#ourCOG This Day, March 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
This Day, March 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
March 20
43BCE: Birthdate of the Roman poet, Ovid. In “The Art of Love,
Part One” Ovid wrote “And do not miss the festival of Adonis, mourned of
Venus, and the rites celebrated every seventh day by the Syrian Jews.” Apparently,
Ovid knew about Jewish customs and, at least when it came to love, thought well
of them (the Jews and the customs)
1191: The papacy of Clement III “who reissued the bull Sicut Judaeis, protecting the Jews at the time of the Third
Crusade” came to an end today.
1488(28th of Adar, 5248): Celebration of the first “Cairo Purim”
1602: The Dutch East India Company is established. “By the middle of the
seventeenth century, Jewish diamond merchants helped finance the Dutch East
India Company, which organized its own trade route to India. So Amsterdam then
replaced Lisbon as the port of entry in Europe for India’s diamonds.”
1619: Sixty-two year old Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor who as Archduke had
acceded to the wishes of the Dutch and “established religious peace” in their
provinces which helped to turn the Netherlands into a place of refuge for the
Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal, passed away today.
1693: Talmudist Gerhson Ashkenazi, whose many followers including David
Oppenheimer passed away today in Metz.
1705: In Great Britain, Hambro Synagogue founded (there are other claims that
this now defunct synagogue was found variously in 1702 or 1707)
1725: Birthdate of Abdul Hamid I,
the Ottoman Sultan who employed two Jews from Salonica, Doctor Joseph and
Doctor Cohen.
1764(16th Adar II,
5524): Salomon Nathan Maas, the husband of Hewle Meise and the father of Nathan
and Salomon Maas passed away today and was buried in Frankfurt am Main.
1768: In Whitechapel, London,
Abraham Lumbroso de Mattos and Esther Isaac Lumbroso de Mattos Mocatta gave
birth to Moses de Mattos Mocatta, the husband of Abigail Mocatta and a
co-founder of the West London Synagogue.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mocatta
1772(15th of Adar II,
5532): Shushan Purim
1773: Dutch natives Zipporah da
Veiga Mendes Penha and Samuel Van Isaac Lopes Salzedo gave birth to Jacob Van
Samuel Lopes Salzedo, the husband of Ester Spinossa Catteel with whom he had three children.
1780: In Wilton, CT, Rachel Mears
and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Esther Isaacks the wife of Isaac Moses.
1785: Reyna Levy and Isaac Moses
who were married in 1770 gave birth to Israel Moses.
1790: In Virginia, Esther Marache
and Joseph Mordecai who were married in 1786, gave birth to Solomon Joseph
Mordecai the husband of Isabella Jane Kincaid whom he married in 1817 at
Franklin, MO.
1791(14th of Adar
II 551): Purim
1791: In Aldingen, Germany, Elkele Kahn and Samuel Isaac Wormser gave birth to
Zerla Wormser, the wife of Salomon Pappenheimer with whom she had six children.
1792: Prague native Israel De
Lieben signed a patent for Abraham Jacobs at Savannah, GA
1793” Richea Har and Abraham
Mendes Seixas who were married in 1777 at Charleston, SC, gave birth to Moses
Mendes Seixas.
1799(13th of Adar II, 5559):
Ta’anit Esther
1799: French forces under the
command of Napoleon began the siege of Acre. This was part of Napoleon’s
campaign that stretched from Egypt through Palestine. Napoleon’s campaign in
the eastern Mediterranean marked the start of serious Western involvement in
the land that would eventually become the modern state of Israel.
1800: Birthdate of Gottfried Bernhardy, who was “professor and director the
philological seminary at Halle.
1800: Birthdate of SingSing, NY
native Anna Marks, who was an active member of the Philadelphia Jewish
community.
1804: In Philadelphia, PA, Issac and
Rachel Cohen Lyons gave birth to their only daughter, Isabel Rebecca Lyons
Mordecai, the wife of “future state senator Moses Cohen Mordecai, the “son of
David Cohen Mordecai and Reinah Abrahams Cohen and grandson of Mordecai Moses
Mordecai and Zipporah De Lyon” whom she married in 1828 and with whom she had
eight children: Isabel, Hortensia, Rosa Hays, David Henry, Isaac John Randolph,
Ellen Loria, Rachel Minnie, and Isabel.
1806(1st of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph Harif of Zamosc, author of Mishnat Hakhamim
passed away today
1810(14th of Adar II, 5570): Purim
1812: Birthdate of Danzig native
Charles S.J. Semon, the Bradford, England, textile merchant and the “first
foreign born” and Jewish Mayor of Bradford who was the husband Agnes Semon.
http://bradfordjewish.org.uk/charles-semon-1814-1877/
1815: After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of
140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred
Days” rule. In a 1930’s movie about the Rothschilds, Nathan Rothschild
agrees to pledge his entire fortune to defeat Napoleon. In exchange for his
generosity, he demands that the Austrians and Prussian remove their
restrictions against the Jews. “There is a legend told that on the day of the
Battle of Waterloo, Nathan Mayer Rothschild came to the floor of the London
Stock Exchange, leaned against a pillar, and started selling. It was well known
that the Rothschilds had their own independent sources of information and
intelligence, and nobody knew the results of the battle, so when he began to
sell, everyone thought that England had lost, and they began selling, too. That
forced a panic in the market. As much as 15%-20% of the value of the stocks
fell in about three hours. And after they had fallen so low, Rothschild turned
around and began buying. It is said that he knew all along that the Duke of
Wellington had defeated Napoleon and that the British market would go up. And
when the official news came the next day that the British had won, the market
went up 1000 points, making Rothschild even wealthier. It is reputed that on
that coup alone, a substantial amount of the Rothschild fortune was made.”
1816: Miriam Marks, a native of
Sing Sing, NY and the daughter of Michael Marks married her first husband Jonas
Barnett today.
1816: Montague Marks married Hannah
Moses at the Great Synagogue.
1825(1st of Nisan, 5585): Rosh Chodesh Nisan
1826: Jacob Tenachem ben Yedediah Shmuel married Beila bat Asher at the Hambro
Synagogue today.
1833(29th of Adar, 5593): Fifty-four year old Myer Moses II, the
Charleston, SC born son of Myer and Rachel Moses and the husband of Esther
Moses with whom he had five children – Franklin, Jr, Rebecca, Montgomery,
Rachel and Hortensia – passed away today in New York City.
https://chrysler.org/historic-houses/the-moses-myers-house/
1835(19th of Adar,
5595): Attorney Lyon Levy, the Woolwich, England native South Carlina state
treasurer who was married twice – first to Leah Joseph and then to Sarah N.
Cardoza – and who was the father of Abraham, Elias, Leah, David, Frances,
Olivia, Phillpa and S.L. Levy passed away today in Charleston he was buried at
the Coming Street Cemetery in Charleston, SC.
1836: Birthdate of Sir Edward
John Poynter, the English painter who drew on the Bible as topics for his works
as can be seen by his paintings “King Solomon,” King Solomon’s Temple,”
“The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” and “Israel in Egypt.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1867_Edward_Poynter_-_Israel_in_Egypt.jpg
1837(13th of Adar II, 5597): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim
1837: “Mr. Isaac Abisdid was
appointed Chazan today” but would not please the congregation and he would lose
the job in September of the same year.
1842: In Sulzburg, Hirschel Naphtali Dukas and Helena Hendle Dukas gave birth
to Barcuh Berthold Dukas the husband of Sara Dukas
1848(15th of Adar II, 5608): Shushan Purim
1848(15th of Adar II, 5608): Twenty Jews were killed in riots and street
fighting that took place in Berlin. Anti-Jewish riots also spread to Bavaria,
Baden, Hamburg and many other cities. This marked the start of the Revolution
of 1848 that swept the states of Germany. In the end the liberals would lose,
sparking a large migration of Germans including many German Jews to the United
States. These freedom loving liberals would arrive in the United States just in
time to support the infant Republican Party and provide a major element in the
coalition that saved the Union during the Civil War.
1856(13th of Adar II, 5616): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim
1857: The New York Times reported today that “Jews
are always scrupulously careful about the solemnization of marriages. Two
witnesses, two men of character and unconnected with the parties by
relationship have to sign the marriage document and ten adult males must be
present to participate in the” ceremonies.
1854(20th
of Adar, 5614): Sixty-three year Moses Montefiore Ancona, the London born of
Moses Ancona and the former Hannah Montefiore, who lived in Barbados and Jamaica before
settling in Pennsylvania where he used the first name of Moses, married Mary
Ann Knapp, and practiced medicine passed away today after contracting
pneumonia.
1856(13th of Adar II,
5616): Erev Purim
1859(14th of Adar II, 5619): Purim
1859: In the Czech Republic, Moses
Eschner and Carolina “Lottie” Caroline Eschner gave birth to Julia
Vasen, the wife of Benjamin George Vasen and mother of Freda Julia Vasen;
Maurice Eschner Vasen; George Benjamin Vasen, Sr and Beulah Catherine Vasen.
1860: In Kalvarija,Lithuania,
Chaim and Golda Chaya Bluestone gave birth to NYU trained physician Dr. Joseph
Isaac Bluestone affiliated with Beth Israel Hospital and an American delegate
to the 1903 Zionist Congress in Basel who wrote poetry while raising nine
children with his wife Sara Rachel Bluestone.
https://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=364804
1863: Nathan and Regina Ullman
Stern brought their fourteen year old son Leopold Stern, who would become
“known as the dean of diamond importers in American” and “three time Republican
Presidential elector in New York” to the United States today.
1863:After have transferred to the 120th Volunteer Ohio infantry in
1862 and “promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel, today Marcus M. Speigel “was
officially commissioned as a Colonel” while taking “formal command of the
regiment which would serve under General Grant during the campaign to take
Vicksburg.
