September 20
357
B.C.E.: Birthdate of Alexander the Great.
Alexander's eastern conquests would bring the Jews in contact with Greek
Culture. The conflict between Greek and
Jewish values would become a dominant motif in Jewish history over the next
several centuries. The Jewish view of
Alexander was positive, if somewhat idealized.
1187:
Saladin begins the Siege of
Jerusalem. When the siege ended in
October, the Moslems recaptured the city leading to the near collapse of
Christian control in the Holy Land. Saladin allowed the Jews to return to the
City of David from which they had been banned by the Christian Crusaders. (Did
they realize that this meant Jesus would not have been able to live in
Jerusalem?) Saladin’s victory would lead
to the Third Crusade.
1540:
The first auto da fe in Lisbon of those forcibly converted to Christianity
(conversos) is held. The term auto da fe literally means act of faith. In point of fact it was a public execution in
the form of a burning at the stake.
1563:
Maximilian II whose reign was “a golden age for the Jews in Prague” became King
of Bohemia
1590:
French playwright and poet Robert Garnier, the author of Les Juives, passed away. “Les
Juives is the moving story of the barbarous vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar on
the Jewish king Zedekiah and his children. The Jewish women lamenting the fate
of their children take a principal part in this tragedy, which, although almost
entirely elegiac in conception, is singularly well designed, and gains unity by
the personality of the prophet.”
1701:
In Great Britain, Bevis Marks Synagogue inaugurated.
“Situated in the City of London, just off the
ancient thoroughfare of Bevis Marks, the Synagogue was opened in 1701 and the
oldest still in use in Britain. Jews first arrived in England with William the
Conqueror, but following an edict of Edward I, were expelled from England in
1290. For more than 350 years there were no Jewish communities or places of
worship in Britain. In Catholic countries the cruelties of the Inquisition
forced some Jews to convert outwardly to Catholicism whilst, in secret,
adhering to the faith of their fathers. In the early 17th century some of these
crypto-Jews, known as Marranos', came from Portugal via Hamburg or Amsterdam,
to settle in the City of London. But they were still forbidden to practice
their religion openly. In 1655 a group of such Jews addressed a petition to
Oliver Cromwell, requesting freedom to worship and to re-admit Jews to England.
Cromwell gave tacit approval and, as a result, in 1656 the upper floor of a
house in Creechuch Lane (a stone's throw from Bevis Marks) was opened for use
as a place of worship. Towards the end of the century a new synagogue was
planned on the Bevis Marks site. Construction was entrusted in 1699 to Joseph
Avis, a Quaker, and the building was completed in 1701 at a cost of £2650; it is
said that Mr. Avis refused to make a profit from building a house of God and
returned all surplus money to the Congregation. It is also believed that
Princess (Later Queen) Anne presented an oak beam from a Royal Navy ship for
use as a roof support for the Synagogue building. In 1992 and 1993 the
Synagogue suffered great damage from terrorist bomb attacks on the City of
London. Nearly £200,000 was raised by donation and has since been spent in
repairing and renovating the structure to return it to its former glory. As it
approaches its tercentenary, the Bevis Marks Synagogue appears much as it did
on its opening day in 1701.”
1721:
Thomas Dogget, the Anglo-Irish actor who played “the role” of Shylock
“comically, even farcically” passed away.
(Dogget was one of a whole host of actors who played the role of the Jew
without ever knowing any of them)
1725:
In Moravia, a fine of 1,000 ducats “was imposed on anyone who allowed Jews to
come into possession of real estate, particularly customhouses, mills,
wool-shearing sheds, and breweries.” (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)
1741: Handel completed
the first act of “Samson,” a work based on the Biblical figure described in the
Book of Judges.
1755(15th of
Tishrei, 5516): Sukkot and Shabbat observed as the French-Indian War continues
for a second year.
1761: On the exact
anniversary of the first auto-de-fe in Portugal, Gabriel Malagrida was burned
alive on the Terreiro do Paço at Lisbon. He was to be the last victim burned in
Portugal at any auto-de-fe.
1762(3rd of
Tishrei, 5523): Tzom Gedaliah
1763: In London, Joseph
Gompertz and Esther Moses gave birth to Lion Gomperts, the husband of Rebecca
Salomons.
1768(9th of
Tishrei, 5529): Kol Nidre
1766: In Amsterdam, Samuel
van Isaac Lopes Salzedo and Sipora De Isaac Hisq. de La Penha gave birth to future New Yorker Judith van
Samuel Peixotto, the wife of Cantro Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto.
1770(1st of
Tishrei, 5531): Rosh Hashana
1773(3rd of
Tishrei, 5534): Tzom Gedaliah observed as the Russo-Turkish War drags on for a
fifth year.
1774(15th of
Tishrei, 5535): Sukkoth
1775: Maria Theresa
issued an order allowing Jews to “keep tanneries” which was the third of three
orders that would appear to show a desire to improve the economic conditions of
the Jews
1779(10th of
Tishrei, 5540): Yom Kippur
1779: Birthdate of
Jacob Baiz, the native of Bayonne, France and Leah Baiz who eventually settled
in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
1779: Birthdate of Karl
Streckfuss, the Prussian privy council who in 1833 wrote a treatise, “On the
Relation of the Jews to the Christian States” in which he expressed reluctance
“to recommend a universal emancipation because of the alleged moral and deficiencies
of the common type of Jew. (As reported by Jacob Katz)
1789(29th of Elul,
5549): Erev Rosh Hashanah observed for the first time during the Presidency of
George Washington.
1796: Thirty-three-year-old
York, PA native Reuben Etting and twenty-five-year-old Philadelphia native
Frances Gratz gave birth to Isabella Etting who died before reaching the age of
four.
1797(29th of
Elul, 5557): Erev Rosh Hashanah observed for the first time during the
Presidency of John Adams.
1798(10th of
Tishrei, 5559): Yom Kippur
1798: Birthdate of
Philipp Freiherr von Schey Koromla, the native of Guns who became a successful
businessman and was the first Hungarian born Jew to become a member of the
Austrian nobility.
1800(1st of
Tishrei, 5561): Rosh Hashanah observed for the last time during the Presidency
of John Adams.
1800: As of this Rosh
Hashanah, Rabbi Nachman had returned from Palestine where he had lived since
1789 and had taken up residence in Zlatopol where the resident had asked him to
name the leader for the High Holiday Services.
1800: Moses David
Friedman, the son of Dawid Friedman and Rachel Friedman gave birth to Abraham
Friedman.
1804(15th of
Tishrei, 5565) First Day of Sukkoth
1804: In Virginia, L.
Joseph & Company is scheduled to closed today because of “their uniform
practice to do no business on days ordained by Mosaic Law to be holy.”
1809(10th of
Tishrei, 5570): Yom Kippur
1811(2nd of
Tishrei, 5572): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah observed 8 days after the
“perihelion passage” of the Great Comet of 1811
1812:
A.M. Rothschild is buried next to ancestor Iassk Elchanan who died in
1585. Elchanan was the first one whose
tombstone was marked with the emblem of a shield which gave rise to the Red
Shield.
1817(10th
of Tishrei, 5578): Yom Kippur
1817:
In Bernberg, Saxony, Nathanael Reichenheim and Zipora Cäcilie Reichenheim gave
birth to Ferdinand Reichenheim the husband of Fanny Reichenheim.
1819(1st
of Tishrei, 5580): Rosh Hashanah
1819:
Introduction of the reactionary Carlsbad Decrees which were adopted during the
anti-Semitic Hep-Hep riots which came to
end in October.
1820:
Mark Jacob Nordon married Jane Arrobus at the Western Synagogue today.
1821(23rd
of Elul, 5581): Fifty-nine-year-old Eleazer Elizer, the Newport, RI born son of
Isaac Elizer, who served as Justice of the Peace and as Postmaster in
Greenville, SC passed away today in Greenville, SC.
1823(15th
of Tishrei, 5584): Sukkot and Shabbat
1825:
In Essex, Catherine Phillips and Laurence Lazarus gave birth to Caroline
Lazarus, the wife of George Mark Simmons with whom she had nine children.
1825:
Simeon Oppenheim and his wife gave birth to Samuel S. Oppenheim “one of the
founders and a member of the Building Committee and Board of Management of the
New West End Synagogue in London who worked on charitable activities with Rabbi
Isaac M. Wise of Cincinnati.
1828:
Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher, the Posen born “son of Salomon and Rahel Gutel
Kalischer and his wife Henrietta gave birth to Amalie Kalischer who became
Amalie Grunberg when she married Moritz Grunberg with whom she had three
children.
1829:
In Charleston, SC, Jacob Hertz and Rebecca Hertz gave birth to Frederick Eger
Hertz.
1831:
Birthdate of German native Julius Levis, the husband of Henrietta Emilie with
whom he had five children.
1836(9th
of Tishrei 5597): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre chanted to the last time during
the Presidency of Andrew Jackson.
1837:
Julius Singer married Rika Woolf at the New Synagogue today.
1838(1st
of Tishrei, 5599): Rosh Hashanah
1838:
Birthdate of Nathan Barnet, the native of Pozan who became mayor of Patterson,
NJ and was a founder of the Miriam Barnet Hebrew Free School.
1838:
Birthdate of Lowell, MA native and Episcopal priest William Reed Huntington who
on the first anniversary of the Kishinev massacres when “thousands of Jews were
marching up Broadway” approached Grace Church “appeared bareheaded at its
portals and remained there until the people passed while the church bells
tolled” showing “that the typical American Christian clergyman is of a
different type to the priests who bigotry is largely responsible for the
persecuting spirit in Russia…”
1844:
In Poland, Israel and Gertrude Zloto “Yetta” Friedman Guranowsky gave birth to Dora
“Dorothea” Guranowsky Apt, the wife of Gustave Apt whom she married in 1866.
1846(29th
of Elul, 5606): Erev Rosh Hashanah observed on the same day as the start of the
Battle of Monterrey during the Mexican-American War.
1847(10th
of Tishrei, 5608): Yom Kippur observed a week after American forces entered
Mexico City marking the end of the combat phase of the Mexican-American War.
1848:
Creation of The American Association for the Advancement of Science whose
Jewish members have included Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist,
evolutionary biologist and historian of science who served as the
organization’s president in 2000.
1850:
“Emperor Franz Joseph remitted the war-tax today but ordered that the Jews of
Hungary without distinction should contribute toward a Jewish school fund of
1,000,000 gulden; a sum they raised within a few years.”
1851:
Twenty-four-year-old Moritz Pinner, the Posen birth son of Rabbi Levin Aron
Pinner and Wilhelmine Goldbarth Pinner who had left Bremen aboard the SS Anna arrived
in Baltimore today after which he settled in Missouri where he became an
abolitionist, served as editor of Republican antislavery papers in St. Louis
and Kansas City, and was a member of state and national Republican conventions
in 1860.
https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/family/moritz.html
1851:
Birthdate of British playwright Henry Arthur Jones, author of “Judah” in 1890
and “The Triumph of the Philistines” in 1895.
https://archive.org/details/triumphphilisti00jonegoog
1856:
During the week ending today, of the 461 people who died in New York, only one
of them died at The Jew's Hospital.
1862(25th
of Elul, 5622): Leil Selichot
1862:
Today, President Lincoln wrote a letter of recommendation for “Issachar
Zacharie…his Jewish podiatrist” in which said “Dr. Zacharie has, with great
dexterity, take some troublesome corns from toes” and is now treating me” with
some success “for what plain people call back ache.”
