Sunday, November 19, 2023

This Day, November 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

 November 20

331 BCE (21st of Kislev, 3431): According to the Talmud, Simeon the Just destroyed the Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim.  The Samaritans had undermined the efforts during the post-exilic period and this move was as much about establishing political sovereignty as it was about wiping out a “high place” intended to compete with Jerusalem.  The victory was marked by a minor festival called Mt. Gerizim Day.

284: Diocletian was chosen as Roman Emperor.  Diocletian began a policy of subdividing the various provinces of the Roman Empire into increasingly smaller administrative units.  Palestine, the name the Romans gave to Eretz Israel, was divided into three territories: Palaestina Prima including Judea, Samaria, and the coastal plain, Iduemea and Peraea with Caesarea (the one on the Mediterranean that had played such a key role in the Great Revolt against Rome) as its capital; Palaestina Secunda, consisting of the Galilee and the Golan with Beth-shean (the city to which the ancient Philistines had taken King Saul’s decapitated body) as its capital; Palaestina Terita consisting primarily of the Negev with Petra as its capital.  In a further division of powers, each of these new subdivisions had a military and a civilian head. All of the new bureaucrats who came with these new subdivisions took on aura of divinity connected in keeping with their role as representatives of the Divine Emperor.  What it meant for the people of the empire was further subjugation and impoverishment.  Diocletian was also the last of the Roman Emperors took actively persecute the Christians.  His ultimate successor would adopt a policy that represented a 180 degree and would mark even worse times for the Jewish people.

542: The Nea Church which contains a the Madaba Map, the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem as part of its floor mosaic was dedicated today.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/02/10/jerusalem.road.discovery/index.html?hpt=T2

http://web.archive.org/web/20111021010325/http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Early%20History%20-%20Archaeology/Jerusalem-%20the%20Nea%20Church%20and%20the%20Cardo

1194: Palermo, Sicily, is conquered by Emperor Henry VI. By the time of Henry’s conquest, Jews had been living on the island of Sicily for over a thousand years. Jews had been living in Palermo since the sixth century because we have evidence that in 590 “Pope Gregory the Great ordered the ecclesiastical authorities to reimburse the Jews of Palermo for the damage suffered by the expropriation of their synagogue.” Furthermore, just prior to the conquest, the famous traveler Benjamin of Tudela mentioned the Jewish community of Palermo in his writings.

1272: Edward I proclaimed King of England. Edward is remembered as the English king, who, after stripping the Jews of their wealth, expelled them from his realm in 1290.

1316: King John I of France died.  His father, Louis X had issued a decree in 1315 allowing the Jews to return.  We do not know how John felt about the Jews (or anything else for that matter) since he only lived for five days.  We do know that the Jews were allowed to remain in France until the end of the 14th century when they were again expelled.

1316: King Phillip V, also called Phillip the Long or Phillip the Tall began his reign during which “300,000 men, headed by a deposed priest and a renegade monk began their desultory march to the Holy Land: which included ravaging the Jews of Navarre, slaying 6,000 Jews in Estella and laying siege to Verdun where the Jews took their own lives rather than the victims of this so-called “Shepherd’s Crusade”

1451: Pope Nicholas V issued an edict empower the bishop of Osma and the vicar of Salamana to appoint new inquisitors to examine the cases of "new-Christians suspected of Judaizing.  The inquisitors were authorized to punish the convict, imprison them, confiscate their goods and disgrace them, to degrade even priests and hand them over to the secular arm - a church euphemism for condemning them to the heretic's stake.

1521: All Jewish wine was dumped by Arabs and heavy fines imposed on the Jewish community of Jerusalem. The Arabs blamed the Jewish use of wine for a severe water shortage. 

1600: Robert Wilson “the Elizabethan dramatist” who “is generally accepted as the author of The Three Ladies of London,” a play that portrayed Jews in a sympathetic light which went against the accepted view of them usurers and Shylocks passed away today.

1616: Bishop Richelieu becomes French minister of Foreign affairs/War.  Richelieu was the power behind the throne during the reign of King Louis XIII. Any decree issued over the signature of Louis was probably written by Richelieu.   While Jews had long been banished from France, exceptions were made. For example, when the French captured the city of Metz, a special letter was posted allowing the Jews to remain because their presence was a necessity for the good of the Kingdom.  Furthermore, the ban against Jews was not enforced during Louis XIII’s reign in his overseas possessions. Once again, thanks to economic needs, in places such as Martinique, the Jews were allowed to settle while engaged in trade and practicing their faith.

1657(24th of Kislev, 5418): Manasseh Ben Israel passed away. Manasseh Ben Israel will always be remembered as the Jewish leader who negotiated with Oliver Cromwell to gain the right for Jews to settle in England.

http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/jb-Menasseh-ben-Israel

https://archive.org/details/menassehbenisra00isragoog

http://www.jewish-history.com/Occident/volume3/may1845/menasseh.html

1685: In Burlington, NJ, Elizabeth Harvey and John Day gave birth to Elizabeth Day, the wife of Thomas I. Branson with whom she had 13 children.

1729(10th of Kislev, 5490): Isaac de Sequeira Samuda, a British physician and poet, the first Jew to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (in 1727) and who in 1728, he gave an oration at the funeral of Haham David Nieto passed away today after which “he was buried in the Portuguese Jews' "Velho" (Old) Cemetery in Mile End Road, Stepney…”

1738: Amsterdam native Hannah Solomons married Prussian born Benjamin Sheftall today in Savannah, GA, after which they had two children, Levi and Solomon.

1766: Birthdate of Rebeca Barnett, daughter of Nathan Barnett and younger sister of Love Barnett

1772: In Philadelphia, PA, Sara Cohen and Henry Marks gave birth to Hyman Marks, the husband of Grace Siexas Judah with whom he had 7 children.

1774: Hart Aaron, “a Long Island Merchant” and “Shochet in New York City married Richa Simson today.

1775: In New York City, Rachel Mears and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Judah Isaacks.

1778: In Amsterdam, Belia Meijer Wolfe and Emanuel Levie Duitz gave birth to Elias Emanuel Duitz.

1779: Marks Lazarus and his wife gave birth to Benjamin Lazarus who died in infancy.

1785: “The earliest known Yiddish letter from the United States was written by Barnard Gratz of Philadelphia to his brother Michael in London today.

1789: New Jersey became the first state to ratify the amendments to the U.S. Constitution known as the Bill of Rights with its guarantee of Freedom of Religion.  It would take another two years for the Bill of Rights to become part of the Constitution. Virginia would put it over the top in December of 1791.

1790: Governor of Georgia Edward Telfair authorized a charter for the "Parnas and Adjuntas of Mickve Israel at Savannah" under which the congregation still operates.

1796: David Levy married Hannah Solomons at the Great Synagogue today.

1808: During a debate on “Jewish emancipatory legislation Friedrich Leopold Freiherr von Schrötter, the Prussian minister of state and veteran of the Seven Years War, expressed his opinion about the demonstration of “Jewish valor on the battle field in which he said “The Jew has fiery oriental blood in his veins and vivid imagination, all indicative of virile courage, when utilized and carried into practice.  He was very brave in the ancient and middle epochs and even in very recent times” during “the American as well as French Revolutionary Wars.  The timidity of the Jews arises, according to my opinion, from the serfdom in which they are kept and from the contempt in which all nations regard them.”

1811: Moses Phillips married Esther Jacobs at the Great Synagogue today.

1816: Birthdate of Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, the native of Mir, Belarus, who was “also known as Reb Hirsch Leib Berlin, and commonly known by the acronym Netziv amd was an Orthodox rabbi, dean of the Volozhin Yeshiva and author of several works of rabbinic literature in Lithuania.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/naftali-tzvi-yehudah-berlin-the-netziv

1820: Teresa Barbarin and Baruh Jonas, the Devon, England born son of Annie Ezekiel and Benjamin Jonas were married today in New Orleans.

1823: Birthdate of Baruch Hirsch Strousberg, the native of Neidenburg, East Prussia, who gained fame as Christian convert Bethel Henry Strousberg, the German industrialist who lost most of his railway empire following business reverses that took place after the Franco-Prussian War.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9505E1D6113BE033A25755C1A9609C94659FD7CF

1824: Kitty Etting and Benjamin I. Cohen who were married in 1819 gave birth to Benjamin Cohen who would only live for 13 months.

1827(1st of Kislev, 5588): Rosh Chodesh

1827: One day after she had passed away, 34 year old Sophia (Minden) Cohen the wife of Aaron Cohen, was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1829: The Jews were expelled from the Russian cities of Nikolayev and Sevastopol.

1833: Samuel Cohen married Hannah Phillips at the Great Synagogue today.

1836: Seventy year old Aaron Lazarus, who had married Ann Levy after his first wife Sophia Lehman had passed away, was buried today in the United Kingdom.

1842: Birthdate of Italian lawyer, editor and political leader Caser Porec.

1842: Morris Lee married Rebecca Duke today in the City of London

1845: Bolette Salomonsen and Zacharias Isaac Levy gave birth to Herman Levy who was buried in Denmark when he passed away in 1895.

1845: In Philadelphia, Clarissa Alman and Joseph M. Asch gave birth toe Charles J. Asch, who enlisted in the Union Army in 1862 and later served as “a special gent of the War Department in Washington, D.C.”

1847: In St. Louis, Austrian Jewish immigrants Anna Abeles and “wool broker” Charles Taussig gave birth to U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Rear Admiral U.S.N. Edward David Taussig who was raised as a Unitarian, who was the first in a four generational family that graduated from Annapolis and who played an active role in the Pacific Theatre during the Spanish American War.

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-people/t/taussig-edward-d.html

1849(5th of Kislev, 5610): Hannah Levy, the Dutch born daughter of Isaac Levy and the wife of Eleazar Lyons who she married at Harrisburg in 1776 passed away today in Philadelphia.

1850: Birthdate of Joseph Samuel Bloch, an Austrian rabbi, who aggressively fought August Rohling, one of the leading Austrian anti-Semites – a stand which resulted in his being elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

1850: In Columbia, SC, Rabbi P.S. Jacobs officiated at the wedding of Jacob Levin and Julia Mordecai.

1856: Birthdate of Piemonte, Italy native and coal dealer Pacifico Ghiron the husband of Ida Dolce Foa Ghiron and the father of Anna Ghiron Fubini.

1857: In Westphalia, German Solomon Spiegel and Rosalie Herzberg gave birth to Cincinnati trained lawyer Frederick S. Spiegel, the husband of Minnie Steinberg who became a Judge of Court of Common Pleas in the 1st Judicial District of Ohio.