1865: Birthdate of Charlottenbrug, Prussia native Hermann Picha, the
German-Jewish actor whose career spanned two decades starting in 1914 and
ending in 1935.
1867(13th of Adar II, 5627):
Erev Purim
1869: In Lithuania Ella Brown and Joseph Feivel Jacobson gave birth Lakewood,
NJ resident Jacob Jacobson the husband of Slata Gordon whom he married in 1891 was
a member of the ZOA and HIAS.
1870: “The Board of Directresses” of “B’nai Jeshurun Ladies’ Hebrew
Benevolent Society,” met today in the 34th Street Synagogue. Mrs. Leo
Henry, the President and one of the founders of the society, “presented a
report calling attention to the number of destitute aged and infirm Hebrews in
the city, who were constantly making application for relief which the society
was unable to confer; also urging the ladies to devise some practical measure
which, when adopted, might furnish permanent relief to these distressed and
suffering co-religionists, without interfering with the original objects of the
organization.” The society had been formed in 1848 to provide relief for
“indigent females.”
1871: In The Hague, Johanna and Maurice Kann gave birth to Emma Louise Kann
1872: Birthdate of Vilna native
and Berlin ordained Rabbi Aryeh Lev Zagur who in 1898 came to the United States
where he served congregations in North Adams, MA; Evansville, IN; Poughkeepsie,
NY and Houston, TX.
1873: In London, Marcus and Cahia Kohen gave birth to Annie Edith Landau, who settled in Palestine where she played a key
role in the development of education and culture for which she was twice
honored by King George V.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landau-annie-edith
1875: Birthdate of Swiss native
Albert Bachman, the son of Russian parents who gained fame as “French
violinist, composer and musicologist.”
1878(15th of Adar II, 5638): Shushan Purim
1878: Birthdate of Alsace
Lorraine native Leopold Kling who in 1894 came to the United States where with
his older brother Samuel Kling established Kling Brothers and Company in 1897
in Chicago.
https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/single-post/kling-bros/
1878: Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli “gave away the bride” when Hannah
Rothschild married Philip Archibald Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery. The
Prince of Wales attended the ceremony that made her the Countess of Rosebery.
1879: It was reported today that Dr. Henry S. Jacobs will deliver a lecture
this weekend at the Norfolk Street Synagogue sponsored by the Young Men’s
Hebrew Union.
1880: J W Seligman & Company are parties to a suit to be heard this morning
by Judge Thayer concerning creating a receivership for financially troubled
Memphis, Carthage and Northwestern Railroad Company. Jesse Seligman is one the
trustees for the railroad’s bond holder
1880: Tonight, the Concord Society is sponsoring a charity for the benefit of
the Young Ladies’ Charitable Union which is part of the United Hebrew
Charities. This first annual event is being held at New York’s Lexington Avenue
Opera House.
1881: Birthdate of Parisian
Eugene Paul Louis Schueller, the founder of the cosmetic and beauty company
L’Oreal and employer of Efrayim Khahneman, whom he rescued from the Nazis which
meant that Efrayim and his wife Rachel could give birth to Nobel Prize winner
Daniel Kahneman.
1882: Calcutta, India native Emanuel Raphael Belilos and Simha Ezra gave birth
to David Belilos who was buried in China after he died at the age of 16 from
the plague in Hong Kong.
1883: In Warsaw, Siegmund Simon Epstein and Sarah Sophia (Lurie) Epstein gave
birth to Russian-American mathematical physicist Paul Sophus Epstein.
http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/pepstein.pdf
1885: The Yiddish theater season opened in New York with an operetta by Abraham
Goldfaden.
1885: Birthdate of Gerda
Windesheim, a Westphalian survivor of the Holocaust.
1886(13th of Adar II, 5646): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Zachor; Erev
Purim
1886: Birthdate of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, the native of Galicia and husband
or Rose Lipschultz Gusik whose life of crime included time with Al Capone on
the south side of Chicago.
1886: In Philadelphia, PA, Florence Stern and Charles
C. Davidson gave birth to Jefferson Medical College trained physician, the
husband of Julia Brown, an “assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at
Jefferson Medical College” and an orthopedic surgeon at the Jewish Hospital in
Philadelphia.
1886: In Philadelphia, Emily Grace Solis and Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen gave birth
to “prize-winning poet, author, translator, historian, and communal leader
Emily Solis-Cohen.” (As reported by Arthur Kiron)
1887: Birthdate of Hartog Hamburger the Amsterdam diamond polisher and baseball
who died after being hit in the head with a line drive.
1890(28th of Adar, 5650): A Hebrew school teacher named Nathan Wisskerz
“committed suicide” this evening “by turning on the gas in his room” at 51
Henry Street.
1890: in Gelsenkirchen, Julius Hess, an attorney and his wife Elisabeth gave
birth to Ernst Mortiz Hess, “ the baptized German Jew who “commanded the
company of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 in which Adolf Hitler
served during WW I.”
1890: Leo von Caprivi began who was an opponent of the anti-Semitic parties,
began serving as Chancellor of Germany and Prime Minister of Prussia
1891: In Berlin,Bernhard
Goldberg, the Polish born son Rose and Abraham Goldberg and his wife Marie Goldberg
gave birth to Betty Goldberg who was the wife of Ruben Cohn and Scholum Solon Salomon
Hirsch
1891: Fifty-two-year-old American
actor Lawrence Barrett who portrayed the character of Shylock “with force,
sincerity and at times splendid effect” but was still not on the level of Edwin
“Eddy” Booth whose portrayal of Shakespeare’s Jew was considered to be the best
of them all.
1892: Birthdate of
Newcastle-on-Tyne native Irving J. Caplan who came to the United States in 1902
at the age of ten, became a successful businessman in Troy, NY, married Marie
Caplan and served as a director of the United Jewish Services.
1892: “Ivory in the Past” discussed the two sources of this item in ancient
times. While the exploits of Hannibal and others points to an African
source the fact that the ancient Hebrews and those living on the Indian coast
and in Ceylon use the same word for Elephant (habba) and the similarity between
the Hebrew word for Monkey (koph) and Sanskrit word for monkey (kapi) are two
of the indications that India which was home to elephants was the other source
for ivory along with the proven fact that Solomon conducted trade with the
orient.
1893: “Errors About Intermarriage” published today provided the views of Rabbi
Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu El on this subject. According to
Silverman, the Bible only prohibits marriage to seven Canaanite tribes and as
can be seen from the examples of Moses and Solomon allows for marriage to
non-Jews.
1893: William F. Wharton completed his services Assistant Secretary of State
during which he had asserted “that the Department of State is without an
information respecting the alleged suspension of the Russian edict against the
Jews.”
1894: Birthdate of New York
native and holder of a Ph.D. from Columbia Dr. Herman Feldman, the author of Stabilizing
Jobs and Wages and Racial Factors in American Industry who served as
dean of School of Business at CCNY before becoming a Professor of Industrial
Relations at Tuck School, Dartmouth College.
1894: As the Board of Health struggles to combat the dangers of tuberculosis,
it is having 15,000 copies of instructions on how to deal with consumptives
printed in a variety of languages including Hebrew. (Apparently, the city
officials did not know that Yiddish would have been a better choice for the
immigrants from Eastern Europe)
1894: The Ladies’ Bikur Cholim Society hosted a Purim celebration for
youngsters at their industrial school.
1895: CCNY grad and Bellevue Medical College trained medical doctor and
bacteriologist Louis Fischer, the
Hungarian born son of Louise Frankel and Ignatz Fisher married Clara Robert
with whom he had two sons – Doctors Alfred and Robert Fischer
1895: In Brooklyn, Louis Grunhurt and his sister Mrs. Mary Ballowa appeared in
surrogate court to contest the will of their brother, the late Dr. Bernhard
Grunhurt who was reportedly lost at sea last August.
1895: The German Societies in New York asked that the fountain in memory of the
poet Heinrich Heine be placed at 59th street and 5th
Avenue entrance to Central Park.
1896: Birthdate of Lithuanian
native and JTS graduate Rabbi Abraham Mayer Heller,
the spiritual director of the Flatbush Jewish Center since 1924 and author who
raised a son, Rabbi Zachary Heller with his wife the former Frances Lesser,
passed away today.
1896: The list published today of
those institutions that the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has given money
to from the theatrical and concert license fund includes Beth Israel ($100);
United Hebrew Charities of the City of New York ($1,000) and Montefiore Home
($500)
1896: “The Hebrew Infant Asylum Benefit” published today described the
successful auction conducted by Maurice Barrymore and Cyril Scott for boxes and
seats at the upcoming performance of The Heart of Maryland, the proceeds of
which will go to the Jewish charity.
1896: Speaking of the Jubilee Celebration being held to mark the 50th
anniversary of the founding of Shaaray Tefila, Rabbi De Sola Menes who has led
the congregation for 18 years, said today. “The congregation Shaaray Tefila in
the half century of its existence has occupied a unique position among the
Jewish congregations of this city” because “it has held the mean between the
radical reform and the ultra-orthodox” making “haste slowly” while moving
“sedately with the times.”
1896: Dr. M.H. Harris delivered his second and final lecture today on the
Inquisition at Temple Israel in Brooklyn, NY tonight. During the lecture
he defended himself against charges of “ignorance, prejudice and falsifying
history” made by Revered Brann of St. Agnes’s Roman Catholic Church made after
the first lecture. “The Catholic Church would like to rid itself of this blog
upon its annals. The fact is the Inquistion was a religious institution
but was mixed up with civil affairs…The fact that the Inquisition was
instituted to investigate heresy is the best proof of its religious character.”