1863:
Birthdate of Beilitz, Austria native Nathan Michnik, the son of Joseph Michnik
who earned his rabbinical diploma from Rabbi Simon Schreiber at Cracow, Galicia
before going to lead congregations in Springfield, IL, Helena, Mt, Huntsville
AL, Jonesboro, AR and Port Gibson before becoming the rabbi of Beth Israel in
Woodville, Mississippi.
1863:
During the American Civil War, the 15th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer
Cavalry, a Union unit that had been formed under the command of Lt. Col.
Gabriel Netter left Paducah, Kentucky, and headed for McLemoresville,
Tennessee. (Netter was one of several Jews to serve as ranking officer in the
U.S. Army)
1865(29th
of Elul, 5625): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1865:
Today's “City News” column reported that “This evening the series of annual
Jewish holidays commences. The first of these is known as Rosh Hashanah, (the
New-Year.) It begins this evening and terminates on Friday night. The origin of
the festival is given in Leviticus xxiii., 23, 24, 25. Though not one of the
three great festivals on which the male population of Israel was to appear
before the Lord, it is nevertheless considered as one of the first among the
principal holidays, and as such has ever been celebrated by the Sons of Jacob.
A peculiar rite of this festival is the blowing of trumpets, and this is not
only observed, but the hearing of the same is obligatory on all Jews. With this
festival begins an era called the ten days of repentance, which is terminated
by the Yom Kippur, (Day of Atonement.) This festival of New-Year is observed
very strictly by the Israelites of this city, no business being transacted, and
the synagogues being thronged by hundreds of devout worshipers.”
1866(11th
of Tishrei, 5627): “Lithuanian Talmudist and Hebraist Judah Judel Ben Benjamin
Scherschewski” who was “employed in one of the business establishments in
Wilna, where, in his spare hours, he occupied himself reading rabbinical works
and studying the literature of the haskalah movement” before being “appointed
teacher of Talmud and rabbinics in the rabbinical seminary of Wilna, which
position he held he passed away today.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13259-scherschewski-judah-judel-ben-benjamin
1867:
One day after she had passed away, 68-year-old Elizabeth Marks was buried today
at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1868(4th
of Tishrei, 5629): Tzom Gedaliah for the last time during the Presidency of
Andrew Johnson
1869(15th
of Tishrei, 5630): Sukkoth is observed for the first time during the Presidency
of U.S. Grant.
1870:
In Baltimore, MD. Jane Ahlborn and Moses Friedenwald gave birth to Johns Hopkins
(AB) and University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.) educated author and historian Dr. Herbert Friedenwald,
the brother-in-law of Cyrus Adler and the “Chief of Division of Manuscripts in
the Library of Congress, who was one of the founders of the American Jewish Historical
Society and a delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress and who “has written articles
for the American Historical Association.
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/frie/friedenwald.pdf
1870:
In Sulzburg, Baruch Berthold Dukas, the Son of Hirschel Naphtali Dukas and
Helena Hendle Dukas and his wife Sara Dukas gave birth to Moritz Dukas.
1870:
During the fight for the unification of Italy, Victor Emanuel seized the
Capitol city of Rome. This victory would lead to the end of Rome’s Ghetto which
had stood for three centuries.
1874:
Vice President Jesse Seligman chaired today’s regular meeting of the Board of
Trustees of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society of New York. The trustees unanimously adopted a motion
challenging the veracity of charges of mismanagement which had first appeared
in the Era magazine and then were reprinted in the New York Times. The motion referred to the charges as “false
and malicious” stating that they were made out of “animosity and malice” aimed
at the chief officer of the society. The
motion called for the establishment of an independent committee to investigate
the charges and report on their “truth or falsity.”
1874(9th
of Tishrei, 5635): Erev of Yom Kippur
1874:
Dr. Solomon Adler, the senior rabbi and Dr. Gustav Gottheil, his assistant,
will deliver sermons in German and English during the Kol Nidre Serve at Temple
Emanu-el, the major Reform congregation in New York City.
1875(16th
of Tishrei, 5546): Second Day of Sukkoth
1876(2nd
of Tishrei, 5636): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah observed for the last time
during the Presidency of U.S. Grant.
1876:
Birthdate of Russian born American writer Herman Bernstein whose “family
emigrated to American in 1893 and settled in Chicago” and who moved to New York
where in 1897 he began his literary career whose works including “a series of
ghetto stores that appeared in the New York Evening Post and “were
reprinted in book form under the title In the Gates of Israel.
1878:
In Moscow, Jacob Kourcik and his wife gave birth to Leon Kourcik, the cantor at
Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn.
1879(3rd
of Tishrei, 5640): Shabbat Shuva
1879:
In San Antonio, TX, Solomon and “Fannie Levi Halff” gave birth to “radio
station operator Godchaux Adolph Cremieux Halff
1880(15th
of Tishrei, 5649): First Day of Sukkoth observed for the last time during the
Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.
1880:
Birthdate of Cleveland native Mollie Rothenberg, the wife of Dr. Emil Manuel
Brudno who was in the Federation of Jewish Women and the mother of Mira Brudno.
1881:
It was reported today that 116 Russian Jews have left Antwerp bound for New
York.
1881: Vice President Chester A. Arthur was sworn in
as President following the death of President Garfield. In 1882, during
Arthur’s single term as President, the United States finally ratified the Red
Cross Treaty enabling the American Red Cross to join the international
body. President Arthur appointed
Adolphus Simeon Solomons as one of three delegates to represent the country at
the Geneva Congress, where he was elected vice-president. This was one of the
earliest moves to give an American Jew a prominent position in public affairs.
Solomons had been a driving force behind the creation of the American Red
Cross. It was at his home that a
proposal was approved to form the Association of the American Red Cross and incorporate
it in Washington, D.C. Solomons was born in New York where he began a
printing business which he would later move to Washington, D.C. and expand into
a full-scale publishing house. A Civil War veteran, Solomons worked to
establish numerous institutions that would aide both the general population and
the Jewish community. He helped
establish the first school for nurses in Washington and one of the first
shelters for homeless men. He helped to
establish Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Russian Jews Immigrant Aid Society.
1882: In Poland, Naftali Herondorf and his wife gave
birth to future Baltimore resident Max Mordchai Herendorf, the husband of Lilian
Herondorf
1882: In MIscolcz,, Hungary, Rivka and Yehuda Leib
Marmorstein gave birth to Avraham (Arthur) Marmorstein the holder of a PhD from
the University of Heidelberg and S.A. Hirsch’s successor as the “lecturer in
Talmud, Codes and Bible at Jews College whose son Bruno, while serving as a
Captain in the British Army “helped to liberate Belsen.”
1883: Birthdate of Albrecht Alt, the German
theologian who wrote “Israel and Egypt” as part of his doctoral and who served
as the Provost at the Evangelical Redeemer Church in Jerusalem.
1884(1st of Tishrei, 5645): Rosh Hashanah
1884: In Leadville, CO, Temple Israel celebrated the
Jewish New Year for the first time in its brand-new building.
1884: In New Orleans, “Isadore Levin Danziger” and
“Amelia Amanda Dreyfous Danziger” gave birth to Tulane University trained
lawyer Alfred David Danziger who served as Assistant State Attorney General.
1884: In San Francisco, opera singer Julie Rosewald
led the music service at Temple Emanu-El making her the first woman to perform
the Rosh Hashanah liturgy.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/sep/20/1884/julie-rosewald
1884: “Forced Out Of Business” published today,
described the demise of Rindskopf Brothers & Co. The company, which began operating in
Cincinnati in 1854 before moving to New York in1866 was forced into bankruptcy
by its inability to obtain financing during the economic downturn as well as
its failure to change its business practices. Morris Rindskopf, one of the
principles of the company, is a well-known philanthropist who is the treasurer
of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the United Hebrew Charities neither of which
are involved in nor threatened by the bankruptcy.
1885: In Troy, NY Anna Lasky and Jacob Grosberg gave
birth to future Michigan resident Charles Grosberg, the father of Merwin and
Jean Grosberg.
https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.1965.09.17.001/26
1885: In Budapest, Fannie Gottesman and Jehuda
Abraham gave birth to Columbia trained orthodontist Samuel Abraham the husband
of Stella Lillian Kronovet and member of both Congregation Ohab Zedek and
Temple Israel in Long Branch, NJ.
1885: “Dr. Pusey’s Daniel” published today provides
a detailed review of Daniel the Prophet, a compilation of nine lectures delivered
at Oxford by E. B. Pusey.
1885: Rachel Davis and Joseph Lipkie gave birth to
Lionel Lipkie.
1886: Birthdate of Cook County, Illinois, resident
Anna Behrman Shinglman, the wife of Joseph Shinglman and the mother of Willard
Edwin Shinglman.
1887(2nd of Tishrei, 5647): 2nd
Day of Rosh Hashanah
1887: Birthdate of Ette Levy who would be buried 73
years later in Natchitoches, LA
1888(15th of Tishrei, 5649): Sukkoth
1890: In Columbus, Ohio, “Fred and Rose Eichberg
Lazarus” gave birth to department store executive Robert Lazarus, the husband
of Hattie Weiler Lazarus with whom he had five children.
1890: Birthdate of poet Rachel Bluwstein
Sela, Zionist lyric poet known as “Rachel the Poet.” She died at the age of
41. Flowers of Perhaps: Selected
Poems of Rachel is an
English translation of some of her works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Bluwstein#/media/File:RahelGrave.JPG
https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2021/03/rachel-bluwstein-1890-1931-hebrew-poetess-and-pioneer-the-parade-in-white-passed-by-part-one/
1890: In Vienna, a sub-Lieutenant started beating
an old Jew before he was stopped by a Prussian officer who turned him over to a
police officer.
1890: Misses Ella and J.M. Dreyfus were among the
passengers who arrived in New York aboard the SS La Champagne.
1890: “City and Suburban News” published today
described plans that Anarchist Johann Most has announced for a mass meeting at
the Labor Lyceum to be held on Yom Kippur designed to mock the Day of
Atonement.
1891: Rabbi H. P. Mendes delivered the sermon at
the dedicatory services for the new synagogue on Staten Island in Richmond
Turnpike, Tompkinsville which were attended by approximately 350 people.
1891: In New York, the Addison Literary Society
hosted a debate
styled “Resolved that the civilized nations of the world should enter a protest
against Russia’s barbarous treatment of her Jewish subjects.”
1891:
In Milville, NJ, the lockout at the Flint and Green Glass Works of Whitall,
Tatum & Co which came in response to a strike sparked by the employment 14
Jews entered its second day.
1892:
In Zutphen, Holland, a Polish shoemaker and his wife gave birth to Joseph
Lefkowitz who gained fame as Joseph Leftwitch, the Anglo-Jewish critic who was
one of the “Whitechapel Boys”, the author of a biography of Israel Zangwill and
the creator of the Golden Peacock.
http://www.jta.org/1983/03/07/archive/joseph-leftwich-dead-at-90
1892:
In Fort Worth, TX an unidentified Jewish merchant was accidently shot in the
leg by Ollie Bowles who was trying to shoot the man who had just been acquitted
of trying to murder him.
1892:
An unnamed Jewish resident of Chicago wrote a letter to former President Grover
Cleveland who was running for President expressing his gratitude for the
statements of support for the Jews of Russia in the platform of the Democratic
Party.
