew Scouts
Movement is founded.
1919: In Cedar Rapids,
IA, John and Ruth Miller gave birth to Joan Miller Lipsky, the widow of Abbot
Lipsky.
http://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2015/Aug/Joan-M-Lipsky/
1919: Birthdate of
Philadelphia Sol Kaplan the successful concert pianist and concert business who
was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1920: At Gomel The
Twelfth Conference of Bund “where the party was split into two separate
parties, the majority Communist Bund and the minority Social Democratic Bund,
came to an end today. (Editor’s note: Yes, strange as it may seem to us looking
at events from 98 years ago, this sort of philosophic wrangling went in in
deadly earnest even as post-War Europe was racked with revolution and
privation.)
1920: In New York City,
Harry and Beatrice Kaplan Reinhardt gave birth to Sheldon Reinhardt and his
twin brother, Burton “who as the detail-minded, taciturn television executive
behind his more extroverted boss, Ted Turner, played a crucial role in the
formative years of CNN and the 24-hour cable news cycle. (As reported by Dennis
Hevesi)
1920: Birthdate of Kazimierz
Smolen, a Roman Catholic Pole who survived Auschwitz survivor and who after
World War II became director of a memorial museum at the site.
1920: Associated
Justice Louis Brandeis voted with the majority today in deciding State of
Missouri v. Holland, United States Game Warden a case in which Louis Marshall, Esq. submitted an amicus curae brief
to the U.S. Supreme Court on Missouri v. Holland on behalf of the Association
for the Protection of the Adirondacks was decided today.
1920: Birthdate of
Furth native Gerda Liselotte Hirsch-Reis who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.
1920: Birthdate of
Marvin Mandel, the 56th Governor of Maryland.
1921: The General
Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia which had been formed in
1897was dissolved today and was “incorporated into the Communist Party.” The
Bund (Jewish Workers Party) held its first conference in Russia. It was the
first Jewish Socialist party in Eastern Europe. At first decidedly anti-Zionist
and pro-Yiddishist, it was organized as a union of Russian Jewish socialist
groups. The bund exerted a great influence on Jews in Europe and America.
Interestingly enough, the Bund held its first meeting during the same year in
which the Zionists held their first Congress.
1922(21st of
Nisan, 5682): Seventh Day of Pesach
1922: Birthdate of New
York born American actress Marian Winters
1923: Frances (Fanny)
Wolf, the New York born daughter of Lillian Hendricks Levy and Louis Napoleon
Levy and her first husband Harold Lewis gave birth to Philip Lewis.
1923: In Manhattan,
Jacob and Regina (Rothenberg) Hymes gave birth to Philip Frederick Hymes the WW
II veteran and hold of an M.A. from the Teachers College at Columbia best known
for his backstage work with “Saturday Night Live.” (As reported by Richard
Sandomir)
1924(15th of
Nisan, 5684): Pesach and Shabbat
1924(15th of
Nisan, 5684): In the evening, some of Harvard’s Jewish students are scheduled
to attend a seder at the home of Greek and Latin Professor Harry K. Messenger,
who along with his converted to Judaism.
1925(25th of Nisan,
5685): Sir David Lionel
Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons passed away. Born in 1851 he “was a scientific author and
barrister.” The son of Philip Salomons of Brighton, and Emma, daughter of Jacob
Montefiore of Sydney, he succeeded to the Baronetcy originally granted to his
uncle David Salomons in 1873. He married Laura, daughter of Hermann Stern, 1st
Baron de Stern and Julia, daughter of Aaron Asher Goldsmid, brother of Sir
Isaac Lyon Goldsmid by which he had one son and three daughters. He assumed the
additional surnames and arms of Goldsmid and Stern in 1899. He studied at
University College, London and at Caius College, Cambridge, gaining a B.A. in
1874. In the same year he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. He went
on to produce several scientific works and pamphlets. He was a J.P., D.L. and
High Sheriff of Kent, mayor and alderman of Tunbridge Wells, County Councilor
for the Tunbridge division of Kent for 15 years and J.P. for London, Middlesex,
Sussex, and Westminster. His home north of Tunbridge Wells, Broomhill, is
preserved as the Salomons Museum. It is also a part of Canterbury Christ Church
University, and is a center for postgraduate training, research and consultancy.”
1925: Dr. Phillip
Klein, who “is aid to be the dean of American orthodox Jewish rabbis,” is
scheduled “to be honored at a public meeting this year at the First Hungarian
Congregation, Ohab Zedek, where he has served for the last thirty-five years.
1926: Birthdate of
Manhattan native and son of Jewish immigrants William Klein “one of his
generation’s most celebrated photographers, represented in museums across
Europe and the United States” who “began his career as a restless postwar
American in Paris who took a studio on the Left Bank, defied traditions and
plunged into his anarchic visions of painting, sculpture, street and fashion
photography, feature films and documentaries.”
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/william-klein?all/all/all/all/0
1926: “A group of
prominent real estate men met tonight at the Park Lane Hotel” and “announced
their contribution of $200,000 to the United Jewish Campaign which formally
opens later this week in the presence of Mayor James Walker who had defied
doctor’s orders to attend the event.
1927: ‘At the
dedication ceremonies of the new Temple Beth Mordecai today, at which Rabbi J.
Gerson Brenner presided, Rabbi Nathan Brenner pleaded with the Jewish people to
continue to practice the Jewish traditions and customs” while Louis Marshall “who
was the principal speaker on that occasion, delivered a fiery address during
the course of which he said, “The Jews have to live their Judaism. It should be
on their lips three hundred and sixty-five days in the year and it should be
taught to their children in the homes.” (JTA)
1927(17th of
Nisan, 5687): Third Day of Pesach
1927: “King of Kings” a
Biblical epic silent film starring Joseph Schildkraut and Rudolph Schildkraut
with music by Hugo Riesenfeld and Joseph Zuro and including an appearance by
Ayn Rand as an extra was released today in the United States.
1928: Birthdate of
William Klein, the New York of “an impoverished Jewish family” who gained fame
as French photographer and filmmaker.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/master-of-the-close-up-william-klein-launched-a-genre/
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/K/klein/klein_articles1.html
1929: “Dinner Aids
Salomon Fund” published today described inauguration of the Haym Salomon
monument campaign which begin with a dinner at the Hotel Biltmore where
attendees heard a speech by “Benjamin Winter, President of the Federation of
Polish Jews, which is sponsoring the Salomon memorial.”
1930(21st of
Nisan, 5690): Shabbat Shel Pesach
1930: In The Bronx,
“operatic tenor Jan Peerce and talent agent Alice (Kalmanowitz) Peerce” gave
birth to director Lawrence “Larry” Peerce whose most famous film may “Goodbye,
Columbus.”
1930: “End of the
Rainbow,” a musical directed by Max Reichman was released today in Germany.
1930: New York Yankee 2nd
baseman Jimmie Reese played in his first major league baseball game.
1931: After having
premiered in New York City two week ago, “Crack Nuts” a comedy with music by
Max Steiner was released to the rest of the United States
1931: The Washington,
D.C. campaign of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee which is
scheduled to raise $60,000 began today.
1932: Funeral services
are scheduled to be held today for thirty-eight-year old University of Illinois College of Medicine
educated gynecologist and surgeon, Dr. Goldye L. Hoffman, the Chicago born
daughter of Ida Louis La Pook and Jacob Hoffman and a “member of the Volunteer
Medical Service Corps during World War I” who “a the time o her death was an
associate in gynecology at her alma mater,” president of the Medical Woman’s
Club of Chicago and a member of Hadassah
1932: “Max Klein, a
restaurant owner of 34 Sutter Avenue, Brooklyn, testified today as the State's
principal witness in the General Sessions trial of the Rev. Samuel Buchler,
lawyer and former Jewish chaplain at Sing Sing, on a grand larceny indictment.”
1933: As an expression
of Nazi anger over Churchill’s speech warning that the Jews of Poland could
suffer the same fate as the Jews of Germany, “a correspondent of the Birmingham
Post reported from Berlin that ‘today newspapers are full of ‘sharp warnings
for England’ with one headline referring to ‘Mr. Winston Churchill’s
Impudence.’”
1933: “Campaign of
English Nazis Taken Up in Rome During Mosely Parleys” published today described
a meeting in Rome attended by Sir Oswald Mosley, Herman Goering “and other
Fascist leaders in which methods for growing a Fascist movement that would
number more than a million in England were discussed. (JTA)
1934: According to a
report by Morton Rotehnberg, President of the Zionist Organization of America,
11,000 German Jewish refugees had entered Palestine from April 1, 1933 through
January 1, 1934. As co-chair of the United
Jewish Appeal, Rothenberg is contributions totaling three million dollars to
aid the refugees from Germany.” At the
same time, Dr. Arthur Hantke, director of the Palestine Foundation Fund
reported that “there is no unemployment.”