(Holocaust deniers were preceded by Inquisition deniers)
1897: Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elhanan opened in New York as an Orthodox rabbinical
seminary. It later expanded into Yeshiva University, with both Jewish and
secular studies, a medical (Einstein) and a graduate school (Ferkauf).
1897: Oscar S. Straus, formerly the United States Minister to Turkey, returned
to New York from Europe today.
1897: It was reported today that Mrs. Joseph B. Bloomingdale and Mrs. Edward
Fridenberg had been responsible for the recent party given for those staying at
the Amsterdam Street facility of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Mrs. Bloomingdale is
the wife of the founder of Bloomingdales Department Store.
1897(16th of Adar II, 5657): Seventy-four year old Dr. Ignatz Grossman the
native of Hungary who was ordained as a rabbi forty years ago passed away today
in New York City.
1897: Birthdate of Polish born and Columbia and JTS trained rabbi, Max Artz,
the Vice Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and husband the former
Esther Podolsky with whom he raised three children – Miriam, Raphael and David
Artz.
1898: Two days after he had passed away, Lewis Hart, the son of Joseph and
Rosetta Hart, the husband of Elizabeth Hart and father of Mary and Hannah Hart,
who then married Adelaide Levy with whom he had had seven children was buried
today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1898: Yetta Firber took the three children of David Bogin, who were her
grandchildren home from the police station after it appeared they had been
abandoned their father. It turned out that they their mother had died in Denver
and they had gotten lost on their way to join their father in East Hartford
where he had gone for work. (Such was the chaotic life of the children of
the “immigrant generations.”)
1898: Three days after she had passed away, Jane Abrahams, the daughter of
Phillip Levy and Elizabeth Davis and the wife of Isaac Abrahams with whom she
had had six children was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.
1899: Herzl established the Jewish Colonial Trust as the financial arm of the
World Zionist Organization. Its goal was to encourage Jewish settlement and
projects which would “advance the Zionist cause.” One of its subsidiaries, the
Anglo-Palestine Company, later became Bank Leumi. Other investment helped
create the Israel Electric Cooperation and Bank Hapoalim.
1899: Private Joseph Weinstein, Joseph Polskey, George C. Hahn, Phillip Isaacs,
Julius C. Meyer and Harry Newburg were among those who completed their military
service with the Third Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was
mustered out of the U.S. Army at Savannah, GA.
1900: Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, a play in one act by David Belasco
premiered today at the Herald Square Theatre in New York City.
1900: Birthdate of Ukraine native and Columbia
University trained educator Abraham Feingold who came to the United States
where he co-founded the Rugby School and was the victim into a “Red” hunt in
New York City.
1901: Russian bank director Levontin presents his plan to buy up the shares of
the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad. Levontin will become the assistant manager of the
Bank in London.
1902: Birthdate of Baltimore native David Lasser, the science fiction writer
and social activist. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/07/us/david-lasser-94-a-space-and-a-social-visionary.html
1903: Lady Sybil Grant the daughter of the 5th Earl of Rosebery and
Hannah de Rothschild, the only child of Mayer Amschel de Rothschild and a
granddaughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild married Charles John Cecil Grant.
1903: Birthdate of South
African explorer, stockbroker and chess champion Albert Sidney Pinkus passed
away today in New York City.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/06/obituaries/albert-s-pinkus-80-40-s-chess-champion.html
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=39243
1903: American author and humorist Charles Godfrey Leland passed way. In
his memoir, Leland recounted the following exchange with George Eliot
concerning her one novel about Jews. “One day she told me that, in order
to write Daniel Deronda she had read through 200 b00s. I longed to
tell her she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with 200 Jews and been
taught as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee the art of distinguishing
Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Arguado of the Sephardim by
the corners of their eyes.
1904: “The American Jewish
Historical Society whose object is to collect and publish data relative to the
achievements of Jews in” the United States, “held the first session of the its
twelfth annual meeting” tonight in the vestry room of the Spanish and
Portuguese Congregation.
1905: The Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith
continued to meet for a second day New Orleans.
1906: Almost two years after the death of Herzl, Sir Edward Gray wrote to
Leopold Greenberg rejecting the proposal for a Jewish settlement in Sinai for
the third and last time.
1906: Birthdate of Rockford
(Illinois) High School star basketball player Luis Beher, the first Jew to win
Kenneth Sterling Day Award while playing for the University of Wisconsin where
his young brother Sammy was “a star football player.”
1906(23rd of Adar, 5666): Fifty-five year old Isaac Gellis the successful
businessman and Jewish community leader who came to the United States
thirty-five years ago who has served as a trustee of the Hebrew Sheltering Arms
Society and the Montefiore Home passed away today at his residence on Henry
Street.
1906: In London, “Esther (née Goldfarb) and Philip Birnbaum, Jewish immigrants
from Poland who fled Warsaw” gave birth to Abraham David Birnbaum who at the
age of three months came to New York where, as Abraham “Abe” Beame became the
city’s first Jewish mayor.
1907: Southern African financier Solomon Barnato Joel, the son of Joel and
Catherine Joel, Ellen (Nellie) Ridley, gave birth to their daughter Eileen who
married John Rogerson and became Eileen Daphne Solvia Rogerson.
1907 (6th of Adar, 5667): Birthdate of Moshe Aharon, the sixth child of Shoshe
and Rabbi Avraham Halevi Shapiro, whom the sainted Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer,
zt”l, pronounced to be an ilui (child prodigy)
1908: “A decision ended down by
Supreme Court Justice McCail, by which he held that the marriage of Louis and
Sadie Kresh, which took place in Richeletz, Austria, was not valid, it is
asserted by Lawyer Benjamin Reass of 132 Nassau Street, will have the effect of
invalidating hundreds of similar marriages among the Austrian Jews on the east
side, besides affecting several thousand children.”
1909: Birthdate of Boston native
Benjamin Alexander, the Harvard trained physician who specialized in hematology
and was a member of the faculty at Cornell University.
1909: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and San Francisco physiatrist Meyer Aaron
Zeli
http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~law00092
1909: In Rotterdam, Moses and Bertha (Haas) Geleerd gave birth to University of
Leyden trained physician Elisabeth Rozetta Gelreed the psychiatrist who fled Nazi
Europe to work at the Menninginer Clinic in Topeka, Kansas who raised one son,
Richard with her husband Rudolph Lowentstein.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Geleerd-Elisabeth-Rozetta
https://www.loc.gov/item/mm83060566/
1910: “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, who
returned last week from a visit to the leaders in England of the liberal Jewish
movement” delivered a sermon in the Free Synagogue this morning on “Is There to
be a Schism in English Jewry?” in which “he declared that the Orthodox English
Jews had no understanding of what the liberal Jewish movement means in America”
and have “the mistaken impression that it was an attempt to escape from
Judaism.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/03/21/104925756.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1911: In Berlin, “Austrian
theater director Max Reinhardt manager of the Deutsches Theater, and his first
wife Else Heims” gave birth to Gottfried Goldman, who gained fame as
producer-director Gottfried Reihnardt.
1911: Birthdate of Milo Sperber, the “Polish born English actor, director and
writer” who was the brother of Manès Sperber.
1911: “The body of a thirteen year old boy, Andrei Yustschinksi was discovered
near a brick factory on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.” This
simple statement describes the first event in what will eventually become The
Case of Mendel Bellis, one of the most infamous episodes of anti-Semitism in
Czarist Russia.
1912: “Gerson Sirota, the Russian
cantor who sailed on the Lusitania for home at 1 o’clock this moring was
examined in the City Court yesterday in a suit which is being brought against
him by Herman Herzog,” the plaintiff seeking “to obtain $764 for expenses which
he asserts were incurred by him in certain business relations which he had with
the singer in Europe.”
1913(11th of Adar II, 5673): Ta’anit Esther
1913: “In Berlin, Austrian
theater director Max Reinhardt (until 1904: Max Goldmann), manager of the
Deutsches Theater, and his first wife Else Heims gave birth movie director and
producer who in 1932 came to the United States where he remained after the
Nazis came to power where he made such moves as “The Great Waltz,” served in
the U.S. Army during WW II and served as the stepfather of “US federal judge
Stephen Reinhardt.”
1913(11th of Adar II,
5673): Sixty-nine-year-old Confederate Army veteran Henry Lazarus passed away
today in Camden, Arkansas.
1914: Birthdate of Chicago native
and University of Illinois alum Ralph “Ruffy” Silverstein, the successful amateur
and professional wrester and husband of Evelyn Epstein with whom he had a son
and a daughter who reached the rank of Captain in the U.S. Amy where he was
with the intelligence unit known as Ritchie Boys and “an advisor to General MacArtur
“about the Japanese study of martial arts during the U.S. occupation of Japan.”
1914: It was reported today that
the Educational Alliance on East Broadway and Jefferson Street will host the
ninth concert of the Educational Chamber Music Society on March 22nd.
1915: American Jewish Relief
Committee apportions $30,000 for Jews in Palestine, $1000 per month (for 6
months) for Palestinian soup kitchens, and $3000 per month (for 10 months) to
Turkish Jews outside of Palestine.
1915(5th of Nisan, 5675): Parashat Vayikra
1915(5th of Nisan,
5675): Sixty-seven-year-old Rebecca Kahn Affelder, the daughter of Nathan and
Isabella Jeri Levy Kahn, the wife of Leopold Affelder and the mother of Minnie,
William, Harry and Jeanette Affelder passed today in New York after which she
was buried in the Mount Neboh Cemetery in Glendale, NY.
1916(15th of Adar II, 5676): Shushan Purim
1916: Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity in a journal called
Annalen der Physik. (And that is much as I know about it except to refer you to
Dr. Joe Rosen, the only person I know who understands it.)
