May 23
142 BCE (23rdof Iyar): Simon the Hasmonean drove the Syrians and their allies out thecitadel which was their last stronghold in Jerusalem.
1052:Birthdate of Philip I, King of France who passed away in 1108. Philip’s life overlapped that of Rashi(1040-1105). In his day, Philipcertainly was more powerful than the wine merchant of Troyes. But how manypeople study Philip today and how many Rashi read. Philip was the king during the FirstCrusade. However, he was not allowed toparticipate because Pope Urban II had excommunicated him. This may account, tosome extent, why the Jews of France did not suffer in the same as did theirGermanic co-religionist during what turned out to be the start of one of thedeadliest periods of Jewish history.
1275: KingEdward I of England ordered the cessation of persecution of Jews of Bordeaux,France. This was at a time when Englishkings still had holdings in France and dreams of sitting on the French throne.This is the same Edward who will eventually banish the Jews from England afterdraining them of all of their wealth.
1420: Albert V(Austria) accused a rich Jew, Israel of Enns, of purchasing a wafer in order todesecrate it. All the Jews in the territory were jailed, dispossessed of theirproperty, separated from their families and then subjected to attempts atforced conversion.
1420: At thebehest of the Church, Duke Albrecht ordered the forcible conversion of the Jewsof Austria. Those that had not converted or escaped or been sent off in theboats were burned at the stake on March 12, 1421, and their beautiful synagoguedestroyed.
1421: ThoseJews still remaining in Austria were imprisoned and/or expelled.
1423: BenedictXIII, the Avignon-based "antipope" known for his relentlesspersecution of the Jews died today.
1498: GirolamoSavonarola, a Dominican monk who was a violent opponent of the comparativelyphilo-Semitic Pope Alexander VI was convicted as a heretic and burned at thestake on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence.
1510: EmperorMaximilian of Germany rescinded a previously issued order to burn all Hebrewbooks.
1524: IsmailI, Shah of Persia and founder of the Safavid dynasty passed away. Conditionsfor the Jews of Persia declined under the Safavids when they adopted Shia Islamas the state religion. “Shi'ism assigns importance to the issues of ritualpurity ― tahara. Non-Muslims, including Jews, are deemed to be ritually unclean― najis. Any physical contact would require Shi'as to undertake ritualpurification before doing regular prayers. Thus, Persian rulers, and thegeneral populace, sought to limit physical contact between Muslims and Jews.Jews were excluded from public baths used by Muslims. They were forbidden to gooutside during rain or snow, as an "impurity" could be washed fromthem upon a Muslim.”
1533: Themarriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.As a condition to their marriage, Henry’s father promised Catherine’s Spanishparents that Jews would never be allowed to settle in England. When Henry decided to divorce Catherine heclaimed that the marriage had taken place in violation of biblical law. He sought the support of Italian rabbis inmaking this claim. The Rabbis did notsupport the English monarch, probably figuring that there was no reason toantagonize the Pope (who was a lot closer) than a distant English monarch.
1536: InPortugal, Pope Paul
1552:Sebastian Munster, the first Christian to publish a complete edition of theBible in Hebrew passed away.
1555: Paul IVbegan his Papacy during which he issued Dudum postquam, the papal bull thatexpanded a 10-ducat tax on Jewish synagogues to help finance catechumen housesin Rome and Cum Nimis Absurdum, the papal bull that “ordered the creation of aJewish ghetto in Rome.”
1568:Netherlands declared independence from Spain. Protestant Dutch rebels led byLouis of Nassau, brother of William I of Orange, defeat Jean de Ligne, Duke ofAremberg and his loyalist troops in the Battle of Heiligerlee, opening theEighty Years' War. The conflict combined politics and religion as ProtestantDutchmen rebelled against Catholic Spain.Holland had provided a haven for Sepharidic Jews escaping the SpanishInquisition. A community of Portuguesemerchants had settled in Amsterdam prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The Protestant clergy were not exactlythrilled about the Jews settling in the country and it took several decades forthe Jews of Holland to gain full acceptance.
1572 (18 Iyar5332): On Lag B’Omer Moses Isserles, also known as the Rama passed away Born sometime between 1520 and 1525, he wasthe son of Israel Isserles, “ a wealthy leader of the Cracow community who, in1553, received royal dispensation to build a synagogue in memory of his wifewhich is known as the Ream Synagogue.”Moses Isserles served as Rosh (Head of the) Yeshiva in Krakow. His mainwork was called Mappah Hashulchan ("The Tablecloth") whichadapted Caro’s Shulchan Aruch to the needs and customs of AshkenaziJewry, It was called the “The Tablecloth” because it “covered” the ShulchanAruch which is translated as “the prepared table.” In other words hecovered Caro’s Sephardic Table with an Ashkenazic Tablecloth. An earlier work, Darke Moshe Hakatzar (TheWays of Moses Abridged) was written in response to Caro’s comprehensivebook on Jewish law called Beit Yoseph. He was known as well for thealmost 100 Responsa he published. Isserles tried to strengthen the stature ofmany customs, elevating them almost to the level of Halachah (Jewish Law). Onthe other hand he was very lenient when it came to cases of stress or financialloss.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111847/jewish/Rabbi-Moshe-Isserles-The-Remo.htm
1578: TheOttoman Sultan rescinded the order to deport the wealthy Jews of Safed to theisland of Cyprus. He did this because the Jews of Safed were said to be payingtaxes which were used to help maintain the Dome of the Rock.
1618: InPrague, an assembly of Protestants threw three Catholic officials out of thewindow after they had found them guilty of violating a law concerning religiousexpression. This event precipitated theThirty Years War, so called because it lasted from 1618 to 1648. Much of the war was fought in the Germanicprincipalities. During the war Jewssuffered at the hands of both sides with pogroms taking place in Frankfort,Worms and Jena.
1633: TheFrench government issues an edict allowing only Catholics to settle inCanada. The target of the ban was theHuguenots but it applied to the Jews as well.Jews would not be able to settle in Canada until after the British werevictorious in what Americans call the French-Indian War
1637(28thof Iyar): Seven Jews, including Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac, were murdered today inCracow.
1638: Today,in Hungary, “Sabbatarian believers were tortured and their writings confiscatedin Kolozsvár and Marosvásárhely”
1708(4th ofSivan): Rabbi Solomon ben David de Oliveria, author of “Ez Hayyim” and the sonPortuguese scholar David Israel de Oliveyra passed away today at Amsterdam.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11688-oliveyra-solomon-de
1749(7thof Sivan, 5509): Second Day of Shavuot
1749(7thof Sivan, 5509): Abraham ben Abraham, who had been a Polish noble named CountValentine Potocki before he converted toJudaism, was burned at the stake because he had renounced Catholicism andbecoming a practicing Jew.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12317-potocki-pototzki-count-valentine-abraham-b-abraham
1764: EstherEtting and David Barrack Hays, the parents of Bedford, NY native Charity Haysand the in-laws of Jacob da Silva Solis were married today.
1768(7thof Sivan, 5528): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor
1769: JonahPhillips and Rebecca Machado Phillip gave birth to Philadelphia resident SarahPhillips, the great-granddaughter of Dr. Samuel Nunez
1773:Distinctions between Old Christians and New Christians were banned in Portugal.It was said this was because of a huge bribe from the Jews, but either way,this ban became law.
1788: SouthCarolina becomes the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Thanks toJohn Locke who wrote South Carolina’s original constitution Jews, along withheathens and dissenters were guaranteed “freedom of conscience.” Jews beganvoting in the colony’s elections in 1702.By 1750, there were enough Jews in the colony to warrant the building ofthe first synagogue in Charleston “which called itself “Beth Elohim” (House ofGod). Francis Salvador was the mostprominent Jewish leader when the Revolution began in 1775. In 1790, South Carolina enacted legislationthat was intended to abolish religious discrimination.
1794:Birthdate of Isaac Moscheles the native of Prague who gained fame as composerand pianist Ignaz Moscheles, one of many of his era who found a trip to thebaptismal font to be a stepping stone on the ladder of upward social mobility.
1799(18thof Iyar, 5559): Lag B’Omer
1799: AaronWorms married Rachel Lamart at the Great Synagogue in London delivered a speechin favor Reform legislation “at the Westminster anniversary reform dinner.”
1806(6thof Sivan, 5566): Shavuot observed as Lewis and Clark and the Corps ofExploration continue to work their way towards the Pacific Ocean.
1814: InGermany, Sophia “Sarah” Lowenstein gave birth to future Lancaster, Pennsylvaniaresident Levi Rosenstein, the husband of Caroline “Carrie” Straus Rosenteinwhom he married in 1825 and the father of Albert, Rosalie, Henrietta, Emma,Morris and Isaac Rosenstein who was in the “shoe business" with a shop onWest King Street, a Democrat and “an early reader for Congregation ShaaraiShomayi.
1822:Influential 19th economist David Ricardo the son of Anglo-SephardicJews who became a Unitarian when he married Priscilla Anne Wilkinson
1825(6thof Sivan, 5585): First Day of Shavuot
1825:Alexander Jacobs, the son of Israel Jacobs and the former Elizabeth Abrahamswas circumcised today in London.
1830: MosesNathan Levy, the Hamburg, Germany born son of Jette and Nathan Levy and hiswife Hannchen Levy gave birth to Roschen “Rosen” Levy who died when she waseight months old.
1833(5thof Sivan, 5593): Erev Shavuot
1834(14thof Iyar, 5594): Pesach Sheni
1834:Birthdate of Thalia Reicheubach
1835: InCincinnati, OH, Alexander Lewis, the Charleston born son of David and RachelBenjamin Lewis and his wife Rebecca Lewis gave birth to Sarah Essenheim themother of Joseph Essenheim.
1837(18thof Iyar, 5597): Lag B’Omer celebrated 10 days after the New York bankssuspended specie payments which touched off the Panic of 1837, the worstfinancial crisis the United States would face until the Great Depression of1929
1838: InMoravia, during what appeared to be an internal conflict in the Jewishcommunity, the government issued a decree canceling the chief rabbi’s“privilege of proposing candidates’ to serve as rabbis at local congregations.
1838:Birthdate of Emile Worms, the French jurist born in Luxemburg, “educated at theUniversity of Heidelberg” who earned his Dr. of Laws at the University of Parisin 1864 before becoming an assistant professor of law at his alma mater andprofessor of law at the University of Rennes.
1844(6thof Sivan, 5604): Erev Shavuot observed on the same day that “the Báb announcedthat He was a new divine Messenger sent to herald a new age for humanity and toprepare the way for Bahá’u’lláh, the universal Messenger of God expected bypeople of all religions.”
1845: SamuelHenry Gluckstein and Hannah Joseph were today at the Great Synagogue in London.
1846: InFürth, Bavaria, Joel and Babette (Elsasser) Krakauer gave birth to AdolphKrakauer who came to New York in 1865and then to Texas where became a successful merchant and leading businessman inSan Antonio and El Paso, Texas before his death in 1914.