1858: The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York addressed a letter to President James Buchanan concerning the Mortara Case. The letter included reference to the letter sent by London Committee of Deputies of British Jews “to their brethren in the United States” seeking their support in having the boy who was kidnapped in Bologna returned to his family.  The letter informed the President of the support being offered by several European nations and of plans to hold a public meeting to enlist public support in the United States. The committee reminded President Buchanan of the prompt action taken by President Van Buren in 1840 when he was asked to intervene to aid the persecuted Jews of Damascus and expressed the hope that he would do the same.

1858: At Vienna, Dr. of Jurisprudence Gustav Fruend and Rosa Fruend gave birth to Dr. of Jurisprudence Hugo Freund.

1858(13th of Kislev, 5619): Hirsch Edelman, the native of White Russia, who worked at Oxford’s Bodelian Library where he produced several works on of the most famous of which was Derekh Tovim: The Path of Good Men, “a compilation of writings by Judah ibn Tibbon and Maimonides along with Arabic and Greek proverbs in Hebrew” passed away today.

1859: In Lancaster, PA, Moses Aaron and his wife gave birth to Israel Aaron the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as a rabbi at Fort Wayne, Indiana, before filling the pulpit at Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, NY.

1859: In Chicago, Jacob Alschuler and his wife gave birth to attorney Samuel Alschuler, the Democratic state legislator who lost in elections for Congress (1892) and governor of Illinois (1900).

1863: During the Civil War, Philadelphian Albert M. Sigmund completed his service as an Assistant Surgeon with the 38th Regiment.

1864(21st of Cheshvan, 5625): Fifty-year old Jacob Ezekiel Lowy, the nation of Austrian Silesia passed at Beuthen where he had been serving as rabbi since 1854.passed away today.

1869: In Kalwaria, Poland, Nehemiah Spectorsky and Hannah Leah Hirschberg give birth to Isaac Spectorsky, the husband of Frances Hurwitz and graduate of the “New York University School of Pedagogy” who was superintendent of the Education Alliance in New York and assistant principal of the Baron de Hirsch Trade School as well as the editor of the Cleveland Jewish Free Press and the author of Yiddish Method of English for Immigrants.

1870: It was reported today that Robert C. De Large, a mulatto with a Jewish father has defeated Mr. C.C. Bowen in the race for the Second Congressional District in South Carolina. A Republican, Mr. De Large “combines the shrewdness of the Jew with the intuitive cleverness of the negro…”

1871: In Vienna, Louisa Wolf and Alexander Gutermann gave birth to City College of New York graduate and humor poet Arthur Guiterman, the husband of Louisa Wolf  and editor of both the Woman’s Home Companion and the Literary Digest who was a cofounder of the Poetry Society of America.

1874: Thirty-two year old Joseph Naphthaly, the Prussian born son of Samuel and Julia Naphthaly and San Francisco lawyer and his wife Sarah, “the daughter of Blaize L. and Pauline Schhmitt” gave birth to Samuel Leon, their first born child.

1874: In Allegheny City, PA, Henry and Henrietta (Naumburg) Rosenberg gave birth to Columbia trained Attorney and “Renaissance man” whose interests included art and poetry who was the husband of Bessie Herman, the son-in-law of Boston shoe manufacturer Joseph Herman and the father Elizabeth Rosenberg Zetel and Anne Rosenberg, the husband of historian Maxwell Geismer

https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.5380.html

1875: Amelia Strauss, the Charleston, SC born daughter of Fannie and Bendix Abraham Weinberg and her husband Alfred Abraham Strauss gave birth to Mordechai Straus, the husband of Annie Elizabeth Strauss.

1877: In “Suwalki, Poland,” Louis and Rebecca Goldstein Rosenthal, gave birth to Elizabeth “Lizzie” Rosenthal who became Elizabeth Feinberg when she married Moses Feinberg.

1880: It was reported today that the Purim Association will be hosting a ball in March at the Academy of Music “for the benefit of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.”

1880: In Germany, the members of the government are expected to face questioning from deputies about anti-Semitic “agitation” that has been taken place.

1880: In Atlanta, GA, Fannie Rich and Aaron Haas gave birth to University of Georgia graduate and Columbia trained attorney Leonard Haas, the husband Beatrice Hirsch and father of Leonard and John Haas who was served as one of the lawyers defending Leo Frank and the treasurer of the United Jewish Campaign.

1880: According to a referee’s reported filed today described the sham by Henry Cone, Abraham Altman, Emanuel Levi and the Third National that enabled them to gain control of the Buffalo clothing firm Friedman & Co owned by Jacob and Burnet Friedman.

1881: It was reported today that “the King of Denmark has knighted four Jews in Jutland.”

1881: A resolution was adopted by a group at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to hold a meeting on November 27 to discuss ways to deal with the unprecedented demand on resources being created by the arrival of the wave of immigrants from Russia.

1881(29th of Cheshvan, 5642): Fifty-nine-year old Presburg born, and University of Vienna educated writer Adolf Dux, the cousin of Leopold Duke and a correspondent of Pester Lloyd passed away today.

1883: The Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum held its second annual charity ball tonight.

1884: Birthdate of Norman Thomas social reformer and frequent Socialist candidate for President of the United States.  Thomas was not Jewish but he was active in numerous causes that affected the Jewish People.  He was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.  As a member of the America First Committee he opposed America’s entry into World War II until Pearl Harbor changed his mind.  At the same time, he worked to change American policy during the 1930’s to make it possible for Jewish victims of the Nazis to enter the United States.

1885: It was reported today that while the Reform movement has approved substituting Sunday services for Saturday services, such will not be the case in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Rabbi Wise, who spoke approvingly of the change said that it was not necessary to make the change in the Queen City.

1886: Birthdate of Alexandre Stavisky, the Ukrainian born French financer whose elaborate swindle gave rise to the infamous Stavisky Affair, a scandal that rocked France in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.

1886: Birthdate of Hungarian native Szoboszlo Hajdu who in 1895 came to the United States where, as  James Eugene Tischler he later became a Notary Public in Ft. Wayne Indiana.

1886: It was reported today that the recent decision of the Supreme Court that “affirmed the illegality of keeping open a shop on Sunday “for the purpose of doing business’” will work an extra hardship on Jewish merchants.  The police had allowed them keep their shops open on Sunday “on the supposition” that because they observed the Sabbath on Saturday they were not covered by the law.  Rabbi Solomon Schindler has already chaired a packed meeting at the Columbus Avenue Synagogue on this subject.  The Jews will comply with the law but will work to have the legislature change it in the next session.

1886(22nd of Cheshvan, 5647): After having been struck by a Hansom cab, 54 year old artist Rebecca Solomon passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/solomon-rebecca

http://jwa.org/media/rebecca-solomon-wounded-dove-1866

1887: “Miss Adams, The Writer” published today traces the life and career of Hannah Adams, the first American woman to earn her living as an author.  Her works included The History of the Jews which was published in 1812.  The full title was The History of the Jews from the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Time and it may be the first book on this topic published in the United States.

1887: “Reading From Right to Left” published today relied on information that first appeared in the Hebrew Journal to speculate as to way Hebrew is read from right to left.  “The most pertinent reason lies in the fact that our vision from right to left is much clearer and stronger than it is from left to right.”

1887: “Emma Lazarus” published today provided a laudatory obituary of the Jewish poet who passed away yesterday.

1887: Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler delivered a lecture to the congregants at Temple Beth-El entitled “Prejudice.”

1888: A concert was given tonight at the Metropolitan Opera House to raise money for the Aguilar Free Library, an institution supported by the leading Jews of New York City.

1888(16th of Kislev, 5649): Forty-seven year old Mitchell J. Asch, the “son of Clarissa and Joseph M. Asch” and the husband of “Manuella Asch” passed away in New York.

1888: As the Third Republic continued to be torn apart by competing factions “Count Munster, the German Ambassador in Paris” reported to his government in Berlin that Baron Hirsch, the Jewish financier and philanthropist was willing to put “a few million” down in support of General Ernest Boulanger “the man on White Horse” who had risen to power originally with the support of one of the sons of the former Orlean kings.

1888(16th of Kislev, 5649): Simon Lederer, a prominent New York merchant passed away today.  Born in Austria in 1823, he came to the United States in 1857 where he pursued a 17 year career in the tobacco business  first with Gustav Resiman and  then as a partner in Bondy & Lederer. A life-long bachelor, he was a generous but modest supporter of Jewish charities.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9502E0DD1330E633A25751C2A9679D94699FD7CF

1889: Gustav Mahler’s 1st Symphony premiered.  Mahler was born Jewish and was still nominally Jewish when he wrote the First Symphony.  He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1897 so that he could become Director of the State Opera.

1889: Birthdate of “German textile merchant and manufacturer Karl Amson Joel who fled the Nazis via Switzerland and Cuba and was the “grandfather of conductor Alexander Joel and musician Billy Joel.”

https://www.revolvy.com/page/Karl-Amson-Joel

1889(26th of Cheshvan, 5650): Sixty-seven year old Dutch bibliographer Meyer Roest  who “to various Jewish periodicals, such as the Dutch Spectator and the Taalkundig Magazin, and edited the (non-Jewish) Navorscher and Israelietische Nieuwsbode for several years and whose best known work is Catalog der Hebraica und Judaica aus der L. Rosenthal'schen Bibliothek passed away in his native Amsterdam today.

1890: As the “run” on Citizens’ Saving Bank, located on the Lower East Side with a large number of poor, Jewish depositors, it was suggested “that Chief Rabbi Joseph be invited to examine the thousands of dollars in the bank’s vault and then tell his people what he had seen” – a move that the Bank President hoped would reassure the depositors and end the run.

1890: In Richmond, VA, “Philip and Mary (Meyer)” gave birth to dentist Harry Bear, the first graduate of the School of Dentistry at Virginia Common University to serve as its dean and the husband of Betty Gellman.

https://dentistry.vcu.edu/about/history/

1892 (1st of Kislev, 5653): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1892(1st of Kislev, 5653): Seventy-two year old Haim Nathan Dembitzer the Galician rabbi and historian who worked with historian Heinrich Graetz and  whose publications include a biography of Tosafist Joseph Porat passed away today.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5075-dembitzer-hayyim-nathan

1892: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Military Band is scheduled to play at a fundraiser at Central Turn Hall which will be addressed by Ferdinand Levy, Judge Henry M. Goldfogle and Dr. Herman Baar, the Superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum

1892: A service is scheduled to take place this morning at Temple Emanu-El to honor the memory of the recently deceased Seligman Adler.

1892: “Russia and Her Jews” published today provided a detailed review of The New Exodus” a Study of Israel in Russia by Harold Frederic a Presbyterian journalist and novelist who had just visited Russia last summer.