1916: As of today, “gifts valued
at close to $100,000 and ranging all the way from a sticks of candy, to a grand
piano, a seven passenger touring car and even building sites in the Bronx and
Staten Islands have been received by the People’s Relief Committee which is
organizing the bazaar and fair for Jewish suffers to be held at the Grand
Central Palace” starting in the last week of March and continuing into April.
1916: Today, it is estimated that
the gold and jewels given by the Jews of Baltimore at a mass meeting held
“under the auspices of the American Jewish Relief Committee” are worth at least
$3,500.00.
1917: In what must have seemed
like a momentous occasion at the time for all Russians, including her Jewish
citizens a manifesto issued by the new Russian Provisional Government published
today began “Citizens: The great work has been accomplished. By a powerful stroke the Russian people have
overthrown the old regime. A new Russia
is born. This coup d’etat has set the
keystone upon long years of struggle.” (In less than a year, the Bolsheviks
would sweep the forces of democratic reform aside and create a dictatorship
every bit as vile as the Czars.)
1917: In
Jerusalem,” noted archeologist Eleazar Sukenik and educationalist and women’s
rights activist Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod” gave birth to Yigal Sukenik who as
Yigael Yadin gained fame fighting in the War for Independence, serving as the
second Chief of Staff for the IDF and becoming a first-rate archeologist. If
you did not know he was a real person, you would swear that some novelist had
invented this fascinating person.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yigael-yadin
1917: Tonight’s mass meeting in
Madison Square Garden which “has been arranged with the co-operation of the
Forward Association, the Bund, the Russian Social Democrats, the Jewish
Socialist Federation of America, the Workingmen’s Circle, the United Hebrew
Trades and the New York local of the Socialist Party” and for which 8,000
tickets have been sold, will mark “the first time in the history of” the city
of New York that “thousands of Jewish refugees will assemble to cheer a Russian
government.”
1917: In an exclusive interview
given to the Associate Press today the new Foreign Minister of Russia said that
“there now appear to be no obstacles” to “a new commercial treaty between
Russia and the United States” since “all the disabilities governing Jews” from
America coming to Russia “have been removed.”
1917: Following the sinking of
several U.S. ships by German submarines, President Wilson met with his cabinet
who voted unanimously in favor of going to war four days before Rosh Chodesh
Nisan.
1917: Two days after she had passed away, 63 year old Fanny Levy was buried
today at “the Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1918(7th of Nisan, 5678): Fifty year old Richmond, VA native Mitchell H. Mark
who moved to Buffalo where he opened a hat store and then with his brother Moe
“founded the Vitascope Theatre…one of the first permanent movie theatres” built
anywhere in the world.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D04E5D6113FE433A25752C2A9659C946996D6CF
http://buffaloah.com/h/mark/Obit.pdf
1918: Birthdate of comedian and
television game show host, Jack Berry. Jack Barry met and teamed up with Dan
Enright in Borscht Belt clubs. They started Winky Dink and You, a children’s
show known for the special transparent covers children had to put over the TV
screen so they could draw the “hidden pictures” during Winky’s
adventures. Barry and Enright were also instrumental in producing and hosting
early game shows, such as Concentration and Tic Tac Dough. Barry is best
remembered as the host on the game show “21” which went from sensational
television hit to be the symbol for corruption in the communications industry.
1918: It was reported today that
based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in
the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for
Jewish soldiers and sailors” who will have leaves so they may observe Passover.
1919: As of today, “more than
$36,000 has been contributed toward New York City’s quota of $100,000 in the
Isaac M. Wise Centenary Campaign being held this week in the United States” to
raise fundes for HUC and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
1920(1st of Nisan,
5680): Triple Header – Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat Hachodesh
1920: Samuel Greenbaum, the
London born son of Louis and Rachel Greenbaum, the Columbia trained attorney
and husband of Selina Ullman was appointed to serve as an Associate Justice of
the Appellate Division of New York.
1920: It was announced today at
its national headquarters on East Forty-second street that “Mrs. Woodrow
Wilson, the wife of the President of the United States, has commended the
national campaign now being conducted by the National Council of Jewish Women
to raise $150,000 with which to carry on Americanization and welfare work.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/03/21/118312461.html?pageNumber=14
1921; In Vienna, Béla Schwimmer and Marie Karp gave birth to Vilma Mitzi
Schimmer who came to the United States in 1935 and married Edward James in 1944
in Brooklyn.
1921: Today, on Sunday, Dr.
Rudolph Grossman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Galsworthy’s Strife and
the Problem of Capital and Labor” at Temple Emanue-El where services start at
11:15 a.m.
1921: Dr. Klass is scheduled to
deliver a sermon on “Our Faith in the Time of Trouble at services that start
“promptly at 11” at Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue.
1921: In New York City, two
hundred delegates at a preliminary meeting of the Provisional Committee for an
American Jewish Congress adopted resolutions that were intended to make this a
permanent organization.
1922: Birthdate of actor Werner Klemper. The German born refugee from Hitler’s
Germany was the son of Otto Klemper. Ironically, Werner gained his greatest
fame as the bumbling Colonel Klink on “Hogan’s Hero” the sitcom set in a German
POW Camp.
1922: The 25 teams that have been canvassing the “trades and industries” as
part of the New York City campaign for Jewish relief for the victims of the
war, famine and pogroms in Russia are scheduled to turn $450,000 tonight.
1922: In the Bronx, Jewish immigrants Bessie (née Mathias) and Irving Reiner
gave birth to comedian and writer Carl Reiner who first gained fame as “the
second banana” on the Sid Caesar comedy show “Your Show of Shows” and is also
remembered for his work with the 2000 Year Old man and the Dick Van Dyke Show.
1923: In Cleveland, OH, the will
of Charles Eizenman, who for twenty years was the President of the Federation
of Jewish Charities, which was probated today called for $50,000 to be given to
the Federation of Jewish Charities, $12,000 to be given to JPS and $2,000 to
HUC.
1924(14th of Adar II, 5648) Purim
1924: Birthdate of British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby, the grandson of Rabbi
Chaim Maccoby and the librarian of Leo Baeck College whose area of expertise
was the relationship between early Christianity and first century Judaism
including the contention that the last two thousand years of western
anti-Semitism had its origins in the drive of early Christian leaders to
separate their religion and followers from the Jews.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jul/31/guardianobituaries.religion
1925: The new Hebrew University
is scheduled to be dedicated on Mt. Scopus with Lord Balfour and Dr. Chaim
Weizmann in attendance.
1925: Charley Phil Rosenberg
(Charles Green) won the World Bantamweight Championship today.
1926: In New Orleans, the former
Anna Leibof gave birth to Tulane University engineering graduate Harold Allen
Rosen, “a driving force in the invention of modern communication satellite
technology.
1926: Soprano Nanette Guilford
whose name at birth was Nanette Gutman, who had sung in smaller roles until
today “when she appeared as Ginerva in La Cena Delle Beffe by Umberto
Giordano.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-24-mn-477-story.html
1926: “The Fiddler of Florence” a
comedy written and directed by Paul Czinner and co-starring Grete Moseheim was
released today in Germany.
1927(16th of Adar II, 5687): Purim Meshulash
https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/purim-meshulash-1927
1927(16th of Adar II,
5687): Eighty-three-year-old Harold Solomon Gerstner, the Polish born son of
Hyman and Fannie Gerstner and first husband of Sarah Blumberg Parnes passed
away today after which he was buried at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten
Island.
1927: “More than 3,000 children
attended the first rally of the New York Jewish Religious Schools which had
been organized by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise of the Central Synagogue.”
1927: Birthdate of Manhattan native Lawrence Seymour “Larry” Phillips the
Princeton University History major who became a top executive in the family
owned Phillips-Van Heusen clothing business and a leading Jewish
philanthropist.
1928: Birthdate of Anthony Bernard Blond “a British publisher and author” who
was a cousin of Harold Laski. He passed away in 2008. You can learn more about
Blond by reading his autobiography Jew Made in England, which was published in
2004.
1929: In Paris Michel (Max) Zide and Perl Zahnstecher Zider, “immigrants from
eastern Europe who owned a grocery store in a poor Jewish neighborhood” gave
birth to Rose Rosenthal, who in 1941 escaped with her parents to the United
States where they opened a grocery store in Brooklyn and she “earned a degree
at CCNY,” married and moved with her new husband to Houston where she found
work as a French teacher and raised two children.
https://hmh.mwmdigital.com/survivor/111/
1929: New York Mayor Jimmy Walker
“spent more than three hours” this “afternoon on a tour of the new Beth Israel
Hospital,” a five bed facility facing Stuyvesant Square.
1930: Birthdate of Arthur Schneir, the native of Austria who survived the Nazi
occupation of Budapest who has been Senior Rabbi at Park East Synagogue since
1962 and who founded the Appeal of Conscience in 1965.
1931(2nd of Nisan, 5691): Sixty-seven-year-old Mathilde Saphir, the
Austrian born daughter of Aurelia and David Schwarz and the wife of Josef
Saphir passed away today in Vienna.
1931: In the Bronx, Charles Lipshitz and the former Frances Rosen gave birth to
CCNY graduate Harold Lipshitz, who gained fame as actor Hal Lidnen who
gainedhis greatest fame in the title role of the police comedy “Barney Miller.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-05-17-ca-5428-story.html
1932: Christians, Moslems and
Jews united for a week-end of prayer that ended today “for relief from a
continued heat wave and drought that have seriously menaced crops.
1932: During a radio sermon
delivered this afternoon on radio station WPCH Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of
the Institutional Synagogue declared that “the Geneva Conference is but a
pretense at an effort for world peace” and that “the world through the League
of Nations is merely nibbling at, rather than grappling with, the question of
world peace.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1932/03/21/issue.html
1933: “German Fugitives Tell of Atrocities at Hands of Nazis” published today
provided readers of the New York Times with accounts from Americans
arriving in Paris from Germany of “outrages and cruelties in racial purging”
and “Jews fleeing persecution.”