1847: LevyZachariah was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.
1848: Birthdate of Otto Lilienthal German bornaviation pioneer. He died in 1896 afterone of his gliders failed to work properly.
1849: InLondon, Betsey Philips married 27 year old Montague “Myer” Gluckstein andbecame Betsey Gluckstein.
1851: RichardLalor Sheil an Irish writer, orator, and Member of Parliament passed away. Jewsshould remember Sheil as a supporter of measures to allow Jews to sit asmembers of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Following the Rothschild’selection to the House of Commons Sheil delivered a speech entitled “OnDisabilities of the Jews” that began included these words in the openingparagraph, “A British subject ought in every regard to be considered a Britishcitizen; and inasmuch as the professors of the most ancient religion in theworld, which, as far as it goes, we not only admit to be true, but hold to bethe foundation of our own, are bound to the performance of every duty whichattaches to a British subject, to a full fruition of every right which belongsto a British citizen, they have, I think, an irrefragable title. A Jew born inEngland cannot transfer his allegiance from his sovereign and his country; ifhe were to enter the service of a foreign power engaged in hostilities withEngland and were taken in arms he would be accounted a traitor. Is a Jew anEnglishman for no other purposes than those of condemnation? I am not aware ofa single obligation to which other Englishmen are liable from which a Jew isexempt; and if his religion confers on him no sort of immunity it ought not toaffect him with any kind of disqualification.”
1852(5thof Sivan, 5612): Erev Shavuot observed for the last time during the presidencyof Millard Fillmore
1854: In NYC,Henrietta Rosenbaum, and David Mayer gave birth to NYU trained laryngologist EilMayer, the husband of Louise Blume and “medical veteran of WW I” who was asurgeon in the throat department of theNew Yok Eye and Ear Infirmary and the chief of clinic throat and ear departments of the Mt. Sinai Hospital.
1855(6thof Sivan, 5615): Shavuot observed on the same day that the Daily Ohio Statesmanreprinted a speech by Senator Henry Clay in which he defended the “AmericanSystem” and praised “the immigrants who daily arrived on America’s shores.” (Editor’s note - the defense of immigrants(including Jews) by a prominent national leader when the Known-Nothing Partymentality was on the rise was a an act of political bravery)
1855:Birthdate of Jacob David Mamor, the Russian “son of Solomon Marmor, the Rabbiof the Lieranten Schule” who one of the few Jews to hold a diploma from the St.Petersburg Imperial Conservatory of Music and who began serving as the cantorat the Baltimore (MD) Hebrew Congregation in 1899.
1856(18thof Iyar, 5616): On the day after Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolinabeat Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress over the issue of slaveryand the day before Pottawatomie Massacre, which also tied to the fight overslavery, the Jews observed Lag B’Omer
1856:Birthdate of Congressman Henry Mayer Goldfogle who urged President Wilson to“designate January 27, 1916 as the date for collecting funds for the relief ofsuffering Jews in Europe.”
https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=G000260
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/henry-mayer-goldfogle
1856:Birthdate of Cracow native Leopold Zinsler who came to the United States in1883 where he served as the rabbi at “the Bohemian Congregation in Newark,”“Congregation Shahre Zedek” and “Congregation Anshe Emeth.
1858:Birthdate of Isaac Tuck, the native of New York’s Old Seventh Ward and “pioneerin fruit trade journalism who “was one of the founders of the Fruit Trade Journal and Produce Record”and the Fruit and Produce Trade Association of New York City as well as amember “of the South Brooklyn Board of Trade and the Twelfth Assembly DistrictDemocratic Club.”
1859: TwoPolish Jews, Philip Moses and Samuel Preiss filed a complaint today claimingthat a tailor name William Meyer had attacked Preiss and stolen his watch whilePreiss was in his store. The two plaintiffs gave such contradictory storiesthat it led the Judge to believe that Meyer was actually the victim ofblackmail attempt. He charged Moses andPreiss with attempted blackmail and filing a false police report. The two complaining witnesses are nowdefendants and since they could make bail they are awaiting trial in the cityjail. [So, all of our ancestors weren’t Kohanim or psalmists, so what?]
1863(5thof Sivan, 5623): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot
1863:Ferdinand Lasalle formed the General German Workers ’Association (ADAV),Germany’s first labor party today. Healso began serving as its President, a position he would hold until his deathin August of 1863.
1865: InLondon’s East End, “Joel Joel (a London tavern keeper of the King of Prussia),and Kate Isaacs, who was a sister of Barnett Isaacs (Barney Barnato) gave birthto Solomon “Solly” Barnato Joel the brother of Jack and Woolf Joel with whom hemade a fortune in the South African diamond mining trade and the husband ofactress Ellen Nellie Ridley.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joel-solomon-barnato
1866:Birthdate of Edgar James Banks, the oriental language professor and amateurarcheologist who climbed Mount Ararat “in search of Noah’s Ark” and who soldthe clay tablet that became known as Plimpton 322 which provided a window intothe world of Babylonian mathematics and linguistics passed away today.
1866:Today in Brooklyn, twenty-seven-year-old New York banker Walther Luttgen, theGerman born son of Carl and Johanne Luttgen and a valued member August BelmontCompany married Amelia Victoria Bremeyer with whom he had two daughter –Florence and Gertrude.
1867(18thof Iyar, 5672): Lag B’Omer observed on the same that Jesse James and his gang“robbed a bank in Richmond, MO, killing two and getting away with four thousanddollars.
1870: Theannual meeting of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites was held thisevening at Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City. The report of the ExecutiveCommittee included a comprehensive look at conditions of Jews in a variouscommunities. The committee reported that the Governor of Syria had agreed toallow the purchase of land for a Jewish agricultural school. Construction will begin as soon as thegovernment at Constantinople gives its approval. Romanian Jews, including those living in Bucharest,Vacco and Salatz have been the victims of violent attacks. Jews continued to suffer in Russia and theycontinue to subject to laws prohibiting them from living near the frontier.Halevy has not begun his trip to China where he is to gain information on thecondition of the Jews living there. At its recent meeting in Paris, theUniversal Alliance reported that it had 12,000 members around the world. Thecommittee urged that other states adopt laws similar to the one in New Yorkthat allows Jews who observe the Sabbath to work on Sunday, despite theexistence of “Blue Laws.” The committee urged the Jewish population to supportMaimonides College. The committeecredited “the good sense of the American public” that organizations attemptingto Christianitize the U.S. Constitution had meant with little success.
1871: AnImperial Ukase (proclamation) has been issued order the Jews of Poland tochange their appearance by doing away with their long black coats and trimmingtheir beards and side-curls.
1873:Birthdate of Rabbi Leo Baeck. His most famous work was The Essence ofJudaism. He believed in ethical monotheism as part of the core of Judaism.Unlike contemporary rationalists, he also acknowledged that the mystery of Godwas also essential to Jewish belief. He saw the need for the experiencing Godat the emotional level. This experience would lead to the ethical behavior.Also, Baeck saw the need for ritual as an affirmation of the concept of peoplehood. Baeck chose not to leave Germany. He was imprisoned at Terezienstadt. Hisfaith survived the experience. He passed away in 1956.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/baeck.html
1874(7thof Sivan, 5634): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor
1874:Birthdate of “Ephraim Moses Lilien an art nouveau illustrator and printmakerparticularly noted for his art on Jewish themes who is sometimes called the"first Zionist artist” whose works included a photograph of Herzl taken1901https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Moses_Lilien#/media/File:Herzl_Basel_1901.jpgand “The Queen of Sabbath” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Moses_Lilien#/media/File:Juda_13.jpg
https://streetsofisrael.wordpress.com/2014/01/
1875: In Essen,Germany, Isaac Simon Hirschland, the son of Son of Simon Hirschland andMarianne Hirschland and his wife Henriette Hirschland gave birth to Londonresident Agatha Gruenebaum, the wife of ErnestGruenebaum and mother of Ludwig Gruenebaum; Kaethe Weinberg; Erich OttoGrunebaum; Kurt Hermann Gruenebaum and Charlotte Hackett
1875: “AnInteresting Jewish Ceremony” published today described the conversion ceremonyof Henrietta Held at which Rabbi Marx Cohn officiated.
1875: “Michel Levy: The Life of a Great FrenchPublisher” published today described the shock in Paris at the death of this 54year old literary leader and provided a detailed account of his life andaccomplishments.
1877: InPaterson, NJ, Judge Barkalow will begin to hear evidence in divorce caseinvolving Moses Fananholz (or Tananholz) originally from Chicago and his wifethe former Rachel Blumenthal from Montreal.The wife claims that her husband only married her for her money; thatshe that the ceremony was only for a betrothal under Jewish custom and not amarriage ceremony; and that since she was under the age of 18 (the age ofconsent) when the ceremony was performed the marriage was illegal.
1877: AtBuffalo, NY, in the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, architect Cyrus LazelleWarner Eidlitz the son of architect Leopold Eidlitz married Jennie TurnerDudley.
1879: ProposedHebrew Convention” published today described the preparations that are beingmade for the upcoming meeting in New York of delegates representing the“various branches of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Agenda items will include a report oncharitable activities and a report on the activities at the college the Unioncontrols which trains young men to serve as rabbis. One major topic of discussion will be theproposed to change Jewish Sabbath services from Saturday to Sunday.
1879(1st ofSivan, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1879: InMilwaukee, WI, Carrie Strauss and Isaac Friend gave birth to Harvard trainedattorney Arthur S. Friend, the husband of Fanny Hartz and “head of the A.S.Friend Companies engaged in the construction and operation of a chain oftheatre located in New England” who had begun his “theatrical career as generalcounsel to Jesee L Lasky Feature Play Company after which he produced severalmotion pictures starring George Arliss.
1880: InJerusalem, Joseph Raphael, the chief justice of the Sephardi community ofJerusalem and president of the community council and his wife gave birth to Ben-ZionMeir Hai Uziel “the Sephardi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine from 1939 to1948, and of Israel from 1948 until his death in 1953.”
1881:Birthdate of Russian native and labor editor for The Jewish Morning JournalWilliam Post who in 1905 came to the United States where he was “a chartermember and vice president of the Jewish Writers Union and an author who usedthe Nome de plume William Pohotsky as well as the husband of of Pauline Postand the father of Nathan Post.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/08/02/88272179.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1882(5thof Sivan, 5642): Erev Shavuot
1882: InCleveland, OH, 41-year-old Isaac Alsbacher and 31 year old Rebecca Klein gavebirth to Dr. David Darwin Alsbacher, the fourth of their sixth children.
1883: InDenver, CO, 49-year-old Pennsylvania native Hezekiah Charles Ullman, the son ofGerman-Jewish immigrants Lazarus Ullman and Lydia Abrahams and Ella Adelaidegave birth to Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman who gained fame as “swashbuckling”movie star Douglas Fairbanks.
1884: As theMay Laws took effect “Jews who had served in the army encountered difficulties,at the expiration of their terms of service, in resettling in the villages inwhich they had dwelt.”