1893: As of today, the tenants at 59, 61, 63, and 65 Moore Street, all of whom are Russian Jews are to have vacated the premises as ordered the Civil Justice in Brooklyn.

1894(21st of Cheshvan, 5655): Russian born pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein passed away.

1894: Birthdate of English film composer and music director, Louis Levy.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/942790-Louis-Levy

1894: Pauline and George Washington Milius gave birth to Dorothy Milius who was the wife of “Sidney Walter Kaufman and Sidney Salkey.”

1894: Birthdate of Austrian screenplay writer Carl Mayer who, with the rise of the Nazis, fled to Britain where he would die young, poor and almost completely forgotten. 

1893: Twenty-three year old Harvard graduate Jesse Isidor Straus, the New York born son of Isidor Straus and the former Rosalie Ida Blum, who became an executive with Macy’s and American Ambassador to France, today married Irma Nathan.

1896: Birthdate of Rakhel Peisoty, the native of the Ukraine who gained fame as American labor leader Rose Pesotta best known for her work with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pesotta-rose

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pesotta-rose

1896: “Rachel Frank of California, the only woman rabbi who is famous as the ‘inspired prophet’ of the Jews on the Pacific Coat” was “conspicuous among” the delegates at the just completed first convention of the National Council of Jewish Women

1896: As the first convention of the National Council of Jewish Women during which Joseph Jacobs of London gave an address in which he said “The future of Judaism lies with Jewish woman and  Mrs. Hannah G. Solomon was elected president came to an end.

1896: Professor H. L Sabsovich, the General Agent of the Baron De Hirsch Fund officiated at the service dedicating the new synagogue in Woodbine, NJ, a colony settled by Russian-Jews.  The service included a sermon in English by Rabbi Sabato Morris and a sermon in German by Dr. Morris Jastrow.

1896: Birthdate of Russian author Yevgenia Ginzburg.

1896: In Brooklyn, Joseph and Sarah (Lewis) Spero gave birth to economist and political scientist Sterling D. Spero, the holder of a doctorate from Columbia best known for “co-authoring a famous study of African-American labor history entitled The Black Worker, the Negro & the Labor Movement.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/01/04/archives/sterling-spero-of-nyu-dead-public-administration-professor.html

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/government-as-employer-by-sterling-spero-new-york-the-remsen-press-1948-pp-xi-497-565/EB5B8609EBA0CA418BC45BC631A04FC8

1897: The Beni Zion Association is scheduled to meet at 7:30 p.m. in King’s Hall in London

1898: A summary of the United Hebrew Charities report for October revealed that the society had processed 2,243 applications that would provide assistance to 7,477 people.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50B17F73A5D11738DDDA90A94D9415B8885F0D3

1898(6th of Kislev, 5659): Fifty-five year old Emanuel Wachenheim passed away tonight at Bellevue after he had brought to the hospital from the Victor Hotel where he had registered under an assumed name and may have tried to take his own life.

1898: Birthdate of “German textile merchant and manufacturer” Karl Amson Joel, “the grandfather of conductor Alexander Joel” and pop-star Billy Joel.

https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Karl%20Amson%20Joel&item_type=topic

1898: Vice President Maruice Untermyer gave the opening address at the formal dedication of “the new home of the Hebrew Infant Asylum” which included a performance by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band.

1899: Birthdate of Bohemian born “Austrian-Swiss ophthalmologist and inventor” Hans Goldmann. (Some sources show November 21 as his birthdate)

http://www.ascrs.org/honorees/hans-goldmann-md

1900: Mrs. Alexander Kohut presided over the monthly meeting of the Council of Jewish Women in the vestry of Temple Beth-El where Miss Annette Kohn read a paper on “The Jewish Problem in New York.”

1901: At the opening meeting of the Second New York State Conference of Charities and Correction, Rabbi Adolph Radin of the People’s Synagogue and Chaplain of the House of Refuge arose from his chair and said, “I wish to register…my protest in the name of justice and humanity against the action of the Juvenile Asylum” to which “Jewish children are sent…and after a brief period are sent to Christian families.” He compared this form of proselytism to the practices of Czar Nicholas II.

1901: A devastating fire broke out in a four story brick factory building in Brooklyn, the top floor of which was occupied by Isadore Gerber’s sweatshop.

1901: Birthdate of Frankfurt, Germany native Albrecht Joseph, the “playwright, screenwriter and film editor”  and husband of Anna Mahler, the daughter of Gustav Mahler, who fled Nazi German and began working in Hollywood sometimes usings the name “Al Joseph.:

1902: “The Jewish Theological Seminary held its first public gathering this evening in the hall of the Young Men's Hebrew Association at Lexington Avenue ad Ninety-Second Street. Prof. Solomon Schechter, the professor at Cambridge University, England, who is known for his archaeological work in the Genizah of Cairo, made his inaugural address as President of the Faculty of the new seminary.”  Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of the Board of Trustees, followed with a speech that outlined the development of Jewish educational institutions in the United States.

1903: Birthdate of journalist and co-editor of the Menorah, Herbert Solow who began as a Bolshevik and ended up working for Henry Luce’s Fortune magazine, the bible of Capitlism.

1904:  It was reported that there has been “increased violence on the part of the part of reservists near the Russian frontier “including the murder of a “Jewish storekeeper and his wife at Bendzin.”

1905: “Emma Lazarus’s Memory Honored At A Meeting” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9803E7DC143DE733A25753C2A9679D946497D6CF

1905: “Says President Can Act” published today includes a challenge by Charles Fleisher a Boston Rabbi to the notion that there is nothing President Roosevelt can do to help the Jews of Russia saying that “if both as an individual and the representative of 80,000,000 people consecrated to decency and brotherhood, Mr. Roosevelt express with character vigor the indignant protest of America, then the Czar cannot choose but take notice.

1905: Oscar S. Straus presided over The National Committee for the Relief of Sufferers by Russian Massacre held a meeting today in Temple Emanu-El during which reports were read by Treasurer Jacob H. Schiff, Secretary Cyrus L. Sulzberger “and the various trade committees that have been soliciting funds.

1905: As of today, the Jewish Relief Fund for the victims of the Russian massacres has reached the $500,000 dollar mark including $152 from the Jewish community in Hamilton, Ohio, $20 from Congregation Temple Israel in Portsmouth, N.H., $111 from the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Ybar City, FL and $93 from the Orthodox Jews of Wichita, KS,

1905: It was reported today that in England “at a good many churches preachers have made references to the Russian atrocities” and that a number of congregations have adopted “formal resolutions expressing sorrow and shame that in the name of Christ’s religion and in a Christian county such acts of fiendish cruelty have been perpetrated.

1905: It was reported today that National Committee collecting money for the relief of the Russian Jews who are being massacred has raised $498,651 including $500 from “the Jews of Bradford, PA,” $200 from Dr. Morris Skalmer, West Colfax Settlement, Denver, Colorado,” $93 from the “Orthodox Jews of Wichita, Kansas and $112 from the Canton Hebrew Congregation, Canton, Ohio.

1906: Thirty-four-year old award winning  “painter and sculptor” Marco Zim , the Moscow born son of Bella Miriam Ratner and Jacob Samson Zim, married Minnie Orlo Cohen today.

1906: In New York City, the Fire Commissioner asked the Finance Committee of the Board of Alderman for an $8,000 for eight Fire Chaplains and “ $1,000 for Hebrew interpreter” because as he said  can you imagine “an Irishman trying to talk Hebrew to men who can’t speak English!”

1907(14th of Kislev, 5668): Forty two year old New York City native Samuel A. Tuska, the 1884 graduate of CCNY and “member of Heller, Hirsh & Co” who was a trustee of both the Aguilar Free Library society and the Society for Ethical Culture passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1907/11/21/104712218.pdf

1907: Birthdate of New York City native Herbert Theodore Bergman who gained as actor Alan Reed whose career included appearances in such major films as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s but is best known for being the voice of “Fred Flintstone.”

1908: The Grand Vizir of Morocco sent a letter to President of the Alliance Israelite Universelle approving educational work and stating that the new Sultan is resolved to protect Jews.

1909: In Berlin, “architect Alfred Breslauer” and “Dorothea Lessing, the daughter of art historian Julius Lessing gave birth to Marianne Breslauer, the noted photographer who left Germany rather than have work published under a pseudonym and the wife of Walter Feilchenfeldt whom she met in Holland.

https://www.museunacional.cat/en/marianne-breslauer-photographs-1927-1938

1909(7th of Kislev, 5670):Parashat Vayetzei

1909(7th of Kislev, 5670): Mrs. Schore Shapiro passed away today.

1909: The University of Michigan led by halfback Joseph “Joe” Magidsohn, “the first Jewish athlete to win a varsity ‘M’” who was the “first athlete known to have refused to compete on the Jewish High Holy Days” defeated the University of Minnesota today.
1909: The One-hundredth anniversary of the death of Moses Mendes Seixas was observed at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York. Gershom Mendes Seixas was the first native-born rabbi in the United States. He was one of seven children of Rachel and Isaac Seixas. He was born in New York City on January 15, 1746. He was the first rabbi in America to give his sermons in English. He gave sermons which dealt with Jewish participation in the life of the state and made appeals for support of the American Revolution and against the British-Indian raids in the Northwest Territory. When the council members of Philadelphia made eligibility for an assembly seat dependent on professing the divine origin of the New Testament, he and other Jews fought against this unconstitutional religious test.

1910: Fifty-eight year old Hungarian born Rabbi Joseph Zeisler married his second wife Hermine Kafka today in New York City.

1910: Twenty-seven year old University of Chicago graduate ad HUC trained rabbi Gresham George Fox, the Russian born son Moses and Isabelle (Kuklinsky) who served as the Rabbi for Congregation Beth El in Ft. Worth, TX and found the South Short Temple of Chicago married Hortense Lewis today.

1911: In Munich, Bruno Walter conducted the premiere of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

1911: The Hebrew Congress meeting in Lemberg, Galicia came to a close.

1911: As American indignation over the Russian treatment of American Jews in Russia continued to grow, members of the “Progressive Order of the West” petitioned Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley to “write to President Taft” asking him to “take action on the Passport Question.”

1911: Missouri Governor Hadley wrote to President Taft “advocating the abrogation of the Treaty of 1832” with Russia.

1911: It was reported today that in Camden, NJ, the Hebrew school will shortly open a course for girls since it now successfully is conducting three classes for male students.