There is an “insistent demand for workers” throughout the country
meaning that the influx of immigrants will be a net economic gain.
1935(16th of
Nisan, 5695): Second Day of Pesach
1935: De Big van het
Regiment directed by Max Nosseck a refugee from Nazi Germany, with a script by
Arnold Lippschit another refugee from Nazi German was released today in the
Netherlands.
1935: It was reported
today that the project to settle 1,600 Jewish children from Germany to
Palestine by February 1936 “is among those supported by American Jewry through
the United Jewish Appeal which is conducting a nationwide drive” to raise
$3,250,000.
1936: Carl J. Austrian
made public telegrams “Presidents and chancellors of several colleges and
university in” the United States sent to Rabbi Jonah B. Wise in which they
deplored “a decree promulgated shortly after Easter excluding Jewish children
from German public schools.”
1936 (27th of Nisan,
5696): As Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Palestine Arabs killed nine Jews in
Jaffa. Among the victims was Eliezer Bugitsky who was murdered by Sales Hassan
and Abu Aabahi. The riots lasted until 1939. The end product is the White Paper which was
intended to put an end Jewish immigration and new land purchases.
1936: Arabs attacked
Jews in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa district this morning leaving nine Jews dead and
another fifty seriously wounded.
1936: “The economic
plight of Jews in Poland suffering anti-Semitism was described at a mass
meeting at the Hotel Pennsylvania today called by the Federation of Polish Jews
in America in behalf of the American Committee Appeals for Polish Jews” which
is trying to raise one million dollars to help the Poles.
1937: Time magazine
publishes an article about the origins and growth of Hart, Schaffner and Marx
as the clothing firm marks its fiftieth anniversary.
1937: Birthdate of New
York native and Colgate, University of Chicago and University of Paris
diplomate Peter Tarnoff, the husband of Mathea Falco and the father of
Nicholas, Alexander and Benjamin Tarnoff who rose to the rank of Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs in 1993 and earned “the Department of
State's highest award, the Distinguished Service Award for extraordinary
service in advancing American interests through creative and effective
diplomacy.”
https://www.cfr.org/news-releases/memoriam-peter-tarnoff
1937: Construction of
the Golden Gate Bridge a project on which Joseph Strauss served as Chief
Engineer was completed today.
1938(18th of
Nisan, 5698) Fourth Day of Pesach
1938: In Providence,
RI, a Polish born immigrant who “worked as a plumber and contractor” gave birth
to controversial academic Stanley Fish the holder of a B.A. from Penn and an
M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale who began his career as an expert on poet John Milton.
https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/stanley-fish
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169331
1938: Birthdate of “American
orchestrator, musical director, and composer” Jonathan Tunick, “one of nineteen
of the "EGOT" – people to have won all four major American show
business awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.”
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876642/
https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/jonathan-tunick-12646
1938: Two hundred
eighty prisoners attended a Passover service tonight at Sing Sing Prison where
were led by Rabbi Jacob Katz, the Jewish chaplain and Zalman Yavneh the cantor
at the West Side Institute Synagogue.
1939(30th of
Nisan, 5699): Isaac Carasso passed away today in France. Born in 1874, in what is now Thessaloniki but
was then part of the Ottoman Empire, Carasso was part of a prominent Sephardic
family. He practiced medicine in Spain
before beginning his studies of the effects of Yogurt on digestion. In 1919 he founded the company that many
Americans recognize as Danon Yogurt
1939: Birthdate of St.
Louis and Washington University trained
attorney Ervin Harold Pollack, the member of the Ohio State University Law
School Faculty and “founder and first president of the Ohio Association of Law
Libraries” who passed away in 1972.
https://www.aallnet.org/inductee/ervinpollack/
https://www.librarything.com/author/pollackervinharold
1939: The Mizrachi
Women’s Organization of America raised $20,000 at a luncheon at the Waldorf
Astoria
1939(30th of
Nisan, 5699): Henry Levi Leavitt the Chicago born husband of Lena Gertrude Baer
and father of Melbourne, Ruth, Adelaide and Margaret Leavitt who opened The
Horseshoe Store in Hoquaim, Washington with his brother-in-law Julius Baer and
“served as the first vice-president of Temple Beth Israel in Aberdeen,
Washington, passed away today in Los Angeles.
http://www.jmaw.org/henry-leavitt-hoquiam-washington/
1939: The Women’s
League of Palestine raised $30,000 at a luncheon at the Hotel Astor.
1940: In Sofia,
Bulgaria, the governments of Bulgaria and Romania signed an agreement creating
an airline which will operate between Sofia and Bucharest with connecting
flights to Tel Aviv.
1941(22nd of Nisan, 5701): 8th
Day of Pesach; Shabbat Shel Pesach
1941: Robert F. Wagner, Sr. introduced a
resolution in the U.S. Senate stating that U.S. policy should favor the
"restoration of the Jews in Palestine." The resolution was supported
by 68 Senators.
1941: “Crazy With the Heat,” with a book co-authored by Max Liebman was
performed for the last time on Broadway at the 44th Street Theatre.
1942: “Chief Judge Irving Lehman of the Court
of Appeals, who is honorary president of the National Jewish Welfare Board,
paid tribute to the organization's services in war and peace during a quarter
of a century at a founder’s dinner at the Hotel Commodore” tonight.
1942: “The National committee for a Louis D.
Brandeis Colony in Palestine announced today “the formation of a national
committee of labor leaders and prominent citizens for the purpose of
establishing a new labor settlement as a living tributed to the late Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme court.”
1942: The Career of Henrietta Szold published
today provides a lengthy review of Henrietta Szold: Life and Letters by
Marvin Lowenthal in which the author describes “the life of the dauntless woman
whose name is linked with Palestine.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/04/19/85331270.html?pageNumber=59
1943: Members of
Belgium Jewish underground aided by Christian railroad men derailed a train filled
with Jewish deportees bound for the extermination camps. Several hundred Jews
were saved.
1943(14th
of Nisan, 5703 ) - PASSOVER, WARSAW Ghetto UPRISING; The Jews were
determined not to be moved without giving up a fight. 2,100 Germans, fully
armed, enter the Ghetto. The Jews fighting force consisted of about 700 men and
women. They were armed with 17 rifles,
50 pistols and several thousand grenades and Molotov cocktails. A small group of Jewish fighters open fire on
the entering German troops. After an hour of skirmishing, the Germans
retreated. The final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began on the Eve of
Passover, April 19, 1943. The deportation did not come as a surprise. The
Germans had amassed a military force to carry it out, but did not expect to
engage in a confrontation that included street battles. Armed German forces
ringed the ghetto at 3:00 a.m. The unit that entered the ghetto encountered
armed resistance and retreated. The main ghetto, with its population of 30,000
Jews, was deserted. The Jews could not be rounded up for the transport; the
railroad cars at the deportation point remained empty. After Germans and rebels
fought in the streets for three days, the Germans began to torch the ghetto,
street by street, building by building. The entire ghetto became a sizzling,
smoke-swathed conflagration. Most of the Jews who emerged from their hideouts,
including entire families, were murdered by the Germans on the spot. The ghetto
Jews gradually lost the strength to resist. On April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz
the ZOB commander wrote the following to Yitzhak Zuckerman, a member of the ZOB
command who was stationed on the "Aryan" side: "I cannot
describe the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a special few will
hold out; all the others will perish sooner or later. Their fate is sealed.
None of the bunkers where our comrades are hiding has enough air to light a
candle at night.... Be well, my dear, perhaps we shall yet meet. The dream of
my life has risen to become fact. Self - defense in the ghetto will have been a
reality. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish
men of battle". The rebels pursued their cause, even though they knew from
the outset that they could not win. The Jewish underground would continue to
fight the Nazis until the middle of May. The Polish underground only gave
minimal help because of anti-Semitism prevalent among many. Although the Allies
will neither publicize events nor try to help, even before the war ended, the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol of Jewish resistance.
1943: Chaike
Belchatowska who had joined he ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) in January
1943, and her future husband Boruch Spiegel, a commander of a ZOB fighting unit
were among those who took part in the uprising that began today and we among
the handful of fighters who survived.
1943: The Bermuda
Conference of Great Britain and the U.S., held in Hamilton, Bermuda, takes no
meaningful action to help Jews in Europe. Before the meeting, representatives
of both countries had agreed not to discuss immigration of Jews to their
nations nor to ship food to Jewish refugees in German-occupied Europe.
1943: A year and a half
after having been “to the predominately Jewish district of Sophienstreasse in
Berlin,” “Arthur Schmidt was sent on Transport 37 from Gleis (Track) 17 of
Berlin-Grunewald Station to Auschwitz” after which he was never heard from
again.