1885(9thof Sivan, 5645) Parashat Nasso
1885(9thof Sivan, 5645): Marcus Simon Rosenbacher, the Sulzbach, Germany born son ofSimon Aron Rosenbacher and Libussa Rosenbacher, husband of Franziska (Fanni)Anna Rosenbacher and Henriette Rosenbacher and father of Emanuel Rosenbacher;Marie Lobethal; Therese Michael; Wilhelm Rosenbacher and Dr. Arnold Rosenbacher,a leader of the Jewish community in Prague and “Hebrew scholar” who was thepresident of the Union of Bohemian Jewish Congregation and vice-president ofthe Union of Austrian Jews passed away today in Hamburg, Germany.
1886(18thof Iyar, 5646): Lag B’Omer
1886:Birthdate of Moshe David Drabkin known as David Remez the native of Belarus whomade Aliyah in 1913 with his wife Liba. At the end of his long, rich career hewas one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1948 and servedas cabinet minister in Ben-Gurion’s first two governments.
1886: RachelMontefiore was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.
1886:Ninety-year old German historian Leopold von Ranke who described Mosaicmonotheism and “its revolt against nature worship” as the “principle on whichis built a civil society which is alien to every abuse of power” in hisUniversal History, passed away today.
1887: Oscar S.Straus, the new United States Minister to Turkey and his family arrived inConstantinople today. They had beenexpected ten days earlier but were delayed when their daughter became ill inVienna.
1889:Birthdate of New York native Louis brand who played basketball for CCNY from1907 through 1909.
1890: It wasreported today Mrs. Charles Peterson claims an unnamed Jewish peddler hadpitched her nine month old daughter into a tub of water. The mother claims she “was absent at thetime” and has not offered a basis for the claim.
1890: All ofthe children of the late Herman Frohman “applied for and secured from the Courtof Common Please a writ de lunatic” which will force their mother, MaryFrohman, to answer charges that she is “a lunatic.” This is part of a dispute over the estate ofthe deceased Jewish butcher.
1891: A firebroke early today at tenement house at 38 Ludlow Street which is home to 18Jewish families.
1892: In NewYork City, “Selig and Goldie (Feigen) Peshkin gave birth to Dr. Morris MurrayPeshkin, the Fordham graduate and husband of Lillian Rapaport who served as theclinical professor of medicine and pediatric allergies at Albert EinsteinCollege of Medicine and the national president of the Asthmatic Children’sFoundation.
1892: “Aresolution of sympathy for the Jews of Russia was introduced and passed” attoday’s session of a conference of Methodist leaders being held in Omaha,Nebraska. “The resolution declared that it was the sense of the conference thatthe Jews in Russia were being unmercifully persecuted” and that “it was thehope of the conference that Russian Jews would soon enjoy the same rights asother people.”
1893: It wasreported today there are only two Jewish murderers imprisoned at Sing SingPrison in New York. Sixty year old Adolph Reich is serving a life sentence forhaving killed his wife. He had beensentenced to death, but the Governor commuted his sentence. Charles Lovitz wasfound guilty of murder in the second degree after having shot his wife.
1894: On thesecond day of the First American Conference of Hebrew and Christian Workers forIsrael, Reverend James Adler delivered a talk on “Dry Bones” which included arecitation of his problems in trying to convert Jews.
1894:“Congress of Liberal Religionists” published today described meetings beingheld at Temple Sinai in Chicago, Illinois that include representatives ofReform Movement and other denominations such as the Unitarians and the EthicalCultural Movement with the hope “of securing closer cooperation between thedenominations of liberal religious societies.”The congress is an outgrowth of the Parliament of Religions which washeld in Chicago during the World’s Fair.
1895: It wasreported today that Max Casten, alias “Jew Sam” has been arrested in St. Louis,MO, on charges of stealing $2,500 worth of diamonds
1895:Birthdateof Maryland native Kate Markowitz who gained fame as Kate Weinberg the wife ofBaltimore clothing manufacturer Harry E. Weinberg, the mother of Selma RuthWeinberg and the daughter-in-law of Gittel and Shmul Yakov Weinberg
1898: MartinBeir, the Rochester fire insurance agent, was in New York on business today
1898:“Patriotism of the Jews” published today included a declaration by RabbiRudolph Grossman that the United States war with Spain “was of Divine ordering”and that Spain’s kingdom in the western hemisphere is “finished
1898: It wasreported today that there one thousand Jewish officers in the Austro-HungaryArmy, that one further of the officers in the French Army are Jews and thatthere were 10,000 Jews in the Union Army.
1898: Duringthe Spanish-American War, Corporal Leo Witkovski of Tampa, FL serving inCompany M of the 1st Florida Volunteer Infantry was among thosemustered into federal service today.
1899: CharlesLatimer who has been accused of being one of the men who attacked Leopold Levyis being held by police. Levy has diedof from the wounds that Latimer and his unknown compatriots inflicted on the 49year old salesman.
1900: In Kiev,Bella and Nachum D. Petchersky gave birth to New York real estate executive andphilanthropist Solomon N. Petchers, who served on the board of the AmericanAssociation for Jewish Education and helped to fund the Albert Einstein Collegeof Medicine and the Central Library for the Blind in Jerusalem.
1900:Birthdate of Franz Leopold Neumann “a German-Jewish left-wing politicalactivist and labor lawyer, who …is considered to be among the founders ofmodern political science in the Federal Republic of Germany.”
1900: Herzlseeks support at a meeting with Ernest von Koerber, Austrian political leaderwho served as Prime Minister from 1900 to 1904.
1901(5h ofSivan, 5661): Erev Shavuot
1901:According to the petition of Bushrod M. Watts of Baltimore City by Isaac LobeStraus, which today Watts “caused to be served by personal service uponRepublican Samuel Affelder, a Baltimore City Councilman, a notice of contestfor said seat in the First Branch of the City Council of Baltimore City fromthe Fourteenth Ward…”
1902: In theNorth, South and West Ends of Boston all of the Solomont kosher meat storeswere operating today after “disturbances occurred among the Hebrews yesterday”in front the establishments.
1903: InBuffalo, NY, a special committee submitted a resolution to the American BaptistMissionary Union condemning “the recent massacre of the Jews in Russia.”
1903:Following the Kishinev Pogrom Wenzel von Plehve, Russian Minister of theInterior “rebuffed a Jewish delegation that asked for a condemnation of themassacre and relaxation of anti-Jewish rules.”
1903: Herzlwrites to Wenzel von Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior and to KonstantinPobiedonostzev asking them to arrange an audience with the Czar. Herzl alsoturned to Bertha von Suttner and asks for her assistance in this matter. VonSutter was an Austrian writer, pacifist and the first woman to win the NobelPrize for Peace.
1904: InCincinnati, 37-year-old “lawyer and stockbroker Alfred Holzman and 31 year oldRachel Florence Workum Hlozman gave birth to University of Cincinnati graduateElizabeth Lloyd Holzman the Blues singer and actress who gained fame as Libbyand who at her death was known as “Mrs. Libby Holman Reynolds Schanker, widowof a Reynolds tobacco heir and the wife of artist Louis Shanker.
1905(18thof Iyar, 5665): Lag B’Omer
1905: It isbelieved that the speech Feodor Chaliapin gave today to workingman at Karkoff“in which he urged the audience not to molest the Jews who after all he weretheir brothers, prevented another Jewish massacre.
1906: NewAtlantic Hall was crowded” tonight “with pushcart peddlers who are members ofthe East Side Pushcart Peddlers Association” who contend “that for two yearsthe Bureau of Licenses has refused to issue peddler’s licenses to Jews” and“that every pushcart license held by a Jew on the east side represents ‘graft’paid to someone whom they call a ‘politician.’”
1907: InAlbany, NY, State Senator Martin Saxe introduced a bill “which provides forimportant amendments to the Civil Rights Act” which was prompted by the refusalof the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City to rent rooms Mrs. Bertha Rayner-Frank and hernieces because they were Jewish.
1907: “Apologyto Mrs. Frank” published today described events surrounding theMarlborough-Blenheim Hotel’s refusal of service to Mrs. Bertha Rayner Franksand her two nieces because they were Jewish and the subsequent apology byJosiah White & Sons, the Atlantic City hotel’s owner.
1908:Birthdate of architect Max Abramovitz two of his most famous designs wereLincoln Center and the UN building.
1909: New YorkCity native Dr. Bernard Drachman, a graduate of Columbia University and theUniversity of Heidelberg is scheduled to be installed today as the rabbi at“Chab Zedek Congregation” on West 116th Street.
1908:Birthdate of Linda Mathews Watkins, the wife Gabriel Lorie Hess and attorneyfor Will Hays and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America whomhe married divorcing his first wife Helen Baer Stamm and the mother of AdamHess.
1909(3rd ofSivan, 5669): Elias Solomon, an Australian politician, passed away. Born in1839, in London, England, he migrated to Australia as a child. He had no formaleducation, but in 1868 became a clerk and auctioneer in Fremantle in WesternAustralia. In 1877 he was elected to the Fremantle City Council. In 1892, hewas elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly as the member forSouth Fremantle, where he remained until 1901. In that year, he transferred tofederal politics, winning the Australian House of Representatives seat ofFremantle for the Free Trade Party. He was defeated by Labor's WilliamCarpenter in 1903.
1910(14thof Iyar, 5670): Pesach Sheni
1910:Celebration of the Geiger Centenary.
1910:Birthdate Arthur Jacob Arshawsky in New York, who became a popular "big band" bandleader Artie Shaw whose hits included"Come'on my House".
1911:Dedication ceremony of the New York Public Library. Over the next century, the library wouldprovide countless generations of Jews a variety of cultural and educationalopportunities. The library’s “DorotJewish Division is one of the great collections of Judaica in the world and themost accessible for both scholarly and personal use. While the collectionoffers commentary on all aspects of Jewish life it also includes Hebrew andYiddish-language texts on general subjects.”
1912(7thof Sivan, 5672): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor
1912: “Theremains of the late General Morris Horkheimer” who died yesterday at AtlanticCity “accompanied by his family” are scheduled to arrive in Wheeling, WestVirginia “at 9:30 this morning…and will be removed to the family home at 800Main Street and arrangements for the funeral.
1912: Tonight,at a meeting of the American Immigration and Distribution League at the HotelManhattan, Montefiore G. Kahn, Acting Secretary of the organization, announcedthat he would give the league 13,000 acres of farming and clay lands in NewJersey, valued by the donor at more than $2,600,000. The land was to beparceled out free to deserving immigrants who desire to become farmers.
1912: Today,The Hamburg-American Line under the leadership of general director AlbertBallin launched the SS Imperator, which at that time was reported to be “theworld’s largest Ship.
1913: In NewYork founding of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, now known asthe American Cancer Society which helps in the fight against a disease withJews have a unique history.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15516840
1914:Birthdate of actor and critic Leo Lerman, author and editor for style settingmagazines including Mademoiselle, Vogue and Vanity Fair.