1933: At the initiative of the Jews of Vilna, an anti-Nazi boycott began. It
eventually spread all over Poland and to many countries in Europe. Yet within 6
months Poland itself signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler which called
for the cessation of all boycott activities.
1933: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that “the hoisting of Nazi
swastika banners over the German consulates at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv has
greatly disturbed the feelings of the Jewish public.” Fearing hostile
demonstrations, British police and detectives are guarding the German
buildings.
1933: The Nazis completed building Dachau, the first of the infamous
concentration camps.
1933: Darius Paul Dassault born Darius Paul Bloch reached the rank of Brigade
General in the French Army today.
1934: “Immediate investigation of
Nazi activities in the United States was voted by the House today, 168 to 31,
after speakers had condemned in sharp terms the Nazi persecution of the Jews
and other groups, amid frequent applause.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/21/93756012.html?pageNumber=1
1934: Professor John Dewey of the
Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, said today that he was convinced
that Hitler and Hitlerism were “by all odds the greatest threat to world
peace today.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/21/93756079.html?pageNumber=10
1934: “Anti-Semitism, hitherto
inactive in Yugoslavia, made its first appearance” in Sarajevo tonight “when a
group of students demonstrated noisily during a concert given by a Jewish
singing society composed mostly of German emigrant Jews” after which “they
threw rotten eggs and distributed anti-Semitic leaflets.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/21/93756082.html?pageNumber=10
1935(15th of Adar II,
5695): Shushan Purim
1935(15th of Adar II,
5695): University of Minnesota trained attorney Benjamin Mandel Goldman, the
Waukesha, WI born son of Anna and Jacob Goldman and the husband of Clara
Goldman who was an active member of B’nai B’rith passed away today in Los
Angeles.
1935(15th of Adar II,
5695): Newark, NJ businessman and manufacturer Max Eisman, a member of the
Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York passed away today.
1936: Founding of Kol Israel (Voice of Israel).
1936: “Chancellor Adolf Hitler
has assumed himself a 100 per cent majority of all the valid votes cast in the”
upcoming “Reichstag election” in which Jews will not be allowed to vote “by
creating a ballot that leaves the voter only choice of voting for him or
invalidating the ballot.”
1936: “In Palestine,
establishment of a legislative council continued to occupy the minds of both
Arab and Jewish leaders” with the “latter being adamant in their refusal to
participate in the council on the basis of representation in proportion to
population which would make the Jews a permanent minority.”
1936: “Polish Jews have strongly
criticized” a government bill to ban ritual slaughtering “which they said would
eliminate their method of kosher slaughtering.”
1936: The daughter of a Viennese
rabbi who was employed in Berlin “as a religious instructor by a Jewish
community center” has been released after six months of imprisonment and
“ordered to leave Germany as an undesirable alien.”
1937(1st of Nisan,
5697): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh
1937: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson
is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Religion of the Psalms” at Temple
Emanu-El this morning.
1937: Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel is
scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Eternal Road” today.
1937: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is
scheduled to deliver a sermon “Benjamin Franklin and the Jews” this morning at
Rodeph Sholom.
1937: The Luncheon of the Women’s
Division of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan
(Soviet Union) is scheduled to take place this afternoon at the Hotel Astor.
1937: In Honolulu, Katherine
Gordon Landis and Robert E. Hammersberg gave birth to Lois Ann Hammersberg, who
as Lois Lowry “received the National Jewish Book Award in 1990, in the
Children’s Literature category.”
1938: In his sermon today at the
North Baptist Church in New York, Rev. Francis K. Shepherd said “God will save
the Jews from Hitler as He saved them from Haman.”
1938(17th of Adar, II,
5699: Cantor Mordecai Balag passed away today in New York City.
1938(17th of Adar II,
5698): Fifty-seven-year-old Rebecca Schweitzer, the Russian born daughter of
Hirsch and Hannah (Levine) Garbovitsky and the wife of Peter J. Schwietzer,
“the largest importer and exporter of cigarette paper in the United States who
used their fortune for philanthropy and support of the embryonic Zionist
movement passed away today.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schweitzer-rebecca
https://www.vera.org/blog/vera-schweitzer-the-vera-institutes-worthy-namesake
1939: Seven thousand Jews fled
German occupied Memel, Lithuania.
1939: A 24 hour strike was scheduled to begin a 5 A.M. in Palestine to protest
Great Britain’s latest plan that would, according to The National Council Of
Palestine Jews, would lead to the “liquidation of the Newish national home” and
strangle Jewish settlement in Palestine.
1939: Rabbi Milton of Steinberg of the Park Avenue Synagogue spoke to the
Brooklyn Chapter of Hadassah at the Waldorf-Astoria where 2,000 women heard
chapter president Mrs. Joseph L. Horowitz announced that “$60,000 has been
raised since last October” to help to support projects in Palestine.
1939: Approximately 5000 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, including many
done by Jewish artists, deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis were burned
on an enormous pyre in Berlin.
1940: Birthdate of Mary Ellen
Mark, the Philadelphia native who became “one of the premier documentary
photographers of her generation.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13306.html
http://www.maryellenmark.com/bio_resume/bio_resume.html
1941:
Rabbi Robert “Serebrenik met in Berlin with Adolf Eichmann who demanded that
Luxembourg must be “Judenrein”, and was given eleven days to complete the
emigration of the Jewish population from Luxembourg.
1941: At Baumann and Berson Children’s Hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto, nurse D.
Wagman writes that she is helpless to prevent death.
1942: After having been turned over to the Nazis today George Politzer, the
Marxist philosopher was tortured – treatment that would last until his
execution in May
1943(13th of Adar II, 5703): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; Erev
Purim
1943: On Purim Eve in Czestochowa, Poland, over 100 Jewish doctors and their
families were taken away and shot. The meaning behind the factor-of-ten chosen
was revenge for the ten sons of the Jew hater Haman who were hanged in Biblical
times. Victims include 56-year-old gynecologist Dr. Kruza Gruenwald,
30-year-old general practitioner Dr. Irena Horowicz, and 44-year-old
neurologist Dr. Bernard Epstein. Czestochowa is the home of the “Black
Madonna.”
1943: “Bulgarian military police, assisted by German soldiers, took Jews from
Komotini and Kavala off the passenger steamship Karageorge, massacred them, and
sunk the vessel.”
1943(13th of Adar II, 5703): Eighty give year old
Jeanette Isaac Davis who wrote the “foreword to the second edition The True
Boundaries of the Holy by her father Samuel Hillel Isaacs and husband of
Benjamin Davis passed away today in Chicago.
1944: One day after the Nazis took control of the Hungarian capital, the SS
seized control of The Budapest University of Jewish Studies and turned it into
a prison
1944(25th of Ada, 5704): Japp de Mesquita, the son Dutch graphic
artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita and Elisabeth de Mesquita died at Theresienstadt
today approximately a month after his parents had been gassed at Auschwitz.
1944: “Cover Girl” a musical directed by Charles Vidor with songs by Jerome
Kern, Ira Gershwin and E.Y. Harburg was released today in the United States.
1945: Erhard Auer, the Socialist political leader who was physically attacked
by the Nazis in the 1930’s and who was imprisoned at Dachau for his alleged
role to kill Hitler in 1944 died today.
1945(6th of Nisan, 5705): An Allied air raid killed Jewish women in a camp at
Tiefstack, Germany, near Hamburg.
1946: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, the President of the ZOA, today
told members of the national executive committee that while in England he had
met with former Prime Minister Winston Churchill who assured him that “he has
always been a Zionist and still is a Zionist.”
(Editor’s note – too bad he did not act that way when he was enforcing
the White Paper during WW II)
1947: “The World Jewish Congress announced” today that “it has
received assurances that a law recently enacted by Ecuador was no bar to the
admission of immigrants on the basis of race, creed or religion.”
1948: “David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, speaking
in Tel Aviv today, stigmatized United States abandonment of partition as
“surrender” and rejected a United Nations Palestine trusteeship
“even for the shortest time.”
1948: Laura Z. Hobson’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” wins the Oscar
http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/20/1978/laura-z-hobson-s-gentleman-s-agreement-wins-oscar
1949: Israeli forces took control of Ein Gedi on the western shore of the Dead
Sea. This move helped to secure the western border of the newly created Jewish
state and to protect Israeli interests in an area that would be beneficial to
the chemical and tourist industries.
1950: “The Angel with the Trumpet” the film “based on a novel by
Ernst Lothar” which “follows the rise and fall of an Austrian aristocrat, and
her eventual death following the Anschluss” was released in the United Kingdom
today.
1950: Moshe Sharett, Israel’s Foregin Minister, “called upon the seven-member
nationas of the Arab League today to make peace with Israel by direct
negations.” He said that Israel only wished “to consolidate its present
position…There will be no further war if the Arab world does not will it.”
1951:
After opening in New York,“Royal Wedding” the Alan Jay Lerner musical comedy
directed by Stanley Donen premiered today in Los Angeles
1952(23rd of Adar, 5712): Rabbi Armand Bloch passed away.
1952(23rd of Adar, 5712): Seventy-nine year old Racie Adler passed
away.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/adler-racie
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Executive
Branch of the US government made it known that experience in Israel suggested
that technical cooperation could succeed there in specific objectives:
“Namely to aid in reducing the present economic crisis, to contribute significantly
to the development and to increase productivity.” The Presidium of the
Conference of Jewish Claims Against Germany announced that Moses A. Levitt,
executive of the American Joint Distribution Committee, would lead the
delegation to The Hague Conference on Jewish Claims and Reparations. In the
House of Commons Selwyn Lloyd, Minister of State, announced that Britain was
contributing £4,452,440 for the first year of the three-year international
program (the Blandford Plan) to resettle 800,000 Arab refugees from Palestine
in various parts of the Middle East. In addition Britain announced that it was
proposing an interest-free loan of £1,500,000 to Jordan to contribute
indirectly to the same purpose.