1892:
Birthdate of Zutphen, Holland native Joseph Lefkowitz, a resident of the
London’s East End and school dropout who gained fame as journalist Joseph
Leftwich, a correspondent for the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency and the Palestine
Post whose books included The Golden Peacock and What Will Happen
to the Jews?”
1893(10th of Tishrei, 5654): Yom Kippur
1893: The Hebrew Anarchist continued their
tradition of mocking the observance of Yom by holding balls and enjoying other
entertainments. This year’s events were
held at Clarendon Hall where attendees paid fifteen cents to enjoy the speeches
and merriment.
1893: Rabbi Louis Lustig and his congregation will
not be worshiping at their usual house of prayer at 180 Rivington Street
because of a fire that broken out at eleven o’clock last night after Kol Nidre
Services.
1895(2nd of Tishrei, 5656): 2nd
day Rosh Hashanah
1895: The Russian Jews who arrived in Norwich, Ct
yesterday from Quebec and are planning to take a steamer to New York City that
they are following this “round-about route…to escape the rigid Custom House
inspection” that greets immigrants who arrive in New York from Europe.
1895: “Silver Dollar” Smith, a Jewish saloon owner
and member of the Tammany machine went looking for William Smith in an attempt
to get him to press charges against Martin Engel, a Tammany leader.
1896: A new Charles Frohman melodrama is scheduled
to open in Boston today which will eventually be brought to New York
1897:
Birthdate of Chicago native Burton Stanley Bachman, the Northwestern alum who
served in the military during WW I.
1898:
Colonel Dreyfus was released from prison on Devil's Island. This is the famous
Dreyfus of "The Dreyfus Fair" that rocked France and provided the
impetus for Theodore Herzl to become the father of modern Zionism.
1898:
Herzl began a journey that would
take him to Paris, The Hague and London on business of the Jewish
Colonial Trust (Bank).
1899:
Twenty-three-year-old Washington University trained attorney, Benjamin F.
Koperlik, the St. Louis born son of Isaac and Anna (Lowenstein) Koperlik
married Hattie Levy today after which he settled in Pueblo Colorado where he
served as President of Temple Emanu-El.
1899:
In Prussia, “Hugo Strauss and Jennie Strauss, née David” gave birth to American
philosopher, Leo Strauss.
https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/on-leo-strauss/
1899:
French President Emile Loubet pardoned Dreyfus.
1899:
In Kirchhain (Prussia), Hugo and Jennie Strauss gave birth to German-American
political philosopher Leo Strauss
1899:
After hiding out in a villa with his anti-Semitic comrades, Max Regis, the
former mayor of the city and “a notorious Jew baiter” went into Algiers
“stirring up anti-Jewish demonstrations, during which the windows of several
shops owned by Jews were smashed.
1900:
Nathan Straus’s Alvez raced successfully today at the Speedway.
1901:
“New Jersey Honors President’s Memory” published today described services held
in houses of worship all over the Garden State including the Camden’s Sons of
Israel Synagogue attended by 500 Jews who heard speeches by Joseph Roterman ,
Frank Auerbach and Rabbi Leventhal from Philadelphia.
1901:
Birthdate of Vilna native and Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Charles
Abrams who gained fame as an urban planner and expert on public housing.
1902:
Louis and Emma Sachs gave birth to Solomon Sachs who was murdered by the Nazis
at Sobibor.
1903:
“Jewish Holiday Season” published today described the “Quaint and Ancient
Ceremonies for the New Year” and the “customs in the Orthodox and Reformed
Congregations” marking the “period of observance from Rosh Hashanah to Succoth.
1904:
The Times of London Russian correspondents “says that the Russian legal journal
Pravo subjects to very severe criticism the recent modifications of the
legislation relating to Jews” which are “concessions” that can be ascribed “to
secure during the war” with Japan "the greatest possible measure of
internal peace.”
1905(20th
of Elul, 5665): Mrs. Caroline E. Sheftall Heidt, the Savannah, GA born daughter
Emanuel and Jane L. Theiss Sheftall and the wife of William Theodore Hedit whom
she married in 1856 and with whom she had two children passed away today in her
hometown.
1905:
On New York’ east side Lewis Lebowitz has sold a six-story tenement at 55
Cannon Street to David and Nathan Stein.
1906(1st
of Tishrei, 5667): Rosh Hashanah
1906(1st
of Tishrei, 5667): Seventy-nine-year-old, George Bazett Colwin Leverson, the
Middlesex born of Elizabeth Moses and Montague Leverson passed away today.
1907:
Journalist Elias Tobenkin, married Rae Schwid Tobenkin, who came to the United
States from Russia in 1898 and who was the mother of Paul Tobenkin, “a member
of the editorial staff of the New York Harold Tribune.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/04/03/96809512.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1907: The first Neiman Marcus department store
opens for the tenth day in Dallas, TX,
1908:
In Houston, TX, members of Congregation Adath Heshurun dedicated their new
synagogue.
1908:
Jacob “Jack” Louis Ottenheimer, the Baltimore born son of Rachel Feldenheimer
and Louis Ottenheimer married Clara Bussy today.
1909:
According to figures released today that appeared in the August immigration
report of the Department of Commerce and Labor 37,314 Hebrews immigrants came
to the United States during the last fiscal year.
1910:
Birthdate of New York born, and Columbia trained psychologist Joseph Ephraim
Barmack, the WW II veteran and CCNY faculty member
1910:
Fifty-three-year-old Levi Goodman, the “wholesale stamp clerk in the Madison
Avenue Branch of the Post Office was arrested” today on charges of having
embezzled “$1,088 in stamps and money.”
1911:
In New York, a case of Jew versus Jew British boxer Matthew “Matt” Wells
defeated World Featherweight Champion Abe Attell known as “the Little Hebrews”
in a non-title bout.
1911:
Birthdate of Brooklyn native Ralph R. Greenson, the psychiatrist and
psychoanalysis for a whole raft of celebrities including Tony Curtis and
Marylin Monroe and role model for the hero of the novel and movie Captain
Newman: M.D., who attended medical school in Switzerland because he was
Jewish and who was the husband of
Hildegard Troesch Greenson and the father of Daniel Peter Greenson, passed away
today in Los Angeles after which he was buried at Hillside Memorial Park in
Culver City.
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6w1024rs/
1912(9th
of Tishrei, 5673): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre
1912:
Birthdate of Gutsi Kollman, the widow of Eric Kollman who was a distinguished
professor of history at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA from 1944 to 1973.
1913(18th
of Elul, 5673): Parashat Ki Tavo
1913:
Birthdate of Chicago native Dr. Herman Heine Goldstine the University of
Chicago trained mathematician who worked on the earliest electronic computers
and helped the military develop the famous Eniac. (As reported by Wolfgang
Saxon)
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/us/herman-goldstine-dies-at-90-helped-build-first-computers.html
1914:
This afternoon, former Deputy Attorney General Maruice B. Bluementhal spoke at
the Young Folks’ League saying that “Americans not only uphold neutrality but
disapprove of the war in toto” yet “our hearts go out to three hundred thousand
Jewish soldiers in the Russian Army, who having bled and suffered at the hand
of their country on account of being Jews, are now suffering and dying for
their country because, as Jews, they are loyal to the flag under which they
live. Theirs is a martyrdom which
demonstrates the moral and intellectual superiority of the oppressed Jews over
his opporessor.”
1914(29th
of Elul, 5674): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1914:
Tonight, at Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a Rosh Hashanah
sermon on the topic of “Peace” using as his theme the words of Isaiah,“Peace,
peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near saith the Lord.”
1914:
Cantor Epstein and Rabbi Straus officiated at tonight’s service at Adath
Abraham Temple.
1914:
Rabbi Samuel Schulman conducted services at Temple Beth-El on Fifth Avenue.
1914:
Four thousand worshippers attended services conducted by Rabbi Jacob Tarlav of
the People’s Synagogue which were held at the Educational Alliance building on
East Broadway.
1915:
Today, during the Gallipoli Campaign in which members of the Zion Mule Corps
laid the groundwork for what became the fighting spirit of the IDF, “the Royal
Newfoundland Regiment landed in Sulva Bay.”
1916:
After having referred Joseph Barondess’ motion that teachers and clerks be
allowed to be “absent from their duties so they could observe Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur the New York City School Board was scheduled to hold a special
meeting to decide on the request which had been watered down from “with pay” to
“excused without pay.”
1916:
Hugh M. Dorsey, the man responsible for the infamous prosecution of Leo Frank
was told today by his chief support Thomas E. Watson that he was not to issue
any statements in support of Woodrow Wilson.
1916:
“Henry Morgenthau, former Ambassador to Turkey, explained” today ‘that this
appeal for a ‘Ten Thousand Club,’ whose members were to contribute $1 each to a
Woodrow Wilson campaign fund was not intended as a sectarian appeal to the
Jews” and that publication of the appeal in Yiddish newspapers was just the
first of many appeals that would be made in foreign language papers read by
immigrants.
1917:
“Refuses Request of Jews” published today described the appeal that the Jewish
Union of Frankfort-on-the-Main to the Pope to get his aid in overturning the
decision of the Italian government to deny shipping of the Palm branches
necessary for the celebration of Sukkoth to Jews in Germany and German occupied
territories. (Editor’s note – The Italians and Germans were on opposite sides
during WW I so the Italian decision is not as unreasonable as it might seem)
1917:
Birthdate of Arnold "Red" Auerbach. This New York native earned bachelors and master’s degrees from George
Washington University. Despite his
father's initial lack of enthusiasm for his interest in athletics, Auberbach
coached the Boston Celtics to nine straight NBA championships in the 1950's and
1960's. However, sheer numbers do not do
justice to the impact of this Hall of Fame coach. During his career, the Celtics were the
dominant force in professional basketball.
Auberach's Celtics were a force beyond the hardwood courts, as they
provided a venue where African-American athletes could shine in a way not known
before in American sport.
1917(4th
of Tishrei, 5678: While serving with the 3rd Battalion of the South
African Infantry Henry Mark Jacobs, the son of Joseph and Clara Isabel Jacobs
was killed in action today while fighting on the Western Front during the
Battle of Ypres.
1918(14th
of Tishrei, 5679): Erev Sukkoth
1918:
M. Politis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announces Greek governmental approval
of the suggestion by Dr. Chaim Weizmann to the Greek representative in Egypt,
that a volunteer military corps be developed for Palestine, from among the Jews
of Salonica.
1918:
During WW I, General Allenby’s forces entered the Jezreel Valley and began two
days of fighting that would lead to the capture of Afula (later known for its
Pistachio nuts) and Megiddo, the site of the biblical battle of Armageddon.
[One can only wonder what the Jewish forces serving with Allenby felt as they
trod this land on the eve of the holiday simply known as “The Chag.”]
1918:
Birthdate of George Lachmann Mosse, the German born American cultural historian
who co-founded “The Journal of Contemporary History.”
https://archive.org/details/georgemosse00reel76rs
1919: All five Socialist
candidates including Louis Waldman who had won a special election appeared at
the New York State Legislature with attention of assuming their seats.
1920: The
final day of examinations for those wishing to attend the Teachers Institute of
the Jewish Theological Seminary.
1920:
In San Francisco, the 8-day campaign to raise “$350,000 for the relief of the
suffering Jewish in Eastern Europe” is scheduled to come to an end today.