1915: “TheIllinois Equal Suffrage Association, Political Equality League and Women’sClub” are among the organizations supporting the gathering of “Chicago women…inthe big banquet hall of the Auditorium Hall” scheduled to take place thisafternoon to protest the execution of Leo M. Frank.
1915: Inresponse to questions about clemency for Leo Frank, the Governor-elect’s viewspublished today state that “You can just say for Nat Harris that if the matterof dealing executive clemency to the condemned man is to be considered by him,the entire outside world will not be taken into consideration one it. It is entirely a Georgia matter.”
1915: “Areport telling of the relief work for the benefit of war sufferers in Palestinewas issued today by the Provisional Executive Committee for General ZionistAffairs” chaired by Louis D. Brandeis.
1915: In NewYork, “the local Kehillah, or Jewish community meeting in the Concert Hall ofMadison Square Garden today, endorsed the idea of holding a conference ofdelegates from Jewish organizations throughout the country to consider theplight of European Jews and to determine what could be done for theamelioration of their condition after the war.”
1915: “Inremarks preceding his sermon this morning,” Dr. Madison C. Peters of the NorthBaptist Church on West Eleventh Street said, “I know the people of Georgia andit is unfair to judge all by those who are clamoring for the life of a man whoby common consent I not innocent, has never had a fair trial. The outcries of the mob against the defendantwere not against Leo Frank – it was a cry against the Jew.”
1915: In NewYork this afternoon “at a meeting of the Alliance Israelite Universelle…aresolution was adopted after being seconded by Professor Richard Gottheil ofColumbia to prepare a protest in the name of the Jews of the United Statesagainst the execution of Leo Frank” because those at “the meeting took thestand that the Frank verdict was the result of race prejudice…”
1915: “Aletter from Leo Frank was received today by Harry A. Lipsky of the Daily JewishCourier” in which the condemned man expresses his appreciation for the supportof the Chicago community and stating “I am well and putting up as good a fightas I know how.”
1915: It wasreported today that ex-Congressman William W. Howard of Augusta has been chosento argue the case to grant clemency in the case of Leo M. Frank before GovernorSlaton should the appeal to the State Prison Commission fail.
1916: IsidoreHershfield an attorney “who went to the war zone last October to represent theHebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society,” “visited all of the battlesfronts and distributed relief to Jews in the war area” is expected to arrive inNew York today aboard the New Amsterdam.
1916: The lastin a series of notes were exchanged between the Russians, French and Britishwhich finalized the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement which effectively“divided” the Ottoman Empire among the Allies while the outcome of WW I wasstill in doubt.
1916: HenryMorgenthau, the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey is scheduled to address theIllinois Manufacturers Association at noon today after which he will leave forSt. Louis and Kansas City “where he will continue his pleas for aid for the warsufferers.”
1916: Aresolution was unanimously adopted by 1,400 at the convention of theIndependent Order of B’rith Abraham requesting that the Governor of New Yorkinstitute a public investigation of “the charges made by Max J. Klein that,because he was a Jews, he was barred from the Second Field Artillery, NationalGuard of NY by Captain Howard E. Sullivan of Battery D.
1916: At theconcluding session of the 13th annual convention of the IndependentOrder of B’rith Abraham at the Amsterdam Opera House the following officerswere elected: Grand Master – Leon Sanders; Deputy Grand Masters: GustaveHartman, Abraham Rosoff, Max H. Schoen, Emil Zuker, Dr. George Sulton, PhillipP. Levy, Otto S. Hirsch, Hyman Winick, Jacob Zuckerman and Jacob Eaton; GrandSecretary – Max Hollander; Grand Treasurer – David Goldberg; Grand Trustee –Benjamin Eherenfeld and Counsel of the Order – Adolph Stern.
1916: “Theorganization of the first Kehillah on Washington Heights was completed at ameeting of of about 500 Jews” tonight in the Washington Heights Synagogue” on161st Street where the speakers included Rabbi Judah L. Magnes,Chairman of the Kehillah of New York, Emanuel Hertz, and Dr. Elias Margolies.
1917: Funeralservices are scheduled to be held this afternoon at Temple Jehosuah for fifty-eight-year-oldFannie Schwager, the wife of Morris Schwager
1917: Thisevening, “the workers of the Central Jewish Institute” hosted “a farewellbanquet to mark the departure of Rabbi Herbert S. Goldman” for his new ventureto improve life in the Jewish district centered on 116th Streetwhich he called the “hell” of the city of New York.
1917: Funeralservices are scheduled to be held this afternoon for Mrs. Abe Siegel, themother of Lawrence Siegel at Free Son’s Cemetery in Chicago.
1917: Theannual meeting of the Jewish Home Finding Society of Chicago of which Mrs.Adolph Kurz is Secretary is scheduled to take place this evening at theStandard Club.
1917: Thejoint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and theAnglo-Jewish Association, “two of the most influential bodies of British Jewry”issued a statement opposing “Jewish resettlement in Palestine, as planned bythe Zionist organizations.”
1918: WhiteRussia native Leon Cheifitz, a resident of “Canada at the age of 9” and amember of “Poale Zion at the age of 15, left for camp after having joined theJewish Legion in which he would rise to the rank of Sergeant before beingdemobilized in 1921.
1918: It wasreported today that “a dispatch from Paris states that the Jewish NationalCouncil has issued a protest against the atrocities committed upon the Jewishpopulation in occupied Russia” while also charging “that pogroms have beenorganized by the German authorities who have aroused the peasants against theJews.”
1919: Dr. Emil G. Hirsch and Julius Rosenwald are scheduled to be two of theguests of honor at luncheon hosted this afternoon by The Council of JewishWomen at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago.
1920(6thof Sivan, 5680): Shavuot observed for the last time during the Presidency ofWoodrow Wilson
1921: “Thebiennial Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the FourthAssembly of the Federation of Temple Sisterhoods was formally convened tonightwith services in Temple Beth Zion” where Dr. A.L. Meyer of San Francisco gavethe council sermon and “the delegates were greeted by Rabbi Louis J. Kopald…”
1922: Premierof "Abie's Irish Rose." This was the first of over 2,500performances seen by an estimated fifty million attendees.
1922:Birthdate of New York native, Julliard trained violinist and WW II veteranSeymour Solomon, who with his brother Maynard founded Vangaurd Records, a mustlabel for folk music lovers in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/19/arts/seymour-solomon-80-record-label-founder.html
1923:Birthdate of Bessarabia native Boris Dorfman who authored about 1000 articleson Jewish issues in Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and German forpublications including Birobidzhaner Shtern, who was one of the founders ofShofar, the first Jewish newspaper in the former USSR and the father ofAmerican publicist Michael Dorfman.
1924: Policein Chicago pursued the investigation into the murder of Bobby Franks, whom theynow knew was not being held for ransom since his corpse had been discovered.
1925:Birthdate of photographer Henry Wolf, owner of Henry Wolf Productions and the1976 recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal for LifetimeAchievement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/business/media/16wolf.html
1925:Esther Goldenbaum Schulman Lederberg and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Lederberg gave birthto Dr. Joshua Lederberg “an American molecular biologist who is known for hiswork in genetics, artificial intelligence, and space exploration. He wasawarded half of the Nobel Prize in 1958 for his research in genetic structureand function in microorganisms. The other half of that year's prize was sharedby Edward Lawrie Tatum and George Wells Beadle. In addition to hiscontributions to biology, Lederberg did extensive research in artificialintelligence. This included work in the NASA experimental programs seeking lifeon Mars and the chemistry expert system Dendral. Lederberg’s parents had movedto the United States from Palestine in 1924.His father was an Orthodox Rabbi. Fortunately for the world of sciencewhen Lederberg was Bar Mitzvahed in 1938 he received a copy of Bodansky's” Introductionto Physiological Chemistry,” a book that he said had a tremendous impact onhis scientific development.
1926:Birthdate of Amos Degani, the Tel Aviv native whose political career includedserving as an MK from 1957 to 1969.
1926:Birthdate of Yossel Mashel Slovo, the native of Lithuania who as Joe Slovobecame a leader in the anti-Apartheid movement while serving as a leader of theSouth African Communist Party and the African National Congress.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-joe-slovo-1566935.html
1926:In Wilno Max Weinreich and Regina Szabad gave birth to linguist UrielWeinreich.
1926:The United Jewish Campaign in New York is scheduled to come to an end today.
1927:Birthdate of Dieter Hildebrandt, the German non-Jew who directed the AcademyAward nominated documentary “The Yellow Star – The Persecution of the Jews inEurope 1933-45.”
1928:Having delivered an address last night in which he called “upon the Zionist ofAmerica to ‘refrain from fratricidal war’” Dr. Chaim Weizman is scheduled toleave today for London
1928:In speech given tonight at a meeting of the Samuel Tichner Society, SupremeCourt Justice Peter J. Schmuck “praised the society as one of the oldest of theNew York Jewish orders” having begun as “a boy’s social club on the lower eastside that began in 1875.
1929:Birthdate of Marvin J. Chomsky who won Emmy Awards for his direction“Holocaust” in `978 and “Inside the Third Reich” in 1982.
1929:“The Crown,” a play by David Calderon premiere in Tel Aviv in a productiondirected by Alesksei Dikiy.
1929: InPalestine, the leaders of Ahdut HaAvoda and Hapoel HaTzair, thetwo major labor parties sign an agreement that will merge the twoparties into one. The merger is slatedto take place on July 25.
1930:After having earned his LL.B in February and passed the New York State BarExam, Chicago White Sox Catcher Moe Berg, who had injured his knee during anexhibition game with the Little Rock Travelers, “returned to the startingline-up” today.
1930:“Westfront 1918,” a German movie about World War I featuring Wladimir Sokoloffwas released in Germany today.
1930:In Brooklyn, David and Eva Kellman gave birth to Dr. Charles D. Kelman, theclinical professor of ophthalmology and “father of phacoemulsification.”
1931(7thof Sivan, 5691): Second Day of Shavuot and Shabbat.
1931:“Albert Ottinger, chairman of the New York campaign for $1,000,000 for the aidof Jews in Eastern and Central Europe, issued a statement today attacking AdolfHitler and his German Fascist followers for their alleged anti-Semiticcampaign” saying that “the Hitlerites have sponsored propaganda against theJews in forty magazines and sixty newspapers and have caused to be printcartoons picturing the Jews as the enemies of Germany.”
1932(17thof Iyar, 5692): Eighty-year-old textile manufacturer and philanthropist JamesSimon who provided funding for several archaeological digs passed away today.
http://www.meaus.com/109-james-simon-memorial.htm
1932:“The Tenderfoot,” a film based on George S. Kaufman’s play “The Butter and EggMan” as released today in the United States.
1933:It was reported today that detectives who had questioned Waxy Gordon (bornIrving Wexler) about the murders of Max Hassel and Max Greenberg “got theimpression that he might welcome a jail sentence” for federal income evasion“since rival gunmen are said to be out to murder him and his associates.”