1953: “Destination Gobi” an
off-beat WW II movie produced by Stanley Rubin with music by Sol Kaplan was
released in the United States today.
1954(15th of Adar II, 5714: Parashat Tzav; Shushan Purim
1954(15th of Adar II, 5714): Joe Levin, a founder of B’nai Abraham in Brenham,
Texas and the father of Jewish Texan historian, Rosa Levin Toubin passed away
1954: In Madison, Wisconsin, Morton Wagner and Bernice Maletz gave birth to
author and screenplay writer Bruce Alan Wagner whose work includes “A Nightmare
on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.”
1954: Birthdate of East Meadow,
NY native and University of California, Hastings Law graduate Louis Sachar, the
husband of Carla Askew who was the “inspiration for the counselor in There’s
a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom and Stanley’s lawyer in Holes with whom
he had one daughter, Sherre and who is the award-winning author “best known for
the Wayside School series and the novel Holes.”
1955(26th of Adar,
5715): Fifty-one-year-old Brown graduate and Harvard trained attorney Harry A.
Shulman, the Mogilev, Belarus born son of Simon Shulman and Tillie Klebanoff
who was a “professor at Yale Law School from 1930 to 1954 and Dean of the Yale
Law School staring in 1954 passed away today.
1956: Under the leadership of Habib Bourghiba, Tunisia gained its independence
from France. Bourghiba was well disposed to the 100,000 strong Jewish
community, appointing a Jew to his first cabinet. But he was not able to stem
the tide of “Islamic extremism” that would take hold in subsequent
years.
1956: In Lambeth, South London Sally Oppenheim-Barnes, Baroness
Oppenheim-Barnes and her husband gave birth to Phillip Oppenheim, who when he
became an MP became part of what have been the only Parliamentary Mother-Son
duo in English history
1958(28th of Adar, 5718): Seventy-eight-year old Anna Warner Robins,
the Polish born daughter of Benjamin and Pearl Leach Eichelbaum Warner and the
wife of David M. Robbins passed away today after which she was buried at the
Home of Peace Memorial Park.
1958: “Merry Andrew,” a musical starring Danny Kaye, directed by Michael Kidd,
produced by Sol C. Siegel and written by Isobel Lennart and I.A.L. Diamond, was
released for showing to the movie going public.
1959(10th of Adar II,
5719): Seventy-eight-year-old Columbia University medical school graduate and
Universities of Strasbourg, Berlin and Vienna trained psychoanalyst Dr. Leonard
Blumgart, the husband of Eleanor Blumgart and father of John Blumgart who
studied with Dr. Sigmund Freude and who “during WW I served as a captain in the
Army’s neuropsychiatric service at Plattsburgh, NY” passed away today at his
home in Manhattan.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/21/80766171.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1960: William Schueller and Eleanor Neyens Schueller of Zwingle, Iowa gave
birth to Elizabeth Mary “Liz” Schueller, the younger sister of Deb Levin, Z”L.
1960: ABC broadcast “You Still My
Eyes,” an episode of “The Rebel,” directed by Irvin Kershner.
1962(14th of Adar II, 5722): Purim
1964: Ernest Lehman completed his
final draft of the script for “The Sound of Music” today.
1965: Rabbi Heschel flew to Selma from New York tonight as civil rights leaders
planned to try another march from Selma to Montgomery. Previous attempts had
been stopped by violence so the aged sage was literally risking his physical
well-being to help “the widow, the orphan and the stranger in our
midst.” The march was part of the fight to gain passage of what became
known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the second most important piece of
Civil Rights legislation ever adopted in the United States.
1967(8th of Adar II,
5727): Seventy-two year old Breslau native Kurt
Peiser, who in 1907 came to the United States where after earning his college
degrees “served as executive director of Jewish federation and welfare funds
successively in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Detroit and Philadelphia” and who helped
to “set up relief programs in North Africa” during WW II after the Allies had
driven the Italians and Nazis back across the Mediterranean Sea” passed away
today.
1968: In New York City, Attorney Arnold Jacobs Sr. and Ellen Kheel gave birth
to journalist and author Arnold Stephen “A.J.” Jacobs, Jr. the husband of Julie
Schoenberg with whom he had three sons – Jasper, Zane and Lucas – and cousin of
legal scholar and fellow author Cass Sunstein.
1969(1st of Nisan,
5729): Rosh Chodesh Nisan
1969(1st of Nisan,
5729): Sixty-two-old Abraham Rabinowitz, the graduate of the NYU School of
Commerce and “assistant vice president and chief accountant of the Eastern Life
Insurance of New York, the brother of Max, Samuel and Ida, suffered a fatal
heart attack today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/03/22/90073420.html?pageNumber=33
1969(1st of Nisan,
5279): Sixty-six-year-old CCNY and Columbia University alum, Morris H. Weiss,
the principal of Public School 215 since 1950 who was the husband of Rose Aluff
Weiss and the father of Michael A. Weiss passed away today.
1970: The funeral services for Isadore H. Prinzmetal, the motion picture
industry attorney and a leader in Jewish community service, were conducted
today at Hillside Memorial Park.
1970: In New York, June Brody and David Rapaport gave birth to “actor, director
and comedian” Michael David Rapaport.
1971: Today at the Colony Theatre
in Boston the curtain came down on the pre-Broadway run of “Follies,” “a
musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman.
1973(16th of Adar, II,
5733): Seventy-year Martin Codel, the “biological son of Samuel Braverman” who
was raised by his mother Sarah Codel and adopted father Morris Codel and the
father of Ella Codel who was the author of Radio and Its Future and who
along with Sol Taishoff and Harry Shaw founded Broadcasting which is now published as Broadcasting and Cable passed away today
1974: “The Super Cops” based on a
book of the same name starring Ron Leibman was released in the United States
today.
1975(8th of Nisan, 5735): Boston born Harvard graduated
eighty-nine-year-old Reuben B, Gryzmich, a philanthropist of Boston and a
founder of the United Jewish Appeal and Beth El Hospital in Boston who was a “director of the Hotel Corporation of
America, chairman and president of Alles & Fisher, cigar makers, and
president of the Plymouth Rubber Company of Canton, MA” who was the husband of Ethel
Gryzmich passed away today in Palm Beach, FL.
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/22/archives/reuben-b-gryzmich-89-boston-philanthropist-dies.html
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155422715642
1975: Aharon Uzan replaced Yitzhak Rabin as Communications Minister
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the French Foreign
Minister, Louis de Guiringaud, said that Arab recognition of Israel’s right to
exist was a prerequisite of any Middle Eastern settlement. Israel, he
continued, would have to withdraw from occupied areas, but this did not mean a
complete withdrawal from all territories captured in 1967. In Cairo the
mainstream and hard-liners of the members of the Palestine National Council
struggled over the wording of a declaration of a political stance of the PLO.
In Haifa the president of the Technion, Amos Horev, deplored the lack of a
long-term industrial planning in Israel.
1978(11th of Adar II, 5738): Dr. Meyer Aaron Zeligs, whose defense of Alger
Hiss, Friendship and Fratricide, stirred controversy when it was
published in 1967 with the conclusion that Whittaker Chambers was a
psychopathic personality died today on his 69th birthday at his home in Sari
Francisco.”
1980: “Nijinsky,” a biopic directed by Herbert Ross and co-produced by Herbert
Ross was released today in the United States.
1981: In California, Actor Dustin Hoffman and Lisa Hoffman gave birth to Jacob
Edward “Jake” Hoffman who has gone on to develop an acting career of
his own.
1981(14th of Adar II,
5741): Purim
1981(14th of Adar II,
5741: Seventy-four-year-old Olympic Gold Medal winning speed skater Irving
Jaffee passed away today.
1981: “Omen III: The Final
Conflict” based on characters created by David Seltzer with music by Jerry
Goldsmith and featuring Mason Adams was released today in the United States.
1981: “The Postman Always Ring
Twice,” a film version of the novel by the same name with a script by David
Mamet was released today in the United States.
1981(14th of Adar II,
5741): Seventy-three-year-old businessman, Morris Abrams, the holder of patents
for the Arrows brand staple gun the husband of Flo Abrams and the father of
Allan, Louise and Isabel Abrams passed away today in Englewood, NJ.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/23/obituaries/morris-abrams.html
http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n86817849/
1983(6th of Nisan,
5743): Seventy-four-year-old Polish born Holocaust survivor and “Yiddish
writer, editor and historian” Julian Hirshaut, the author of Jewish Martyrs of
Pawiak and the husband of Hanna Hirshaut with whom he had two daughters, Betty
and Vivian, passed away today.
1984(16th of Adar II,
5744): Eighty-five-year-old Rose Snyder, the Ukraine born daughter of Victor
(Avigdor) Kramer and Rochel? Krasnoshchek, the wife of Henry Snyder and mother
of Elaine Richman and Marvin Lewis Snyder passed away today in Boston.
1987: “Stripped to Kill,”
co-staring Norman Fell was released today in the United States
1989(13th of Adar II,
5749): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim
1993: 27th of Adar, 5753): Shabbat HaChodesh
1993: 27th of Adar, 5753): In separate incidents, two Israeli soldiers –
Sergeant Gitai Avisor and Sergeant Yossi Shabtai – were killed.