1921(17th
of Elul, 5681): Eighty-two-year-old diamond merchant Jules Porges, a
native of Vienna, raised in Prague “where his father was a master jeweler and
the husband of “Rose-Anne Wodianer” passed away today in Paris.
1922:
Among those returning to New York on board the Cunarder Berengaria were William
Fox, head of the Fox Company who had been in England “superintending the
filming of ‘If Winter Comes’” and Herbert N. Straus, the President of R. H.
Macy and Company and Mrs. Straus.
1922:
It was reported today that “charges that Harvard University was seeking to
discriminate against Jewish students have been renewed with the publication of
excerpts from the new blank form which applicants for admission are required to
fill out.”
1923(10th
of Tishrei, 5684): Yom Kippur
1923:
Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to “hold special Atonement Day services today at
the Town Hall” in New York City.
1924:
In Manhattan, Alexander and Eugenia Moshinsky gave birth to Albert Eliot
Moshinsky who gained fame as Albert Marre, the Tony Award-winning director. (As
reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1925(2nd
of Tishrei, 5686): 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah
1925:
“The fourteen Yiddish theaters in Greater New York, opened the season of
1925-26 on the second day of Rosh Hashanah and all have played to capacity
houses.”
1925:
Birthdate of Eliezer Zborowski, the Polish born Holocaust survivor who started
the American and International Societies for Yad Vashem (As reported by Douglas
Martin)
1926:
“The Ramblers,” a Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby musical that featured such songs
as “All Alone Monday” and “You Smiled at Me” opened at the Lyric Theatre.
1927: Birthdate of Henry Taub a founder of the
payroll company that grew into the global giant Automatic Data Processing, also
known as ADP.
1928:
Birthdate of Dr. Joyce Brothers who first gained national fame as a quiz show
contestant on the "$64,000 Question."
1928:
The “Israelitisches Familienblatt” published an article expressing “Support of
Jewish Ceremonial Art.”
https://jewish-history-online.net/source/jgo:source-135
1929(15th
Elul, 5689): Sixty-four-year-old medical pioneer Dr. Claribel Cone, the
Jonesboro, TN born daughter of Hellena and Herman Cone passed away today in
Lausanne, Switzerland.
1929:
Maude Harrison Perkins and Robert Melville Scholle were marries today at the
home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Sidenberg, brother-in-law and sister of the
bridegroom.
1930:
Birthdate of Chicago native and graduate of the Yale School of Architecture
Stanley Tigerman,
https://www.archdaily.com/tag/stanley-tigerman
1930
In San Francisco, Mortimer Fleischhacker, Jr., the San Francisco born son of
Mortimer Fleishhacker and Florence Isabelle (Bella) Fleishhacker and his wife
Janet Louise Fleishhacker gave birth to Delia Ehrlich.
1931(9th
of Tishrei, 5692): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre
1931:
Birthdate of Bologna native Franco Cesna who joined the Italian resistance at
the age of 12 and “was shot by Germans while on a scouting mission in the
mountains.”
1931:
In New York, Stella and Mortimer H. Koenig gave birth to M(arshall) Glenn
Koenig, the Cornell University trained physician who “became the director of
the Division of Infectious Diseases in
the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/09/classified/paid-notice-deaths-koenig-stella-a.html
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article-abstract/127/4/488/861779?redirectedFrom=PDF
1932:
Robert and Hattie Weiler Lazarus gave birth to Nancy Weiler Lazarus who would
die in infancy.
1932:
Today, the Toronto daily newspaper, The Evening
Telegram, devoted its front-page banner headline to a report that its’
Moscow-based correspondent, Rhea Clyman, had been “Driven From Russia” and
attacked as a “Bourgeois Troublemaker.” (As reported by Jars Balan)
1933(29th
of Elul, 5693): Erev Rosh Hashana observed for the first time during the
Presidency of F.D. R.
1934:
“Spring Parade” a comedy produced by Joe Pasternak and co-starring Franciska
Gaal was released today.
1934:
As his career was winding down featherweight Harry Blitman entered the ring for
the 74th time and emerged victorious by a TKO.
1935:
“Frank Ritchie, a national secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association
and investigator for the American Christian committee on the non-Jewish refugee
problem in Germany, reported today that the number of Christians "who
suffer persecution on account of their Jewish descent is double that of the
persecuted Jews."
1935:
It was reported today that while staying at Hyde Park President Roosevelt met
with Jesse L. Straus, Ambassador to France now in the United States on leave of
absence about the “Italo-Ethiopian Crisis.”
1935:
Henry Morgenthau Sr., the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey had a “social visit”
with President Roosevelt at his Hyde Park Estate.
1936: In a time when most Jews were supporting FDR,
friends of Republican Presidential candidate Alf Landon, expressed their
gratification over a statement by Felix M. Warburg, New York banker and
philanthropist, announcing his support for Governor Landon.
1936:
“Christianity Is Held To Be Bolsehvistic” published today described how “the
neo-pagan German Action is carrying our Chancellor Hitler’s attack against
“Jewish bolshevism by arguing “that Christianity is also a Jewish product”
because the “Jew’s Bible” which contains “numerous passages” that “are easily
recognized as Bolshevist class theories” is the foundation of Christianity
making it, like Bolshevism, a Jewish product.
1936:
It was reported today that “the Polish Ambassador has informed the British
Foreign Office that the population of his country is growing by 400,000
annually with the highest rate of increase among the Jews and that an outlet
for them is much desired” which would explain why “Colonel Josef Beck, Polish
Foreign Minister will be presenting a plan to the League of Nations calling for
the emigration of 75,000 Jews annual from Poland to Palestine.” (Editor’s Note – Lost among the Holocaust
Histories is the reality of virulent anti-Semitism in pre-war Poland and the
desire of the Poles to ride their country of the Jews which happened to be
violation of the treaties creating the modern state of Poland.)
1936:
“A campaign to raise $500,000 for the settlement of 1,000 European Jewish
families in the Russian all-Jewish territory of Birbobidjan was announced”
today “at a meeting of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in
Birobidjan” which “was attended by delegates from 250 Jewish organizations and
societies have a membership of more than 50,000 persons.”
1936:
“Predicting a bloody conflict between believers in God and the forces of the
anti-Christ, the Reverend Robert E. Woods delivered a message at high mass in
St. Patrick’s Cathedral where he “warned Catholics, Protestants and Jews they
must be prepared to take aggressive measures to defend their faith in ‘the one
and only true God.’”
1937(15th
of Tishrei, 5698): Sukkoth
1937(15th
of Tishrei, 5698): Sixty-six-year-old Kuhn, Loeb & Co partner, Felix Moritz
Warburg, the grandson of Moses Marcus Warburg “one of the founders of M.M and
the husband Jacob Schiff’s daughter, Frieda whose philanthropy included leading
the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the founding of the
American Friends of Hebrew University passed away today.
http://www.jta.org/1937/10/21/archive/felix-m-warburg-dead-at-66
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0457/ms0457.html
http://blog.thejewishmuseum.org/if-these-walls-could-talk-the-warburg-mansion/
1937:
The Palestine Post reported that Egypt, in an outspoken declaration made
by its foreign minister, Butrus Ghali Pasha, officially objected to any planned
partition of Palestine. Butrus Ghali explained that Jews and Arabs, "both
descendants of Abraham," had lived together amicably for centuries and
could continue to live so in our own time and day.
1937: The Post reported that Mr. K.W.
Blackburne, assistant district commissioner for the North of Palestine,
informed local mukhtars (village heads) that they would be held responsible for
any terrorist activities which might take place within their territories. Whenever
found guilty they would have to pay damages and defray the expenses of the
special punitive police posts, established in their villages. This tough talk was not backed up with action
as the British government did little or nothing to put an end to Arab terror.
1938:
“Father John LaFarge, an American Jesuit tasked with writing an encyclical for
Pope Pius XI to condemn racism and anti-Semitism, turns his work over to
Wladimir Ledochowski, the Father Superior of the Jesuits in Rome.”
1938:
“The seven bishops of Austria, led by Cardinal Theodore Innitzer, Archbishop of
Vienna, issue a letter complaining about that the relations between the
Catholic Church and Nazi Party have not developed as they had originally
envisioned.
1939: All radios owned by Jews in Greater
Germany were confiscated.
1939:
Today, the Evening Standard today published a cartoon depicting Hitler greeting
Stalin after the invasion of Poland, with the words: "The scum of the
earth, I believe?". To which Stalin replies: "The bloody assassin of
the workers, I presume?";
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact#/media/File:Davidlowrendezvous.png
1940:
Breendonck concentration camp opens in Belgium.
1940(17th
of Elul, 5700): Sixty-seven-year-old McGill trained physician Sidney Solomon
Oppenheimer, the Yale, Canada born son of Celia and August Isaac Oppenheimer,
and the husband of Dorothea Oppenheimer passed away today in Spokane, WA.
1941(28th of Elul, 5701): Several thousand
Jews, mostly women and children from Kovno, Lithuania, are executed at the
local synagogue after being held there for three days.
1941(28th
of Elul, 5701): Just 17 days after celebrating her 84th birthday,
Emma Hays Eckhouse, the daughter of Abraham Hays and Fanny Kahn and the widow
of Moses Eckhouse who was active in many civic and Jewish communal organization
as can be seen by her service a volunteer probation office in the Indianapolis
Juvenile Court and vice president of the Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Society,
passed away today after which she was buried at the Indianapolis Hebrew
Congregation Cemetery South
1941: Policemen in Kiev, Ukraine, adopt
armbands identifying the wearer as a member of the Nazi-sponsored Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists.
1942(9th
of Tishrei, 5703): Erev Yom Kippur
1942(9th
of Tishrei, 5703: Fifty-nine-year-old Russian born American rabbi “Mordechai
(Max) Yohlin” passed away today in Philadelphia.
https://library.temple.edu/scrc/mordechai-yohlin-family-papers
1942:
Seventy-two-year-old Emil Schiff was transported from Leipzig today with the
destination being Terezin where he was murdered later in the year.
1942(9th
of Tishrei, 5703): In Letychiv, Ukraine, the SS starts a two-day murder spree
that claims the lives of at least 3,000 Jews.
1943(20th of Elul, 5703): One thousand
Jewish inmates of the camp at Szebnie, Poland, are trucked to a nearby field,
stripped naked and executed with machine guns. The bodies are burned, and the
bones thrown into the Jasiolka River. Those who had been ordered to pile the
dead bodies onto a pyre were then shot to death as well.
1943:
Today, luck ran out for German music hall and cabaret entertain Kurt Gerron,
who had found refuge in Holland, and his family when they were sent to
Westerbrook .
1943:
In Norfolk, VA, David Crowe and Earnestine Ingram Mancil gave birth David
Crowe, the holder of a Ph. D from the University of Georgia and professor at
Elon University who wrote Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life,
Wartime Activities and the True Story Behind the List.
1943: Jacob Kapler, a Jew assigned to the
body-burning detail at the Babi Yar, Ukraine, mass-murder site, finds a key
that fits the padlock on a bunker in which he and other laborers are locked
each night.
1944(3rd
of Tishrei, 5705) Tzom Gedaliah
1944:
Today, on his 13th birthday, the body of Franco Cesna who had been
shot by Germans while he was fighting with the Italian resistance, was returned
to his mother.
1944:
The Jewish Brigade Group is formed by the British high command. After a long
battle by Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Sharret, the British agreed to the
establishment of a Jewish Army to fight alongside British troops. In all over
5000 people from pre-state Israel including many who had fled from Europe
enlisted. Seven hundred of them lost their lives. After the war they formed the
nucleus for those working to get Jews from Italy and the Balkans by legal or
illegal efforts.