1933:Birthdate of Alvin Ira Malnik, the St. Louis born businessman “withlong-lasting business and personal relationships with members of the Rat Pack”who “purchased and remodeled The Forge restaurant in Miami Beach” with the lateJay Weiss.
1933:Birthdate of Paris native Rabbi Aharon Lictenstein who uniquely receivedsemicha from Yeshiva University afterwhich he earned “a PhD in English Literature from Harvard” where he met hisfuture wife Tova, the daughter of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2014/04/who-is-aharon-lichtenstein/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/renowned-rabbi-aharon-lichtenstein-dies-at-81/
1933:The all-Jewish Platoon of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps was expanded to anall-Jewish company under the command of Captain Noel S. Jacobs. While theunit’s chaplain was Rabbi Mendel Brown, the leader of the Sephardic community,most of the members were Russian Jews
1934:The Palestine Jewish National Assembly orchestrated a general strike againstthe immigration ban that was scheduled to last from noon until 7 p.m. thisevening. During the strike, fifty Jewish strikers in Tel Aviv were wounded inclashes with the police. Twenty of the wounded were described as being inserious condition.
1934(9thof Sivan, 5694): Sixty-six-year-old Harvard trained lawyer Simon Louis Adler a judgeof the United States court for the western district of New York, died of aheart attack today after which he was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery inRochester, NY.
1934(9thof Sivan, 5694): Fifty-seven-year-old composer and arranger Gustave Salzer whoserved as the musical director for several Broadway shows including “AnimalCrackers,” “Sweet Adeline” and “The Dubarry” passed away today.
1935:Joseph "Yosky" Toblinsky participated in the hijacking of a truckwhile driving through Sullivan County today escaping with $8,000 worth ofpharmaceutical drugs. He also kidnappedthe driver and his assistant. Born in1879, Toblinsky “was a New York City racketeer who, as head of an independentgang on East Side Manhattan, was involved in extortion and poisoning horseswith the Yiddish Black Hand during the early 1900s. He was… sent to Sing SingPrison for cruelty to animals in 1902.”
1936:As Arab violence continued, “on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, just outside ofJerusalem, two light tanks and two trucks carrying troops were fired upon fromthe Arab Village of Ainkarem.”
1936:Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes is scheduled to deliver an addresswhich will broadcast this evening from the Astor Hotel where the New YorkUnited Palestine Appeal is hosting a dinner to mark the start of it drive toraise $1,500,000 for the aide of European Jews seeking settlement in Palestine.
1936:“Night riders of the Black Legion, a terroristic secret society” whose“prospective members are asked if they will take arms against Jews, Negroes andCatholics” are the leading suspects in the murder of a 32 year old WorksProject Administration (WPA) worker in Detroit.
1936:Declaring that German refugees in France, Holland, Czechoslovakia and otherEuropean countries were in a ‘precarious’ condition the American Jewish JointDistribution Committee announced” today “emergency appropriations were beingmade to meet the needs of the victims” over and above the five thousand dollarssent monthly to Holland, the ten thousand dollars sent to Czechoslovakia andthe more than twelve thousand dollars sent to Austria.
1937(13thof Sivan, 5697): Sixty-eight-year-oldGerman born, and University of Bonn trained medical doctor, GustaveLippman the husband of Alice Drey Lippmann and son-in-law of Albert and MarieDrey who in 1894 moved to St. Louis where he practiced pediatrics and served onthe faculty of St. Louis University passed away today.
1937:Birthdate of Jerome Rosenberg who would hold the dubious distinction of beingthe longest serving prisoner in New York State when he died.
1937:“In accordance with the proclamation of Dr. Stephen S. Wise declaring today asNational Shekel Day, 10,000 volunteers” conducted “a house-to-house canvassseeking 250,000 members for the 1937 enrollment of American Zionists.
1937:Ninety-seven-year-old John D. Rockefeller passed away. To the world at large, he was the founder of StandardOil, one of the robber barons, etc. Buthe was also the founder of the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/rockmuseum.html
1938(22ndof Iyar, 5698): Fifty-three-year-old Richmond physician and vice president ofthe ZOA Dr. Lazarus Karp the Latvian born son of decorated war hero IsraelJoseph Karp and father of Columbia University graduate Mina Karp passed awaytoday.
1938:As Arab violence continued unabated, ThePalestine Post reported that Yitzhak Yitzhaki, 55, was attacked and stabbedto death by two Arabs near the Beit Vegan quarter of Jerusalem. Ezekiel Muncik,25, a supernumerary constable from Kfar Yona was shot and killed during one ofthe Arab attacks on Hanita. Another young settler, Abraham Katz was severelywounded only one hour later and it was impossible to Ctake him to hospital. Apolice sergeant, injured in an earlier attack, died of his wounds in the Haifahospital. Two Arabs were injured by a bomb explosion in Tiberias.
1939(5thof Sivan, 5699): Erev Shavuot
1939: Following the adoption of the infamous MacDonaldWhite Paper which all but put an end to Jewish immigration in Palestine,Winston Churchill, who was still a political outcast,spoke in favor ofJewish immigration tellingthe House of Commons, "So far from beingpersecuted, the Arabshave crowded into the country and multiplied tilltheir population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up theJewish population. Now are being asked to decree that all this is to cometo an end. We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most withme, to an agitation which fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed byNazi and by Fascist propaganda." (According to Martin Gilbert,Churchill was right. "Between 1922 and 1939 more Arabs had enteredPalestine than Jews." Many of these immigrants were drawn toPalestine by the improvingeconomic conditions which were often a productof Jewish settlement. Ironically, these Moslems who came from a varietyof North African and Middle Eastern countries would be counted among the"Palestinian refugees" that are with us to this date.)
1939:During a debate on the Peel Commission’s White Paper, Winston Churchill defendsthe Balfour Declaration and criticizes Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain forbetraying the Zionists and turning his back on a document he had so ardently supportedtwenty years before. “They (the Jewishsettlers) have fulfilled his (Chamberlain) hopes. How can he find it in his heart to strikethem this mortal blow?” Upon hearing of the speech, Weizmann telegraphedChurchill” “Your magnificent speech may yet destroy this policy. Words fail me to express thanks.”
1939:The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Long, criticized the McDonald White Paperin a speech in the House of Lords.
1939:In Palestine, on the eve of the Shavuot holiday, seven new settlements areestablished simultaneously. In all, twelve new settlements are established inMay, expressing the faith that even in the grim new circ*mstances of the WhitePaper, settlement was one of the essential means of fighting for the Zionistaim.
1939:Isaac Nachman Steinberg a Russian born Zionist who was a leader of the“Territorialist Movement” arrived in Perth, Australia and began trying to gainsupport for the “Kimberly Scheme” – a plan in which “75,000” Jews fleeingEurope would be settled in the western part of Australia.
1940:In what may be one of the strangest meetings in the history of the RooseveltWhite House, FDR met with Louis E. Krstein, Chairman of Feline’ DepartmentStore.
1940:Archibald Henry Maule Ramsay the anti-Semitic, pro-fascist Member of Parliamentwas arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Defence Regulation18B
1940:As French forces fled from the attacking German Army, Margaret and Hans Reyreturned to Paris from Normandy.
1940:The Broadway production of “Keep Off the Grass,” “a musical revue produced byLee Shubert and J.J. Shubert” opened today at the Broadhurst Theatre where it“ran for a total of 44 performances.
1940:Frustrated by "illegal" immigration into Palestine, BritishHigh Commissioner for Palestine Sir Harold MacMichael insists that Hungaryaccept the return of two Jews who had left Hungary and settled in Palestine in1934 on tourist visas. The Hungarian government replies that there are an"excessive" number of Jews in their country and the government's aimis "that as many as possible should be encouraged to emigrate."
1940:Lord Lloyd, the Secretary of State for Colonies expressed his opposition toPrime Minister Churchill’s plan to arm the Jews of Palestine so that he couldbring the 20,000 British troops stationed in Palestine home to defend against apossible German invasion. Lloyd fearedthe reaction of the Arabs to what Churchill saw as a way of providing forself-defense while meeting the Nazi menace.
1941:Birthdate of Zalman King Lefkowitz whoas Zalman King gained fame as “a filmmaker who mixed artistic aspiration, aprofessed empathy for female sexuality and gauzy photography to bring soft-corep*rnography to cable television — particularly with his Showtime series “RedShoe Diaries” in the 1990s…´(As reported by Douglas Martin)
1942(7thof Sivan, 5702):Second Day of Shavuot
1942(7thof Sivan, 5702): After having been tortured by the Nazis for at least twomonths, George Politzer was murdered by a firing squad.
1942:The Nazis deported the Jews from Stopkov, Slovakia, including the Findlingfamily today and sent them to Auschwitz
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/08.asp
1942:“Grand Central Murder” produced by B.F. Zeidman and featuring Same Levene “asInspector Gunther” was released in the United States today.
1943(18thof Iyar, 5703): Lag BaOmer
1943:NaziAktionen kill thousands of UkrainianJews at Przemyslany and Lvov.
1943: U.S.premiere of “Mission to Moscow” a film treatment of the memoir of the formerU.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union directed by Michael Curitz, with a scriptby Howard Koch and a musical score by Max Steiner.
1944(1st ofSivan, 5704): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1944: In NewYork, Rabbi Samuel Belkin was inaugurated as President of the Rabbi IsaacElchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College. An honorary degree of Doctorof Law was conferred upon Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and anhonorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on Rabbi Isaac Rubinstein,former Chief Rabi of Vilna and a twenty-six-year member of the Sejm (the PolishSenate.)
1944: InPeekskill, NY, June and David Polis gave birth to Susan Polis who gained fameas Susan Polis Schultz an American poet, producer of greeting cards founder ofBlue Mountains Art and the mother of Colorado Congressman Jared Polis.
1945: GestapoChief Heinrich Himmler committed suicide.
1945: “Actingon SHAEF's orders and with the approval of the Soviets, American Major GeneralRooks summoned Dönitz aboard the Patria and communicated to him that he and allthe members of his Government were under arrest, and that their Government wasdissolved.”
1945: Twoweeks after the German surrender, Chaim Weizmann writes to Prime MinisterWinston Churchill appealing for an end to the White Paper and restrictions onJewish immigration to Eretz Israel. Theappeal would fall on deaf ears.
1946: In“Harrow, north London…Jewish hairdressers” gave birth to Stephen AnthonySolomon Marks who gained game as Stephen Marks, “a British fashion retailer andfounder, chairman and chief executive of the French Connection brand.”
1946: “TheDevil’s Mask” directed by Henry Levin, with music by Irving Getz and featuringLudwig Donath as “Dr. Karger” was released in the United States today.
1946: JamesWork was elected president of the National Farm School, after having served “asActing President for many months during the illness of President Louis Nusbaum.The school was the creation Joseph Krauskoph, a leading American Reform Rabbi.