1943: “Richard Law, the
senior British representative at today’s Bermuda Conference wrote to his boss,
foreign secretary Anthony Eden, ‘Sorry to bother you about Jews. I know what a bore it is.’”
1943(14th of
Nisan, 5703): Rabbi Menachem Ziemba conducted a Seder tonight in the Warsaw
Ghetto days before he would be gunned down the Wehrmacht.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Ziemba
1943(14th of
Nisan, 5703): Members of the military
attended a Seder at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.
1944: Birthdate of Tel
Aviv native, Yehuda Weinstein, who became the Attorney General of Israel.
1944(26th of
Nisan, 5704): Eva Levin Altfeld, the Russian born daughter of Sima and Aba
Ascher Levin and the wife of Solomon Altfeld passed away today after which she
was buried at the B’nai Israel Congregation Cemetery in Baltimore, MD.
1945: General Bedell
Smith, Ike’s Chief of Staff, telephones Churchill to describe the horror that
American troops found when they liberated Buchenwald. Smith assures Churchill that it was worse
than the scenes Ike had described in his telegraph of the previous day.
1945: A “tommy” was
photographed using his bulldozer to push the corpses found at Bergen-Belsen
into a mass grave.” (Editor’s note – the British were not being
insensitive. They were trying to avoid
an epidemic that would have wiped out more the survivors, most of whom were
little more than walking skeletons with no resistance to disease.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Hardman#/media/File:Bergen_Belsen_Liberation_03.jpg
1945: For a second time, General Eisenhower cabled Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, with a request to bring
members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they
could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public.
1945: General Marshall
received permission from the Secretary of War, Henry Lewis Stimson, and
President Harry S. Truman for these delegations to visit the liberated camps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohrdruf_forced_labor_camp
1945: During an
afternoon speech in the House of Commons, Churchill describes the horrors
discovered by Allied troops at places like Buchenwald and calls for Parliament
to send eight representatives to view the camps as the first step in bringing
those responsible for these atrocities to justices.
1945: U.S. Army troops
captured Leipzig, Germany today where they found a general of the Volksstrum
who had committed suicide lying in the floor of city “with a torn picture of
His feuhrer beside his clenched fist.”
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-187.jpg
1945: The Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical "Carousel" opened on Broadway.
1945: Dr. Rudolf
Kastner crossed the Swiss border today.
1946(18th of
Nisan, 5706): Fourth Day of Pesach
1946: Bouquets of
gladioluses and other flowers from Palestine were present to wounded American
soldiers at Halloran General Hospital in Staten Island as a gift of Palestine
war veterans in appreciation of the aid the American military gave in the
liberation of Europe’s Jews. The gift
was timed to coincide with the Festival of Passover.” The flowers were grown in
Mishmar Hasharon, a settlement midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
1946: New York Yankees
Pitcher Herb Karpel appeared in his first major league baseball game.
1947: This evening, The Shanghai Jewish Youth
Community Center opened its Warsaw Ghetto Commemoration week with a Yizkor
service.
1947: Comedian Shelly
Berman married Sarah Berman
1948: Twenty-four
armored trucks filled with Jewish veterans who had served with the British Army
during WW II, drove to a hilltop “situated less than a mile from the Arab
village of Bureir” where the Jews disembarked and established a new settlement
called Brur Hayal.
1948: Haganah captured
Tiberias
1948: Dr. Maurice
Finkelstein was appointed chairman of New York City’s Temporary Housing Rent
Commission which had been “set up to administer the local freezing rents for
permanent guests of hotels, apartment hotels and rooming and lodging houses”
while aiding tenants threatened with eviction.
1948: A Palmach unit
used Al-Kafrayn for a training base before blowing it up
1948: Six years after
being released in the U.K., Hatters Castle, a film noir with a screenplay by
Paul Merzbach and Rudolf Bernauer, produced by Isadore Goldsmith and filmed by
Mutz Greenbaum was released today in the United States.
1949(20th of Nisan,
5709): Reform Rabbi and Zionist leader Stephen Samuel Wise who in 1942 had met
with U.S. Under-secretary of State Sumner Wells and that held “a press
conference where he announced that the
Nazis had a plan for the extermination of all European Jews and had already
killed 2 million” passed away passed
away today. (Editor’s note – Guess the World really did know, and the world
just did not care)
http://www.swfs.org/welcome/history/
1950(2nd of
Iyar, 5710): Yom Hazikaron
1950: At speech given
to the Commerce and Industry Association in New York City, Harry A. Shadmon,
director of the export division of the Chamber of Commerce of Tel Aviv and
Jaffa said that “Israel stands a good chance this year of doubling the
$4,500,000 in exports which it sent to the United States in 1949.” The figure
for 1949 is especially impressive considering the military challenges the
Jewish state was facing for the first six months of that year.
1951: CBS broadcast the
first episode of “Casey, Crime Photographer” produced by Martin Manulis, with
music by Morton Gould.
1951(13th of
Nisan, 5711): Benjamin Jacobs, the London bon son of Amelia and Barnett Jacobs
a tailor who served with the Royal Engineers, the Northern Cyclists Battalion and
the Labour Corps during WW I passed away today after which he was buried in the
Rainham Jewish Cemetery.
1951: “A Tree Grows in
Brooklyn,” with lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by Arthur Schwartz, based on
the novel with the same name opened at the Alvin Theatre
1952: Herb “Gorman
appeared for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Chicago Cubs today
pinch-hitting in the 7th inning and grounding out” in what “was his only game
in the majors.”
1951(13th of
Nisan 5711): Benjamin Jacobs, the London born son of Amelia and Barnett Jacobs
who served with the Royal Engineers during WW I passed away after which he was
buried at the Rainham Jewish Cemetery.
1952(24th of Nisan):
Yiddish poet Moses David Gisser passed away in Santiago, Chile.
1952: The German song
“Mutterlein” which became known as “Answer Me” with English lyrics by Crown
Heights native Carl Sigman was published today.
1953(4th of Iyar,
5713): Yom HaZikaron
1953: Hermann Merkin and Ursula Merkin (née Ursula Sara Breuer)
gave birth Jacob Ezra Merkin the financier who was a friend and business
associate of Bernard Madoff with whom he colluded in the one of the worst Ponzi
Schemes of the 21st century.
1953: The Jerusalem Post
reported that torches and ceremonies on Mount Herzl had signaled the start of
Israel's sixth year of independence.
1953: The Jerusalem Post
reported that Yasha Heifetz, the world-famous violinist, whose countrywide
concerts schedule included a Richard Strauss violin sonata, cancelled his next
recital, as his right hand, struck by an unknown person who opposed playing
Strauss and Wagner in Israel, had become painful. Prime minister, David
Ben-Gurion expressed his deep regret over this unfortunate incident.
1953: The Jewish Labor
Committee adopted a comprehensive program for this year that included a greater
effort to obtain fair employment legislation in states and cities, as well as
intensified activity to achieve drastic revisions of the McCarran-Walter Immigration
Act.
1954(16th of
Nisan, 5714): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
1955: Ten months after
having premiered in the United Kingdom, “The Young Lovers” with a screenplay by
George Tabori, a score by Benjamin Frankel and featuring David Kossoff who
would a British Film Academy Award as “most promising newcomer to film” was released
in the United States today.
1957(18th of
Nisan, 5717): Third Day of Pesach
1958: Former Justice of
the New York State Supreme Court, Goodman A. Sarachan and his wife announced
the engagement of their daughter Naomi, a senior at the University of Michigan
and a niece of Sir Leon Simon of London to Warren Singer of Brooklyn and
graduate of the University of Michigan College of Engineering.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/07/20/91398997.html?pageNumber=59
1958: “Back to
Methuselah,” new two act version of Shaw’s play written by Arnold Moss for
which Bernard Simon, Nat Dorfman and Irving Dorman served as Press
Representatives was performed for the last time on Broadway at the Ambassador
Theatre.
1960(22nd of
Nisan, 5720): Eighth Day of Pesach marking the last observance of the holiday
during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1960(22nd of
Nisan, 5720): Sixty-five-year-old New York born WW I veteran Al Posen, the award-winning
cartoonist who created several comic strips, the most famous of which is
“Sweeny and Son” passed away today.
https://library.syracuse.edu/digital/guides/p/posen_a.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Posen#/media/File:Sweeneyandson5855.jpg
1961(3rd of
Iyar, 5721): Yom HaZikaron
1961: In Manhattan,
Borscht Belt comedian Freddie Roman and his wife gave birth to Alan
Kirschenbaum a television producer and comedy writer who worked on such shows
as "Raising Hope," "My Name is Earl" and "Yes, Dear"
(As reported by the LA Times obit staff)
1961(13th of
Nisan, 5730): Sixty-five-year-old actress Rose Wallerstein, the wife Los
Angeles theatre owner Oscar Ostroff passed away way today in California.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/04/21/118907978.pdf
1962(15th of
Nisan, 5722): Pesach
1962: “Five Finger
Exercise” the film version of the play by Peter Shaffer, directed by Daniel
Mann with music by Jerome Moross. Was released today in in the United States
today.