1944:
Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, joins the Whermacht
1945: The Jewish Agency for Palestine makes its
first claim for restitution from Germany for crimes Nazis committed against
Jews.
1945(13th
of Tishrei, 5706): Forty-six-year-old Alice Stix Eiseman, the daughter of David
and Amelia Stix Eisman and the husband of Milton Alfred Hellman whom she
married at Frankford, Michigan in 1917 passed away today in University City, MO
after which she buried at the New Mount Sinai Cemetry and Mausoleum in Affton,
MO.
1945:
Eleanor Roosevelt and Mrs. Henry Morgenthau, Jr. visited the refugee camp at
Fort Ontario where most of the population was Jewish.
1946:
In Haifa, Lilly and Eliyahu Goldenberg gave birth to David Goldenberg who
gained fame as Israeli entertainer and television personality Dudu Topa
1947(6th
of Tishrei, 5708): Parashat Vayeilech; Shabbat Shuva
1947:
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia passed away.
New York's "Little Flower" had an Italian father and a Jewish
mother. La Guardia never "traded on
his Jewish origins" for political purposes. At the same time, he suffered numerous times
because of them. For example, his career
in the Foreign Service ended before it began, despite his linguistic skills,
when it was explained to him that a Jewish parent would prove detrimental to
his future. He was the victim of
numerous anti-Semitic slurs from political opponents. At one point the Democrats ran a Jewish
candidate against him thinking it would be to their advantage. However, La Guardia (a Republican) had the
last laugh when he challenged his opponent to a debate so long as the language
of the match was Yiddish. The opponent
demurred because his linguistic skills were less than La Guardia's who then
went on to win the election.
1948:
Today, “following the Altalena incident” battalions of the IZL which had been
“fighting in Jerusalem…were disbanded and their soldiers joined the IDF on an
individual basis” in accord with Ordinance No. 4 which established the IDF as
Israel’s only military force.
1949:
Four years after the end of the Holocaust, “the Federal Republic of Germany”
(known as West Germany) had its first government formed today.
1949:
Today “Historian and educator,” Isaac Eisenstein Barzilay married Helly Frost
with whom he had two children Joshua and Sharonah.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/classified/paid-notice-deaths-barzilay-isaac-eisenstein.html
1950(9th
of Tishrei, 5711): Kol Nidre
1950(9th
of Tshrei,5711): Thirty –six-year-old New York born Dartmouth graduate and
former Time Magazine Moscow Bureau Chief Richard Edward Lauterbach, “the son of
Morton Edgar and Hazel Augusta (Kronthal) Lauterbach” and husband of the former
“Elizabeth S. Wardell” with whom he had three children – Jennifer, Ann and
David” passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/09/21/86457040.pdf
1950:
Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky left New York on an Air France aircrafts
on his way to Israel where he will conduct the Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra. “He will give fifteen
concerts in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa.”
1951:
As the infant Jewish state copes with the economic challenges brought on by
immigrant absorption and having to defend itself against a cordon of states
dedicated to its destruction. David Horowitz presents Israel’s plans for
dealing with the situation at the National Economic Conference at Washington,
D.C.’ Shoreham Hotel.
1951:
Jewish Film Distributors, local film distributors for Carmel Film of Tel Aviv
has announced through Nathan Axelrod, head of the company that “Rebirth of a
Nation,” a 90 minute documentary and first of a new series of Israeli made
features will have its American premiere at the Stanley Theatre.
1951:
In a speech given at the Jerusalem Shoe Company marking the end of Industry
Week Israel’s Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan announced “a program to mobilize
$300,000,000 for new industrial projects in the next three years. In his speech Kaplan declared, “Some think
Israel needs pity. But I say we need
assistance. We are building at a
tremendous tempo and Israel is surmounting its difficulties.
1952(1st
of Tishrei, 5713): Rosh Hashanah
1952:
Birthdate of Randy Grossman who played tight end for Temple (where else would a
Jewish boy play) University before going on to a career with the Pittsburgh
Steelers with whom he earned four Super Bowl rings.
1953:
Israeli President Itzhak Ben-Zvi opened the 4th Maccabiah at Ramat
Gan Stadium.
1953(11th
of Tishrei, 5714): Seventy-four-year-old “Abraham Panken, a retired merchant”
and “a vice president of the Greater New York Aid Society and the Council for
Older People” “ who was a brother of Justice Jacob Panken and the father of
former state Senator Harold Panken” passed away today.
1953:
The New York Times includes a review
of Saul Bellow’s latest novel, “The Adventures of Augie March “about “a
West-Side-Chicago Tom Jones…of depression years with a ‘weak sense of
consequence.’”
1954:
“In a plea for widespread support of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Dr.
Albert Einstein said today that Israel was "the only place on earth where
Jews have the possibility to shape public life according to their traditional
ideals."
1954:
Thomas Dewey, the Governor of New York “today noted the advent of the year 5715
in the Jewish calendar and said America owed ‘an abiding debt for the contribution
made by the great Hebrew tradition to our religion, our laws and our culture.’”
1955(4th
of Tishrei, 5716): Fifty-eight-year-old Academy Award winning screenwriter and
playwright Robert Riskin passed away today.
http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=1376
1955:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “Navy Log” the anthology series that gave
Don Devlin “his first acting role” and that featured theme music by Irving Bibo
and Fred Steiner.
1955:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “The Phil Silvers Show,” created by Nat
Hiken, the Chicago born son of Jewish parents and starring Phil Silvers
the eighth and youngest child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Saul Silver and
Sarah Handler
1956(15th
of Tishrei, 5717): Sukkoth
1956:
First appearance of The American Examiner which resulted from a merger
of the Brooklyn Examiner and The American Hebrew
1957:
In Tel Aviv, athletes began another day of competition in the Maccabiah Games
1959:
In Cologne, the Roonstrasse Synagogue which was originally dedicated in 1899
and destroyed during Kristallnacht was reopened with a formal dedication
ceremony today.
1959:
Beth Shalom Synagogue, in Elkins Park,
PA, was inaugurated, a few
months after the passing away of the architect who designed it, Frank Lloyd
Wright. The synagogue is considered a Wright masterpiece. The synagogue would later be placed on the
list of National Historic Landmarks.
1960: Pitcher Larry Sherry loses gives up two runs
in the 9th as the Cards defeat the Dodgers 3 to 2.
1960(28th of Elul, 5720): Seventy-six-year
Russian born Jewish dancer Ida Rubinstein who converted to Catholicism passed
away today.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rubinstein-ida
1960: A
London production of Once Upon a Mattress, a musical comedy with music
by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Marshall Barer” opened at the Adelphi Theatre today where it ran for 24 performances
1961(10th of Tishrei, 5722): Yom Kippur
1961(10th of Tishrei, 5722): Forty-year-old
Andrzej Munk movie director and script writer died today as a result of a car crash in Kompina, Poland
in a head-on collision with a truck
http://culture.pl/en/artist/andrzej-munk
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/13/munk-o13.html
1961: Birthdate of Lisa Allred Bloom, the daughter
of Gloria Allred who followed in her mother’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer
and television personality.
1963(2nd of Tishrei, 5724): Second Day of
Rosh Hashanah – the last time that the Jewish New Year would be observed under
the abbreviated presidency of John Kennedy.
1963(2nd of Tishrei, 5724): Seventy-three-year-old
Ukraine born labor union leader Max Guzman, the husband of Ida Guzman with whom
head two daughters – Sandra and Freda – who in 1907 came to the United States
where he took place in the strike known as the “Uprising of the 20,000” and was
an official of the ILGWU for 45 years passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/09/22/90897315.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1964(14th of Tishrei, 5725): Erev Sukkoth
1964: Funeral services were held today for Ann
Klauber Berson the wife of Leonard R. Berson and daughter of Ethel Klauber and
Leo Klauber, Treasurer and Board Member of the Emanu-El Midtown Y.M.Y.W.H.A.
1964: At noon today, in Brooklyn funeral services
were held for Samuel Abramowitz, the husband of Lillian Cohen Abramowitz and
father of Judyth A. Weisser and Marcia A. Aronson
1967: 20th Century Fox released “Two for the
Road” which was produced and directed by Stanley Doan, the son of Jewish
parents from South Carolina.
1969(8th of Tishrei, 5730): Shabbat Shuva
observed for the first time during the Presidency of Richard Nixon.
1970(19th of Elul, 5730): Sixty-nine-year-old Arturo
Rosenblueth, the Mexican doctor who was a pioneer in the field of cybernetics,
passed away today.
1971(1st of Tishrei, 5732): Rosh Hashanah
1971(1st of Tishrei, 5732): Seventy-two-year-old
Russian born American businessman and philanthropist Louis Schweitzer passed
away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9506E2DD1F3FE63ABC4951DFBF66838A669EDE
1972: In Jerusalem, one postal worker was injured by
a letter bomb.
1972: Nobody was injured today when a letter bomb
exploded in Tel Aviv.
1973(23rd of Elul, 5733): Eighty-three-year-old
Samuel Aronowitz, the Albany born son of Max and Dora Arronwitz “a lawyer, a
founder of radio station WTRY in Troy” and “a fellow of Brandeis University
passed away today after which he was buried at Beth Emeth Cemetery.
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/21/archives/samuel-aronowitz.html?searchResultPosition=1
1973(23rd of Elul, 5733): Sixty-three-year-old
German-born “logician and philosopher” and author Robert S. Hartman who was
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 passed away today.
https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/
1974(4th of Tishrei, 5735) Fifty-six-year-old
novelist and actress Jacqueline Susann, the Wynnewood, PA born daughter of schoolteacher Rose Jans and
portrait painter Robert Susan and the wife of Irving Mansfield whom she married
in 1939 who is best known her novel Vally of the Dolls, lost her battle
with cancer today.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/20/1921/birth-of-novelist-jacqueline-susanne
1974(4th of Tishrei, 5735): Eighty-six-year-old
Henry Austryn Wolfson “a scholar, philosopher, and historian at Harvard
University, the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center in the United States”
passed away today.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1976_28_01_00_feuer.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21063.html
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/harry-austryn-wolfson
1975(15th
of Tishrei, 5736): Sukkoth
1975: Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish Secretary of
State met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko whose country was busy
locking up Jewish refusniks.
1975: On ABC, premiere broadcast the first episode
of “Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell” (not to be confused with the late
night Saturday night program).
1976: In Washington, DC, of Joan Lurie (née Marx)
and Eric Lawrence "Rick" Bernthal, a lawyer with Latham & Watkins
LLP gave birth to actor Jonathan Edward “Jon” Bernthal, the brother of Nicholas
and Thomas Bernthal and the grandson of Syracuse University basketball player
and violinist Murray Bernthal.
1976(25th
of Elul, 5736): Seventy-one-year-old Kermit Bloomgarden, the Broadway producer
whose productions included “The Diary of Ann Frank” passed away today.
https://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/collection/data/173692441
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/09/21/archives/kermit-bloomgarden-producer-of-many-outstanding-plays-dead.html
1976:
In Flossmoor, IL, “Fern (Malis) Salamensky, who worked for her family’s scrap
metal business, and Paul Salamensky, a welfare examiner gave birth to New York
Law School graduate Beth Mara Salamensky who was active in the Jewish
L.G.B.T.Q. community. (As reported by Julia Carmel)
1976:
CBS broadcast he first episode of season five of “Maude” a sitcom created by
Norman Lear and starring Bea Arthur as Maude
1977:
The Jerusalem Post reported that the
military government destroyed a terrorist's house in Beit Hanina.