1946: A mob ofrioting Poles attacked Zypora Frank and her family today which was Zypora’sbirthday. According to Mrs. Frank, ''They threw stones, they were yelling, 'Youtake our coal and give us the Jews,' and somebody threw a grenade.'' Two peoplewere killed, one right next to the 11-year-old girl, spattering her birthdaydress with blood. Following anotherpogrom in July, Mrs. Frank’s parents would decide to send their children toPalestine. They were sure that the Poles would finish what the Germans hadbegun.
1946(22ndof Iyar, 5706): Lithuanian born anarchist and translator William Wess aka WoolfWess passed away today in London.
1946(22nd ofIyar, 5706): Sixty-three-year-old New Jersey State Highway Commissioner AbrahamJellin, the Russian born son of Reichel Levine and Max Jellin, the husband ofBessie Ida Slonimsky Jellin and father of Jerome Kalman Jellin who in 1889 cameto the United States with his parents where he was “a road and bridgecontractor” before serving as Street Commissioner and Tax Assessor in NewBrunswick, NJ passed away today.
1947: TheBritish intercepted a three-masted Italian schooner today off the shore ofPalestine containing 1,457 Jews who were trying to enter the country. The Jews, most of whom were Polish, Russianor Hungarian, had been on the ship for over two weeks. They had named the vessel Mordei Hagetaoth(Ghetto Fighters) and placed a sign on the deck, written in English proclaiming“From the ruins of the ghetto to our own country – our only refuge – Open thegates.
1947: It wasreported today the “Zwi Brik, the former director of the Palestine Office inLithuania” “the first Jewish refugee to be given a visa for Cyprus” “where morethan 13,000 visaless Jews are confined” has set sail from Naples bound for theBritish controlled Island.
1948(14thof Iyar, 5708): Pesach Sheni
1948: ThomasC. Wasson, the Consul General for the United States in Jerusalem, died todayafter having been shot in an alley “by a .30 caliber rifle.”
1948: Today“New York Times reported that Thomas Wasson "on his death bed stated thatArabs had shot him," but two weeks later retracted this statement.’
1948:Independent producer Harry Popkin disclosed he had “purchased two new storiesfor his program of ten pictures for United Artists”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/05/24/86901739.html?pageNumber=23
1948: The onlyadvance of the Arab Legion beyond the Old City walls into "JewishJerusalem" was halted in front of Notre Dame. The commander of the ArabLegion, Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), considered that battle to be theworst defeat suffered by the legion throughout the war.
1948: Israeliforces take control of Ramat Rahel
1948(14thof Iyar, 5708): Rabbi Yitzchak Avigdor Orenstein, the Western Wall’s firstrabbi and his wife were killed today during the shelling of Jerusalem by theJordanian forces trying to seize the entire city for its King.
1948(14thof Iyar, 5708): “An Air Transport Command C-46 Curtiss Commando aircraft whichflew from Czechoslovakia to Israel with the fuselage and engine of the firstS-199 to be assembled in Israel, crashed as a result of heavy fog which coveredTel Nof and Sde Dov airfields. The navigator Moshe (Moses Aaron) Rosenbaum waskilled. Ed Styrack the radio operator was badly injured, and both the aircraftand its cargo were destroyed.”
1948: Thesettlement of Allonei Abba was established by Holocaust survivors fromCzechoslovakia, Romania and Germany. Even as the war with the Arabs was heatingup, Jewish settlements were being started.When you consider the conditions in Israel at the time, this hast tomake the Jews “the eternal optimists” in the truest sense of the term. The name of the settlement came from twoHebrew words. Allonei is a form of theHebrew word Allon, meaning Oak which served as a reminder of the Tabor Oaksthat grew nearby. Abba was the firstname of Abba Berdichev. Berdichev hadparachuted into Czechoslovakia in 1943 with orders to assist Britishclandestine forces and aid Jews trapped in Hitler’s death trap. Like so many of the others sent on suchmissions, Abba Berdichev was captured and killed.
1948: Egyptianforces began its attack on the Jewish settlement of Negba with an artillerybarrage. The Egyptian force consisted of 2,000 well-armed troops as well assupport from the Egyptians Air Force.The Jewish force at Negba consisted of 70 soldiers from the Haganah and75 members of the settlement. Theylacked artillery, air cover and pretty much anything else that a modern mightneed. Negba had to be held to keep theEgyptians from reaching Tel Aviv. Thefight would last for nine days.
1949: TheFederal Republic of Germany (also known as West Germany) is established. There was a great deal of apprehension amongJews around the world to see an independent German nation rise four years afterHitler’s defeat. During the 1950’s WestGermany would pay reparations to the Jews and the state of Israel. Additionally, Germany would provide militaryand economic support to the Jewish state despite pressure from a wide array ofArab states.
1949: In theUK, release date for “The Perfect Woman,” featuring David Hurst in his firstfilm role as “Wolfgang Winkel.
1950(7thof Sivan, 5710): Second Day of Shavuot
1950(7thof Sivan, 5710: Six-eight-year-old author and journalist Joseph Gollomb, the Columbia graduate and St. Petersburg bornson of Julius and Rachel Gollomb who was the uncle of actress Judy Holidaysuffered a fatal heart attack today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/05/24/132818552.html?pageNumber=29
1951:Twenty-year-oldHyman “Hy’ Cohen who would make to the Majors for seven games in 1955, pitcheda shutout while playing for the Des Moines (IA) Cubs.
1952:Birthdate of Tehran native and B.A. Pace University graduate Fred Ohebshalomwho in 1964 where he became a real estate mogul and philanthropist sitting onthe boards of the Iranian American Jewish Committee and of the Bet HadassahIranian Jewish Center while raising four children, two of whom work in theirfather’s real estate empire, with his wife Yovonee.
1954:“Patriot and President” published today provided a review of John Adams:Independence Forever illustrated by Jacob Landau.
1958:Birthdate of Mitch Albom
1960(26thof Iyar): Rabbi Joshua Chaim Kasovsky, editor of “Mishnah Concordance” passedaway.
1960: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion announces inthe Knesset that Adolf Eichmann, an Nazi SS officer, was abducted from BuenosAires, Argentina, by Israeli agents and flown to Israel to stand trial forcrimes against the Jewish people.
1960: In anarticle published in Life magazine,cartoonist Al Capp wrote "The secret of how to live without resentment orembarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else was to beindifferent to that difference.
1964: Theformer Betsy Eichler and Arthur Milliman gave birth to Judith Jay Millman whois named in honor of maternal grandmother Julian Jay Eichler.
1965: In NewYork, filmmaker Hava Kohav Beller gave birth to author and editor ThomasBeller.
http://www.therestlessconscience.com/interview.html
1966(4thof Sivan, 5726): Seventy-five-year-old Lazarus Joseph the NYU basketballplayer, New York State Senator, New York City comptroller and active championfor the “rehabilitation of Jewish survivors of Nazism” whose son Jacob, a U.S.Marine died during the Battle of Guadalcanal, passed away today.
1966(4thof Sivan, 5726: Eighty-three-year-old, patron of the arts Minnie Guggenheimerthe New York born daughter Samuel Shafer, “a member of Shafer Brothers, abanking firm that was founded in 1860 and granddaughter of man who made a fortune in theCalifornia gold rush which made it possible to set up his sons in business andthe wife of attorney Charles S. Guggenheimer whom she married in 1903 and whosefather was at one time the president of the N.Y.C. Board of Alderman and actingmayor.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/minnie-guggenheimer
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/05/24/82441700.html?pageNumber=1
1967: Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran andblockades the port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israelishipping, laying the foundations for the Six Day War. A blockade like this is an act of war underinternational law. In addition to which,it was a violation of the U.N. agreements that had ended the Suez Crisis in1956-57. After the Six Day War, therewas a lot of nit-picking about whose planes attacked first i.e. who fired thefirst shot. The fact of the matter isthat this blockade was an act of war and anything the Israelis did afterwardswas an act of self-defense.
1968:Birthdate of Los Angeles native Laura Allison Wasser, the Loyola Law Schooltrained attorney who is called by some the “Queen of Divorce Lawyers.”
https://www.kveller.com/jewish-divorce-lawyer-laura-wasser-is-the-queen-of-celeb-splits/
https://forward.com/schmooze/350455/8-things-about-angelina-jolies-a-list-jewish-divorce-lawyer/
1968(25thof Iyar, 5728): Eighty-two-year-old Morris Haft, the Russian born son of Jennieand Max H. Haft and “a major figure in the garment industry” whose ladies coatand suit company, “Morris W. Haft and Bros. was known for many years on SeventhAvenue as ‘the General Motors’ of the industry because of its size” and who wasactive in New York politics, a major art collector and such a supporter ofIsrael that the city of Herzliya named a street in his honor passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/24/77102682.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1969(6th ofSivan, 5729): Shavuot is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency ofRichard M. Nixon.
1969: AsIsraelis were celebrating Shavuot, Israeli security forces arrested numerousterrorists as they foiled attacks in on both sides of what had been the GreenLine.
1970:Birthdate of Yigal Amir, the coward who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
1971(28thof Iyar, 5731): Yom Yerushalayim
1971(28thof Iyar, 5731): Sarah Alpert Kolko, the daughter of Isaac S. Alpert and thewife of Nathan Kolko passed away today after she was buried at the Britton RoadCemetery in Monroe County, NY.
1972: ThomasPaul Malone began serving as Canadian Ambassador to Israel.
1973: Funeralservices are scheduled to be held this morning for 89-year-old NYU law schooltrained attorney and former senior officer of the C. I. T. FinancialCorporation Edwin C. Vogel the law partner of his brother Martin Vogel, atrustee of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.
1976: Twenty-year-oldAmy Alcott won the LPGA Classic in Jamesburg, NY.
1977(6th ofSivan, 5737): First Day of Shavuot
1977(6thof Sivan, 5737): Eighty-year-old former major leaguer Sam Bohne, the SanFrancisco born son of Louis Coen who named his Samuel Arthur Cohen who playedsecond from 1916 to 1926 for the Cardinals, Reds and Brooklyn Robins passedaway today.
1978: TheJerusalem Post reported that the Army Ombudsman, Rav-Aluf (Res.) HaimLaskov, complained that the cruel harassment of recruits by theirnon-commissioned officers and officers was still a recurrent phenomenon inIsrael Defense Forces.
1979(26thof Iyar, 5739): Three people were killed and thirteen more were injured when abomb was detonated at a bus stop in Petach Tikva.
1979: JosephBrodsky Russian born Jewish poet and essayist who would go on to win the NobelPrize in Literature in 1987 and would be chosen Poet Laureate of the UnitedStates (1991-1992) was inducted as a member of the American Academy andInstitute of Arts and Letters.
1980: “DieLaughing,” a comedy co-produced, co-written and co-starring Robby Benson wasreleased today in the United States.
1981(19th ofIyar, 5741): Entertainer George Jessel passed away.
1981(19th ofIyar, 5741): Russian-born Canadian lawyer and political leader David Lewispassed away. His son is an official with the UN dealing with AIDS in Africa andhis grandson Avi Lewis is a broadcast journalist.