1963: “Hot Spot,” a
musical with a book by Jack Weinstock and lyrics by Martin Charnin and Stephen
Sondheim premiered on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.
1964: In Atlanta, GA, Paul
Barton, a traveling salesman who sold women's uniforms throughout the
Southeastern United States and his wife Joan who grow up in an Orthodox Jewish
home in Queens gave birth gave birth to
UNC and San Franciso 49ers offensive tackle Harris Barton who became a Managing
Partner of Champion Ventures after his retirement.
1965: Funeral services
for the 78 year old Russian born author and member of the editorial staff of
the Jewish Daily Forward Mendel Osherowitch who in 1910 came to the United
States where he wrote a biography of Moses Montefiore that was published in
1941 as well as David Kessler and Muni Weisenfreund, Two Generations in the
History of the Yiddish Theater in America are scheduled to take place this
morning at 11 am in Manhattan.
https://www.jta.org/archive/mendel-osherowitch-noted-yiddish-author-dead-funeral-today
1966(29th of Nisan,
5726): Eighty-year-old “prize-winning poet, author, translator, historian, and
communal leader Emily Solis-Cohen” passed away. (As reported by Arthur Kiron)
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/solis-cohen-emily
1966: Eighty-nine-year-old
Russian born American opera impresario Max Rabinoff passed away today.
http://archives.nypl.org/mus/20361
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/rbml/Rabinoff/
1967: In Jerusalem,
State Controller Y.E. Nebenzahl accused the Government of waste in a number of
in his annual report today.”
1967: The head of the Zionist Organization of America declared
today that Israel's hope for increased Western immigration, particularly a
large influx of technically skilled young American Jews, could be realized only
if Israel "creates the social and economic conditions" to attract it.
1967: Konrad Adenauer former Chancellor
of West Germany passed away. Born in
1876, Adenauer remained in Germany during the war. He was imprisoned
by the government for his anti-Nazi sentiments.
In 1949, he was named Chancellor of the democratically elected West
German Government. Adenauer worked to
reshape the role of Germany which included accepting responsibility for
de-Nazfication and the role that Germany had played during the war. He agreed to a program of reparations for the
Jewish people and worked to establish harmonious
relations with the state of Israel. He
did this in the face of pressure from Arab governments that had a lot more to
offer the struggling German economy.
1968(21st of Nisan, 5728):
Seventh Day of Pesach
1968: “As Jews in the United States and
elsewhere observed the 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, fears are mounting in Poland that a
new wave of anti-Semitism is once more endangering Polish Jews with some
analysts warned that if a movement led by Major General Mieczyslaw Mocar
continues to gain force it could “tap the dell well-springs of traditional
anti-Semitism.
1969(1st of Iyar, 5729):
Rosh Chodesh Iyar; Parashat Tazria-Metzora
1969(1st of Iyar, 5729):
Seventy-six-year-old Cornell graduate and WW I civilian engineer serving with
the Navy Charles R. Adelson, the husband of the former Jane Levinson with whom
he had two children and the board chairman of the Delson Candy Company and “a
former president of the Association of Manufacturers of Confectionary and
Chocolate passed tonight in Palm Becach, FL/
1970(13th of Nisan, 5730): Sixty-three-year-old
Theodore Yudain, the Russian born son of Morris and Bertha Yudain and
Connecticut newspaperman Theodore Yudain who was editor of the Greenwich News Graphic, political editor
of the Bridgeport Herald and editor
of the Stamford Advocate passed away
today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/20/archives/theodore-yudain-stamford-editor.html
1971: Funeral services are scheduled to
be held this morning in the Chapel of Temple Emanu-El for 79-year-old Joseph
Love, board chairman of the corporation of Joseph Love, Inc, one of the largest
manufacturers of children's wear, the husband of the former Minerva Rosetsky
with whom he had four children – Mathew, Stanley, Robert and Jane.
1971: In Casablanca, Moroccan Sephardic
Jews David and Régine Elmaleh gave birth to “French stand-up comedian and
actor” Gad Elmaleh.
1972(5th of Iyar, 5732): Yom
HaAtzma’ut
1972: The late Diane
Arbus's photographs were chosen to appear in the Venice Biennale, marking the
first time an American photographer was honored at the event.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/19/1972/diane-arbus
1973(17th of
Nisan, 5733): Third Day of Pesach
1973(17th of
Nisan, 5753): Ninety-one-year-old Hans Kelsen, the main author of Austria's new
constitution after the First World War” and the Pure Theory of Law passed away
today at Berkley, CA.
https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2577&context=californialawreview
1973(17th of
Nisan, 5733): Sixty-seven year old realtor Ida (Menter) Arffa, the widow of
Emanuel Arffa and mother of Gerald, David and Marvin passed away today in New
York state
1973:
Barbra Streisand recorded "Between Yesterday & Tomorrow"
1973: “Soylent Greent,’ a science fiction cliff
hanger directed by Richard Fleishcer and co-starring Edward G. Robinson was
released today in the United States.
1973: Birthdate of Israeli professional tennis
player Tzipora “Tzipi” Obziler who represented Israel at the 2008 Summer
Olympics in China.”
1974(27th of Nisan, 5734): Yom HaShoah
1974: Today, a three‐judge Federal Court panel upheld the Kosher Slaughter Act and supported Leo Pfeffer’s contention that
kosher slaughter, by cutting a particular artery in an animal with a sharp
lathe, “causes instantaneous loss of consciousness and is therefore humane.”
1974(27th of Nisan, 5734): Yigal Stavi was
killed today when his F-4E Phantom II was shot down today by the Syrians.
1974: Benny Kiryati was taken prisoner when his
F-4E Phantom II was shot down today by the Syrians.
1975(8th of Iyar, 5735): Seventy-six-year-old
French author and historian Robert Aron passed away on the night before he was
scheduled to be formally inducted into Académie
Française
1976(19th of Nisan, 5736): Fifth Day
of Pesach
1976: Professor of Meteorology Tzvi Gal-Chen
and his wife gave birth to Rivka Galchen “a Canadian-American writer and
physician whose first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in
2008.” She has served as an adjunct professor in the writing division of
Columbia University's School of Art
1978: Yitzhak Navron was elected 5th President
of Israel.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/state/pages/yitzhak%20navon.aspx
1978: NBC broadcast “The Saving Remnant,” the
fourth and final episode of the mni-series “Holocaust”
1978: Following the withdrawal of Israeli
forces from Lebanon after Operation Litani, the South Lebanon Army (SLA)
shelled NIFIL headquarters.
1978: In Palo Alto, CA, Betsy Lou (née Verne), a
writer and occasional actress, and Douglas Eugene "Doug" Franco a
Silicon Valley businessman who met while they were students at Stanford gave
birth to James Franco “an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer,
teacher, author and poet.”
1979(22nd of Nisan, 5739): Eighth
Day of Pesach and Yizkor
1979: Five
Prisoners of Zion - Boris Penson, Anatoly Altman, Leib Khnokh, Hillel Butman
and Wolf Zalmanson – were “pardoned by the Soviet authorities and left for
Israel.
1981(15th of Nisan, 5741): Pesach is
observed for the first time under President Ronald Reagan.
1981(15th of Nisan, 5741): Eighty-five-year-old
Basel, Switzerland born “musicologist, composer, pianist and conductor” Ernst Levy
“an unusual and powerful pianist,” the author of A Theory of Harmony and the
father of “composer and cellist Frank Ezra Levy.”
1982: Aharon Abuhatzira was convicted today “of
larceny, breach of trust and fraud.”
1984(17th of Nisan, 5774): Third day
of Pesach
1984: In “Ernie Cobb Keeps Chasing a Dream”
published today Dave Anderson described how Ernie Cobb, who played basketball
in Israel when nobody else would give him a chance, overcame false charges that
he had taken point in a point-fixing conspiracy during while playing for Boston
College.
1985: In a joint ceremony, President Ronald
Reagan presented the Congressional Gold Medal to Elie Wiesel and on signed the
Jewish Heritage Week Proclamation at the same time that Wiesel “stirred deep emotions when he tried to
dissuade President Ronald Reagan from taking time from a planned trip to West
Germany to visit a military cemetery there, in Bitburg, where members of Hitler’s
elite Waffen SS were buried” saying “That place, Mr. President, is not your
place…Your place is with the victims of the SS.’
http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/resources/reagan.html
1986(10th of Nisan, 5746): Shabbat
HaGadol
1987: Lieutenant General Levi ended his term as
IDF Chief of Staff. The Tel Aviv native
joined the army in 1954 and took part in the parachute drop into the Mitla Pass
during the 1956 Sinai Campaign. He
passed away on January 8, 2008 (Shevat 1) at the age of 72.