1977:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “Lou Grant” produced by Gary David Goldberg.
1977:
The Jerusalem Post reported from
Washington that US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe
Dayan wound up their talks amid continuing differences between their
governments on the question of the Palestinian representation at the reconvened
Geneva Peace Conference and the establishment of new settlements in the
administered areas. Israel announced that it would not soften its stand against
the proposal allowing Arabs to attend the Geneva Conference in a single,
unified delegation which might include the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Given the distance of time, the Likud (Begin then; Sharon now) has certainly
changed its stance on this issue.
1979(28th
of Elul, 5739): Sixty-eight-year-old Buffalo, NY native and Stanford educated
agricultural economist Dr. Sidney Samuel Hoos passed away today.
1979:
Assassination of French
left-wing militant Pierre Goldman who had also been convicted of several
robberies. Goldman was the son of Alter Mojze Goldman, a Polish Jew who
was active in the French Resistance during World War II.
1980(10th
of Tishrei, 5741): Yom Kippur
1980:
Avraham "Avi" Cohen, an Israeli playing football for Liverpool (UK)
caused a stir when he played in today’s match with Southampton which ended with
a score of 2-2. There were those who
thought he should have followed in the footsteps of Hank Greenberg and Sandy
Koufax and who had not played on Yom Kippur.
1981:
Final performance of Hanoch Levine's ''Ya'acobi and Leidental,'' a contemporary
Israeli comedy running at the La Mama annex
1982(3rd
of Tishrei, 5743):Tzom Gedaliah – Jewish football fans must not only go without
food and drink they must go without the professional version of their game
since the NFL players went on strike for the first time in history.
1982:
The BBC broadcast the first episode of “Smiley’s People” featuring Maureen
Diane Lipman in the role of Stella Craven.
1984:
NBC broadcast the first episode of “The Cosby Show” a sit-com created by Ed
Weinberger.
1984:
NBC broadcast the first episode of the third season of “Family Ties” a sitcom
created by Gary David Goldberg.
1985:
Birthdate of Canadian mixed martial artist Sarah Kaufman who has opted not to
follow the faith of her father.
1987:
Hanna Azoulay-Hasfari won the Ophir
Award for Best Actress for Leading Role in "Nadia.”
https://jwa.org/thisweek/sep/20/1987/hanna-azoulay-hasfari-wins-ophir-award-best-a
1987(26th
of Elul, 5747): Sixty-three-year Tony Award winner Michael Stewart passed
today. (As reported by Jeremy Gerard)
1990(1st
of Tishrei, 5751): Rosh Hashanah
1990:
NBC broadcast the first episode of season seven of “The Cosby Show” a sit-com
created by Ed Weinberger.
1991:
“The Fisher King” which marked the film debut of Dan Futterman was released
today in the United States by TriStar Pictures.
1991:
“McBain” a box-office disappointment “directed and written by James
Glickenhuas” was released today in the United States.
1992:
STS-47. The 50th Space Shuttle Mission whose crew included Jay Apt
came to an end today.
1992(22nd
of Elul, 5752): Seventy-nine-year-old sculptor Reuben Kadish passed away. (As reported by Roberta Smith)
1993(5th
of Tishrei, 5754): Eighty-year-old Cyrus Leo Sulzberger, the New York Times
Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent and author, the nephew of NYT publisher
Arthur Hays Sulzberg, who was known by his initials as C.L. Sulzberger passed
away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/21/obituaries/c-l-sulzberger-columnist-dies-at-80.html
1993(5th of
Tishrei, 5754): Mae Silverman Eplan, the
daughter of Dupkie and Jacob Hurwitz and the wife of Harry Issadore Silverman
passed away today in Florida after which she was buried the Mikro Kodesh Beth
Israel Cemetery in Baltimore.
1994(15th
of Tishrei, 5755): Sukkoth
1994(15th of Tishrei, 5755): Seventy-four-year-old
Michael Dekel, the native of Pinsk who fought in the Red Army during WW II,
before making Aliyah in 1949 passed away today.
An MK, he served in several different cabinet posts.
1995(25th of Elul, 5755): Seventy-nine-year-old
“Walter A. Haas Jr., patriarch of the San Francisco family that controls Levi
Strauss & Company” passed away today.
1996(7th of Tishrei, 5757): Eighty-three-year-old
Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős passed away today. (As reported by Roberta
Smith)
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/24/us/paul-erdos-83-a-wayfarer-in-math-s-vanguard-is-dead.html
1996: “The First Wives Club,” a comedy produced
by Scott Rudin was released today in the United States.
1998: “The musical revival group 42nd Street
Moon in San Francisco, presented a staged concert of Redhead,” “a musical with
music composed by Albert Hague and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who with her
brother, Herbert, along with Sidney Sheldon wrote the book/libretto” for the
last time tonight.
1998:
Outfielder Gabe Kapler made his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers.
1998:
The New York Times book section
featured reviews by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest
including “The Brink of Peace: The
Israeli-Syrian Negotiations”
by Itamar Rabinovich.
1998:
In “The Lost Tribe of Natchez,” Jennifer Moses describes the fate of the Jewish
community of Natchez, Mississippi.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/travel/the-lost-tribe-of-natchez.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
My
8-year-old son, Sam, and I are sitting on either side of Marty Nathanson, in
the last row of Temple B'nai Israel, in Natchez, Miss. Since the mid-1970's,
the 86-year-old Mr. Nathanson, the unofficial historian of Jewish Natchez, has
conducted Friday night services here -- sometimes to a congregation of no more
than two or three souls. It's been years since there was a big enough Jewish
community in Natchez to support a rabbi full time -- today, according to the
few Jews left, there isn't a single Jewish child living in this jewel-like city
on a bluff above the Mississippi River. The Jews once helped oil the machine
that was rich, heady and proud Natchez, a world port for the cotton trade. They
are all but gone: the living to larger, more dynamic cities, the dead to Jewish
Hill on Cemetery Road. But for now, Mr. Nathanson isn't interested in the dead,
but in the beautiful neo-classic temple itself, with its soaring ceilings under
an exterior dome, stained-glass windows, ark of Italian marble -- within which
are century-old Torah scrolls -- and historic pipe organ (built by Henry
Pilcher's Sons of Louisville over a century ago). He explains that its roots go
back to the establishment of a Jewish burial society, or Hevrah Kedusha, in
1843 -- making B'nai Israel the oldest functioning Jewish congregation in
Mississippi, and one of five original charter members of the American Reform
movement. Indeed, the cornerstone of the original building was dedicated, in
1870, by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of American Reform Judaism.
Finally, he points to the balcony above our heads. ''That's where the black
drivers sat,'' he says. ''That way they could come inside, get out of the
heat.'' ''You mean the Jews had slaves?'' Sam asks, incredulous. ''This was
after the war between the states,'' he says, adding that the drivers were paid
employees. ''But after all, the Jews here were Southerners. What side do you
think they fought on?'' Not only did the Jews of Natchez fight on the
Confederate side, but a 7-year-old Jewish child, Rosalie Beekman, was the sole
Civil War casualty in Natchez proper. She was hit by a Yankee shell fragment in
front of her father's store, on the street of gamblers, riverboaters,
prostitutes and shop owners known as Natchez-Under-the-Hill. (Today,
Natchez-Under-the-Hill houses restaurants and a docked casino boat.) Like
Rosalie's parents, Aaron and Fanny Beekman, who emigrated in 1843 from Forets,
Germany, the Jews who came to Natchez in the early 19th century were primarily
French and German speakers, from Alsace-Lorraine and Bavaria. They fled
mandatory conscription, anti-Jewish laws and economic constrictions to take
their chances in a new, hot, fertile and wide-open land. Their story can be
heard and seen year-round on bus tours run by the Museum of the Southern Jewish
Experience and tour operators. In Natchez, as elsewhere in the South, Jewish
settlers, many of whom got their start as peddlers, thrived primarily as
businessmen. Among them were shop owners who extended credit to cash-strapped
farmers, middlemen who financed the cotton trade, and traders who took
advantage of the river traffic. Within decades, too, they had cast off the
strictly Orthodox Judaism of their ancestors, and had become Southern Reform
Jews, a people who rejoiced in the new, streamlined Americanized version of the
ancient Hebrew prayer ritual. They allowed family members of both sexes to sit
together to worship, and looked the other way when Jewish shopkeepers worked on
Saturday. In fact, by the turn of the century, Jews had moved from
Natchez-Under-the-Hill to above the cliff, the site of present-day Natchez,
where they had 45 businesses -- about a third of all in town -- and continued
to flourish until 1908, when the boll weevil devastated the cotton crop. ''They
were wholesalers, traders, retailers, suppliers, you name it,'' Mr. Nathanson
tells Sam. ''Main Street and Franklin Street were lined with Jewish businesses,
and they stayed open on Saturdays until 1 or 2 in the morning, because the
black workers didn't come in until 8 or 9 at night. There were black bands, and
hot tamale sellers. I tell you, it was a swinging place. And the Jews were at
the center of everything.'' Though the city is host to two annual pilgrimages,
most tourists are largely unaware of the city's Jewish past, seeking instead a
whiff of the glories of its planter society: visiting the antebellum mansions
and plantations that ring the city, seeing the Confederate pageant, and in
spring, strolling through gardens ablaze with azaleas, crepe myrtle, camellias,
phlox and iris. But if you scratch the surface -- or visit Temple B'nai
Israel's basement, which doubles as a branch of the Museum of the Southern
Jewish Experience, and has exhibits and videos about the history of Jewish
Natchez -- you can't go a block without hearing the echoes and seeing the
shadows of the city's Jews. They're all but gone, but the buildings they built
and inhabited remain. This is one reason why the first stop Sam and I make
after saying goodbye to Mr. Nathanson is the former home of the Simon Moses
family, Glen Auburn, only a few steps from the temple on South Commerce Street.
The Moses family owned, at various times, D. Moses & Sons (''Cheap Cash
Store''), several cotton-buying houses and the streetcar line. Built in 1875, Glen
Auburn is the home of Ann and Randy Tillman and their six children, descendants
of Joseph and Ricka Tillman (and their son, Casius Tillman, once president of
the Cotton and Merchants Exchange). Though this branch of the Tillman family is
Catholic, their Jewish antecedents seem very much part and parcel of the air
they breathe. (You can arrange a visit through Temple B'nai Israel or the
Historic Natchez Foundation; the family asks that a donation be made to the
temple.) The exterior of the three-story house is French Second Empire, but the
large, airy, romantic interior is what Mrs. Tillman calls Old Natchez. The
original 14-foot hand-painted ceilings are being restored, and the
two-foot-thick brick walls still keep the house cool -- as does the latticework
that connects the main house to the servants' wing, which now houses children's
bedrooms. As we leave Glen Auburn, I try to imagine what life must have been
like for the descendants of those first French- and German-speaking Jews. What
was it like to wake up every morning to a view of the Mississippi River, to
walk on a Main Street filled with familiar faces, to alight at temple from a
horse-drawn carriage, and to try sleeping through a blazingly hot and muggy
August night? As if in answer to my thoughts, a horse-drawn carriage appears
around the bend with a clip-clop, clip-clop sound. Because Natchez was largely
untouched by Union shelling, and later ignored by urban development, the
visible city is a kind of living time warp -- a time warp, however, that caters
to late-20th-century visitors. And among Natchez's many small inns are those
that were once the homes of prosperous Jews. A block from Glen Auburn, in fact,
is the Bailey House Bed and Breakfast, originally the private home of the
Jacobs family, whose businesses included dry goods, liquors, cotton and the A.