1981: Syriaclaimed that it had shot two Israeli drones while Israel admitted the loss ofonly one pilotless plane. The aircraftwhich were flying a recon mission over eastern Lebanon fell victim to Syrianmissile batteries stationed in the Syrian occupied portion of that country.
1981: U.S.Presidential envoy Philip Habib arrived in Beirut on a mission designed to keepthe situation on the Syrian-Lebanon –Israel border from exploding into war.
1981: RabbiRonald B. Sobel, senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El officiated at the wedding ofSheryl E. Israel and Barry J. Spiegel. The bride’s father is Kenneth M. Israel,president of Cinema Shares International Television Ltd., and chairman andchief executive officer of the Excel Video International Corporation,
1982(1st ofSivan, 5742): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1982: The NewYork Times featured a review of Bronx Primitive: Portraits in aChildhood by Kate Simon who “grew up Jewish in the Tremont Avenue sectionof the Bronx, having been brought there by her young immigrant parents directfrom the Warsaw Ghetto, with only a brief stopover on the Lower East Side.”
1982:At Cannes, premiere of “Pink Floyd – The Wall” starring Bob Geldoff, thegrandson of “Amelia Falk, an English Jew from London and with music by BobEzrin and Michael Kamen
1983:“One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin completed its 8thseason.
1984:At the Cannes Film Festival, premiere of “Once Upon a Time in America” thecrime film based on The Hoods the novel by Harry Grey (born Herschel Goldberg)the tells the tale of Jewish boys from the Lower East Side who grow up to bebig time hoods.
1985:Ronald Reagan awarded Sydney Hook the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1987:As part of the IPO’s 50th anniversary celebration, James Levineconducts the orchestra for a second time.
1988(7thof Sivan, 5748): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor
1988(7thof Sivan, 5748): Seventy-three-year-old former French speaking CBS Pariscorrespondent David Schoenbrun, one of “Murrow’s Boys” who brought us the newsin the golden age of foreign reporting passed away today.
1989(18thof Iyar, 5749): Lag B’omer celebrated for the first time during the Presidencyof George Bush.
1990(28thof Iyar, 5750): Yom Yerushalayim
1990:Today “Eusébio da Silva Ferreira — considered by many to be one of the greatestsoccer players of all time — took a short trip to the Jewish section ofVienna’s central cemetery to pray by the grave of the late Béla Guttmann, aHungarian Jew and soccer legend, buried there in 1981.” (As reported by JPO’Malley)
1993:In “Remembering Irving Howe” published today Leon Wieseltier examined the lifeof his co-religionist and author known to many for his seminal work World ofOur Fathers was published today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/23/books/remembering-irving-howe-1920-1993.html
1994:In “Richard Avedon” published today, Paula Chin examined the career of thefamous photographer who "as the only son of Jacob Israel Avedon, aRussian-Jewish immigrant who started a successful retail dress business onFifth Avenue.”
https://people.com/archive/richard-avedon-vol-41-no-19/
1995(23rdof Iyar, 5755): Rabbi Yehuda N. Mandelbaum of the Torah Institute of Baltimorepassed away today.
1995:ABC broadcast the final episode of “Full House” a sitcom starring Bob Sage
1996(5thof Sivan, 5756): Erev Shavuot
1999:“Michael Landon, the Father I Knew,” a biopic written and directed by MichaelLandon, Jr. the son of the actor best known as the father on “Little House onthe Prairie” was broadcast for the first time on CBS.
1999:The Chicago Jewish Historical Society is scheduled host “Preserve Your Familyand Community History” an Oral History Workshop at the Spertus Institute.
1999(8thof Sivan, 5759): Eighty-eight-year-old “Edith Lewin, who with her husband,Bernard, amassed the largest privately owned collection of Mexican modernistart and then gave it away” passed away today.
1999:The New York Times featured reviewsof books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readersincluding Another Life: A Memoirof Other People by Michael Korda.
2000(18thof Iyar, 5760): Lag B’Omer
2000:“Proof” the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning drama starring Ben Shenkmanas “Ben” premiered off-Broadway today.
2001(1stof Sivan, 5761): Rosh Chodesh
2001(1stof Sivan, 5761): “Asher Iluz, 33, of Modi'in was killed outside Ariel en routeto supervise a road paving in the area, when Palestinian gunmen opened fire inan ambush.” (Jewish Virtual Library)
2001:Broadcast of the final show of series three of “Felicity” created by J.J.Abrams, starring Greg Grunberg as ‘Sean Blumberg.”
2002:Prime Minister Ariel Sharon replaced Eli Yishai as Minister of InternalAffairs.
2002:David Azulai completed his services as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
2002:An Hamas detonated bomb at the Pi Glilot gas depot north of Tel Aviv failed toset off a catastrophic explosion.
2003:After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, “Manic” starring JosephGordon-Levitt was released today in the United States.
2004:The New York Times featured reviewsof books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readersincluding ''Still Life With Bombers: Israel in the Age of Terrorism'' by DavidHorovitz and ''How Israel Lost: The Four Questions” by Richard Ben Cramer.
2004:“Regarding the Torture of Others” by Susan Sontag was published today in the New York Times Magazine.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/23/2004/susan-sontag
2004(3rdof Sivan, 5764): Eighty-nine year old historian, sociologist and orientalistMaxime Rodinson, whose parents were murdered at Auschwitz, passed away today.
2005: Today,“President George W. Bush nominated Rod Rosenstein to serve as United StatesAttorney for the United States District Court for the District of Maryland
2006: “InIsrael, New Reflections on Holocaust” published today, The New York Times reported on evolving Jewish methods ofremembering the Shoah. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/world/middleeast/23holocaust.html?_r=0
2006: Releasedate of “Blue Alert,” an album co-written by Leonard Cohen.
2007(6th ofSivan, 5767): First Day of Shavuot.
2007: The twoday Tel Aviv Poetry Festival comes to an end.
2007: AmyBarrett and novelist Jonathan Lethem whose mother was Jewish gave birth toEverett Barrett Latham.
2007: Todaytennis player Jesse Levine “lost his first college match in the quarter-finalsin the NCAA Men’s Singles.”
2008: NormanFinkelstein was denied entry to Israel today “because, according to unnamedIsraeli security officials, of suspicions that ‘he had contact with elements'hostile' to Israel" including’ a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon.”Finkelstein “visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the2006 Lebanon War.” While ther he said: “Hizbullah represents the hope. They arefighting to defend their homeland, they are fighting to defend the independenceof their country, they are defending themselves against foreign marauders,vandals and murderers and I consider it to be genuinely to be an honor to be intheir presence.”
2008(18th ofIyar, 5768): Lag B’Omer.
2008: BradleeBirchansky leads Friday Night Services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa aspart of his Bar Mitzvah weekend.
2008: In Plymouth (UK), police detained two men linked tothe bombing of a Giraffe’s restaurant that had taken police yesterday.According to authorities, 22-year-old Nicky Reilly, a recent convert to Islamwho police said had a history of mental illness, was wounded when a bomb wentoff in the Giraffe restaurant at a shopping center in Exeter, Devon. Giraffe, which has 25 restaurants around the UK, isowned by Jewish partners.
2008:“Synechdoche, New York,” directed, written and co-produced by Charlie Kaufmanpremiered today at Cannes.
2008: In astory entitled “Public allowed rare chance to view Dead Scrolls,” The Columbia Dispatch reports on thepublic display of the 2,100 year old 24 foot scroll with the text of thebible’s book of Isaiah at the Israel Museum. Israel put the Dead Sea scrollcontaining the Book of Isaiah on display for the first time since 1967. Thecalfskin parchment was locked away because of deterioration. It will beavailable to the public for three months as part of the 60th anniversary of thefounding of the Jewish state.
2009(29th ofIyar, 5769): On Shabbat, start reading the Bamidbar, Book of Numbers.
2009: Day 2 of“Conference 2009” hosted by the Philadelphia Kehilla For Jews at AracadiaUniversity in Glenside, PA.
2009: A24-year-old man was diagnosed with the swine flu on today, becoming the eighthperson in the Jewish State to come down with the virus. He had recentlyreturned from the United States and was presumed to have contracted the illnessthere. A second man had also been hospitalized due to concerns that he may havethe virus as well.
2009: FranklinH. Littell, a father of Holocaust studies who traced his engagement with thesubject to the revulsion he felt as a young Methodist minister while witnessinga big Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1939, died today at his home in MerionStation, Pa., outside Philadelphia today at the age of 91. Dr. Littell alsobecame an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, in part because he believed thatit* very existence refuted theologies that foresaw or favored the witheringaway of the Jewish people. He rejected the theology of some Christian backersof Israel that Jews must ultimately become Christian…” (NYT)
2010: “DancingAlfonso” and “Ida’s Dance Club” are scheduled to be shown at the Israeli FilmNight sponsored by Magen David Sephardic Congregation in Rockville, MD.
2010(10thof Sivan, 5770): Irwin Rosten, an award-winning documentary filmmakerperhaps best known for "The Incredible Machine," which took PBSviewers on a revolutionary voyage inside the human body in 1975, passed awaytoday at the age of 85.,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/arts/04rosten.html
2010(10thof Sivan, 5770): David Ginsburg, a liberal lawyer and longtime Washingtoninsider who helped found the Americans for Democratic Action and led thepresidential commission on race relations whose report, in 1968, warned thatthe United States was “moving toward two societies — one black, one white,separate and unequal,” died today at his home in Alexandria, VA at the age of98 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/25ginsburg.html
2010: Despitegray skies that threatened rain, tens of thousands of people turned out for amassive celebration of Israel today, at the annual Salute to Israel Parade onManhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
2011: The Ellis Island Old World Folk Band is scheduled toperform at the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living in Danville, CA
2011: Phyllis Newman, who was married to Adolph Green for overfour decades is scheduled to take part in program entitled “Carried Away: BeingComden and Green” that highlights the work of the team of Adloph Green andBetty Comden that created such hits as “On the Town,” “ Wonderful Town,” “Bells are Ringing” and “Singin' in the Rain.”
2011: For the first time HBO broadcast “To Big to Fail,”a cinematic treatment of “Andrew Ross Sorkin's non-fiction book Too Big toFail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save theFinancial System—and Themselves”, co-starring Edward Asner and featuringEvan Handler.
2011: El Al flight 027 carrying 279 passengers landed safely atBen Gurion Airport this morning after it was forced to make an emergencylanding when a technical fault was found in one of its left wheels. The planetook off en route to New York late last night but was forced to turn back andperform an emergency landing when the pilots noticed that one of the leftwheels had become jammed.
2012: Dr. Leo Hershkowitz, Adjunct Professor of Historyat New York University and CUNY Queens College (ret.) is scheduled to deliver alecture about the early history of Jews in New York City at the NYC Departmentof Small Business Services
2012: In London, The Wiener Library is scheduled to hosta screening of “SS-3: The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich,” a film about theBritish inspired plan to kill the ruthless ruler of Bohemia, person favorite ofHitler and a key planner of the Final Solution
2012: Film critic Aviva Kempner who was the founder ofthe Washington DC Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to deliver a lecture on adocumentary film on which she is working that traces the life of JulesRosenwald, the man who led Sears, Robebuck & Co during its glory days andwas one of the nation’s leading philanthropists.