1987: Today a series of shorts that would
become the Simpsons became a regular feature of the Tracey Ullman Show, a
creation of James. L. Brooks.
1989(14th of Nisan, 5749): Ta’anit
Bechroto; erev Pesach
1989: One day after he had passed way, 63-year-old
Brooklyn born Melvin Annenberg, a loan office with Merchants Bank in Syracuse
was buried in Temple Adath Yeshurun Cemetery.
1990(24th of Nisan, 5750):
Eighty-two-year-old Goldie (Peromsik) Arguss, the wife of Arthur Arguss passed
away today.
1991: “Drop Dead Fred” a comedy starring Phoebe
Cates was released today in the United States.
1993(28th of Nisan, 5753): Yom
HaShoah observed for the first time during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.
1993: Fifty years after the start of the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising, Lillian Lazar describes the fight against the Nazis.
1994: In
Riverside Park, as a small group gathered to remember the 51st anniversary of
the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Ruth W. Messinger's thoughts turned to what was
happening in Gorazde. "Remembering what happened in Warsaw helps us
express our outrage at what is now happening in Bosnia," said the
Manhattan Borough President, referring to the siege of the Bosnian town.
Benjamin Meed, another New Yorker, was living just outside the ghetto walls
when the rebellion began on April 19, 1943, a Jew with Aryan papers. "For
weeks I saw the ghetto burn," said the man who is now the president of the
Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization in America. "It was terrible. I
remember how I watched my neighbors go about their normal lives. There was a
carousel outside the ghetto walls that kept going. I cannot forget the
bystanders. Now, I cannot believe that after that the world could allow such a
thing today." By the time the handful of ghetto fighters had mounted their
valiant but hopeless uprising, there were 40,000 Jews left inside the ghetto
facing the fatal deportation that had already carried hundreds of thousands to
their deaths. Then, news of what was happening did not make its way easily from
Warsaw. Word comes more speedily from Gorazde, where there are reportedly 65,000
people huddling in flight from Serbian forces advancing into the city, and
United Nations officials have warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe.
1994: A Tenement Building at 97 Orchard Street,
New York City, NY was designated as a National Historic Landmark. “Built
between the years 1863-1864, the tenement building at 97 Orchard Street is
representative of the first surge in tenement construction in New York City
propelled by the need to accommodate the large influx of immigrants that were
settling in the Lower East Side during this period. The late nineteenth century
saw a precipitous increase in Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe, many of
whom settled in the Lower East Side. The building at 97 Orchard Street housed
numerous ethnic groups including Germans, Irish, Greek and Spanish, however,
the ethnic make-up of the tenement building between 1890 and well into the
1920s consisted entirely of Eastern European Jews. With its upper four floors
remaining virtually untouched for sixty years, the building readily conveys to
the present-day observer the harsh and confining living conditions experienced
by many immigrants in New York City during the latter part of the nineteenth
century, and Eastern European Jews in particular. During its period of highest
use, as many as 10,000 people may have inhabited the tenement building at 97
Orchard Street.”
1995(19th of Nisan, 5755): Fifth Day
of Pesach
1996: Boļeslavs Maikovskis, the Latvian Nazi
collaborator who lived undetected in New York for 36 before fleeing back to
Europe died today without ever answering for his crimes.
1997: Amid a ballroom filled with local
notables, and political dignitaries, the Jewish Chautauqua Society honored former U.S. Senator
Harris Wofford with its National Champion of Interfaith Award. For the Jewish Chautauquans, who promote
public service and interfaith dialogue, the award was especially relevant. Wofford,
a Democrat who represented Pennsylvania in the Senate, is the Clinton
administration's standard-bearer for volunteerism, the chief executive officer
of the Corporation for National Service.
1998: In
“The World; 50 Years Ago in Israel: Trying to Imagine the Future,” Marc D.
Charney traces the history of the Jewish state.
1998: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including “The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision” by Henry Kamen, ''The Discipline of Hope,'' by
Herbert Kohl, and “Bitch: In Praise of
Difficult Women” by Elizabeth Wurtzel.
2000(14th
of Nisan, 5760): Fast of the First Born observed for the last time during the
Presidency of Bill Clinton
2000(14th
of Nisan, 5760: As Jews sat down for the Seder, based on the number of sales,
thousands of Jews had their first chance to use the Reconstruction A Night
of Questions: A Passover Haggadah by Rabbis Joy Levitt and Michael
Strassfeld
2001(27th
of Nisan, 5761): Ninety-year-old Obie award winning playwright Lionel Abel “the
son of Alter Abelson, a rabbi and poet, and of Anna Schwartz Abelson, a writer
of short stories” passed away today.
2001(27th
of Nisan, 5761): Forty-five Ornan Yekutieli, a sixth-generation Israeli on his
father's side and a second-generation Holocaust survivor on his mother's side
who was born in Haifa in 1955 and was head of Jerusalem Now faction in the
Jerusalem City Council, passed away in New York while waiting for a liver
transplant.
2001: President and
Mrs. Bush participated in the “Days of Remembrance” Observance in the U.S.
Capitol. The President declared, “We are bound by conscience to remember what
happened, and to whom it happened.” Mrs. Bush participated in the lighting of
candles with a Holocaust survivor.
2001: At Colgate University’s Saperstein Jewish center Barry Strauss,
director of peace studies and a professor of history at Cornell University,
delivers a talk entitled “Massacre and Memory," followed by a discussion
of the 1914 massacre in a small Russian-Polish village, and its after-effects.
2002: This afternoon 250 Jews and 350 Palestinians shouted at each other across
Michigan Avenue in Chicago as the Arab-Israel conflict comes to the Windy City.
2003(17th of Nisan, 5763): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat
Chol HaMoed
2003: “Israel said today that it was willing to pull back troops, release
some Palestinian prisoners and ease travel restrictions if an emerging
Palestinian government made a serious effort to halt violence.”
2004(28th of Nisan, 5764): Yom HaShoah
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/61109#.U1CvjJtOWpp
2004(28th of Nisan, 5764): Samuel Ralph "Subway Sam"
Nahem a journey-man pitcher who began his career with Brooklyn in 1938 and
finished it with the Phillies in 1948 passed away today at the age of 88. Nahem came from a Jewish baseball family
since his uncle was outfielder Al Silvera.
2004: The Jewish Theological Seminary Board of Overseers organizes a fund
raiser that features a rare exhibition of original
copies of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, owned by Dorothy
Tapper Goldman. Proceeds from the event will enable JTS to make new
acquisitions.
2005: A new mikvah
designed by an Israeli architect was dedicated at the Grand Choral Synagogue in
St. Petersburg, Russia.
2005(10th of
Nisan, 5765): Seventy-nine-year-old pioneering jazz drummer Stan Levey passed
away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/nyregion/stan-levey-bebop-drummer-dies-at-79.html
https://jazztimes.com/news/drummer-stan-levey-dies/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1488901/Stan-Levey.html
2006: Haaretz
reported that a sixteen-year-old tourist from the
United States who sustained critical wounds in Monday's suicide bombing was
still in serious condition.The teenager was fighting for his life after doctors
operated on him most of the night. His injuries were mostly to his stomach and
internal organs and his aorta was torn, she said. The American boy's family did not want
any details about him released to the media.
2006(21st of Nisan, 5766): Members of
Portugal's Jewish community said prayers in a downtown Lisbon square to mark
the 500th anniversary of a massacre of thousands of Jews in the Portuguese
capital's streets. Chronicles from the time recount that when Catholic crowds,
incited by a small group of priests, ran amok for three days in 1506 at least
2,000 Jews were butchered and burnt alive. The violence was said to have broken
out after a local Jew questioned the validity of a supposed miracle. Lisbon at
the time was gripped by hunger amid a prolonged drought and was threatened by
an outbreak of the plague. Locals, encouraged by the Inquisition, sought divine
help. About 50 members of Lisbon's Jewish community, estimated to number around
1,000, gathered at dusk in a square next to the Maria II National Theater,
which was built on the site of an old Inquisition court. Participants declined
to speak to reporters, citing a religious prohibition. Portugal's King Manuel I
forced all Jews in his country to convert to Catholicism in 1496. Some fled,
but those who stayed were subjected to humiliating public baptisms. They were
designated "New Christians" or "Marranos," Iberian slang
for pigs. Even then, they remained at risk from religious persecution and lived
in designated Jewish quarters. In 1988, Portugal's then-president Mario Soares
formally apologized to Jews for the persecution.