1911: In Warsaw, “Regina and Benjamin Szymin, a respected publisher of Yiddish and Hebrew Books” gave birth to David Syzmin who gained fame as David Seymour famed photographer and co-founder of Magnum Photos.

http://davidseymour.com/

http://lightbox.time.com/2013/01/16/a-second-look-chims-children-of-war/#1

http://merrill.umd.edu/events/visible-scars-children-and-war-photography-david-chim-seymour

http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/bio_chim.html

1912: Lee K. Frankel of New York, Simon Rosendale of Albany, and William M. Rosendale of New York attended the second day of New York State Conference of Charities and Correction at Syracuse, NY.

1912: The Alliance Israelite Universelle New York branch which is led by its President Kaufman Mandell issued an appeal for aid on behalf “of our brethren who have been left homeless and falling victim to Cholera” as a result of the “massacres and devastations of the Balkan War” in which thousands of more Jews have lost their lives.

1913: Arnold Schoenberg completed the opera "Die glückliche Hand" ("The Hand of Fate")

1913: Birthdate of Charles Bettelheim, a French economist and historian and founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI).

1913: Birthdate of Leo Hanin, the native of Vilna who found refuge in China and Japan before finally making Aliyah in 1948

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/idcard.php?ModuleId=10006693

1913: Birthdate of Professor Henry A. Fischel, the noted linguist who played a key role in the founding of the Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University

1914(2nd of Kislev, 5675): Seventy-year old Lizzie Sicher Fishell, the Prague born daughter of Daniel and Lizzie Sicher and husband of Ferdinand Fischell with whom she had six children – Arthur, Regina, Samuel, Henry, Daniel and Mamie – passed away today after which she was buried at the New Mounty Sinai Cemetery in Aftton, MO.

1914: “For the Relief of Jews” published today urged donors making contributions to The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews to send them to Treasurer Harry Fischel at the World Building.

1915(13th of Kislev, 5676): In Chicago, Dr. Adolf Decker a physician and chess champion passed away.

1915: The New York County Chapter of the Red Cross of which Jacob H. Schiff is Treasurer “issued a Thanksgiving appeal for further funds for work in Europe.”

1915: “A Great Thinker” published today described Dr. Cyrus Adler’s view of his friend and colleague, Dr. Solomon Schechter of blessed memory which included his statement that Schechter’s “most notable scientific discovery was the great find of the Hebrew treasures in the so-called Genizah at Cairo, Egypt which was the greatest single discovery of ancient manuscripts that has ever been made by one man” and that included “the lost original of the Hebrew text of Ecclesisasticus.”

1916: According to reports published today the new facility of the Young Men’s and the Young Women’s Hebrew Association being built in Brooklyn “is the first of its type to provide equal accommodations for men and women” and will be “equipped with two gymnasiums and swimming pools

1916: Birthdate of Lilian Halpernova, who was transported from Prague in 1942 to Ujazdow where she was murdered.

1917: “The Chicago Woman’s Aid” is schedule to “hold its next regular meeting today at 2:00 p.m. at Sinai Center.”

1917: “Approximately five thousand men and women composing the 1917 Committee For Six Thousand” are scheduled to “attend the Opening Dinner Rally at the Standard Club” this evening which will mark the “launcing of the Ten Day Campaign to raise additional funds for the Associated Charities” in Chicago.

1917(5th of Kislev, 5678): Caroline "Carrie" Goldman Bendel, the daughter of Lewis and Sarah Peterson Goldman and the wife of Edward Henry Bendel passed away today after which she was interred in the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation Cemetery.

1917: As the Empire of Russia collapses, the Ukraine declares itself an independent republic. In the ensuing civil war, as many as 100,000 Jews may have been killed in organized pogroms or by forces competing for control who had one thing in common --- anti-Semitism.

1917: “The Woman’s Society of Zion Congregation” is scheduled to act as “hostess to the Jewish women of the sixty-three organizations affiliated with the ‘Chicago Conference’’ this afternoon at the Zion Temple on Ogden Avenue and Washington Boulevard.

1917: Nathan Straus, Henry Morgenthau and Jacob Schiff were among those who attended a meeting tonight where plans were discussed for the upcoming campaign in which New Yorkers were aiming to raise five million dollars for Jewish Relief and for the Jewish Welfare Board in the United Army and Navy.

1917: In Palestine, during the Battle of Nebi Samwil, which was part of the British offensive designed to capture Jerusalem, the 75th Division advanced along water-logged muddy roads and seized the villages of Saris and Kuryet el Enab which had been held by a rearguard detachment which meant the main body of the Ottoman Army was still waiting for them.

1917: In Johannesburg, SA, those attending “a mass meeting” adopted a resolution “favoring the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine” and “thanking the Imperial Government for its sympathy and support” in attaining this end.

1918: In “Palestine Needs Aid” published today an appeal was made for the “contributions of clothing for men, women and children for immediate ship to Palestine” where “an epidemic of pneumonia is threatening the population of Galilee who are facing the cold weather in a practically naked condition.”

1918: Rabbi Joseph Silverman is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Civil War veteran and successful Peoria (Illinois) businessman Captain Joseph B. Greenhut this morning at 10 o’clock at Temple Emanuel with burial at Salem Field Cemetery.

1919: “A call for men to serve in a unit of expert relief and welfare workers to aid in the rehabilitation of the Jews in Poland was issued” today “ by the Joint Distribution Committee.”

1920(9th of Kislev, 5681): Parashat Vayetzei

1920: Rabbi Max Reichler is scheduled to deliver a sermon this morning on “The Pursuit of Happiness” at Sinai of the Bronx this morning

1920: Twenty seven year Rabbi Reuben Levovitz, the Minsk born son of Chaim Joseph and Zive Lebe (Mandel) Levovitz who to the United States in 1920 where he was a member of Rabbincal Board of New York City and a member of the Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada married Zlate Kustonowitz in Minis.

1920: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El at 5th Avenue and 76th Street.

1921(20th of Cheshvan, 5682): Seventy-seven year old David Zvi Hoffmann passed away today in Berlin.

http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/01/rabbi-david-hoffmann-zl-by-eliezer-m.html

1922: The Conference of Lausanne, one of the many peace conferences held to windup World War I which was covered by Albert Karasu opened today. Born in 1885 in Ottoman Salonika, he went to school in Switzerland before returning to Istanbul where he founded Le Journal d’Orient which survived until 1971, 11 years before Karasu passed away.

1923: In Springs, Transvaal, Union of South Africa, Isidore Gordimer,  a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė and Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer gave birth to Nadine Gordimer. a South African Jewish novelist and writer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in literature and 1974 Booker Prize.  Gordimer was educated at an Anglican convent school. Thereafter she studied for a year at Witwatersrand University, but did not complete her degree. During the 1960s and 1970s she taught at several universities in the United States. She drew praise for her demand that South Africa re-examine and replace its long held policy of apartheid. As such, most of her works deal with the moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country. Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953. A founding member of the Congress of South African Writers, Gordimer has been awarded numerous honorary degrees, as well as France's Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

1924: University of Cincinnati graduate and HUAC ordained rabbi, Dr. Harry W. Ettelson, the holder of Ph.D from your Yale and Lithuanian born son of Miriam Harris and Samuel Ettelson who served as Chaplain in the U.S. Navy in WW I and led  congregations in Ft. Wayne, Hartford and Philadelphia before assuming the leadership of Temple Israel in Memphis, TN married Nell R. Schwab today

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ettelson-harry-william

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/harry-w-ettelson/

1924: Birthdate of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot is a leading proponent of fractal geometry. He is Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Emeritus at Yale University and IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html

1925: “Countess Maritza” a silent film with a script by Max Glass was released today in Germany.

1925: In Moscow, Rachel Messerer-Plisetskaya, a silent-film actress and “Mikahil ‘Misha’ Plisetski, a diplomat and engineer” gave birth to “ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-mourns-jewish-ballet-rebel-maya-plisetskaya/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/arts/dance/maya-plisetskaya-ballerina-who-embodied-bolshoi-dies-at-89.html

1925:  Birthdate of Robert F. Kennedy who was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968 be he was supposedly upset because Kennedy was a supporter of the state of Israel.

1926(14th of Kislev, 5687): Parashat Vayishlach

1926: “Hundreds of delegates representing American Jews in 27 states” are in Boston tonight “for the national conference for the United Palestine Appeal ushering in the 1927 campaign” to raise ten million dollars.\

1927: “At the opening session of the Jewish Agricultural Society’s night school at 301 East 14th Street, Gabriel Davidson, general manager of the society declared” tonight “that Jews were turning to farming” in the United States “in larger numbers than before.”

1927: The Jews are neither a race nor a religion; they are a historic community, according to Rabbi Nathan Krass, who delivered the first lecture of the current season Sunday Morning Services today on "Why We Remain Jews" at Temple Emanu-El, at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street”

1928: Birthdate of “Sgt. Alec ‘Moishe’ Freedman,” the native of Stepney-Middlesex who was wounded when the 1st Battalion Leicestershires attacked Hill 317 “on the night of November 6th, 1951.”

1928: “For the first time in the history of the Zionist movement in America, 150 leaders of the Zionist and non-Zionist facts met at a dinner” tonight at the Hotel Astor” where “they discussed plans for the intensive development of Palestine as the national home of the Jews and joined in praising Dr. Chaim Weizmann…for his recent achievement in healing the split between Zionists and non-Zionists.”

1929: Birthdate of Joyce Beber (née Sacks) the yesihiva student turned advertising executive who co-founded Beber Silverstein & Partners and created numerous memorable campaigns for the Helmsley group of hotels, which successfully promoted Leona Helmsley and her hotel chain, but led to her being hired and fired four times by Helmsley.

1929: Rabbi Judah P. Magnes declares that Palestine must be a place for Christians, Moslems and Jews. He sees Palestine as an international home for people of all three faiths and calls for “the renunciation of all ideas of Jewish political domination” along with the development of “cultural Zionism.”

1929: Today, Gertrude Berg's popular radio program, The Goldbergs, about an upwardly mobile American Jewish family debuted on NBC radio. Berg developed the kernel of the show as a series of live sketches to entertain guests at her family's Catskills hotel. It was produced in recurrent runs as a daily 15-minute program on NBC and other networks for nearly two decades before shifting to television in January, 1949. On both radio and TV, Berg served as the sole writer, producer, and star of one the nation's most popular programs. Throughout its 30 years on radio and television, as well as in presentations on Broadway and on film, The Goldbergs dealt explicitly with Jewish life in the United States, joking about the cultural differences between "old world" immigrants and their American-born offspring. Berg's Molly became a cultural touchstone, a figure combining old world wisdom, new world common sense, and a mother's humanity in confronting the perplexities of American life. Over the show's three decades, the Goldberg family moved from a New York City tenement to the Bronx and later to suburban Connecticut, mirroring the upward progression of many Jews into the American mainstream. Although Berg continued to produce The Goldbergs into the 1950s, the show's popularity declined. The demise of The Goldbergs reflects the homogenizing trend in postwar American society. As millions of ethnic Americans fled their traditional urban enclaves in search of an un-hyphenated, simply "American" identity in the suburbs, programming explicitly grounded in ethnic cultures gave way to more all-American shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. The Goldbergs went off the air in 1955.