1993: “Barbarians at the Gate” a movie version of the book by the same name
that described Henry Kravis’ efforts to buy RJR Nabisco with a script by Larry
Gelbart was broadcast today by HBO
.
1993: A third meeting between Arabs and Israelis began in Oslo, Norway.
1996: UPN broadcast the first episode of “The Sentinel” a Canadian television
series created and written by Danny Bilson.
1997: A “special edition” of “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold,” a
movie version of the novel produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was
released today
1998(22nd of Adar, 5758): Yemina Avidar-Tchernovitz, the native of
Vilna who arrived in Palestine as a twelve year old in 1921 and went on to
become an author of children’s books written in modern Hebrew passed away
today.
http://www.ithl.org.il/page_13612
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/tchernovitz-avidar-yemima
2000: It was reported today that “The discovery in downtown Prague of the
remnants of a medieval Jewish cemetery has turned into a political and moral
quandary for the Czech government and an embarrassment for the small Czech
Jewish minority.”
2000(13th of Adar II, 5760): Ta’anit Esther observed for the last
time during the presidency of Bill Clinton.
2001: President Bush welcomed
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the White House.
2002(7th of Nisan, 5762): Seven Israelis died when an Islamic terrorist blew
himself up in a packed bus.
2002: Seven people were killed and about 30 injured, several seriously, in a
suicide bombing of an Egged bus #823 traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth at the
Musmus junction on Highway 65 (Wadi Ara) near Afula. The victims: Sgt. Michael
Altfiro, 19, of Pardes Hanna; St.-Sgt. Shimon Edri, 20, of Pardes Hanna; SWO
Meir Fahima, 40, of Hadera; Cpl. Aharon Revivo, 19, of Afula; Alon Goldenberg,
28, of Tel Aviv; Mogus Mahento, 75, of Holon; and Bella Schneider, 53, of
Hadera. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
2003: “Six decades after his
parents were arrested and deported from German-occupied France, Kurt Werner
Schaechter, an Austrian-born French Jeew went to court here today to demand
that France’s national railroad company accept its responsibility and express
remorse for transporting Jews to Nazi death camps.”
2004: The treasure hunt, David Blaine’s $100,000 Challenge, devised by game
designer Cliff Johnson, creator of The Fool’s Errand, was solved today.
2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by
Jewish authors and/or of topics of special interest to Jewish readers including
“Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father
of Cybernetics” by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, “Rebels on the
Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio
System” by Sharon Waxman and “The Angel of Forgetfulness” by
Steve Stern.
2005(9th of Adar II, 5765): Eighty-four year old “businessman and
philanthropist Sir Leslie Porter passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-leslie-porter-6149848.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1486217/Sir-Leslie-Porter.html
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/mar/24/guardianobituaries.rogercowe
2006: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Jonathan Pollard’s appeal “to overturn a
federal appeals court ruling that denied his attorneys access to classified
information used in his trial” that they claim “are needed to make Pollard’s
case for clemency.”
2006: “The Valet” starring Gad Elmaleh and directed by Francis Verber, whose
father Pierre-Gilles Verber and grand-uncle Tristan were Jewish but who was
baptized at birth was released in France today.
2006:
The WB broadcast the final episode of “Related” created by Marta Kauffman and
starring Lizzy Caplan.
2006(20th of Adar, 5766): Ninety-six-year-old “Sophie Gerson, a legendary
figure in the history of textile union organizing in the South and a lifelong
fighter for peace, justice and socialism” passed away today. (As reported by
Deborah Gerson and Tim Wheeler) https://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/20/2006/death-of-social-activist-sophie-gerson
2006: Haaretz reported that Archaeologists have uncovered
underground chambers and tunnels constructed in northern Israel by Jews for
hiding from the Romans during their revolt in 66-70 CE.
2007: An exhibition featuring documents from the Otto Frank as well as other
material from the YIVO archives pertaining to the Holocaust in the Netherlands,
which has been on display on the Batkin Mezzanine level, at the Center for
Jewish History comes to an end.
2007: The Association for Jewish Theatre in conjunction with the Jewish Theatre
of Austria hosts a three day international conference for Jewish theater
professionals, artists, and aficionados.
2007: Avraham “Hirchson was investigated for seven hours by Israeli police
regarding an alleged embezzlement at a non-profit organization while serving as
the chairman of the National Workers Labor Federation.”
2007(1st of Nisan, 5667): Rosh Chodesh Nissan
2007(1st
of Nisan, 5667): Eighty-four year old music executive Hyman Y. “Hy” Weiss
passed away today. (As reported by Ben Sisario)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/obituaries/31weiss.html
2008 (II Adar 13 5768): Feast of Nicanor – “Judah Maccabee’s defeat of the
Syrian general Nicanor was originally celebrated as a minor festival on 13 Adar
(I Macc.7:49), this ‘Day of Nicanor’ being specifically mentioned in the
Apocrypha as occurring immediately before Purim, ‘the day of Mordecai (II Macc.
15:36). In time, the Feast of Nicanor gave way to the Fast of Esther.”
[Editor’s note: In another of the many oddities connected with the Purim
celebration, a joyful celebration of a real historic event gave way to a fast
connected to what is at best a piece of historic fiction.]
2008 (II Adar 13 5768): Fast of Esther
2008: In Washington, veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr discusses his
new book, “Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium.”
2008: The state of Iowa issued Agriprocessors Inc. of Postville 39 citations
with proposed penalties of $182,000 for allegedly violating state workplace
safety and health standards
2009: On Friday night, members of Mount Kisco’s Jewish community gather at
Mount Kisco Hebrew Congregation in an unparalleled display of Jewish
revitalization and Jewish unity as they take part in the 13th Shabbat Across
America Program.
2009: Today “an appellate court denied Bernie Madoff’s request to be released
from jail and returned to home confinement until he is sentenced to prison in
June. (Talk about Chutzpah)
2009: “I Love You Man,” a comedy directed by John Hamburg and starring Paul
Rudd, Jason Segal and Andy Samberg was released today in the United States.
2009: Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Shimon
Peres at 10:30 this morning to ask for more time in which to form a coalition.
Peres agreed to the request, and gave Netanyahu an additional two weeks.
2010: The Washington Post features a review of “The
Irresistible Henry House” by Lisa Grunwald, the daughter of the late Henry
Grunwald.
2010: Meeskeit and A Matter of Size are scheduled to be shown at 14th Annual
Mandell JC Hartford Jewish Film Festival.
2010: Today two rockets were launched at the Ashkelon district, north of Gaza,
another landed in Shaar HaNegev, northeast of Gaza and fourth rocket was fired
at Shaar HaNegev.
2010: A weak earthquake was felt in northern Israel tonight; no injuries or
damage was reported. The Seismological Institute reported that the quake
measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. It occurred just north of the Kinneret Sea
(Sea of Galilee), near the Arik Bridge, at 8:45 PM, for about ten seconds.
Residents reported feeling it. The Arik Bridge is named for Aryeh Shamir, an
IDF a paratroopers officer who fell in the line of duty. It was built in 1976.
Just ten days ago, a 3.4 earthquake was felt in northern Israel. Its epicenter
was off southern Lebanon, in the Mediterranean Sea. Just a day before that, a
level-6 quake hit Turkey, north of Lebanon, killing dozens.The Kinneret
currently stands at 212.81 meters below sea level, 19 centimeters above the
recommended red line. Israel’s rainy season is nearing its end.
2010: The color version of “Forbidden Zone” which had marked Danny Elfman’s
debut as a director when it was released in black and white in 1980 was shown
for the first time today at the Museum of Modern Art.
2010: For the first time in 62 years, hundreds gathered for emotional Sabbath
prayers at the renewed, majestic Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.
2011: Ilana Cravitz is scheduled to appear at Klezmer Workshop in Cambridge,
UK.
2011: Israeli vocalist Yasmin Levy is scheduled to appear at the SF Jazz Spring
Session where this daughter of “a revered Turkish cantor” will explore a
forgotten treasure trove of songs dating back to 16th century Spain.”
2011(14th of Adar II): Purim]
2011(14th of Adar II): Fifty-four year old Robert Spiegelman, who accompanied
the high school band he directed to the 2011 Rose Bowl Parade despite a serious
illness, passed away today. Speigelman grew up and lived in the St. Louis area.
The school’s jazz ensemble, under his direction, traveled to Paris in 1997 to
play in the 50th anniversary of the school’s namesake’s renowned flight from
New York to Paris. (As reported by the Eulogizer)
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by
Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including
“Modigliani: A Life” by Meryle Secrest and “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” by
James Carroll.
2011: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by
Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “New and
Selected Stories” by E.L. Doctorow and “Lee Krasner: A Biography” by Gail
Levin. In describing herself, Krasner said, “I happen to be Mrs. Jackson
Pollock, and that’s a mouthful. The only thing I haven’t had against me was
being black. I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you,
and a little too independent.”
2011: 22-year-old IDF Armored Corps officer was stabbed during an attempt to
steal his weapon in Jaffa this morning. An unknown masked assailant stabbed the
soldier in his chest and made off with his weapon.
2012: “Underdogs: A War Movie” is scheduled to be shown at the Gainesville
Jewish Film Festival in Gainesville, FL.
2012(28th of Adar, 5772): One-hundred-one year Rabbi Chaim Pinchas
Scheinberg passed away today.
2012: In Philadelphia, PA, Congregation Mikveh Israel’s 3rd Annual Sephardic
Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2012: “400 Miles to Freedom” is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the
16th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.
2013(9th of Nisan, 5773): Ninety-nine year old mezzo-soprano Risë
Stevens who Jewish mother, “the former Sadie Mechanic, recognized Risë’s vocal
talent early and was an enthusiastic steward of her youthful career” passed
away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/arts/music/rise-stevens-opera-singer-dies-at-99.html?hpw&_r=0
2013: Ruth Thomson, author of Terezín, A Story of the Holocaust is
scheduled to deliver a lecture at The Wiener Library in London.