2007: The Israel Opera presents the season’s
first performance of Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos.”
2007: A four day long International Conference
entitled “Children Hidden in Belgium during the Holocaust meeting in Israel
comes to an end.
2007: Paul “Kurtz appeared on Penn &
Teller's television show Bullshit! arguing that exorcism and Satanic cults are
merely "hype and paranoia.”
2007(1st of Iyar): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
2007: The
Jerusalem Post reported that A Bible that a condemned member of the
pre-state underground gave to his British prison guard minutes before he and a
fellow Zionist fighter killed themselves is to be returned by the guard's son
in Jerusalem today, six decades later. The saga dates back to 1947, when Meir
Feinstein, 19, and Moshe Barazani, 21, were sentenced to death by the Mandatory
authorities. Feinstein, of the Irgun, was condemned for his part in the bombing
of the Jerusalem train station, and Barazani, of Lehi (the Stern Gang), was arrested
with a grenade in his pocket while attempting to kill the city's British
military commander. The two men became friends in the Jerusalem Central Prison
and decided to blow themselves up rather than be hanged. Feinstein and Barazani
formed a connection with a British police guard at the prison, Thomas Henry
Goodwin, whom they dubbed "the good jailer." Right before their
deaths, Feinstein presented Goodwin with a personally inscribed illustrated
Bible. The Hebrew inscription read: "In the shadow of the gallows,
21.4.47. To the British soldier as you stand guard. Before we go to the
gallows, accept this Bible as a memento and remember that we stood in dignity
and marched in dignity. It is better to die with a weapon in hand than to live
with hands raised. Meir Feinstein" A separate, similar English inscription
was written below. Minutes later, after asking the guard for a moment of
privacy to say a few prayers - thereby saving his life - the two men killed
themselves with two booby-trapped oranges they'd hidden in their cell. Goodwin
only realized later that there was an inscription for him in the Bible.
"There is no doubt that they did not want to injure the guard. This is
unequivocal," said Underground Prisoners Museum director Yoram Tamir in
Jerusalem. Goodwin returned to the United Kingdom after Israel gained its
independence in 1948 and kept the Bible for the next half century. Before his
death, he asked his family to return it to the Feinstein family. Several months
ago, Goodwin's son Dennis contacted the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem
seeking to track down Feinstein's family and return the Bible. The Underground
Prisoners Museum was able to locate Meir Feinstein's nephew, Elazar Feinstein.
Today, Dennis Goodwin will return the Bible to Feinstein at the museum. Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert attends the ceremony, which is conducted in cooperation
with the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, and under the auspices of the Jewish
Agency and the Prime Minister's Office. The Bible will be put on display at the
Underground Prisoners Museum. Feinstein and Barazani are buried on the Mount of
Olives.
2008: Diversity of Devotion: Celebrating New
York’s Spiritual Harmony, an exhibit of photographs on display at the Brooklyn
Public Library celebrating Faith in its many forms comes to a close. The
Brooklyn Public Library show includes a photograph of Rabbi Levy and Rabbi
Eliyahu of Congregation Beth Elohim in Queens taken by photographer and Forward
contributor Julian Voloj. The work was drawn from Voloj’s series of photos on
black Jews in America.
2008: Palestinian suicide bombers from Gaza
drove three explosives-laden vehicles into the Kerem Shalom goods crossing on
the border with Israel early today.
2008(14th of Nisan, 5768): Just as it did 65
years ago, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising falls on the same day
on both the secular and Jewish calendars.
2008(14th of Nisan, 5768): In the evening, the
first Seder marks the start of Pesach.
2008: The last
surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising paid silent tribute to the
young Jews who launched the doomed revolt against Nazi troops 65 years ago. Marek
Edelman, 89, handed yellow tulips and daffodils to his grandchildren, Liza and
Tomek. He watched as they placed them at the foot of the gray-and-black
Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto, located in a barren square at the heart
of the former ghetto. Accompanied by a crowd of a few hundred people in wet
weather, Edelman, in a wheelchair, moved on to nearby monuments to leaders of
the ghetto revolt, before ending in a square where the Nazis put more than
300,000 Jews on trains to Auschwitz and other death camps. At a separate
ceremony, members of the Jewish community read out the names of some of those
killed in the uprising and then formed a human chain in front of the ghetto
heroes' monument, as sirens wailed and military guards fired three rounds of
gunfire as a sign of mourning. The uprising was the first act of large-scale
armed civilian resistance against the Germans in occupied Poland during World
War II. The Nazis walled off the ghetto in November 1940, cramming 400,000 Jews
from across Poland into it, under inhuman conditions. On April 19, 1943, German
troops started to liquidate the ghetto by sending tens of thousands of its
residents to death camps. In the face of imminent death, several hundred young
Jews took up arms in defense of the civilians. They held off German troops for
three weeks with homemade explosives and a cache of smuggled weapons. The
uprising ended when its main leaders - rounded up by the Nazis - committed
suicide on May 8, 1943. The Nazis then razed the ghetto, street by street.
Today’s commemorations followed official events held Tuesday, to avoid
coinciding with the Jewish Sabbath. President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and
President Shimon Peres of Israel led those observances.
2009: The New York Times featured
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish
readings including “Shadow and Light” by Jonathan Rabbn, “How Free Is Free? The
Long Death of Jim Crow” by Leon F. Litwack and the recently released
paperback edition of “Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the
Borderlands” by Michael Chabon.
2009: At NYU’s Bronfman Center for Jewish
life people from all over New York City join in “Sing Out Israel,” an event
featuring familiar Israeli and Jewish tunes.
2009: A.B.
Yehoshua, the award-winning Israeli author, reads from and discusses his most
recent novel, “Friendly Fire,” and chats about his life as a writer and his
thoughts on Israel in a conversation with Leon Wieseltier, at the Sixth and I
Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
2009: The Illinois Holocaust
Museum & Education Center opened today under rainy skies, with several
thousand people seated beneath large tents, their enthusiasm shown in a
standing ovation for survivors.
2010: As part of its Graduate Seminar Program, The
Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present a program entitled “‘Gentleman's
Agreement’ and ‘Crossfire’:
Anti-Semitism at the Movies”
2010:
Terminal 5 is scheduled to host New York’s community-wide Yom Ha'Atzmaut
celebration honoring Israel's fallen and celebrating 62 years of independence
at what is described as the largest Yom Ha'Zikaron/Yom Ha'Atzmaut gathering in
the world outside of Israel!
2010(5th
of Iyar, 5770): Yom Hazikaron
2010(5th
of Iyar, 5770): Felicia
Haberfeld, a native of Poland who fought to reclaim her husband's ancestral
home in Auschwitz decades after it was seized by the Nazis, died today at the
age of 98 in Los Angeles. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/01/local/la-me-felicia-haberfeld-20100501
2010: The
State Department summoned the senior Syrian diplomat in Washington to accuse
his government of "provocative behavior" in supplying scud ballistic
missiles to Hezbollah.
2011(15
Nisan, 5711): First Day of Pesach
2011: “Adnan
Dameery, spokesperson for the Palestinian Security Forces, reported DNA tests
had exonerated a detained suspect and that the masked gunman who had murdered
Juliano Mer-Khamis, the former IDF paratrooper and filmmaker, was still at
large.
2011: In
the evening Second Seder. Somewhere a
person with roots in the Gibraltar Jewish Community will say “Todo el que tenga
hambre, venga y coma, todo el que tenga menester, venga y pascue” (Anyone who
is hungry come and eat; all who have need, come and celebrate) as they follow
that community’s custom of reciting the Haggdah in Ladino for the Second Seder.
2011: In
the third such attack in Greece in less than 2 years, arsonists break into
Corfu island synagogue and damage at least 30 prayer books
2011: Steve
Soboroff was hired by Frank McCourt to be the Vice Chairman of the Los Angeles
Dodgers baseball team. (Soboroff was Jewish)
2011: A
revival performance of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” opened today
2011: “Venerable Art Dealer Is
Enmeshed in Lawsuits” published today looks at the challenges facing 65-year-old
Guy Wildenstein, the leader of “a discreet dynasty of Jewish art dealers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/arts/design/wildenstein-art-gallery-is-beset-by-lawsuits.html
2012(27th
of Nisan, 5772): Yom Hashoah
2012: “Spoken
Word and Music Performance” a Holocaust Remembrance Day observance co-sponsored
by La Maison Francaise is scheduled to take place at the Embassy of France in
Washington, D.C.
2012:
Holocaust survivor and Director of the ADL, Abraham Foxman is scheduled to
appear at the Illinois Holocaust Museum’s Yom Hashoah memorial event.