1930: “A provisional committee of four which will act on behalf of the American members of the Jewish Agency for Palestine has been established, according to an announcement made tonight by Dr. Cyrus Adler, joint chairman of the council of the Jewish Agency, through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.”

1930: “The Rev. Dr. Isaac Landman, editor of The American Hebrew, announced today that Newton D. Baker of Cleveland, President Wilson's Secretary of War, had been designated as the first winner of the publication's annual Medal for the Promotion of Better Understanding Between Christian and Jew in America.”

1931: “Anti-Semitic attacks occurred today in Vilna, its suburbs and in the neighboring towns of Lida and Trock” and “attacks against the Jews were also carried out in Suvalk, Province of Grodno.”

1932: “A unified program consolidating all work for the upbuilding of the Jewish National homeland in Palestine was adopted at the conference on Palestine” being held in Omaha, NB, “today which leaders of seven national Jewish organizations attended and where Professor Gustav Klausner of St. Louis University was elected “president of the newly consolidated central and southwestern divisions the Zionist Organization” which “embraces thirteen states.”

1933(2nd of Kislev): Rabbi Moses Mordecai Epstein, author of Levush Mordecai, passed away today.

1934: Lillian Hellmann’s "Children's Hour," premieres in New York City.

1934: The Hartford Symphony Orchestra, which Fritz Mahler served as music director from 1953-1962 performed for the first time tonight.

1934: At their home at 145 Central Park West, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Gevirtz hosted a dinner honoring “Judge Otto A. Rosalsky and the dinner committee of the Bar Mitzvah celebration of the Jewish Education Association during which “Judge Rosalsky was installed as the acting president of the association.”

1934: After Nazi students interrupted his lectures, Felix Hausdoff stopped teaching his Calculus III course during the winter semester.

1935: Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s partner in the original “Axis of evil” “declared government control of all the gold in Italy.”

1935: In Michigan, Miriam Meckler-Horowitz, a piano teacher, and Ben Meckler, an English teacher, in Detroit, gave birth to Ruth Meckler who gained fame as pianist Ruth Laredo.

http://www.ruthlaredo.com/

1935: King Levinsky, who had recently been knocked out by a youthful Joe Louis, “fought professional wrestler Ray Steele in a bout that attracted national interest.”

1936: William Green, the President of the American Federation of Labor today “protested again the persecution of the Jews in Germany by the Hitler government voicing indignation against the attacks on a race which had committed no wrong and which, during the centuries, ‘has made its contribution toward freedom and the spiritual welfare of the world.’”

1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Samuel H. Godenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Stone That Became the Altar.”

1936: At the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, author Marvin Lowenstein is schooled to deliver an address on “The Jews of Germany.”

1936: At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Louis I Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Where is the Gates of Heaven?”

1936: In Perth Amboy, NJ, Murray Goldstein and the former Evelyn Bier gave birth to Charles Arthur Goldstein a successful attorney who worked to recover Holocaust art.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/nyregion/charles-goldstein-dies-at-78-sought-return-of-art-looted-by-nazis.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1936: Today, Premier Benito Mussolini sent money and an invitation to come to Italy to the Polish-Jeish student Janien Berg, who has been unable to finish his studies” in Warsaw “because of anti-Semitic riots.

1937(16th of Kislev, 5698): Parashat Vayhishlach

1937: In Detroit, Michigan, “Miriam Meckler-Horowitz, a piano teacher, and Ben Meckler, an English teacher” gave birth to Ruth Meckler who gained fame as concert pianist Ruth Laredo, the wife of violinist Jamie Laredo.

1938: Father Coughlin made the first of his many anti-Semitic attacks on his radio show. Using Nazi documents, American radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin contends that Jews are responsible for Russian communism and for Germany's problems. All of Coughlin's radio programs are approved by his archdiocese as not contradicting Catholic faith or morals. Some Catholics protest Coughlin's broadcasts, including Chicago's Cardinal George Mundelein, but most of the American Church is silent.

1939: In what had been Poland, the Nazi Generalgouvernement blocked all bank accounts held by Jews. Withdrawals were limited to thirty dollars per month.

1939: In a letter bearing today’s date sent to Representative Martin Dies, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on un-American Activities, Harry A. Jung, honorary general manager of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation wrote that he had never corresponded with Oscar C. Pfaus, “director of a Nazi propaganda agency called Ficte Bund” or “anyone else about going on any publication board for an alleged Nazi magazine.”

1940: Britain announced a more stringent policy aimed at Jews trying to enter Palestine illegally.  Jews found on ships running the British blockade will not be allowed to enter Palestine.  They will be taken to an undetermined colonial destination where they will be imprisoned until the end of the war.  At that time, there final destination, which will not be Palestine or the site of the imprisonment will be determined. 

1940: The Jewish Agency informed Prime Minister Churchill of the inhumane conditions under which Jewish detainees are being held on the island of Mauritius.

1940: In Manhattan, attorney Walter J. Loria and his wife Ruth gave birth Jerry Loria, the art dealer who bought the Miami Marlins major league baseball team.

1940: Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers. This is the first step on the long road which will belatedly bring the Holocaust to the Jews of Hungary including Nobel Prize Winner Elie Weisel.

1940: In Vienna, in his talk with Hitler Hungarian Prime Minister Teleki “brought up the Jewish question” saying “that when peace was concluded the Jews would have to be moved out of Europe” to which Hitler “replied that he regards the solution of the Jewish question for Europe as one of the biggest problems of peace”

1941(30th of Cheshvan, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1941(30th of Cheshvan, 5702): Approximately 7000 Jews from Minsk, Belorussia, are killed at nearby Tuchinka.

1942 (11th of Kislev, 5703): Rechaviah Lewin-Epstein, who was in charge of the economic work of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs died in Cairo today at the age of 49 while on his way to Palestine to continue his work.  Mr. Lewin-Epstein, the son of author and Zionist leader Elias W. Lewin-Epstein, established The Bureau of American Economic Committee for Palestine an organization he headed until 1938.  He returned to New York in 1939 after he had “facilitated the settlement of thousands of refugees in agriculture, industry and trade” in Palestine.

1942: U.S. premiere of “Strictly in the Groove” featuring Shemp Howard

1942: Birthdate of folk singer Norman Greenbaum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPlGFh6OpQ

1943: Facing withering fire from Japanese artillery and machine guns, U.S. Marines land on Tarawa.  This bloody battle provides part of the backdrop for “Battle Cry,” the World War II novel by Leon Uris.

1943: This afternoon several hundred residents of Tel Aviv protested the search that had been carried out at Ramat Hakovesh.  The protesters also demanded the release of men who had been arrested during the search. 

1943: After 36 performances at the Plymouth Theatre, the curtain came down on “The Naked Genius,” a play produced by Mike Todd.

1943: “Winged Victory,” a play originally created and produced by the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II as a morale booster and as a fundraiser for the Army Emergency Relief Fund” with a script by Moss Hart that “tells the story of a group of recruits struggling to make it through pilot training” opened in New York at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre today and became a smash hit, playing to over 350,000 people in 226 performances.

1943: Madeline Dreyfus who had chosen to remain in France as part of the Resistance instead of joining most of her family in the United States was sent to Auschwitz. Her grandmother Lucie Eugénie Hadamard, Colonel Dreyfus’ widow stayed with her.  She would be hidden in a convent, survive the war and not pass away until 1945.

1943: The Nazis auction off the furniture and household possessions of the family of Isak Plesansky in an example of how the property of Norwegian Jews “mysteriously” disappeared.

1944: Forty-five year old anti-Nazi resistance leader Leo Drabent who had been arrested by the Gestapo along with his wife and eight other comrades was” guillotined at the Brandenburg-Gorden Prison” today.

1944(4th of Kislev, 5705): Havivah Reik and Rafael Reiss, together with a group of captured Jews, were murdered in the Kremnica forest by the Germans and their Slovakian fascist collaborators. They dumped the bodies into a large ditch that served as a mass, unmarked grave.

1944: “The special People’s Court sentenced “Hans Neumann, Leo Drabant, his wife along with eight other resistance members” “to death because they had ‘attempted to destroy the resistance of the German People…”

1944(4th of Kislev, 1944): Twenty-six year old Madeleine Levy, the daughter of Jeanne and Pierre-Paul Levy died today at Auschwitz.

1944(4th of Kislev, 5705): Haviva Reik was captured and executed by the Nazis and members of the Ukrainian Waffen SS. Born in 1914, she was one of four volunteers from the Yishuv in Eretz Israel who parachuted into Slovakia to help the uprising against the Nazis. In September 1944 she succeeded in helping the Jews who were left in Banska Bystresis. When it fell they moved into the mountains with other Jewish partisans. Kibbutz Lahavot Haviva and the Givat Haviva center are dedicated to her memory.

1945:  Twenty-four Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg in which Colonel Benjamin Kaplan, “who later became a Harvard law professor and served nine years on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court” played a key role in crafting the indictment. 

1945: Birthdate of Deborah Eisenberg, an American short-story writer, actor and teacher who is the long-time companion of actor Wallace Shawn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/books/review-your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenberg.html

1945: In Oceanside, NY, clothing store owners William and Bettina (May) Barasch gave birth to Bettina Barash who gained fame as “Bettina Plevan, a top litigator who made her name defending employers in sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases, and who helped pave the way for women to advance in the legal profession after shattering glass ceilings herself.” (As reported by Katharine Q. Seelye)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/bettina-plevan-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/bettina-plevan-obituary?pid=200514348

1945: Joseph Newman wrote to the War Office today to ask why the Gestapo had released Denise Desvaux so quickly, how did they know that Isidore Newman was a British officer and had she betrayed him to the Nazis.

1946: As tensions rise in Palestine, a bomb exploded in Jerusalem.

1947: The New York Times includes a review of The Victim, Saul Bellow’s novel about Asa Leventhal, “a frightened and lonely, man.”

1947: "Meet the Press" makes network TV debut on NBC. The popular television news show began as a radio program in 1945, produced by Lawrence Spivak. A panel of four news people interviewed a prominent leader of the day.    When the show shifted to television, Spivak was the permanent panel member and some time served as moderator. 

1947: Lillian Hellman's "Another Part of the Forest," premieres in New York City.