2012: Filming began for “Iron Man 3” a film based oncharacters created by Stan Lee and co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
2012: Nancy Margulies, the daughter of Joan Thaler – thedoyen of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community- is scheduled to perform herone-woman show “Deaf Poets Society” at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her most recent book, a spook entitledKlassic Koalas: The Koala Museum of Modern Art Catalogue is on sale at theCedar Rapids Museum of Art.
2013: Nineteen-year-old Corporal Roi Alphi was killedwhen a landmine exploded in the Golan Heights laid to rest tonightinthe military section of the cemetery of his hometown, Gan Yavne.
2013: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduledto present 'Jews, You Should Fight to the Bitter End:' Bogoraz's LiteraryResponse to the Gomel' Pogrom
2013: The Israel Festival, an annual showing drama,theatre, dance and music is scheduled to open in Jerusalem.
2013(14th of Sivan, 5773): Seventy-nine-year-oldsinger/songwriter Giuseppe Mustacchi the son of Sephardic Jews from Corfu,passed away today
2013: A sketched map of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’sland-for-peace offer to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008 —hurriedly drawn up by Abbas after a meeting with Olmert that December, and madepublic for the first time today — suggests that Israel was prepared to withdrawto borders very similar to the pre-1967 lines and swap areas of northern andsouthern Israel in return for maintaining the larger settlement blocs.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hand-drawn-map-shows-what-olmert-offered-for-peace/
2013: The Louvre Museum in Paris opened its first-everIsraeli exhibit today, displaying a 1,700-year-old mosaic floor that wasrecovered from a garbage dump near Lod in central Israel.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/from-lod-to-the-louvre/
2014: “Jewtopia” is scheduled to be shown at noon-time inMason, Ohio, as part of Jewish American Heritage Month.
2014: “Donald Sterling has agreed to surrender his stakein the Los Angeles Clippers to his estranged wife, and she is moving ahead withselling the team, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told TheAssociated Press today.
2014: A revised version of Assi Dayan’s “The 92 Minutes ofMr. Baum” is scheduled to open today in the United States.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-remake-heads-to-hollywood/
2014: On the final morning of the 4thInternational Writers’ Festival, Etgar Keret and musician Shlomi Saban arescheduled to sing, read and chat in a one-off event. (As reported by JessicaSteinberg)
2014: “With the words of the Kaddish and a sprinkle ofearth over his remains, Avner Less, the Israeli official who interrogated AdolfEichmann was reburied today in Berlin’s Wannsee neighborhood, not far from thehouse where the senior Nazi who helped organize the Holocaust outlined hisgenocidal plans in 1942.” (As reported by David Rising)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/eichmanns-interrogator-reburied-in-germany/
2015: Parsha Bamidbar
2015(5th of Sivan, 5775): In the evening, Erev Shavuot
2015: The JCC Manhattan is scheduled to host “The PaulFieg Tikkun Leil Shavuot.”
2015: Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thankedPresident Barak Obama for blocking a UN moved at forcing Israel to come cleanon its nuclear capabilities en route to a Middle East zone free of nuclearweapons.” (As reported by Times of Israel)
2015: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is scheduled tocelebrate Shavuot and the Confirmation of Jessica Heeren, Ben Sarasin andGabrielle Thalblum
2015: According to an article published today in Raial-Youm, “a London-based Arab newspaper,” “Saudi Arabia recently rejected anIsraeli offer to provide it with Iron Dome rocket defense technology.”
2016: Professor Todd Endelman of the University ofMichigan is scheduled to speak on “The Emotional Toll of Antisemitism and itsConsequences” at Birbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury.
2016: In Des Moines, IA, Congregation Beth El Jacob isscheduled to offer “Chevra Kadisha Training.”
2017: According to information supplied “by Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu’s office,” President Trump is scheduled to “arrive at YadVashem at 1 p.m.” and to begin his speech at the Israel Museum at 2:00 p.m.
2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled tohost “a delicious 3 course meal and a group discussion.”
2017: At sundown events marking a Jerusalem Day that isspecial because it marks the 50th anniversary of the reunificationof the Jew are scheduled to begin.
2017: The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre is scheduled tohost a screening “The History of Love.”
2017: ELI Talks, “a nonprofit organization devoted tonurturing and transmitting inspired Jewish ideas is scheduled to host anevening Beth Huppin, a Jewish Education from Seattle, Macy B. Hart, Presidentand Founder, Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL) andSam Novy a “social entrepreneur” from Baltimore, MD.
2018: In Lyndurst, Ohio, Oheb Zedek-Cedar Sinai Synagogueis scheduled to host a screening of “Big Sonia.”
2018: A “Drop-In Tour” of Temple Tifereth Israel Galleryat the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to take place thisafternoon.
2018: A photographic exhibition “Elderly Jews andHolocaust Survivors in Dimona” is scheduled to come to an end today at theStreicker Center.
2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduledto a book launch of Hasidism: A New History by David Biale and Samuel Heilman
2018: “The Labor of Life” by Hanoch Levin is scheduled toopen to a sold-out house at the 14th Street Y
2019: In Alberta, Canada, the Edmonton Jewish FilmFestival is scheduled to host a screening of “Tel Aviv on Fire.”
2019: The Center for Jewish History and the AmericanJewish Historical Society are scheduled to host “A Dad’s Mission AfterParkland” in ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Guttman talks to FredGuttenberg whose “14 year old daughter Jamie was one of 17 people killed by agunman at Marjory Stoneman Dough High School” about his crusade “for strictergun control and public safety laws.”
2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final twoscreenings ‘The Testament.”
2019: As part of the “Music of Remembrance” program, theSan Francisco Conservatory is scheduled to host the world premiere of “TheParting” and “chamber works by three Hungarian Jewish composers whose liveswere cut short by Nazi persecution.”
2019: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, theNational Archives is scheduled to host an evening author Dr. Pamela Nadella shetalks a variety of American Jewish women including “Justice Ruth BaderGinsburg, Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, poet Emma Lazarus, labor organizerBessie Hillman, and convicted spy Ethel Rosenberg.”
2019(18th of Iyar, 5779): Lag B’Omer
2019(18th of Iyar, 5779): The former EdithGraff, the mother of “Iris Morse and Ellen Graff” and the wife of ColumbiaUniversity Historian Henry F. Graff whose translation of intercepted messagesprovided key information for the Allies before D-Day and the imminent surrenderof Japan after the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.
2020(29th of Iyar, 5779): Parashat Bamidbar.For more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2020: On line, Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled topresent “Clergy Havdalah, co*cktails and Mocktails”
2020 Rodef Sholom@Home is scheduledto fill Shabbat with the look and feel of the real thing with Torah Study,followed by Shabbat Services and a Havdalah experience designed to “enrichour souls and lift us as we begin a new week.”
2020: Aliya Institute in CrownHeights which had shut down voluntarily on March 10 and which held a dailyminyan yesterday is scheduled to have services this morning.
2021: Writer-filmmaker RebeccaPierce is scheduled to talk “about how racism and antisemitism are linked, howthe system pits minorities against one another and other related issues.”
2021: Kerem Shalom of Concord isscheduled to present online, “Shtetl to Ellis: The Untold Story”
2021: The Jewish Heritage Museumof Monmouth Count (NJ) is scheduled to present via Zoom, Rabbi Michael Kleinlecturing on “Famous Jews You Never Heard of” including Shabbetai Tzvi and AdaYonath.
2021: 2LIFE COMMUNITIES isscheduled to present online “L’Chaim, 2Life: Enjoy “Fiddler on the Roof” inYiddish.”
2021: The New York Timesreviews books by Jewish authors or of special interest to Jewish readersincluding Love Like Water, Love Like Fire by Mikhail Iossel and AnApprenticeship Or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector
2021: Author Anna Solomon isscheduled to talk about her novel, TheBook of V, which retells the Book of Esther via three characters’ stories in differenttime periods that overlap
2021: The Contemporary JewishMuseum series “Sunday Stories” is scheduled to travel back to the first half ofthe 20th century, when Old Country Jewish immigrants raised chickens in aprogressive community at Petaluma.
2021: Jews around the world bracefor more anti-Semitic attacks as groups as varied as thugs in NYC engage inanti-Semitic violence and an official of the Pakistan government talks about aJewish cabal controlling the media, a classic anti-Semitic trope.
2021: The Jewish Federation ofthe Corridor is scheduled to present via Zoom “an introduction to Genealogy.”
2021: Live from Jerusalem, Torahscholar Avivah Zornberg is scheduled “to delve into her 2016 book Moses AHuman Life which analyzes Moses’ vexing personality, uncertain origins,struggles with speaking and turbulent relations with his own people.
2022: the 34th annualWilliam and Irene Weinberg Baltimore Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to hostthe initial screenings of “The Conductor” and “A Radiant Girl.”
2022: Based on an announcementmade last week by Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, the mandate obligingtravelers to wear a mask on international flights will not be extended bytoday.
2023: YIVO is scheduled, live andvia Zoom, a lecture by Roy Ginsberg on “POETICS OF ARRIVAL OR RETURN?: LAYINGTHE PATH TOWARD INDUSTRIAL UTOPIA IN PERETZ MARKISH’S, 'DER FERTSIKYERIKER MAN'.”
2023:The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the final session of Naomi MillerBeginners’ Yiddish: Shopping, Cooking Inviting and Easting for the JewishHolidays.”
2023: The JDC Archives isscheduled present a webinar “Yiddishkeit and JDC’s support for Jewish Educationin Communist Poland,” featuring Dr. Anna Sommer Schneider which will be the fifth program in the JDC series “YoungLives in Turmoil and Transformation: JDC’s Work with Children in the TwentiethCentury.”
2023: The Center for JewishHistory is scheduled to present Marian B. Wood, the experienced speaker, blogger, and author ongenealogical methods, who will teach teach workshop attendees how to organize and store their genealogicalmaterials, curate their collection, write a "genealogical will," andshare their family history.
2023: Having agreed “to boost funding for ultra-Orthodoxyeshiva students and their families by up to NIS 250” Prime Minister Netanyahuis scheduled to figure out a way of meeting the Otzma Yehudit’s demands for“more funder for tis priorities” in hisquest to gain the necessary votes to pass his budget.
2024: Tickets are available atANU (Museum of the Jewish People) for those wishing to view “The Codex Sassoon”– the earliest, most complete edition of the TaNaCh.
2024: As part of Jewish AmericanHeritage Month, the National Museum of America Jewish History is scheduled tohost “Antisemitism, USA: A Conversation with Zev Eleff, Kristen Fermaglich,Sarah Ihoff, Lincoln Mullen, Mark Oppenheimer, Britt Tevis and John Turner.”
2024:As May 23rd begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitismsweeps the United States and the Hamas held hostagesbegin day 230 in captivity.(Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so weare just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time.)