2012:
Yad Vashem will publish thousands
of new documents today gleaned from national and KGB archives from the former
Soviet Union on this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
2012:” Remembrance”
a film that depicts a love story between a German Jew and a
Polish
Catholic that blossomed amid the terror of Auschwitz in 1944 is scheduled to be
shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.
2012: The
world’s most wanted living Nazi collaborator is Laszlo Csatary, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center said in its annual report today (As reported by Gil Shefler)
2012:
Left-wing extremists defaced three
monuments to Israeli terror victims and fallen members of the security services
in the Jordan Valley, police discovered today, just one week before Israel
honors its war dead.
2012: Irwin
M. Jacobs “was named the W. P. Carey School of Business Dean’s Council of 100
Executive of the Year, which honors change-making business leaders who serve as
models for today’s business students”
2012: Yad
Vashem is scheduled to publish “thousands of new documents gleaned from
national and KGB archives from the former Soviet Union on this year’s Holocaust
Remembrance Day. The new archival material – totaling approximately one million
new documents – is available following several international agreements made in
the past four years with national archives and those with the KGB from the
former USSR.”
2013: The
Maccabeats are scheduled to perform at a Shabbat Event at the University of
Illinois sponsored by Chabad.
2013: “No
Place on Earth” is scheduled to premiere in Portland, Oregon and Chicago,
Illinois.
2013(9th
of Iyar, 5773): Ninety-two-year-old Francois Jacob, the recipient of the 1965
Nobel Prize in Medicine passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Francois_Jacob.html
2013(9th
of Iyar, 5773): Eighty-year-old computer and math wizard Kenneth I. Appel
passed away today.
2013(9th
of Iyar, 5773): Ninety-five-year photographer turned actor Allan Arbus best
known for his role as the quirky psychiatrist on “M*A*S*H,” passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/23/local/la-me-allan-arbus-20130424
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/arts/television/allan-arbus-mash-actor-dies-at-95.html?hpw&_r=1&
2013(9th
of Iyar, 5773): Eighty-three-year-old children author and illustration E. L.
Konigsburg passed away today.
2013: A
dinner to help raise funds for research on treating Glycogen Storage Disease, a
rare Ashkenazi Jewish liver disorder is scheduled to be held at the Coral
Springs Marriott.
2013: On
the secular calendar, 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005188
2013: A
complex $10 billion arms deal in its final stages would strengthen two key Arab
allies – the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - while maintaining Israel's
military edge, US defense officials said today.
2013: Following
the public outrage over a debt arrangement between Bank Leumi and tycoon Nochi
Dankner’s Ganden Holdings Ltd., the bank announced this afternoon that it was
backing out of the arrangement.
http://www.jpost.com/Business/Business-News/Bank-Leumi-backs-out-of-Dankner-debt-arrangement-310404
2014: “The Last Act of
Lilka Kadison” is scheduled to have its final performance today at the Falcon
Theatre in Burbank
2014: In Poland,
observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day which coincides with the anniversary of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
2014: The main synagogue in Nikolayev, located in the southeast
of Ukraine, was firebombed today when two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the
synagogue’s door and window. (As reported by JTA)
2014: “Paris-Manhattan”
is scheduled to be shown at the JCC Rockland International Jewish Film
Festival.
2014: Premiere of “5 to
7” directed by Victor Levin at the Tribeca Film Festival.
2015: “The Art Dealer”
is scheduled to be shown as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival.
2015: “G-D’s Honest
Truth” is scheduled to be performed for the last time at Theatre J in
Washington, D.C.
2015: In Washington,
D.C. Dr. Samuel Gruber is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “ Before
Modernism: American Synagogue Architecture Before WW II.”
2015(30th of
Nisan, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
2015: “American Jewish
comedian Amy Schumer” talked about her “new film ‘Trainwreck’” today “at the
2015 Tribeca Film Festival.”
2015(30th of
Nisan 5775): Eleven days before his one hundredth birthday Elio Toaff who
served as Chief Rabbi of Rome from 1951 to 2002 passed away today.
2015: The New York
Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish
readers including The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
by Eugene Rogan and the recently released paperback edition of Mad As Hell:
The Making of “Network” and the Fateful
Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies by
Dave Itzkoff
2015: In commemoration of Yom HaShoah the Guy
Mendilow Ensemble and the Philadelphia Girls’ Choir are scheduled to a perform
a concert that includes compositions in English and Ladino that takes us "musical
trek from bustling Mediterranean ports and resplendent Balkan capitals to
communities shattered in the Second World War and all but forgotten" at
the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia.
2015: Today’s Yom Hashoah observance at the
William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, GA is scheduled to include a
speech by Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat and the Atlanta Boy Choir performing “I
Never Saw Another Butterfly.”
2015: The President’s Residence announced today
that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Reuven Rivlin
tomorrow “to request an extension in forming” a new government. (Times of
Israel)
2015: “Hundreds of people commemorated the 72nd
anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising” this afternoon in
the Polish capital city.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/poles-mark-72nd-anniversary-of-warsaw-ghetto-uprising/
2015: “Hungarian Holocaust survivors rescued 70
years ago from a train taking them from one concentration camp to another today
paid tribute to the American soldiers who helped liberate them.”
2015: The 12th annual “March of Good
Will” a demonstration against anti-Semitism took place today in Prague.
2016(11th of
Nisan, 5576): Ninety-three-year-old Nobel Prize laureate Walter Kohn passed
away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/science/walter-kohn-nobel-winning-scientist-dies-at-93.html
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1998/kohn-bio.html
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1998/kohn-bio.html
2016: The American
Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Kosher USA: How Coca-Cola
Came to the Passover Seder and Other Tales of Modern Kosher Food” which “follows
the journey of kosher foods through the modern industrial food system, traces
how iconic products such as Coca Cola tried to become kosher, what made
Manischewitz wine the very first kosher name brand to gain an African American
audience, and more.
2016: In “Streti’s
Matzo, a New York Tale of a Lost Love” published today Nicolas Rapold provided
a review of a documentary about the Big Apple and the Bread of Affliction.
2016: Future Treasury
Secretary Steve Mnuchin, “an early Trump supporter” attended Trump’s victory
party “after the New York Republican primary” today.
2016: In an appearance
sponsored by the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund, “Magda Brown, who was 17 years
old in 1944 when she and her family were deported on one of the final
transports to Auschwitz-Birkenau” is scheduled to speak at Kennedy Sr. High
School.
2016(11th of Nisan, 5776): Hungarian native and Holocaust survivor Joseph Altman, the
award winning NYU trained biologist and neurobiologist Joseph Altmaan the
husband, successively of Elizabeth Altman and Shirley A. Bayer passed away
today.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cne.24058
2016: “Norman Lear:
Just Another Version of You” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish
Film Festival.”
2016(11th of Nisan,
5776): Fifty-one-year-old Israeli movie star Ronit Elkabetz passed away today.
2016: All decent human
beings pray for the recovery of 15 year old Eden Dadon and all of the other
victims of yesterday’s terrorist bus bombing in Jerusalem as they fight to
recover from their wounds and burns.
2017(23rd of
Nisan, 5777): Ninety-six-year-old Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg, the former
publisher of The Chattanooga Times, the Sulzberger paper before the New York
Times, passed away today.
2017: The UK Jewish
Film Organization is scheduled to sponsor a screening of “The Pickle Recipe” in
Glasgow, Scotland
2017: The UK Jewish
Film Organization is scheduled to host a special preview screening of “The
Zookeeper’s Wife” at the Phoenix Cinema.
2017: “Barney’s
Version” and “Weirdos” are scheduled to be shown at the Vancouver Jewish Film
Centre. 2017: “An Israeli computer scientist,” “Adi, Sahmir, a professor at the
Weizmann Institute” is scheduled to receive a Japan Prize today as recognition
“for his contribution to information security through pioneering research on
cryptography.”
2017: Poland’s chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich led “the burial
ceremony of Torah Scrolls in the Warsaw
Jewish Cemetery” today.
2017: “Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu faced harsh criticism from bereaved parents today over his
management of the 2014 Gaza war during an emotional three-and-a-half-hour-long
hearing, including a series of heated back and forths between politicians and
families of those killed in battle.”
2017: “Holocaust Escape
Tunnel,” a “Nova” production shown this evening, sheds new light on the attempt
by 80 imprisoned men and women — mostly Lithuanian Jews — to make a break for
freedom in the face of Nazi bullets.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/science-helped-verify-this-unbelievable-holocaust-escape-story/
2018(4th of
Iyar): Israel Independence Day observed since the fifth of Iyar falls on erev
Shabbat;
2018: The Jewish
Federation of Cleveland is scheduled to host Israeli singer-songwriter David
Broza at its Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration at Landerhaven,
2018: “Pioneer Women,”
a statue created by Leo Friedlander, that “was commissioned as part of the
Texas Centenary celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of Texas
Independence from Mexico” and is on the campus of Texas Woman’s College in
Denton, TX “was added to the National Register of Historic Places” today.