2013: “Jailed Unjust in the Death of a Rabbi, Man Nears Freedom” published
today described events the events surrounding the two decades old murder of
Rabbi Chaskel Werzberg
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/nyregion/brooklyn-prosecutor-to-seek-freedom-of-man-convicted-in-1990-killing-of-rabbi.html
2013: Israeli soldiers provided medical care to four wounded Syrians on the
Golan Heights border
2013: A special screening of “The Flat” is scheduled to be hosted UKJF
2013: President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed
broad consensus on Israel’s top security priorities in a statements following a
meeting in Jerusalem.
2013: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to presents “Louis
Marshall and the Founding of Modern American Judaism”
2013: Barak Obama is scheduled to begin his first trip to Israel as U.S.
President. He had previously visited while serving as a U.S. Senator.
2014: Violinist Pinchas Zuckerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth are scheduled to
join the IPO conducted by Zubin Mehta in a Benefit Concert held in honor of the
late Marvin Hamlisch.
2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host
its 2014 Humanitarian Awards Dinner.
2014: “Wagner’s Jews” is scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film
Festival.
2014: The 17th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is
scheduled to come to an end.
2014: The Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open with a
screening of “When Comedy Went to School.”
2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris. After
breaking his nose, the assailants drew a swastika on his chest
2014: “The Israel Air Force showed off its new cutting-edge training aircraft,
the M-346” today. (As reported by Marissa Newman)
2014: Meir Kin, who has refused to give his wife Lonna Kin a get married
Daniela Barbosa tonight in Las Vegas in what was a very public reminder of the
inequity in Jewish divorce law.
2014: Eight of 11 families of Iranian Jews missing since the 90s were told this
evening at the Center for Intelligence Heritage that their relatives were
murdered on their way to Israel. (As reported by Orli Harari)
2014: “A German panel ruled against the heirs of four Jewish art dealers today
in a complicated case of a monumental collection of medieval religious art
known as the Welfenschatz, or Geulph Treasure.” (As reported by Amanda
Borschel-Dan)
2015: The exhibition “Lincoln and the Jews” which was inspired by the
publication of Lincoln and the Jews by Jonathan Sarna sponsored by the New York
Historical Society is scheduled to open today.
2015: “The Green Prince” directed by Nadav Schirman is scheduled to be shown at
the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.
2015: Today “Empty Mirrors Press published Howard Epstein’s political memoir Rise
Again: Nova Scotia’s NDP on the Rocks an account of his 15 years in
provincial politics, the history of the New Democratic Party in Nova Scotia,
and his analysis of the successes and failures of the Dexter NDP government
during its term in office.
2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Music Box in Atlantic, City.
2016: In Atlanta, the Breman is scheduled to host Henry Birnbery, the German
born American G.I. who will describe his experiences as one of the “first
American eyewitnesses to the devastation of the Nazi concentration camps.”
2016: “Wedding Doll” and “A Night at the Opera” are scheduled to be shown on
the final day of the Houston Jewish Film Festival.
2016: “A Tale of Love and Darkness” which marked the directorial debut of
Natalie Portman “in this adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Amos” is
scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.
2016: LimmudFest New Orleans 2016 is scheduled to come to an end today.
http://limmudnola.org/schedule/
2016: Hadassah of Greater Washington is scheduled to host High Tea and Harmony,
a fundraiser offering attendees a multi-dimensional musical experience along
with a traditional “High Tea.”
2016: As part of “Jews in the American South” Rhetta Mendelsohn is scheduled to
lead a walking tour of Old Charleston “with special emphasis on significant
architecture, garden culture and sites of Jewish interest” followed by dinner
with Eli Hyman, the “great-grandson of W.M. Karesh, a Jewish immigrant from
eastern Europe who started a wholesale dry-goods business in the city in 1890.”
Read more: http://go.forward.com/jews-in-the-american-south/#ixzz43JSZOcOI
Read more: http://go.forward.com/jews-in-the-american-south/#ixzz43JSHRXoX]
2016: The annual AIPAC Policy Conference is scheduled to open in Washington,
DC.
2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors
and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Imbeciles: The
Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by
Adam Cohen, Carry Me by Peter
2017: “Israel’s David’s Sling
anti-missile battery will go operational within the next two weeks, providing
the finishing touch of the Jewish state’s multi-tiered missile defense array, a
senior Israeli Air Force officer said today.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)
2017(22nd of Adar,
5777): Eighty-seven years old Robert B. Silvers, the son of James J. Silvers a
salesman, sometime farmer and small business owner, and Rose Roden Silvers a
music critic for The New York Globe and one of the first female radio hosts for
RCA, who founded The New York Review of Books passed away today.
http://www.nybooks.com/robert-silvers/
2017: A surprise drill began
today in which “2,000 reserve soldiers were called up…to simulate war in the
Gaza Strip.”
2017(22nd of Adar,
5777): Eighty-seven year old psychotherapist George Weinberg passed away today.
(As reported by William Grimes)
2017: JW3 is scheduled to host a
screening of The Second Time Around, an improbable tale of love involving Isaac
Shapiro, “a grumpy Polish tailor
2018: “The 6th Global
Forum for Combating Antisemitism” is scheduled to continue for a second day in
Jerusalem.
2018: The Evelyn Rubenstein JCC
Houston is scheduled to host “Get Cultured: Short Film Night” at the Axelrad
Beer Garden.
2018: “End Game” and “Keep the
Change” are scheduled to be shown at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.
2018: Publication of the
paperback edition Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty
Appel, the Brooklyn born son of Irving and Celia Appel and graduate of the
State University of New York at Oneonta
2018: In Jerusalem, Mercaz
Hatarbuyot is scheduled to host concert pianist Eliahou Zabaly.
2018:
Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to
host “The Unlikely Nazi
Hunters: A Rare Conversation with Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
2019(13th of Adar II,
5779): Fast of Esther; at night read the Megillah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2019: The New York Sephardic
Jewish Festival is scheduled to come to an end with the New York premiere of
the documentary Photo Farag and presentation of the Pomegranate Award to
“director Lisa Azuelos.”
2019: In Florida, the Boca Raton
Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Working Woman,”
“Joseph Pulitzer” and “A Fortunate Man.”
2019: In Metairie, LA (suburban
New Orleans) Congregation Beth Israel, JNOLA and the Jewish Community are
scheduled to host “a very Lego Purim Party” that will include services and a
Megillah reading for the whole family.
2020: The Jerusalem Marathon
which was scheduled to take place today has been postponed “until after the
Jewish holidays in the fall” per the order of Mayor Moshe Leon.
2020: In New Orleans, Limmudfest,
which was scheduled to begin today has been canceled due to the pandemic.
2020: Safety Jordan Dangerfield,
a member of the Ethiopian Jewish Community signed a new contract with the
Pittsburgh Steelers today.
2020: “Shabbat Live or Later:
Coronavirus Edition,” a livestream organized by Ahava is scheduled for this
evening.
2020(24th of Adar,
5780: On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeits of “Rabbi Isaack Eizik Margolit, author
of Seder Gittin ve-Halizah,”
and “Rabbi Eliezer Lipmann Silbermann, founder of Ha-Maggid, the first Hebrew weekly newspaper” (As reported by
Abraham Bloch)
2021: Contra Costa JCC is
schedule to present an in-person Passover scavenger hunt for ages 3 to 13 and
their families.
2021: KlezCalifornia is scheduled
to offer the first screening on of line of “an artful video adaptation of
Sholem Asch’s ground-breaking 1906 play ‘God of Vengeance’” performed by the
Yiddish Theatre Ensemble under the direction of Bruce Bierman.
2021: the Beth Am Oneg Israel and
Shabbat Jewish Film Series Committees are scheduled present a screening of
“Dolphin Boy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSyWHhta5LQ
2021(7th of Nisan,
7801): Parashat Vayikra;
2022: The JWI Women’s Leadership
Conference is scheduled to open today.
2022: Hundreds of thousands of
Israelis gathered today at the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a spiritual
leader in ultra-Orthodox Judaism, in one of the largest public gatherings in
Israeli history. (As reported by Patrick Kingsley)
2023: Tel Aviv Fashion Week is
scheduled to continue for a second day.
2023: The Weitzman National
Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host “Freedom Seder
Revisited.
2023: The International Lab for
Research and Leadership in Interfaith Collaboration and Coexistence are
scheduled to present “The Journey of the Sarajevo Haggadah.”
2023: The Weitzman National
Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host the last session of
“Telling Our Stories” during which attendees investigate their family’s
histories and stories using the Museum’s award-winning collection for
inspiration.
2024: The Museum at Eldridge
Street is scheduled to host film critic for New York Magazine (Vulture) Bilge
Ebiri, and moderator Lucy Shahar for a discussion of the acclaimed comedy-drama
“The Holdovers.”
2024: In Cedar Rapids, the
Hadassah Book Club under the leadership of Nancy Margulis is scheduled to
discuss Kosher Kosher by Jean Meltzer.
2024: In partnership with the
American Society of Jewish Music, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is
scheduled to host a Purim Spiel that will include musicians from the Mannes
School of Music and the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and performers
from The School of Drama who will provide a dramatic and festive telling of the
story of Esther, Mordechai, Haman, and King Ahasuerus which will be punctuated
by thrilling performances of klezmer music.
2024: Lockdown University is
scheduled to host a lecture by Jeremy Rosen “Making Sense of the Bible: Can its
Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 13:16, Good Spies, Bad Spies.”
2024: As March
20th begins in Israel, the Hamas held hostages begin
day 166 in captivity.
(Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we
are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time.)
ourcog 