1947: It was reported today that Lessing J. Rosenwald, the President of the American Council of Judaism, has expressed his strong opposition to “plans to establish the American Jewish Conference on a permanent basis to coordinate all Jewish activities in this country.”  The American Council of Judaism was a leading anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the United State.

 1947: British diplomat Sir Alexander Cadogan delivered his country’s response to United Nations General Assembly’s Committee on the Palestine.

1948: “The Little Ballerina” a British drama featuring Anthony Newley was released in Sweden today.

1948: In New York City, “high school counselor Claire Masure” and her husband who was a pharmacist gave birth to actor Richard Masur who “served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild.”

1948: “An unarmed RAF photoreconnaissance De Havilland Mosquito of No. 13 Squadron RAF was shot down by an Israeli Air Force P-51 Mustang flown by American volunteer Wayne Peake as it flew over the Galilee towards Hatzor Airbase. Peake opened fire with his cannons, causing a fire to break out in the port engine. The aircraft turned to sea and lowered its altitude, then exploded and crashed off Ashdod.” Both members of the crew were killed. (So much for the myth of British neutrality in the Middle East.

1948: The first preliminary armistice talks begin when William E. Riley, chief UN truce observer, meets separately with Israel Foreign Office officials and Egyptian commander Fouad Sadeh Bey.

1948: Dr. Philip C. Jessup announces U.S. policy regarding peace talks in the Palestine including a proviso that any changes in Israel’s boundaries must be agreed to by the Jewish state and a willingness to examine some parts of Count Bernadotte’s plan including the internationalization of Jerusalem.

1949: The Jewish population of Israel reached one million.

1949: “The Austrian-born Joseph Floch who has been painting in” the United States “for a nearly a decade is exhibiting recent work at the galleries of the Associated American Artists” in what is his third one-man show. (Editor’s note: What is left unsaid is that Floch was Jewish and he came to the United States to escape the Nazis)

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/11/20/84287127.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/14365

1951: Lewis L. Strauss addressed the second annual convocation of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.  Dr. James Conant, President of Harvard, Dr. A. Whitney Griswold, President of Yale and Arthur Hays Sulzberger, president and publisher of The New York Times, received honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters. (Sulzberger was the Jewish member of the trio).

1951: Dr. Simon Greenberg, vice chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary conferred the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Literature on Rabbi Shraga Abramson, a visiting lecturer on the Talmud.

1951(21st of Cheshvan, 5712): Seventy-five year old Russian native Philip Davis, whose education at the University of Chicago, Harvard  and Boston University Law School led him into the fields of social work, the law and motion pictures where he served as the President of the National Motion Bureau “from 1914 to 1940” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/11/21/94280389.pdf

 

1952: The Slánský trials- a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials - began in Czechoslovakia. The Slansky trials take their name from Rudolf Slansky.  “A veteran of revolutionary of Jewish origin, he had served as Secretary of the Czech Communitys Party.  Slansky was accused of spying for American imperialism, for the State of Israel and for the Zionist movement; allegedly he was a link in a chain of treachery” designed to undermine the authority of the Socialist Revolution i.e. Stalin and the Soviets.  “Fifteen years later this affair was officially declared to have bee a despicable slander, the whole affair having been fabricated by Soviet security agents working in Czechoslovakia.”

1955: It was reported today that City College has received a bequest of $6,000 from the late Eugene H. Hoeber, the nephew of “the late Professor Adolph Werner, a City College graduate of the Class of 1857, a City College faculty member from 1857 to 1915 and a twice acting president.

1955: Dr. Cari Alpert, special assistant to Yaakov Dori, president of the Technion (Israel’s answer to MIT) “said a permanent peace between Israel and the Arab states would result in the opening of Technion’s doors to Arab students.

1957: Morton Wishengrad's "Rope Dancers," premieres in New York City. Wishengrad was raised on New York’s Lower East Side by his Orthodox Jewish father.  Wishengrad was not particularly interested in maintaining his Jewish identity which was rather ironic because, in 1944, he became the first script writer for the radio show, “The Eternal Light” produced by the Jewish Theological Seminary.

1957(26th of Cheshvan, 5718): Seventy-two year old Vilna born Cooper Union trained engineer Joseph Halpern, the “director of the Bureau of Port Planning and Development and the Department of Marine and  Aviation, the husband of Ida Halpern with whom he had three children --- Dr. Seymour, Adeline and Beatrice – passed away today in Brooklyn.

JOSEPH HALPERN, PORT OFFICIAL, 72; Planning and Development Director of City Bureau Dies--Designed Docks - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

1958: It was reported today that “Dr. Franz J. Kallman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute is seeking to prove that hereditary physical factors make persons susceptible to the disease” and “he has found that in schizophrenia patients a certain enzyme regulating the metabolism of blood cells behaves abnormally, possibly keeping the cells from transmitting proper substances to the substances to the nervous system.”

1959: WABC fires Jewish disc jockey Alan Freed over payola scandal.

1960(1st of Kislev, 5721): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1960(1st of Kislev): Seventy-nine year old Ya’akov Cohen, the native of Slutsk who made Aliyah in 1934 and became a prize winning “man of letters” who received the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation, for translations from the German of the first part of Goethe's Faust and other Goethe's works, Torquato Tasso and Iphigenia in Tauris, as well as a selection of poems by Heinrich Heine” passed away today.

1960: When the White House announced today that James D. Zellerbach was retiring as U.S. Ambassador to Italy, it released a letter from President Eisenhower to the Ambassador in which he wrote “You have served your country with a high sense of dedication and purpose of which you should be justly proud.”

1961: Birthdate of  Shaker Heights, OH native and Temple Kol-Ami confirmand James “Jim” Meririll Brickman “an American pop songwriter, pianist and radio host. Brickman has earned two Grammy nominations for his albums Peace (2003) for Best Instrumental, and Faith (2009) for Best New Age Album.

1962: Birthdate of pianist and composer Robin Speilberg, the granddaughter of flutist Rubin Spielberg.

http://alextimes.com/2009/10/robin-spielberg-setting-her-life-to-a-s/

1963: It was reported that George Maislen, the newly re-elected president of the United Synagogue proposed “that a special committee be formed to help the Conservative clarify its philosophy and to present a series of appropriate statements in the field of ritual policies” that take into consideration and environments of our time.

1964: The Second Vatican Council, under Pope Paul VI, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that the Jewish people as a whole are not to be blamed for Jesus' death.

1965(25th of Cheshvan, 5726): Parashat Chayei Sara

1965(25th of Cheshvan, 5726): Forty-two year old Brooklyn Polytech graduate Boris Sherback who worked with the Textile Workers Union, the Marshall Plan and the Agency for International Development and who in 1946 married Doris Hoffman Scherback with whom he had three children – David, Janet and Loren -- passed away today.

1965: In New York, “art dealer” Harold Diamond and “interior designer” Hester Diamond gave birth to Michael Louis Diamond who gained famed the rapper “Mike D.P

1968: In New Jersey, Stephen and Nancy Einhorn gave birth Cornell graduate David Einhorn, an American hedge fund manager and the founder of Greenlight Capital who “was included in Time magazine's Time 100 list of "100 most influential people in the world" in 2013.”

1969(10th of Kislev, 5730): Sixty-three year old labor lawyer Lee Pressman who was accused of involvement with the Communist Party passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=980CE5DA1E3AEF3BBC4951DFB7678382679EDE

1970(21st of Cheshvan, 5731): Eighty-year-old Columbia graduate and JTS trained rabbi, Abraham Aaron Neuman the Austrian born of Rachel Rose  and Max Neuman who in 1898 immigrated to the United States where he eventually became President of Dropsie College and served as Democratic elector in the 1940 presidential elections passed away today.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/neuman-abraham-aaron

1971(2nd of Kislev, 5732): Parsahat Toldot

1971(2nd of Kislev 5732): Seventy-three year old Katherine Stieglitz, the daughter of photographer Alfred Stieglitz and Emmy Stieglitz passed away today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Stieglitz#/media/File:Stieglitz-Katherine.jpg

1972(14th of Kislev, 5733): Eighty-year old Jennie Grossinger, the “queen” of Grossinger’s Resort Hotel passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/grossinger.html

1973(25th of Cheshvan, 5734): Forty-eight year old author and songwriter Allan Sherman who wrote the popular musical satire Camp Granada passed away.

http://jangle04.home.mindspring.com/sherman3.html

http://users.bestweb.net/~foosie/sherman.htm

1974: “In The Boom Boom Room” directed by Joseph Papp and co-starring Ellen Greene and Helen Hanft opened today at The Public Theatre.

1975: Spanish dictator Francisco Franco passed away.  A fascist who aligned himself with the Hitler and Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War which would be seen as a “dress rehearsal for WW II” Franco refused to join the Axis and remained neutral during the war.  “According to the recent discovery of a World War II document, Franco ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers.] Franco supplied Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler with a list of 6,000 Jews in Spain, for the Nazis' "Final Solution". However, Franco built no Jewish concentration camps on Spanish territory, nor did he voluntarily hand Jews over to Germany. Furthermore, Spanish diplomats extended their diplomatic protection over Jews in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Balkans

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/20/franco-gave-list-spanish-jews-nazis

1975: “The arrest of Boris Zaturensky, 33, in Minsk is reported. Zaturensky was arrested  on charges of buying and selling gold coins, not long after his application to emigrate to Israel.

1975: A fortnightly scientific seminar, similar to the one in Moscow, is begun  in Kiev with the participation of 15 Jewish scientists, most of whom were refused exit visas to Israel.

1976(27th of Cheshvan, 5737): Parashat Chayei Sara

1976: “Dorothy Schiff Agrees to Sell Post” published today described the decision to sell the venerable afternoon New York newspaper to Australian Rupert Murdoch including information that was found Jeffrey Potter’s biography Men, Money and Magic which appeared last month.

1977: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/sadat_speech.html

http://www.historycentral.com/Israel/1977SadatComesToIsrael.html

1978: The funeral of Judge Leo F. Rayfel is scheduled to take place today at 2 pm in Farmingdale, Long Island.

1979: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French Special Forces to put down the uprising.  Anybody who was paying attention would have noted that violence in the Middle East has many causes that have nothing to do with Israel and  the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites should be a real matter of concern

1981: “Israeli President Yitzchak Navon appealed to a number of European heads of state to  intercede with the Soviet Union to allow Dr. Alexander Paritsky to immigrate to Israel.:

1982(4th of Kislev, 5743): Parashat Toldot

1982: Andy Kaufman was forever voted off of Saturday Night Live by a live phone poll.