Jacobs & Sons Banking Company. Built at the turn of the century, the Bailey
House (named after a more recent owner) has recently been restored to its
Colonial Revival style. The columned house has broad verandas, a corner tower,
and five bedrooms for paying guests. Or you might prefer to walk the seven or
eight blocks to the antique-studded Burn Mansion (circa 1836), another small
inn, once the home of Saul Laub, a Jewish businessman who was Mayor of Natchez
in the early 1930's. There, you can sit outside on wrought-iron chairs and
admire the wildly blooming back garden while you sip on the best mint julep
I've ever tasted. And there are numerous other B & B's (like Highpoint,
once the home of the Friedler family, and Clifton Heights, which belonged to
the Lehmann family) where mezuzas once hung, and candles were lighted on Friday
nights in the spacious dining rooms. At noon, Sam and I find ourselves
strolling along the remains of Clifton Avenue, a once-magnificent street
sitting at the very top of a cliff above the river. Most of Clifton Avenue,
which over the years had begun to erode off the cliff, has been shored up and
turned into a walking path. Sam is staring at the silvery-brown expanse of river
and the miles and miles of green on the distant shore, thinking (he tells me)
about Huck Finn; I'm gazing at the dilapidated Queen Anne and Colonial Revival
mansions that look out over the river, wondering whether or not it would be
possible to buy one of them, perhaps as a weekend place. There are turrets and
towers, wide verandas and wild rosebushes, and the lonely sounds of birds and
wind. It's spooky here -- too quiet. But at the turn of the century, this was
the Jewish neighborhood; the land acquired in 1888 Isaac Lownburg and Henry
Frank, partners and merchants. Indeed, the three decades preceding the purchase
had seen a Jewish mercantile explosion -- in 1858, there were 12 Jewish
businesses in town; by 1877, there were 28, making up more than half the dry
goods and cotton-buying operations in this town, where cotton was still king
and Jews and gentiles alike shared the pleasures of belonging to the exclusive,
all-male Prentiss Club on the corner of Pearl and Jefferson Streets (now home
to the Pearl Street Cellar, a night spot). ''But Mom,'' says Sam, still
mystified by the paradoxes of history, ''How could they fight on the Southern
side? Didn't they know that slavery is wrong? I mean, hadn't they read the Book
of Exodus?'' The Jews who came to Natchez broke bread from the get-go with the
planter class, I explained. Their fortunes rose and fell together, their
children and children's children intermarried, they celebrated the same
victories and died from the same diseases. And they lie up on Jewish Hill,
surrounded by hundreds of Christian graves. The entire cemetery is beautifully
maintained by the city. There are whole families -- wiped out by yellow fever,
in some cases -- under distinctively Jewish headstones: the clasped hands that
signify marriage, the outstretched hands of the kohanim (Jews of priestly
descent). They are buried beneath Hebrew lettering under a blue dome of
Southern sky on this peaceful, lovely hill above Big Muddy. Here are names and
more names: Frank, Friedler, Goldberg, Hart, Dreyfus, Lemle, Geisenberger,
Weiss, Samuels, Wise; Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, the generations
lying side by side.
1999(10th of Tishrei, 5760): Yom Kippur
1999: Speaking
at a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Steve
Forbes and editor of Forbes magazine tells the students that the Ten
Commandments should be displayed in all schools because they are "the
basis for this civilization." “The Ten Commandments gave us Judaism from
which flowed Christianity.”
2000: Barbra Streisand performed the first of two
concerts at the Staples Center.
2001: Twenty-six-year-old Sarit Amrani was shot by
members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade.
2002: This afternoon, “the University of Tennessee
will dedicate the newest addition to the Tennessee athletic complex, the
Wolf-Kaplan Center” which “is named in honor of the two donors who made the
lead donation to make the facility possible, Drs. Robert J. Kaplan and Rodney
Y. Wolf, both of Memphis.”
2002: Ninety-one-year-old Necdet Kent, the Turkish
diplomat, who while serving as vice-counsel in Marseilles from 1941 to 1944
risked his life to save Jews, passed away.
“When Kent heard that Turkish Jews who were living
in France were rounded up by the Nazis, he personally went to the train station
and demanded the release of all Jews who were Turkish citizens. According to
Arnold Reisman, “When the guards refused to comply, he got into the wagon with
them. A German officer ordered him to get off but Kent refused to leave unless
they let his Turkish citizens off as well. Angrily, the officer said no, you
can go with them and closed the door. After three hours of extreme cold and
filth, the train arrived at the next station. Obviously realizing a possibly
explosive international incident had to be quickly diffused, the German officer
who opened the door to the wagon apologized profusely and allowed Kent to leave
and take all the people in the wagon with him, never looking at papers, never
checking to see if they were Turkish citizens or not.” He saved 80 Jewish
lives.”
2003(23rd
of Elul, 5763): Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech; Leil Selichot
2003(23rd of Elul, 5763): Eighty-nine-year-old Bernard Manischewitz,
whose family name is synonymous with kosher food passed away today. (As
reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/obituaries/23MANI.html
2004:
An Israeli airstrike tonight “was carried out against a vehicle carrying two
Hamas terrorists who were on their way to launch a rocket attack."
2004:
“The Westchester County authorities said” today that they had arrested a Bronx
man, Thomas Zibelli, 33, of Radcliff Avenue, who worked as a security guard and
in a machine shop, for recruiting minors to post pro-Hitler and white power
stickers on buildings, including a synagogue, in Mount Vernon. (As reported by
Marek Fuchs)
2005:
Yedioth
Ahronoth reported that that there is more ethnic diversity in the U.S. Jewish community than previously
believed.
2005:
Rabbi Miri Gold, of the Birkat Shalom congregation in the Gezer community, who
is a Reform rabbi, petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding that she be
appointed to the official position of chief rabbi of her community..
2005
(16th of Elul, 5765): Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal passed away at the age of
96.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/world/europe/20iht-obits.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092000201.html
2005:
The Zionist Central Council of Greater Manchester presented the Herzl Award to
Jonathan Hantman.
2005:
Tonight, “Israel's leading known Kabbalistic Elder, Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri
called upon worldwide Jewry to return to Israel due to natural disasters which
threaten to strike the world.”
2005:
Jonathan Letham received a MacArthur Fellowship
2005: IDF temporarily entered the northern Gaza Strip, constructing a buffer
zone parallel to the border near Beit Hanoun before pulling out.[
2006:
During the “Cash for Honors” investigation, Lord Levy (Michael Levy) was
questioned for a second time and then released on bail. It would take another 9
months before that no charges would be brought against. The wheels of justice grind slowly.
2006: Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew
Congregations of the Commonwealth broadcasts his New Year message In A
Strange Land on the BBC One
2006:
In accordance with Herzl’s last request, his children, Hans and Pauline Herzl,
are interred beside him in Jerusalem’s Ht. Herzl Cemetery.
2006:
A bill introduced by Congressman Henry Waxman “that would lift the bank on
federal money for subway tunneling in his district passed the House by a
unanimous vote.
2007:
Israeli Daniel Sharon is arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of involvement in
murder and spying. Further investigation will establish that he is a convert to
Islam and a self-identified homosexual.
He will be released in mid-October, 2007.
2007:
An IDF Spokesperson's Unit video of St.-Sgt. Ben-Zion Henman, filmed only
moments before the soldier was shot to death during operations in Nablus, was
released.
2007:
The 107th annual meeting of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago was
held today at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Wacker Drive, Chicago.
2008:
In Washington, D.C., journalist and philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy presents the annual Gerald L. Bernstein
Memorial Lecture drawn from his new book, “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism,” at
the French Embassy.
2008:
Selichot observances begin at Temple Judah with a wine and cheese reception and
a viewing of the Israeli film, Joy, followed by services.
2008(20th
of Elul, 5768): Eighty-five year old Russian history expert, Marc Raeff passed
away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/education/29raeff.html?_r=0
2008
(20 Elul): Yahrzeit of Jacob Levin; gone from this world, but not from our
worlds and our hearts.
2008
(20 Elul): In Manhattan, Joseph Shenker, who as the first president of La
Guardia Community College in New York was a leader in having students combine
on-the-job experience with their studies, passed away at the age of 68. For the
last 13 years he was provost of the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University
and lived near the campus in Brookville, N.Y.
2009:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including “I Shudder: And
Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey” by Paul Rudnick and
the recently released paperback edition of “A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand
Strategy for America in the Middle East” by Kenneth M. Pollack.
2009:
The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or
of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Possibility of
Everything" by Hope Edelman
2009:
A memorial service was held today to celebrate the life of the artist Julius
Schulman whose last exhibition was at Craig Krull Gallery in Los Angeles.
2009
(2 Tishrei, 5770): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
2009:
Eighty-six-year-old music publishing executive Freddy Bienstock” who played a
key role in promoting the career of Elvis Presley passed away today. (As
reported by Ben Sisario)
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/arts/music/24bienstock.html
2009:
IDF troops killed two Palestinian militants and wounded three in an incident
along the Gaza border late this afternoon. The IDF said in a statement that a
border patrol fired tank and artillery shells at a group of Palestinians seen
planting a bomb at the Gaza border fence.
2010:
Center for Jewish History, Center for Traditional Music and Dance and World
Music Institute is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Hidden Musical
Treasures of Romania.”
2010:
Former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, White House Diary, which
includes his criticisms of President Clinton’s and President Obama’s policies
in Israel including the building of settlements on the West Bank is scheduled
to go on sale today.
2010:
Denver based editorial cartoonist Ed Stein “launched a national comic strip
called “Freshly Squeezed.”
https://www.gocomics.com/freshlysqueezed/about
2010:
The winner of the People’s Choice Award is scheduled to be named today by
Sukkah City, an international Sukkah-building competition based in New York
City that has pitted famous and not-so-famous architects against one another in
an attempt to create deliberately temporary structures of beauty, art and
artifice.
2010:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in a ceremony on Monday that
“Fractured Bubble” by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan and “Shim Sukkah” by
Tinder, Tinker had won New York’s first international succa design competition,
winning the People’s Choice and jury prizes, respectively.
2011:
An international conference on anti-Semitism that coincides with the 70th
anniversary of the murder of 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar later this month is
scheduled to take place in the Kiev today.
2011:
“HaHov” (The Debt) is scheduled to be shown at the JCC in Manhattan.
2011:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today at a Likud party
conference that he is aware he will come under heavy pressure as he prepared to
leave for New York. Netanyahu added that "it is much easier to win
applause from world nations by extensive concessions we make, and then we see
what we get.
2011:
Ehud Barak has convinced Nigeria to not support the Palestinian statehood bid,
a statement from the Defense Ministry reported today.
2012: Mish Galprin, author of Reimagining
Leadership in Jewish Organizations is scheduled to deliver a lecture
titled “Ten Practical Lessons to Help You Implement Change and Achieve Your
Goals” in Washington, DC
2012: Iran
deliberately provided false information about its nuclear program to Western
investigators and the International Atomic Energy Agency, a senior Iranian
official has confirmed.