2018: “Ina Lancman,
daughter of Naftali Herts Kon, well-known Yiddish poet and writer, are
scheduled to give a presentation together with Polish attorney Tomasz T.
Koncewicz. Lancman that will focus on Naftali Herts Kon’s literary career and
the stirring story of his persecution and the confiscations of his papers under
the Soviet and communist Poland regimes”
https://www.yivo.org/Naftali-Herts-Kon
2018: Natan Sharansky
is scheduled to receive his Israel Prize for promoting immigration today as
part of Israel’s Independence Day celebrations
2019: Volodymyr
Zelenskyy participated in the presidential debates at Olimpiysky National
Sports Complex.
2019: On the 76th
anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, it has been reported that “Hamburg
prosecutors have charged a 92 year old former concentration camp guard” “identified only as Bruno D. of aiding and
abetting 5,230 case of murder during the almost nine months he spent on duty
at” Stutthof Concentration Camp as a member of the SS.
2019: In one of those
Calendar Coincidences, on the Gregorian calendar, Good Friday, which marks one
of the most famous Passover related events in history coincides with the start
of Passover in the evening. For more see
The Trial and Death of Jesus by Haim Cohn.
2019(14th of
Nissan, 5779): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach;
2020(25th of
Nisan, 5780):
2020: In Coralville,
IA, the pandemic does not halt the learning as Kathy Jacobs is scheduled to
lead an introductory y session about Mussar, thanks to the wonders of Zoom.
2020: In Atlanta, GA,
the Breman Museum is scheduled to broadcast “a very special Yom HaShoah message
online and through social media” featuring Ilse Eichner Reiner, Holocaust
survivor, and a Anat Sultan-Dadon, Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern
United States.
2020: The Jewish
Community Relations Council of Greater Boston is scheduled to host “Virtual Yom
HaShoah Remembrance & Reflection”
2020: Since Jews only
eat two times – when they are sad and when they are happy – in Cleveland,
“Nathan, Seth, Eric and Angie are standing by for your orders as “Kantina” is
scheduled to open today with curbside pickup and home delivery.
https://www.kantinakatering.com/
2020: The New York Times features reviews by
Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including When
Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains by Ariana
Neumann, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the
Poisoning of America by Gerald Posner, The
Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency
by Daniel W. Drezner and Wayside School Beneaeth the Cloud of Doom by
Louis Sachar
2020: Today, Israelis
are scheduled to feel the first full day of the government’s plan to open the
economy which were announced last and will be reviewed in two weeks.
2020: ““A Slippery Slope:
Jews, Schmaltz and Crisco” during which Rachel Gross, American Jewish studies
chair at SFSU, talks about how Crisco began in 1913 with intense marketing
toward Jewish women, who in turn began relinquishing authority to corporate
“experts” is scheduled to be “organized on Zoom by Jewish LearningWorks” this
afternoon.
2020: Yom HaShoah
Commemoration at Beth Hillel Bnai Emunah, in Wilmette, Illinois, scheduled for
today has been canceled due to the Pandemic.
2021: S.F. Bay Area
Jewish Genealogical Society is scheduled to offer a class on organizing your
boxes of photos, with tips on getting started, setting goals and not getting
stressed out led by photographer Susan Gerbic.
2021: Taube Center for
Jewish Studies is scheduled to present Penn State professor Lior Sternfeld
talking about his book, Iran and Zion, on the Jewish history of
20th-century Iran.
2021: Temple Emanuel
(Wakefield) is scheduled to present online “Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older.”
2021: In conjunction
with East Bay Int’l Jewish Film Festival streaming this 2020 documentary “Holy
Silence,” historian Fred Rosenbaum is scheduled to talk about the controversial
role of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during World War II.
2022(18th of
Nisan, 5782): Fourth Day of Pesach
2022: On the secular
calendar, 247th anniversary of Lexington and Concord which, on the
Jewish calendar, fell on the 5th day of Pesach
2022: On the secular
calendar, 79th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
2022: In New Orleans
Touro Synagogue is scheduled to host its Board Meeting
2022: The Virtual
Passover Film Festival, presented by the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
scheduled to continue for a fifth day.
2022: “Leket Israel’s
Passover Family Open Picking Days” is scheduled to come to an end today.
2022: The London School
of Jewish Studies is scheduled to offer in person the “British Museum Matazah
Ramble” with Rabbi Raphael Zaru,
2022: In Walnut Creek,
CA, Chabad of Contra Coast is schedule to host a seder led in Russian by
Ukrainian-born Rabbi Yitzchok Tsap.
2022: In Palo Alto, CA,
the Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to host “Roses and Almonds: Songs of the
Sephardim” during “Bay Area trio Aquila will perform a concert of Sephardic
music celebrating life, love, food, drink, nature, spirituality, adventure and
humor.”
2023: The Walnut Street
Synagogue is scheduled to host on-line an online exploration of Jewish food
traditions and the historical connections between Jews and food with Jewish
food researcher Joel Haber.
2023:The Jewish
Community is scheduled to present “The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud”
during which Nathan Szajnberg will discuss his soon-to-be-published book
comparing Maimonides’ “The Guide for the Perplexed” and Freud’s “The
Interpretation of Dreams,” and how the former could be be perceived as
anticipating that latter.
2023: The Vilna Shul,
Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present on online lecture,
“The Jewish Deli Revival: Consuming American Jewish Nostalgia,” in which
professor Rachel Gross will examine how restaurateurs are making American
Jewish food fit for the 21st century, emphasizing sustainability and local
produce.
2023: The Streicker
Center is scheduled to host the first session of Naomi Miller Beginners’
Yiddish: Shopping, Cooking Inviting and Easting for the Jewish Holidays.”
2024: All Jewish
Theatre is scheduled to host “Prompt/ ‘ingredients’ go out for Bake-Off, plus
actor and director sign-up sheet.”
2024: The Museum at
Eldridge Street is scheduled to host a Walking Tour of the Jewish Lower East
Side where participants can “explore an era of unparalleled growth as waves of
immigrants settled, prayed, played, worked, shopped, and attended school in
this neighborhood as they built their new lives in a new land.”
2024: At Temple Judea, an
Oneg is scheduled to be held before Shabbat Worship with Rabbi Yaron and Cantor
Abbie – Freedom Shabbat – featuring the Tabernacle Baptist Choir.
2024: The Lexington
Venue in Lexington, MA, The Circle Cinema in Tulsa, OK and the Manor Theatre
are scheduled to host screening of “Farewell Mister Hafman,” a film that tells
the story of a Jewish jeweler trying to survive the Nazi occupation of Paris.
2024: As April 19th
begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin day 196
in captivity. (Editor’s note:
this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a
snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time.)
2025: 250th
anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord
2025(21st of
Nisan, 5785): Seventh Day of Pesach when “we read how on this day the sea
split for the Children of Israel and drowned the pursuing Egyptians, and the
"Song at the Sea" sung by the people upon their deliverance”
2025: As April 19th
begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of ant-Semitism sweeps across the globe
that includes the fire-bombing of the mansion housing the family of Governor
Josh Shapiro on Pesach, the reality is that the remaining Hamas held hostages
begin day 561 in captivity (Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this
blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight
Israeli time)
2026: The Temple
Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host a concert with Achinoam “Noa”
Nini, Grammy-winning Ukrainian Jewish pianist Ruslan Sirota and drummer Daniel
Dor.
2026: The Jewish
Heritage Alliance and Jewish Virtual Library are scheduled to host “Part II of
a four-part series, The Western Sephardic Atlantic: Renewal, Influence, and
Legacy.”
2026: In Columbus, OH,
Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host an evening of Sushi and Sake accompanied
by a karaoke sing along.
2026: The Jewish
Heritage Museum of Monmouth County, NJ is scheduled to host a screening of “Malka,”
starring Tovah Feldshuh followed by a Q and A with the filmmakers
2026: The Institute of
Jewish Rock is scheduled to host an Israeli Bruch at Malka in West Palm Beach,
FL.
2026: Professor Admiel
is scheduled to deliver an online lecture in which he” will delve into the
demand for boarding schools in light of the Baal Shem Tov revolution at the
beginning of the Hasidic movement in the 18th century” after which he we will
examine deep insights into the life of the soul, which also resonate in
surprising ways in the thought of Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm.”
2026: As April 19th begins in Israel, the citizenry is deciding whether or not to attend protests scheduled to take place outside the homes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana on Sunday morning. (Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time)