1982(4th of Kislev, 5743): Seventy-nine year old Abraham Louis Pomerantz the Brooklyn trained lawyer who was “deputy chief counsel at the Nuremburg Trials” and the father of Daniel Pomerantz and children’s author Charlotte Pomerantz passed away today. (As reported by Edward R. Gargan)

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/21/obituaries/abraham-pomerantz-79-pioneering-lawyer.html

1983: ABC broadcast “The Day After,” a made for television film directed by Nicholas Meyer, co-starring Steve Guttenberg and with theme music by David Raskin for the first time tonight.

1986(18th of Cheshvan, 5747): ninety-three year old Mathematician Alexander Markowich Ostrowski, the Kiev born son of merchant Mark Ostrowski whose “work was mainly, but not exclusively in algebra and number theory, and he had a great interest in numerical methods as well as abstract mathematics” passed away today in his adopted home, Switzerland.

1987: Jerry Reinsdorf’s Chicago Bulls began a streak of sold out games that would only come to an end with the retirement of Michael Jordan in 1999.

1988: ABC broadcast the fifth episode of “War and Remembrance,” “an American miniseries based on the novel of the same name written by Herman Wouk”

1990: Efraim Gur began serving as Deputy Minister of Transportation.

1991: Nadine Brozan described one of those strange coincidences in life where Richard Dreyfus and Michael Burns who lived near each other as children both became involved in projected related to Alrde Dreyfus.  Burns authored Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945 while Dreyfus produced and starred in a film about the French Captain entitled “Prisoner of Honor” that focuses on one of those sought to free Dreyfus, Georges Picquart.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/20/style/chronicle-992491.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1992: ABC broadcast the episode of “Civil Wars” a legal drama created by Steven Bochco, the son of painter Mimi Bochco and concert violinist Rudolph Bochco.

1995:  In a front page article, The Austin American Statesman reported that a group of IBM employees who were supposed to move from Florida to Austin were balking at the move because Austin lacked a kosher butcher and a Jewish Day School.  With a month, H.E.B opened a kosher butcher shop at one of its Austin stores.

1998(1st of Kislev, 5759): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1998: After having premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, “The Rugrats Movie” with a script co-authored by David N. Weiss was released in the rest of the United States today.

1999: In Paris, the 1999 Trophée Lalique figure skating competition which saw Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski give Israel a sixth place finish in Ice Dancing, came to an end.

2000: In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum was nominated to serve as “Secretary of the of the Environment of the Federal District” today.

2000(22nd of Cheshvan, 5761): Sgt. Sharon Shitoubi, 21, of Ramle, wounded 2 days ago in the Palestinian shooting attack in Kfar Darom, died of his wounds today

2000(22nd of Cheshvan, 5761): Miriam Amitai, 35, and Gavriel Biton, 34, both of Kfar Darom, were killed when a roadside bomb exploded alongside a bus carrying children from Kfar Darom to school in Gush Katif. Nine others, including 5 children, were injured.

2001: Toronto native and documentary film maker Avi Lewis, “the great grandson of Moshe Losz, an outspoken member of the Jewish Bund,” “was featured on” today’s “Life and Times” episode of “The Lewis Family.

2001(5th of Kislev, 5762): Eighty-six year old Joseph Greenberg, the husband of the former Marilyn Green and the father of LouEllen Barkan and William Greenberg passed away today.

2002: In “Network Tries to Expand Jewish Nation” published today Mica Rosenberg described the work of the Jewish Multiracial Network in dealing with the changing demographics of the Jewish people.

https://www.jta.org/2002/11/20/lifestyle/network-tries-to-expand-jewish-nation

2003: Car bombings in Istanbul continues after the initial bombings targeted two synagogues resulting in the death of 25 people and the wounding of 300 more.

2003: “The Last Samurai” directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, with a script co-authored by Marshall Herskovitz and music by Hans Zimmer was released today in Tokyo..

2004: “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” a comedy produced by Barry Mendel and Scott Rudin, with a script co-authored by Noah Baumbach and co-starring Jeff Goldblum premiered in Los Angeles today.

2005: A symposium is held at the American Schools of Oriental Studies entitled “The Tel Zayit Stone: A New Tenth-Century Inscription from the Judean Shephelah

2005: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest including the paperback edition of Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lanksy which recounts the adventures of  Lansky, who won a MacArthur award in 1989, as president and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, traveling the world to salvage and catalog a literature once on the verge of oblivion.

2006: “A rally organized by Anglo students to raise Israeli awareness about the genocide in Dafur is held at Zion Square in downtown Jerusalem.  The rally is sponsored by Hatzilu et Amei Dafur (Save the Nation of Dafur) a group composed of Yeshiva and seminary students.

2006: Birthdate of Noah Pozner who would be the youngest victim at the Sandy Hook Mass Shooting

2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, Imad Dalal who heads the Arabic music department at Safed College presents a program of traditional and contemporary song.

2007: Prime Minister Olmert is reported to be going to Cairo for a surprise meeting with Egyptian leaders.

2008: At the conclusion of his three-day trip to Great Britain President Shimon Peres is scheduled to meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace where he will be awarded a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG), the sixth-most senior award in the British system, used to honor individuals who have rendered important services in relation to foreign nations.

2008: After critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997.  This is part of the long descent into what has been termed the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that will have a devastating on all Americans, Jew and gentile alike.  Many Jewish organizations will be forced to down-size as funding sources dry up.

2008: In a secret ballot House Democrats voted 137-122 to have Congressman Henry Waxman replace John Dingell as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

2008: As part of the Live From Lincoln Center series, Jewish, Violinist Gil Shaham, the son of two Israelis, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and pianist Jonathan Feldman perform this intimate concert at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse featuring the music of composer Pablo de Sarasate in a panoramic survey of the music of his music on the occasion of the 100 anniversary of his death.

2008: Poland's capital marked the completion of a massive restoration project that marks the borders of the former Jewish Ghetto that was walled in by Nazis occupiers during World War II. otten. "This is all real and unreal," he said. "That we're here walking, through these streets."

2008: The 45th anniversary edition of the New York Review of Books was was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein was published today.

2009: The 92nd St Y in New York, hosts the Shababa Bakery where you are invited to prepare for Shabbat by squishing, rolling and braiding your very own challah which you can take home and bake.

2009: At Columbus, Ohio, at Tifereth Israel, Rabbi Unger leads The Mitzvah Initiative which features an unconventional approach to learning that is a series of open and honest workshops and discussion by participants which examine some of the most critical elements of Jewish life.

2009: The U.S. State Department issued a statement noting “a growing trend of anti-Semitic hate crimes and discrimination around the world.” The statement coincided with the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal to serve as the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.  “The position has been vacant since Gregg   Rickman left at the end of the Bush administration.”

2010: Sarah Michelle Levin and Melissa Ellen Levin are scheduled to be called to the Torah as B’not Mitzvah at North Suburban Synagogue Beth El.  They are the twin daughters of Gigi Cohen and Michael Levin and the sisters of Dana Levin who celebrated her Bat Mitzvah in the same congregation in November of 2008.  They are the granddaughters of Zena and David Cohen of blessed memory Mrs. Betty Levin, an ayash chayil par excellence and Dr. Jacob Levin, of blessed memory.

2010: JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to hold its 30th Fall Fundraiser honoring Tanya and Stephen Bodzin.

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest of Jewish readers including “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945” by Max Hasting, “Eva Bruan: Life with Hitler” by Heike B Gortemaker, “The Unmaking of Israel” by Gershom Gorenberg and  Umberto Eco’s novel, “The Prague Cemetery,” that explores the history of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

2011: “Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” a film Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, that recounts Churchill's years in the political wilderness, his early opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, his support for Jews, his return to government by the demand of the British people and his rise to the Prime Minister's office in 1940, is scheduled to be shown at The Jewish Eye World Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Rabbi Dr. Levi Cooper who the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled the first in a three part lecture series entitled Rabbi Akiva: The Mystical Prayer of a Legal Authority at Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

2011: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is scheduled to speak at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa.  Emanuel is Jewish.  Jefferson and Jackson were not!

2011: Fears of a fuel crisis this morning followed last night's discovery of a water problem in Ben Gurion International Airport's jet fuel.

2011: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu today called for medical residents to return immediately to their hospitals as their representatives informed the High Court of Justice that they were willing to return to the negotiating table and to accept the court's proposal to appoint a mediator.

2012: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginias is scheduled to present the final part of the series “The Evolving Views on the Afterlife in Judaism.”

2012: Steven A “Cohen was implicated in an alleged insider trading scandal involving an ex-SAC manager” today.

2012: Four rockets fired by Gaza-based terrorists exploded near a community in the Eshkol Regional Council.

 2012: As of midnight, Operation Pillar of Defense enters its seventh day with the Israeli government holding off on a ground offensive in the hope that talks in Cairo will lead to an end to massive Hamas assault on its citizens.

2012: Those living in southern Israel organize demonstrations against plans for a cease-fire one of which is to take place in Kiryat Malachi where three Israelis had been murdered by terrorist rockets and one at Ashdod.

2012(6th of Kislev, 5773): Eighteen year old Corporal Yosef Partuk and an Arab-Israeli civilian identified as Alayaan Salem al-Nabari were this  morning during a mortar attack

2013: Today Noah Pozner would be turning 7 if had not been gunned down last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

2013: Yosef Mendeolovich is scheduled to discuss his memoir, Unbroken Sprit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage and Survival at the Center for Jewish History

2013: Temple Judah is scheduled to host the Hadassah Book Club which will discuss Breakfast at Stephanie’s by Nancy Margolis.

2013: “Inheritance” is scheduled to be shown at the Other Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Joseph P. Franklin a white supremacist who killed at least 8 people and wounded Larry Flynt and Vernon E. Jordant, Jr. in an attempt to start a race war was put death in Missouri today by lethal injection for have having murdered Gerald Gordon outside of a St. Louis Synagogue where this innocent non-Jew was attending a Bar Mitzvah.

2013: A mid-range missile defense system, intended to close a large gap in Israel’s aerial defense readiness, successfully completed an intercept test today, the Defense Ministry announced. (As reported by Mitch Ginzburg)

2014(27th of Cheshvan): “2104 BCE (1657 from Creation), as the Flood waters finally subsided, Noah, his family and the animals left the Ark. On this day, God commanded them to repopulate and resettle the earth

 

2014(27th of Cheshvan, 5775): Ninety-one year old Samuel Klein whose founding of the Casas Bahai chain of Department Stores earned him the nickname “the Sam Walton of Brazil” and whose philanthropies included major contributions to the Lubavitch Yeshiva in the Born Retiro neighborhood passed away.