2012: Steve
Feller is scheduled to deliver a lecture titled “Light Fantastic: A Forum on
the Understanding of the Nature of Light” at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2012: In
“NFL to honor NFL Films' Steve Sabol on Sunday” published today, Gregg
Rosenthal described plans to honor the man whose cinema skills and foresight
helped to popularize professional football.
2012: Sarah
Silverman made a public service announcement (PSA) criticizing new voter
identification laws that create obstacles to the ability of certain U.S.
populations to vote in the November presidential election, i.e., young, old,
poor, and minority citizens” that “was financed by the Jewish Council for
Education and Research (JCER) and was co-produced by Mik Moore and Ari
Wallach.”
2012:
Support for President Barack Obama among Jews in the state of Florida is down 7
percent on 2008, according to an American Jewish Committee (AJC) poll released
today.
2013:
“Fill the Void” is scheduled to open in Boise, Idaho.
2013(16th
of Tishrei, 5774): Second Day of Sukkoth
2013(16th
of Tishrei, 5774): Tomer Hazan, a Sergeant in the Israeli Air Force was
murdered tonight after being “lured to the village of Beit Amin by Nidal Amar.”
2013:
In London, Dr. Robert Friedman is scheduled to lecture on the story behind his
latest work, 28 Letters: The Short Life Of Renée (Baba) Friedmann On Not So
Calm Waters
2014:
As of today, Joan “Hamburg is heard on WABC-770 from 1 to 3 on Saturday
afternoon.
2014(25th
of Elul, 5774): Eighty-four-year-old actress Polly Bergen who converted to
Judaism in 1957 passed away today.
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-0921-polly-bergen-20140921-story.html#page=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/polly-bergen-dies-at-84-emmy-winning-actress.html
2014: Rabbi
Ari Israel, the Executive Director of University of Maryland Hillel is
scheduled to speak on “Israel and Judaism: forming Positive Jewish Identities
at Any Age or Stage.”
2014: Gidi
Gov and Berry Sakharoff are scheduled to appear at the Phasa Morgana Festival.
2014: The
Vengerov Festival, featuring its namesake violinist Maxim Vengerov who came to
I
2014: “The
daily L’Echo reported that “the
Belgian authorities have prevented several attacks by jihadist fighters
returning home from Syrian and by sympathizers with the Islamic State extremist
group.” (As reported by Times of Israel)
2014: It
was announced today, that “a large stalactite and stalagmite cave” has been
“discovered in the Jerusalem hills” the location is being kept secret, so as to
ensure the public does not enter before steps have been taken to ascertain how
the ancient cavern and its formations can be preserved.” (As reported by Itamar
Sharon)
2014: An
Israeli drone crashed in southern Lebanon near the border between Israel and Lebanon.
2014: Zemer
Chai joined with the clergy of six Maryland synagogues in a unique community
Selichot service, in partnership with the Jewish Community Center of Greater
Washington.
2015: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The
Court and The World: American Law and the New Global Realities by Stephen
Breyer, Sisters In Law: How Sandra Day
O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the
World by Linda Hirshman and The Social Sex: A History of Female
Friendship co-authored by Marilyn Yalom
2015:
Hungarian natives and Holocaust survivors Eva and Les Aigner are scheduled to
deliver a lecture on their experiences at the George R. White Library on the
campus of Concordia University.
2015: The
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “Both Ground and Plow:
Looking for Vilna” during which Rita Gabis will discuss “her quest to recover
Vilna through poetry and personal memory.”
2015: The
Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled host two former
members of the House of Representatives speaking on “The Partisan Divide:
Congress in Crisis.”
2015: In
Cedar Rapids, IA, Rabbi Todd is scheduled to begin teaching Temple Judah’s
first ever class in “Biblical Hebrew.”
2015: At the Jewish Museum, “Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of
American Television” is scheduled to come to a close today.
2015: The
by American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, in
partnership with the Mizrahi Film Series, the Taub Center for Israel Studies,
the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Department, and the Kevorkian Center for
Near Eastern Studies, New York University are scheduled to host a “reading,
screening and discussion to celebrate the publication of Yitzhak
Gormezano-Goren’s Alexandrian Summer in English, and Amit Goren’s film
premiere of Alexandrian Summers Again and Forever.”
2015: The
Toronto International Film Festival which has included screenings of “Rabin,
The Last Day,” Ido Haar’s documentary “Thru You Princess,” “Demolition”
starring Jake Gyllenhaal and “Spotlight” starring Leiv Schreiber” is scheduled
to come to a close today.
2015: Andy
Samberg is scheduled to serve as m. c. of tonight’s 67th Annual
Primetime Emmy Awards.
2016: The
Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to conduct a
noontime walking tour of “Jewish Downtown Washington.”
2016:
“Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, head of the Shalom Hartman Institute, spokr at the
Jerusalem ordination ceremony of the first cohort of the Beit Midrash for
Israeli Rabbis” today.
2016(17th
of Elul, 5776): Seventy-three-year-old Robot inventor Victor Scheinman passed
away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2016: A-WA “an
Israeli band made up of the three sisters Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim” is
scheduled to perform at “The Knitting Factory.”
2016: The
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a
talk “by Suzanne Hertzberg, the author of Katherine Joseph: Photographing an
Era of Social Significance as part of the opening the exhibition “Secrets of
the Greatest Generation: Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us.”
2016:
“Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War,” a new film directed by Ken Burns and
Artemis Joukowsky is scheduled to shown on PBS at 9 pm EDT and 8 pm CDT.
http://www.defyingthenazis.org/
2017:
This morning, JW3 is scheduled to the final screening of “Green Park,” a
documentary about the iconic Anglo-Jewish hostelry.
2017(29th
of Elul, 5777): Ninety-nine-year-old Lilian Ross, a mainstay of The New Yorker,
passed away today.
2017(29th
of Elul, 5777): Erev Rosh Hashanah
שנה טובה, כתיבה וחתימה טובה.
2017: Last day of 5777; in the evening Erev Rosh Hashanah – 5778
לשׁנה טובה
2017:
Rabbi Jonathan Feldman and Rabbi Joshua Klein are scheduled to lead services
sponsored by MJE EAST at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue followed by a social
complete with refreshments.
2017:
As Jews prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah the friends and family Gusti Kollman
celebrate the 105th birthday of Gusti Kollman!
2018:
“The American Jewish Historical Society” and the “Center for Jewish History”
are scheduled to present a screening of the documentary “Love Gilda: the
Eternal Spirit of Gilda Radner.”
2018:
In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the two final screenings of the Silver Lion
award winning film “Paradise.”
2019:
For those looking for something different to start Shabbat, the Street Market
and Wok in Jerusalem is scheduled to host “Sushi Friday.”
2019:
In Baltimore is scheduled to host a variety of erev Shabbat events including a
Young Families Tot Shabbat in the morning and in the evening Kabbalat Shabbat
Service preceded by an “Oneg Shabbat Snack.”
2019:
In San Francisco, “star of TV, stage and screen Tovah Feldshuh is scheduled to
perform highlights from Broadway musical “Queen of Mean” about Leona Helmsley.”
2019:
The third episode of “The Spy” starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a legendary Mossad
agent is scheduled to be shown on Netflix.
2019:
The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to hold a special Friday
night service with Karenna Gore speaking on “Our Moral and Religious
Obligations to Protect the Earth.”
2020:
Suburban Temple-Kol Ami is scheduled to hold a service for “kids and teens” via
Zoon start at nine o’clock.
2020:
Chochmat HaLev and Camp Tawonga are scheduled to host “Drawing on Forgiveness”
-- Improv sketching with artist Meg Adler to encourage self-forgiveness during
the Days of Awe.
2020:
In Iowa City, Chabad Rabbi Avremel Blesofsky is scheduled to lead an “outdoor
social distancing minyan” in his backyard complete with Shofar blowing.
2020:
Kol HaLev, Cleveland’s Reconstructionist Jewish Community is scheduled to host
morning services after which “attendees will participate in Kiddush rituals.”
2020:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Daddy: Stories by Emma
Cline, The Presidents vs. The Press: The Endless Battle Between the White
House and the Media — From the Founding Fathers to Fake News by Harold
Holzer, and Cry Havoc: Charlottesville and Democracy Under Siege by
Michael Signer
2020:
As Jews gather virtually or in socially distanced venues to observe the Second
Day of Rosh Hashanah, references to “the Book of Life” take on an added
poignancy as they mourn the passing Ruth Bader Ginsberg who died erev Rosh
Hashanah.
2020(2nd
of Tishrei, 5781): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
2021(14th
of Tishrei, 5782): Erev Sukkoth
2021:
This evening in San Francisco, Congregation Emanu-El is scheduled to host a
“Sukkot gathering and talk by artist Shimon Attie, who will discuss his new
floating art installation “Night Watch,” which explores the humanitarian issues
of displacement, asylum and transience.”
2021:
The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present Kochava Munro leading a “First
Night of Sukkot Niggun Circle.”
2021:
The Aquarian Minyan is scheduled to present Jewish educator Marty Potrop
teaching about the “odd rituals” of Sukkot, Hoshana Rabbah and Shemini Atzeret.
2022:
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present new episode of
the Exclusive Authors Series with Regine M. Tessone who will discuss her book Monavar's
Journey.
2022:
The National Library of Israel is scheduled to host online Rabbi David Wolpe,
and former Microsoft executive, Kinney Zalesne, as they explore Martin Buber’s
philosophy as it relates to changing norms of social interaction in the digital
age.”
2022:
PBS is scheduled to broadcast the third and final episode of the three-part
documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust.”
2022:
In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to present online Mitzvah Yomi,
an in-depth learning and conversation about the 613 commandments in the Torah.
2022:
Prime Minister Lapid is scheduled to meet today with UN Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Greek Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
2023:
In New Orleans, the Tulane Hillel Board is scheduled to meet this evening.
2023:
Temple Shalom of Medford, Massachusetts is scheduled to present “Gesher
Candlepin Bowling.
2023:
YIVO is scheduled to host a lecture on Martin Heidegger by Richard Wolin,
author of Heidegger
in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology and Jonathan Brent, the Executive Director of the YIVO
Institute in New York City.
2024: All decent mourn the
deaths of Maj. (res.) Nael Fwarsy, 43, a logistics company commander in the
300th “Baram” Regional Brigade’s 299th Battalion, from Maghar, and Sgt. Tomer
Keren, 20, of the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion, from Haifa who were killed
yesterday in a drone attack by Hezbollah which is a continuation of the rocket
and missile attacks from Lebanon that have driven tens of thousands of Israelis
from their homes.
2024: In Newton, MA, Temple
Emanuel is scheduled to host a “Trivia Shabbat Dinner.”
2024: In Cambridge, MA,
OneTable is scheduled to host “Not Your Mamaleh’s Shabbat Dinner + Challah
Bake!” at Mamaleh's Kibitz Corner
2024: The Temple Emanu-El
Streick is scheduled to host Friday Night Shabbat Services with the theme of
“Holding Onto Humanity” featuring Israeli mothers and mothers from Gaza who
have suffered losses since the terrorist attack on October 7 that was the worst
single day loss of Jewish lives since 1945.
2024:
As September 20th begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that
has included Hamas supporters calling for Zionist passengers on a New York
subway to raise their hands, sweeps the United States and the Hamas held
hostages begin day 350 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:
Post a Comment