2014: “The Palestinian Authority has arrested some 30 suspects over the last 72 hours thought to be planning terror attacks, primarily against settlers, as well as operatives involved in incitement against Israelis, senior Palestinian sources told The Times of Israel today.”

 

2014: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present: “Mizrahi Music, Piyyut, and the Search for Israeli Identity”

2014: “Authorities intercepted a massive shipment of tens of thousands of firecrackers, as well as knives, Tasers and other weapons today that police say was en route to rioters in East Jerusalem.” (As reported by Tamar Pileggi)

2014: Jerry Seinfeld backtracked on his recent self-diagnosis of autism today, saying he was not on the spectrum but only “related to it on some level.”

2014: “A Nazi Roundup, Chaotically Evoked In 'La Rafle'” published today provides a an informative review of movie that  “chronicles the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of July 1942, in which roughly 13,000 Jews living in Paris (4,501 of them children) were removed from their homes by French police and sent to detention camps in the countryside, before being deported to Auschwitz.”

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a panel discussion “Towards Life: Reviving Jewish Life in Contemporary Poland.”

2014: In the Senate, the Majority Leader “filed for cloture on Noah Mamet’s nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.

2014: In Melbourne, “A Match Made in Heaven” and “Zero Motivation” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014: “Unorthodox” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th UK Jewish Film Festival

2014: The 16th Street Book Club is scheduled to discuss The World to Come by Dora Horn

2015: After having premiered at Cannes, “Carol” featuring Carol Brownstein as “Genevieve Cantrell” was released today in the United States

2015: “Soviet genocide in Ukraine” by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew who “coined the term genocide” was added to Russian index of "extremist publications", whose distribution in Russia is forbidden

2015: Jeremy Katz, the Director of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum is scheduled to host a tour providing an in-depth look at the Breman’s latest Southern Jewish History Exhibition Eighteen Artifacts: A Story of Jewish Atlanta.

2015: Broadway previews of the latest production of Fiddler on the Roof are scheduled to begin this evening.

2015: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Schnitzel and Shmooze” Friday night dinner.

2015: “The Hunger Game: Mockingjay-Part 2 produced by Nina Jacobson was released today in the United States.

2015: In a post on Facebook today, “said he planned to take two months of paternity leave after his daughter is born this year” because “studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families.”

2016: “Alone in Berlin” and is scheduled to be shown on the last evening of the 20th UK International Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “The Tenth Man” and “The Last Laugh” are scheduled to be shown at Brisbane as part of the Jewish International Film Festival

2016: “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” is scheduled to shown as part of the Global Day of Jewish Learning.

2016: “From Silence,” a new one-act play by Anne Marilyn Lucas that explores how the trauma of the Holocaust gets passed on from one generation to the next is scheduled to be performed for the last time at the Theatre for the New City, the Lower East Side theatre that has gained a reputation for staging radical political plays… (As reported by Cathryn J. Prince)

2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to a mock trial “The People vs. King David” with Prosecutor Chris Cuomo and Alan Dershowitz defending the Jewish monarch.

2016: A screening of “Mir Kumen On” an “educational film from 1936 which is one of the precious few surviving movies evoking Jewish life in Poland prior to its poisoning from external, racist forces” is scheduled to be shown at MoMA today. (As reported by Jordan Hoffman)

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=cfb8b7e18d631d09f248bc525&id=c1a35cb9c2&e=e3800374ef

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature by Adam Kirsch, Moonglow by Michael Chabon and Eleanor Roosevelt The War Years and After Volume Three: 1939-1962 by Blanche Wiesen Cook

2017: “Holy Air” and “Monsieur Mayonnaise” are scheduled to be shown at the 21st UK International Jewish Film Festival.

2017: “The New York Times said today that it was suspending Glenn Thrush, one of its most prominent reporters, after he was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior.”

2017: Jacob Wisse, director of Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to lead “a walking tour through Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibition The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Back, exploring the image and legacy of the Arch of Titus from Imperial Rome to modern-day Israel.”

2017: The Primo Levi Center is scheduled to host Michela Andreatta (University of Rochester), Serena Di Nepi (University of Rome La Sapienza) and Jane Tylus (New York University) in a discussion of “Ariosto’s masterpiece Orlando Furioso in the context of an early modern Jewish quest to define minority status amidst a dramatic transformation of mentality, political equilibria, and power structures.”

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host its Chanumas/Chrismukah Party completed withmince pies, doughnuts, xmas crackers and dreidels.”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Barbara Tuchman whose works included The Guns of August and The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 continues today.

2018(12th of Kislev, 5778): On the Hebrew calendar yahrzeit of “Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, the Director of Chabad Lubavitch in Cyberspace and considered by many the pioneer of Jewish education on the internet.”

2018: “An International Jewish Festival for Contemporary Culture” which will feature “Erez Lev-Ari and The Suits doing Ari San, a tribute to Rabbi Shalom Shabazi” is scheduled to open today.

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host lectures on “Zionism and Challenge to American Jewry” by Rabbi Robert Hirt and “Two Faiths, Two Scriptures, One God: The Torah and the Quran” by Rabbi Leonard Schoolman and Dr. Hussein Rashid.

2019: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Leona” in Glasgow and Manchester.

2019 The North Peninsula Jewish Community is scheduled to host a “From to Healing” which will include a screening of “Bogdan’s Journey.”

2019: Jews For Entrepreneurship is scheduled to celebrate its 10th anniversary at the Greenwich Mansion in San Francisco.

2019: JNEXT, the Jewish Federation’s “engagement vehicle for members of the Greater New Orleans Jewish community (and interfaith partners and spouses) in their forties and fifties is scheduled to take place this evening featuring  Chefs Alon Shaya and Graison Gil in conversation about their recent trip to Israel.”

2019: “The head of the European Jewish Association has written to an auction house in Munich, Germany asking for it to halt a sale of 147 different items from the Third Reich, including clothing belonging to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, Hitler's top hat and a silver-covered edition of Mein Kampf” which is scheduled to take place today. (YNET)

2020: In another session examining UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled to talk about Austrian artist Lazar Krestin’s 1905 painting “Jewish Resistance.”

2020: Ensemble for These Times’ Jewish Music & Poetry Project are scheduled to present  Dalit Warshaw live in N.Y. playing her piano piece “Winter Dream,” in memoriam of artist-writer Charlotte Salomon, who was killed in Auschwitz

2020: Park Synagogue is scheduled to host “So You Think You Know Cholent?” a virtual cooking class with Jared Skoff”

2020: The Maine Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the last screening “Good Thoughts, Good Words” and the first screening of “Heading Home.”

2020: Beth Israel of Judea is scheduled to host Dr. Pamela Munster of UCSF Center for BRCA Research and Aimee Sax of Sharsheret as they discuss the latest in genetic testing, cancer prevention and how it impacts Jewish families.

2020: Everybody Is A Star Foundation, Value Culture and rapper Kosha Dillz are scheduled to present a Shabbat program celebrating people of all abilities, with live music

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, Temple Judea is scheduled to virtual “Shabbat Worship with Rabbi Yaron Kapitulnik and Cantorial Solist Abbie Strauss.

2020: The JCC Literary Consortium is scheduled to co-present Mimi Lemay talking about her memoir What We Will Become, about the odyssey of her transgender child, Jacob, and her own struggles

2020: The Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival goes dark because of Sabbat but is scheduled to begin again tomorrow.

2021: In Palo Alto, CA, the Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to host its “Hebrew Channukah Party,” an “outdoor event for Hebrew speakers that includes menorah making with artist Shira Lao, doughnuts and dreidels.”

2021: In Waltham, MA, Temple Beth Israel is scheduled to present “Lift Every Voice Shabbat,” during which “Rabbi David will deliver a dvar Torah that lifts up one or more voices from a marginalized group within the Jewish community.”

2021: The Eden Tamir Center is scheduled to present Ensemble Modus featuring piano quartets by Mozart and Brahms.

2021: The two-long Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2021(16th of Kislev, 5782): Parashat Vayishlach;

2022: Kol Israel Foundation is scheduled to hold its Roll with Kol 2022 casino night fundraiser in honor of volunteer Elissa Wuliger at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, OH.

2022: The Louis and Marilyn Hurwitz Community Mikveh is scheduled to have its “grand opening” today. at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in Des Moines.

2022: The Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled to host the “East Coast debut of Yale Strom's cantata in honor of those lost in the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire after which the  quintet will also perform klezmer and Italian melodies that would have been heard in NYC before WWI.

2022: AJEX (The Jewish Military Association) is scheduled to hold its annual Remembrance and Parade Ceremony today at the Cenotaph.

2022: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host its Closing Night Gala at Curzon Mayfair.

2022: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a reading of The Tattooed Torah, Q&A, and film adaptation screening presented by Beth Kopin, the film's executive producer, and Brett Kopin, co-screenwriter

2022: As part of the Molly Blank Concert Series, the Breman Museum is scheduled to present the Annette Cohen Quartetinho

2022: The New York Times features reviews books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Free Market: The History of an Idea by Jacob Soll.

2022: Six-time Emmy award-winner Andres Cantor, the Argentine-Jewish announcer and  two-time Emmy nominee Sammy Sadovnik, “a proud Jew from Peru are scheduled to cover the World Cup which begins today for Telemundo while Matt Turner and DeAndre Yedlin are scheduled to play for the United States.

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rksq00euus

2023: “A concert supporting the Western Galilee is scheduled to take place in Omaha, Nebraska.”

2023: The St. Louis Jewish Book Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2023: A celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra is scheduled to take place with a concert featuring Beethoven and Hailstork.

2023: Funeral services are scheduled to take place this morning at the Riverside Jewish Center for Hector Goldman, Z”L, husband of Gisele Goldman, father of Judy (and Joel) Isaacson, Debbie Rosenbloom and (David Levin) and Edward (and Devorah) Goldman.

2023: Agnon House, the home of Nobel Prize winner S.Y. Agnon is scheduled to host the first lecture in a series that “will discuss Agnon's writing in the shadow of the war through reading the stories "Until Here" and "In Mr. Lublin's Shop".

2023: Temple Emanuel of Newton is scheduled to present online “Turmoil on Campus: Learn How Jewish Students Are Coping & Standing With Israel, and How We Can Help.”

2023: In Metairie, LA, the Jewish Community Day School board is scheduled to take place this evening.

2023: The Yiddish Study group sponsored by Agudas Achim in Coralville, IA  is scheduled to meet via zoom

2023: As November 20 begins Israel; tensions on the northern border increase following yesterday’s launch of at 25 rockets that triggered sirens in several northern towns, Hamas continues to be threat as can be seen by yesterday’s rocket launches and  the Hamas held hostages begin day 45 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)

 

 

 


No comments: